From the Frying Pan

I LOL’d at this pic. It might have been hysterical laughter, but it was genuine—and that’s what will keep me going into 2017.

If you believe life is going to be hard, it will be hard. Better to believe it will be all right, that you will be all right, than to condemn it from the get-go.

For me, 2016 was a year rife with uphill battles. Ter and I agonized for months to bring about something that has not yet materialized. Work was unsettling for us both, for different reasons. My left ankle locked up in January. My bones flared through the fall and winter. The Flyers missed the playoffs again. A baker’s dozen of musicians, legends and icons passed on. The world went completely crazy. Looking back, last year sucked out loud ... but it didn’t kill me. In fact, I have emerged (I hope) stronger and more immune to difficulty than I was twelve months ago.

Seeds were planted in the tumultuous soil of 2016 that will bloom in 2017. Some will produce challenging consequences, others will remind us that beauty and art and kindness still exist. Life will happen. We needn’t expend ourselves to seek the bad stuff—CNN delights in keeping us apprised of global disasters, and reality TV continues to bombard us with eat-or-be-eaten cupcake competitions and outback inbred family shenanigans. The night is dark and full of terrors, ’tis true, but it is also rich with moonlight and magic. Resolve to marvel at the moonlight. Believe in the magic. Refuse to accept the universe as a cold and hostile environment. Embrace the dark, let it liberate your other senses, and above all, do not fear it.

It’s only as scary as you want it to be.

New Year’s resolutions, I have said, are not my thang. Maintaining a daily practice of kindness, compassion, appreciation and gratitude for each moment is. Humans complicate everything. Nothing needs to be that hard. When you find yourself fighting upstream, do yourself a favour and stop. The river will take you where you’re meant to go; resistance is generally a sign that you’re going the wrong way.

Or that you’ve convinced yourself of life being unnecessarily hard. For you, a spark of divinity caught in a human experience, it doesn’t have to be complicated. Simplify as much as you can. Believe in the goodness of the Universe. Cherish yourself and others will follow. You deserve it just because. You are a good person, a valuable person, a light in the night that will cast a wide beam if you allow yourself to do it—and doing it is easy.

Just be you.

If you’re unsure exactly who “you” are, take some time this year to figure it out. Look inside rather than out. Listen to your heart. Ignore your head. (Hint: Your heart always speaks softly. Your head will chatter incessantly and even start yelling to make itself heard. The louder it gets, the closer you are to silencing it with a solitary word: Quiet.) Remember, given freely and without condition, love is never a mistake. Try it on yourself first. It’ll feel weird to start, but it gets easier with (you guessed it!) practice. And don’t beat yourself up if you miss a day. Or a week. Or a month. Forgive yourself and start again. And don’t wait for January 1, 2018 to do it.

I’m with you.

With love,

Viking Visdom

I admit, it’s harder to keep the faith when I’m hurting. This darned human experience sure gets in the way of my being a divine spark.

Thank the gotts for diversions like season five of Vikings. The character of Ragnar Lothbrok, played so hideously/beautifully by Travis Fimmell, continues to beguile. In almost every episode, he drops a line worthy of remembering not just because of his delivery, but because the words apply—seriously—to my own life.

Take the argument he got into with his grown son Ivar, for instance. Ivar is historically known as “Ivar the Boneless”. None of the saganistas knows for sure why, so the series’ writer has depicted the character as a cripple. He hauls himself around on his hands, dragging his useless legs behind him and fighting like all get out to be considered as normal as his well-formed brothers. The kid isn’t particularly likeable. He certainly isn’t a sympathetic character, not with that attitude.

Anyway, Ivar goes on a raiding voyage to England with his father and nearly dies in a shipwreck. He and Ragnar, along with the other survivors, end up trekking inland from the beach, and because of Ivar’s disability, he falls behind. Ragnar stays with him, but finally loses his patience and demands that the boy quit trying to be normal. “Let yourself be a cripple!” he says. Naturally (to me, anyway), Ivar loses his temper. They get into a fight, shouting into each other’s faces, the boy screaming that he can be normal. Ragnar screams back that he can’t be normal because he isn’t normal, and “only when you accept that, can you become great.”

Blink.

That line hit me as hard as Ragnar telling his sons in an earlier episode, “Don’t look behind you. That’s not where you are going.”

I embarked on this series because Ter was curious about it so I thought I’d go along in support. The first season was so awful that I have no idea why we came back for season two, but that was when things got interesting. I still consider it one of the funniest shows on TV—the scenes between Ragnar and King Ecbert of Wessex are truly priceless—but pearls are present if I listen closely ... and I maintain that Fimmell’s portrayal of Ragnar makes it all worthwhile. He has the best lines and he delivers them brilliantly. I can’t say I’ve learned everything about life from Vikings, but I’ve sure picked up a few gems to get me through my recent struggles.

Uff da!

Starlight

A light year is the length of time it takes for light to travel from its source to Earth. A star that shines a hundred light years away can die, but the light will continue to shine for a century before we’ll see it go out.

A lot of stars have gone out this year. David Bowie. Glenn Frey. Leonard Cohen. Prince. George Michael. (That one hurt more than the others put together because I have more of his albums than I do of all the others put together.) Then, in tragically quick succession, Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. It seems to me that a mass exodus is happening, but I may only be so aware of it because these famous names are a part of my generation; after all, thousands of people die every day and most of us don’t even blink. At least the famous ones leave behind a legacy of work that keeps them alive in the hearts of their fans.

