No Mo’ Sno’

 

You know that snowfall I reported a post or two ago? Well, it kept snowing. And snowing. And snowing, until 35 centimetres had landed on the south island and everything froze in place. No last minute prezzie shopping, no grocery shopping, no visiting, no departing upstairs neighbours. Nothing. The rest of Canada has every right to thumb their noses at us, but that doesn’t make the stress any less stressful for people accustomed to green Christmases.

My snowmance extends to fantasies of being snowed in, of the aforementioned hot tea, fat novels and cozy blankets. The truth is far less enchanting. The truth is even I get cabin fever. It’s not that I would go out, it’s that ability to choose whether or not to go out. Being snowed in negates that agency.

Oh, Ter and I did suit up and venture out the next day. We assessed the Tiguan situation, shovelling off as much of the snow as we could to prevent him from freezing solid when the melt came (it has yet to start). Mercifully, the snow was still light and powdery, and we managed to dust off the hood, windshield and windows, but digging out was too much for two babes in their sixties. Besides, if we’d been able to clear a path to the road, the road itself was impassable.

In a bizarre way, it was fun to be out in bright sun and knee-high snow, working with my proton to move the white stuff around. It felt like we’d accomplished something when we finally came indoors to thaw ourselves out. It’s important to feel empowered in such situations, because it’s hard to stay positive when the challenge continues beyond a day or two, especially as Christmas Day creeps ever closer and there are still things to be done.

I can’t imagine the strain on parents of little kids. How do you explain to a six year old who believes in magic that Santa couldn’t get his sleigh out of the driveway? Yup. I am luckier than most in these Currier and Ives conditions. Perhaps it’s a recognition of how overwhelming life has lately been that my loving friendly and generous Universe has blessed me with a puny-by-comparison set of args this Christmas. I’m warm, I’m safe, I’m fed, so quit whining, Ru.

I submit that it’s all relative. A few days of “severe by west coast standards” snow is hardly a life or death event, but Christmas has taken an odd turn in past years and this was the first holiday season since Mum died that looked promising. I’ve become woefully nostalgic for Christmases past, which in itself is different, if not understandable in the circumstances.

Ter and I used to go all out during the holidays, and while I’m sure we griped and got stressed at the time, I only remember the joy. The tradition. Filling the advent calendar with Quality Street chocolates. Dashing out to pick up sock stuffers during lunch breaks. Shopping trips on weeknights when the stores are less crowded. Baking a ton of cookies. Lavish Christmas teas with friends and family. Wrapping presents in elegant paper. My wee sister’s fabulous mincemeat tarts. Kicking back on Christmas Eve when all was said and done, sipping a ruby mimosa and watching Alistair Sim by the light of the “f***ing soap opera tree”, as a friend once called it. The Christmas Day phone call to my parents ahead of the Queen’s Message.

Everything has changed. My parents are gone. So is the Queen. Our beautiful Edwardian flat was traded for a ho-hum standard apartment. A global pandemic moved in, stayed for two years and never really departed. The world itself seems to have tilted further out of alignment. Indeed, why should Christmas have survived intact?

You have to laugh at the irony. Imagine, Christmas being called on account of snow.

Merry, merry anyway. With love,

Change Versus Rest

 

It’s said that a change is as good as a rest. So, in theory, I should be able to shift from work routine to home routine without doing a face-plant on the first day of vacation, right?

Wrong.

My first day went fairly smoothly in that I accomplished all I’d set out to do, which wasn’t very much in comparison to getting up and getting out to spend a day with my co-workers at the office. Such an endeavour demands more energy than a day off, so on Day One I went easy on myself ... I thought.

I slept in, took a walk, started my annual read of The Night Circus, ate way too much sugar, did some philosophizing with Ter, and did not need a nap to get me through the day. We planned to finish up the last of our prezzie shopping on Day Two, but when I woke up that morning, I was headachy and seriously conflicted about my ability to deal with crowds of people in a confined space. I tried to talk myself into soldiering on, that I was just tired but it would be okay—and the next thing I knew, I was in tears over nothing and Ter bailed me out by insisting I stay home while she tackled the Christmas crowds. Gratefully, I relented.

Ter was a trooper, making two forays into the retail wild and accomplishing her mission without me whining in her wake. I read my book, skipped taking a walk, ate no gluten, and yes, took that afternoon nap. Day Three was a much better start, though we were both semi-stunned at how quickly the fatigue set in during our quick trip to the mall. But that’s another post.

The point of this one is my realizing that a change is not always as good as a rest. Sometimes a full stop does more good than an altered focus, especially at this time of year. Christmas is a whole other barrel of monkeys when it comes to energy drain and I’m still figuring out the critical balance between capacity and demand in regular life. The curve remains pretty steep as I suss out which symptoms are attributed to age and which are the result of living in a post-COVID world. The plague struck as I reached my sixties so I’m not sure what would have happened anyway; in some ways I’ve never been so confused by ongoing change.

Methinks it’s time for a rest.

