Wine

Monkey Business

I got an early Christmas present this year by way of an acceptance for my novella, Nomads of the Modern Wasteland by Running Wild Press, which was awesome. Almost as awesome as having a monkey butler…

Right before my birthday, I got a very cryptic email from my mother. The subject line was “VW”, and the text of the message said this:

“Hi Honey: Bought you a present today to do with the above (hint) his first name is Ralph.  See you soon.  Love, Mom xxx”

I pondered for quite a while, and came up empty. I asked Ken, “What do you think this means?” and he replied, “Maybe some kind of stuffed animal?” And I was doubtful at first, but then I had an epiphany that maybe it WAS an animal but not the stuffed kind, and I wrote back this:

“Is it a monkey butler?! I’ve always wanted one of those! Also, there was nothing above except the initials V. W. Is my monkey butler’s name Ralph Van Wooster? Can’t wait to find out! Love you:-)”

I was super-pumped, and waited for a while to get a confirmation. And waited. And waited. But my mother didn’t reply back, and I got worried. There were several possible reasons why I had yet to receive a loving message about how clever I was to have surmised that my present was a simian man-servant:

1) My mother was mad that I guessed her riddle and spoiled the surprise. I could see her reading the email, and then saying to my dad in a low whisper, “How does she always know? Well, let her stew, the smartass.”

2) My mother had actually bought me a Volkswagen, and didn’t know how to let me down gently. I have to say though, Mom, that a VW named Ralph would have been almost as cool as a monkey butler, but only if it was a Beetle.

3) Someone had hacked my mom’s email, and I would eventually learn that in “exchange” for the present, I would have to send $5 000 in iTune gift cards to a Nigerian prince named Ralph Varem Wabara who’s being held captive on the International Space Station by Chris Hadley (a Canadian criminal mastermind/astronaut).

4) My mother didn’t know what a monkey butler was, and my email befuddled her, so much so that she didn’t know what to say in return. I could see her reading the email and then saying to my dad in a low whisper, “What is she on about now? I can’t even dignify this with a reply. It’s your fault she’s so weird,” and then my dad would say, “Och! Yer aff yer heid, woman!”

Number 1, of course, was the most likely scenario, so I spent the next few days feeling a little guilty for being so clever. Then my parents came by the house to drop off my gift. I had read extensively on the topic of how to train a monkey butler, and I had the guest room prepared as per the instructions I found on a weird website which was exclusively devoted to the topic of “How to Train Your Monkey Butler”—it contains pearls of grammatically incorrect wisdom like “When you have your monkey butler serve a person let him take his time and serve one person at a time so he doesn’t get confused and start to get angry, a confused angry monkey is no fun for anyone.” I heartily agree and highly recommend this advice to anyone who might find themselves in my position.

Then Mom and Dad arrived, and I was a little concerned when I saw them coming down the walk “sans simian”. What a letdown. But when they came in the house, my mother presented me with a CD of music by Ralph Vaughan Williams, who, aside from Trent Florence Welch, Reznor, Maynard James Keenan, and Dave Grohl, is one of my favourite composers, and that really softened the monkey butler blow because the other night, Ken had tried to lull me to sleep by playing “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis” only he had to find it on YouTube first, then he put his iPad directly on my ear so that the music wouldn’t drown out The Weather Channel, which he was watching fanatically as one does. It wasn’t very lulling and more just annoying, although he meant well. Now I can play that, and “Lark Ascending”, any time I want. But I was still curious:

Me: Why didn’t you answer my email? I thought you were mad.
Mom: Your email? You mean the one about the monkey butler? I would have, but I don’t know what a monkey butler is.
Me: It’s a monkey that’s a butler.
Mom: Would you really want one of those? Wouldn’t it be a lot of work to train it?
Me: Yeah. You’re probably right.

And then I realized that every time I had pictured Ralph Van Wooster in my head, he was actually wearing a bellhop uniform, and not a bespoke tuxedo, so it’s probably good that I wasn’t put in charge of training him, because then he would insist on carrying everyone’s bags instead of serving drinks.