Truth is, the world is always a little bit darker when someone dies.

I like to watch Jeopardy! to test my memory banks and see how far out of the loop I’ve fallen with regard to pop culture. Once in a while, I’ll take an inexplicable shine to a contestant and root for that person through victory after victory. Halfway through December, a quiet young woman named Cindy Stowell won her first game and took her place as the defending champion. Her run took her through six wins and over $100,000, before she was inevitably defeated. She gave Ter and me more than one heart attack over the course of her appearance—she wasn’t always quick with the buzzer, but she consistently came back from the red to win the game with a clever bet on the Daily Double or knowing the answer to an obscure Final Jeopardy question. And she never lost her cool. She was a little mouse with big eyes and dark hair, a shy smile and sweet demeanour. Something about her was delightful and fragile and made you want to cheer for her.

On her seventh appearance, at the start of the game, Alex Trebek mentioned that her goal had been to win $100,000 and she had accomplished this with her previous win. My radar pinged with an uh oh, and sure enough, regrettably, she lost her seventh game. At the end of that show, however, a clip of Mr Trebek came up after the credits, in which he explained that, during the filming of Cindy’s shows a few weeks earlier, she had been fighting stage four cancer. She lost her battle with it on December 5, almost two weeks before her shows aired. In short, she had already departed when her championship run was broadcast.

Like a little star whose light took a few weeks to wink out of our sky.

The Next Two Weeks

This is my life for the next two weeks. With breaks for the new Star Wars film and hosting a visit with my wee and boy sisters on New Year’s Eve, the bulk of my remaining fortnight’s vacation will be spent writing. Yup, a typewriter and a coffee cup (actually a computer and a tea tumbler) are my constant companions as I devote myself to reconnecting with the Muse.

My primary project is the story of Caius and Aurelia. I won’t get it finished—there’s too much to tell—but now that I feel more like myself again, I’m eager to resume the writing of it. While I was doing the dishes the other night, the opening lines of Aurelia’s POV drifted in on the winter wind, soon followed by a third character stepping up to tell his version of the tale. I was so excited I forgot about the dishes and stood with my hands in the hot water, watching the pictures in my mind’s eye. With that much meat on the bone, I’ll be feasting well into 2017!

Reconnecting means more than with the Muse, however. I lost some serious touch with my daily practice after accidentally igniting an auto-immune reaction to a homeopathic flu preparation in November. A natural alternative to an annual flu shot, which I have never had, I decided to get back with the program after some years of going without—and I wish I had gone without it this year, too. Within 48 hours of the first dose, joints were flaring all over the place; and while there is no definitive proof that the medicine was the culprit, the timing is too suspicious to discount it. Over the five week course, my arthritis progressively worsened, started to recover, then worsened again. Three health practitioners had three different theories. None of the treatments made it better. One or two made it worse. I decided to finish the flu program rather than quit halfway through—it may or may not have been a good idea, but four weeks after my final dose and my body appears to be recalibrating. Oh, my joints still hurt like tiny star flares, but the frequency, location and intensity are diminishing and, as I say, I am beginning to look outward with more interest in things than I was through the past couple of months.

During those interminable weeks, it was all I could do to get out of bed, get to work and hang on until fatigue sent me to a premature bedtime. Christmas only happened with the help of tea fairy Treena and my angels—thanks to them, I was able to pull off the coup of Christmas prezzies for my beloved Ter, who was my stalwart rock the whole time—but anything else requiring energy or focus fell by the wayside. Weekly yoga sessions, daily meditations, attention to detail at the office (I’m sure my mistakes will show up later in January), and writing anything other than my name were sacrificed in the name of survival.

Though I did finish my annual reading of The Night Circus. And the Christmas cards got done. Priorities, you know.

So, my fiendish plan for the rest of my vacation also includes reconnecting with Ru. Gradually, gently, I mean to reinstate my twice weekly yoga sessions and practice more frequent meditations. Ter has wryly warned against “over meditating”—she has as many gurus as I have doctors, and in helping to make her point with me, she realized that she has a similar proclivity to spiritual maintenance as I have to physical. And it’s true: too much of a good thing can be as harmful as too much of a bad one. The pendulum on maintenance (physical for me, spiritual for her) swung a bit too far and messed us up in 2016. Between us, we intend on simplifying our practices as we move into the new year, aiming for balance in all things.

With love,

The Day After Christmas

It was fun, but now it’s over. No more shopping, no more wrapping. No more jingle bells. No more Santa runs to friends and family. Holiday movies have been watched and Christmas CDs are back in the rack. No more prezzies to open—the tree now shelters the unmasked goodies bestowed on us by our loved ones. Ter and I are stuffed with December treats and the kitchen is jammed to the rafters with the surplus. We live in such abundance, we are most grateful to be so fortunate.

There is, however, an oddly hollow sense when all is said and done. Sated and exhausted, we awake on December 26 to the perennial question of “Now what?”

Luckily, I have a plan—but that’s tomorrow’s post.

Last night I wondered what the day after the first Christmas was like. If it had been as anti-climactic as the day after every Christmas since.

