Sometimes it goes well

Today, as on many other days, George R.R. Martin made me sigh a little.

No, I wasn't re-reading the Red Wedding scene in A Storm of Swords for the fourteenth time. No, I wasn't watching good ol' Jon Snow get sliced and diced on TV. I was reading George's livejournal entry from January 1st, 2016, where he explains to legions of salivating fans why his long-awaited Winds of Winter won't be published anytime soon, despite repeated assurances that it would be.

"Unfortunately, the writing did not go as fast or as well as I would have liked. You can blame my travels or my blog posts or the distractions of other projects and... whatever, but maybe all that had an impact... you can blame my age, and maybe that had an impact too...but if truth be told, sometimes the writing goes well and sometimes it doesn't."

Word, George. I feel you, you big, bearded, suspender-wearing genius.

That's part of the reason I haven't written anything in this blog for years, why I haven't even put pen to paper to scribble any just-dropping-off-to-sleep-when-a-brilliant-idea-pops-into-my-brain stuff, or snippets of conversations I've pulled from shameless eavesdropping in restaurants and waiting rooms. Because sometimes the writing goes well, and sometimes it doesn't.

I can even pinpoint the exact moment my muse fled screaming: that day back in April 2015 when D and I learned our son Dylan is on the autism spectrum, which flipped typical parental expectations and hopes on their asses. The urge to write, to create, to dream on paper...well, all that energy drowned in a huge wave of grief and worry and WTF.

D and I have a strong foundation of love and respect in our home, and the unwavering support of our immediate family. We're damned lucky that way. Anytime a child in your life faces a health challenge, though, I think it irrevocably alters a family's dynamics. It alters your priorities, your marriage, your relationship with friends and extended family members who either don't get it, or don't know how to support you. Shit, I don't even know how to support me sometimes. You learn quickly who you can lean on, and who you want to punch in the throat.

Dylan is a beautiful boy. If anything, he's become even more precious to me simply because I treasure all that he is, now that I have learned to let go of my expectations of what he should be. Autism is not a disease that needs to be wrung out of someone. Autism isn't always fun, but it certainly isn't the end of the world. As I've tried to explain to our daughter Jade, who is a year older than Dyl, autism makes her brother's brain work differently than hers, and that's okay. We work with his strengths to overcome his weaknesses. We practice compassion and patience and humour. And isn't that how it should work with everyone, anyway?

So I'm back. My inner Mama Bear has become a little more badass, and I've come to a place of acceptance and determined optimism where my boy is concerned. Oh, there are still days where I cry in the bathroom because my little dude - in the most overused euphemism ever - is "being difficult." There are days when people, even those closest to me, just don't get it and I have to pace the cornfield for an hour and rant my frustrations to the crows and barn swallows. And there are days where Dylan's brilliance lights up my world and reminds me to open my heart to the times when it goes well so I can have the strength to power through the days when it doesn't.

Here's to more days where the writing goes well, for both me and Big George.

My, My, My...

How time does fly, fly, fly when I'm ignoring my blog.

I mean, come on: my last post was October 2014. What's up with that nonsense? Sheesh. You'd think that chest cold really DID turn into a raging zombie infection, causing me to become a mindless non-blogger who ate everyone in Kinkytown. Either that or I really got into the rum.

Turns out my affliction was nothing more serious than a case of mummy meltdown because Dylan started JK, combined with a healthy dose of "I don't give a crap about blogging right now." I know I'm a writer, which makes it strange and scary when I lose my need to write. It's sometimes hard to have faith that the urge to tell stories will return if I give myself permission to not write for a while. Then one day, I buy myself a new cahier d'exercices in a flashy colour, grab my favourite pen and sit down and scribble like I never stopped. That day was today. (Thanks, purple cahier!)

So fear not, faithful (and possibly frustrated) readers. I've been busy blogging in my head, so all sorts of things are ready to spill out onto scraps of paper and my keyboard. I'll try really hard not to abandon you for this long again.

Stay tuned for tales of dismembered rabbits, dancing at the Russian Tea Room, and that word of the year thing.

A Little Less Should, a Little More Rum

It's Wednesday. No rain, just chills and wind and curdled clouds. I should be mowing the lawn. Or something.

I should do the kids' laundry so Jade won't have to crouch naked at the top of the stairs again screaming,

"MUMMA WHERE'S MY CHEETAH OUTFIT!? YOU SAID YOU WOULD WASH MY CHEETAH OUTFIT!!"
and Dylan won't have to wear his undies inside out tomorrow.

I should round up and capture all the dust elephants under my bed so I don't have another asthma attack tonight.

I should mix the dough for Hallowe'en cookies because it has to sit in the fridge for four hours before I can let the kids attack it with rolling pins and cookie cutters.

I should clean out the drawer from hell that caused D to curse and violently slam it shut when he was trying to find one elastic band.

I should write a blog article.

Oh wait, I AM writing a blog article. That makes one "should" out of five, which isn't bad considering I've spent most of the morning slumped on the couch playing online Scrabble and sipping a hot rum toddy. Mumma feels like she's getting a chest cold, and that does not make Mumma happy, or motivated, or overly concerned with her ever-present to-do list. Ever have one of those days when the "shoulds" creep up and try to strangle you? Screw the shoulds. Today I love the couch.

Anyone who spends most of their time looking after an active family knows the danger of forgetting to look after themselves. A couple of weeks of that stupidity and you simply collapse. After surviving several unsavoury health issues, I've come to recognize and listen to the messages my body sends me. Today, it was the sensation of having an invisible thirty pound cat sitting on my chest that made me stop doing the dishes and retreat to the sanctuary of my couch. I've essential oiled myself, turned the fireplace on, and concocted my tried and true "I feel like crap" remedy: hot water, lemon juice, raw honey, sliced ginger, a splash of rum and a cinnamon stick. Damn, is it good. It makes the invisible cat feel lighter with each swallow, and sends my should list back to where it belongs: in the drawer from hell.

UPDATE: 2 p.m.
I just watched the Walking Dead episode where a character gets a little tickle in her throat, which becomes a nagging cough, which then makes her cough up blood and die and become a zombie. If I start bleeding out my eyes, I know the rum just isn't cutting it.

