Humour

Within A Month!

The other day, I was out doing errands. I must have gone to three different plazas to buy things from at least 2 stores at each one. At some point, I realized that whenever I took a step, it sounded like one of my flipflops was making a shuffling/scraping sound. I figured it was just the asphalt, but eventually, it started to trigger my misophonia, so I got to the car, and looked at the bottom of my shoe. Stuck to the underside of my flipflop was a bright neon green sticky note. It was slightly crumpled up. I unfolded it, and it said: “One month from July 25th”. That was all.

And I was like, what kind of message from the universe is THIS??!! I didn’t know whether I should be feeling optimistic or terrified. And I have an entire month to wonder about this and anticipate either the best, or the WORST August 25 in existence. According to my google calendar, that’s a Sunday, and so far, I have nothing on. I plan to keep it that way. On August 25th, you’ll find me huddled under the covers in my bedroom, listening for the sound of a fuselage that has snapped off an airplane and is heading for my roof. Why? Because my bedroom is the safest place I can think of to be, but I’ve also seen Donnie Darko, and I’m the Queen of Worst Case Scenarios.

Then I also thought about the person who WROTE the note, and what wonderful or terrible thing they were anticipating when they scribbled down this dire, and very vague prediction. Because if it was supposed to be a reminder, it’s a sh*tty one:

The phone rings…

Person 1: Where the hell are you?!

Person 2: In bed, why?

Person 1: Because it’s August 25! THE 25TH! One month to the day we first met! I’m standing here surrounded by 80 of our closest friends and family and you’re a no-show! Your parents are FURIOUS.

Person 2: My parents are there?!

Person 1: Who do you think paid for the whole thing?? Your dad keeps telling everyone that you’d forget your own name if it wasn’t written on your forehead.

Person 2: Yeah, that tattoo really hurt.

Person 1: Did you even try to remember? Did you write it down?!

Person 2: I put it on a sticky note…but then I lost the note.

Person 2: The wedding is off, BOB! (hangs up)

Person 1: Dang.

Personally, I can’t remember to do things I wrote down TWO days ago, let alone thirty. In fact, earlier this week, Ken asked me if I had anything on in the morning because he remembered I’d written something on the calendar in the kitchen. I looked and it said, “Clock.” And I didn’t have the faintest idea what that meant (although I certainly had high hopes), until I looked at my google calendar where I had typed in Chuck. Chuck is our travel agent and I was supposed to see him that morning. I was minorly let down because Chuck is, obviously and sadly, not a clock.

Anyway, the days will keep counting down until August 25. I’m sure there’s a wonderfully spooky story in there somewhere, just waiting to be told, but first I have to get through the next month. And if you don’t hear from me that Sunday, you’ll know why…

Mydangblog and the Blustery Day

For most of this week, I’ve had a song stuck in my head. I get that a lot and sometimes for more than a week, thanks to my particular brand of OCD, where a random song will start to loop and I can’t stop it, to the point where I wake up in the middle of the night and it’s still playing. I wrote about this previously (check out It’s Toxic for more), and it usually happens when I’m very stressed. And what is the song, you ask? It’s The Rain, Rain, Rain, Came Down, Down, Down from the Disney feature Winnie The Pooh and the Blustery Day. In the story, it rains so much that Piglet and Pooh are flooded out of their homes, and I don’t know why anyone would think that was adorable and totally appropriate for small children. I remember watching it as a small child myself and being very afraid for Piglet. Of course, back then I couldn’t swim, so I assumed anyone surrounded by water would just drown.

And why do you have that particular song stuck in your head, you ask? Because last week, I was beset—nay, besieged, by torrential rain wherever I went. It started last Sunday when I did a book fair at a town not far from here. It was an outdoor event, so Ken and I loaded up the table, chairs, and the canopy/tent we’d gotten cheap off Facebook Marketplace. It was a sweltering day and we were both exhausted by the time we got the tent up, having forgotten how it all went together and taking extra long in the full sun for the debacle. No sooner had the event started, and people arrived, when the skies took an ominous turn. Ken had left by this point, wanting to go home and mow the lawn, and he called me to say that he was halfway home and it was teeming down. Then the thunder started. Then the downpour came. I threw tarps over everything then spent the next hour hanging on to my cheap-ass tent for dear life as the wind threatened to turn it into a parasail. I got soaked to the skin and only sold one book the entire afternoon.

