Writing

Boob Job; I Love My Dog

This week, I had to do something that I’d been dreading for a while—get a mammogram. My original appointment had been in July, then I had to change it and the earliest I could get was December. But then, in a surprising turn of good luck, we were going to be away on a cruise in December and I had to change the appointment once again. The earliest new date I could get was in July—again. It seemed like a good thing but then I started thinking—is it? What if there was something wrong with one of the “girls” and I wouldn’t even know until next summer, by which time it might be too late? But there was nothing, seemingly, that I could do, given that the clinic where my requisition was sent was notorious for never having any appointments. Then two weeks ago, I was getting an ultrasound on my shoulder at a new place in the same building as my physiotherapist and they had a big sign that said they’d just become partners in the government screening program. I enquired—they could give me an appointment almost right away. I would have rejoiced but if you’ve ever had one of these done, you’ll know it’s nothing to get excited about. And for those of you who’ve never had the pleasure—imagine taking a rubber ball and compressing it in a machine like this:

You get the idea? And guys, we all know if the test for testicular cancer involved smashing your scrotum in this torture device, some science dude would have figured out a different method YEARS ago, involving no contact, soothing music, and ice cream at the end. Not to say that men don’t go through very painful and invasive routine medical tests…cough cough. At any rate, I approached the day with a sense of doom and found myself subconsciously crossing my arms over my chest at random moments. Then the morning of the mammogram (sounds like a horror movie doesn’t it—The Morning of the Mammogram From Hell) arrived and I drove to the clinic, heart pounding. See the last time I’d had one of these done, it was two years ago, and you may remember I wrote about it then, more specifically how the technician told me, after I was securely and excruciatingly clamped, “Make sure you don’t pass out.” I mean, what the hell does THAT mean? How exactly am I to prevent myself from passing out? And then the nightmarish thought—What if I DID? Would I just dangle there from my boob until…it didn’t even bear thinking about.

So with much trepidation, I entered the clinic and was called in almost right away by the same woman who had done an X-ray for me not too long ago, which didn’t bode well. But then we started chatting:

Me: Hey, I remember you from that X-ray a while back.
Tech: Yes, I do X-rays too but mammograms are really my specialty. I’m a jack-of-all-trades, I guess.
Me: And master of all of them, right?
Tech: *laughs* Don’t worry. Did your last one hurt?
Me: A little.
Tech: Well, we’ll make sure it doesn’t this time.

And true to her word, it was easy peasy and relatively painless. I even let her do a couple of extra shots “just to be on the safe side”. So fingers crossed that the “girls” are all right, and I don’t have to do this again for two more years.

In other news, Atlas is coming up on 4 years old now, and I have to say that he’s become the BEST dog. He was a holy terror as a puppy, as a 1 year-old and a 2 year-old, but over the last year, he’s just really settled into his role as a good boi. He has such an endearing personality, and you always know what he’s thinking about, which is mostly food. In fact, that’s when he’s most human—when it’s time for a meal. A while back, I started giving him a teaspoon of soft food with his kibble at every meal—we call it his “special”—and he goes nuts for it, jumping into the air like a baby goat when he sees me get the spoon, which I like to hold aloft like a beacon as I proclaim “The special spoon!!” It’s become such a thing that the last time we went away, my parents took care of him and my mom called, concerned:

Me: Hey, what’s up?
Mom: Atlas won’t eat. I don’t know what’s wrong with him.
Me: He won’t eat?
Mom: He’s just standing in front of the refrigerator. He keeps looking at it, and then looking at me. Very pointedly.
Me (laughing): That’s because his special is in there. He wants a dollop on his kibble.

A while later, she messaged to say that he gobbled everything up just like a good boi would. I love him so much.

And I’m glad I have him because he’s a real comfort when things are sh*tty, like last week when I got an email telling me that the company who published both my short story collections was dissolving. And not only are they not publishing anything new, they’re “unpublishing” all their other books, as in they will no longer exist in the public realm, and it was like a gut punch, or worse than a mammogram in terms of pain. So if you know anyone who publishes reprints of well-reviewed spooky stories that did as well financially as one could hope, let me know. In the meantime, I’ll just be over here, hugging my chest and cuddling my dog.