The morning poke

This morning, after shuffling Jade down the lane and onto the bus for the first time in three weeks, I did something sneaky. Once Dylan was absorbed in his BBC kids' show, I tiptoed outside and sat on the back stoop with a hot cup of coffee, flavoured with the last of the eggnog. The air smelled fresh and melty, instead of frigid and manure-y like it did last night. Breathing it in gave me more satisfaction than even that first sip of coffee. I watched a cloud of finches burst into the air and settle with a chorus of chirrups in the naked branches of our red maple. An irate blue jay soon scattered them, but they whooshed their way onto the black walnut tree instead in a cheerful, fluttering rush. I could hear a distant snow plow scraping its way along our road, but other than that and the chatter of finches, there was delicious stillness. Then faintly, I could hear a voice through the open kitchen window hollering the one word with the power to shatter any zen moment: "MUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMYYYYYYYY!?"

It was five minutes of solitude at the most, in weather that's finally warm enough to pause in without six layers of protective clothing, but it was all I needed to give me the poke in the brain I've been waiting for: it's time to write again.

We've been housebound since Sunday, thanks to the "arctic vortex" that descended on most of our area over the past week, bringing nose-hair-freezing, bone-cracking temperatures and wind that slices through you like a samurai sword. You know it's bloody cold when a winter lovin' gal like me starts to shiver in her snow pants. And before the deep freeze, we had my sister and nephew's arrival from Australia to celebrate, the my other sister's arrival from balmy Bali, then a wave of sickness at Someday which postponed Christmas to Boxing Day. Throw in a few Lowry Christmas celebrations, travelling to and from my Dad's cabin, New Year's, one sister's departure and enough laundry to choke an industrial washing machine, and life was full to the brim of…well, life.

Not that I'm complaining, or making excuses. I just decided that it was time for a sabbatical from writing. After all the edits and drafts and proofreads and reorgs of my book, I'd had enough. When I played Candy Crush or pretended to be a kitty for sale for my daughter's enjoyment or sat on the couch and read a pile of books under D's disapproving eye, I was conscious of my blog and my notebook and my new purple pen staring at me balefully. "Yeah, you can wait," I told them, and refused to feel any guilt whatsoever. Instead of writing, I cooked soups and stews and baked biscotti and smartie cookies. The kids and I decorated the house to within an inch of its life. I hung out with my sisters and nephew, hurt my knee tobogganing, played "Coffee Monster" and tractors and Sneaky Snacky Squirrel with the kids, re-read three of my favourite Game of Thrones volumes and uploaded a squillion photos onto Facebook. I didn't read any blogs, I didn't write any blogs, and I didn't care. The nice thing about being a writer (to me, anyway) is that even when you're not physically putting stuff down on paper, you can write stories in your head until finally there's no room left and they have to burst out onto the page.

This morning's five minutes of gorgeous, snowy peace reminded me that it's probably time to end the sabbatical and get back on the ol' writing horse again. I'm ready now. I've had a good rest, a very full winter of joys and irritations and the ideas are starting to leak out of my ears. Hopefully you're all still interested in hanging out with me at the Someday Diaries again.

Hello my lovelies!

I'm here! Honest! I'm here, and happy and ready to start bloggin' again.

In case you didn't know, I've been completely and wholly absorbed in finishing the second draft of (gasp) my book. That's right, people. I wasn't just slacking off, eating bon-bons on the couch and drinking wine this whole time. Nope, I've been proofreading (ugh), editing (double ugh) and killing my darlings. Out of approximately 70 eager-to-be-told tales from Someday, I've whittled the collection down to 50. Have mercy, that was a sucky job. Even more painful a task was trying to organize them into some semblance of order. Anyway, it's done and it's now in the hands of my intrepid editor. Let's pray she doesn't use a lot of red pen.

So for those of you who still check in here to see if I'm alive, thanks! You rock! I'll be posting regularly again, promise.

And for those of you who care, my book should be available next year (she said while crossing her fingers and knocking on wood and promising the literary gods a sacrifice of several squirrels).

Can you believe it? Someday is finally around the corner!

The Write Stuff

Heyyyyy!

You may have noticed that I haven't been posting much lately. It's not because I don't want to; in fact, I've been writing endless blog entries in my head, most of which never get transferred to paper or laptop. Yeah, you're welcome. I just wanted you to know that I'm not being lazy and I haven't developed a hatred of blogging or writer's block or anything like that. In fact...I've been writing a book.

Really.

Want proof? Here:

I just printed out the first draft, which is pretty freaking cool, but also means I have pretty freaking crazy editing ahead of me now. The fun part was writing it all down; the scary part comes next.

I'm going to continue to blog as much as I can. It's just that I feel enormous obligation to my book, now that it's done, to work on getting it to a place where I feel it's ready to publish. So blogging, sadly, comes in at around fifth place in the I'll-get-around-to-it race, after kids and sleep and husband and my book.

Just wanted to let you know so you don't abandon Someday!

Lovin' the LEIBSTER!

A big shout out to my dear pal Susan at Notes from Innisfree...she awarded me a Leibster!

Whoo hoo! Hurray! Yippee!!!

Okay, I didn't know what it was either, but hey, I got an award, yo.

Susan told me that Liebster is a German word, meaning dearest or beloved, or favorite. This lovely little award is given to bloggers with less than 200 followers in order to help them get a little well-deserved attention and coax more awesome readers to visit their blog.

Further to my earlier post about paying it forward, once you win a Liebster, the idea is to pass it along to other bloggers you love, and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog. Apparently I'm supposed to do this to eleven other bloggers, but to be frank, I'm kind of like a hermit in the bloggesphere and I don't really know eleven other bloggers who need that many followers. So I'll keep it to four of my favourites and stick to the other rules by posting four random facts about myself, and answering four of the questions Susan asked as my nominator. Oh, and I have to make up four questions for my nominees to answer...mwah ha ha!

Normally I detest form letter type stuff, but this feels more like a big, bloggy love-in. So, thanks Susan! And here goes nothing, my leibschens...

Four Funky Facts about Me
1) I have seen Michail Gorbachev, Cybil Shepherd and Tony Danza in person. I know. Now you want to be my friend, right?