Then, on Monday, as we kept getting shower after shower, I got worried about the basement. It’s a partial basement and crawlspace and it’s always a little damp but we have a dehumidifier that keeps things under control. On Tuesday morning though, the skies opened and we got rain like we’ve never seen rain before. I didn’t think much of it until I heard the sump pump running endlessly. So I opened the basement door to take a peek. There was a small river running across the basement floor, and I just about lost my mind:

Me: Ken! There’s water everywhere!
Ken: It’ll be ok. The sump pump isn’t broken this time.
Me: What if the power goes off?!
Ken: Then we’re screwed.
Me: OMG, the house is going to collapse!
Ken: The house has been standing for almost 120 years. It will be fine. We just need to—

And that’s when the song started. It’s been playing in my head as we mopped, as we shopvac’d, as I fretted, and as Ken put down hydraulic cement.

Luckily, the hydraulic cement seems to have done the trick for the time being, until we can get someone in to take a proper look. But they’re all busy right now because a lot of other people got a lot more water in than we did and sustained a heck of a lot more damage, one of the advantages of us having a creepy basement that I’m pretty sure is haunted so we don’t keep anything down there that a ghost would like. And the upside? I’ve been singing the rain song wrong all these years, as I found out when I watched the YouTube video just now, so now my brain can do it right. And the rain, rain, rain, came down, down, down…

It’s Puzzling, Isn’t It?

Ken and I love to do jigsaw puzzles. We usually have one going in the kitchen where we can take a minute and pop in a few pieces between other work. I find it relaxing and I think there’s proven evidence that you get a little dopamine rush when a piece clicks. But sometimes I wonder about the people who design them, like what choices are they making with the illustrations? Case in point, last week, we got a new Charles Wysocki puzzle. Charles Wysocki was an American painter who specialized in “primitive Americana”. If you’ve ever done a Wysocki puzzle, you know it heavily features this idyllic view of late 1800s towns with a LOT of American flags everywhere, and as a Canadian, I find this weird, because I’ve never done a Canadian puzzle covered in OUR flag, but sometimes there are also clocks, so it all evens out. This week, though, I opened up the new puzzle and looked at the poster, excited to discover that all the buildings were antique stores and curiosity shops. “Oh, wow!” I said to Ken. “Look at all the cool stuff in the windows of these antique stores!” He agreed that it was going to be a lot of fun, considering we have an antique business ourselves, and I started to build the frame. But then I looked closer and something dawned on me: the painting the puzzle was based on represented life in the 1800s, and all the people were wearing old-timey clothes and driving horses and buggies so NONE OF THE THINGS IN THE WINDOWS WOULD BE ANTIQUES! The stuff in the stores were things that those people would have used every single day and probably thought were modern conveniences, like the railroad lantern, the ironstone china, and the coffee grinder. If they wanted to be truly authentic and antique, shouldn’t the stores have sarcophaguses or suit of armour at least? So unless this town is one of those places where actors are all dressed up and pretend to be pioneers for the tourists, it’s seriously out of whack.

And it reminded me of the time that I started working on a Dowdle puzzle, which are based on the work of a different American artist, Eric Dowdle. This one was of Peggy’s Cove in Canada, which is strange considering he was from Utah, but it does explain the presence of a random Mountie standing by a flagpole, like that’s just what Mounties do all the time or whatnot. I started to piece the edge together as one does and immediately discovered that one of the pieces was all chewed up and distorted, like a dog had eaten it and spat (or sh*t) it back out. Oh well, I thought, at least it’s not missing, because I HATE when a puzzle has a missing piece, and I think I’ve written about suspecting Atlas of stealing puzzle pieces before. But it got worse. See, there are a lot of tiny human (?) figures in the puzzle, and as I started to pull them out, it became clear that the artist who designed it was, perhaps, really more into horror stories than pastoral scenes of a harbour town.

Like, OK, it’s bad enough that there are 4 dudes in three-piece suits and fedoras standing on a rock looking like they all want to talk to me about Jesus, and numerous people are hoisting giant lobsters in the air and swinging them around like that’s a completely normal activity (and maybe it is in Peggy’s Cove–I’m going there in August so I’ll keep you posted) but then, in the background, there’s this guy:

What the absolute f*ck is this guy doing, crawling out over a rock towards you like that girl from The Ring?! You don’t notice him at first, because there’s so much else going on, what with all the proselytizing and lobster waving, but once you do, HE’S ALL YOU SEE. And then suddenly it seems like maybe instead of an idyllic fishing village, this is a zombie town, and all the figures are now ominous and the lobsters are screaming for help. In the poster that came with the puzzle, he appeared to be wearing large, weird mittens on his hands, and I really didn’t want to find the rest of him in case he came to life and started crawling over the back of my couch.

