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Bang!
I got rear ended a couple of weeks ago. I was in my car, on the way to work. Traffic was backed up on the bridge over the highway, so I was literally at a standstill, watching the red tail lights on the cars below. Then it happened. BANG! My reading glasses, which had remained perched on the top of my head from my morning perusal of the newspaper before I left the house, were suddenly on the floor, and my heart was racing a million miles an hour. It took more than a couple of deep breaths to… Read more…
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A new year, a fresh page – what to write?!
Yesterday, on the last day of 2019 – the decade, in fact – my Facebook feed was full of that quotation – you know, the one that talks about today being the first blank page of a new 365 page book, and that we should write a good one. A little googling tells me it’s from to singer/songwriter Brad Paisley, but it’s often unattributed. Regardless, thoughts about writing that book is a little more than metaphorical for me this year. This year, in fact, we get an extra day – 366, in total – not just the standard number. Canada’s…
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Let me tell you a secret
I’ve been keeping a secret. Actually, I haven’t been keeping it very well, because it’s been slowly leaking out among close family, friends and colleagues, like air from a balloon. But its getting closer, so its time to let it out before I burst. I’ve had some ideas bubbling in my mind for a few years. Bits and pieces of stories, settings and characters – all ideas for writing that I have wanted to flesh out. Slowly, bit by bit, they’ve been taking up more time in my head, but with work being pretty much all-encompassing for more years than I’d… Read more…
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The November blues
I hate November. For me, November is the cruellest month. The gloriously coloured leaves have fallen from the trees like tears. We’re all a bit hypoglycemic after tumbling from our Hallowe’en sugar high. The joy of one extra hour of sleep has been replaced by the depression that comes from realizing that darkness descends before work is done. Art Credit: @CBC It’s dark when I wake up, dark when I go to work – where I spend the day in my windowless office – and dark when I go home. November is the month where the year is made or lost. Where… Read more…
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Learning to walk alone
I’m a person of some faith – and many friends – so the “walk alone” in this title of this post isn’t meant metaphorically, but in this case more tangibly. I wrote about “women’s best friend” a few years ago on this blog. I’ve had the same canine companion since 2006. Since then, there have been endless long walks together. Along suburban streets, through local forests and ravines and across frozen lakes. We’ve scrambled down banks and jumped across streams more times than I can count. All you had to do was say, “walk” and she would come running. But my… Read more…
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Changing with the times
Yesterday, as I was driving home, I saw my first flock of starlings this fall. They were dancing across the sky, magically swooping and twirling as one single unit. I’ve always been astounded at how birds do that. I know that geese, flying in formation, take turns as leader, but a flock of birds doesn’t seem to have the same, as they morph into different shapes, and double back again and again, never leaving a single member behind. When I saw this, I was coming home from a choral rehearsal, and the similarities between the birds acting as one, and… Read more…
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Are you happy
I’m reading a book called The Happiness Curve. It posits that our 30s and 40s are the most unhappy decades of our lives – where stress lives and where things bottom out, so to speak – and that in our 50s, we regain a great deal of balance and happiness. I think there’s some truth to that, at least in my somewhat privileged Canadian experience. I have a circle of friends who are either approaching or are just past that magic half-century mark and we’re all seeing a bright shiny future coming closer and closer. We’ve been heard humming Pharrell Williams’ iconic song. Many of… Read more…
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Lighting up the sky
Beyond my garden fence last week, I was treated to an amazing light show each evening at dusk. I don’t remember seeing this many fireflies in many, many years. A few nights ago, the neighbour kids were out trying to catch them in jars, just as I did as a child. When I was in Costa Rica a couple of years ago, we experienced bioluminescence in the water. Motion caused it there, so the more we moved our kayak paddles at night, the more the phytoplankton glowed, forming magical patterns in the water. The science behind the light is bioluminescence. When… Read more…