Me: I don’t think a monkey would make a good butler.
Ken: Um, what?
Me: It would be hard to train him. I can’t even get Atlas to play dead—he only plays “wounded”.
Ken: You have to make it submit. You know, like “Shock the Monkey”.
Me: If you think the best way to train a monkey is to shock him, then you don’t deserve a monkey butler. Besides, I thought that song was about a guy who pleasured himself in a sudden and rather violent way.
Ken: Um, what?
Me: Like Spank the Monkey, only–never mind. (whispers) You know I’ll have to make this whole conversation up when I write about it. Forget about training a monkey butler—I need to train YOU to be a better “humorous foil”.

At the end of the day, I didn’t get a monkey butler. But I DID get an awesome CD, AND a publishing contract, so it’s still been a pretty great couple of weeks!!

Good King Wences-What?

It all started earlier in the week when Ken and I were at a local holiday banquet. Ken was tasked with creating a ‘fun’ trivia quiz, and I wasn’t allowed to know anything about it so that I wouldn’t have a leg up on everyone else because I’m very good at trivia–my mind is like if a jukebox had a baby with an encyclopedia and they all had OCD, and also, the jukebox NEVER STOPS PLAYING. At any rate, one of the trivia questions was about Good King Wenceslas from the Christmas Carol.

What year was King Wenceslas born?

640 BCE
907 CE
1595 CE
1853 CE

So I said 1595, since none of the other answers made sense, but the correct answer was 907, and I was confused because they didn’t have saints before, like, the late 900s AD or something, being as there was no Christianity before 0 AD or whatnot, but then Ken pointed out that I had misread the question, that it was his birthdate, not when the song was written, and that CE was the same as AD, but that AD was a religious term and Common Era wasn’t so it was better to use ‘CE’, and then I POINTED OUT that AD is the common vernacular, and I’d had a couple of glasses of wine, KEN. Anyway, my partner Cathy and I did really well on the trivia, despite the dating debacle. And the wine.

Then, the next day, we were talking about it and I remembered why Good King Wenceslas ranks up there with the most stupid carols. Let me break it down for you:

“Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the feast of Stephen”

So he has nothing better to do during a feast but look out the window? Shouldn’t he be hosting the banquet that HE organized?

“When the snow lay round about
Deep and crisp and even
Brightly shone the moon that night
Though the frost was cruel”

That’s some heavy foreshadowing right there. Best to stay inside where it’s warm, but no…

“When a poor man came in sight
Gath’ring winter fuel”

Why wasn’t he invited to the feast? Is it because he’s poor? So classist.

“Hither, page, and stand by me
If thou knows be telling:
Yonder peasant, who is he?
Where and what his dwelling?”

So he just assumes that his servant knows every single peasant? Even more classist. Also, it’s like the way people conceive of Canadians: “Oh, you’re from Canada? Do you know Bob from Kamloops?” Narrator’s Voice: She does. Just like the page, because plot twist…

“Sire, he lives a good league hence
Underneath the mountain
Right against the forest fence
By Saint Agnes’ fountain”

And those are some VERY specific coordinates. Like maybe he’s been there before, probably when the weather wasn’t so shitty, maybe for a barbeque…

“Bring me flesh and bring me wine
Bring me pine logs hither
Thou and I will see him dine
When we bear them thither”

Seriously? We’ve already established that ‘the frost was cruel’ and now we’re going traipsing out in the middle of the night into a blizzard to give a guy, who already HAS WOOD, some MORE WOOD, as well as some FLESH? You couldn’t wait until the morning? So impetuous. Also, who’s carrying all the flesh and wine 3 miles through the snow? I bet you dollars to donuts that it ISN’T Wenceslas.

And then of course, you know the rest. The page almost dies of hypothermia, the king is like ‘Oh, just walk in my footsteps and you’ll be fine, and by the way, don’t drop the flesh and wood,” and we never find out if they get to the peasant’s house.