So anyway, I’ll keep doing my Wysocki–I just won’t look too closely at the horses’ eyes, just in case they’re devil horses or something, because you never know…

Signs of (Bathroom) Trouble

Last weekend, Ken and I went to the book launch for one of my DarkWinter Press authors. It was a wonderful time—great audience, beautiful venue, and I think she sold a lot of books. It’s the second time I’ve been fortunate enough to attend a DarkWinter author’s book launch and I hope I can keep doing it! But right before the book launch, Ken and I decided to stop off at his old high school, which is in a town near the book launch venue, because they were having a homecoming afternoon.

It was very busy, with a lot of people in attendance because the school serves the small town it’s in plus all of the surrounding area. Still, Ken managed to find a few friends and spent some time catching up (and when I say ‘spent some time’ I mean YOU MADE US LATE TO THE LAUNCH KEN) but it was nice for him to see some of the guys he hung around with when he was a teenager. Right before we left, I needed to use the bathroom and I found one in the main hall. It said ‘Gender Neutral Washroom – Students’, which I thought was very nice, so I went in and used the facilities, but when I tried to wash my hands, I couldn’t get the faucet to work. This happens to me sometimes and it serves to reinforce my belief that I am really a ghost, even though Ken tells me he can see me most of the time. Anyway, I also have OCD (yes, a ghost with OCD—I haunt your house by cleaning it) so I needed to find somewhere to wash my hands and lo and behold, right next to the Gender Neutral student washroom was another door that said, ‘Gender Neutral Washroom – Staff’. So I went in there, and it turns out that the problem was not me being invisible again but that the faucets were NOT in fact motion activated and had a very small handle which needed to be turned. A few blessed seconds later, hands clean, I turned to leave and saw a very strange sign on the wall by the toilet which said this (see below for what it says if you can’t read the image):

In regular print: “If you have digestive issues, please go see a doctor.”

Then in large print: “Otherwise, it is expected that you will clean the toilet after an episode of diarrhea.”

And then in very small print: “Nobody else wants to be part of your bathroom issues.”

I stood there for a minute pondering this. I reread it, then took a picture of it. Later, I was talking to Ken and Kate about it and showed them the picture:

Kate: It makes sense. Why should the custodian have to clean it up?
Me: That’s not the point. The point is this—THERE IS A SIGN. That means it’s happened MORE THAN ONCE!
Kate: Oh right!
Me: It’s the same logic as warning labels on appliances. If it says, “Do not use this hair straightener on your eyelashes” it’s because at least one person has done it! So the question is, how often has ‘an episode of diarrhea’ been such an issue that someone posted an actual warning sign?!
Kate (laughs): Yeah, whoever made the sign was fed up, like, ‘We’re all sick of your shit, Frank.’
Me: And the sign is LAMINATED. Like, just in case it needs to be wiped down.
All: EWWW.

And I can tell you right now, having worked in a high school for many years that the sign was probably written by one of the female English teachers directed towards one of the male gym teachers and you can literally feel the animosity coming off it despite how restrained it is, like what she really wanted to say was ‘Here’s a newsflash, FRANK—if your system can’t handle the constant barrage of burritos and beer, give us all a break from your sewage shower and eat some roughage. And if I ever see you waltzing out of this Gender Neutral space after your explosive diarrhea has rendered it uninhabitable again, I will personally shove a toilet brush up your—”

You can imagine the rest.

Happy anniversary, Ken! It’s been 34 wonderful years and here’s to at least 34 more!

Tiny Me

It’s been another crafty week at the mydangblog household. First, you may remember the peel and stick wallpaper that Ken and I used to create the illusion of a bookcase door which leads to our secret library? Well, it’s not much of an illusion when it starts to fall off the panel attached to the door (as if the illusion wasn’t already problematic based on the size, and worse, the bizarre titles of the books on the peel and stick bookcase—Dawn Fly Stuff is still my favourite and you can read about all the rest in a previous post called Lost In Translation). But my tremendous disappointment at the less than sticky stickers was relieved when Ken said, “I have a great idea—I’ll get some trim and moulding and tack it all down with actual wood that looks like a bookshelf.” And that’s what he did. It looks even better than it did before the books all started to fall off, especially since the giant fake candle sconces in the middle are now hidden. But of course, the trim had to all be painted the same colour. Which I volunteered to do before I realized that I would have to use painter’s tape to protect the books in EVERY SINGLE SQUARE. It took me 3 minutes to paint the trim. It took me OVER AN HOUR to tape it all up. Still, at the end of the whole process, I think it looks even more realistic than it did before, and the stickers so far are staying stuck.

