Category Archives: Fun

And . . . Go! The Big Project is live!

Posted in Fun, Life, Novels and Stories, Reading, Writing by

I can’t express how exciting this is. My big dream: To become a novelist. How is it happening? With your help and this kickstarter campaign. I’ll tell you what, I’m so freaking excited and giddy. So, I’ve drawn a cartoon to illustrate how much all of your support has been knocking me off my feet, and blowing my mind.

blow my mind

Today is day one of reaching that goal for publishing my novel, The Adventures of Claire Never-Ending. I won’t say again how much this means to me, because it’s said in the video on the kickstarter page, and I’ve written about it before in this blog.

What I will say is that there are two huge goals in this campaign:

1) Raise enough money to create this book.

2) Get this book into people’s hands. To imagine people sitting down with their cups of tea and reading my novel . . . to picture people meeting the Claires, having their favourites, resonating with the stories . . . it’s magical. And I can’t help but wonder in what ways will people connect with the ladies and gentlemen of this novel? There’s a ripple image used in one of the stories, and I’d like to apply it here. If one person reads the book, and passes it onto their friend, who passes it onto their friend – I just wonder how far the story of the Claires could go? It’s a dream and in this next month we’ll see what happens.

So yes – the campaign is live, please do pledge, pick up a copy and share.

Also, not to distract you but I’ve got to share this too: Apt613 has written a piece on my writing/project, and I’m so totally thrilled with it. If you’d like to read it, click here and check it out.

Why I ALWAYS dance at weddings

Posted in After treatment, Bumpboobs, Fun, Life by

The suitcase has been half unpacked and my purple cocktail dress is draped across the growing pile of clothes on the sofa in our bedroom (I’ve got some beige heels somewhere, but I couldn’t’ tell you where they’ve gone). I have a popped blister on my left foot, and my hair is an unwashed bird’s nest from all that hairspray I tried to use that ultimately did nothing.

This is going to be a very quick post because of all the things that need doing, including lunch being made.

Here is what I want to say.

This past weekend we attended a wedding of a friend and his beautiful wife. These weddings amoungst my friends are fantastic. They are first class celebrations of love, connections and reuniting. I’m so glad to be part of that happiness.

Anyhow, you know how it goes at weddings. The bride and groom have their first dance, and not long after the dance floor becomes deserted as people attend to the bar in order to work up ‘courage’. And that’s all fair enough.

But I have an MRI on Tuesday.

It’s weird to say that. And maybe you don’t see the connection? I have a MRI on Tuesday to make sure there’s no cancer in my body.

And this past Saturday evening, there was an empty dance floor. Do you see the connection yet?

When it comes to weddings, along with all the lovely conversation, dresses, and food – I choose to DANCE. I need to DANCE. Zsolt and I must DANCE.

It’s a strange thing to say, and quite possibly in my head, but I feel like there’s this very thin veil between me and my old high-school friends. It has a whole lot to do with having had cancer, fighting cancer, worrying over cancer.  You know?

When I dance with my husband at weddings, I’m doing it (despite the quality of the music) because I’m alive and capable of moving, because I’m here now and tomorrow holds no promises, and because it makes me so happy to dance and be goofy.

Actually, thinking about this – I’m underestimating the experiences of many of my friends. I know some of them have faced things I’m yet to encounter, and felt things that are just as deeply impacting. Love, loss, life, distance, heart-break, illness, fatigue, divorce, birth, death  . . . Jesus! I just realized that as a group, we’ve seen a lot.

So maybe everyone does get it – and that’s why, by the end of the night, everyone is dancing.

Anyhow, I’ve got to go and make this soup. But all that to say that when it comes to wedding, I’ve got to dance. One the light side it makes me laugh, and looking deeper, it makes me feel alive.

Okay, time for lunch. And maybe a shower to follow!

A Game of Association

Posted in Blogging and Other Fun, Fun, Life, Novels and Stories, Writing by

So what’s new? What’s what? What’s up?

Life has been comprised of little events over these past couple weeks. Little things and little events. The other night before falling asleep I was laying in bed with my husband, Zsolt, and I think we were right on the cusp of dreamland. Something happened, and I cannot remember what it was. Maybe we turned over at the same time, or sighed at the same time, or patted one another’s back or belly. All I can remember is thinking, ‘I have to write about this, it would make a lovely post.’

