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Standing up for Silver Sisters
Like most of the nation, I couldn’t help but be shocked and saddened when the now former CTV News Anchor Lisa LaFlamme showed up on Twitter this week to talk about how she’d been unceremoniously sacked from her job and then asked to keep quiet about it for several months. As the days wore on, and opinions were spouted and columns were penned, it started to become clear that sexism and ageism were likely at play here, and when it was admitted that her natural hair colour might have been part o the decision making process, women (and men) around the country… Read more…
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Settling back in
Five weeks. It’s been five weeks since I’ve returned to reality after a glorious six month break. It’s all a bit surreal, having left work behind and come back to it in the middle of a global pandemic. I’m sure there are people in my company who I only deal with on rare occasion who don’t even know I’ve been away. I had left my computer and work phone in my office, so I wouldn’t be tempted to “just check” on how things were going, so I got up bright and early on the first day and rather than lace… Read more…
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Back to reality
And just like that, it’s over. I’m feeling a little like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz today, except when click my heels together three times tomorrow morning, it will be back to work for me. Six months has flown by and I can hardly remember the fear – and excitement – that accompanied the beginning of my sabbatical at the beginning of March when I closed down my laptop and work phone and left them on my desk in the office. For the first few weeks, I eschewed alarm clocks, routine and the newspaper. I slept (a lot!), read… Read more…
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The comfort of traditions
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the comfort of traditions. We’re supposed to want change all the time. Continuous improvement, self-improvement, bigger, stronger, faster. Change is the only constant, they say. But sometimes the comfort of tradition is what we crave. Yesterday, I felt drawn to make crepes on Shrove Tuesday the way my Mum used to make when I was little. I haven’t made them in a long time, but it felt right this year to go back to that tradition. I’m out of practise though and they were not quite as thin as they should be. Maybe… Read more…
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Masks and (peri)menopause don’t mix
We’re getting closer to putting 2020 behind us. Good riddance to bad rubbish, as my mother might say. Life everyone else, I’m sick and tired of COVID-19. It has ruined plans, taken people from us, delayed travel, interrupted educations and disrupted the economy. Depending on where we live, it may have locked us in our houses, and wherever we live, it’s made us hoard toilet paper, hand sanitizer and wipes. We started baking bread, leaving flour and yeast I even heard that popcorn was in short supply as we hunkered down to see if we could watch all of Netflix. Really early on, before we… Read more…
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For the love of words
It’s no secret that I love words. As a kid, my parents nicknamed me “Chatty Kathy”, but I was just as much at ease with my pencil and notebook as I was chattering away at the dinner table. I think I get this naturally. I’ve written before about how my Grandfather helped me write an April Fool’s story for a friend, and my Mum writes a column for her local newspaper. As I grew older, my pencil was replaced first by a typewriter and then a computer, but for me wordplay has always been a means of telling stories –… Read more…
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A plan without a plan
A few days ago, a friend of mine posted a quote on FaceBook from Mandy Hale that struck me. “You don’t always need a plan,” the blogger turned author wrote. Sometimes you need to just breathe, trust, and see what happens.” It seems particularly appropriate this week, as I’ve got “Sabbatical 2.0” as I’m calling it, papered over at work. While it clearly wasn’t meant to happen in 2020, 2021 is my year – one way or another. At this time last year, I was almost vibrating with excitement. I had my plane ticket booked and my flat booked. I’d told old… Read more…
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Back to work(place)
I felt quite unbalanced last weekend. I was back home from a short getaway on the lake, and while the weather hadn’t cooperated, I did catch up on much lost sleep and made my way through several books. Just what the doctor ordered after six months of an insane pace at work, thanks to COVID-19. So it puzzled me that I was feeling “off”. My stomach was queasy and my head heart. It wasn’t until I started to get ready for bed, having readied a lunch for the next day and laid out my work clothes that it dawned on… Read more…
