I accidentally left my sweater at the Royal Bank.
As I live out of town a bit, I decided to call and get the receptionist to hold on to it until the next day, when I would return to town and pick it up.
Houston phone numbers begin with 845- as does the Royal Bank's, but when I dialed 845-2218, I got transferred to somewhere in Winnipeg!
After two rings, an automated voice thanked me for phoning and told me how wonderful this automated service was because now I could reach someone 24/7, blah, blah, blah.
Had I reached someone yet? Not yet. The "voice" gave me a list of options, none of which included lost sweaters. I did press zero for operator. I was then told to make another choice, between personal accounts and business or agricultural account information. I wondered if I should get my client card ready as was suggested. Then the surprise. I was told this call would be recorded so now there would be proof of my senility- something a husband just waiting to commit his wife would want to hear about. Could this recording stand up in court?
This was silly. It's a 7 minute drive to the bank and I had already wasted that, plus someone had just recorded two swear words that slipped from my mouth. I hung the phone up and jumped into my car, ready to return to the bank. That's when I found my sweater behind the passenger seat.
As I returned to the house I thought, hey, I have a good friend in Winnipeg. I haven't heard from her for awhile. Now that I can phone for free, I picked up the receiver and dialed 845-2218. Eventually a real person does come on the line, and believe-it-or-not, he knew Mary Jean Radley! She was about to have her third son and he would call and let her know I was asking about her.
I phone the bank often, just to see how the weather is in Winnipeg and to check up on that new baby of Mary Jean's. Who knows, if it gets nice enough, I may go for a visit?
But until then, I'll keep checking with my local bank.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
New Mothers Day Tradition
My sister in Ontario has started a new Mothers Day tradition. We lost our mother to pancreatic cancer in April, 2009. A month later, our first Mothers Day without her, as you can imagine, was extremely grievous for us both.
But this year, my sister and three girlfriends who have also lost their mothers decided to hold a "Lunch With Mom" afternoon. My sister hosted the event and draped a table with our mother's market-place plates and dishes. Cut flowers, our mothers favourite, scented the air. They served their mother's pickles and recipes from their cookbooks. Adorned in their Mom's jewelry, they placed photos of their dearly departed on the side board before spending the next hours swapping favourite stories of life between mothers and daughters. There was laughter and tears. A sense of closeness through loss but at the same time, a joy for turning something so sad into something wonderful. Something to repeat again next year.
For me, I celebrated this year with my mother-in-law and her family. It's not the same, but it helps.
There will come a day when my sister's new tradition will be for me as well. Maybe the two of us will even spend it together?
Whatever you end up doing, have a Happy Mothers Day everyone.
But this year, my sister and three girlfriends who have also lost their mothers decided to hold a "Lunch With Mom" afternoon. My sister hosted the event and draped a table with our mother's market-place plates and dishes. Cut flowers, our mothers favourite, scented the air. They served their mother's pickles and recipes from their cookbooks. Adorned in their Mom's jewelry, they placed photos of their dearly departed on the side board before spending the next hours swapping favourite stories of life between mothers and daughters. There was laughter and tears. A sense of closeness through loss but at the same time, a joy for turning something so sad into something wonderful. Something to repeat again next year.
For me, I celebrated this year with my mother-in-law and her family. It's not the same, but it helps.
There will come a day when my sister's new tradition will be for me as well. Maybe the two of us will even spend it together?
Whatever you end up doing, have a Happy Mothers Day everyone.
Mother's Day Memories
I'm going to tell you the whole truth, as I know it, so that you can understand the power of my Mother's last gift to me.
While very preganant with her second child, my mother took her one-year-old son and left my father, moving from New Brunswick back to her parent's place in Ontario. I was born despite a raging snowstorm to an anxious, bewildered young woman whose husband had wronged her. She had no idea what she was going to do.
I would say that the wedge between us started from day one. I never felt connected or close to my mother and cannot remember a day I did not cause her grief. Not until I left home at age 17. That's when the letters between us began.
We continued writing and getting to know each other as women and mothers. She came west to visit, we went east to visit. The time spent together lengthened and the more we talked, the more I saw what an amazing person Dorothy Saunders really was. So different from me. Two unlike signs that grated each other's psyche and never had a chance of becoming peas in a pod. But we became true friends.
