Giving Everyone The Finger

A couple of weeks ago, something really weird happened at the antique market where I work. And that’s saying a lot, because weird sh*t happens there all the time, as I’m sure you’ve realized based on my previous stories about it, like the guy who did a LOT of cocaine. For another example, see last month:

Me: So that’s six magazines at $4 each, plus tax. Your total is $27.12
Woman (volunteering this with no prompting): The Playboys are for my son. He’s 17.
Me: How would you like to pay?
Woman: He’ll be so excited.
Me: I can only imagine. Have a great day.

So, yes, the clientele can be a little—quirky. But a week ago Monday, this one really took the cake. A man came in, short, twitchy, with a shock of bright orange hair under his ball cap. He smelled REALLY bad. He was interested in jewelry and one of the owners took a tray of rings out of the showcase and brought it to the counter so he could look at them all. My co-worker and I were behind the counter, and we also made a beeline for the rings because the vendor had just come in and restocked. The man kept going on about “his lady” and how great ‘his lady’ was, and how ‘his lady’ deserved only the best, ad nauseum, until he’d finally picked out several rings. Then he went to look around on the other floors, at which point, my co-worker said, “Oh my god, that was disgusting.”

And she wasn’t talking about ‘his lady’. Nope, she was talking about the horrifyingly swollen, cracked open, bloody, and black index finger that the guy kept pointing around with. I’d never seen anything like it before—I’d describe it even further but some of you may have weak stomachs.

Me: What the hell happened to him?! That’s unreal!
Co-Worker: I know! I’m burning with curiosity!
Boss: I’ll find out.

So when the guy came down to pay for his rings, the young boss asked him about it.

“Oh, that,” he said. “I was doing some carpentry, and I was about to hammer a nail into the floor when someone knocked on the door. It scared the crap out of me and I jumped and hammered my finger instead. But it’s okay—it doesn’t hurt. They gave me some antibiotics at the doctor’s but then we got into an argument, so I haven’t been back.” Then he left.

Co-worker: I can’t believe that doesn’t hurt—it looks insanely painful.
Me: There’s a reason why it doesn’t hurt.
Boss: Why?
Me: It’s dead. He has gangrene. The next time we see him, he’ll be missing a finger. If he survives it.
Boss: Gangrene? Seriously? How do you know?

How do I know?! Because I’m Gen X, obviously. When we were growing up, there were very few rules:

1) Look both ways before you cross the street.
2) Don’t talk to strangers.
3) Come in when the streetlights turn on.
4) Watch out for quicksand.
5) If you cut it, clean it. Otherwise, you’ll get gangrene and it’ll fall off.

Even as a late-middle-aged adult (because I plan to live past 100), I still abide by these rules. Except for number 2—because of my job, I’m literally forced to do this, and now, thanks to number 2, I’ve seen the physical evidence for number 5. Number 3 is, of course, my favourite, because I have no desire to be anywhere other than my bed with a glass of wine once the streetlights turn on.

So then I had to explain gangrene to some of my younger colleagues, whose collective reaction was “EWWW!!! No wonder he smelled so bad!”

And sure enough, guess who was back this past Tuesday? He was looking for more rings for ‘his lady’. My co-worker leaned forward over the counter a little and whispered, “He’s got it wrapped up…but it looks shorter…”

Yep. Sure enough, the finger was gone. When he came to pay, I’d been nominated to ask him about it:

Me: I remember you from last week. What happened with the…?
Gangrene Man (waves hand with only four digits angrily): I went to the hospital, and they cut it off!
Me: Uh, sorry to hear that.
Gangrene Man: Stupid hospital. And then they were like, “You should have taken all the antibiotics.” Anyway, my lady is gonna love these rings. Nothing too good for her.

And then he was gone. Like that gangrenous finger.

In other news, I’ve just launched Baxter House Editions, the reprint division of DarkWinter Press. Here’s a little bit about how it came about, you can read the story here!

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.

So Many Questions

Lately, I’ve been besieged by the most bizarre ads on literally every social media platform, ads for things I don’t want, don’t need, and would NEVER buy. Yet the ads just keep getting weirder, as if some algorithm is testing my resolve:

Algorithm Engineer 1: Here’s a one-person bathtub. She HAS to buy that.
Algorithm Engineer 2: One-person bathtub. Bwah hah hah!
Algorithm Engineer 1: Wait—nope, she passed.
Algorithm Engineer 2: Show her one with an antique mantel clock mounted on the ledge! Quick!