A Colourful Little Number

You may remember me telling you that in December, I submitted my humour book What Any Normal Person Would Do to a fairly prestigious competition, The Leacock Medal for Humour. I was worried that my books wouldn’t be received by the deadline, since I’d decided so late in the year to submit, but I got notified that they’d made it safely into the hands of the judges. As part of the competition, every entrant gets put on the website along with the title of their submission, a headshot, and a biography. My headshot was really cute, featuring me wearing a black leather vest just to give me a little bit of a bad-ass vibe. I know I probably don’t stand a chance because Rick Mercer published ANOTHER book last year, and there are quite a few other famous Canadian humourists from huge publishing houses on the list. But still, I was excited to see myself on the website. I went there last week and called up the list. I scanned. I scanned. I continued scanning, but I wasn’t worried because I assumed that since it wasn’t in any kind of alphabetical order that I could discern, then it must be in the order that submissions were received. And then finally, I found myself:

Me: OMG. You won’t guess where I am on the list!
Ken: At the very top.
Me: I love how supportive you are, but no!
Ken: Where are you then?
Me: Number 69!!

And it just seemed so damned appropriate that a weirdo like me with the most absurd sense of humour would be NUMBER 69. I laughed my ass off and then I did what any normal person would do—I posted it on Facebook. And it’s a credit to my friends that only ONE person even remarked upon it. I had 88 likes and 39 comments and NONE of them aside from the first person mentioned it at all! I mean, the congratulations were wonderful, but I hadn’t posted it to brag or anything—I just thought it was outrageously funny, and then I felt dumb because no one else did, and then I was worried that I might have offended people and they were too nice to say anything about it. But then I went to get a tattoo and I was telling my tattoo artist about the whole thing:

Me: And I’m on the list…at number 69.
Tattoo Guy: WHAT? Bwah haha! That’s hilarious! Of all the numbers to get, you had to get the dirtiest one!
Me (relieved): I know, right?!
Tattoo Guy: Well, now you’ve got to win.

So yeah. That’s me. Number 69. I feel like I’ve already won.

In other news, Ken and I are still hard at work on transforming one of our bedrooms into a secret library room with the idea of turning the whole back part of the house (bedroom, secret library, and private bathroom) into a Writer’s Retreat that we can rent out. We’ve been doing it on a dime, getting furniture and accessories second-hand and so far haven’t been scammed like we were initially. We got a gorgeous leather loveseat from a lady for fifty bucks on the condition that we also took the sofa, which was badly damaged. But the dump was on our way home, and if you know anything about me, you know I LOVE the dump. But sadly, this was the kind of dump where they watch you ALL THE TIME to make sure you don’t take anything that other people have dumped. How fair is that? Then we finally got the loveseat home only to discover, after Ken and our neighbour made several attempts, that it was too big to go up the stairs. So now, I have a gorgeous leather loveseat in my office on the main floor and my green leather couch is in the new secret library. I hope people appreciate my sacrifice.

Looking Back to New Year

Today’s topic is actually about New Year’s Resolutions, which I do not make, mostly because if I want to change something about my life, I do it when I think of it, not on some arbitrary and imaginary date line. But still, the moving forward of time does give one pause, and by “pause” I mean “let’s stop and think about what the f*ck we’re doing and do we want to keep on doing that?” So here are a couple of things I decided I would or would not be doing in the year 2019. It’s up to you to determine now, 5 years later, which resolution(s) I actually kept:

2019

1) I will no longer be distracted by things when I’m having a serious conversation with someone. For example, once I was speaking with a colleague in my office when I realized that there was something in my boot, like a small piece of gravel or a large piece of lint. Mid-sentence, I reached down, took off my boot, shook the gravel out, looked inside the boot, put it back on my foot, and continued with the conversation. I’m extremely fortunate that I worked with people who didn’t seem to care about things like that, but still, it must be disconcerting to find yourself in the middle of a performance of Waiting for Godot. Or maybe my colleague was impressed by my multi-tasking skills. Another time, I was in a meeting, and someone said, “It’s like an icebox in here” and I started thinking about what if we were actually holding the meeting IN an icebox, and would there be sides of beef just hanging there, and could we see our breath and whatnot instead of focusing on performance measures. I didn’t say anything out loud–I’m not that weird (or maybe I am–don’t judge me). Either way, I feel like it’s a slippery slope from boot examination to toenail clipping. Ken said he had a similar situation once when he was talking to a woman who, during the conversation, reached up under her skirt and hoiked up her pantyhose. I asked what he thought, and he said, “I guess it was really bothering her. I mean, you do what you have to do, right?”