2) Someday I'm going to travel to Japan and climb Mt. Fuji at sunrise. I even know a few words in Japanese. I just need to learn the ones for "I am not dead, I am just resting here on the side of the mountain."

3) I have a terrible, terrible crush on the guy that plays Jaime on Game of Thrones. This has replaced my terrible, terrible crush on Hugh Jackman, which replaced my terrible, terrible crush on Scully, which replaced my terrible, terrible crush on Harrison Ford that pretty much lasted a decade.

4) The four foods I can never get enough of are olives, ice cream, popcorn and sushi.

Four Questions from Susan
1) What motto do you live by?
I'd like to say it's something philosophical and deep, but I think it's more along the lines of, "Knock yourself out." Which I say a lot to my kids when they ask whether they can do something, like build a fort out of every piece of furniture in the house, or take off all their clothes in the sandbox. Basically, I figure if it isn't dangerous, unkind or unhealthy, go for it! We shelter our kids too much these days. They need to have harmless little adventures. And so do I.

2) What's your favourite movie?
Favourite feel-good movie: Greencard. Favourite movie I never get tired of watching even though my husband doesn't get it: The Matrix. Favourite foreign movie: Oldboy. Favourite nostalgic movie: a tie between Grease and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

3) If you could wave your magic wand and solve one world issue, which issue would you choose to address?
I wish mental health issues like depression, anxiety, bipolar and post-traumatic stress disorders would just vanish off the face of the earth. Cancer comes a close second. And the repression & abuse of women and children. I know, that's three things. But man, that's a tough question.

4) If you could have dinner with any living person, who would it be?
Wayson Choy. I just love that guy. Plus he's funny and would never judge me for ordering too much bacon or wine.

And My Nominees Are...
In no particular order, here are my awesome Leibster nominees. Check out their blogs! Stay a while! Leave a comment! (Us bloggers really dig comments because then we know real people are reading our stuff)

Public Recluse The Lesser - your daily dose of truth with a sprinkle of sarcasm

Tea and Spice and All Things Nice - tips, recipes and other funky posts from a local tea goddess

Converse, Wookies and the Pursuit of Joy - the title kind of says it all, doesn't it? Zen zaniness and sharp observations from one seriously cool woman

Hick Chic - a little Johnny Depp (okay, a LOT of Johnny Depp), musings about country life, hilarious barn stories, sweet posts about her critters. What's not to like about this girl? And did I mention we went to high school together?

Four Nosy Questions for my Nominees
1) What's your favourite childhood memory?

2) In four sentences, describe your ideal day.

3) Do you believe in Heaven?

4) When's the last time you had a really good belly laugh, and why?

Hey Shorty, it's your Birthday...

I'm 43.



43!!!

Which is kinda awesome, in my opinion. No longer in my carefree, naive 20's, or my semi-tragic, semi-romantic 30's. Nope, now I'm in my ever-evolving 40's. Mother, daughter, sister, wife, writer, unrepentant coffee addict, and looking to gain ten pounds, I'm adjusting my Aries horns and ready to ram my way into my 44th year. Look out, Bruce County.

Having dealt with so much nastiness these past three years, you'd think I'd be less than thrilled with this decade of life so far. Not so. I've been able to occasionally grasp that ephemeral sense of peace people have been encouraging me to seek. It's fleeting, but now at least I know it's there. Plus I'm filled with relief that the worst seems to be behind me, thankful for the funny, cosy, healthy moments that make regular appearances in my life now that I'm taking the time to notice them. Mindfulness, living in the moment, blah blah blah. I hate all that Oprah-speak, but the concepts are surprisingly great when you discover they're real and not just some crap Dr. Phil made up.

"So what do you want for your birthday, Kimmy?" is the question from D that starts getting asked in mid-February and usually lets up around April 1st, the day before my birthday. It's weird. This year, I didn't really want anything, not even a get-together with friends or a fancy dinner out. The absence of anxiety seems like gift enough. I was treated to cake and gifts by my family and in-laws on the weekend, and Jade drew me the cutest card, complete with a giant green balloon and a portrait of me with enormous ears. That fit the bill.

Then I found out that for the last two weeks, D had been frantically trying to buy me a 150 CC motorbike. What the what?? He'd put in three separate offers that all fell through, which explains his extra grumpiness lately. He told me he was going to put it in the garage with a big pink bow on it and make me take out the recycling. I was tickled by his covert plan, even though I don't really need a motorbike. I convinced him to buy me a non-fiction book I've been wanting to read called An Inconvenient Indian instead. Somehow, I don't think he was overly thrilled with the substitution. Motorbike vs. book? He just rolled his eyes.

"It was very sweet of you to try and buy me a bike," I whispered to D in bed on April Fool's night. He grunted, still ticked off at his bad luck. As I drifted off to sleep, my mind wandered over to that back shelf of my brain where I keep my (clean) fantasies. If I could have anything I wanted for my 43rd birthday, besides a motorbike, what would I want? How about..

- a plane ticket to Calgary and a rental car so I could drive out to Banff for a week of writing at the Banff Centre. I soooo miss the mountains and the smell of the air there. And the food at the Banff Centre canteen. Banff always makes me feel like a writer.

- rent a horse and go riding for a couple of hours along a wooded trail. I'd hear the jingle of the bridle, the squeak of the saddle, the whoosh of horse breath and the clump-clump of horse feet. There would be warm flanks under my legs, cold air on my nose, sunshine in my hair. There would be birdsong and blue sky. Yeah.

- hole up at the cottage on the couch with the fireplace cranked up and a dozen blankets on me. I'd sip coffee and Baileys, read the paper and my books, snooze, order pizza from Ripley for supper and drink wine with D as we devoured each gooey slice. We'd curl up together on the couch and watch the fire after the kids went to bed and listen to the waves, newly released from their icy shackles. And, um. You know. "Cuddle."

- go back to Florida for another 10 days!