Buzzkill

Well, thank you, Debbie Downer, for yesterday’s post. Sheesh. The last thing one needs on the threshold of her fifty-fifth birthday is a reminder, even a semi-positive one, of tragedy and mourning. While the subject is true enough, and the post was, I guess, as uplifting as one can make it, it was also evidence of the panic my mind went into on discovering that a) I am on vacation and b) all is well.

Honestly, I was amazed at the abnormally dark and dangerous thoughts that taunted me throughout much of Tuesday. At first, I was actually immobilized by them. Everything from locking the basement door between laundry loads, which I never do, to picturing Ter being T-boned at a left turn, which I never do, came to mind in such a short space of time that it was soon obvious something was afoot.

Someone was trying too hard to scare me out of my happy.

Turned out to be myself.

Not myself in the divine sense, of course. Myself in the intellectual/egotistic sense. Yup, my compostable white knight, the disk operating system assigned to keep my physical self safe and alive, didn’t have a lot to do on Tuesday, and facing a fortnight of days off with not a darned thing to worry about, she freaked out in a big way.

Once I figured out what was happening, I was able to stop it. I just said, “Stop!” And it worked. I could almost hear the whimpering as my mind shrank into a corner to suck her thumb. She poked her head out a few times during the day, but now that I was on to her, she didn’t get very far before I sent her scooting back to her corner.

As for why, all I can conjure is the suspicion that I usually run on so much adrenaline, always thinking ahead because Ru time is defined by my work schedule, that when I take my foot off the gas, my mind views it as a threat and sets out to convince me that the world is scarier on vacation than it is in everyday life!

Nice try, girlfriend.

The conscious mind is uncomfortable with silence. It’s awkward with contentment, and if the present moment is tranquil, it won’t last “so you’d better buckle up for what’s coming because if you’re not braced and breathing fast, you’ll be horribly maimed for not having listened to me!”

Relax, Compostable Ru. You’re fine. All is well; you’re safe, Ter is safe, and no one is imperilled just because I’m taking a few days off. This moment is most precious for being one of a kind, so I intend on enjoying it—and if you calm down and breathe, you’re welcome to enjoy it with me.

There. Doesn’t that feel better?

You bet it does.

With love,

Rigged

The last thing I expected on vacation was to have to get used to a new computer. It almost figures that, at 10:15 a.m. on my first official day (weekends don’t count), I booted the writing rig ... and nothing happened.

Strangely, I did not freak out. I called to Ter:”My computer’s dead.”

From the living room: “What?”

“My computer’s dead. I just pushed the button and nothing happened.”

She appeared immediately in my doorway. “Nothing?”

“Nope.” I jabbed the button a couple more times, just to be sure. Still nothing.

“We’ll have to get you a new one,” she declared.

I agreed—but this did not stop us from sitting down at my desk (she in the chair, me on the floor) and staring at the old box for a few minutes as if waiting for it to resurrect itself.

A brand new writing box is unnecessary. A used one suits me fine. I only use it for writing, so no need for fancy software, a ton of memory, or an über-graphics capability. My first one was bought new in 1994. The second one was inherited after an office upgrade. The third and fourth were both bought used from a local place that refurbishes as well as builds new rigs, and supplies the parts if you want to build your own. It’s an odd place, populated by geeks who are awkward with people, especially girls, but the product is usually sound.

As we were going into town anyway, we left a little early and dropped by the shop. It doesn’t take long to pick a new writing computer. All I need is a desktop PC with some version of Windows and MS Office. Box No. 5 is a step up by running Windows 7; its predecessor ran XP, so I’m finally caught up to the twenty-first century. After a brief chat with the kid behind the counter, who ran a test boot to ensure that the box I bought was indeed working, I produced my plastic and set off with my prize.

We run Office 2010 on the big rig, but have neither a backup disk (we downloaded it from the internet) nor the rackinfrackin product code that would have enabled me to burn a copy. I had it once, but at this late date you must be kidding. So, back to the shop, where I’d noticed a copy of Office 2007 for home use under glass. Bought that, and another mouse since the one I had wasn’t USB slot-friendly, then returned home to finish the set up.

Starbucks is not the evil empire, my friends. Micro Soft is. Installation was a breeze, but the Activation Wizard appeared and refused to let me go further without verifying the software. Oh, I could do it later, but be forewarned: after 24 boots, “some features may not be available to you”. I couldn’t believe it (yet I could): my own computer was threatening to foil me if I didn’t comply! $%&%#&*%# Bill Gates!

Ter brought me my phone and wisely left the room. I dialled the 1-800 number and got Siri’s boyfriend, who walked me through the eight-part activation and confirmation sequence. You’d better believe I wrote it all down for future reference! There’s no point in stroking out over it, I know. What really matters is that I’m up and running. I spent the next hour or so configuring my defaults and setting up my files, then shut everything down—including myself—for the night.

I was up, however, at 6:30 this morning. Guess I needed some quiet time to wake up the newbie and see if my default Word settings stuck. (They didn’t.) I’ve reset them and hope they’ll stay around now that I’ve actually written something using the new template. I am also planning to write a completely new story while I get familiar with an unfamiliar system.