🙂

So lovely, and apparently, so forgettable. Taken away by sleep.

Little things have been happening. There was a wasp nest on the back porch; Zsolt an I constructed a plan to knock the thing down with an Ikea curtain rod. We were going to wait until dusk, when the bees were also sleepy, then he was going to poke the nest, drops the curtain rod, and run into the apartment (not a far run, it’s about 1 foot to the screen door). To be honest, I was looking forward to the adventure, but then the handyman who is working on the apartment came by and did it before we could tackle the situation. That’s probably for the best, but I feel just a little like the story has been stolen away.  So again, a lost opportunity for narrative fun.

But speaking of the back porch, since you’ve now read to the fifth paragraph in this blog post, I’ve got myself a little herb garden growing out there. Two basil plants, two mint plants, one lavender plant, one Thai basil plant, one Italian parsley and one clump of chives cut from the garden at my parent’s house. They are all planted in a box (which is very important for non-dying reasons you’ll read below) that I’ve arranged, and received daylight on and off as the sun arches across the sky.

So the other day, speaking of gardening, we received a letter in the mail from the city of Ottawa. This letter advised us not to grow carrots, or really anything edible in the ground. Why? Because the land on which we are now living used to be a garbage dump and the food could poison us! And down the street, on this very same road, there is a house that was put up for sale at an ambitious price tag of $400,000. Can you imagine anyone paying $400,000 to live on an old garbage dump where you can’t even grow carrots? But the house, much like my apartment, is beautiful.

In continuation of my publishing quest, I attended an event put on by the local Ottawa Romance Writers’ Association. These ladies know their stuff. The most interesting aspect of the talk revolved around self-publishing. It seems to me that with all the stuff I’ve already written, why the heck not find it some professionally designed covers and list them on Amazon as ebooks? They’ll be sitting there doing the exact same thing they are doing now on my hard drive . . . and I actually really like the stories. My mom always says I ought to write my stories like I write my blog, which is an opinion that makes sense – though nevertheless I do love my third person woman-in-flux narratives. : )

Last night I was at a good friend’s house for dinner. We ate BBQ beer-can chicken and spicy pork with grilled veggies (and wine, but I don’t really drink wine). It was entirely delicious. Anyhow, as the evening went on and no one left the table – which Zsolt calls, “preserving the harmony of the table” – the conversation somehow rolled around to water, or more specifically ponds and lakes.

Did you know that people (myself included) are entirely weird about water? Now you’d think that ducks, and fish, and otters, and turtles would be the ones who are freaked out by bodies of water – because statistically I think they have a wayyyyyy higher chance of being eaten while swimming than humans. But nevertheless, as we (the dinner party) chatted about water, it was soon revealed that we all have strange hydrophobic thought patterns.

I blame my father. That’s you, Tony. When I was a kid, he had me watch the movie JAWS because it was apparently the best movie of all time and everyone – even children – should check it out. : ) To this day, I have to fight back the image of a shark being in the pool with me every time I go swimming. And then extend that to lakes and oceans. It hasn’t stopped me from swimming in the Mediterranean, and canoeing in the lake, and doing laps in a pool . . . but it’s there in my mind nevertheless, and it makes me uncomfortable.

Another fellow said that he associates lady ghosts hanging above the water. And then another fellow said he always wonders how many dead bodies are in cement boots at the bottom. Eugh!

Zsolt, as usual, was not weird. He doesn’t have any qualms with water, lakes, oceans or ponds.

And since I’m now at the end of this post, several paragraphs later, I will ask you: does water freak you out? And if so, what exactly about water freaks you out? I’m guessing at least a few people have stories to share. It cannot be a coincidence that three out of four people at that dinner table have weird associations.

What’s your weird association?

P.S.

OH! Another bizarre association concept. One fellow asked the table, what do you think about when I say “best of both worlds?” Here are the answers:

The Star Trek Episode where Picard becomes Borg

Being a King and eating loads of cake

Having the best from a variety of options

Pulling from Europe and the United States

Fascinating or FASCINATING? What do you think of with the expression?