The reality of my 43rd birthday was pleasant, if not as exciting as some of my fantasies. I had a lazy morning with the kids, where we cuddled and tickled and teased, before Grandma took over for the rest of the day. Sushi was on the menu for lunch, with a great girl from my Mom's group for company. We had some good laughs together about hapless husbands and wacky preschoolers. I went for a pedicure to get rid of my hideous hobbit feet, after which I foolishly ruined the polish job with a long hike in what the kids call "The Muddy Woods" (aka the Kincardine trails). I discovered a new trail that led me up a steep hill flanked with cedars and reminded me of the trail that connects the town of Banff to the Banff Centre. It even had icy spots and coyote tracks. All it was missing was elk poop. On my way back into town, I grabbed a mochaccino at Books N Beans, snuck into the library with it and my laptop to blog and write and Facebook the afternoon away. Sunshine on the desk, dude reading a Wolverine comic in the corner, a collection of sweet birthday greetings online, peace and quiet. In a word: lovely.

After a few flirty texts, I packed up and met D for supper at the dim, cosy room at the back of the Governor's Inn. The food's always great there and the servers are sweet. After that, kid pick-up and tuck-in, a few glasses of wine in front of the fireplace and 43 spanks. (Okay, I made that last part up) (Sort of)

Let's hope the rest of 2013 perks up for this ol' lady, cause the first half hasn't been a laugh riot. I guess that's my biggest birthday wish.

I'm baaaaa-aaaack!

My first instinct was to call this post "Yo bitches, I'm back!" You know, a catchy, gleeful, boo-YA! type of title since I've been out of action for so long. But it seemed a little too gangsta for some of my more gentle readers, not to mention the fact that I don't actually talk like that (except in my head). All I could think of instead was the voice of that little possessed girl from poltergeist: cute and a wee bit creepy.

Because when a blogger that I follow (and by "follow," I mean check in on when I'm bored) drops out of the blogosphere for no apparent reason, it is a little creepy. I tend to fret. Did they die? Did they lose both index fingers in a horrible keyboarding accident? Or did the activity of blogging just become so boring they threw up their hands in disgust and vowed never to post navel-gazing claptrap again?

F*** You Penguin, Zombie Guy and YayNayDay, all blogs that I enjoyed reading, have all gone the way of the dodo in the last few years, ceasing their entertaining posts without much, if any, explanation. Their disappearances left me feeling a bit bereft. Even though I didn't visit their blogs every day, dropping in to find no recent entries was like going over to a friend's place, hoping for a friendly chat, only to discover your friend won't answer the door. You just wanted to pop in and chat for a minute, dammit; where the heck did they go?

So if anyone out there has experienced a similar feeling of mild disappointment (or irritation) after arriving at Someday to find I haven't been posting since December, I do apologize. The truth is so banal that I'd rather tell you what didn't happen. As in:
- I did not break my leg skiing after winning the Canadian Butter Council's all-expenses paid trip to Banff.
- I was not arrested for participating in peaceful, naked protests on Parliament Hill.
- I have not gone all Honey Boo Boo on my kids and hired them out to toddler modelling circuits.
- I did not adopt a Vietmanese potbellied pig.
- I did not catch c-dif again. (THANK GOD)
- I was not swept away on a romantic month-long vacation to Japan, Kuai or Bora Bora. (sigh)

Okay, okay. Here's the truth:
- in early November, I pulled two muscles in my neck and became severely dehydrated playing my very first game of hockey, which led to a violent migraine, which led to 48 hours in bed. (I did score one goal though)
- Both kids contracted the flu, which led to a reocurrance of an anxiety disorder I thought I'd just said goodbye to.
- The anxiety triggered a month of wildly unpleasant bowel experiences, which resulted in a joint colonoscopy/endoscopy (or, as D put it, a "two-fer"), which resulted in a diagnoses of IBS, which is what I think doctors tell people like me when they find out we're not dying of colon cancer or cursed with colitis, but will be stuck for life with a cranky tummy and unpredictable bowels
- Enter medication, which my body decided to unceremoniously reject, leaving me in bed for over three weeks, unable to eat anything that didn't resemble broth or applesauce.
- Say hello to full-blown anxiety attacks, with an occasional smash of depression, which made me feel as though I'd fallen into a rather large, rather black hole that I couldn't seem to claw my way out of...

...but I did. With lots and lots of help. Phew.

So, see? I've got reasons, people! I didn't just bugger off and decide blogging was for foodies, celebrity hounds and sarcastic moms. I was here, fretting about my own absence; I was here, writing poignant, moving blog posts in my head that I promptly forgot; I was here, wondering if you'd come back and knock on the door again. I'm so glad you did.

Just so you know, this blog was never intended to be about anxiety, depression or IBS, and it's not going to change now. There are so many other, more talented bloggers who capture these experiences in a much more graceful, succinct manner than I ever could. The Someday Diaries is just going to be about life at Someday, in all its crazy glory.

And I'm back to answer the door, even if I have to crawl over to do it.

A November Rose

Last week, I was beaten down by a combination of illness (nasty gastrointestinal flu), kids' illnesses (same), holiday overload (a rainy, solo-parent Hallowe'en) and my own middle age (attempted to play hockey for the first time and ended up with a full-on migraine and two pulled neck muscles). Not a stellar seven days.

Consequently, I woke up yesterday feeling like I'd been run over by a truck. Mondays are daycare days, which means that after I help D load 'em up, I'm kid-free until 4:30. I try to save Mondays for householdy-type chores, so after going back to bed for twenty minutes with a heating pad on my neck, I ran some errands, went to the doctor and chiropractor, picked up groceries, ran a few loads of laundry. And then I was seized by a strong urge to get a coffee, go to the cottage and walk on the beach.

Beach walks are not your typical November activity. It was a shivery day, still and somber-skied. We had our first taste of snow last week, and it won't be long before the sand freezes and the lake begins to turn sluggish with chunks of slushy ice. Even now the beach is a rugged, forlorn place. The cottages are all boarded up, snow fences - those spiky, unwelcoming-looking things - have been erected and there's not a soul to be seen. It was a weird place for me to end up, when I could have been slumped in front of the fireplace with an Advil and my heating pad.

But as soon as I trudged down the slope from the cottage to the shore, I knew why I had come. Because Rose was there, and she took my hand and led me off down the beach to pick stones and watch birds.