Me (driving): I’ve never understood the popularity of a song about some sundowning old guy deciding to wander off into a snow storm during a banquet that HE organized and almost killing his page.
Ken (on his phone):It says here that the feast of Stephen isn’t an actual feast. It’s Saint’s Stephen’s day, December 26th.
Me: Yes, I’m aware, KEN. That was just for comic effect.
Ken: It also says here that he wasn’t an old guy. Wenceslas was only 28 when he died.
Me: Only TWENTY-EIGHT?! Well, now it make sense. He wasn’t trying to be charitable—he thought the peasant was getting ready for a party and he wanted to horn in on the action. He was just lonely, and the flesh and wood were weird-ass hostess gifts. He and the page were probably already drunk and like, “Dude, it’s so BORING here in the castle–isn’t this supposed to be a feast day? Let’s find a peasant we can hang with. Don’t worry about your coat—it’s only a couple of miles. If you get cold, you can just…I dunno…walk in my footsteps,” and the page was like, “Cool. Maybe it’s a barbeque.”
Ken: Wenceslas was murdered by his brother.
Me: Honestly? Not surprising.

Let’s Party!

I’m Not The Problem

Last Monday, it was my birthday. I’m at that age now where I don’t need to celebrate too intensely—in fact, some days I’d rather just forget about it, no problem. But my family is wonderful and makes sure that it’s always a memorable occasion, and this year was no different. However, based on my gifts, I’m starting to think that maybe everyone ELSE thinks that I have a problem.

It started on Saturday, when my parents came out to visit and brought me a gift. It was a lovely bottle of wine. On Sunday, because Ken and I were going to Toronto on my actual birthday to attend a poetry reading by one of my wonderful authors, Bill Garvey, as well as an upcoming poet Paul Edward Costa, we had my birthday party. I got home from work at my new weekend job at the best bookstore in the province, the Riverside Bookshelf, and Ken announced that he, Kate, and Max had prepared a Scavenger Hunt for me, Clue style. I started in the kitchen with the following clue:

The ‘smallest rooms’? Obviously one of the bathrooms, but I was immediately chastised:

Me: There’s nothing in this bathroom—let me check the other one…
Ken: Bathroom?! It says ‘smallest ROOMS’! Come on!
Me: Oh wait—my miniatures!

Sure enough, there was a present there on the shelf between my conservatory and dining room—a lovely bottle of wine. Then I got the second clue:

I ran up to our bedroom and sure enough—a lovely bottle of wine was nestled against my pillow. Carrying two bottles of wine in hand, I ran to the cat tree as per the next clue:

…and Ilana was snuggled against yet another lovely bottle of wine. The Scavenger Hunt continued for 3 more clues, each culminating in increasingly more lovely bottles of wine. Total so far: 7 bottles of wine. (We also played an actual game of Clue, and I finally won—it was Mrs. Peacock in the dining room with the wrench) and by the end, I was quite tipsy.

The next day, we headed to Toronto to my brother’s house with the intention of leaving our car there and taking the subway to the poetry reading. My brother, who has a Ph.D., wasn’t home, but he messaged that he’d left my birthday present on the counter in his kitchen. We arrived, and I went straight for the gift bag, which contained…3 lovely bottles of wine. Final count: 10 bottles of wine.

Now, I don’t want you to get the wrong impression. I LOVE wine, and I was THRILLED by my gifts, and that is no lie. I will drink them over the next few weeks and silently thank each person for understanding me so well. But is it TOO WELL? I asked Ken:

Me: Am I that much of a wino?
Ken: Of course not—people just know what you like.
Me (taking a sip of lovely wine and sighing): They really do.

And then of course, it was Thursday, and I did what any normal person would do—I bottled a batch of wine with my dad. Cheers!

In other news, yes, I recently started a weekend job at a local bookstore so I’m living the dream. Except for the part where I have to leave the delightful coziness of my bed on a Sunday morning and go somewhere. Still, it’s a bookstore, so there’s that.