But I’ve been very good at ignoring even the most enticing clock slash bathtub and I suppose I’ve infuriated the algorithm gods. Case in point:

And I have SO many questions that I hardly know where to start.

1) What the hell is it?

Well, it looks like an inflatable merman. A merman wearing a stethoscope and carrying a puppy, so a…veterinarian merman? Who treats land animals? Below, where it’s cut off, it says December Diamond Dr. P, which I assume is either a very cool rap name, or Dr. P is short for Dr. Perplexed. Which is what I am, and also the good doctor, because the way he’s holding the back of his head makes him look VERY confused about who he is and what he’s doing out of the water. (Also, how does he get to the vet clinic? Does he drag himself down the street or do people bring animals to his…pool?)

2) What IS he doing out of the water?

I don’t know but he looks thirsty and sad. Also, I can’t see the puppy’s back end, so maybe the puppy is a merdog? They have matching collars/belts so I can only assume that it’s HIS puppy. Is the puppy sick? Or is this just some clever way to pick up a date, like “Hi, my dog and I were wondering if you were free later to swim around and listen to each other’s heartbeats” or “Damn, baby, take a listen. You can’t hear anything? That’s cuz you just stole my heart” and then the dog woofs approvingly.

3) Why was it created?

No one knows. The more important questions are these—Is it life size? Is it inflatable? Does it float? Can I use it as a centrepiece in a really crazy fountain in my front yard? Because THAT would be a terrific addition to our neighbourhood.

4) Is the person who created it insane?

ABSOLUTELY. YES.

And the most important thing is that I wrote all of this before I investigated and discovered what December Diamond Dr. P really is because I wanted the element of surprise for ALL of us. Can you even begin to guess? It’s a CHRISTMAS TREE ORNAMENT. He is 7 inches tall and you can buy him on Amazon for the low, low price of $63.22. Of course, if you’d rather pick a different merman, because there’s an ENTIRE COLLECTION, you can also get a firefighter merman, or this cowboy merman riding a horse. I have no clue where that stick goes, and frankly, I’m just fine not knowing.

My favourite part is that in the item description under theme, it says “Religious”. And the best thing of all? Now that I’ve spent so much damned time researching these things, I can’t wait to see what the Algorithm Engineers send me next…

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.

Friends For The Holidays

Over the past couple of months, I’ve noticed a weird trend in my Facebook friend requests—they’re all coming from dudes with two first names. I don’t mean like Joe-Bob Smith; I mean I’m getting requests on the daily from guys called Andrew Mark, John Joseph, or Michael Steven. It’s like someone googled “most popular white man names” and started pairing them up. And before you think I’m stereotyping, ALL of these guys are white. And Christian. And widowed. And either doctors or in the military. Which begs the question, knowing me as you do—why the HELL would a white Christian widowed army doctor want to be MY friend?! But I began to suspect that it was just a scam and that none of these guys were actually real right at the very beginning (based on the fact that none of them had any followers and their pictures all looked like what you’d get if you asked Siri, “Find me a photograph of a generic middle-aged white man”) and I’ve been deleting at least two fake friend requests a day. And then came the icing on the cake last week when I got a friend request from a man named Harry. HARRY NUTZ. Seriously?! You couldn’t snare me with Robert David and you think I’m going to fall for hairy nuts? And Harry also identifies himself as a “Christian” and single (with a name like that, it’s no wonder). Slight tangent: I had a cousin in England whose actual name was Harry Dick. But nobody thought it was funny because back then, people in England didn’t refer to manparts as “dicks”. Now, if his name had been Harry Willy, he’d never have lived it down. At any rate, I deleted Harry Nutz’s request as well, on the grounds that his nuts were probably a front for some scam artist who didn’t know how to manscape.