2) I will continue inventing words. You may have noticed that, in the previous paragraph, I used the word “hoik”. I use this word all the time. It means “hoist and yank”. I thought it was a real word until I used it once when I was telling the very nice gentleman I worked with about my roommate and how she had broken my toilet:

Me: She must have really hoiked on that handle!
Very Nice Gentleman: Did you say ‘hoik’? What does that mean?
Me: Hoik? You know, like this! (*mimes hoisting and yanking and makes the appropriate hoisting and yanking sound, which is ‘hoyk’*)
VNG: I’ve never heard of that word.
Me: Well, I didn’t just make it up.

Turns out that I did. I googled it and there’s no such word. But it’s a damn good word, useful for many occasions, and since I am very good at the made-up words, I will continue to invent them. Another one is “stabscara”, which is when you poke yourself in the eye with a mascara wand, as in “Oh my god! I just stabscara-d myself!!”.

Friend: I love your new eyepatch.
Me: Yes, I happened to stabscara myself but it all worked out in the end. Arrr, where’s the rum?

3) I will stop being so bad at potlucks. We used to have potlucks at work all the time, and now that I’m retired, I still attend them occasionally. When I was living in Toronto, I didn’t have a lot of fancy cooking equipment and whatnot, so whenever there was a sign-up, I just put “Drinks”. And while you might think that would make me popular, I learned my lesson after the liquor-filled chocolate meeting snack fiasco of 2017, and when I say drinks, I now mean 2 cases of Perrier, which is terribly boring and probably a let-down for everyone who saw HOW I had signed up for this particular workplace potluck in what appeared to be a very boozy way:

Go home, Suzanne, you’re drunk again.

I arrived at this potluck and people were bringing in crockpots and crystal trays and poinsettias and wreaths, and I was like, “Here. Stow these babies in the mini-fridge”. Well, they all got drunk—the cans, not my colleagues. In the future, I will try to be a little more creative, like putting bows on the Perrier boxes or something. Also, I would love to have the confidence of the person who simply wrote “Something Special”:

Me: So what did you bring to the potluck, Cathy?
Cathy: Something special.
Me: Processed cheese on Ritz Crackers?
Cathy: It’s special.
Me: But it’s just–
Cathy: SO SPECIAL.

4) I will continue to write. My only purpose in writing this blog is to make people happy, so I will keep on trying to do that. I am nothing if not resolved.

If you guessed 3 and 4, you win a Fandangly Award to do with what you will. Because it’s almost 2024, and I THINK I’m better at potlucks now (you’ll have to ask the neighbours) and I’ve definitely kept writing.

And now, just like 5 years ago, here are three questions for any of my friends to answer:

1) What is the most wonderful thing that happened to you this year?
2) Star Trek or Star Wars?
3) What would you bring to a potluck?

Happy New Year to all of you and yours!

Falling For It

Well, it’s almost Christmas and you can tell because the ads on my social media are getting more and more weird. Case in point:

Is it me, or does that dude look a little too excited for his bath time, like maybe it’s also his “special man time”? And he looks almost too large for the bathtub—based on my knowledge of human proportions, where the hell are his legs?! At any rate, a one-person spa is absolutely perfect for me—I already take my own pillow whenever I travel, so now I could take my own bathtub with me. I looked up the translation of the company name and in English it means something like “glamorous water” and isn’t that what bathing is all about—being glamorous in the water? That guy in the ad sure thinks so. And the best part is the ad next to it, which is cut off, but that’s the beautiful irony of it–I looked up “glark” and it literally means “to figure something out from context”. So here’s the challenge: can you glark the glarks?

But I’ve had my ups and downs lately because I keep getting scammed online. First it was a purse company that seemed legitimate until I paid for it and immediately got a message telling me that my item wouldn’t ship until I sent a SCREENSHOT OF MY CREDIT CARD. After a lot of back and forth, they finally agreed to ship the item without the photographs and then sent me a fake invoice with a tracking number button that did nothing. So I contacted my bank and the rep in the Disputes department that I spoke to was very nice and he made me feel better about being so dumb:

Me: I can’t believe I fell for this.
Rep: It happens all the time. If something’s too good to be true, it probably is. What was it that you bought?
Me: A Louis Vuitton purse. I mean, I figured it was fake, but I should have known it was also a rip-off—it was way too cheap.
Rep: No kidding. Those things cost a fortune. And the reason I know that brand is because just last week, I had to deal with a woman who got taken for over $1500 for a pair of Louis Vuitton shoes.
Me: …They make shoes?