And then, because I was in A MOOD, I decided to tackle my new miniature room, and for the record, let me just clarify that it’s a miniature room, NOT A DOLL HOUSE because that’s a road that, as much as I’d love to go down, is also a rabbit hole that I may never emerge from. But last week, before we went to that awards banquet, I made Ken stop at an antique market up north because I had seen a Facebook post from one of their vendors who specializes in miniatures. Not only him, as it turns out—this place is the MECCA for tiny things and I was super-excited by what I bought, I mean, I got a cute little HARP among other things. I’d been thinking about it all for several days and rearranging things on the counter and looking for ephemera and whatnot, so after our secret library door success, Ken built me a box and I started the room. It turned out even better than I’d hoped and I’m so happy with it. Ken took a look when I was finished though:

Me: What do you think?
Ken (silently calculating): There are 3 clocks in this room.
Me: Of course there are 3 clocks. How else will Tiny Me know what time it is?
Ken: None of the clocks work.
Me: Tiny Me is aware, KEN. Time is a construct.
Ken: That…doesn’t make any sense.
Me: It’s my room—Tiny Me can have as many clocks as she wants!
Ken: Okay, Susab.

In case you’re confused, ‘Susab’ was the name on my place card at the awards banquet we went to. So to recap—they spelled my last name wrong on the press release, they had ‘Susan’ on the seating chart, and then ‘Susab’ on the place card. No wonder I didn’t win—they didn’t even know who I was! I should have just told them to use Tiny Me.

I Detect Another Mystery Show

Right now, as in Saturday morning which is when I usually write this, I’m a little distracted because I’m getting ready to go to the big banquet for that literary award I was longlisted for. I already know that I didn’t win, but there’s a roast beef dinner–need I say more? I’ve never been to a big literary banquet and I’m very nervous, like what if I drink too much and pull a Kanye by rushing the stage and insisting that Margaret Atwood should have won? (Narrator’s Voice: Update: She did not rush the stage. But she DID address a man in line at the bar with “You look familiar–is your name Jerry?” to which he gave her a strange look, muttered, “No, it’s Steve. I need to go get some water” and hurried away. And not long after, she was mortified when ‘Steve’ got up on stage because it turns out he was the HOST of the gala and also a VERY well-known Canadian comedian but in her defence, Steve is mostly ON THE RADIO). So in honour of my anxiety (which proved to be a valid concern), I present to you a throwback to a post I made a few years ago, which appropriately follows up on my Midsomer Murders expose. Hope you enjoy! (Also, at the end of this, there’s a link to a radio show I recently did, so also enjoy!)

Once, I was bored and there was nothing good on TV, so I decided to watch a rerun of a show whose title had intrigued me for a long time: “Houdini and Doyle.” From what I understood, it was about a detective duo at the turn of the century, and I love detective shows. One of my all time favourites is the updated version of Sherlock Holmes called Elementary, starring the irascible Johnny Lee Miller, and Lucy Liu as Watson. I also adore Benedict Cumberbatch in the BBC version of Sherlock, which I’ve rewatched several times on Netflix, so I thought I’d give Houdini and Doyle a whirl. All I knew is that Harry Houdini was a Hungarian-American magician, and that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was the Scottish author of the Sherlock Holmes series, among other things. I love magic and I love Victorian Scottish fiction writers (albeit a very small group) and I had high hopes for its ability to keep me happily occupied for the next hour. Unfortunately, the TV show was—and I’m being polite here—absolute sh*t. Here are my main complaints:

