Blogging Does Not An Author Make

What the heck happened? Where did my week go?

I'm sure you're probably asking yourself the very same question(s).

I swear I grudgingly, blinkingly, force myself out of bed on Monday mornings and the next thing I know - its Friday. Happens faithfully every week.

But this makes me reflect on time in general. I had one such reflective day on Wednesday this week. Why, you may ask? Well for one reason, had my mother been alive it would have been her 88th birthday. Thinking of her birthday ALWAYS makes me do the math on my own. But I'll dodge this topic for another day.

The other item I reflected on was that January 27th is an anniversary of sorts for me. I began blogging on January 27th, 2004 (on another blog hosting site. I didn't move over to blogspot until a few years ago).

Six years of putting myself out there. Six years of whining, and weeping, and celebrating, and cavorting, and gnashing of teeth. I've gained friends, drifted in and out of others lives, and loved every journal-ling moment of it.

I've balanced on a fine line of what's too much information, and what's just enough to keep you coming back, or at least enough not to embarrass myself with. I constantly try to remind myself who I'm writing for. For Me? Or for you? But lets face it - we all want to be read by a blogroll a mile long. I write what I want people to read, and come back to keep on reading. I want you to like me. I want you to want to read me - like a good drug. I want to endear myself so fully to you that you will read me regardless of the trollop I put out. (Believe me when I say I know that I put out a fair amount of rubbish, at least I think so when I go back and read my early writings).

All that to say - Yay me! Six years behind me, and untold stories ahead of me. Lucky you's.

Taboo or not?

J.D. Salinger died today at the age of 91. He was a reclusive writer, and was best known for "Catcher In The Rye".

I never got what all the fuss was about that novel. I read it in my teen years. I read it because everyone said it was controversial and band from Canadian schools. Or at least I was given that impression. We all know that if something is made 'taboo' that any self respecting has to get their hands on it... right?!

So, I'm asking - did you ever read it? Did you get it? What was all the hullabaloo about?

(Cool. I just used the word hullabaloo. I don't think I've ever written it before).

The hubster will be home tomorrow evening. And I'm ready for him to come home. I've enjoyed having the house to myself, but I also know that this is going to be a reoccurring theme.

It's so quiet.

There's little to no mess to clean up.

I can eat what and when I want and it generally involves vegetables (unheard of in our household).

But I do miss the hugs and the smiles.

I digress . . . I've been keeping myself busy non-the-less. And to prove it, here are some photo's.






The little dog "Duke" you've seen before, but his companion is "Marlie" a Black German Shepherd. Both dogs, in real life, belong to my brother, and I created these for him for his birthday a week ago. I've really got to get them in the mail. (I admit this only to you few readers - I'm not happy with how Marlie turned out. Nose isn't right. Neck is too long .... my list could go on. But I have to remember that I only started doing this felting stuff back at the end of November. Ya get whatcha get. Right!?)

The Dinosaur was something I just started the other night and finished last night.

Idle hands are the devils play ground .... Actually - my hands aren't idle, but they're sure playing!

Calm After the Storm

I had a horrible nightmare last night. I’m not going to candy coat it, or lead slowing into it – it was a horrible dream.

So much so that I woke up from it and began to cry. I’m not even sure where the emotion was coming from. Which only got further complicated when I began lamenting the fact that my husband was not there to hold me during my torrent of emotion.

The dream started out simple enough, but quickly escalated to a screaming match. I didn’t know the majority of the people in my dream, and I won’t go into what all went on, but what I do remember was the extreme amount of anger that I was feeling. Hence the crying once I woke up. At one point in the dream I was screaming so hard and venomously (major expletives emitted) that the pitch of my voice was high enough that only dog’s could hear – at which point my voice completely cut out.

Everyone one around me was taunting me, and trying to provoke me to physical anger, but I fought it – the desire to hit someone. Eventually the police were called in for a “domestic dispute”.

I was trying to calm down and catch my breath, and try to explain what was going on. Everything that came out of my mouth made me sound crazier and crazier. I began to feel more and more hopeless.