But I don’t need their shoes. I just want my fifty bucks back. And then, Ken and I decided that instead of moving, we’d turn one of our bedrooms into a secret library room and doesn’t every secret library room need a tufted leather loveseat? I found a perfect one on Facebook Marketplace and I contacted the seller. He told me it was available and when I asked if we could pick it up on the weekend, he said sure, but that he’d need a deposit to hold it, since he had “so many people interested in it”. And that kind of thing isn’t unusual, and he seemed legit, so I sent a small deposit. And that was the last I heard from him. (I even had a friend contact him pretending to want to buy the couch, and he pulled the same sh*t with her—he refused to give her an address for pick-up until she gave him money up front and when she wouldn’t, he ghosted her.) Again, I contacted the bank, but this time, because my e-transfer was auto-deposited, I couldn’t get it back. We actually called the police and filed a report, and the cop said the same thing, after lecturing me for a while about “overseas scams” and “fake IP addresses”. But the best part was that I (and my friend) reported him to Facebook, and they said they wouldn’t do anything because he hadn’t “violated their terms of service”. You learn your lessons the hard way, I guess. This was my face when I learned that I would be receiving neither a very cute handbag or a very stylish couch:

But never mind all of that. Christmas is almost here, and I have a lot to celebrate, including the fact that my publisher, DarkWinter Press, has submitted my humour book What Any Normal Person Would Do to the Stephen Leacock Medal for Literary Humour. My publisher can be a real pain in the ass and falls for a lot of scams but she’s very thoughtful so I forgive her. (It’s me. I’m the publisher.) Wish me luck! And if you want your own copy (which I just updated and filled with even more funny stuff) it’s available here:

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, and all that great stuff to you and yours!

The Bees’ Knees

Currently, Ken and I are on a cruise. It hasn’t been quite the experience we’d hoped for, due to sh*tty weather. The first sign of trouble was the night before we were supposed to leave and I got an email telling us that we were no longer going to Key West and Nassau because of “inclement weather—now we were going to Key West and Cozumel. When we arrived in Florida, it was pouring and windy but we were only there overnight. Once we got on the ship, the seas were super-rocky and by that night, our snorkelling excursion in Key West had been cancelled. But it was okay—we decided to just do the hop on/hop off trolley and see the town. The next morning , I woke up and turned on the ship’s navigation channel. It showed our ship going into Key West, doing a circle, then heading back out. Now, I’m not very good with maps but it seemed to me that a loop and a “high tail it out of there” wasn’t a great sign. And sure enough, about half an hour later, there was an announcement that it was too dangerous to try and dock in Key West so we were heading straight for Cozumel. But the announcement was only in the halls, and when we went for breakfast, it was amazing how many people were coming in with backpacks and whatnot, as if they were going ashore. The family next to us kept saying, “When do you think we’ll get to Key West?” and “How much longer will it be?” until I put them out of their misery and told them, “Never.”

But Ken and I were not deterred. After a full sea day of playing trivia and winning champagne and jewellery at the art auction raffle, we went to sleep excited about our excursion the next day to the Mayan ruins and the beach. Then things got even better when we got on the bus and our guide told us that we were also stopping at an extra destination—a tequila factory. And that was awesome because we had booked a trip to a rum factory in Nassau and I was very sad about missing it because if you know me at all you know I adore factories where alcohol is made.

Once we’d finished at the Mayan ruins, where we saw the cutest iguanas and a random anteater, we got back on the bus. We started chitchatting with the guide, Payo, and I said, “I’m excited about the next stop” and he replied, “Oh yes, the something something” and I said “Pardon?” and he said “The Bee Sanctuary” and I said, “…Pardon?!” because the way he said it, it still sounded kind of like Tequila Factory because of his very thick accent so I got my hopes up, but he said it again and there was no doubt that IT WAS BEES. Then he went back to the front of the bus.

Me: We’re going to a bee sanctuary?

Ken: Apparently.

Me: Do I have to touch the bees?

Ken: Probably not.

Me: Okay then.

Ken: You’re being surprisingly calm about this.

Me: I should have had the free tequila shot at the Mayan ruins when that dude offered it. Are these rescue bees or something? Do you think they’ll be aggressive?