  • The plot was ridiculous. This episode took place in a town where everyone except the local doctor and a little girl suddenly died. People were just lying on the streets in their period costumes, or keeled over their dinners of mutton and ale. Even the dogs were dead. And so were the mice—I know this because Houdini pointed out a nest of dead mice under a porch in a very obvious way in order to prove—well, I’m not actually sure what he was trying to prove. Houdini and Doyle eventually decided that everyone died due to a large cloud of carbon dioxide which had escaped from a nearby mine and which had asphyxiated the entire town. And as convoluted as that all sounds, it wasn’t even the ridiculous part. The most illogical part of the whole thing was their explanation regarding the survival of the doctor and the little girl. I was hoping beyond hope that since the show revolved around a famous magician that there might actually be a supernatural or magic-y rationale, like they were both alien mutants with cosmic lung capacity, or immune to the biological weapon that the government was experimenting with or something cool, but no. The doctor was in bed having a nap, and the little girl was sick and was also in bed. Therefore, they were BELOW the gas cloud and escaped its nefarious and deadly clutches. At which point, I yelled at the TV, “WHAT ABOUT THE DEAD MICE UNDER THE PORCH?! ? WHAT ABOUT THE DOGS? ARE YOU SERIOUSLY TELLING ME THAT ALL THE DEAD DOGS WERE TALLER THAN THAT KID’S BED?!”
  • It made even less sense later, when having “solved” the first mystery, Houdini and Doyle then prevented the assassination of the President of the United States at a hotel because they had found a note with the words “King Edward” on it, and after thinking it was about killing the King, they realized it was the name of a hotel and got there just in time. All in one episode of 45 minutes (not counting all the commercials).
  • There were no magic tricks AT ALL. Considering the show stars one of the most famous American magicians of all time, there was a surprising LACK of magic-type stuff. Not even a f*cking card trick. They should have had Houdini in a locked closet, tied up with padlocked chains, racing against time to escape and thwart the assassination. Instead, he just knocked the gun out of the guy’s hand. Boring.
  • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was Scottish, yet he spoke with an English accent. Yes, they sound different. The English always sound like they’re trying to knight you, and the Scottish always sound like they’re mad at you, thusly:
    English: I hereby dub thee Lady Mydangblog. You may rise.
    Scottish: Och, you’ve a new fancy name ‘n all! Gie up, lassy!!
    But Doyle was always like “Good Heavens! What the devil happened here, my good man?” instead of “Whit? Awae wi’ ye, numptie!” Yes, I know that the actual Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was well-educated and spoke the “Queen’s English”, but it would have added something to the show if he’d used spicy phrases and unintelligible dialect. The plot didn’t make any sense, so why should the dialogue?
  • Houdini sounded Canadian and the whole show had a distinctly Canadian feel ie: it was kind of amateur-ish, like Murdoch Mysteries, where a Canadian detective in the 1890s “uses radical forensic techniques of the time, including fingerprints and trace evidence, to solve gruesome murders” (imdb) along with his partner, female coroner Dr. Julie Ogden (yes, a female coroner in the 1890s–very realistic). I wasn’t sure WHY I felt like Houdini and Doyle was so Canadian, then I googled it, and it turns out that the show “has Canadian producers and comes from the same production company as Murdoch Mysteries.” Mystery solved.
  • Last, throughout the show, Houdini kept insisting that you always know when you’re dreaming because “You can’t read in your dreams.” This is patently untrue. I read things all the time in my dreams, words that I’ve written, stories, poems, social media posts, and whatnot. I don’t always remember them when I wake up, but I READ them, so maybe I’m just more magical than Houdini.

Anyway, in keeping with the current trend of unrealistic detective/magician duos like Houdini and Doyle, I came up with a couple of my own.

1) “What The Dickens!”: This show stars Charles Dickens and David Copperfield, played respectively by Gerard Butler and Keanu Reeves, because why the hell not? In the show, Dickens has time-travelled to the future and meets American magician David Copperfield. Together, they investigate the disappearance of many large buildings and monuments, and battle their arch-nemesis Uriah Heep, played by Dick Van Dyke, who is as immortal as any supervillain. After they’ve solved every mystery (turns out it was Copperfield all along), Dickens returns to his own time and writes a very long novel called “David Copperfield” where he makes a LOT of stuff up, (he got paid by the word, after all) but leaves out the detective/magic part because he doesn’t want his heirs to get sued by Copperfield in the future for revealing his magical techniques.

2) “Fitzgerald and Wife”: In keeping with the fine tradition of married couple detectives, this show features F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. Every week, they are presented with a new mystery which they fail to solve because they are too drunk.

3) “Robbie and Doug”: This is a Canadian reality show starring famous author Robertson Davies, who almost won a Nobel prize, and Doug Henning, a Canadian magician who ran for Parliament as a candidate for the ‘Natural Law Party’, which believes that all the problems in the world can be solved by learning the art of “yogic flying”. In the show, Davies just grumbles a lot about everything in an unintelligible dialect because he’s 90 years old and Scottish, and Henning solves all the crimes by flying around and meditating. The show is cancelled when viewers discovered that Henning isn’t REALLY flying—it’s only special effects. Yogic flying is actually just bouncing in a lotus position, and everyone knows you can’t solve crimes by bouncing unless you’re Tigger.