The answer is a no-brainer, really. What can possibly outdo a heavenly choir and three wise men dropping by with gifts of gold and rare perfume? Like it’s awaited everyone else in all the centuries to follow, real life awaited the little family in Bethlehem. I bet Mary wanted nothing more than a bath and some peace and quiet, but no—she was expected to preside over the festivities. Apparently none of the kings was able to wield any influence with the local innkeepers, so the party stayed in the stable. The next morning, the kings would have departed, the shepherds returned to their fields, and Mary was faced with a newborn son of God unable to articulate his wants and needs, and she a new mother with no experience to guide her. Worse, she had to get back on that donkey for the trip home to Nazareth—bad enough while heavily pregnant, but trickier now that the babe was on the outside. She’d have to nurse him, clothe him, and cuddle him, all the while thinking how nice it was that everyone turned out to praise the birth but didn’t stick around to help with the clean up. Once they got back to Nazareth, they’d have been welcomed home by the community and life would fall into a new routine, and pretty soon the royal visit and Hallelujah chorus would have seemed like she had dreamed it.

No blasphemy is intended here. Whatever happened on that night all those years ago, life went on for the players as sure as it goes for each of us. The baby had a singular destiny, but what baby doesn’t? We are each born of divinity, each on a path designed specifically for the individual, and while few of us will change the world as radically as Jesus did, we will change our little corners of it, hopefully for the better but sometimes not.

I’m a day late, but the sentiment is no less heartfelt: Merry Christmas.

With love,

You Can’t Go Home

we were here

Not when you rented the place, anyway.

Ter and I spent 17 years on the top floor of a grand old Victoria mansion, circa 1885. Two of those years were lived in #15, a two-storey loft with a gargantuan kitchen and a gorgeous view of the city skyline. The main problems with that suite were the paper-thin wall between us and #16, and the appallingly disrespectful tenant who took up residence there a year and a bit after we moved in. So after a bunch of the tenants got together and the girl was evicted, Ter and I moved next door to avoid a similar scenario down the road. (Being a two bedroom, #16 ran the risk of becoming home to another roommate situation unlike our own, where one was never home and the other was a party animal.)

Both suites were stunning for having been renovated to reflect the era in which the house was built. The walls were a soft sage green trimmed with plum, and the bare fir floors rippled gold and amber when the sunlight crept across them. We had ghosts in the hallways and tons of closet space, and a cute little rooftop deck between the gables. It was accessed by a little mullioned door on the far side of the vestibule, where we stashed our wine and root veggies in the winter (the vestibule got very cold!) Ter put pots of herbs and pansies on the deck, and often sat outside on a summer night, watching the stars until well past her bedtime. We stuffed both beds into the smaller bedroom and used the larger one—with the cathedral ceiling and identical view of the city skyline as #15—as our main living room. We used what was probably meant to be the living room as a quiet room, where we lined the built-in bookshelves with our hardcover coffee table books and plugged an electric heater disguised as a wood stove into the faux fireplace.

At Christmas, we draped greens over the doorways and put up a tree in every room. Pillar candles were stood in corners and glass bowls of potpourri scented the whole apartment with pine and cinnamon and orange.

The Julian and Therése story was written there in 1998. Lucius was born there in 2002. The Cassandra series was started and countless other projects completed. Ter did some artwork, but discovered a passion for cooking in the little kitchen that had only two electrical outlets plus the one in the stove.

We held countless afternoon teas. We walked up the road to Government House and Craigdarroch Castle, and down the road to town. The resident ghosts ranged from a mischievous schoolboy with red hair to a young girl in a flowing gown to an old lady with a bitter attitude. Ter often heard a distant choir singing in the dead of night, and once I felt someone squeeze my heel as he/she/it passed by my bed.

We had squirrels, wasps and rats too, over the years, not to mention a plague of silverfish that was never really solved because the plumbing leaked so badly. We froze in winter and sweltered in summer. Neighbours—some good, some annoying—came and went until we became the dowager tenants who had survived four property management companies.

What we did not survive was the change of ownership in 2007.

I often wondered what happened to #16 after Ter and I abandoned hope in 2011. The place needed some serious renovation, as no maintenance had been done in years and the ceiling around the skylights remained open to the shingles after the new owners put them in that first winter. Whenever a tenant left, the suite was upgraded and the rent appropriately jacked. But Ter and I pulled a fast one by handing in our notice, so they had to rent it as it was because they needed the guaranteed income. One evening close to our end date, the property manager showed up with a viewer in tow (so much for 24 hours’ written notice), and we suspect the kid took it because, at that price and in that neighbourhood, he was young enough to endure rougher conditions than open ceilings and leaky pipes.

We were done. It was not a particularly peaceful parting.

After all these years, #16 is on the market again. Advertised as 1000 feet of loft-style living with geometric ceilings and industrial light fixtures, they have ripped out both the closets and the chimney in the bedroom hallway, torn out the wall that created the first bedroom, torn out the wall that created the second bedroom, filled in the bookcases and covered over the faux fireplace, knocked out the doorway to the kitchen and opened up the “ghost crossing” where the little red haired kid liked to hide ... in short, the place is gutted. Soulless. Everything is cold and sharp and jutting. The floors look great; but I dare anyone to keep the place warm with Shredded Wheat in the outside walls and ten foot ceilings at their highest point.

Not my problem, I know. It’s just that my heart broke a little more when I saw what had become of our charming, beautiful former home; the home we had loved and made our own even though we didn’t own it.

Sadly, it’s not always a tenant who destroys a rental suite.