The self berating began at the first phone call. Pancreatic cancer. My Mother had four months to live. But Mom...I'm just getting to know you. I need more time. How could this happen? What had I been thinking?We were going to have a big party for your 75th birthday. That's only two more years.
Like my siblings, I raced to my mother's side, but the self whipping continued. I should have brought her out to visit us more. I should have phoned her everyday. I should have been a better daughter. I was a schmuck. I was a bottom feeder. This woman had given me life and I had given her nothing but back talk and attitude.
When my brother handed me the grocery bag filled with every card, every letter and every picture I had sent to my mother over the past 30 years, I was astounded.
"You saved all this?" She had. It was all there. And every letter told her how much I loved her. How thankful I was for her in my life. What she had given me was irrefutable proof that I had been a good daughter. That I had respeceted her and shown her my love.
So with this treasure in hand, I now face Mother's Day with a better grip on what matters most. That is celebrating the memory of my mother. Never minding how it started, but what it became and continued on to the end.
Because it was the most beautiful gift at such a crippling, sensitive time, I have started grocery bags of memories for my own children.
While very preganant with her second child, my mother took her one-year-old son and left my father, moving from New Brunswick back to her parent's place in Ontario. I was born despite a raging snowstorm to an anxious, bewildered young woman whose husband had wronged her. She had no idea what she was going to do.
I would say that the wedge between us started from day one. I never felt connected or close to my mother and cannot remember a day I did not cause her grief. Not until I left home at age 17. That's when the letters between us began.
We continued writing and getting to know each other as women and mothers. She came west to visit, we went east to visit. The time spent together lengthened and the more we talked, the more I saw what an amazing person Dorothy Saunders really was. So different from me. Two unlike signs that grated each other's psyche and never had a chance of becoming peas in a pod. But we became true friends.
The self berating began at the first phone call. Pancreatic cancer. My Mother had four months to live. But Mom...I'm just getting to know you. I need more time. How could this happen? What had I been thinking?We were going to have a big party for your 75th birthday. That's only two more years.
Like my siblings, I raced to my mother's side, but the self whipping continued. I should have brought her out to visit us more. I should have phoned her everyday. I should have been a better daughter. I was a schmuck. I was a bottom feeder. This woman had given me life and I had given her nothing but back talk and attitude.
When my brother handed me the grocery bag filled with every card, every letter and every picture I had sent to my mother over the past 30 years, I was astounded.
"You saved all this?" She had. It was all there. And every letter told her how much I loved her. How thankful I was for her in my life. What she had given me was irrefutable proof that I had been a good daughter. That I had respeceted her and shown her my love.
So with this treasure in hand, I now face Mother's Day with a better grip on what matters most. That is celebrating the memory of my mother. Never minding how it started, but what it became and continued on to the end.
Because it was the most beautiful gift at such a crippling, sensitive time, I have started grocery bags of memories for my own children.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Blow Me Away
I'm an outdoors person. I bike and hike, fish and ski and if locked inside for too long, I begin to breathe heavy (which contrary to my husband's belief does NOT mean I'm "in the mood"!) Being a writer, I make money out of what I'm fond of calling "thin air," meaning I could do what I do anywhere in the world, but I choose to live here, in an outdoor person's paradise.
So, as a diehard enthusiast that once wished to grow old(er) here, I feel sorrow that my resolve is beginning to waver. I watch the receeding end of the vans moving our neighbors south and for the first time I feel envy and not anger at their mutiny. Can I come visit? Often?
It isn't merely that the annual summer has dwindled to two weeks. The fact that only very healthy fish can survive in our lakes without a wet suit is bearable, too. I don't mind that every second year becomes a new record in snowfall or precipitation. Or flooding. Or that the price of fuel and fresh produce is ridiculous.
No, for me it's this wind. I usually love wind. But lately I wish it had more of a physical form so I could swat at it. I am a self-professed wind-whipped whiner that wants to know, "Is the sky falling?" or are the rumours true? Have all the clear-cuts around here caused the non-stop racket coming from my wind chimes? Is it really the shrinking ozone to blame, because if it is, I would like to offer to go door-to-door demanding people stop usiong aerosols.