Only it’s not unfamiliar at all. Now my writing computer mirrors my work computer and the similarity is so unsettling that I chose to switch up the colours just to remind myself that this computer means fun!

Idle Thoughts

One week off is not enough.

Hands up, everyone who’s surprised.

I doubted this would be news.

Truly, I am grateful to have had the time to be Ru. Though I didn’t get everything done that I wanted, everything I did I wanted to do.

I went back to Castasia. I finished the story about Lucius’s twin sister—I started it months ago, so it was good to wrap it up at last—and began another one about his youth, this one from his foster father’s POV and why he (Lucius) went into exile. Geez, this character is a goldmine; I could write Lucius stories forever and never run out of episodes. His influence is so powerful that he even owns the ones that aren’t about him!

I also embarked on a refresh of Orphan Black so I’m primed for season four (expected for my birthday)—no time for a marathon, but I got in a few episodes of season three. I remain an ardent fan of the series. It gets better and better.

And I finally watched the documentary about the late Amy Winehouse that won an Oscar last spring. I could have been a fan if she had been allowed to follow her bliss rather than her path—I had not known she started as a jazz singer before her career went supernova and she went the tragic way of many a broken child whose solace became her undoing. Her story, unfortunately, was the same as too many others—Billie Holliday, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain to name a few—but in a way it was worse for her because of the relentless media exposure. She wasn’t free to conquer her demons in private. She was forced to do it publicly, because that’s what the public demanded though her battle was deeply personal. As in “none of our business”, yet it became big business for the media. And how quickly the applause turned to derision! Get famous enough in this world and you’re doomed no matter how talented you are.

Her version of “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” is sublime.

Enjoy.

The Space Between the Notes

You wait for a day off (aside from a regular weekend) and when it arrives, you’re immobilized. The plan you had in mind suddenly appears less appealing than catching up on F***book or baking cookies or reruns of Big Bang Theory on the comedy network.

Help is on the way.

A year after buying it, I finally started reading David Usher’s Let the Elephants Run. It’s an easy read: concepts are presented as sound bites and anecdotes from his own life—I love hearing how my idols’ process works—and, yes, there are exercises (none of which I’ve done … yet) but the primary takeaway so far has been the paradoxical pairing required for successful creativity:

Freedom and Structure.

Freedom to imagine and structure in which to develop what you’ve imagined.

It’s not news that my problem, er, challenge, is always structure. More often than not, my imagination runs me, a state in which I am blissfully content to remain, often to the detriment of any ideas that may arise from my imaginings. Follow through is the perennial bugaboo for writer Ru.

But this isn’t a post about self-recrimination. It’s about reaffirming my commitment to creativity, to my characters and ideas and wordsmithing skills. It’s about my commitment to me.

I love to write, so I am taking the next few days to reconnect with the written word. Remarkably, this involves actions other than writing itself. I’m also eager to take care of myself, my environment and my former house elf, but performing these small tasks outside the writing room will benefit my creative self by providing space in which to mull over and resolve plot issues.

“Music is made in the space between the notes.”

I’ve forgotten who said this, but it rings true for me and therefore must be true for any artistic endeavour, no matter what the medium. So off I go to make music. I can already hear the chorus …

A Tight Fit

Home from the holidays. Blerg. How does a spirit that’s flown free, and even spent a few days disembodied, cram itself back into the daily grind?

Not easily.

I’m all about attitude, and I know that I have the power to make every situation a positive one no matter how challenging the circumstances, but I could use another week of vacation. On the other hand, my resolve to change my work situation has not wavered. I even got a little astrological advice on SSI. At the café by the beach, I was sipping my chai and Ter was flipping through a local publication when she found the horoscope pictured above. I read mine, burst out laughing, and attracted the attention of the guy behind the counter, who sauntered over and observed that people don’t usually laugh at their horoscope. “We take those things seriously,” he said, faking a reproving frown.

“No kidding,” I replied cheerfully, handing over the magazine. “I’m a Virgo and having problems at work. Is this a hint, or what?”

A copy of the Chinese Horoscope for 2015 was lying on the table in the Stonehouse living room. On the morning of our departure, Ter was taking pictures and caught one of me perusing the book. I love these things. Without taking them too seriously, I find them interesting. I was born in 1961, the Year of the Ox. My element is metal. 2015 is the Year of the Goat, and if I had read the predictions before they became a semi-annual report, I might have stopped the world and gotten off for good. Changes abound. Frustrations lie ahead. I want to change my job but opportunities will be rare. Disruption is everywhere. The Goat is a mercurial critter, throwing things in the air just to see where the pieces land.

Gee, you think?

As with all things, the cycle will come full circle. The chaos that is life right now will find its balance and smooth out. The elevator at home will be installed and construction ended. Our downstairs neighbours will settle in after October 1. I’ll either find a new job or the one I have will change, whichever is in my best interest. Patience and perseverance are probably my best weapons at this point. They’re certainly less likely to land me in jail.