At several points I remember saying to myself “This is so High School”. I suppose it was in reference to the reasoning behind my initial upset, but I kept repeating, “This is so high school. This is just SO high school.”

But people wouldn’t leave me alone. On one hand they were afraid to be in the room with me, but on the other hand they were afraid to leave me in a room by myself. Personally, I would have preferred to have been left by myself, but I had momentary thoughts of committing suicide just to make the anger go away.

That’s when I woke up, and began to cry. I couldn’t shake the feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. It really rattled my morning. I’m actually kinda happy the hubby wasn’t here. I’m not sure how I would have explained it all to him. I’m not even sure I want to explain it to myself.

I realize this is the second or so time that I’ve written about my dreams, and they’ve both been weird and twisted. I assure you this is not the norm. I love dreaming, and generally find them most entertaining. Just not lately it seems.

I will sleep better tonight. I will resort to drugs to make it so ☺

Adjusting to a Change of Pace

I know many of you think I'm pretty whacked, and I think this may confirm it.

I married late in life, and lived alone for the fast majority of those unmarried adult years. I enjoyed living alone (most of the time). My first year of marriage was a real challenge for getting used to someone else being in 'my' home, even though this room-mate was for all the right reasons.

One of the other adjustments I made was settling down into a less than "social" life because my husband is very introverted. VERY! He's often told me he would like to like in a cave, far far from everyone - except me. That's pretty introverted. So it took me a few years to begin to rebuild relationships and patterns and feeding the part of me the needs my friends and social.

So I've take very proud moments of deciding "yes, I will go out tonight and hang with .... (insert friends name)".

Here's where I prove myself quite whack - this morning at 6:45am AND a Sunday, I got up so that I could take my wonderful hubby to the airport. He's off to Tennessee for a week of business. Here I am now, sitting at home, in my living room luxuriating in the .... silence. The aloneness.

I love my aloneness. I love having the house to myself. I love my husband, and will miss him .... tomorrow. But right now - I'm lovin' having the house all to myself.

And yet you would think that I would be revelling with the opportunity of connecting with friends and having them over. Or because I have no one waiting for me at home - creating coffee dates out.

I'm torn, but my inner introvert is enjoying the moment, and for now - maybe just tonight I will obey my quieter self.

One drawback to the silence - my tinnitus is loud and clear. No rest for the wicked, but then again, I don't have to share the bed tonight. :-)

Little Life Lessons

As I'm sure many of you have noted, I'm not the best grammatically correct writer. I really struggle, and have to stop and think twice frequently over spelling, grammar, tense ..... It's enough to give me a headache.

But today I found this site, and will forever bookmark its life lessons on apostrophe's .... or is it apostrophes ... ? and this one for spelling.

Have a happy weekend.

Be Careful What You Pray For

It's a lovely quiet Sunday afternoon here in overcast, ready to rain Victoria. We've had a wonderful break and I can already feeling myself girding up to go back to work tomorrow. It's all good.

But I digress and need to catch you up on the recent festivities of Christmas, travels, and family. As I stated a couple of entries ago our Christmas plans were to travel down the to Bay area of California and spend Christmas with my brothers and their families. It is ALWAYS a fun time with my siblings and their kids - and I mean ALWAYS. I rarely laugh as hard or as long normally as I do with them. They bring out a side of me that others rarely see, and I often miss myself.

But to back up even a little bit more .... when I get around my family something strange and wonderful takes over me. I very easily get carried away and leave my husband in the dust. The excitement of being with them, and the ensuing fun that will be had makes me lose sight of my husbands more reserved nature. I don't mean to, but I end up 'thinking' he's carried up and away just like I am, when in fact he's barely treading water.

So when the invitation was given to us my husbands one request was to not leave him on the curb. With this in my mind, and knowing my propensities I asked a close girlfriend of mine to pray for me over the holidays. Pray that I would be ever mindful of my husband and his needs for my attention over the course of our time with my ever exuberant family.