Merry Christmas to Youbou

We think it’s about the prezzies. We run around like headless barnyard fowl and dig ourselves into debt for things we hope will fix us permanently within people’s hearts, or prove to them how fixed they are in ours, and it’s almost a guarantee that on Christmas morning, if the planets are aligned and you were in psychic tune with the Universe while shopping at the mall, you’ll be a rock star for the moment.

And that’s okay. It happens to everyone and everyone does it. We all have those magical moments when something we’ve always wanted is gifted with love and gratefully received, and vice versa. Once in a while, a gift will stay with you for years, as fondly remembered as the person who gave it to you, though I’m willing to bet the majority of things given and things received can neither be recited nor matched to the proper person before two Christmases have passed.

And that’s okay, too. Tangibles are truly fleeting.

We remember traditions because they happen every year. Traditions, I think, are more important to us than the prezzies; we just don’t realize it.

When Ter and I lived in our gorgeous old Victorian suite, my mother once said it didn’t feel like Christmas until she and Dad came to us for our annual holiday tea. I have to say, we decked those halls in spectacular magazine-spread style, and it was a pleasure for us to host the parents for a visit over seasonal savouries and sweets each December.

One of my most memorable holidays, however, happened the year my parents were unable to come because Mum went down with a hella cold and Dad was on the brink of following suit. At the time, they lived 90 minutes out of town, over the Malahat and left on Highway 18, and it made no sense for them to try and travel all that way for a couple of hours with us, especially when neither of them was in partying health. It was disappointing, but also the wiser course.

On Christmas morning, after we’d opened our presents and had our breakfast and spoken with our loved ones both in town and out, we decided on the spur of the moment to go see Mum and Dad. Why not? It was a beautiful sunny day, we had no other plans, and it bugged us that they were both sick at home on Christmas Day.

So we loaded their gifts into the Camaro, blasted up the ’Hat and turned left on Highway 18. One of the things I loved about Jules was how he proved the theory of time slowing as speed increases. I swear, the faster he went, the slower the scenery seemed to flow past the window, and in top gear, he was all but airborne along that stretch of asphalt.

Right off Hwy 18, with the forest closing in on a twisty-turny road, Porky Pig’s rendition of “Blue Christmas” came on the r-r-r-radio. Between laughing and singing along, we arrived at the parents’ place in seemingly record time. Dad was so surprised to see us at the front door that he forgot to feign dismay. We ambushed Mum in her sickbed (she drew the covers to her eyes and ordered us from the room before we caught what was catching), then sat with my father in the living room until, unable to keep herself in isolation, Mum joined us for a cup of tea and a present exchange.

I don’t remember what we talked about or for how long we stayed, but I do remember the joy I felt at surprising them that Christmas. It was one of the happiest holidays of my adult life.

And though I don’t recall what we gave them, I’m pretty sure my prezzie was a bottle of Bailey’s.

Snow What?

photo courtesy of Ter

I am a snowmantic. I love the idea of snow. A pristine blanket of sparkling white, evergreens draped in a thick layer of frosting or a cityscape glazed in royal icing—any or all of these images will excite my creativity and set me to fantasizing. I am often inspired to write snowy scenes. I adore the mental images of winter furs and dappled grey horses in a black and white wood. More compelling is the comfort of a scene in a cafe, of Christmas shoppers taking refuge from the weather over steaming eggnog lattes or peppermint hot chocolate.

Snow at night is even better than snow in sun—it’s a joy to be bundled in your jammies or wrapped in an oversized sweater, cradling a mug of spiced apple cider or sweet milky tea while snow falls thick and soft outside the window. Creating the mystical glow that brightens the dark and makes the stars seem sharper in the sky.

The crunch of your boots breaking the crust on that first foray outdoors. The bracing scent of Arctic cold and the shock of it reaching your lungs. Skating outdoors on a frozen pond. Slinging your skates over your shoulder and hiking home in deep drifts of snow. (Okay, I’ve never done that, but Ter did when she lived in Alberta.) Brightly coloured parkas and Nordic patterned mittens, striped scarves and tasselled toques, sleds and toboggans and snowball fights in the schoolyard.

Sounds good, doesn’t it?

What I tend to forget is ... snow is cold. It is usually accompanied by a colder wind. It might be fun as it gathers on your hood, but once inside the drugstore where you’ve trudged to get batteries for the flashlight in case the power cuts out, don’t lower your head or melted snow will pee all over your summer sneaks because this is Victoria and who needs winter boots out west?

Chances are, a pair of good ones won’t pay themselves off because it’s so rare, but when snow does arrive in the Garden City, it is not the snow you knew when you were a kid in Alberta or Quebec. It is wet, heavy, slippery, stubborn snow with a mercifully short shelf life but a brutally obstreperous nature. It melts fast and freezes solid. Walking an icy sidewalk becomes an extreme sport unless you have cleats. Driving is okay if you have proper tires (Tiggy’s were upgraded to all weather from all season last year) and no one else is on the road, otherwise it’s demo derby on the highways and byways. As little as two centimetres will stress us out and shut us down.

I had the idea for this post before the winter hit us last week. We only endured a few days of light-by-Canadian-standard snowfall, but it was rougher than it was a pleasure and all I can say with any certainty is our plan for retiring to Canmore has been relegated to the Hall of Doof Ideas.

Merry Christmas.