I've spoken of this phenomenon before, and I don't know if it's real, or just grief mixed with wistfulness after the hangover of a bad week. Honestly, I don't care. I felt my daughter there with me, and who am I to question the validity of a feeling?

Sometimes when I feel her presence, she has tousled brown curls, the same as her father's. Other times, she has perfect blonde hair that looks like silk...nothing like Jade and Dylan's wild, honey-coloured mops that defy brushing and seem to grow an inch a week. But in my mind's eye, Rose shares their flash-quick smiles, and that brand of energy that makes them skip and jump instead of walk.

We never talk, Rose and me; I'm just content to know she is beside me, and imagine the feel of her fingers clinging to mine. A few times, I swore I could feel the weight of her arm in the crook of my elbow, as though she'd become a teenager in the course of three steps. She is good company.

I stooped and picked up the stones that caught my eye, watched a loon dive and resurface, took great gulps of chilly November air, and basked in the presence of my daughter. I thanked God for life, for family, for writing, for birth and death. For once in my chaotic life, I was thankful for just that moment.

I know it's probably weird to write about this here, instead of keeping it safe in my heart. I just...wanted to. Rose has her place in this foolish little diary of mine, along with all my other snippets of daily life, of sickness and health, of milestones reached and howls of laughter, of costumes and candy and rainy nights and fevers. She is with me every day, even when I don't remember she's there. And so she belongs on these pages, with the rest of my life's story.

"Don't get lost in the maze, Mummy..."

After 17 years, I resigned from my job.

Yeah, that sentence makes it sound profound, like I've decided to strike out on my own and tackle writing, mummyhood and the art of jam making while waving a triumphant middle finger to THE MAN. But it really isn't that romantic. Just a case of office politics, "business decisions" and a month-long shower in corporate crap.

I've had a pretty sweet deal: working from home with a team that was smart and well-regarded, in a job I liked and was good at. Then came the news: our work from home arrangement was being terminated. Crap.

The reasons management decided to cut our work from home programme still haven't been made transparent, but suffice it to say that I was the only one with a 2 hour commute, so the message to me was loud and clear. Ciao baby, and thanks for all the fish.

The powers that be were professional enough to allow me to keep my job until the end of August, which is more than they technically needed to, but the atmosphere had become so unhealthy that I knew I couldn't hang on that long. Hurt feelings and a bruised ego didn't help matters much, either. And when I summoned up my courage and voiced my opinions on the whole scenario to my bosses, it did nothing to improve an already unpleasant situation. It got harder and harder to breathe every time I logged in to work, so I gave my two weeks' notice and got the hell outta Dodge.

I took Jade to work with me on Friday, because I figured she should experience the place to which I've devoted the last 17 years of my professional life. I wanted her to know what my office looked like, meet the people who had been my friends and colleagues for so long, and get a taste of what Mummy did all day.

Jade received her security card necklace, eyed it with interest and announced, "Now I'm pretty just like Daddy!" (D wears a security card every day), making the security guard - one of my favourite faces in the office - grin.

As I guided my daughter down the labrynthine path to my department, she studied the neutral fabric walls, the stained carpets, the photos and posters and whiteboards that adorned the cubicles. She said hi to people I didn't even know, and waved her security card at them in case they doubted her right to be there.

When we finally reached the hotel office where I usually set up camp for my monthly visits, Jade's mouth dropped open. My crazy colleagues, following a time-honoured tradition on our team, had decorated my office both with photos of things I hated (gnarly man-feet, feet with rotting toenails) and things I loved (Second Cup logos, the dancing spiderman gif) plus balloons and streamers. I noticed two tiny potted roses, which I instantly knew were a quiet tribute to my little lost daughter; I lit up when I saw photos of my friends and I at office Christmas parties, my wedding, Hallowe'en contests. Jade was enchanted; my vision started to blur. They were sending me off with a heartfelt bang.

After Jade had visited my colleagues and the cafeteria, and done a few downward facing dogs in the aisle, I took her back through the cubes to the front door, where my sister was waiting. "Don't get lost in the maze, Mumma," my daughter warned me. Probably the best advice I'd get all day.

Back at my desk, I cracked open the boxes of doughnuts I'd brought from the Lucknow bakery and took a big breath. Bring it on, I thought, and sent an email to friends to let them know my corporate wake had begun.

The doughnuts began to disappear, and I said goodbye to people I'd worked with for almost two decades, answered questions (No, I wasn't going to take up farming; yes, I would be back to sell my jam), laughed at kooky memories, gave and received hugs, wiped tears and held back my own. I hate crying; I especially hate crying in the office. Tears just seem so incongruous with cubicles. So I sucked it up and laughed and joked instead.

My team had a final pita lunch together, which was equal bits hilarious and soggy. We talked about all the office episodes our little group had collected over the years: fibre pills, exploding juice cans, Second Cup runs, broken noses and first impressions. Our tradition of getting Pita Pit lunches to celebrate all things big and small seemed fitting, but when my friends brought out gifts and cards the tone of our little party changed. Goodbyes suck.

I wish I could say I got through the rest of the day without a sniffle, that I walked out of there with my head held high. But I didn't. A few careless remarks from my boss and two zero-hour embraces from beloved colleagues broke my resolve; the tears welled up, and I stumbled out of the maze and through the jaws of death one last time with red eyes and a heavy heart.

So here I am, on my second day of freedom, contemplating the months ahead and sighing over the years behind me. I'm giving myself permission to grieve, feel pissed off and a bit lonely. I'm also allowing myself to roll on the floor with the kids until 9 p.m., hang laundry in my underwear, drink coffee on the deck with the chipmunk and garden in my bare feet. I plan to laugh, swim, pick sweetcorn, build sandcastles and drink a lot of wine. I'm going to write and get jamming. I'm going to be happy, eventually.

And, if I'm honest with myself, I may just owe the company a great debt. I was too loyal to leave on my own, to nervous to jump off the edge into unemployment. When they asked me to resign, they also handed me an oyster. Whether I find any pearls inside is up to me.