Tim and I departed on the morning of the 23rd. We had a 15+ hour drive ahead of us split up over two days. Typical west coast it was overcast and dreary, but knowing there was a family reunion less than 48 hours in my future the day could not have shone brighter. The ferry was uneventful, but the roads were busy once we got the wheels rolling again. I always feel like the longest part of any trip is the time spent on the ferry and getting through Vancouver. This trip was no different.

The Interstate 5 through Washington state was equally as uneventful as the ferry, but once we hit the Washington / Oregon border fog descended and stayed. In fact, it stayed right until we hit the Oregon / California border - and then the fog lifted and we could see our surroundings again.

We stopped for the night in Southerlin, Oregon far to far away from California for my liking, but basically half way. Back on the road again, speeding south we finally made it to the Oregon / California border by approximately noon. Just a few short miles north of Weed, California we stopped at a rest area to stretch our legs and divest our bodies of unwanted fluids.

At most Rest Areas I like to seek out a map of the area and see just how far we've come, how far we've got to go, and figure out where the heck we are in the grand scheme of things. And at most U.S. rest areas in particular, there are informative signs with maps, and local flora and fauna.

Although Weed is a higher elevation than we had been crossing over, the temperature was hovering just at freezing. We had not seen much snow, rare skiffs along the side of the highway, but generally clear of ice. That being said, as I walked towards the information board my right foot came in contact with what I have deemed to be the only icy patch in all of California in December 2009. My right foot went left, my ankle went right, and the rest of me followed my toes - and I went down hard. It all happened in a blink of an eye. Slow motion in my brain, an image popped into my brain of my ankle now being in a pretzel shape like in the cartoons. But the pain it was feeling was far from funny.

Praise God, but I didn't hear any pop or crack - other than my pride crumbling as only humans can do when they take an indiscriminate tumble. However, this time - I didn't bounce back up and pretend like nothing happened. Something happened, and I knew that I was not just going to be able to walked this on off.

Wincing I hobbled back to the car, and tried to assure Tim that I was going to live and that we would make it to my brothers before nightfall. I was determined that this was just mind over matter, and if I pretended that nothing was wrong - then nothing would be wrong. Darn it!

A further hour and a half down the road we stopped again at a rest area. And I finally braved a look at the ankle. It was hot, it was swollen, and already starting to bruise up. I convinced Tim that although I DID NOT want to find a hospital or a clinic - it was Christmas Eve for goodness sake - that we should find a pharmacy and get a cold pack and a tensor bandage. Which we did.

I propped myself up in the back seat to elevate the leg and ankle. For the next several minutes Tim and I took turns trying to get the "instant cold-pack" started. You just had to find the little package of catalyst inside the bag and pop it. This proved to be almost hilarical - if I hadn't been in so much discomfort. Neither one of us could pop it and our minds kept trying to convince ourselves that the packet was getting colder. It wasn't.

Finally I hit the right spot and icy coldness flooded the bag and I applied it, wrapped into the tensor, to my ankle.

And we carried on and arrived at my brothers place around 8pm. Gimping from embrace to wonderful familial embrace Christmas arrived, and we were with the people who mean the most to me in this world.

Safely landed on terra-firma I created a spot for myself on the couch and kept the foot raised, wrapped, and iced for the next several days. We had a marvellous time of laughing, drinking, playing games, opening presents, and generally enjoying each others company to the fullest.

God answered my (and my girlfriends) prayers in an extraordinary way. I was forced to slow down and appreciate my husband and my family in a less than hectic manner. Never leaving him in the dust, but rather encouraging his own interaction with people that cared as much for him as I do. And I am thankful on so many levels.

Once returning to Victoria I sought out a doctor who sent me for x-rays. Nothing serious showed up. Today - 11 days later - my ankle is doing better although I'm still limping somewhat, and a little ginger for fear of doing it again, but know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I rest in the palm of my makers hand.

I hope and pray that Christmas and New Year were equally as special for you. Happy 2010 dear readers.