But I needn’t have worried. They were tiny stingless bees and we never saw any of them. And there were market stands at the bee sanctuary that sold tequila so it all worked out in the end.

In other news, I’m absolutely thrilled to tell you that my new novel, Charybdis, is going to be published by UK publisher JC Studio Press, run by the amazing Jane Cornwell. Here’s a synopsis:

Charybdis takes place in two different time periods. In the present, Greta Randall, a graduate student in Waterloo, Ontario about to embark on a PhD., is determined to continue her research into an obscure Canadian poet and recluse, Louisa Duberger, hoping that she will uncover the mystery of Duberger’s life and work. In the second time period, beginning in the year 1891, Louisa Duberger herself chronicles the tragic events of her life in a secret diary that she keeps from her eighteenth birthday until her death at the age of 25. The two timelines converge in a suspenseful way when Greta meets Matthew Shepherd, who claims to be Louisa’s great-great-nephew, and who has secrets of his own that he would kill to protect, including the last entry of Louisa’s diary.

Look for it in late spring 2024!

Reading Is Fundeathmental; Exciting News

For over a year now, I’ve been tutoring a little girl who struggles with reading. Every week on a Thursday, I go over to her house and we spend an hour reading together, doing writing activities, and a variety of other things designed to improve both her reading and writing skills. She’s also in French Immersion, which for Canadians means that even though you’re not French and no one else in your family speaks French, you take most of your classes in French. So my little protégé not only struggles with reading in English but also reading in French. Luckily, I took French all through high school, right into university, I taught it when I was younger, and I can read it pretty well. And for the purpose of this post, I’ll call my little friend Samantha:

Me: Comment ça va aujourd’hui, Samantha?
Samantha: How do you know so much French?
Me: I studied it for a long time and I used to teach it to students just like you.
Samantha: YOU WERE A TEACHER??
Me: What did you think I used to do?
Samantha: I thought you worked in an antique store.
Me: What, like all my life?
Samantha: Well, you’re not that old.
Me: Très bien, ma chère.

Samantha is in Grade 3 so I spend a lot of time looking for age-appropriate books, usually in thrift stores where you can get virtually brand-new readers for under two dollars. The other day, I thought I hit the jackpot when I discovered a book that was in both French AND English for young readers. The book was called George the Goldfish / Georges Le Poisson Rouge. I looked at the cover—it was a little boy looking lovingly at his goldfish. I opened the front cover and inside was a variety of pictures of the little boy doing a variety of activities with the goldfish: carrying him around in his bowl, playing while the fish watched, showing the fish his Hallowe’en costume (also a goldfish) and so on. The next page was a series of suggestions to parents and teachers on how to use the book to encourage reading in both languages as well as information about a picture dictionary and pronunciation key at the back. Then there was the title page with the little boy looking into the fishbowl lovingly and the fish looking back at him as lovingly as a fish can look. So I brought it with me last Thursday:

Me: Okay, Samantha, let’s get started. First read the English, then read the French at the bottom.
Samantha: Harry has a goldfish. His name is George. Harry a un poisson rouge. Il s’appelle Georges.
Me: That’s great. You have a really good accent. Keep going.
Samantha: George swims around and around in his bowl. Harry loves to watch him. Georges fait le tour de son…what’s that word?
Me: Sound it out.
Samantha: A..quar-um. Oh, aquarium, like a big fish tank. Harry adore le regarder.
Me: Excellent. Ready to turn the page?
Samantha (turns page): But one day, Harry’s goldfish—WHAT? THE GOLDFISH DIES??!!
Me (panics): Give me the book—what?! OH MY GOD.
Samantha (laughing): MOM! The tutor is making me read a book about death!

I started laughing hysterically too, a mixture of horror and absurdity, as she ran out of the room to show her mom. I followed along and we found her mom in the kitchen. I apologized profusely as her mom also started to laugh:

Me: I am SO sorry—I had no idea. I should have screened it more carefully. I just thought it was a nice story about a boy and his goldfish…
Samantha’s Mom (laughing): Until it wasn’t…hey, don’t worry about it. It’s all a part of life–or death.