Present and Accounted For

Last week, I received funding from The Writer’s Union of Canada to go up North and do writing workshop presentations at the local high school there. I’ve done this before at other schools and it usually goes well, despite the incident in the spring where the teacher in charge confided that she hadn’t told the students I was coming. When I asked, “Why not?”, she said if they knew, NONE OF THEM WOULD SHOW UP, and if that isn’t a boost to the old ego, I don’t know what is. But the kids this week all knew I was their guest speaker and they seemed pretty jazzed about it. As for me, I was exhausted for a variety of reasons. First, after haranguing Ken about taking too long at work and making us late KEN, we set out on the 4 hour drive. We were about 20 minutes down the highway when Ken asked where I’d put the copies of the books I was taking to raffle off to the kids, and I realized with horror that I had forgotten an entire bag, which also contained the memory stick with my PowerPoint presentation. I actually started to cry at the thought of going back and losing even more time, as if I wasn’t stressed out of my mind with anxiety already, but there was no choice. Luckily, Ken isn’t the kind of guy to give me grief over things like that—goodness knows I felt bad enough. And not only was I exhausted after the now 6-hour drive, I also have a terrible time sleeping at hotels. I also felt grubby, because the motel we had booked smelled terrible and had no hot water. It made me appreciate social distancing even more because I kept 6 feet between me and anyone who could catch a whiff of ‘motel stank’.

But the students were lovely and very enthusiastic—until it came time to share their writing ideas with the whole group. Their reluctance was palpable. Luckily, I have a little trick up my sleeve that I use in times like this.

Me: I’m working on a new book right now, a murder mystery, and I need victims. So if you put up your hand and share your writing, I will name a character after you, and you get to choose how I murder you.
Students (all hands go flying up in the air): Me! Me!

Here are some of my favourites:

Matty – killed on stage during a musical number, possibly electrocuted by her guitar

Kennedy – flaming arrow to the chest

Zack – burned in a public place on a giant pyre

Grace – pushed off a rollercoaster at the top by a very strong 5-year-old

Jimmy – killed fighting a bear

It was simultaneously adorable AND terrifying how much thought they’d put into this. And it all reminded me so much of Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies. If you haven’t read it (click link if you want to have it read to you but it’s gruesome, just an fyi), it’s a very darkly humorous alphabet book: A is for Amy who fell down the stairs / B is for Basil assaulted by bears…and it goes on, only getting worse, as you can well imagine, but the illustrations are hilarious. Anyway, it was a good time and Ken and I made it home that night without having to stay in motel hell again.

But doing things like this is getting harder and harder for me. When did I stop wanting to explore the world and just stay home? I know it’s not just me—I was having a conversation with a friend the other day:

Friend: How did it happen? When did I become so old?
Me: I know, right? Like, all I want is to putter in the garden, write, make miniatures, and watch TV in bed with a glass of wine—that’s the dream.
Friend: One of my friends had extra tickets to the Pink show last week, and I LOVE Pink, but it was in Toronto, last minute, and I was like, go ALL THE WAY to Toronto and see a concert AT NIGHT without any chance to prepare? Hard pass!
Me: Ken wanted to go to a restaurant last week and I begged him to let me cook for him at home. Why would I want to spend all that money to WAIT for my food to come?!
Friend: EXACTLY!

Stick, meet mud. Maybe I was always like this, but I had the youthful energy to overcome it. Who knows. At any rate, if you’re looking for me, you can find me at home, nestled in my office writing a story about a boy who gets killed in a bear fight. I already have the last line written: “It was a bear, Jimmy. What did you expect?”

Phoning It In

For today’s post, I’m sharing the last four pictures I took on my phone.

1) You might be squinting right now and saying, “Is that some kind of bug?” and you would be correct. I was staying at my brother’s to be there for my nephew while my brother, who has a PhD, was involved in some very important work stuff. I, being retired, was more than happy to fill in. We were going to have one of my nephew’s favourite meals, ‘Thai-Inspired Beef Bowls’. It was in a bag in the fridge from one of those ‘meal kit’ places, and on Monday night, I got it out and started to prep it. I poured the rice into a pot, and one of the grains looked very dark. I put a different pair of reading glasses on (one for REALLY close-up viewing, unlike the pair I was already wearing, which was for medium viewing, and also unlike a third pair in my purse which is for ‘things that are approximately four feet away’), and I scrutinized the rice. And forgive me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe that rice grains have legs. I called my nephew over for his opinion:

Me: Hey, do you think that’s a bug?
Nephew: Definitely.
Me: It looks dead. I could pick it out…
Nephew: You could.
Me: The rice has to be boiled anyway. That would kill any bug corpse germs, right?
Nephew: It would.
Me: Then we’re in agreement?
Nephew: We are.