Paradise Found

How do I even begin to describe our Salt Spring retreat? First, I’ll say that my fifty-fourth birthday was absolutely painless, and blessed with a thunderstorm that seems to be an annual event given that the same thing occurred in 2014, when I was awakened from my birthday nap by a flicker of lightning and subsequent boom! This year, the sun showed its face at dawn, then promptly ducked behind a glowering thunderhead. The sky was a more ominous colour each time I looked at it, and then came the rain. Ter and I stood on our little patio with our Motos set to “video” and each recorded a full minute of solid rain. Nature at its finest. Beautiful, majestic and inspiring.

That pretty well describes our short visit to the Island, too. I spent three whole days disinclined to do much more than explore the local bookshops and wait for the deer to show up every evening. Though I’d brought my blog log, I wrote not a word. I’d brought a novel, yet read nothing more than the Stonehouse welcome brochure. I’d packed my pencils and sketchbook, and they remained packed the whole time. The cameras got a lot of use, though—Mr. Moto on the road to/from, and the Canon for day trips. If not for the pictures, I might have dreamed the whole experience.

There’s not much to report on the outside, beyond trying to relate the grandeur of living in a palatial home overlooking Ganges Harbour and the smaller Gulf Islands. Honestly, the Stonehouse looks like a movie set, but it never felt cold or aloof. We arrived to find our host, Michael, in the midst of prepping for afternoon tea. The scent of baking shortbread met us at the door, and a citrus almond torte awaited to accommodate my gluten sensitivity. While Ter dealt with the formalities, I walked into the vaulted living room, hauled my jaw up off the floor, and thought, Julian would own a place like this (and probably does).

I realize now that any trouble I had relaxing into it was all my own doing. Not having been there before, neither Ter nor I had any idea what to expect or how to behave. It felt naughty to sneak out and use the kettle, as if we were breaking the rules and trespassing beyond the threshold of our room. By the end of our stay, however, we had surrendered to the house’s embrace and were roaming both house and grounds with impunity. I felt truly liberated for the first time in maybe forever. The routine was simple: wake up, make tea, watch the sun, get dressed, eat breakfast, watch the rain, go exploring, return for tea, go for dinner, watch the deer, take a bath, have tea, go to bed. No TV, no radio. The house is rigged for ambient music in every room, so we had tuneage, but no media except for updating our FB pages courtesy of free WiFi. There is a TV in the living room, but we didn’t bother.

Our daily outings took us to the northern tip of the island one day, and across it on another day (the lateral trip took maybe a half hour). Best word to apply to Salt Spring is “funky”. The bookshops are great, though – I actually bought myself a birthday present by a local author (local in that he’s from Toronto but lives on SSI) at Salt Spring Books, and had hoped to score a specific rarity at Black Sheep Books; otherwise my highlight of our exploration was discovery of a little café at the north end of the island. We walked the beach, collected a couple of oyster shells, then dropped in for tea and a phenomenally good slice of chocolate-orange olive oil cake. Maybe half a dozen other folks were sprinkled around the room, but a conversation in progress involved a heated debate between two locals on the grammatical breakdown of a single sentence: “Sean is passionately in love with Katherine.” Ter had to drag me away before I threw in my two cents. I may lead a sheltered life, for nowhere else have I encountered an argument on where the verb belongs.

Now that we’ve done it once, I think we’ve found our home away from home. Gone are the days when Vancouver revived us; the energy there is waaaaaaaay too crazy. It’s a little nutty in Ganges village, too, but for a different reason: we drove SSI from tip to tail and never met a traffic light!

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

thank you for your wisdom, Dr. Wayne

It’s the last day of August and change is a-comin’. We’ll soon have new neighbours downstairs. My resumé is in the shop, being revamped in support of my intention to seek another job. Ter’s office has been moved into a new ministry. I’ll be 54 in a couple of days. And though not everyone knows it, the world lost a great light yesterday when Dr. Wayne Dyer passed on in his sleep (but that’s another post).

Gratitude for the return of my voodoo medicine man continues. His work on my bum ankle is bearing fruit, though it’s taking time and conscious effort on my part—not to mention a sharp reminder of just how much fun acupuncture can be when the points are activated. You know the jarring metallic ache of tin foil on a filling? Amplify it a thousand times and you have the latest response to an ankle point that I had no idea existed until recently. Aaaaaeeeeeiiii, did it HURT! After I regained consciousness, Dr. Voodoo jested about wearing a cup next time … only I didn’t laugh.

He also told me—because we chat between threats during a treatment—that the Chinese annual cycle actually has five seasons (no, hockey is not the fifth no matter what the Scotiabank commercials say): true fall, true winter, true spring, true summer, and late summer/early fall. He’s an October baby, so we share a mutual love of the segue from summer into autumn. I’ve always viewed this time of year as a time of renewal and new beginnings. Given all that’s happened during the past few months, I’m especially grateful for the morning mist and evening chill that bracket the welcome warmth of a lingering summer sun.