As a side note, I know that neither F. Scott or Zelda were magicians, but I liked the concept too much to leave it out on THAT technicality.

Also, if you’re interested in hearing me read from my OWN gothic thriller/mystery Charybdis, as well as from my new work in progress Nomads of the Modern Wasteland, I was recently featured on the radio show Reader’s Delight, hosted by the lovely Jody Swannell. You can listen to it here: https://radiowaterloo.ca/episode-vi-of-readers-delight/

The Most Dangerous Game

Here’s something that I recently discovered. Anyone who thinks that today’s young generation is coddled, babied, overprotected, love luxury and all those things that people have liked to sling around ever since Socrates have obviously never seen 13 year-olds play lacrosse. I had the distinct pleasure of doing this on Friday night as we went to watch our nephew in a local tournament. Now, our nephew is an athletic kid, slim build, and as we stood in the bleachers watching the team enter the arena, I couldn’t figure out which one was him:

Me: He’s one of the goalies, right?
Ken: Yeah…the goalies are over there.
Me: But neither of them could be him—they’re both HUGE.
Ken: I think they wear a lot of padding.

A lot of padding is an understatement—it was indeed my nephew and he looked like he had several couch cushions hidden underneath his uniform. I was trying to figure out how on earth a goalie could move around in equipment like that, then I saw the actual net, and it was only marginally wider than the kid in it, so it looked like not a lot of moving was actually required. And what was even weirder is that none of the other kids, the ones who weren’t goalies, were wearing ANY padding at all. Okay, I thought—I guess they get really violent with the goalie, shooting the ball at him hard and whatnot, but they must have a LOT of rules to protect the other kids. And then they started playing, and I was like, what the actual f*ck?? I mean, I coached high school senior rugby for several years and it’s a pretty aggressive game, but I swear, 13 year-old lacrosse players are MANIACS. They were whacking each other with sticks, knocking each other onto the concrete, shoving, tripping, tackling—it was unreal—at one point, there were four players in the penalty box, 3 from the other team and 1 from our side. My nephew’s team won something like 16-1 but they have a mercy rule (the irony of which has not escaped me) so they only show the score up until 8. And then, when the final whistle blew, they all shook hands like it was no big thing that they had just survived The Hunger Games.

After he got his equipment off and we hauled several large cushion bags to the car, we took him for some fast food:

Me: That was pretty violent.
Nephew: Yeah. The other team was playing a little dirty though. And the refs weren’t calling very many penalties.
Me: You mean they could have called MORE? So you’re not actually allowed to take your lacrosse stick and slam it into the back of another player?
Nephew: If they don’t have the ball, you shouldn’t.

And the best part was that I had the whole thing completely backwards—the goalie is the one LEAST likely to get hurt because no one is allowed to go into the inner crease plus the goalie is dressed like a giant mattress and everything just bounces off him. Well, off my nephew. Not the other goalie, who let in 16 goals. As my nephew succinctly pointed out, “Their defence sucked.” But their offense? That was killer. Literally.

It’s A Mystery

Recently, I’ve been binge-watching an old British TV series called Midsomer Murders. The show focuses on a detective named Barnaby who lives in this vast English territory called Midsomer (not to be confused with Midsommar, which is quite possibly the most INSANE and awful movie I’ve ever seen, nor is it a time of year like Midsummer, which in Canada, happens in October). Each episode is an hour and a half long and there are TWENTY-THREE seasons with between 4 and 8 episodes a season. It’s been on since 1997 and they’re still making new episodes. Right now, I’m in about Season 9, I think—it’s easy to lose track, but at this point, I think I’m qualified to make a few observations about this show.

1) How are there any people left in Midsomer? Because in each episode there are at least 4 murders, sometimes more. Midsomer is rivalling several entire countries as well as numerous American States to be crowned the murder capital of the world. You think Murder, She Wrote was a little over the top? Try living in Midsomer, where your life is in your hands every day because you own a relish factory.

2) How big exactly is Midsomer? In the first couple of seasons it seemed like it was a fairly small county consisting of two or three villages. But when all those people were murdered, they started adding on with places like Midsomer Parma, Midsomer Wellow, Badger’s Drift, Midsomer Worthy (not to be confused with Midsomer LITTLE Worthy, Midsomer Barrow—in fact, if you look online, there are SIXTY-TWO different towns and places where these murders all take place. It’s like Midsomer has its own continent. But I guess when you’ve been killing off your population for 27 years, you need to expand your victim pool.