Seemed a shame to waste a meal that had been so obviously packaged with care. And the ‘inspired’ part? I’m going to try making this at home—without the bugs.

2) This ad is confusing. Mainly because I never get cranky when I drink. But these boxes…and I’m not sure how it works. Do you put the drinks IN the boxes? Do they play music WHILE you drink? No wonder they’re cranky. I’d be pissed off too if people kept clogging up my wind-up mechanism with alcohol. And they’re all in perfect condition except that one…is a plate. It always amazes me though when, rather than looking up the actual term for a thing, someone chooses to just post an ad like this:

Box Owner: I need to post an ad for these weird alcoholic boxes but I don’t know what that thing is called that winds them up.
Random Friend: You could look it up.
Box Owner: Looking up things makes me cranky—oh wait!

3) I took this screenshot from LinkedIn. After my last post ABOUT LinkedIn, I got a message teasing me that people had been looking at my ‘profile’. I get these quite often but they won’t tell you WHO was actually looking until you give them money to upgrade your plan. But now I think LinkedIn is just f*cking with me, because the Canada Revenue Agency is the government taxman, like the IRS, and the Attorney General oversees the court system and I HAVE COMMITTED NO TAX CRIMES, LINKEDIN SO NICE TRY. The other two companies make sense, but when I saw the last one, I was inordinately excited, like why is a steakhouse looking ME up? Cuz it’s usually the other way around and maybe it’s a sign that I should go and get some steak.

4) This is the cutest cat on the planet. Period.

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!

Taking The Fall

First the good news: After the shuttering of Potters’ Grove Press and their decision to unpublish all their titles, I was left with 2 short story collections that were no longer available. I’m happy to announce that my first short story collection, Feasting Upon The Bones, has been republished by Baxter House Editions and I even had the chance to correct a couple of minor typos that had always bothered me. So if you’d like a copy of the new and improved Feasting Upon The Bones, you can buy it here!

http://a-fwd.com/asin=B0D3YBHJ5R

And in other news…

As I write this, much of my body is aching thanks to an incident earlier in the week, which was terrible at the time but which, because you know me and you know I can laugh at just about anything, seems funny in retrospect:

I woke up early on Thursday morning because I had an online meeting. OK, the meeting started at 9 am but I’m retired and I spent the majority of my career getting up at 5:45 so 9 am IS EARLY AND I WILL NOT BE JUDGED. I got ready, but because it was an online meeting, I did what any normal person would do and I put on a nice sweater and also some pajama pants and my old woolly slippers because my bottom half wouldn’t be visible. The other person logged on right at 9 and we began to chat. Then she wanted to share something on her screen. At the same moment, my phone, which I’d left upstairs, began to ring. It was taking her a minute to get the file up and I was worried about the phone because Ken had gone out with Atlas and I’d heard sirens just a little while before the phone started ringing and again, if you know me at all, you know that I’m the Queen of Worst Case Scenarios. So I said to the other person, “While you’re getting that ready, I’m just going to grab my phone” and then I ran upstairs.

I was in a bit of a panic, thinking that someone was calling to tell me that poor Ken had been hit by a car chasing after Atlas, who had broken his collar AGAIN, or more ludicrously that he had been attacked by an angry swarm of bees and I was picturing Atlas snapping at them all and praying he didn’t get stung (which has happened in the past and I’ve tried to soothe him while simultaneously trying not to laugh at his chubby cheeks), when I hit the third step from the top.

That was when my slippers, being old and woolly and having no tread, went completely out from under me and I landed hard, left-side down, on the stairs. But that wasn’t the end of it. Thanks to my super-comfy yet non-grippy pajama pants and sweater, I began sliding DOWN THE STAIRS AT BREAKNECK SPEED. It sound like this: Thunkthunkthunkthunkthunkthunk and I could go on for another 7 thunks but I think you get the point. About halfway down, I screamed at the top of my lungs—why, I don’t know, because there was nothing and no one who could save me, and I wondered if it was true that if a woman who’s falling down the stairs screams and there’s no one there to hear her, does she make a sound? And the answer is yes. Yes, she does. A very loud and terrifying sound. I hit the bottom of the stairs and lay there for a second, trying to figure out if I had broken anything, and then I suddenly remembered that I was IN A MEETING. So I had to limp over to my office chair and sit down very carefully.