In celebration of this shift between the seasons, Ter and I are taking off to Saltspring Island tomorrow. It’s more of a retreat than we imagined it would be when we booked the accommodation, again because of all that’s occurred of late. Home construction, work headaches, wonky ankles, noise noise noise … yes, we’re looking forward to a few days of solitude and utter silence.

In my absence, however, the Rebellion continues, courtesy of a few brave souls who accepted my invitation to be guest bloggers. Ms. Nicole D. Myers, my personal Poetry Bean, takes the wheel on September 1, followed by my precious (and pre-scheduled) Ter on “the day”—September 2—and finished up with an offering from my immortal beloved, Julian Scott-Tyler, on September 3. I am truly blessed to have Nic and Ter in my life, to have their love and respect and admiration. Everything they give me is reflected back a hundredfold. Despite being a writer, I cannot express in words how deeply grateful I am for their friendship. Julian is a different animal entirely, but he is also the only character I know who comes without hesitation when I call. That speaks to an affection he hasn’t professed aloud, but which I certainly feel when I’m working with him.

And so, with change in the wind, to Saltspring I go.

With love,

Vacation Update

look closely - I think that's an otter

My bum ankle has made me reluctant to work it for any length of time, so my walking has been severely reduced of late. One of the things I want to do on vacation is return to the daily flânerie—that idle stroll with no particular destination in mind (though I inevitably wind up at Starbucks), sometimes with the camera and sometimes not, but always with the intention of enjoying the world around me.

Thank you, everyone who loves to garden. Some of the yards around here, drought conditions notwithstanding, are explosions of shape and colour and glorious scent.

I’ve also missed the beach. Granted, rising with the sun is easier at spring and fall equinox, so I haven’t seen a sunrise since March and likely won’t for another few weeks, but this morning, I went for my first “beach flânerie” since I can’t remember when.

Want to test a wonky ankle? Walk along a pebbly beach. Good thing I was wearing my Nikes; at least I gave the foot some stability, and it held up really well. I sat for a while with my eyes closed and listened to the tide come in. Surf striking shore sounds like the roar of a crowd and surf receding over pebbles sounds like applause. Just thought I’d mention it.

I walked all along the beach at Ross Bay, crossed the road and hiked back through the cemetery. Up ahead, I saw what looked like a big tawny dog and immediately scoped for its owner. What I saw was another critter, equally big, equally brown, soon joined by a third. I slowed right down, trying to look innocent and not smell like I wanted to be chased.

They turned out to be deer. Three young bucks, to be exact, and only one of them gave me the time of day as I passed among them. He looked me right in the eye, shrugged, and went back to grazing. His buddies didn’t even blink.

So now I’m home for the rest of the day. Ter is out on a foodie adventure and I have a date with Bill Maher for elevenses. This afternoon? More writing, maybe. I have a few blog posts in mind and all the time I need to get ’em done.

It’s nice to be back in the real world.

Start to Finish

It occurs to me on Day Two of my vacation that now is my chance to finish something. I have a trove of beginnings and no ends in sight. I also have a fortnight of loosely scheduled outings around which I have ample time to write. Momentum is more easily maintained without a day job to jam a stick in my spokes.

I recently had a good, albeit brief, talk with a co-worker who is also a writer. We had a lull while awaiting another’s arrival to a meeting, and I asked her how she was doing in her real life. She has three projects on the go, and a set of creative challenges as unique to her as mine are to me. For instance, it takes her roughly five chapters to get momentum and start enjoying the process. “I hate beginnings,” she sighed.

By contrast, I am the opposite. I love beginnings and tend to lose momentum at five chapters—assuming I make it that far in the first place. These days, I’m lucky to write five pages before a project stalls. Hence my collection of half-finished stories, each begun with great enthusiasm and inevitably abandoned when I reach the early-midway point. If I persevere, the end will reveal itself and I emerge triumphant. Perseverance, however, is harder to employ now that my job has more responsibility and takes more of my mental energy than it once did.

But, hey, I’m on vacation! Instead of starting something new, I have decided to finish something already started. I’ve picked the piece, reviewed what already exists, and am now wondering where it will take me before I reach the end—but reach the end I will. I am resolved.

Actually, one might say the same thing about life in general.

Smell the Roses

It’s the first day of vacation and I can’t slow down. My mind chatters like a runaway train: what to do first? Dust? Bake? Walk? I can almost hear it panting in my ear, a juiced-up puppy eager to bust loose.

Why is it that I feel pressed to do everything—even play—all at once? Granted, a jet moving at speed on an extended flight needs time to slow down once its wheels touch the tarmac. A sudden stop would flip it end over end, and I’d rather avoid a face-plant on my first day off.

Breathe, Ru.

PBS began a rerun of Wolf Hall, last week. Two episodes, back to back. I read the book by Hilary Mantel and wanted to see what Masterpiece made of it.

For most of the first episode, I was dying, the pace was so ponderous. It helped that I know the characters—told from the perspective of Thomas Cromwell, it’s the oft-told tale of his rise in the court of Henry VIII at the time of the King’s Great Matter. A darned good story worth retelling, else I may have packed it in at thirty minutes. I’m glad that I stayed with it, though, because after thirty-five minutes, it got interesting. By the end of the second episode, Ter and I were sold and looking forward to the next installment.