3) Every single person who lives in Midsomer has a deep, dark secret. From the local barman to the local baron, they’re all hiding something. That’s why in every episode, there are so many red herrings. I mean, you can’t stretch a murder investigation into an hour and a half unless you have twenty different suspects who have a shady past/married their stepson/made someone drink hallucinogenic tea/had a secret lovechild fathered by the local Anglican minister/turned someone into a blood eagle/once shot a guy during a foxhound and claimed they were aiming for the fox/burned someone alive/urinated on a sacred tree (some of these happened in the TV show Midsomer Murders and some happened in the movie Midsommar and some happened in BOTH. Guess which is which?)

4) The same actor played Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby for the first 13 seasons and when he retired, his ‘cousin’, Detective Chief Inspector John Barnaby takes over, and the best thing is that the actor playing John Barnaby, whose name is Neil Dudgeon was in one of the earlier episodes called Garden of Death. The IMDB synopsis of this episode is: “When an arrogant aristocratic family’s decision to develop a memorial garden into a commercial tea shop has the villagers up in arms, murders past and present rear their heads.” People got MURDERED over a tea shop. And the guy who becomes the new Barnaby was the sexy memorial gardener. Also, in researching this, I discovered Neil Dudgeon has been a bit actor in every single BBC mystery series, so I guess he has a lot of experience at detective-ing.

5) The synopses get increasingly more random and bizarre as the years go on. Here are some of my favourites:

The bodies of former criminals are found in a cornfield. The cause of their deaths and the strange position in which they lay is rather bizarre. Rumours quickly circulate in the village that it could be the work of some extra-terrestrial force. However, Barnaby is far from convinced.

When one of the world’s rarest orchids is smuggled illegally into Midsomer Malham, it triggers a catalogue of passion, jealousy and death.

The unveiling of a newly-discovered novel by deceased Midsomer crime-writer George Summersbee at the Luxton Deeping Crime Festival is jeopardised when the manuscript is stolen and a woman is fatally electrocuted by a booby-trapped roulette wheel. Can new dad Barnaby untangle a web of jealousy and obsession to find the killer?

The annual harvest fair and the daredevil riders of the Wall of Death come to Midsomer village Whitcombe Mallet. When the owner of an equestrian centre is trampled by his horse DCI Barnaby and DS Nelson have to unravel a complex feud from the past, where nothing is what it seems.

Alien abductions, illegal orchids, booby-trapped rouletted wheels, walls of death—what more could anyone ask for?

But recently, all of my mystery watching came in handy when we had a murder in our OWN house:

Me: I have discovered the body of a mouse in the guest room. This crime shall not go unpunished. Now let me see. (*carefully appraises group of suspects and then points with a dramatic flourish*) Atlas!! Was it you?!
Atlas: What? No! I have an alibi. I was outside at the time, barking at the squirrels.
Me: Hmmm. (*points with another dramatic flourish*) Then it must have been Ken!!
Ken: Why would I—what are we doing here exactly? I don’t remember this scenario ever happening…
Me: Don’t break the fourth wall, KEN. All right, let me see…there’s only one other suspect—ILANA!! It was YOU!!
Ilana: I didn’t do it, copper! I swear!
Me: Then why did the mouse write ‘Twuz A Kat in its own blood on the floor? Explain THAT!!
Ilana: Fine. It was me. But it was supposed to be a present.
Me: Mystery solved.

DCI Barnaby would be proud.

Reactine Well

Reactine Well

The virtual book launch for my new novel Charybdis just finished and it was lovely, so huge thanks to everyone who came, to my special guests Susan Richardson, Lawrence Moore, and Paul Brookes, and an especially big thank you to my amazing publisher Jane Cornwell of JC Studio Press for organizing it!