Hygge Days Are Here Again

It’s a Danish word that has no precise comparative in English. Like umami, it’s a sense rather than a solid; one of those mysterious intangibles that everybody understands not by intellect, but by spirit.

Hygge (clumsily pronounced “hue-gah”) is defined as “a complete absence of anything annoying or emotionally overwhelming, and/or the act of taking pleasure from the presence of simple, soothing things.”

It’s the feeling you get in front of a fire, when the cold dark winter closes in and folks gather together for warmth and comfort. It’s the light of a single candle after everyone else goes to bed. The pleasure in a cup of hot chocolate spiked with Bailey’s. The joy in sharing a blanket on a snowy sleigh ride. The sound of jingle bells. The smell of cinnamon and cloves. Little kids laughing. Your favourite sweater. A hug from a friend. Exchanging smiles with a stranger. Coming in from the cold and scenting shortbread fresh from the oven. Listening to carols while looking at the Christmas tree.

It’s not exclusive to the winter, though it probably lends itself best to the time between fall and spring, and it’s not really about the components of circumstance, either. If I understand it correctly, it’s about how you feel. I suspect I feel it more when I am myself, not necessarily alone, but with my trusted posse, those who know me best and love me as I truly am. A feeling of belonging, of acceptance and connection; of oneness with something greater than the individual.

It feels good. It feels warm. It feels comforting and safe. It feels ... wonderful.

They say the Danes are the happiest people in the world. Hygge knew?

Chirping

As Ter and I were leaving for work the other day, I casually said to one of the bears, “Cardie, you have the con.”

“Okay, Mum,” he replied.

Fast forward to that evening. Ter picked me up from a massage appointment after work and the house was dead dark when we arrived home. She unlocked the door and swung it open for me to go ahead. I started slowly up the stairs, nursing a knee that had just endured a bone-deep fingering courtesy of my RMT.

Chirp! said the smoke detector, advising us that the battery was dead.

“Well, that answers my question,” I remarked.

“What question is that?” Ter asked from below.

“I’d been wondering if that alarm even has a battery.”

Really. Five years into our residency and the alarm hadn’t so much as peeped.

“It’s a nine volt, right?” I asked, trying not to limp as I fetched the stepladder from the back hall.

“I think so,” Ter replied. “Geez, I hope we have a spare.” She went straight to the kitchen stash and hallelujah! A nine volt battery was nestled among the plethora of AAs we keep on hand for our gazillion remotes.

She was brave enough to try the ladder first, but even with my bum knee, she’s not as steady on her feet as I am, so I got the short straw. (Actually, I practically thrust her aside to “let me do it, dammit!”) Up I went, recalling the old alarm at Rockland and what a pain it had been to get into the battery compartment. I can puzzle out just about anything given time, and after a few seconds of eyeballing this one, I pushed on the little door. It popped open without protest. Too easy! I happily pulled the battery and exchanged it for the replacement Ter handed up to me.

All the while, every thirty seconds, the alarm cheerily went Chirp! While I was up there, I decided to test the alarm. Darned near blew out my eardrums, but the thing worked so I closed the compartment door and came down the ladder. Ter and I high-fived, did the power pose (there’s nothing two girls and a Tiguan can’t do!), and I hefted the ladder down the hall.

I opened the back door and … Chirp!

Ter and I traded scowls. “That battery must be dead too,” I said.

“Gods know how old it is,” she morosely agreed.

I brought back the ladder. She steadied it and I climbed back up to see what the frack was going on. I pulled the battery and flipped it end to end. “Oh yeah,” I said, “it’s been leaking.”

“Great,” she said, dryly. We looked at each other until one of us suggested we might be able to leave it until morning.

The alarm disagreed. Chirp!

Turns out its one of those safety coded ones that’s wired into the house and won’t shut up unless a working battery is installed.

I came back down the ladder. “I’ll go,” I said, meaning to the hardware store.

Ter gave me the shark-Finn look. “Not with your knee. I’ll go.” But I think it was more to spare herself the intermittent and insistent Chirp!

She was back in twenty minutes, the new battery was installed and the ladder posted in its designated spot shortly thereafter. Blessed silence descended. My knee was treated to some ice, and the evening passed as usual. We only wondered for a minute or two exactly when the alarm had begun to chirp, as no one had been home for most of the day and the bears weren’t saying.

But the next work day, as we were getting ready to leave, Cardigan piped up, “Mum, I don’t want to have the con anymore.”

Aches and Pains

Well, crap. When they told me my arthritis would burn out in eight or ten years, they forgot to mention that I’d have to deal with repercussions. Maybe I should have seen it coming, but I totally missed that the damage done to my joints as a teen would come back to bite me in middle age.

Recently, and by that I mean as adults, my mum and wee sister have both been diagnosed with RA, and each of them has said to me that they don’t know how I lived with it all those years ago.

Truth is, neither do I.

Credit the strength and energy of youth ... and a poor memory for hard times. I did it because I had to, but it must have been tough. There were long stretches when I couldn’t move worth a darn; I do recall being camped on the couch with a book and blanket while Dad and my sibs trooped off to work and school. I missed a lot of school that first year, and in subsequent years, too.