She guessed why: we had to slow down, ourselves. Once we did that, we could pay proper attention and the story came alive.

A friend once told us that he could teach anyone to juggle. “All you need is to stick with it for more than three minutes,” he said. Three minutes being the critical period required to catch and keep someone’s attention.

Are you kidding me? Three minutes? That’s all?

Apparently, it is. I am guilty of impatience if F***book takes too long to load, if more than two people are ahead of me in the checkout line, if I land at an intersection as the light turns red and I have to wait through the whole sequence.

I have two weeks to live life at my own speed. Right now, I’m on “world speed”. If I take three minutes to be still and silent, it’s almost guaranteed that my natural rhythm will kick in and suddenly I’ll believe what is true:

I have all the time I need.

I must use some of it to stop and smell the roses.

Blackout in Effect

A chilly spring morning, the mercury sitting at nine degrees with clouds and showers expected later today. Right now, it’s sunny … and I’m dawdling.

Ter dropped me in the village and I treated myself to a “real” Asian Mist—all milk despite my recent dairy-free status, a risk I’m willing to take with three days of vacation left. I can afford a flare if that’s my fate.

Re-work on the novel has been slow, due in part to my dawdling but mostly because I’m rewriting more than I’d imagined I would. And it’s daunting. So I let myself be distracted by F***book and Youtube (lots of Lep stuff there!) to the detriment of the project, and every day I become increasingly anxious that I’ll get nothing accomplished before heading back to the mill.

Well, not nothing. I’ve laundered the bedding and taken long walks. I’ve learned (happily) that Rick Savage is partial to Maseratis—my kind of man—and Joe Elliott likes a 4x4 because there’s loads of room in one. I’m brewing more kombucha and will have another batch of pfefferneuse in the freezer before Friday. Most importantly, I’ve learned how to answer my phone. But where actual writing is concerned, there’s not much to show for my working holiday.

So I’m going dark for a couple of days, to focus on the re-write and get some momentum going. I want to wake up thinking about the story instead of what witty remark I can post on F***book. I get than an author should be interactive with her audience, but she’s only an author if she’s writing offline and I’ll kick myself if this week passes without some significant progress on the novel. Part of me thinks I should blow it up and start from scratch, but three hundred pages in and I’m reluctant to dump any of it. Much of it is good. I’ve loaded the files into a separate folder and am rebuilding one chapter at a time, but the deeper I go, the more detours are taken from the original draft, so who knows? Maybe a complete bust up is the best thing!

Won’t know unless I quit dawdling and get down to it. Apricot tea and Sarah Brightman are in place and ready to go. Time for Ru to get disciplined.

*sigh*

Working Holiday

Spring in the pagan days was the beginning of a new year. Same applies to the workplace fiscal year, which starts on April Fool’s Day and don’t let the irony of that escape you. Perhaps because April begins the first annual quarter at work, it heralds a beginning for me. By the end of March, my creativity has been suppressed for almost three months and I’m dyin’. Fortunately (is it?), I have accumulated enough years of service to enable a full five day week of vacation without making a big dent in my annual allocation.

I’m taking such a break next week. I like to have a project in mind before I book vacation, usually something I can finish, like a short story that’s been in progress for months or something new, like The King’s Man, which was written on the fly over four days straight. This time out, I’m admitting defeat before I begin. I will not get this holiday’s project done before I have to go back to work … but I intend on getting my teeth into it nonetheless.

It’s the novel, also known as Reijo’s romance. Having committed to finishing the first draft before tackling something newer and shinier, I’ve been tapping away at it of late and have discovered some wondrous things about my mysterious heroine. I knew very little of her when I started. Four years later, she was still baffling. It’s true what they say – creativity feeds on itself. Only by focusing intently on Jannika’s part of the story have I discovered who she truly is. A general idea has evolved into a complex but very real young woman who is struggling to understand …

No spoilers allowed, especially as the series preceding this volume remains unpublished. Learning what I’ve learned about Nika, however, has given my writing holiday a greater purpose than simply not going to work. Now I have something to accomplish and I’m excited about it. Yup, rewriting a bunch of already written stuff has never looked so inviting. So, first thing on Monday morning, I’ll be camped at the Moka House with an Asian Mist and my scribbly journal, making helter-skelter notes to help with my mission of tightening up weaker scenes and revisiting the ones that work to ensure continuity. Once I’ve cleaned up the preliminaries, I should be able to write nonstop to a happy ending.

Me, write a happy ending? Hey, everything is possible.

Onward and Upward

The first week after holidays is always brutal, but last week was particularly so. My back went out, I paid two visits to the chiropractor, needed a sick day to recover, and finally pulled out of the gloom by Friday. I thought it was me. Turns out that the third week of January is the most depressing week of the calendar year.

Honest. Boy Sister told me so at coffee on Thursday—and it was a revelation.