Poetry 101

I used to write a lot of poetry when I was younger. Bad poetry. Mysanthropic poetry. Maudlin poetry. Regardless of the quality, writing poetry was a healthy way to express my teenage angst, and a harmless enough past-time. Until I decided to show my beloved poetry to an English professor of mine, who told me it was "juevenile" and that I shouldn't waste my time attempting to submit it to any contests or publishers.

Jerk.

Silly, impressionable girl that I was, I stuffed my poor poems back in my satchel and slouched back to my apartment, where I hid them in a drawer and didn't write any more poetry for a very long time. Actually, I didn't write poetry again, at all, until my late thirties, if you can believe it. Yes, I was that shattered by a thoughtless piece of criticism.

But I've grown up since then, and although I still feel my eyes narrow whenever I picture that arrogant professor, I pat my old, hurt self on the back and write poems whenever I feel like it. I don't care if they ever see the light of day. Haiku are fun; so are sonnets, although they take considerable brain power and I don't usually have much of that left over after a day of work and evenings filed with building block towers and teddy bear tea parties. Still, it's therapeutic, and pleasing, to find just the right words to express something you've just thought of, or seen out the window, or day-dreamed about when you were supposed to be listening in on that conference call.

My mother loved poetry; so did my Nana. In fact, we read several poems at Nana's funeral because we knew she'd have liked that. I found lots and lots of poems she'd copied out in longhand after she died, tucked away in cookbooks and drawers and photo frames. I found it interesting that she had written this one out, because my Mother had this poem hanging on our den wall when I was growing up; Mom and Nana didn't always get along, but apparently they had the same taste in poets. Hmmm.

I like Rudyard because he has a stiff upper lip, and the kind of wisdom I wish I'd had when I reached out a shaky hand to collect my poor abused poems from that wank of a Professor. So here's a little dose of Brit wisdom for you...hope it helps!

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!


Rudyard Kipling

Oh yeah baby...I'm back!

Oh true and faithful readers of this ol' blog, I'm back.

Finally.

I'm not back with a vengeance, or back to kick butt and take names or anything. But hey, fingers to keyboard and arse in chair are pretty impressive after having written barely a word apart from countless inane facebook status updates since the spring.

2011 was a tough friggin' year. Thanfully, it didn't kill me. It did, however, make my life miserable on a number of levels. It also made me appreciate my body, my health, my doctor, my kids, my husband, my extended family and - most surprisingly - my sanity. Which, I'm happy to report, is now intact and functioning at a near-normal 90% success rate.

So thanks to everyone who stuck by me, encouraged me and held my hand, both literally and through cyberspace, while I battled some nasty demons in body and soul.

I'm back. Yeeha!

In praise of...the Thank You note

One of my more vivid memories of childhood is of my sister and I hunkered down at the dining room table, necks stiff, legs dangling, surrounded by tape, glue, bits of paper and lists galore. We were on thank-you note duty, as enforced by my formidable mother.

Although we had a small immediate family, my mother had a lot of friends. These friends were not only plentiful, they were generous, kind and always brought us gifts when they came to visit. They never forgot a birthday, or arrived for supper empty-handed. And even the ones who didn't celebrate Christmas still came for Christmas dinner bearing gifts for my sister and I. And one thing my mother insisted on was that we write formal thank-you notes for every gift we received.

These were not store-bought notes with swirly THANK YOUs already stamped across the top, oh noooo. These, my friend, were hand made notes, little paper cards meticulously folded and decorated with collages of cut and paste pictures scrounged from the piles of dead greeting cards my mother hoarded for this exclusive purpose. I'm sure they were perfectly hideous, and perfectly entertaining for the folks who received them.

I think I must have written hundreds of little notes over the years. When Christmas or birthday months rolled around, I would look at my delightful pile of presents and gloat over them - then groan inwardly, thinking of the cramped hands and stiff back I'd have to endure in a few weeks. Initially, writing thank-you notes was kind of fun. The first five or so would be carefully folded and decorated, with much thought given to theme and colour. Then it was all downhill after that, each successive card looking sloppier and more haphazard than the last.

I still have very generous friends and family, and I still feel moved to write thank-you notes. It's a testament to my mother's lessons about gratitude and politeness, but I also feel it's kind of a lost art. I wrote over one hundred fifty notes after D and I got married (his job was to address and stamp them); I wrote around fifty after each baby was born. It humbled me to see how generous and kind people were to us after these events; I figured the least I could do was write them a wee note to say thanks and endure a few hours of stiff neck and fingers.

A few of my friends write some pretty mean thank-you notes themselves. My sister-in- law always writes beautiful, very personal notes inside her hand-made cards; my good friend creates the most elaborate works of card art to send her thanks. And one of my newer Kink friends got her two year old daughter to crayola the inside of the note they sent to say thanks for her birthday present. I thought that was pretty cool.

I'm a bit ashamed that I don't take the time to write notes for my birthday presents any more. Emails and phone calls are easier for this sleep-deprived mama right now. I do my best to send notes anytime the kids get a gift though, and I'm hoping that I can pass along this small act of gratitude to them when they're old enough. I like to think that one day I'll corral them into sitting at the dining room table (the same one I wrote mine at) and creating little cards of their own, while I (and my mother from up above) nod in approval.

My cheatin' heart...and pen

Last Tuesday, I did something kind of naughty. And I plan to do it again tonight.

I cheated.

On my hot husband? Heavens, no. On my recommended pre-natal diet? Um, I would actually have to be following said diet in order to cheat on it. No, I committed my naughty act against two slightly more mundane things: my old city coffee shop, and my new country one.

My long-suffering novel has been dormant for almost a year now; the last time I dusted it off was at the KPL Storytelling festival last year, where I read a revised version of my first chapter. Since then - nada.

Motivation to write is - not surprisingly - harder to come by these days, not to mention the dwindling trickle of once-plentiful ideas that kept my characters and plot ticking away. I'm trying not to be too hard on myself; family needs to come first sometimes. But things are gonna get really busy in the fall with baby numero duo, so I made up my mind to try and get at least two more chapters written this summer. And in order to do that, I needed a writing space...outside of Someday.