I’m thinking on it now because the past few weeks have been particularly annoying. It’s not just my hinges or ball-and-sockets, either. My tendonitis is back with a vengeance (though I imagine curtailing my colouring might help alleviate the situation), and I’ve been to a bunch of appointments while trying to solve the mystery of my right knee. It’s fine when I’m not moving around and it’s fine when I’m standing still, but try to walk on it and it bites back. I’m not complaining—okay, maybe I am—but I am pondering the precondition and why it’s acting up right now.

The last time I was racked up like this was in 2011/12, when I was so stressed about the home situation that my back kept going out. And, yes, I am somewhat stressed at present—though this time, home is not the arena. There’s a lot going on at work, some good, some not so much, and all happening at the same time. For me, “change management” often means “pain management” and once my mental angst is done, my physical angst should follow suit.

I had a good talk with my executive director last week. I was razzing him about losing his phone and his keys and his building access card, suggesting that an idiot string might be in order, when he looked at me and wondered aloud what the heck was going on. He’s a young man; he shouldn’t be so scattered. I shrugged and said, “It’s evidence of too many daggers in the air.”

I may just have answered my own question. These days, coping skills are stretched to their absolute limits; life is not supposed to be an extreme sport, yet it’s certainly acting like one. We have so much coming at us so fast that we can’t possibly handle everything at once—and yet we try. We fear that failing will mark us as failures, but why does it have to be our fault? Humans are not designed to multi-task. We’re meant to do one thing at a time, but with so many knives in the air, how many of us are doing anything to the best of our innate ability?

No wonder my knees are acting up.

Nobel Poet

I have no problem with Bob Dylan receiving the Nobel Prize for Poetry. He may not be able to sing for toffee, but few poets can. It’s the poetry that earns the recognition, and someone with a body of work as extensive and influential as Dylan’s deserves all the credit he can get.

Same goes for Leonard Cohen, by the way. It may be my maple leaf showing, but I’d sign a petition to have him awarded the same prize (regrettably posthumously) since I find his poetry/lyrics/sentiments more moving than Dylan’s.

I sort of digress.

I own no Dylan albums. I only know what songs I’ve heard on the radio. I love the impression of him done by Don Ferguson of the Royal Canadian Air Farce, mostly because it highlights the mumbled nasal twang that enables most folks to pick out no more than an occasional word. But Bob Dylan is responsible for one of the few bright sparks in my 2011 “Holiday From Hell”.

Up until 2015, when they stopped producing it, the annual Starbucks Christmas CD was anticipated with all the energy and excitement of a kid for, well, Christmas. I have all but one disc in the collection, my favourite being Let it Snow, released in 2011. Even the cover art is fabulous. It’s still among the first discs to hit rotation at the start of the festive season. Every song on it is a winner—including Dylan’s. In fact, his is one of my favourite tracks.

Not because he wrote it (he didn’t). Not because he recorded it (for a charitable cause). Not for any other reason than the cornball foot stompin’ headbangin’ country-fried tempo had my Ter dancing around the kitchen in a truly rare fit of present-moment glee. To this day, whenever I hear it, I am reminded of a sparkle in the snowstorm that became a whopping dump and nearly destroyed us.

The poet goofed, though. Another Dylan track was featured on the Bucky’s disc the following Christmas, and alas, it’s the one track I consistently skip.

Proof that even a Nobel Prize winner can make mistakes.

Gone Fiction

Almost halfway through November and this is my third post? One might think disaster has struck! A computer malfunction, perhaps? Global catastrophe? Plague? In some measure, all of the above may apply. My computer is fine—gods know, it hasn’t been overworked of late. The global catastrophe was the outcome of the US election. Plague-wise, Ter has been checked by her first cold in years (that’s what we get for starting the homeopathic flu program last week). She’s a fighter, though. She hasn’t missed a beat despite ongoing congestion and coughing fits, but in truth, none of the above explains why the Rebellion has been silent.

Truth is, I’ve started a new story. If I treat it like dessert and write my veggies first, I won’t get it done before my appetite is gone; not that blogging is a chore, but it can interfere with the fiction flow, and after so many months of struggle with a novel that won’t cooperate and a bunch of beginnings that won’t move past the halfway point, this one has gained some serious momentum and I intend to roll with it.

It’s liberating to drop the gloves and go for something just because I want to do it. As I have mentioned in previous posts, I tend to write in chronological order, a practice that served me well enough during the Fixed Fire storm. Blogging and short stories have shown me the joy of bouncing around from one idea to another rather than the next in line. It’s also messed with me a bit. One day a few weeks ago, after a futile stab at forcing my muse, I asked myself what I wanted to write rather than what I felt I should write, and the answer came so quickly that I knew it was for real.

So I’ve leapfrogged over a couple of FF volumes and tackled the story of Book 9: the reunion of the brother and sister who were separated at the end of Treason. I’m working specifically with him right now, wanting to get his story out before switching to another’s angle; it’s a novel-sized project with a few points of view, but again, breaking new writing ground, I’m focusing on one character at a time and planning to weave the threads together once they’re all done.

My journey continues to inspire the usual mélange of philosophy, comedy, drama, hockey woes and food porn. Life is a curious mix of black and white and fifty shades of  ... well, you get it. And, fascinating as everything is right now, I am more fascinated by someone else’s story.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

With love,

The Best of Times

Remember the good old days? Your first car, your first love, your first real job? The days when you were part of a posse? When every weekend was spent at the movies and you couldn’t wait for the new (insert artist here) album? When you got by on three hours of sleep because life was so fresh and vibrant that sleep was an inconvenience?

