Not Her Anymore

I imagine that part of me sleeping soundly
Finally, after twenty or so years
All her trials and tribulations
Bring me near to tears
How she fought so hard and lost
How she fought so hard and won
How it took being halfway through thirty
Before she felt her life had finally begun
By then too exhausted to really enjoy
The relief that came [...]

Read Full Post »

Sometimes, it IS the big things.

It’s one thing to bring in the New Year with a whopping expense as in a new furnace, like we have a few thousand miscellaneous dollars lying around just for such an emergency…NOT.
So what’s the likelyhood that just six months later our fridge would crap out? I don’t know from mathematical odds, but I [...]

Read Full Post »

A Picture…

Is worth a thousand words…
And when I look at this picture (one from my HS grad photo session) some of the words that come to me are:
Young, adorable, doubtful, eager, oblivious, unsure, hopeful, intelligent, insecure, defiant, afraid, willing, hurt, desperate and most importantly of all, able.
I know that’s only fifteen, and despite all the in [...]

Read Full Post »

Your Stream of Things

I bare my body and you’re all for that
But try to bare my soul and you run away
As though your time is too valuable to waste
As though you’re limited only to physical tastes
When it’s about you then it’s all copasetic
But if it’s about me then it’s only aesthetic
Surely I can’t need as much as you
Surely [...]

Read Full Post »

The Extra Step

Okay, so we’ve decluttered and downsized. We’ve consolidated our debt and we’ve curbed our spending habits. We got rid of the second car and, since we had to get a new furnace anyway, we converted from oil to natural gas.
We’ve started a vegetable garden (which is doing quite well by the way…I have pictures and [...]

Read Full Post »

A Simpler Life

For the last few years our lives have been about re-evaluating our priorities, decluttering and downsizing.
Basically, we are trying to simplify.
And no, it wasn’t a sudden burst of wisdom at the error of our ways or a prophetic dream foretelling doom that smartened us up. It was the bank calling with threats of taking [...]

Read Full Post »

What Was It Like?

My son recently told me that his girlfriend’s parents asked him at dinner one night…
“So, what was it like being raised by a 16 year old?”
In reflex my eyebrows raised and I thought, “Now there’s a polite question to ask a person!”
I sighed and said, “You know, I turned 17 less than three months after [...]

Read Full Post »

Do-it-Yourself Fun

Thanks to Dana at Principled Discovery for her post “A makeshift education” for the inspiration to finally post the following. Really, I’ve been meaning to for months.
I truly believe that the best kind of fun anyone can have is the fun you make yourself. Whether that’s writing a story, making your own costumes [...]

Read Full Post »

Wasn’t Willing To Wait Around

The following is part of a speech recently given by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. (Thanks to Stephen at Amazed and Bemused who posted it in full.) It’s a formal apology to the people who suffered at the hands of the Indian Residential School system.
“We now recognize that, in separating children from their [...]

Read Full Post »

Okay, Now I’m Complaining

And at least it’s not just all in my head. See this story from the CBC.
“It’s been more than five days since Southern Ontario and parts of Quebec first faced temperatures that approached or topped 30 C – which felt like 41 because of the humidity.
That’s about 10 degrees hotter than normal.”
Reminds [...]

Read Full Post »