Aside from that, it’s been a lovely week because I’m currently kitty sitting my grand-kitty. Kate and her boyfriend are on the West Coast visiting his family, so we’ve been left in charge of the delightful Ilana. The delightful and furry Ilana. Did I mention that I’m very allergic to cats? So while I’m loving taking care of this tiny monster of joy, I’m also stuffed up to the gills, which is being compounded by all the pollen in the air now that spring is finally and definitely here, because if you know anything at all about Canada, you’ll know we actually have something like 13 seasons here, and I take this from the several many memes about Canadian seasons that one can find on the internet:

Winter
Fool’s Spring
2nd Winter
Spring of Deception
Third Winter
Pollen Spring (this is where we are now)
Construction
Summer
False Fall
Second Summer
Fall
Winter Is Coming
Hello darkness my old friend

So you can only imagine how difficult breathing is for me right now, but I can’t help it. Ilana is adorable and sweet and a total little goblin who likes to wake me up in the middle of the night by punching the back of my head and then rubbing her face against my nose until I wake up:

Me: What the hell?
Ilana: There may be a mouse…
Me: Well, go get it. That’s your job.
Ilana: But I want you to know about it. If I catch one, I will bring it to you.
Me: Please do NOT do that.

There is a mouse down here, I’m certain

Like most cats, she’s also very fickle about how and when she receives attention:

Ilana: I present to you my tummy. Please rub it.
Me: Awwww. Such a cute—ouch! Why did you attack my hand?!
Ilana: Changed my mind. Wait. Rub my tummy.
Me: Will you attack my hand again?
Ilana: No, I promise.
Me: Okay. You’re so sweet—ouch!! Damn it!!
Ilana: One more time?
Me: Sigh. Alright.

Of course, she’s still not comfortable around Atlas but she’s getting more used to him, and he still regards her as a wild woodland creature:

Atlas: That skunk is back.
Me: Not a skunk. But don’t bother her regardless. You think a skunk is an issue? Wait until you try to rub her tummy.
Atlas: Fair enough. Will you rub MY tummy?
Me: Will you attack my hand and bite me?
Atlas: What do I look like—a psychopath?

At any rate, we have her for over another week, and I’m thoroughly enjoying everything about her, because, as you can see by the pictures, she is the most precious little kitty in the world—no matter how much of a psychopath she is, and I’m single-handedly keeping the allergy medication people in business.

Feeling Bubbly But Not Expensive

This will be a quick one because the book launch for my new novel Charybdis is this afternoon and I’ve been planning like crazy, buying meats and cheeses, and assorted drinks and other things so that people will be busy eating and not notice how nervous I am. I also bought 2 bottles of bubbly but because we forgot to get some in the city, I was forced to buy it at the local gas station and all they had was Spumante Bambino and it was $10.95 a bottle in case anyone is thinking that champagne is a luxury. I’d normally do something a little fancier like a nice prosecco but gas station liquor store beggars can’t be choosers.

Otherwise, it’s been a quiet week. Here are the highlights:

On Tuesday, I presented a workshop on creative writing to a class at a school that seemed to be near Niagara Falls and I was so excited because I was planning on hitting some wineries on the way back. The kids were amazing and when I was done, I put “wineries near me” into my gps and THERE WAS NOTHING. I was on the wrong side of the escarpment apparently, and came home empty-handed, having also not made the finals for that literary prize I was longlisted for. Well, not really empty-handed—I got a nice mug and a lanyard from the school.

I ordered some gluten-free licorice for Kate because she was recently diagnosed with celiac disease. It came on Wednesday and I was so excited because licorice is her favourite. I tried it. It tasted like cardboard.

Thursday: That bug is back.

Say hello to my little friend!

Friday: I had been booked for AGES to do a reading at this one particular reading series on Saturday which meant I couldn’t do a book festival that came up on the same day that I really wanted to do. Then the reading series cancelled at the last minute, so I asked the book festival people if I could be put on a waiting list. It would have been cool to do either, kind of like a Charybdis weekend with the launch being on Sunday and all. Then the book festival got cancelled because of rain and the rain date was TODAY. And on Friday night, I got an email offering me a spot at the book festival for today but I couldn’t take it because I’M LAUNCHING MY BOOK. Could my timing be any worse?!

But then on Saturday, with big junk pickup on Monday, I made Ken take me driving around the back concessions and there wasn’t much but I got, AT THE SIDE OF THE ROAD FOR FREE, a stained glass lampshade in perfect condition. So the week turned out okay after all. I’m pretty easy to please, as you can tell by both the lampshade and the Spumante Bambino.

Here’s a picture of the aurora borealis that I took from our upper deck because it’s beautiful and even if things don’t always go my way, life is still very beautiful too. Wish me luck this afternoon, and by wish me luck, I mean let’s hope that at least a few people show up and drink my cheap champagne.

Also, if you can’t attend my in-person launch and you’d still like to celebrate with me, my wonderful publisher JC Studio Press is doing an online Eventbrite launch for Charybdis on Saturday, June 1. You can register for that here!