I came of age in the 1980s. That’s when I hooked up with Ter, we got our own place, and I got my first loan to buy Blue Thunder. I spent one summer in Europe. I discovered Sting and Duran Duran. I had a good government job and a kinda sorta boyfriend (and that’s the last you’ll hear of that, ever). I dabbled with vampires and wrote a fictional band biography because there was no reason not to. I not only ran with the cool crowd, I was one of the executive. So many good memories were born in those years. Some painful ones, too, but whatever. For me, the 80s were all about growing up and growing out, leaving kidhood behind and becoming an adult. I spent them figuring out who I was, and I had so much fun doing it that I still perceive the 80s through rosy lenses, as expertly polished as the slickest Bryan Ferry tune.

So imagine the surprise when I saw a recent documentary about the state of the world during my glory days. The Falkland War. The cold war. The drought in Ethiopia. Reaganomics. The threatened rainforest. AIDS. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. The Challenger explosion. Ted Bundy.

I was living la vida loca and the world was in chaos.

“Surprise” isn’t the right word. I knew about these things on a peripheral level, but they didn’t affect me at the time. Despite the world going crazy around me, those years remain among the happiest of my entire life. Oblivious years? Self-absorbed years? Or just years spent in pursuit of myself, the shaping of the woman I was destined to become?

My point? Those times were not the best because of what was happening around me. They were the best because of what was happening within me. Consider the best years of your life. Think about what happened to make them so, then look outward to what the world was going through at the same time. I bet it was as nutty, as tumultuous and uncertain and just plain scary, as it is now. If so, then I suggest that the “good old days” we old folks long for had little to do with the state of the world and everything to do with where we were as individuals. The 1980s were not as golden as I’ve always believed. Neither were the 50s, 60s, or 70s, though I’m sure lots of people remember them as fondly.

My second favourite Styx song is called TheBest of Times. I heard it on the oldies (!!) station a few days ago, and I smiled because the sentiment is as relevant today as it was thirtysome years ago:

The headlines read these are the worst of times

I do believe it’s true

I feel so helpless, like a boat against the tide

I wish the summer winds could bring back paradise

But I know, when the world turns upside down

Baby I know, you’ll always be around

The best of times

Are when I’m alone with you

Some rain, some shine

We’ll make this a world for two

Those memories of yesterday will last a lifetime

We’ll take the best, forget the rest, and someday we’ll find

These are the best of times

With love,

Orange is the New Black

In no way, shape or form do I support, condone or agree with the outcome of the US election. I haven’t felt that sick in front of the TV since I watched the Twin Towers collapse on 9/11. I am a democratic socialist who supported Bernie Sanders, so I admit to harbouring reservations about Hillary in office, but still—the lesser of two evils, right?

Moot point, Ru. Despite the effect this singular decision will have on the entire planet, only a select number among the global population had a say in making it. The American people have spoken. The rest of us (and those who voted for the unsuccessful candidates) will have to live with it.

Ironically, they wanted change in 2008, and they got it. Maybe it wasn’t what they’d envisioned, or there was too much of it with too little time to adjust (humans are not as progressive as we think), or maybe those descendants of the original settlers are freaked out by their former majority becoming the new minority—whatever the case, the end result of yesterday’s vote is necessary.

You can only duct-tape a leaky system for so long before it blows completely, and I suspect a Democratic win last night would have been just another Band-Aid on the bleed. Well, we called down the thunder, so get ready for the BOOM!

I say “we” because it’s been my experience that humans, much as we whine about wanting change, really prefer things to stay the same. Institutional failure may be partly responsible for the orange outcome of this ground-rattling election, but the devolution of society has as great a part to play in the demise of what came before it.

True change is often painful. Disasters, whether natural or man-made, always precede a rebuild of some sort; we only choose to improve our toys. Improving conditions for the poor, for refugees and immigrants, for the working class, even for the earth itself, isn’t usually in anyone’s self-interest until it becomes imperative. No one who voted for Obama’s successor was voting for the good of others. They were voting for themselves … and that’s pretty well what they got. Those who voted for the other candidates (remote as the independents’ chances were, they still deserve to be recognized) were likely more community-minded and globally aware, but were shown to be in the minority.

America is broken. Of course it can be fixed. It can rise from the ashes and emerge stronger, better, and braver than it was yesterday. Did they pick the guy to get it to that place? Hell, no! Healing a wound never begins on the top. It begins deep down, close to the bone; that’s where the rebuild begins. Recovery is up to the people. It’s up to families and neighbours and co-workers and community leaders to make a difference at the local level. They will have to get each other through the next few years. They can do it; they just have to be willing to do the work themselves rather than relying on the tangerine head to do it for them.

I am sympathetic, truly. I appreciate the fear and desperation of the folks who voted as I would have voted; alas for them, the democratic process must be respected even when you don’t get who you want.

As for the crashing of Canada’s immigration website when the numbers started firming up, I guess socialism is looking pretty good to some of our neighbours now, eh?

I wish them well. I believe they can do better. I hope the people will join and become a stronger nation by working together, by showing kindness and compassion to themselves and each other. The human spirit, when focused and tuned in, is fiercely inspiring. We are capable of great and wondrous things.