Fortunately, everyone took it in good humour and Samantha wanted to read the rest of the book, which didn’t get any more light-hearted—in fact, there are lengthy descriptions in English AND French of Harry and his mom burying George in the garden and planting flowers on his grave and in what POSSIBLE world would you write a story for ages 3+ where the main character DIES ON PAGE 3?! And nowhere in the copious “parent notes” was there ANYTHING about this book dealing with the dark theme of the death of a beloved pet! It’s like the Old Yeller of 2023.

In other news, this past week, I was the featured writer on Susan Richardson’s amazing podcast A Thousand Shades Of Green. Susan is a poet extraordinaire and she also writes the blog Stories From The Edge Of Blindness, so having her choose me for this project and hearing her tremendous compliments regarding my writing really made my week. If you want to listen to her gorgeous voice reading my work, or the work of some other wonderful writers, you can find her podcast at floweringink.com

Decorating 101010101

As I may have mentioned, Ken and I have been doing a little preliminary house hunting with an eye towards downsizing. The perfect house slipped through our fingers a couple of weeks ago—the owners had accepted an offer literally hours before we went to see it—and since then, it’s been slim pickings. But the whole adventure has given me food for thought regarding our own de-cluttering since it’s become very apparent that some people, when they put their house on the market, just don’t give a sh*t. The other day, we went to see a place, older and even bigger than our own house, but at a price point significantly lower. The pictures on the online listing showed a LOT of Christmas decorations but the house had been on the market for a while and we just assumed the photos were from last year. Then we went to see it in person. The photos were NOT from last year. To say the owner of the house is a Christmas fanatic would be an understatement—there were fully decorated Christmas trees in every room, garlands draping over every surface, and more Santas, elves, stockings, and other Christmas paraphernalia than I’ve ever seen, even in a store that only sells Christmas sh*t. And the icing on the cake? In the dining room, under the fully decorated Christmas tree, were wrapped presents. Hundreds of wrapped presents. I’m the kind of person who’s still trying to buy gifts on Christmas Eve, and this lady has all of her shopping done mid-November?! I didn’t know whether to be impressed or horrified, and I haven’t even mentioned the outrageous number of dead, stuffed animals that decorated every room–there was a giant fish mounted on the wall above the headboard in each of the bedrooms, and a flock of taxidermied geese in the foyer. And yes, the geese were draped with Christmas garlands. Ken was looking quite happy about the whole situation, considering he’s the one who really needs to Marie Kondo his crap, but I didn’t want to give him any ideas, so I said to our agent, “I can see why you said it was important to scale back on extraneous stuff. I guess this person didn’t listen.” And then we both looked pointedly at Ken. Ultimately, we all agreed that it was very difficult to get a sense of the house or the space with so much distraction, and it made my own decorating taste seem minimal by comparison.

And I do have a very distinct decorating style, which I like to call Oscar Wilde In The Haus, which is like when a gay Victorian poet has designed your decor:

My Office
Oscar Wilde’s Office

Which makes it even more weird (is weird even the right word?) that I recently got this ad from Wayfair with the caption “Your home makeover starts here.”

What exactly am I remaking my home over to? The f*cking Vatican? In which case, I need a LOT more stuff in my house because I’ve been to the Vatican and it is just PACKED, kind of like that Christmas house but with Jesus instead of Santa and taxidermied priests instead of geese. Could you imagine having a cardboard Pope as your aesthetic “statement piece”?

Guest: Is that–?
Me: Pope Francis? Yes.
Guest: Why is he–?
Me: Standing in the corner of the living room? He’s just hanging out. Do you want a blessing?
Guest: No, just a drink. I mean, that’s okay, right?
Me: Is the Pope Catholic?
Guest: Uh…I don’t know much about religion.
Me: Me neither. But I like his outfit. It matches the drapes.

At any rate, I’ve eschewed His Holiness as a decorating motif. I think I’m more of a “giant cardboard cutout of RuPaul” kind of gal. At least, that’s what Oscar Wilde would have picked.

Leggo My Lego; Another New Release Announcement!

I can already tell there’s a piece missing.