Think about it. Christmas is over, but the bills are coming in the mail. The cheerful lights have been boxed up for next Christmas, abandoning us to the long, dark winter. New Year’s resolutions are proving too ambitious, so we start to drop them and feel like failures as a result. And I return to work with renewed understanding of why I was so stressed when I left and a plan to regain control of my destiny, but the stressors remain unchanged and my plan requires time to implement so I wind up immobilized—mentally, emotionally and physically.

Truly, I was ready to hang myself mid-week. The string of Philly games probably saved me, despite the dismal duo of shutouts they suffered on Wednesday/Thursday. Then, BS and I spent a few minutes together after coffee with my wee sister, and he told me that we were halfway through the most depressing week of the year.

I immediately felt better. Walking home from the limo stop that same night, I noticed a bunch of snowdrops blooming beneath a garden bush yet glowing with fruitcake lights—an odd juxtaposition that gave me more hope. Then I saw it happening in my own garden: new green buds swelling amid the teeny-tiny blossoms already born. Spring is on the way, I thought with relief. We’ve made it.

I say “we” because poor Ter, who had returned to work on January 5th, suffered more last week than she had the week previous. Yep, the third week sucked, but we’re out of it and on our way to better things. I am also forewarned.

In 2016, I intend to take the whole month off.

We’re … 25th?!

First day of vacation and I wake up wondering where I write to complain about the new format at Hockey Night in Canada. The Flames are in Vancouver tonight, but I dunno – the draw isn’t the same since Kesler’s become a Duck and I don’t remember when I last watched an early game because the broadcast team is intolerably annoying.

Then I look at the schedule and see that Philly is visiting the Leafs in Toronto. That changes everything!

A few days ago, the boys had clawed their way into 22^nd place in the league standings. Surely they’ve improved since then; they have lots of time to make the playoffs now that their losing trend is over.

Ha!

As of this morning, they’ve slid down into 25^th.

^%$&*$

I’m still tuning in at 4:00. I can’t miss a chance to see them, especially playing against the 10^th place Leafs. It is, after all, my first day of vacation and the Leafs are my father’s team. A hockey dinner of mince and tatties await, and however the game turns out, I’ll have seen my Flyers.

It remains to be seen if Dad stays in my will.

Last of the Summer Whine

Back to work tomorrow. I’m not ready. The pace, the paperwork, the people – I like my job and I like the people I work with, but during the past fortnight my life has settled into its own rhythm and it has been heavenly.

Though I’m trying to be reasonable about it, my inner two-year-old is stiff as a board and screaming. I took her on a long beach flânerie this morning, keeping as close to the water as possible to avoid the “pound pound pound, huff huff huff” of the ubiquitous joggers. Good that the tide was out; regrettable that the beach is rocky and tipped at an angle that makes walking more difficult. Every step required presence of mind, which I guess was a positive given that it kept me focused on the moment rather than dwelling on my resistance to the inevitable. When I got home, Ter reflected my feelings with her own, then suggested we enjoy our day rather than waste it fretting about tomorrow.

And tomorrow and tomorrow.

The Calista/Darius story got serious traction during the past couple of days. I’m at the two-thirds point where I finally foresee an ending though I’m yet unsure how it will look for Calista when I get there. I also took another look at the urban vampire series I’d started BL (before Lucius); the character sketch of Rob Browning was taken from it and now I’m contemplating how to rework the whole story because it won’t farkin’ let me go. Rob and Cassie are the star-crossed lovers and Darius is the bad guy. The universal plot portent, I know. I recently watched an interview with George RR Martin wherein he quoted Faulkner’s reminder that the human heart in all its conflict is what makes a story. Whether it is set in the wild west, outer space, 17^th century France or the Amazon jungle, the characters make it real … even if one is a vampire.

Fried Egg Friday

My all-time favourite sandwich has to be fried egg. From the time I was a kid, I’ve loved them: semi-runny yolks, whites crispy-fried in bacon fat, and thick mayo on good white bread. Bond Bond’s bakery here in Victoria makes the perfect white bread, the best I ever tasted, which elevated the relatively simple fried egg sangie to something celestial. In my glutenous glory days, my bi-weekly Friday off regularly featured a killer fried egg sandwich, sometimes with potato chips to poke in the yolk. Culinary heaven.

Alas, those days are gone. I tried it with GF bread and promptly abandoned the notion of creating a reasonable facsimile. Honestly, there are times when substitutes are just not acceptable. Gluten free bread is smaller, far more dense, a lot more fragile, and quite frankly not that great unless it’s toasted first. Toasted, it assumes a similarly crispy-crusty texture and stability that emulates “real” toast well enough to make it an occasional treat. What I can’t figure out, however, is why peanut butter just sits on the surface like a sticky puddle of goo rather than sinking into what tiny pores exist. If my complexion was as smooth as a slice of GF toast, I wouldn’t need makeup.

It took me more than a year to find a solution to the fried egg dilemma, a solution that existed long before I went gluten free though I didn’t see it at the time:

The next best thing to the perfect fried egg sandwich is a tiger’s eye – white bread with a hole cut in the center, fried in bacon fat with an egg cracked into the middle. Since GF bread toasts up so well, logic suggests that it will fry up equally so, yes?