I'm not sure why I can't seem to write at home. I have a decent-sized office with a great chair and a reasonable desk. But I prefer to do my writing outside the walls of my house. Back in Waterloo, I used to write faithfully for several hours a week at the Second Cup coffee shop; there was something so comforting about the aroma of that place. I'd feel all the day's tension melt away at the first sniff of freshly ground coffee. I always ordered the same thing (a mocchacino to start, with a mint tea for later), the chairs fit my kinks, and there always seemed to be a table waiting just for me, with an electrical outlet within my laptop's reach. It was my weekly ritual, and I loved it.

After moving to the Kink, I searched for a suitable replacement. There weren't many options, and certainly no Second Cups to satisfy my mocchacino cravings. The independently owned Books n' Beans had a quirky, welcoming atmosphere and decent lattes, but they weren't open beyond 6pm, and I'm an evening kind of writer. Still, I liked the fact that it was a small-town operation, and not some crazy Starbucks catastrophe.

When a Coffee Culture chain opened up a block away from Books n' Beans, I disdainfully turned up my nose after trying one latte, which - HORRORS! - came out of a push-button box thing instead of a proper espresso machine. Yes, Second Cup is a commercially owned chain too, but at least all their drinks are hand-brewed!

But as I tried to find other options, I realized that unless I wanted to write in a noisy bar with peanut shells on the floor, or in the hermetic, beverage-less silence of the library, I was going to have to suck it up and give Coffee Culture a try. And so last Tuesday, after Tai Chi, that's just what I did. And I was pleasantly surprised.

CC was clean, quiet and comfortable. I had a wide array of seats to choose from; deep, squishy armchairs by the fire, straight-backed chairs at little tables, or soft, cushioned booths. They had a rather nice menu, and as I'm always starving after Tai Chi, the toasted bagel and cream cheese hit the spot. (My one complaint with Second Cup was that their food always - frankly - sucked.) Even the latte wasn't as bad as I'd remembered it, although it still made me shudder to see the guy press the "Latte" button on his machine. Service was friendly and prompt, too. All in all, CC was a location very conducive to writing. I managed to get a few pages scribbled after spending an hour sorting through old chapters and trying to collect my scattered thoughts.

So I'm going back tonight. Wish me luck. And don't tell the guys at Second Cup!

Sleepless at Someday...again

Things I like to do when I can't sleep:
1) Write letters to people in my head. Most of the time, they are witty, harmless epistles to my favourite pen pals E and K, but sometimes they're poisonous, vitriolic notes dripping with hate and bitterness. Mostly to companies where I've received sub-par customer service.

2) Think of all the things I wish I'd said to my ex when he left me. Sometimes I play out the scenarios in my head. They usually come across as campy soap-opera type scenes where I am full of righteous anger and say cutting things while he just stands there, mute and helpless. Not especially productive or healing, but it's reallllly fun. Especially when I simply have to roll over to see the absolute best man in the world sleeping beside me.

3) Drive. I know, I know, it's the STUPIDEST thing to do when one is tired, cranky, worried, etc. I've actually given up the practice ever since I was pulled over by a cop in Point Clark for driving around late at night without my headlights on. Oopsie. I was tired and upset and incoherent. Luckily, he figured out I wasn't drunk and was very kind. But he insisted on following me back to my brother-in-law's place (where we were living at the time) because I couldn't find where D had put the ownership. Ah yes, there's nothing like having your brother-in-law wake up to find a cop in his front foyer.

4) Go down to the kitchen and eat whatever I can get my hands on. Olives. Cheesies. Ice cream out of the carton. My husband's lunch. Food tastes oh-so-delicious when it's eaten sneakily and stealthily in the middle of the night. (Even better than eating it in the bathtub!)

5) Count my blessings. I like to think about the first time I danced with D, in the hallway at the U of W during our first ever salsa lesson. Or the way Jade fit perfectly on my chest every night we slept at the hospital after she was born. The way my friend R snorts when she laughs and the crazy sense of humour both my sisters have. How beautiful the sun looks against my bedroom wall on an autumn morning. How lucky I am to have a big, comfy bed to sleep in.

Boo

Facebook has many ridiculous questionnaire-type apps (Who would be your celebrity boyfriend?! What colour is your Aura?! What alcoholic beverage are you?!) which, for reasons that I haven't thought about too closely, I seem to keep trying. I think they're mostly harmless little time wasters that you forget about moments after you publish your results (Ben Affleck! Aqua! Beer!)...but one did make an impression on me last week.

"Which ghost sleeps in your room?" popped up on my feed page. And I have a thing about ghosts, so I took it. And the result? Well, here it is, in all its grammatically grating glory:

this dog grew up on a farm in the 1800's but drowned in a lake. this dog doesnt only sleep at the end of your bed every night but he follows you everywhere you go and keeps you away from more danger than you realize. all of your lucky escapes from trouble are thanks to him.

Hmmm.

I did have a bull terrier named Henry who choked to death in a tragic apple incident about 12 years ago. He would have cheerfully chewed apart anyone who tried to harm me, so he'd make a pretty sweet ghost doggie. Except I don't believe in ghosts. Which is problematic, because I'm writing a novel about them. Yeah. Go figure.

I shouldn't say I don't believe in ghosts at all; the fact is that I'm kinda scared to believe in them. I don't want to meet one, not now, not ever. But I have felt, at different times throughout my life, that I wasn't alone in a place, even though technically I was the only person there. Especially in our old house in New Hamburg and here, at Someday. Both places are 100 years old and are bound to have some sort of history kicking around them.

But does that mean there are ghosts? Dunno. My friend R is convinced that our blue room must be haunted because her daughter acts weird whenever they sleep over there. It was supposed to be Rose's room, so who knows? Maybe Rose comes out to play with R's daughter. Gah! I just gave myself a shiver.

The thing I struggle with is not knowing whether ghosts are friendly or mean, good or evil, interested in humans or unobtrusive. If they exist, why are they here? How come they're not living it up in the afterlife? And what do they want from us? These are the questions I have been wrestling with for ages, and the elusive answers are holding up my novel's progress. I can't write about ghosts until I can figure out what exactly they want from my character. If you have any ideas, I'm all ears.

Or maybe I should just ask ghostie Fido tonight.

