If I didn’t have you
I meant to post this before Christmas, but the time got away from me, and I missed the chance. And then I forgot. But when I was chatting with my friend kc dyer today, she happened to mention Tim Minchin, and that reminded me. You may already be familiar with the Australian comic, but he’s brand new to me. I was introduced to him by another blogger’s link to his Christmas Song, “White Wine in the Sun”. It isn’t comical, but sweet and sentimental. I’m posting it here for those of you who can stomach a little Christmas sentiment in January. Once I’d seen that one, I went looking for other videos of his, and came across this one. It’s a love song to his wife, whom he apparently met when he was a teenager, and it gave us a good laugh at my house. Of course, that might have something to do with my husband and I having met when we were teenagers, too. Enjoy. Share...
The Routine Life
We’re working on housebreaking our puppy at the moment. It’s awfully reminiscent of potty training a toddler: the adults learn to adhere to a new routine to promote success in the toddler, whether she’s human or canine. The process has, of course, disrupted my usual routines and made me really aware of how ritualized my workdays usually are, filled with little habits that make the difference between a productive, happy day and a grumpy, useless one. No matter how varied our lives may be from day to day, I suspect most of us have certain rituals we adhere to, the absence of which upsets the balance of our days. What seems paradoxical about them is that rituals take up time, but somehow I get a lot more accomplished when I follow them than when I’m not able to for one reason or another. My own list of little routines and rituals is long and boring to anyone other than me, but here are a couple of examples of what I’m talking about: The very first thing I do when I come downstairs after dragging myself out of bed (where I hit snooze two times on the alarm) and brushing my teeth is check my email. It’s an integral part of my morning, and it happens before I let the dog out, before I make breakfast or lunch for my daughter or anything else. Down the stairs and to the computer. I don’t have time to respond then, but I can think about them while I’m going through the rest of the off-to-school routine and be set to reply when I sit down to get to work. And if there’s social email there from friends, that sets a better tone for the day, just as personal snail mail has such a different feeling from bills and junk mail. There are a handful of websites I have to check before/as I get started on work. I always shave my left leg first. Why? The letting-the-dog-out-every-hour routine has some benefit (please, let it have some benefit!), but what of the rest? Why are we such creatures of habit? Nothing would be different if I shaved my right leg first, and checking my email at 7:50 in the morning affects nothing more than my mood. And yet the world seems off-kilter when these things are disrupted. I know I’m not the only one, because I’ve heard too many people talk about their days being messed up by being out of their routines. What are some of yours? Share...
Back from Away
Well, not away, exactly, but I was offline over the holidays, and am playing catch up today. Apparently not everyone went offline for a few days when I did; there’s a lot of stuff out there to catch up on! Happy new year! I’m excited about 2010. Ten months from now marks my first Surrey International Writers’ Conference (www.siwc.ca) as the conference coordinator. As I’ve mentioned before, I started the job right after the 2009 conference ended in October, but the work really picks up now that the holidays are over. And I still have a book to finish. I’m not one for new year’s resolutions. I spent too many years in school as a student and as a teacher to really think of January as the beginning of the year. I always find myself thinking about new year sorts of things in September instead. But back-to-school after the holidays for my daughter means back-to-work for me, and I’m excited about getting on with both jobs. I’d love to have a second finished manuscript behind me by the time the conference rolls around. We’ll see! Thanks to all of you who stopped by here in 2009. Hope to see you back in 2010. Share...
Puppy update
Several people have asked me how the puppy’s doing, so here’s an update: In the four weeks we’ve had her, she’s just about doubled in size, from 5 ½ pounds to 9, and that was last week at the vet, so she’s probably closer to double now. Life is really difficult for Sadie, as she is now called. Here’s what a typical afternoon looks like (taken with my phone, so excuse the quality): She’s proving to be both a cuddly companion and a crazy, manic puppy, as suits her age. She’s figuring out some basic commands, but still doesn’t get the notion that using the great outdoors for a bathroom is the thing for dogs to do. She’ll happily run around outside for ages, long after we know she badly has to go, but she’ll hold it until she comes in and her feet hit the newspaper on the kitchen tiles. And yes, we’ve tried newspapers, even stinky, used ones, outside on the patio and on the lawn, but apparently that doesn’t feel the same as the paper does on the tiles, so she’s having none of that idea. We’ll get there eventually. Or so we keep telling ourselves. She has also carried on the great puppy tradition in our family of biting my husband’s ears. Every single puppy in our extended family has made a habit of trying to do that. They don’t bite anyone else’s ears, just his. He can think of ways he’d rather be singled out, but tradition must be upheld. Share...