“I’m back. Are you ready to get started?” I asked between clenched teeth. And the meeting continued like nothing had happened, except that I was in agony.

But the best part is that, even though I didn’t break anything, I have some huge bruises, and while that might not seem like an upside, it’s certainly getting me lots of sympathy and maybe even a nice get well present KEN (hint hint—I like wine). Speaking of wine, the only other time I’ve fallen down a set of stairs was when I fell down our attic stairs almost 20 years ago. I was at the bottom trying not to cry and Kate, who was about 8 at the time, immediately ran and got me a glass of wine. Because she’s the best daughter, aren’t you KATE? (hint hint—I like wine).

Worst slip and slide EVER

Total Eclipse of the Heart

Well, I guess the most exciting thing that happened last week was the eclipse. And it WAS truly exciting, I have to say. Ken and I drove to my aunt’s boyfriend’s place (it’s always so weird to say ‘boyfriend’ when people are in their late 60s, isn’t it, like he’s not A BOY, he’s a grown-ass man with grandkids, but I digress) and the whole fam had gathered to witness the event. I’d ordered those special glasses from Amazon, and I checked very carefully to make sure that they were legit and not going to render us all blind (as a side note, one of the larger towns near here ordered eclipse glasses also off Amazon and then had to recall them when they found out that they were knock-offs and not approved by NASA or whatnot but mine WERE and it’s been almost a week and I still haven’t gone blind). When we woke up on Monday morning, it was quite cloudy and Ken was being his typical gloom and doom self, going on about ‘cloud cover’ and wind speed and ‘chance of precipitation’ like the Weather Channel was paying him to give me his opinion, but I would not be dissuaded. “It’s going to be perfect,” I said, with all the confidence of a late-middle-aged woman who has never given a sh*t whether or not she was wrong about anything.

We left shortly after lunch to drive down to the lake, and on the way, there was blue sky on the horizon. “See,” I said. “It will be FINE.” I said this with all the confidence of a late-middle-aged woman who recently ran outside and across her front lawn in the pouring rain in her stocking feet and screamed “Get the f*ck of my street!” to an asshole in a pick-up truck who was trying to deface our Pride crosswalk by doing a burn-out on it. I got photographs of the truck AND his license plate—the jury is still out on whether or not the cops will do anything about it. Also, we had to leave Atlas behind, and a friend was going to give him lunch and let him out, but I had to message her and remind her not to let him out between 2:30 and 3:30 because he’s such a dope that he’d probably stare at it barking until his retinas burned out. She responded by sending us this picture of him on the couch, safely relaxing in the house:

At any rate, the closer we got to the lake, the more sporadic the cloud cover was, which filled me with incredible optimism. We arrived and hugged the family—Mom and Dad were there, along with my other aunt, and a couple of friends. We had snacks and wine, because what the hell is the point of watching a phenomenon of nature without ‘nature’s more fun grape juice’, and then sat on the deck. Waiting. It was still cloudy. The eclipse was supposed to start around 2:30 pm and right around then, the wind picked up and the clouds began to move. By 3 pm, the skies were blue and clear. We all had our glasses on, breathless with anticipation and freaking out that the clouds would return—but THEY DIDN’T, KEN, JUST LIKE I SAID.

It was an awe-inspiring moment. I’ve never in my lifetime seen a total solar eclipse and holy sh*t, let me tell you, it was worth the wait. And the best part was that Ken had his really good camera, and he got some amazing shots:

Not Today, Satan; Things My Mother Left Behind Release!

This week, I had to get blood taken. I absolutely hate having that done, but my new family doctor wanted to do benchmark bloodwork before Christmas and it showed that my cholesterol was slightly elevated:

Me: What would cause that?
Doc: Mostly diet.
Me: Ahem…does drinking wine cause high cholesterol?
Doc: No, not really.
Me (internally VERY relieved): I’m prepared to cut any food out of my diet that I need to.