Or maybe this is another ice age, like the one cheery fellow felt was a possibility?
All I know is I am freezing even when the sun is out, that I've had to replace three Canadian flags in 8 months and the future that I had tied to this ground beneath my feet is slowly beginning to blow away.
So, as a diehard enthusiast that once wished to grow old(er) here, I feel sorrow that my resolve is beginning to waver. I watch the receeding end of the vans moving our neighbors south and for the first time I feel envy and not anger at their mutiny. Can I come visit? Often?
It isn't merely that the annual summer has dwindled to two weeks. The fact that only very healthy fish can survive in our lakes without a wet suit is bearable, too. I don't mind that every second year becomes a new record in snowfall or precipitation. Or flooding. Or that the price of fuel and fresh produce is ridiculous.
No, for me it's this wind. I usually love wind. But lately I wish it had more of a physical form so I could swat at it. I am a self-professed wind-whipped whiner that wants to know, "Is the sky falling?" or are the rumours true? Have all the clear-cuts around here caused the non-stop racket coming from my wind chimes? Is it really the shrinking ozone to blame, because if it is, I would like to offer to go door-to-door demanding people stop usiong aerosols.
Or maybe this is another ice age, like the one cheery fellow felt was a possibility?
All I know is I am freezing even when the sun is out, that I've had to replace three Canadian flags in 8 months and the future that I had tied to this ground beneath my feet is slowly beginning to blow away.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Body Transplant, Please
I'm not only aging, but it appears I am out of "the know."
"What?" my friend squealed as she rubbed her thumb viciously across the frown lines between my eyes. "You've never heard of Botox before? Oh, girl, you are so overdue!"
Since that day, whenever I look in the mirror, all that looks back at me are those deep furrows.
I frown at them, making them worse and soon find myself running to my computer to look up the word "botox." It's found under plastic surgery, along with a procedure called forehead lifts where they make an incision across the top of your head and literally pull your face back up into place. There is "dermabrasion" where a high speed sander grinds the wrinkles from your skin. Eyelid surgery removes excess bags. "That last one's for me," says another friend. "Lyposuction, I've had that on my neck!" says another. Where have I been while all this has beeen going on around me? And Botox? "Nothing to it," two of my buddies chide. "A needle goes in between your eyes to paralyze the muscle. Do this often enough and you'll never frown again!"
What's the fun in that, I wonder? How will I be able to threaten my kids with just the slide of an eyebrow- or show my husband it's time to quit chatting up that long, legged bimbo with her hand on his thigh NOW just by making my eyebrows touch in the middle?
I look my aging face over. She's right, though, the frown lines are deep enough to grow seeds in and the crow's feet look more like ostrich tracks. There's also a round mark on my forehead that the more I stare at, the uglier it becomes. I could have that lasered off, I'm told. Probably wouldn't cost as much as having those breasts readjusted or getting my ears pinned back.
My arguement is if I fix one thing,the other parts are going to look out of whack. I'll have a baby's bum forehead and a turkey neck. Besides, where do you start and where do you end?
I think I'll wait. And when I hit 80, I'll do a complete overhaul. "New body, please."
Body transplants. I'm sure they're the next thing. I should be able to afford one by then if I go without the Botox and face grinding now.
"What?" my friend squealed as she rubbed her thumb viciously across the frown lines between my eyes. "You've never heard of Botox before? Oh, girl, you are so overdue!"
Since that day, whenever I look in the mirror, all that looks back at me are those deep furrows.
I frown at them, making them worse and soon find myself running to my computer to look up the word "botox." It's found under plastic surgery, along with a procedure called forehead lifts where they make an incision across the top of your head and literally pull your face back up into place. There is "dermabrasion" where a high speed sander grinds the wrinkles from your skin. Eyelid surgery removes excess bags. "That last one's for me," says another friend. "Lyposuction, I've had that on my neck!" says another. Where have I been while all this has beeen going on around me? And Botox? "Nothing to it," two of my buddies chide. "A needle goes in between your eyes to paralyze the muscle. Do this often enough and you'll never frown again!"