Yes! Eureka, it’s not the monarch of all sandwiches, but it’ll do.

Today is my last day of solo vacation. I have a week remaining, but Ter is also on vacation starting tomorrow, and while we won’t be living in each other’s pockets the whole time, my run of the house will require, well, clothing. I got the first scene of the new story done yesterday, plan to write more today, plus catch two more episodes of Orphan Black … which may or may not have inspired the theme for said new story. It’s not about clones, but there is a theory out there that everyone has a double. If that’s so, says I, why not more than one, and do they all exist in this dimension?

Enquiring minds want to know … but can certainly wait until after lunch.

Guns and the F-Bomb

That was Rob Thurman’s answer when she was asked why she chose the urban fantasy genre for her novels. “Guns and the f-bomb,” she said. She loves guns, and UF allows for flagrant cursing which, if your hero is consistently targeted by the same monsters he’s been hired to kill, is a justifiable offense.

I don’t know much about guns—my nephew is my go-to guy when I need weapons advice—but I learned how to cuss in earnest while working the night shift at a local radio station twentysome years ago. That said, my desire to write within the genre has more to do with bending the rules than unleashing my inner foul-mouthed schnook. It’s a place where I can explore alternate realities and meet wondrous characters who aren’t human, yet who face similarly human dilemmas.

My plan today was to walk straight home from the village after Ter dropped me off, getting my flânerie in early and snapping a few pictures on the way. No Asian Mist, no journaling; just a walk in the sun while I sorted the next scene in Calista’s story.

Problem is and as usual, another story is surfacing. It’s one that I’ve glimpsed in hints like shadows in a dark corner but haven’t been able to see full-on. Some details have begun to present themselves, so I grabbed my scribbly journal and a fiver, then sat at Moka House to purge my head of the voices. (The drink in the pic is an apple pie carmello and, no, I won’t be doing one again. Too sweet.)

I got a bunch of stuff on paper, including the lyrics to a Durannie B-side called Secret Oktober because the song has long intrigued me and I think may have inspired some structure for this tale. I’ve got two characters, a premise, and a beginning—what comes afterward is still in the dark. As with most of my stories, it will develop as it’s written and that’s okay. I watched an interview with the creators of Orphan Black—you’d think a story about clones would have started as a story about clones, but it didn’t. One guy said to the other, “What if you saw your identical twin just before he stepped in front of a train?” Now they’re two seasons in and a third has been ordered … but I digress.

The opening scene of this latest is so vivid in my mind that it has to be written before I can do anything more with anyone else, so that’s my plan for the morning. Two more episodes of OB and some domestic stuff is on tap for the afternoon, and it’s already 9:30 so I’d better get it in gear.

Who has time for a day job???

Out of Office

“I am out of the office until Monday, September 8, 2014. Neither email nor voice mail is being monitored, so if you want me, you’re SOL …”

As of yesterday at 4:30, I am on vacation, semi-regularly monitoring my home email, and still running phone calls through the machine to avoid those pesky (why do we pay for an unlisted number?) telemarketers. My grand plan is to get very well acquainted with my recently acquired keyboard – the one with a working “B”. I started yet another story last weekend, this one about … well, let’s just say that all the work I did a decade ago seems to be relevant to stories I’m inspired to write now. “Black in Back” is likely to get some attention into the bargain; it certainly hasn’t fallen off the radar, but this new one is, as are most new things, shinier and therefore of more interest at present.

Speaking of which, I’ve got season two of Orphan Black scheduled into lunchtimes next week and the latest in the Leandros bromance to finish – I’m almost halfway through Downfall and it’s painful to tear myself away for things like work, food, and sleep. I was telling Ter this morning how volume nine has introduced some very cool points that tie in with our ongoing Philosophy Quest, things at which a lot of urban fantasy fans may roll their eyes, but with which I am completely on board. Multiple lives figure prominently, of course, and a character who has run the gamut with Cal and Niko throughout the series is sharing the narrative with our hero. I was initially lukewarm at the prospect of the world’s biggest braggart taking the wheel, but he’s turned out to be more sympathetic than I thought. And Cal … what can I say about Cal? I’m scared to death for him, more scared than he is – or claims to be; I’m fairly sure he’s more afraid than he dares let on, but his rage is absolutely on target.

If I haven’t said it a hundred times before, I—love—this—guy.

As for Orphan Black, wow, who knew? Apparently I did; I recall my ears pricking at trailers when the first season ran on Showcase, but I couldn’t find it on the schedule so let it fall by the wayside. I caught the first season on DVD last month; it’s gratifying when my instinct for unique and brilliantly-done TV/movies/books proves to be bang-on. I am now as deeply hooked by Sara Manning’s ongoing adventures as I am by Cal and Niko’s. Lemme tell you, with competition this fierce, the “real world” has got a lot of catching up to do.

Maybe without me in it for a couple of weeks, it’ll try harder to keep me engaged when I’m forced back into it.