Turns out that the foods she identified were potatoes, salmon, steak, rice, and pasta (even the gluten-free kind). So yes, literally ALL the things I like to eat. She recommended the Mediterranean diet, and I’ve been trying to follow it, but there’s only so much chicken and quinoa a girl can eat. Otherwise, I eat pretty healthy foods and thinking more about it, that’s a complete lie and I should be surprised that my cholesterol isn’t worse. So anyway, on Thursday, I went to the lab to get blood taken.

Lab Tech: When was the last time you ate?
Me: About 45 minutes ago. I had fries from McDonald’s and a Pepsi. Considering this is a cholesterol test, that wasn’t a great idea…
Lab Tech: Haha. NO.

I rolled up my sleeve and turned my head, and when the needle went in it really hurt. I looked back and the tech had a perturbed look on his face, and then I remembered that he was taking blood from my right forearm, you know, the one with the words THE SEVENTH DEVIL splashed across it underneath devil eyes.

Me: I should probably explain—it’s the title of a book…I mean a book that I wrote…it’s not about Satan worship or anything…well, there are demons in it…anyway, I have one on my other arm too!

I showed him my left forearm and The Dome tattoo which graces it but he still didn’t seem convinced. He just muttered, “Okay,” and then handed me a cotton ball to stop the bleeding. In retrospect, perhaps the bulk of my lower arm wasn’t the best place to get a large devil tattoo as I’ve had to explain it on more than one occasion to a medical professional holding a large needle. And to add insult to injury, I got my lab results back yesterday and my cholesterol is STILL high–not quite as high as before, but still slightly higher than it should be. Screw you, quinoa. (Although I actually like quinoa, so maybe I just need to cut out the Mickey D’s).

In other news, Baxter House Editions has just released its second publication: the gorgeous poetry collection Things My Mother Left Behind by Susan Richardson. Susan writes the blog Stories from the Edge of Blindness and hosts a phenomenal weekly podcast called A Thousand Shades of Green. Things My Mother Left Behind is about the undeniable connections between love and grief, joy and pain. It is an exploration of one woman’s journey through the loss of loved ones, loss of sight, loss of control and innocence. It is about escaping into darkness and discovering light.

You can buy it here!

Things That Are Like Other Things

Last night, Ken and I were watching a YouTube video about songwriters that got sued because their songs sounded too much like other songs. And there were a LOT of them. Most of the time, the newer songwriters lost in court and had to pay royalties to the previous songwriters. And it got me thinking about other things that are like things, only I don’t know if anyone ever got sued over any of these:

One Christmas, Ken put something amazing in my stocking. We’ve always given each other stockings full of socks, chocolate, wine, and other small cool stuff, and that year I was excited to receive a pen. That might sound less cool than I’ve made it out to be, but wait! It wasn’t just a pen—it was also a screwdriver, a level, and a ruler. It was, in fact, a “4-In-1 Pen Tool”, and if that isn’t the best thing that is like another thing, I don’t know what is. Now, no matter where I go, I can measure something, check if it’s level, repair it, or write down an interesting fact about it. Because multi-tasking is an art, and things that are like other things are a multi-tasker’s best friend.

Here’s another example–if you’ve been here before, you know that I LOVE gummy vitamins. They’re multi-coloured, taste just like gummy bears, and are the best of both worlds. The first thing I get to do when I get up in the morning, even BEFORE I eat my yogurt, is have some candy. And it was recommended by my doctor! I NEVER used to take vitamins before, on the grounds that they tasted bad (except for Vitamin C tablets, which taste like oranges, or just like the baby aspirin they had when I was a kid. I used to sneak baby aspirin every so often because they were so delicious–I could fall off my bike and bleed half to death because my blood was so thin, but it didn’t hurt at all), and I didn’t really care about thiamine or niacin or dioxin or whatever. But now, I take vitamins every day because it’s fun AND healthy.

