Category Archives: Blogging and Other Fun

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?

A Letter to My Fourteen Year Old Self

Posted in Blogging and Other Fun, Bumpboobs, Life, Love, Writing by

(Starting Note: I’m listening to an Abba Album on repeat, swaying to Fernando!)

A while back – before the holiday spin overtook my brain with turkey, mashed potatoes and bottles of champagne, I received an interesting email from Kristi Harrison, founder of the “Life Changes Foundation” which is raising awareness after the diagnosis of Kristi’s friend, Katie Morris Kyser, who was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Krisiti’s concept of Life Changes is really interesting, particularly since ‘new normal’ and losing the person we were before diagnosis is often discussed online. The fact is, life changes – we cannot go back and for me, before engaging in Kristi’s project, ‘back there’ was a place of innocence lost and reality biting very hard. Okay, yes, I have SO MANY wonderful memories before being diagnosed that I cherish (for instance, the ‘how we met’ story with my husband that is excessively romantic and entirely over-shared). But if I cling to who I was before diagnosis, it makes me sad about who I became immediately after. I guess that’s because the experience held was more physically and emotionally painful than anything I’d ever dealt with in my life. And once felt you can’t go back, so I prefer to look forward and punch things out occasionally.

But then Kristi challenged me with the project she’s leading that focuses on writing letters to your 14-year-old self. She asked if I would get involved by writing a letter. (Hello, write about myself? Challenge accepted!)

The adventure of highschool. I'm bottom right.

The adventure of high school. I’m bottom right.

What surprised me in writing the letter is that I still love the girl who was once 14. She doesn’t make me sad, even though her style choices are *ahem* regrettable. In fact, she makes me look forward to having a daughter. Isn’t that weird?  She doesn’t fill me with loss or a mourning sensation . . . I’m simply proud of her and know she’ll be okay despite anything and everything.  And if she’ll be okay, then maybe I’ll be okay too.

Perhaps ‘new normal’ is really just a point (a point that happens and again and again and again) on the continuum of life? And we’ll all be okay, despite whatever crap we encounter – even death. I have to have faith that whatever happens after is just what is meant to be, we’ll go back where we came from, and be whatever we were before. AH! I’m going too deep. No excessive philosophizing will be tolerated on a blog entitled “BumpyBOOBS”

(Okay, I turned off the Abba because those previous 2 paragraphs were deep, and I can’t do deep with Abba. However, I’m now turning it back on.)

So, if you are interesting in joining Kristi’s project, you can find her Facebook page right here: https://www.facebook.com/LifeChangesFoundation

Get in touch. See what happens. 🙂

And now the moment you’ve totally been waiting for (righhhht), the letter to my 14 year old self. Enjoy!

Click to read the letter at the Life Changes Foundation page! I laughed like an idiot while writing this.

Shesconnected Toronto 2012

Posted in Blogging and Other Fun, Bumpboobs, Life, Writing by

Okay I’m just a little bit giddy this evening. It may be due to having been awake since 4.30 AM, but that normally results in my being more ‘zombie like’ rather than ‘totally stoked’.

This weekend I have the privilege of speaking on the Facing Cancer Together panel at the Shesconnected Toronto conference. This place is like my networking dream come true. Firstly it’s full of interesting and smart women. Secondly everyone GETS IT:  sometimes I go to local networking events in Ottawa, which are actually really excellent except that no one understands what social media is about. Blogs, twitter, facebook (and a million others) leave people stumped. So okay, that’s fine as in there’s no competition for social media in that group of successful women, but I do appreciate companies that appreciate what a blogger or social media person can do.  (I’m not going to go into what we can do right now, but it’s largely about relationship building and sharing stories – bringing that all back to the brand)

Anyhow. The train pulls in this morning around 10 AM after a four and a half hour ride from Ottawa. I attempted several sleeping poses on the train including the pretzel, the slouch, the sit back, the fist stack and your classic window lean. (Maybe I slept 20 minutes.) I boot it to the hotel with my luggage, drop my stuff, splash my face – and BAM! I’m down at the conference before you can say “YippiDoDah” six times backwards.

This conference is a mix of brands that love the social media or want to develop themselves in that line of marketing (blogging, tweeting, etc.ing) and bloggers who generally have an established, interactive and impressive audience.

[Bumpyboobs’ side note: my audience may not be huge, but you are all so very impressive – which is why I love to follow your stories too; you get me laughing, thinking and enjoying the good company.]

There are also new bloggers, and companies only just getting started with the social media. Basically it’s about learning and connecting with the women and the brands.

Right – five “HadOdIppiys” later and I’m at the FacingCancer.ca booth greeting the awesome ladies of the Fc.ca, Look Good Feel Better and the CCTFA community. Everyone is in a perfectly lovely and happy mood, and there is no stress whatsoever about completely lost signage that is somewhere in Toronto with the delivery guy who failed to deliver. None whatsoever. 😉 (But it did show up eventually, and oh my goodness our booth looks beautiful!)

I decide not to be super supportive, and instead drop my stuff and go walk around the conference. The conference was really cool; in the course of five minutes I’d hunted out a brand I was curious to meet – they are called Elephoto, and they are quite possibly going to feed into my photobooking /  photocalendering / photomugging / and  photokeychaining addiction in the future. They’re a Canadian company, so I can skip the over-the-border charges, plus they seem quite good quality. Anyhow, we’ll see how that goes. I have this weird love of printing – whether it be books (see my MA baby here), pictures, or business cards, and the sight and touch of high quality paper strikes me deeply with satisfaction.

Weird, or what?  That’s like having a G-rated fetish.  If I can meet some Moo.com reps tomorrow, then my weekend will be complete.

But anyhow! Between the talks on social media, I did go back to the Facing Cancer Together booth to hang out, and cheer them on when the banners and goodies finally did arrive. And while standing there bloggers would come up and inevitably be ask if they had heard of the Look Good Feel Better program, and told about this new intitative of online support called FacingCancer.ca – some ladies just take a pamphlet and say thanks. Others stop for a moment – and if they stop, even for a moment, then you know they have story to share.

Every time I popped back to the booth, there was another woman letting us know how cancer has touched her life, or the lives of those she cares about. Every single time. Which only confirms how important it is to have these conversations, and share the message that support is out there – actually, it’s right here. . . and it’s available for everyone, even if ‘supports groups’ aren’t your thing.

Anyhow. Tomorrow is the panel at 4 pm where we’ll discuss online communities and finding support, plus why blogging is awesome for your well-being. It will be a day full of talks, and hopefully full of interactions and introductions.

It is such a good conference, and like I’ve said, I’m really so happy to be here.