In other news, we recently celebrated New Year’s Day and when I looked at my Google calendar, I noticed that New Year’s Day was highlighted, but that the 2nd was also highlighted as “Day After New Year’s Day (Quebec)” and I was very confused by this. Do the French need a special reminder that the 2nd comes directly after the 1st? But then I investigated further and became enraged. Apparently, if you live in Quebec, you get an EXTRA HOLIDAY on the day after New Year’s Day, and if you live in Ontario, like me, YOU DON’T. And I had to WORK on the 2nd while all the Quebecois were enjoying their extra day off eating poutine and whatnot. And then I investigated even FURTHER when I realized that my Google calendar highlighted all the different days off that each province in Canada gets and now I want to live in Newfoundland, where on top of all the holidays we get here, they get almost one extra day off every month, including St. Patrick’s Day, St. George’s Day, Orangeman’s Day, and a random holiday to celebrate a BOAT RACE called The Royal St. John’s Regatta. They literally have a holiday in June called JUNE DAY. And other provinces and territories have equally tenuous holidays, like in the Yukon, where they get to celebrate Discovery Day, which commemorates that time Yukon Cornelius discovered gold in a glacier after battling the Abominable Snowman. And I was going to do better research on the whole Yukon thing but then I went down a rabbit hole of holidays and discovered that January 7th is known for several interesting holidays including Distaff Day and National Pass Gas Day, so for the rest of this fine Sunday, I’ll be farting around at a spinning wheel.

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

Weird Thoughts and Whatnot

On Friday night, I couldn’t sleep so I started composing this week’s blog post in my head. As you may recall, I’ve been seeing this acupuncturist/chiropractor type guy for my chronic shoulder pain, and I’d given up on the acupuncture on the grounds that lying on my stomach with needles in my back for an indeterminate amount of time was stressful. So a few weeks ago, I went and asked to resume shock wave therapy (which is NOT electroshock therapy, just to be clear—it’s a type of air-compressor driven jackhammer that’s theoretically supposed to break up the calcium in your tendons), and his response was “No problem, kid.” And let me just remind you that the acupuncturist/chiropractor type guy is probably in his early thirties if that, and I am a woman who is quite beyond middle age and in no way, shape, or form, a kid. (Slight tangent: as I was composing this in my head, I was calculating how old I would have to be if 58 was middle-aged and realized that there was NO WAY I would get to see 116 years old unless there was some kind of modern medical miracle that occurred during the next few years, and then I started calculating how much time I had left and the answer to that was BEST CASE SCENARIO 25-30 YEARS and then I freaked myself out at how short a time that seemed and then I had to wander the house in an existential panic until I could go back to bed. Second slight tangent: I have a very dear aunt who has always called me “kiddo” ever since I can remember, and that’s fine because she’s older than me and she’s family and also she reads my blog and I don’t want her to think I don’t like it when SHE calls me kiddo).

At any rate, I’ve become increasingly—I don’t know, it’s like a simultaneous combination of amused and annoyed—by his constant sobriquets and Peleton style encouragement:

“You did amazing today, kid!”
“You’re a trooper—great job!”
“Fantastic work today, milady!”

And so on. And it would be awesome and cool if I actually DID anything aside from lying on my stomach and counting to 600 very slowly until he comes back to take the needles out; otherwise it just seems like hollow praise. But then last week, I arrived just as he was coming out of his treatment room and he greeted me thusly: “Uh oh, here comes trouble!”

I looked behind me to see who he was talking to, but it became quickly apparent that IT WAS ME. Me? Trouble?! Does he not know me at all? As we all know, I don’t have a single real bad-ass bone in my body! But then, at this point in the mental composition of this blog post in my bed, I started to fall asleep, and dreamed that I was writing about a couple who made cute pet videos and in one of them, a cat got mad at a dog for sniffing her, and the caption in the video read, “Stop touching my genitalia with your nose!” and then it occurred to me both in the dream and as I began to wake up again that the word “genitalia” doesn’t sound anything at all like what it is; in fact, it sounds like an old-fashioned word for something very festive, like if you said that “the whole regiment was decked out in their best genitalia” or “the halls were festooned with merry genitalia” or whatnot. And the whole thing was so funny when I pictured it that I laughed out loud, and Ken rolled over and muttered, “What?” and I said, “You’re snoring again” and he went back to sleep while I kept silently giggling just like a little kid and maybe my acupuncturist/chiropractor guy is right about me being trouble.

Did you say trouble?