In praise of...sisters

I just realized I'd better get my August entry in for my "things I love" blog. No sense starting a new series if I don't keep 'er up! So here are things I love about...sisters.

I am the filling in a three sister sandwich. Tanzi is two years my junior and Sissy nine my senior. Tanzi is teaching English Lit in Moscow until next June and Sissy has been enjoying life down under in Australia for almost twenty years now. Despite gaps in age and distance, we're close and fondly refer to ourselves as "crazy sisters three." We even have our own theme song set to the tune of Dolly Parton's 'Islands in the Stream,' but it only exists in a rarely heard live version, usually fuelled by a lot of champagne.

On the rare occasions that all three of us are together, we talk and talk and talk. And drink. And then talk some more. And I'm not even gonna touch on the giggling fits that drinking and talking induce. The exciting part? There's a slight chance that we may get the opportunity to do just that this Christmas, and it will be the first time since D and I got married that we'll all be in the same country together.

Since meeting D, I've been exposed to the brother dynamic (he has two), but I have to say, it pales in comparison to the sister connection. For one thing, the brothers Lowry don't hug, or talk about stuff unless it's mechanical or cider-related. So I thought I'd jot down a few of the things I love about sisters, just for the record.

1) Sisters get you.
Whether it's your weird fear of feet, the way you blink really fast when you're lying, your penchant for toilet reading or your addiction to Asian knick-knacks, sisters get you. They get your jokes, your quirks, your habits in a way even a parent or a spouse can't quite appreciate. I've seen D and my Dad look bewildered over many of the things I do or say, whereas my sisters simply shrug. "Hey, that's just Kim," their expressions seem to say. "Accept that she's weird. Move on."

2) Sisters are your biggest fans.
Sisters have a knack for making you feel good about even the smallest of your accomplishments. My sisters cheer me on constantly, about things as innocuous as creating a new jam flavour to getting one of my articles published. We encourage each other, no matter how crazy the scheme or plan or idea may sound, and we are there to hurrah or comfort as the situation requires. When I publish my book, you can bet my sisters' names will be first on the dedication page.


3) Sisters are kinda like you, but not really.
Even though you share may similarities and certain traits that cement your status as sisters (in our case, a seal-bark of a laugh that has been compared to our Nana's, a bad habit of making funny faces in photos, and a love of lychee to name just a few), you're very different in other respects. And that's a good thing. It's like you're just similar enough to feel connected, but different enough to earn each other's respect.

4) Sisters let you borrow clothes.
'Nuff said. From what I can tell, the brothers Lowry only borrow tools.

So what else can I say? Amen to sisters, my friends. There's nothing quite like 'em.

Shameless Self Promotion...kinda

So when's the last time you let someone read you a story? Or a poem? Or a really racy bit of fiction? And I'm not talking about listening to uTube rants or documentaries on the CBC.

For a lot of us, our last "read to me" moments occurred in childhood, which I think is a shame. There is a very interesting kind of intimacy that springs up between an adult reader and an adult listener when it's done in person. A friend of mine and her husband used to read to each other from a series of novels every night before bed, which I found charming, but apart from that, I don't know too many folks who read aloud to others or get to be on the receiving end of a reading.

Luckily for me, being part of a Writer's Collective has given me many opportunities to listen as authors read their works aloud, and to read my stuff to other folks. (And no, they weren't tied to their chairs.) The WC (which D sometimes refers to as "The Borg Collective" - although we're much more attractive and really don't want to assimilate anyone) is part of Kitchener Library's roster of programmes, and I think I've been with them for 6 or 7 years now. My group rocks - we get along extremely well, despite our wild melange of styles: Victorian historical romance, travel writing, Christian fiction, poetry and children's literature. All of us have been published in anthologies, or the Globe & Mail/National Post, in magazines, webzines, etc. We've won awards and accolades, and one of our members had her first book come out just last week. I'm not trying to toot our WC horn - frankly, I think a great deal of our success as writers has come from the support and helpful criticism of our membership in the WC.

This Wednesday, we're joining forces with the other groups in the collective for a night of readings. The Library has even been kind enough to gather our writing together and bind it up in Anthology. How cool is that?

I used to be pretty good at getting up in front of a crowd and delivering speeches and presentations on a variety of topics; that teaching degree + endless years of being a corporate trainer allowed me to get up in front of as many as 200 people without batting an eye. But I'm out of practice at the whole reading aloud thing these days, especially after working from home for two years. Consequently, I'm a wee bit nervous about Wednesday. Likely it won't be a big crowd, and after the first few breathless sentences I usually get my rhythm; but with Baby pushing on my diaphragm and my blooming belly too big to fit into anything remotely flattering, I'm skeptical about just how well I'm going to deliver...so to speak. I guess that as long as my water doesn't break up at the podium, I'll consider it a success.

If you're looking to be read to, c'mon down to the KPL at 6:30 on Wednesday. Sadly, I'm not reading any of my racier selections this time, but I'm sure you'll have a good time all the same. With all the variety of writing styles, there will be something for everyone.

Spilled Milk?

I was thrilled when the Globe & Mail published the tongue-in-cheek essay I wrote about my experiences milking cows. (The very first draft was crafted here in my blog, for those of you to whom it sounds familiar)

The Facts & Arguments column is widely read across the country, so I was nothing less than tickled to know that my humble little article would appear there (illustrated, no less) for all to see. I thought it would be a nifty little feather in my writer's cap and something to clip out and show my Dad on Easter weekend.

What I didn't count on was the 30 reader comments it generated in the online version. Apparently I ticked off quite a few animal lovers and what my friend Bryan calls "the politically correct crowd." There were several positive comments too, and of course both my sisters jumped in to defend me, but I was taken aback by the mini-lectures I received on animal cruelty. But I love cows! I've never hurt one in my life! I just don't think they're the sharpest knives in the drawer. It was all in fun, people! Sheesh.

As another friend pointed out, "Thank goodness for free speech - otherwise we'd never know who the crazies are." Guess if I'm gonna be a writer, I will need to start developing a thicker skin and remember that not everyone is going to enjoy my stuff.

The article is here if you want to judge for yourself whether my misguided sense of humour about cows was truly offensive. And hey...at least people read it!