The other day I realized that we have approximately 547 pounds of Lego in the house. It’s in bins in the attic, bags in the guest room, totes in the closet…and why, I hear you ask, do you have so much goddamn Lego? Because not only is Ken obsessed with it, and has kept all the Lego ever created since he was a child, but Kate also accrued a sizable collection of Lego kits when she was younger. Even I, myself, although I hate to admit it, became a little fixated on Harry Potter Lego in the early 2000s. Wow, I also hear you say—isn’t all of that Lego worth a lot of money? Well, it would be, if it wasn’t all scattered around the house in bins, bags, and totes. I had a plan, a very clever plan I thought, to just put it all in ziplocks and sell it to one of the toy vendors at the market for a flat cost and then give the money to Kate since most of the Lego was either hers or bestowed up her as part of her inheritance to begin with, but when I broached the idea with my 23 year-old boss, he was horrified:

Boss: But you could make so much more money if you just put it together and sold the completed kits!
Me: Do I look like I have twenty-three years to deal with this?
Boss: But you said you had all the manuals—how hard can it be?

So I thought, what the heck—I’m pretty good at building stuff, and if I could make Kate a lot more cash by completing some of the models, then I’d give it a whirl. And you know what? It was almost f*cking impossible. Every bin I pulled down from the attic contained half a build, and I was running back and forth, trying to find the rest of the pieces, which had magically ended up in a number of completely different bins. Luckily, I had several bags of ‘extra’ parts—at least I hope they’re extra and not part of yet another Lego kit that I’ll never be able to finish. At one point, I spent a literal half hour looking for a long grey piece with 2 rows of 12 little knobs and I never did find it. 60 000 pieces of Lego and not a f*cking sign of it. And it’s not like the old days when I was a kid and the bricks were primary colours and 5 basic shapes—now most of the kits come with like a thousand unique accessory pieces in a variety of colours and if you don’t have them, you can’t substitute anything else to complete a set. Ultimately, I managed to finish a bunch of space alien-type Exoforce (?) kits, some cars and trucks, a few Star Wars spacecraft, and a couple of other things, and then I packed the rest of it up for another day, a day far into the future when Kate is rich and doesn’t need my Lego blood money.

And then there’s this ad for…well, is this what we’re calling them now? But I do love the use of quotation marks:

Mousetrap Update: I didn’t find it in any of the Lego bins. Also, I took apart the skirting around our kitchen island and looked under it, but the mousetrap wasn’t there either. Nor was it in the space between the stove and the counter. We have now looked in every conceivable spot that an errant mousetrap could find itself, and I’m stymied. Also peeved. Also a little freaked out, like did someone break into our house, see the mousetrap on the floor and steal it, along with my second favourite purse and a small makeup bag that were also in that kitchen and that I’m also missing?

One last update: As the Editor of DarkWinter Press, I’m thrilled to announce our release of Cecilia Kennedy’s new short story collection Twenty-Four-Hour Shift: Dark Tales from on and off the Clock! Here’s a synopsis—it’s now available on Amazon and you can purchase either the paperback or Kindle edition by clicking here!

“Punch in your time card to begin the shift. The twenty-four dark tales of short fiction in this collection explore the unsettling things that might linger on and off the clock. Here, you’ll find short stories of work-related haunts and happenings, from the truly sinister (a human-vending machine restaurant), to horror-comedy (a photo shoot with possessed bunnies). But in the hours in between, it can’t be forgotten that the roles played as parents, co-workers, and friends are no ordinary side hustle. That work never ends. And the work shift? Well, that’s the thing that makes you peek over your shoulder and ask, “What just moved?” But you have to clock in to find out.“

A Mouse-y Mystery; An Announcement

Every once in a while, we get a mouse in the house. Of course, it’s usually more than one—you know what they say: where there’s one mouse, there’s usually more. In the past, we’ve tried everything—live traps, sonic devices, a cat—and eventually, they stop coming around for a few months. We hadn’t seen any sign of a wee rodent since last winter, but a week and a half ago, Ken and I were standing in the kitchen talking and suddenly Ken interupted me with, “Look! A mouse just ran across the floor and disappeared under the cupboard!”

We have an old postmaster’s cupboard in the corner of the kitchen that we use for a variety of things, but in the bottom we store Atlas’s food in the right-hand side, and rice and a rice cooker on the left-hand side. Ken opened the left-hand door, which is where the mouse seemed to have disappeared into, and there was no sign of it. But the bags of rice had obviously been chewed into, and there was mouse sh*t on my rice cooker.

As you may remember, we gave up on live traps when it became obvious that the mice had figured out how to get the peanut butter without getting stuck in the trap, and as much as I hated to do it, we went out the next day and bought one of those snap traps. Ken slathered it with peanut butter, much to Atlas’s delight, because that meant he also got some peanut butter (Why? Because otherwise, he would pout and complain), and then Ken slid the trap very carefully under the rice/dog food cupboard with me all the while repeating, “Careful, careful!” in case it snapped his finger off. The next morning, we came downstairs and sure enough, there was a mouse in the trap. It was a late mouse and it made me sad. We repeated the same steps two more times and caught two more mice. But then…

On Thursday morning, I came down for breakfast.