What's the fun in that, I wonder? How will I be able to threaten my kids with just the slide of an eyebrow- or show my husband it's time to quit chatting up that long, legged bimbo with her hand on his thigh NOW just by making my eyebrows touch in the middle?
I look my aging face over. She's right, though, the frown lines are deep enough to grow seeds in and the crow's feet look more like ostrich tracks. There's also a round mark on my forehead that the more I stare at, the uglier it becomes. I could have that lasered off, I'm told. Probably wouldn't cost as much as having those breasts readjusted or getting my ears pinned back.
My arguement is if I fix one thing,the other parts are going to look out of whack. I'll have a baby's bum forehead and a turkey neck. Besides, where do you start and where do you end?
I think I'll wait. And when I hit 80, I'll do a complete overhaul. "New body, please."
Body transplants. I'm sure they're the next thing. I should be able to afford one by then if I go without the Botox and face grinding now.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Pre-Immortilization
It's late and I'm almost finished celebrating! This evening I feel confident enough of both my books to quit editing for awhile. Don't get me wrong. The picking will continue until the day they're printed. I know because I've done that to everything I've ever had published, both fiction and non. And after it's immortalized on a page, I berate myself every time I read it for not saying "this" instead of "that." That's why it's so important to get it right. Who knows who might be one day reading my work? Maybe an overly literate grand kid that I will have embarrassed or possibly another writer who's work I admire. It would be like meeting them with a ring of ketchup around my mouth.
Next on the list is writing the synopsis and book jacket blurb. I have already done that for the first book, Not Just One, so judging by that, it won't be an arduous task. Possibly a few days. It's a fun part of the job, digging through all the best lines and then tightening them even tighter to make short, action and visually packed, sentences. Like tuning a guitar string, you can hear the words, eeeeEEEEE until they sound like the sentence is going to snap right in your face. That's when you know you have that line at the best it can be.
You do know you can't judge a blog by it's cover, though, right? Who has time to edit their blogs? This is merely the overflow outlet which I use as a nightcap to settle me back down before bed. No murder here. No bad guys and heroines struggling their way through pages of onslaughts. Just words. Nice words. Like, have a Goodnight.
Next on the list is writing the synopsis and book jacket blurb. I have already done that for the first book, Not Just One, so judging by that, it won't be an arduous task. Possibly a few days. It's a fun part of the job, digging through all the best lines and then tightening them even tighter to make short, action and visually packed, sentences. Like tuning a guitar string, you can hear the words, eeeeEEEEE until they sound like the sentence is going to snap right in your face. That's when you know you have that line at the best it can be.
You do know you can't judge a blog by it's cover, though, right? Who has time to edit their blogs? This is merely the overflow outlet which I use as a nightcap to settle me back down before bed. No murder here. No bad guys and heroines struggling their way through pages of onslaughts. Just words. Nice words. Like, have a Goodnight.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
6 Hours of Slash and Slice
I'm exhausted. For six hours I've been slashing and slicing and ripping and shredding. Sounds like a horror show but it's only another editing session. You write a thousand words and concentrate that into six hundred quality ones.
The best part of writing though is being able to play God. Call me weird, but it's fun to kill someone then change my mind and edit them back to life again. Simply because they were too nice to die. Wouldn't it be great if that worked for real? If we could edit people back to life?Well, maybe not. Then everyone would still be here and the world would get pretty overcrowded. We could just bring all the great ones back. Like Mother Teresa, Diana, John Lennon, Martin Luther King, my Mom.
Sigh.
Well break time is over and I'm pleased to announce edit number three is almost over. I should be starting the fourth by Monday. With any hope, it should only take five before its ready for the conference.
Off with the heads, I go!
The best part of writing though is being able to play God. Call me weird, but it's fun to kill someone then change my mind and edit them back to life again. Simply because they were too nice to die. Wouldn't it be great if that worked for real? If we could edit people back to life?Well, maybe not. Then everyone would still be here and the world would get pretty overcrowded. We could just bring all the great ones back. Like Mother Teresa, Diana, John Lennon, Martin Luther King, my Mom.
Sigh.
Well break time is over and I'm pleased to announce edit number three is almost over. I should be starting the fourth by Monday. With any hope, it should only take five before its ready for the conference.
Off with the heads, I go!
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