And that got me thinking about: First, things that are like other things that make me happy, and next: the things that SHOULD be like other things that would make me even happier:

1) One of my all-time favourite things which is like another thing is ‘Pants That Are Pajamas’. After working from home during the pandemic, I accrued several pairs of these. Some people call them ‘Yoga Pants’ but I don’t do yoga, unless you count a vigorous stretch to grab a wine glass from the cupboard. And if you’re still working remotely, ‘Pants That Are Pajamas’ allow you to easily transition from Business Casual to Nightwear with very little effort at all.

2) If you’ve ever flown, you know that your seat cushion turns into a flotation device. Which begs the question (which I think I heard first from Jerry Seinfeld) ‘why doesn’t the plane just turn into a cruise ship if it lands in the water?’ I know this is totally possible, because my next favourite thing which is like another thing is a bus that turns into a boat. We went on a bus tour in Ottawa a few years ago, and after we’d driven around for a while looking at the Parliament buildings and whatnot, the driver suddenly announced that we would also be cruising the harbour. Then we drove down a ramp, STRAIGHT INTO THE RIVER. I was totally freaking, but Ken was like, “Don’t worry–the wheels turn into propellers and there’s a ring underneath that inflates.” I responded very calmly with “Liar! We’re going to drown!” and Ken said, “They ADVERTISED this. Why are you acting all surprised? Don’t you remember?”, but I reminded HIM that first, I thought they meant we would get OFF the bus and get ON a boat, and second, I may or may not have been enjoying a very nice Sauvignon Blanc the previous evening when he pulled out the brochure and was waving it around, saying, “Ooh, this will be fun.” But you know what? Once I got used to the idea that my bus was now a boat, and the bus driver was now a sea captain and I could refer to him as ‘Skipper’, I really enjoyed the whole experience. Kate, of course, remained calm throughout the entire tour. Or maybe she was bored. Mainly because the tour consisted of just looking at buildings. But still, the Bus-Boat was very cool.

3) Canes that become swords. Okay, technically, they don’t BECOME swords, they just have swords in them. It would be awesome to be hobbling around, all decrepit-like, then suddenly whip out that sword like a superspy ninja when the need arose. I also love canes that double as flasks for alcohol, because who DOESN’T want to crack that bad boy open when no one’s looking? It would have made my Bus-Boat trip a hell of a lot more interesting once we were on the water, that’s for sure.

4) Sporks. This is two handy things in one–a spoon and a fork. Take it one step further by sharpening the plastic edge, and you have a sporfe: a spoon, fork, and knife all in one, which I just invented. Actually, this might have already been invented, most likely by a prisoner, who stole a spoon from the canteen and turned it into a weapon to shank his cellmate with first, then ate the guy’s pie and ice cream after. Wow, that got dark kind of quick for a fun plastic utensil.

5) Closed Captioning. This allows you to watch TV and read at the same time, so all those people who think reading is a more intellectual pursuit than Netflix can get stuffed.

Okay, so I’ve listed some things that are already like other things, so here are some ideas about things that I WISH were other things:

1) An exercise machine that is also a bar. Many years ago, I had a recumbent cycle, and I used to pour a big glass of wine, turn on the TV, and cycle for a few kilometres. It was hardly like exercising AT ALL, and I broke even on the calories.

2) A bookshelf that is a door. I’ve been bugging Ken about this for a while now, trying to get him to think of a place in our house where we could put a bookshelf that is, in reality, the door to a secret room. There are a couple of spots where we could do it, but Ken thinks it would be really complicated to build. What a baby. I mean, I’m no engineer, but I do have a 4-In-1 pen, and I think it’s definitely possible.

3) A pen with a Tide White Stick on the other end. This is great for people like me, who are fairly clumsy and wave pens around for emphasis, inevitably getting ink on their clothes. But see, with my invention, all you’d have to do is flip the thing around, erase that blob, and you’re good to go. Combine it with the 4-In-1 Pen and you wouldn’t be able to keep them on store shelves—they’d be snapped up faster than a recumbent cycle with a built-in wine fridge.

Ultimately, I am the QUEEN of multi-tasking. Whether it’s eating, drinking, working out, or just relaxing, I’ve got a pen for that.