Christmas Cards
I love Christmas cards. Okay, the truth is I love most of the cheesy, sentimental things about the holiday. But real mail, mail that doesn’t come from the cable company, the power company or the bank is a rare commodity these days, and it’s one I especially appreciate. Christmas cards don’t arrive with the frequency they once did. So many of us are in touch by email that we’ve let the tradition slide in the midst of a busy life. I’m guilty of that this year. I’ve sent a total of seven cards, all to relatives in the UK with whom I’m not in touch by email. The rest of my friends and family won’t be seeing my handwriting in their snail mail, I’m afraid. But some people still manage to send them, and to those organized souls, I say thank you. When a card does come in the mail, even if all it contains is just a simple “Merry Christmas” and a name, it makes me smile. I read a comment somewhere or other from someone who can’t stand getting cards like that, with just a line and a signature. I couldn’t disagree more. How many cards did you send this year? They take effort and precious time, and the fact that someone put the effort into sending me that card adds a bright spot to my day. Today, I got a card I really wasn’t expecting, and it makes me happy whenever I think about it. It came from Scotland. That much was clear from the handwriting on the envelope and, on closer inspection, from the postmark. But there was no return address. Inside, apart from the “Merry Christmas & Happy New Year” printed by the card company, it simply says “To” us, “Love and Best wishes from Rosie.” No last name, nothing further at all, even though Rosie is nearly a stranger to us. But that simple sentiment made my day. Two summers ago, my husband, daughter and I spent three weeks driving around Scotland. (The photo in my header is from that trip.) In part, the vacation was about chasing my family history, seeing the places where my mum had lived as a child, where my grandparents grew up, where my greats and great greats and beyond worked and lived and died. I loved every minute of the trip, and wasn’t at all ready to come home when it was over. One of the places we visited was the community where my two of my great grandfathers worked, one as a gardener at the local estate, the other as a shoemaker. Their houses were just down the road from one another. My great grandmother lived in one of those houses until she died in the early sixties. A local we encountered at the cemetery the day we were there told us that the woman living in that house now is lovely, and would be happy to meet us. So we took the chance and knocked on her door. She came out, and we explained who we were and what our connection was to the house. She was very nice to us. We were only in her yard for perhaps fifteen minutes, long enough to chat a little and take some photos, both of the house and of her in front of it. Her name is Rosie. Last Christmas, with the memories of our trip fresh in my mind, I made a big effort to send Christmas cards to the people we’d met along the way. I didn’t know Rosie’s last name, but for her I had not only a card, but copies of photos: two of the house as it was in my great grandparents’ day, and one of her with my daughter. I did some poking around online, finally emailing the principal of the local primary school just across the road from the house and explaining the situation in hopes she’d tell me Rosie’s last name. She did, and I sent off the card. I never heard back, and didn’t expect to, but I hoped the photos and card had given her that same bright spot in her day I always get from real mail. Today, I got the answer to that. A year after I sent that card, a year and a half after meeting her so briefly outside the home to which we both have a connection, that simple message arrived: “Love and best wishes from Rosie”. It’ll almost certainly arrive late, but I’m going to send out one more Christmas card for 2009 today. Happy Christmas, Rosie. Share...
How’s the weather?
Compuserve forum member and Surrey conference attendee Ev Bishop tackles the question of weather in fiction today at her blog, here. “Can you believe the rain” and conversations of that ilk may not have a place in fiction dialogue without a really compelling underlying reason for including them, but even without talking about it, weather affects our characters. Check out Ev’s post for some lovely weather images and thoughts on its application in your writing. Share...
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