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Aborted kilt mission
They say if you’re kind, then kindness will be returned to you. I guess it’s not always meant to happen in the moment. Not my guy, and not the right tartan, but you get the idea! A couple of weeks ago, southern Ontario got its first real taste of winter. While Toronto mostly got rain, heavy snow fell north of the city. Of course, that was the day that my fiancé and I were scheduled to drive to Barrie to pick up his new kilt. Yes, my redheaded man has decided he’s wearing a kilt to our wedding! The drive… Read more…
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Remembering lives lost too young
My Facebook feed this morning is still reminding me of the horrific shooting at École Poytechnique. It happened in my final year of university, just a couple of hours down the road from where I was at school in Ottawa, studying journalism. Thirty six years ago, 14 women the same age as me, were slain by a lone guman who believed women shouldn’t study at university. I won’t repeat his name. It affected me deeply and I remember so many conversations among my female classmates. I then went on to work in highly technical industries that employed hundreds of engineers… Read more…
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Teenage miscommunication, or how I ended up needing new frying pans!
I’m a communicator – a storyteller, if you will – and for my entire career I was privileged to work with words and language. One of my greatest joys was helping others through particularly thorny issues and ensuring there was no misunderstanding between the giver and the receiver of a message. It should follow, therefore, that clear communication followed me home. Not so much. On the homefront, my family sometimes resembled that proverbial shoemaker’s family, whose children are poorly shod. There are many tales we still laugh about over the dinner table, but the forest fire story takes the cake.… Read more…
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Buen Camino: Learning to trust my abilities!
“It’s mostly flat,” he said. He lied. In September, my fiancé led a group of ten, including me, along the last 100-ish kilometres of the Camino de Santiago in Spain. I had a lot going on in my life (retiring and getting my house ready to sell among them) and had taken him at his word that no “training” was required for this six-day adventure. Then, on one of the group Zoom calls, I started hearing about personal trainers and practise walks of 20 km and started to get a little nervous, even though I like a good walk. No… Read more…
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When plans go awry
I have a plan, I told anyone who would listen, when talking about the early days of my retirement. After 19 years of working for a series of companies, one bought by another, and rebrand after rebrand, my days in the communications/public relations/public affairs were over. I had it all worked out. I’d work part way through the summer, have a birthday and then hang up my hat – there’d still have half the summer to enjoy. August was for sleeping, recovering from years of overwork, whether due to the job demands or simply my own workaholic tendencies. September was… Read more…
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Reflecting on Skipping Stones’ launch
What a whirlwind of activity it’s been in the lead up to the launch of Skipping Stones, and the actual launch week itself! Six weeks ago I was signing off on cover art and interior layouts, buying ISBN numbers, finalizing pricing and uploading files to publishers. At the same time, I was frantically building my marketing plan and trying to entice potential readers to see Skipping Stones as a book they wanted to read this summer. It’s funny. When I published Another Glass of Tea back in 2022, I was equally excited and terrified. It was my first book. What if I wasn’t… Read more…
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Taking care of me
Recently, I was very selfish. I work too hard. Pretty much anyone who knows me will tell you that. And in recent years, with kids all flown, between the day job and my writing, I burn the midnight oil more than I’d like to admit. I know I need to fix my handed-down trait of “you only need to see the doctor if you’re sick.” I actually went to see my doctor late last summer, and as expected, after an extended absence, she sent me away with a raft of paperwork for all the usual things a woman “of a… Read more…
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Celebrate International Tea Day with me
I’ve got the kettle on becaues today is International Tea Day, celebrated by many tea-producing countries. Etymology and linguistics have always intrigued me. I like knowing where words come from, how they transformed into words in my language, and why some words are almost identical across many languages and cultures. I was fascinated, when I started learning about tea that around the world, what we call it can be traced back almost entirely to one thing – how it arrived in different countries, starting over 2,000 years ago. There are really only two variations. Both originate from Chinese, but one is more coastal,… Read more…