With love and hope,

Loui, Loui

well, shoot - he played for Boston once

I don’t mind the Vancouver Canucks. I’m not a raving fan, but I’m not violently opposed to the team, either. “St Trevor of Linden” and all that. I’m not crazy about their general manager, but that’s because he was a) with the Bruins organization before coming to Vancouver and b) he brought over Brandon Sutter from Pittsburgh, who might actually be an okay guy, but, let’s face it, he’s a Sutter.

My hockey pool policy is no secret: I won’t pick players from a team I dislike. I tend to pick former Flyers as well as member of the current roster, for all the good it’s done. This year, I decided to take a chance with Loui Eriksson, who joined Vancouver in the off season. Earmarked to play on the top line with the Twedes, Daniel and Henrik, Loui seems likely to score a whack of points off the twins’ combined genius, thus garnering a whack of points for Ruthie’s Rebels.

Besides, he’s kind of cute.

The Canucks’ home opener was against Calgary. In my list of “go, teams”, Canucks trump Flames, and I wanted to see how Loui would do in a match that really counted. (He got points in a preseason game, but they don’t count in the pool.) First period, a delayed penalty is called against Calgary. The Vancouver goalie streaks for the bench to get the extra man on to stretch the advantage. Loui has the puck. He also has three Flames buzzing him, so he sends a blind pass behind him, hoping his defenceman catches it.

Only the defenceman misses. He flings himself forward in a heroic attempt to knock the rubber disc off course, misses again, and the puck sails merrily into the empty net.

“Dear God,” I blurt, sickened. “Oh, dear God.”

Calgary 1 – Vancouver 0.

They gave credit to the last Flame who touched the puck. I might have been upset that it didn’t count in my pool total, but I was ill for Loui. The new guy, acquired to score goals, and in his first real game, he puts it into his own net. I’ve seen it before, many times. I’ve seen bad bounces beat a goalie from 200 feet and I’ve seen “deflections off their own man” galore, but none of them are easy to take—not even when my team benefits.

Which mine didn’t, this time.

Oh, Loui.

Blustery Days

My earliest memory of hella high winds formed when I was about five years old. I was in kindergarten in Sorel, at a school that was, I believe, walking distance from home.

I don’t remember much about kindergarten except that I didn’t like it. It was new and strange, and full of kids who spoke French when I was the only one who didn’t. I don’t know if I lasted the full term, or if my folks pulled me out after I pitched a four alarm tan-tan in the driveway one day; so much of that time in my life is long gone but for the dramas that tend to stay with a person well into adulthood. Allowing for said dramas to become exaggerated over time, I have a clear sense of losing my mind one day, and my mother telling the kind folks who had come to pick me up to go on their way. I don’t remember anything more than that, but if Mum does, I bet the story’s as embarrassing as the one she likes to tell about the day I first saw snow.

I digress.

While I was still in kindergarten, I remember stepping from the school into bright sun and big wind. The leaves were doing their swirly dance on the sidewalk and skittering into the street. I was wearing my plush green winter coat, which was heavy enough to keep my feet on the ground when the wind tried to lift me off them. It was so strong when it hit me that it felt like a big hand curling around my legs. It tugged so insistently that I was sure I’d achieve liftoff like Piglet in the stories by AA Milne—to this day, on a big windy one, I’ll generally ask of no one in particular, “Can I fly Piglet next?”

Fast forward to November 2015. Ter and I had ventured out to do some Christmas shopping and the wind was so strong when we got home that folks were parking on Dallas Road to watch the ocean pound against the shore. I love a stormy ocean, and while I normally watch it from the shelter of my living room, this time, I couldn’t resist. “I have to go look,” I told Ter, and promptly left her to struggle with the shopping bags while I headed up to street level.

Our street sits a bit lower than the main road. How much lower became evident when I reached the top of the slope and was struck full in the face by a blast of salt spray—and this before I got across the road. I waited for a break in the traffic and crossed over to join the other nut cases hanging out by the railing.

Wind roaring. Surf crashing. Gulls hanging overhead. Kids in their twenties spreading their wings and leaning into the teeth of it, letting the wind hold them upright. Small dogs being carried because otherwise they’d be airborne. My vision immediately obscured by the spray on my glasses. The sheer force of the wind felt like that long-ago hand trying to push me back into traffic, shoving so hard that it seemed almost enraged. I fought back, kept my feet, staggered a few steps along the sidewalk. You can’t breathe in wind that strong; it jams itself down your throat and stays there. And all the while, you are reminded of how fragile, how mortal, you are against this heaving, howling, living entity.

Jesu Maria. Get me out of this.

With the wind helping me along, I trip-and-a-trip-trip-tripped back toward home, where Ter had managed to secure the Tiguan by the curb and wrestle our loot into the house. “Well?” she asked from the top of the stairs. “How was it?”

“One of the stupidest things I’ve ever done,” I replied, gasping.

“Yah,” she said, “while I was trying to drop the hatch on Tiggy, the wind swooped in and snatched one of the empty grocery bags. The last I saw, it was zipping toward Moss Rock Park.”

I could very easily have gone the same route.

Last week, the west coast was treated to a hat trick of storms over three days, ending with the remains of Typhoon Songda predicted to be the most intense of the trio. Once again, folks pulled over to watch the ocean do its thing. Ter parked Tiggy behind the house for the third act, as did most of the neighbours. The street out front was empty that night. The wind ramped up for a bit of a show before dinner, then died back by eight and never really took off.

I didn’t even try to go outside.