Me: Did you check the mousetrap?
Ken: Oh, not yet, I forgot. Hang on. (*gets down on hands and knees to peer under the cupboard*). Uh…
Me: What’s wrong?
Ken: The mousetrap is gone.
Me: What are you talking about? How can it be gone?
Ken: I don’t know, but it’s gone.
Me: But…the whole mousetrap?!
Ken: I know. Maybe the mouse’s tail got caught and it dragged it somewhere else?
Me: I don’t hear any squeaking.
Ken: Maybe it got free.

So we spent a lot of time on Friday searching for the trap to no avail. It has completely vanished. And I know there are a lot of places in any house where a mouse might disappear into, but a whole mousetrap??!! It’s kind of terrifying, to be honest, like where could it possibly have gone?! And now, I have no mousetrap, and potentially a mouse with magical powers, half a tail, and a thirst for revenge. Wish me luck.

In other news, I’m happy to announce on behalf of DarkWinter Press that our second publication, the novel The Dogcatcher by Sean Patrick Carlin, will be available for pre-sale starting tomorrow! It’s an awesome book if any of you are looking for a fun, spooky, and cleverly funny fall read and it’s available to order here!

Pearl(y White)s of Wisdom

On Thursday, I had to go to the dentist for a check-up. Like most people, it’s not something I enjoy, especially since my favourite hygienist, Harmony, only works Monday to Wednesday and our schedules don’t line up anymore. Two visits ago, my new hygienist claimed to be a former Olympic-level figure skater (I looked her up but couldn’t find her listed on any Canadian team at any point in time), and despite the fact that we had never met before, she insisted on spending the entire appointment regaling me with the tales of abuse that caused her to leave the sport and gave her PTSD. Then, at the end of the appointment, she told me that fluoride was poison, and she could recommend several “documentaries” that had uncovered the insidious and evil fluoride conspiracy.  The next time I went, in February, I had a different hygienist who was only slightly better, in that she said ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to me throughout the entire appointment. But at the end she gave me extra floss, which was nice, and did NOT try to push any bizarre conspiracy theories about the world of dentistry. I showed up for my appointment on Thursday, fearing the worst and hoping for the best, when a familiar face came around the corner to call me in.

“Harmony!” I exclaimed, overjoyed. She had switched days last week for some reason and, lucky me, I would get to spend my time in the chair discussing new favourite shows to binge-watch because we have the exact same taste in TV, plus she has excellent timing when it comes to asking a question and then letting me answer without slicing open my gums with her pick. It was just like old times, and at the end of the appointment, I actually felt relaxed. And then I discovered we had another thing in common:

Me: I heard Dr. Morton is going to retire soon.
Harmony: He’s getting there.
Me: He’s been my dentist for a really long time. Can you tell from my chart how long?
Harmony: Hang on…looks like your first appointment was in 2009.
Me: Wow! So like 24 years?
Harmony: Uh huh.

Then there was a long pause while I, and most likely you, dear reader, re-did the mental calculation that led to my pronouncement.

Me: Wait…no, I think that’s only 13 years. I’m so bad at math.
Harmony: Me too. That’s why I just said Uh huh, and went along with you. But 13 sounds correct.

And yes, at some point after the conversation, while I was shopping for a new outfit for my book launch for The Devil You Know which was taking place later that night, I realized that 13 years was also completely wrong, and that Harmony was either being very nice to me, or she was indeed as bad at math as me. Regardless, she will always be my favourite hygienist.

The book launch went really well, by the way. Here’s a picture of me wearing my new outfit:

In other news, here’s the cover reveal for the DarkWinter Press inaugural publication, The basement on Biella: a poetry collection by Bill Garvey. Bill is a brilliant poet who divides his time between Toronto and Nova Scotia, and DarkWinter is so happy to be publishing this collection! I had a moment of nervous excitement right before I hit ‘publish’ and now it’s available for Kindle pre-order! The paperback will be released most likely the beginning of next week, but if you’re interested in the Kindle version, order now and it will land in your e-reader on Monday! Here’s the link and the front cover: