Scotland the Brave?

November 30 is St Andrew’s Day. My office calendar, rather than a Scot, told me; St. Andrew being the patron saint of Scotland, like St. George watches over England and St. Patrick is claimed by the Irish. The three crosses combined make a pretty nifty British flag … but did the Scots and Irish actually want to be part of the United Kingdom? I don’t think so …

Ter and I have been watching Neil Oliver’s History of Scotland, a ten-part series that traces the land of my ancestors from its beginnings under the Picts to the twenty-first century. From the first episode, a particular theme is prevalent: Scots are a difficult people to conquer. The Vikings tried. The Romans tried. The English tried from the day the Romans quit, employing everything from trickery to brute force and failing on all counts. The countries were united by an irony when Elizabeth Tudor died without issue and her Scottish cousin’s son inherited the English throne. The country England wanted to rule now ruled England, so the tables turned and they got cranky over how many Scots had influence in the English court. I can’t blame James VI/I, either. The Scottish nobles hadn’t been that generous with him, but neither had the English. According to Oliver, he had a greater vision for the kingdom, but the only folk who want change are the ones who have something to gain from it so he didn’t have a lot of support from his English lords. They did, however, succeed in Anglicizing the royal Stuarts to the point where Charles I was neither fish nor macfowl and my sweetheart, Charles II, was so thoroughly scunnered by the overzealous Covenanters during his exile that he visited Edinburgh but once—and reluctantly—after his Restoration.

Something else has occurred to me as the series progresses: historically, England has needed Scotland more than Scotland needed England and I suspect the same holds true today. Witness the frantic pandering committed by the British PM ahead of the recent referendum on should Scotland reclaim her independence. The fearmongering worked, but only by a small margin. The doomsday downers were prophesying economic disaster if she broke from the UK. Really? For which side? Economic disaster happens every day; it’s been a given since economics took over the world. Instability inevitably accompanies change, but eventually, all settles down and we move on. Seems to me that Scotland has always been a republic by nature—the crowning of kings served to (sort of) unite the clans under one banner against the English pig dogs, but none save the kings themselves believed they were divine. The country is rich with natural resources; it’s stunningly beautiful in the wildest ways, the people are clever and inventive; heck, the Scottish royal court was more cultured than the English in the time of Henry VIII. His sister’s marriage to James IV was sought to strengthen the Tudors, not the other way round. So somewhere along the line, Scotland began to believe that she couldn’t survive without the English.

I think she can. So do 44.7% of her resident population—and, surprisingly, my father, who has never given me much indication that he favoured one route over the other. The ex-pat was so disappointed by the outcome of the referendum that he dared to put it in writing and has permitted me to post it here. If you ever wondered where I got my gift, here’s your first hint. Enjoy.

* * *

So, now it is over and Scotland is no more.

Unwilling to take a chance on its own prowess and skills but willing to cling to England’s apronstrings and risk that the pre-vote promises will be kept by what the French once called, “Perfidious Albion.”

 It is, I think worth quoting from a well-known source of information the derivation of that phrase as follows:

“Diplomatic sleights, duplicity, treachery and infidelity with respect to promises made or alliances formed with other nations, by the government of England in their pursuit of self-interest.”

It is now, unfortunately too late to say, “Scotland beware.” You believed the crocodile tears, shameful hypocrisies and fearful prophesies of mass unemployment and rising prices made by past masters of duplicity and now must remain with bowed head and bent knee, begging for scraps which may or may not be cast disdainfully from the Westminster table.

In 1305, William Wallace died in agony … and it now appears in vain, at the hands of the English. Perhaps the first verse of a Scottish rallying cry should be re-written, thus:

“Scots wa’ hey wi’ Wallace bled,

Scots wham Bruce has often led,

Ye hiv made yer gory bed,

Noo, lie in it....an’ dee.”

I will now remove the Scottish emblem from my car.  It might leave a dirty scar, but that is only fitting, considering the circumstances.

* * *

I love you, Daddy.

Motivation

It’s hard to write about vampires while prepping for Christmas. I know, it’s only November, but some things need to be done before the twelfth month else I get so far behind I want to hang myself with the tree lights come the holidays. My creativity is far from suffering—the cards are almost done! Ter casually suggested this year’s theme (“socks”—you can free your elf but she’ll never get over it) and after a couple of days mulling over the potential, I was off to the races. It’s always fun once I get started, but having a theme this early is rare. The Ocean Room looks like … well, like the picture introducing this post: less a living room than an artist’s studio.

So, in the meantime, my vampires are in limbo. The Calista story is almost done; I think there’s one more scene before she’s told all she can tell. After that, back to Black, another one that’s almost done. I was over at terribleminds.com the other day and hit another brilliant post about how Chuck gets past the hiccups at one-third, halfway and two-thirds into a project. Those are the hotspots, what I’ve long called the “150 page speed bump” where I get hung up and question a) what I’m doing, b) why I’m doing it and c) if I should even be trying to do it. Creativity is a magical thing, but it’s also fraught with mental landmines designed to sabotage what I was so excited about when I started.

Naturally, now I can’t find his post to link it –but there was also a dandy about motivation that I found extremely helpful, and not only because I already know half of it. It’s a few suggestions to help a writer struggling with the strange paradox of wanting to write while not wanting to write.

Since I can write about doughnuts, you’d think motivation wouldn’t be an issue. So for now, I’m using Christmas as an excuse for avoiding my works in progress and I’m totally good with it.

“Indigenous”

You don’t belong here. You are like the locusts, the grey squirrels, the poison ivy—life forms smuggled out of your element by a homesick immigrant from another place, a place where your numbers were controlled by natural predators and the balance easily maintained.

Now your numbers overwhelm. The world—my world—is threatened by a rampant population and irreversible damage to the environment. Because of you, my world struggles to maintain its equilibrium. Its state of health is imperiled. A mistake was made in bringing you here. The one responsible is aware, but awareness has come too late.

There may be one hope for my kind. What do you do when your home is overrun with vermin? How do you respond when your garden is poisoned and your survival becomes paramount?

You call an exterminator.

Have a nice day.

* * *

Yup, this exercise is black, but I was a little morbid when I wrote it. I actually want to write a full length story once I get through the holidays; it dawned on me one day that we humans are behaving much like those other pesky beasts that are pulled from their natural habitat and wind up infesting their new home because nothing natural knows how to deal with them.

Discuss?

Farewell to Kes

He’s the reason why I was a borderline Canucks fan for the past few years. Now I am free to disdain them with impunity. Ryan Kesler, now with Anaheim, did not deserve the raspberries he got from the crowd on his return to Vancouver Thursday night.

The man is a horse. He logs big ice time and never slacks off. So he wanted to get out of town after the disastrous 13/14 season. Who doesn’t think of changing jobs after a decade at the same place? Maybe he didn’t like the then-coach who the then-GM hired after firing Alain Vigneault. Neither did anyone else. Maybe he got on some of his teammate’s nerves. Alpha males will do that. Or maybe he got discouraged after the Game 7 loss in 2011/12, when fans in jerseys bearing his name and number were setting fire to police cars. Vancouver is a hard city in which to play any sport, but hockey is particularly dicey. Philadelphia fans are ugly, but they’ve never rioted in the streets after losing a Stanley Cup final. Vancouver fans have done it twice. They’re brutal, especially to ex-pats who depart under unfortunate circumstances.

I don’t know why Kesler wanted to leave the team, but I certainly don’t fault him for it. He was a force in the most recent glory days, playing injured in the playoffs and threatening to eclipse Henrik Sedin for conduct becoming a team captain. He scored goals. He helped others score goals. He took lumps for the team and gave as good as he got in a scrap. He was a star for them … and the fans boo when he stands on the opposite side of the red line. There’s gratitude for you.

I wish him well in Anaheim. No regrets here, boy. Well, maybe I have one.

He’d have been a dandy Flyer.

Caroling, Caroling

part of the collection

“Holiday” is my favourite music genre, and not just because I know all the words. Ter and I have amassed so many Christmas albums that we used to start playing them on November first. We’d load up the CD player after work, break open the Christmas jigsaw puzzle, and thus would begin our festive celebration.

Every fall, I load up my Starbucks card to ensure I have funds for their annual holiday disc, the entire collection of which I have except the third year edition (the year of “Ru snooze, Ru lose”). One of my favourite gifts ever is the retro-Christmas disc Nicole sent some years back; it’s loaded with cheesy 60s Xmas Muzak and is absolutely wonderfully awful. Ter and I loved it so much that it was copied and mailed with our Christmas cards. And, of course, my online jazz station puts up a holiday channel each November—from the third week in the month until I leave on vacation, I stream it at work.

I confess, I’m a Christmas music ho ho ho.

The acquisition of holiday tuneage has slowed over the years. I still haunt Starbucks until I see their kitschy CD cover and I am still waiting for Def Leppard to record a Christmas album, but now I wait until after November 11 before I start plaguing my world with old chestnuts roasted in new ways. My wee sister alerted me to a potential addiction issue by helping us to move in 2012—she was boxing up my CDs and happened on the array of holiday titles. “How many Christmas discs do you have?” she asked in mild horror.

“I dunno,” I answered, absently. “Seventy-five or something.”

She was hilariously pinched between disgust and dismay. “I have three—and you gave me two of them!”

Hey, I thought, I can quit any time I want.

That was my first hint.

"Tigress"

She was an indomitable force, brave in ways that appeared natural to her but demanded uncommon courage in everyone else.

She taught her cubs the ways of the world, to behave in public and respect each other in private. They saw her hunt, and the day when she was hunted, they saw her limping back to the den, bloodied and wincing, but determined to fight through her injury.

She moved them often, keeping them safe while they matured. She showed her fangs when they tried her, and they knew she was tired if she made her point with a paw instead of her nose.

She loved her cubs, and they loved her.

She was asked how she had grown to be so fierce and proud.

The question puzzled her at first, then she said, “My mother was fierce,” as if it should have been obvious.

To her, it was.

Happy birthday, Mum.

Fear Less

Life is about contrast: light/dark; yes/no; happy/sad; naughty/nice. We have no choice in that, it’s a physical law. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Nothing is constant but change. This too shall pass. Bad/good things happen to good/bad people.

Yaddayaddayadda.

The empowering thing about contrast is that we can choose which way we’re facing. When it’s all good, we can enjoy the moment, or waste it by dreading its inevitable end. When it goes pear-shaped, we can wallow in piteous despair, or seek the contrast and overcome.

We choose how we respond.

I’m saying this out loud because a) it’s true and b) I need the reminder. I have a lot of fear—or I could, if I chose. Fear is like a water leak; it starts small, so small that you may not know it’s happening until the ceiling crashes into your living room. Then, as is completely natural, you’re immobilized.

Fear is housed in the biological unit’s disk operating system. It’s not the same as the little voice that warns against getting on that particular bus; the little voice is your wiser self, and often dismissed by an intellect so insecure that it will endanger itself by refusing to accept the help. Fear is part of the survival package that comes with this mortality gig. Fear is a good thing—until the filtering mechanism malfunctions. That’s when all manner of mental anguish results. We start spooking at shadows and suspecting infamy at every turn. We begin to believe when we are told we should be afraid, and of what. We then actively seek things to frighten us. The law of attraction gets very weighty in such cases—the more you fear, the more you have to fear.

Nicole sent me the pendant in the picture at Christmas last year. I wear it when I need the boost. Courage is not defined as being unafraid. The bravest souls are still afraid; they simply refuse to be ruled by it. “Courage” has pinged on my radar of late, showing me that I am working through some of my issues. It’s also confirmation that I’m on the right track, because I’d already identified the problem but wasn’t sure how to resolve it. How does one conquer fear, especially an irrational one?

With courage, that’s how. Look the monster in the eye and say, “You’re not the boss of me!”

It’s a start, and there might even be a fight, but persevere. Fear is a bully and bullies are cowards at the core. Be brave. Stand your ground. Trust that all will be well … and it will be.

With love,

N H ell

ah, for the good old days ...

It’s finally happened. I’ve become one of the duffers. One of the crusties who remembers the good old days when one referee was just as incompetent as two, overtime was restricted to the playoffs, and the shootout was a cheap way to win an international hockey game. When the stars played with goons watching their backs and the boys thought twice before hitting a guy in the numbers.

When Ron MacLean hosted Hockey Night in Canada instead of a Sunday night mercy slot.

The game has changed, the league has changed, nothing is sacred and precious little makes sense.

The Flyers lost two in a row over the weekend. In the old days, I’d have gone, Guys, smarten up. Now I’m looking at the schedule and thinking, with 82 games in a season, who gets five days off then has to play back to back, one at home and one on the road? Who set that schedule in stone? I didn’t see the Columbus game, but the boys arrived in Montreal at 1:00 a.m. on game day against the Canadiens and tried to claw their way back from a 2 goal deficit only to fold like a cheap tent in the third period. They were tired! Heck, I get dopey after a long weekend and these guys are expected to hit the ice running after twice that long? Yeah, yeah, yeah, they’re professional athletes, they’re millionaires, they have nothing else to do but stay in shape for a brutally long season, but come on.

And that’s just the players. The fans are suffering mightily too, since the wedding news broke last spring: Rogers had bought broadcast rights to all NHL games and everyone else could go fish. Which is pretty much what TSN has had to do.

Not that TSN trumped CBC for hockey broadcasts, because for most of my life, CBC was where hockey lived. But there were also Canuck games on Wednesday nights, on the CTV affiliate out of Vancouver. Then cable TV expanded and sports channels were born. The Sports Network, for one. I was miffed when the CBC let the Hockey Night in Canada theme go to TSN, but got over it because, hey, TSN ran NHL double headers on Wednesday nights. Better yet, Tuesday night Flyer games were picked up by TSN2—a joy I discovered right before the apocalypse happened.

Most Canuck games were cast on Sportsnet Pacific, called by John and John—Shorthouse on play-by-play and Garrett on colour commentary. A pair of goofballs to be sure, but I enjoyed their banter as much as (and often more than) the game, and it was good to know that, if Ter and I were at loose ends on a winter’s night, there was probably a game somewhere on Shaw’s basic cable.

And, like Old Faithful, on Saturday nights, the CBC reigned supreme.

Not anymore.

HNIC still exists, but I no longer recognize it. Ron MacLean could be cloying, but I liked him better than George Snufflufagus. At least MacLean has sports broadcasting cred. Strombo is a glamour boy trying to be hip and falling embarrassingly short. The broadcast teams are all haywire. Gone from the booth are Rick Ball and Kelly Hrudey, replaced by no-name whozits dredged from the Sportsnet vault. And the panel between periods? I avoided Sportsnet to steer clear of Nick Kypreos and now he’s sitting in PJ Stock’s place with the sad remains of the HNIC talking heads.

Gone almost entirely are TSN broadcasts. Oh, there are games on the new TSN3, TSN4, TSN5 cable stations, when there’s no blackout in effect. Most are part of a new “sports channel” package requiring extra payment for the privilege of viewing. Which might be okay if there were no commercials, but who are we kidding?

Sportsnet channels … now there are a thousand of them, only three of which remain attached to the basic cable package (demanding no extra funding from the viewer) and none of which seem to carry Canuck games on a regular basis. Or any games, for that matter. When we do catch a Vancouver game, the Johns aren’t always calling it. As for the games included in our already exorbitant cable fee, the screen is often so busy with tickertape news items, irrelevant stats and those truly irritating banner ads for cars, restaurants and upcoming broadcast events, that the game is as disrespected as the viewer.

I hate this. I loathe the change, resent the suits responsible, and am powerless to do anything about it. I would stop watching hockey, but I’ve been robbed of that form of protest because I will not pay for games that were once “free” on basic cable.

Only on the Rogers network, you say?

Pity.

Civic Duty

The first signs sprouted some weeks ago: Elect John Doe or Re-Elect Average Joe.

I asked Ter: “Is there an election coming?”

“Must be,” she replied.

“When is it?”

She shrugged, as unsure as I was. Being BC government employees, our level of awareness starts at the provincial level and works up toward the federal. Since neither of us owns property, we had assumed—wrongly, as it happens—that we couldn’t vote in a civic election.

This round was different for many reasons. The campaigning was more evident, for one thing. Candidates were all over the place, going door-to-door, handing out pamphlets on street corners, telephoning folks to ask for support or, at the very least, to encourage people to get out and vote on November 15. The mayoral incumbent was the one who told me that anyone who’s lived in town for six months is eligible to vote. Armed with that information, I resolved to pay more attention.

Even if I hadn’t bothered, I still took a couple of phone calls from one candidate’s campaign office, and encountered a wannabe city councilor on a street corner during a lunch break last week. I sussed out the signs in the ’hood, getting a sense of which way my neighbours would go. I didn’t go to any debates or meetings, and I didn’t look at any websites, but the proximity to Remembrance Day compelled me to show up on the day. I can vote because people have fought and died to make it my right. There are yet pockets in the world where people are still fighting and dying for the same right. Next time, I’ll be more involved in the process, I’ll look at the issues and decide who best aligns with my own, but this round was strictly a learning experience.

When completely ignorant, I generally rely on the advice of people I know. The MLA for whom I usually vote was advocating for a few candidates, so I decided to go with them. On Election Day, I presented myself at the polling station and was mildly boggled at the number of council seats available. Up to eight names here, three there, another three here—oh, and just one for mayor, thank you very much. Phew. That one I could handle, ’cause I’d already made up my mind.

But I looked very hard at another name on the ballot. Pick that one, something said.

I balked, suddenly uncertain. My pen actually hovered over the other name and I almost, almost, heeded the small voice. In the end, I went with my original decision and went away wondering if I had made the right choice after all. As the results came in later that night, I felt the niggling tug of regret, that I had goofed and should have gone with my gut rather than my head.

Fortunately, the election was won by the candidate for whom I did not vote. I’m happier about that than I would have been had my guy won. But here’s the really weird thing:

This morning, I told Ter what happened to me at the critical moment. She didn’t even blink as she said that the exact same thing had happened to her—only she followed her little voice and voted against her original decision. The final result was determined by fewer than 100 votes. Mine was not one of them, but that’s okay. Ter’s was. She and a handful of others tipped the scale, and for whatever reason, someone new has the top job at City Hall.

Each one of us makes a difference. Every one of us matters. We are all connected. Nothing happens to one that does not affect others, be it a family, a neighbourhood, a town, a country, or the whole big blue planet. You think you don’t matter? Think again. Think beyond yourself and you’ll see.

Super Duper Bright Red Nuker

The old—and I mean old—Panasonic microwave recently started to emit sparking sounds unrelated to the popcorn Ter was making. When the stench of hot wiring wafted from the vicinity around the machine, she killed the process and together we searched for the source. We thought we discovered it in a charred food fragment lodged between the door and the inner sanctum that a) turned to ash when I touched it and b) left behind a puke-inducing reek that matched the hot-wire smell precisely. We cleaned up the machine and returned to business as usual.

A week later, Ter is popping more corn and the sizzling sound erupts again, accompanied by the same burning wire smell. This time, she’s adamant and she’s right. It’s the nuker. It’s ancient, it’s served us well, it’s earned its rest.

We inherited the Panasonic; we didn’t buy it ourselves, so we’ve been out of the market forever, but we were immediately united on one point:

The new one would be red.

So we went shopping. Seeking a screaming scarlet finish makes the job a lot easier than if you’re looking for performance specifics; we nailed one on the second stop. Problem was, there were none in stock except the floor model and the salesdude seemed reluctant to let us take away the demo. So we went home, Ter got online and found five in stock elsewhere—four at one outlet, one at another, and all about halfway out of town. Ter on a mission is an unstoppable force, so I got out of her way and off she went to buy one.

She gets it home. We free it from its Styrofoam molding, peel off the protective shrink wrap, hoist it onto the cook’s cart, and damned if the cord isn’t too short to reach the plug. So we switch out the sockets, plugging the nuker into the stereo socket and the stereo into the former nuker’s socket. I’m dazzled by the smarts in this thing—it heats a cup of water in 70 seconds, thaws frozen food by weight, will bake a potato by instinct, pops perfect corn (Ter’s sole stipulation), and it’s candy apple Corvette red.

I’m still engrossed in the manual and don’t notice what she’s doing until Ter says in a dread-filled voice, “Ruthie, the stereo’s not working …”

My head jerks up. “What?”

“The stereo’s not working in that socket.”

My stomach plummets. My voice croaks, “Don’t tell me …” but my mind is shrieking, We bought a brand new nuker and it’s the freaking power outlet? And what does a bum power outlet mean? How do we fix that? Is the house about to burst into flame? Are we about to die in our beds? Are the smoke alarm working?!

Then Ter checks behind the boombox—which was new a month ago—and almost moans with relief. The plug had come loose when we moved it to switch the microwaves; she pushes it back into place and we have ignition.

I nearly had a heart attack, but it’s all good now.

And the oven looks super cool in our kitchen.

A Live One

When I got back into government service some years ago, one of the now-established search and rescue (SAR) groups was just getting started. I was the administrative contact for the provincial program that supported them, but this foundling team was formed of dedicated men and women who gave freely of their time and expertise to help find lost hikers, rescue stranded climbers, and coordinate the occasional evidence search for police investigations. They also spent evenings and entire weekends training in both classroom and live exercises so they could get the RCMP stamp of approval and start taking calls. They’d tromp through the bush or rappel down a cliff for nothing more than expenses and the satisfaction of knowing they had helped to reunite a family or save an injured person.

A search is considered a rescue until either the victim is found deceased or the police call off the operation. For this group in particular, the first few calls they took turned out to be body recoveries. The group director would come by the office and drop off the paperwork (government pays their expenses), we’d do an informal debrief, he’d say, “Thanks, Ruthie,” and off he’d go. As time went on, group morale began to suffer and no wonder. It’s never the team’s fault when a body is discovered, but they get into this work to save lives, to give a family hope and contribute to their communities. I can’t say enough about these volunteers; they truly are heroes and I was exceptionally fond of this crew. They started when I did, so I had a kind of proprietary pride in them and wished more than anything for their success.

One day the director came by with more paperwork, but this time his eyes were alight and his face on the brink of a grin. “Ruthie!” he crowed when he saw me, “we finally got a live one!”

Sure enough, the search had served up a grateful hiker who had simply lost his way.

It’s funny what your mind does. Hockey is in no way as important as the work of SAR volunteers, but when the Flyers got their first win of the season, Mike’s joyful voice rang in my head. Hallelujah, I thought, we finally got a live one!

Lest We Forget

You can only remember if you survived it. In the comfort and safety of your untroubled life, you can merely imagine.

Imagine, then, those who went before, who went bravely and naïvely into battle, face to face with the enemy (boys like themselves), armed with bayonets and met by machine guns. Imagine those who were wreathed in poisoned gas, blinded by smoke and mustard fumes, their throats too choked to scream, heroes robbed of wits and possessed by a terror unseen in your wildest nightmares.

Imagine those who perished in open fields, in wooded copses and muddy trenches. Imagine those who died far from home, who left their mothers and sisters and sweethearts on a mission to retrieve the Kaiser’s helmet and were never seen again.

If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep …

In Flanders Field was written by a man, a witness to the slaughter of a generation sent forth to preserve the liberty of others. In the poem, the dead pass us the torch and warn us against breaking their faith—but can ceasing to fight be considered a break of their faith? They know now, knew as soon as they shed their broken and bloody flesh, that war is not the way to peace. We remember them today because they offered their innocence, their futures, and their very lives to ensure that the world was a safe place for everyone to live.

That it is worse now than it was then, is an insult to their sacrifice.

So remember why they went forth so courageously, in pursuit of an ideal that lies within reach of every living soul yet remains untouched. Remember that war is the worst horror we can visit upon ourselves and do everything in your power to Stop It.

Perhaps then, the dead will sleep.

Writing Full Time

A few weeks ago, I printed and posted this little affirmation in my writing room:

I write full time and I am paid very well to do it. I am following my bliss.

Shortly thereafter, some staffing changes happened at work, and I was given responsibility for the program newsletter, which is sent out a few times a year to our 60+ contractors and ministry stakeholders. (Don’t you just love government jargon?) Writing is so easy for me that I took more time developing the layout and working with the graphics than I did to compose the content. I also tweaked what had already been written, then added some stuff of my own—at the boss’s behest, of course. She loved my first draft, we did some very minor editing, and the final went out on Friday.

Tuesday evenings are reserved for fiction. Blogging is so much fun that it can interfere with bigger projects, bigger being the unfinished shorts piling up on the hard drive, so I made up my mind that weeknights will be devoted to angels, demons, vampires, and the mortals invariably entangled with them. As a result of that, my historical fantasy has taken off and is nearly finished. After that, I think “Black in Back” is next because I wrote some stuff into the historic piece that, upon reflection, actually belongs with Ariel and Tess.

Black, by the way, really hates being referred to as “Ariel”.

Of course I’m not making money writing fantasy—yet—but it seems odd that within days of me getting serious about affirming that I want to write full time and there’s no reason why I can’t get paid to do it, the newsletter landed on my desk. There’s also talk of rewriting my job description to include it and a bunch of other higher level duties, which will entail a pay raise. That’s exciting for many reasons, especially since I told my exec director that I didn’t care about more money and he said, “Ruth, we have to care about it.”

In short, shut up and be grateful, Ru.

So I’ve been writing, just not blogging. I hope to get back online this week, as I like to keep current and already a couple of pre-posts need updating. Those darned Flyers, for instance …

With love,

Rising to the Challenge?

The Flyers fluffed to Florida on the weekend. The one saving grace (no pun intended) was that Roberto Luongo didn’t shut them out. The final was 2-1 for the Panthers, but the score should not have been that close. It should have been a blowout in Philly’s favour. Our defense is pretty thin due to injuries, but we have enough firepower up front to outrun any other team—especially one plagued with injury-ridden forwards.

So what happened?

I can only guess that they play to the level of the opposition. More teams lose to weak opponents than they do to strong ones because the players don’t respect the challenge. What does this mean for Tuesday, when the Oilers come to town without Taylor Hall?

Three guesses and the first two don’t count.

Hickory Dickory

Time is constantly proving its irrelevance. Our lives are dictated by it, but it is a trickster, an illusionist given license to run the modern world—and aren’t we the fools for giving it such power?

Time is unstable. Unreliable. It makes us chase it, then drags its heels like a petulant toddler. It is easily lost when we’re deep in our bliss and rudely intrusive when a workday dawns. We panic when we’re late and bored when we’re early. We eat “because it’s time”, go to bed “because it’s time”, and if we don’t, if we heed our natural rhythm by eating when we’re hungry and sleeping when we’re tired, we mess up the clock and confuse our own bodies into the bargain.

Even the calendar is evil because a child should be born when it’s ready, not pulled from the womb because it’s “overdue”. “Overdue” simply means that predicting a birth date is like predicting the weather: not an exact science. Pity the babes born by appointment. Their first experience in this life is to be roused before they’re ready.

And daylight savings time? Please. Critters and crops have no idea what time it is, and less reason to care, so the old story about it benefiting the farmers is meaningless. As for saving energy by giving us an extra hour of daylight, hello? Light earlier in the morning means dark earlier in the evening and, seriously, summer days are by nature longer than winter days, so why bother when people are more disoriented and accident-prone in the week following a time change than by the usual mix of sleep deprivation and prescription medication?

If I sound crabby—and I believe I do—DST ended last night and my already hormonally-challenged biochemistry has been knocked further out of whack as a result. It will take a week for my system to adapt. I try to accept change because I can’t, well, change it, but I appreciate it more when the change makes sense.

Daylight savings no longer does.

“Adversaries”

The bar was dark but not quiet; not a good place to think. Robert Browning—named for a poet but hardly a poet himself—grabbed a booth in the middle of the crowd and pretended to study the drinks list while keeping an eye on the door. Nerves had brought him early to his appointment, nerves that steadily worsened as time ticked on and Joey did not appear. Shots of iced vodka helped, supplemented by a handful of bridge mix that he pulled from his jacket pocket. One by one, he popped the candies and downed the shots, trying not to think as he waited.

A bottle-blonde with hard-bitten features watched him watching the door. She could have been but wasn’t pretty. She wasn’t alone, either, though the beefy guy at her side was more interested in arguing with his buddy than he was in entertaining his girlfriend. Rob went for the last of the bridge mix and motioned to the bartender for another shot.

It was good to be numb. It wouldn’t be smart to drive like this, but the coke would wake him up once it arrived. It was good to be stoned in front of the TV, as well. So little was worth watching, but the night ahead was a long one. Between Cassie and the cocaine, he was able to stay distracted from his problems with both.

Not that cocaine was a problem. It was more of a placebo to get him through the dark hours when she couldn’t be with him. When she was with him, there was no drug more powerful than her presence. He had sensed it in her three years ago. He had tried to ignore it, deny it, deflect it, but in the end, he had wanted it too badly to let her go. Now that he had her, he feared that too tight a grip would see her slip from his grasp … and yet she was slipping. Their on-again/off-again romance had been seriously on for two months now, and every day he saw new changes coming over her. She had begun as an awkward teenager, torn from her sheltered life as Daddy’s darling and thrust into an alien world where love and trust meant nothing. She had needed him then, had relied on him to protect her from the bad guys and he, trapped in the same world but desperate for something more, had failed her. She would never fully be his, and as each day passed, he had less and less of her.

Still, she let him stay. She came home at dawn to wake him with a kiss. She made him cups of tea and spoon-fed him ice cream from the carton. She rubbed his aching shoulders and whispered I love you in the silence of settling twilight. She shared his love of classic cars and Chinese food; she chose action/adventure over romantic comedy every time. She made him feel like the centre of her universe—only he wasn’t the centre of her universe and they both knew it. Pretending otherwise was a lie, and Rob was tired of lies. He was tired of sharing, tired of loneliness; he was tired, tired, tired. He would be thirty-five in June and time was running out on him.

Where the hell was Joey? The blonde was making moves to leave her place at the bar. Getting up to dissuade her would cost him the booth, and he couldn’t risk missing his meet. As she slithered off her stool and straightened her short skirt over her thighs, he shrugged out of his jacket. She passed too close on her way to the ladies’ room; when she paused on her way back, he had pushed up his sleeves and turned his right hand palm-up on the tabletop. The scars on his forearm ranged in age from ancient to as recent as a few days ago. None was serious and not all were self-inflicted, but they warned of a man obsessed with blades and deeply into pain. She stopped anyway.

“Can I trouble you for a cigarette?”

“Sorry. I don’t smoke.”

She smiled. Her lipstick had been touched up in the ladies’ room and was too orange for her ash blonde hair. “Then I guess there’s no point is asking for a light, either.”

He managed a smile in return. “Guess not.”

“How ’bout a drink? You can’t tell me you don’t drink. I’ve been watching you since you came in.”

“Is that so?”

She nodded, probably more drunk than he was. “No one should drink alone.”

“I’m not alone. I’m waiting for someone.”

“Your girlfriend?”

He smiled again. “Sorry, none of your business.”

She took exception. “I was just being polite.”

“You were being intrusive.”

Already offended, she misinterpreted his meaning and uttered an indignant squawk that rose above the noise from the jukebox. Her boyfriend spun from the bar. “Hey, you hassling my girl?”

Rob’s hackles rose. “She’s hassling me.”

“I am not! I asked him for a cigarette, that’s all.”

The boyfriend eased his feet to the floor. He stood maybe eight inches taller and outweighed Rob by half. Looking for trouble, he wasn’t likely to let the insult to his girl go unavenged. “Have you got one or don’t you?”

“Even if I did, I wouldn’t hand it over.” As the words left his mouth, he wondered what he was trying to accomplish by provoking a guy who looked like he bench-pressed major appliances for fun. Maybe he really was suicidal. It wasn’t a frightening thought—and that frightened him.

He had no time to be frightened. He was hauled to his feet and punched in the face before fear registered. Just as quickly, his training kicked in and he became steel and sinew, a moving target landing blow after blow on a befuddled and totally unprepared opponent. It took three heroic patrons to pull him off before he pounded the man unconscious, and even then, adrenaline made it impossible to contain him. He would not remember the next few minutes; when he returned to something near sanity, the cops had arrived and the blonde was babbling that he had tried to kill her boyfriend. He could not say that he hadn’t; while hardly out cold, the guy was sprawled on the floor and blood seemed to be everywhere. Panic threatened. Had he gone for his knife?

They hustled him from the bar. An ambulance was parked by the curb, lights strobing frantically in the wet winter night. His left eye was swelling shut. One of the cops sat him in the back seat of a squad car and motioned for a paramedic. The medic swabbed him with alcohol while the cops ran a check on his record. His beefy opponent was escorted, not carried, to the ambulance. Rob took a particularly fierce glare from the blonde anyway.

The cops conferred on the sidewalk. “He’s got no priors,” one said, nodding at Rob, “but big boy Jake over there has a rap sheet as long as my arm. What do you think?”

His partner shrugged. “She says the pretty one assaulted the big guy, so we take ’em both in.”

Rob heaved a sigh. Great; just great.

His stint at the precinct was a short one. They didn’t bother to process him; they asked him some questions, brought him a styrofoam cup of weak tea, and left him to drink it in isolation.

Boy, his head hurt. His face throbbed, his knuckles ached. He wanted to go home. He no longer cared about meeting Joey; all he wanted was smooth cotton sheets and the ghost of Cassie’s vanilla perfume on the pillow beneath his cheek. He sat with his elbows propped on the table and dropped his head into his hands. When the door opened, he didn’t look up. When someone sat down across from him, he didn’t look up. Only when the silence went unbroken for more than a dozen heartbeats did he finally lift his head.

He came face to face with Darius Wolfe.

Tiger eyes held cougar eyes over the width of the table, mortal enemies locked in silent combat for possession of the one woman neither could live without. Booze and adrenaline had left Rob too sick to react; he stared rather than started and couldn’t muster the wits to speak. He wished for his switchblade—not that he could have used it here, with cops watching from the far side of the two-way mirror. His gaze slid anyway, unbidden, to the fragile hollow of Darius’s throat. He imagined lunging toward it, driving the tainted blade deep into the gullet and twisting with all his strength. Would it kill Darius outright? Probably not. But it would hurt him, and that would be enough for Rob. It had to be. He had promised Cassie that Darius would not die by his hand unless she asked him to do it. She had extracted the same promise from Darius regarding Rob. Neither of them liked it, but for her, they would do—or not do—anything.

The silence stretched taut between them. Darius was placid, almost indifferent as he produced Rob’s suede jacket and laid it on the table. “They are not pressing charges.”

“Thanks,” Rob said sourly.

“It’s not my doing,” Darius assured him. “There are witnesses to verify that you were struck first.”

Rob rubbed his aching forehead. “Are you one of them?”

Darius smiled faintly. “I’ve been told that you are free to go. Shall we?”

“What are you doing here? Are you following me?”

“For what purpose?”

“You tell me.”

Darius stood up. “We can’t talk here. My car is outside. I’ll take you home, if you like.”

“Since you’re going that way anyway,” Rob added. He didn’t try to curb the bitterness in his tone.

“On the contrary, Cassandra is meeting me elsewhere this evening. When she gets home at dawn, most of the damage to your face will have healed and you’ll be spared the explanation she would naturally demand.”

Rob gingerly fingered the swelling around his left eye. Branded by the vampires, his body was able to recover from injuries more serious than this in record time. If he was lucky, Darius would be right and Cassie need never know that he had been in a fight, let alone hauled to the local precinct and damn near charged with assault. But the matter of meeting Joey remained. He needed that coke.

“I can get back on my own.”

“Robert, you are drunk. If I let you take the wheel in this condition, Cassandra will never forgive me. Draco has already collected your car.”

“But he would need my—” Rob glanced in alarm at his jacket, then at Darius. The vampire’s face revealed nothing. He simply turned and walked to the door.

Rob picked up his jacket. His keys and his switchblade were missing from the left pocket. The keys he could understand, but the knife—?

“If you don’t come now, you’ll spend the night in dryout.”

He saw no choice, not before hitting the street at any rate. He walked with Darius down the hall and through the squad room, where he reclaimed his wallet from the officer at the front desk. She smiled pleasantly at him, but her eyes were on Darius. Taller, broader and more darkly handsome, Darius stole the spotlight for women who weren’t attracted to pretty men even if Rob had been in the condition to challenge.

The January night air felt good on his flushed skin. He paused at the corner to put on his jacket. “I mean it,” he told Darius. “I’ll get back on my own.”

“Feigned independence in one so needy doesn’t impress me,” Darius said, “but, since you insist, I can’t be bothered to force you. Find your way then, but you’ll want this—” he pulled Rob’s pearl-handled switchblade from an inside pocket “—and this.”

Rob’s heart took a crazy leap sideways when he saw the plastic bag. Suspecting a trap, he made his hands stay still at his sides. He felt the vampire’s eyes on him as he fought the screaming urge to snatch it. The white powder looked as pure and innocent as Cassie did when she was sleeping, yet its hold on him was just as deadly.

“This is what you were waiting for at the bar, is it not?”

He looked at Darius, at the warm touch of colour in glacial skin, at the jeans and leather jacket that would be exchanged for a suit later in the evening, and felt his skin go clammy under his clothes. “Joey,” he said.

“Yes,” Darius said, mildly. “Joey.”

“Oh, fuck.”

“Don’t worry, Robert. I saved this for you, and there is plenty more when you’re done.”

“Why?”

Darius was more coldly ferocious than Rob had ever seen him. “I promised not to destroy you. I never promised to stop you from destroying yourself.”

Rob glanced again at the bag of coke snuggled in Darius’s palm. Take it take it take it. “Why now?” he ground through clenched teeth.

“You cannot hold her, Robert. You know it, I know it. This fragile bond between the two of you won’t last much longer. Why not do us all a favour and speed the process?”

Sweat broke on Rob’s brow. “You son of a bitch bastard,” he growled, knowing there was more to it. “Why now?”

“Do you want it or don’t you?” Darius asked. The cocaine danced, caught by a corner between his thumb and forefinger. He suddenly let it go, and the bag arced skyward against the winter night. When Rob sprang to catch it before it burst on the sidewalk, Darius had his answer. He smiled his typically icy smile. “I am unaware of current rates, but I imagine that you and Joey had agreed on a sum?”

Something was wildly wrong with this picture. Darius wanted him out of Cassie’s life badly enough to start dealing drugs. Something had happened—or was going to happen—that Darius didn’t want him to know about. It was a safe bet that Cassie didn’t know about it either, and that she had no idea that Darius had stepped from the sidelines to interfere in her personal life.

“You can tell her if you like,” the vampire said, reading the threat behind Rob’s eyes, “and then I will tell her a few things about you. A childish ploy, but a fight is only fair if one is on the same level as one’s adversary.”

“Since when have you been interested in a fair fight?” Rob asked.

“Cassandra would not have me win any other way. And I will win, Robert. As long as I have help from that little bag of powder, I cannot lose.”

Rob glanced at the cocaine, wondering what was fair about Darius resorting to the role of supplier. If he did have a problem with coke—and he wasn’t sure that he did—Darius had no business pushing it on him. If Darius intended to stand by and let him kill himself, he should have let Rob drive home. Something was definitely wrong here. He sensed but couldn’t see it, felt but couldn’t find it, lurking at his shoulder.

“I don’t have all night, Robert. Pay up and we can go our separate ways.”

Rob reached for his wallet, then paused. Cassie had ducked out before sundown, leaving him with a kiss and a grin to hold him until dawn. Don’t go, he had said, clasping her wrist in his hand.

I’ll be home early, she had promised. Can you stay out of trouble until then?

He had laughed to keep from lying. I think so.

I think so.

He shoved his wallet into his back pocket and handed the coke to Darius. “Get in my face again and all bets are off.”

Surprise flickered like flame behind the ice green eyes. “You’re certain of this?”

He damn well was not, but he nodded anyway. “Next time I see you, I kill you.”

Darius closed his hand over the bag and contemplated his fist in silence. “Fair enough,” he said at last. He cocked his head and offered a sly smile that Rob didn’t like at all. Then he turned and walked away.

Rob stayed rooted to the pavement for a long, chilly moment after Darius had driven off in a vintage black Volvo. He wasn’t drunk anymore—another bonus of the vampire blood tainting his own—but he sure wished he was. He crossed the street against the light and stopped at the payphone on the corner. Cassie had given him her cell phone number some months ago, but he could never remember it. He tucked the receiver against his neck and dug through his wallet until he found the scrap of paper where she had written the number in big bold digits. She answered on the second ring, sounding rushed.

“Yes?”

“It’s me.”

Her tone mellowed as if she had begun to smile. “Hey, you. What’s up?”

“Nothing. I just … wanted to hear your voice.”

“You okay?”

“I am, now. Did I catch you in the middle of something?”

“Yeah—getting dressed. I’ve got a meeting in half an hour. Where are you?”

“In town. I’ll be waiting for you when you come in, though. Are you still planning to get away early?”

“You bet I am. Do you want me to come pick you up?”

“You’ll be late for your meeting.”

“So?”

He almost laughed. “I don’t want to cause trouble.”

She went silent. When she spoke again, her tone had changed a third time. “It’ll be okay,” she said.

He didn’t know how to answer, or if he should. So he said nothing; he just hung on the line, listening to her breathe and reluctant to let her go.

“Rob?”

“Yeah?”

“Is that it?”

He ran a trembling hand through his hair. “Yeah. No. Cassie …”

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

She hesitated; not much, but enough for him to notice. “I love you, too.”

He should have taken the coke.