And Now Z. is at the Door

It's been a week.

I've been pondering instead of writing.  Thinking instead of sitting down and letting my fingers zoom over the keys and click out nonsense, wit, deep thoughts, anything at all.  Sometimes I forget that thinking is an important part of writing.

And sometimes I forget that writing is an important part of writing.

I want to submit scripts to 10 different places this year.  To do that I'll have to do more than just think.

I want to polish my novel and get my 5 free copies.  I'll have to stop musing and start typing to get that done.

I get frustrated with myself.  I love writing.  I hate writing.  I can't go more than a day without picking up a pen and scribbling something down, some form of my thoughts expressed with symbols on a page.  But sometimes it is so, so hard to get myself seated in a chair, without distractions, document open and words flowing in a story that I have an actual deadline to finish.  Even if - especially if - it's a self-imposed deadline.

And now, when I get a bit of a flow going, Z. is at the door waiting to go out to get a flow of her own going, if you know what I mean.

Sigh.

Sometimes it is hard to remember that thinking is an important part of writing.

Sometimes it is hard to remember that not giving up is an important part of writing too.

Success

I'd like to be the sort of person who watches a TED talk a day.  Even one a week.  I am not that sort of person.  I'm more the sort of person who reads meme websites and checks Facebook obsessively while thinking about checking out the TED talks website, forgetting what it's called, and being too lazy to google that shit.

But I have friends - on Facebook, where else - who watch TED talks on a regular basis and they are kind enough to filter through them and share what they like where I can see it.  So here's a TED talk that I recently watched and thought was really, really good.

Go watch it.  Yes, right now.  It's relatively short, and I can wait until you get back.

There.  Now that you've seen it, wouldn't you agree that it makes a lot of sense?

I think we do need to redefine what success looks like to us as a society.  We need to redefine education and what our children need.  Because although I was one of those children who did quite well in the system we have now (and I say that even though I was homeschooled because I can sit at a desk all day, memorize information and regurgitate it on command - that's what you need to do to succeed in school, right?), I know people who didn't do well in that system.  People who wouldn't ever do well in that system.  Kids who needed to be using their hands, pulling things apart and putting them back together in order to figure out math.  Kids who needed to be up and running around in order for ideas to sink into their brains.  Kids who had to draw a picture, or build something with Lego, or Plasticine, before the story they were listening to would make any concrete sense.  Kids who didn't figure out how to read by the time they were 6, but are now, as adults, reading Thomas Aquinas and devouring The Wheel of Time.

The ones I knew best were lucky and got an education that was custom made to fit them.  But not every kid gets that.  Most of them get Ritalin.

For those kids, we need to change how we educate and what we think of as a productive use of time.  What we are validated in.  What our success looks like.

For me, if I can watch a TED talk like this once a month, maybe I'll consider myself a little bit more successful.

Joss Whedon Fan Club

I'm obviously a new convert. I can't even spell his name right (I had to double check and I'd added an extra e). And I haven't seen much of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

But I'm loving Dollhouse.

The Dress

What have I been musing about these last few days?  You know, the days when I didn't write anything?

It hasn't been anything deep or profound.  How to kill five animals from my horse in Assassin's Creed III.  Whether I should play Diablo III or watch The Vampire Diaries on Netflix (The Vampire Diaries won out - incidentally, on FB they abbreviate that show as "VD" - worst abbreviation ever but it makes me smirk).  Whether Z. should be eating cotton batting from her crack-pup or not.  What I should make for supper, and whether I have a migraine or an earache (it's an earache).

But today I ordered my wedding dress.  That's not deep or profound either, but I'm super excited!  I can't stop smiling.  I feel myself light up when I think of how I look in that particular gown, and it surprises me.  I had no idea I'd care so much about what I look like on my wedding day.  I always thought spending wedding-dress-money on a wedding dress was stupid.  So much money for something you wear once!  But goodness, it's so beautiful.  And I look so great in it.  And I really want to look good for my groom.  Elegant, womanly, beautiful.  I look like a bride (which makes sense seeing it's a wedding dress) and I can't wait to see his face when he sees me walking towards him, to make our two lives one.

He's sitting across from me, checking his email or something, and he has no idea of all the thoughts bubbling around in my head and in my heart.  And I have no idea how to communicate them to him, or if I even need to, or if I should.

Some feelings are too big for words to express.

So his face, on our wedding day, will be the expression of a thousand words I cannot say.  And mine will mirror those words back to him.

And hopefully that will be enough.

Z's New Year's Diet

I'm not sure what to write today.

Z. is trying to eat bubble wrap from the box my new camera came in.  What a strange dog.  Must be her New Year's Resolution - "eat many strange and wonderful things."  She's got cotton batting, crack-pup fabric, tree bark, and a bean checked off that list already.

Like she needed another flatulence source.  I'm going to regret giving her that bean, I just know it.

But at least she isn't trying to eat my books.

Oh - spoke too soon.  (She literally went for the books as soon as I finished that sentence.)

On another subject, isn't this dress cute?  I kind of want to go to that shop with my bridesmaids and tell them to find something in my colour scheme.  Actually, I kind of want to go to that shop and just buy myself that dress.

Maybe another time.

For now I'll content myself with looking and then going and stopping Z. from eating a cardboard box.

I'm Dreaming of a Whitewashed Museum

It has snowed without ceasing for the last 24 hours.  It makes for dangerous roads and lovely scenery and a slow day at work.  Not many people want to brave the winter wonderland to come to a museum.

Sometimes it seems not many people want to come to a museum regardless.

I wonder why people are so uninterested in their history.  Their past.  Their story.

I put up displays every month about different topics.  Comic books.  Where food comes from.  The history of toys.  Every time I wonder if I'll offend someone, especially with the one on toys.  I found a stripper pole you could buy for your little aspiring stripper, complete with a garter and fake dollar bills.  I put it in a panel about terrible toys, alongside a version of Monopoly called Blacks & Whites where you played as different races (the white players started with unlimited potential and a million dollars, the black ones with ownership bans on certain property blocks and a mere $10,000) and a road-kill stuffed animal.

A grandmother saw the picture of the stripper pole and got all up in arms.  A colleague had to talk her down and tell her to read the caption under the picture - which basically said, what a super offensive toy this is, what on earth were the developers thinking - before she calmed down.  Why didn't she read it on her own?  If I see an offensive picture with words directly underneath it, I'll read the words before I get bent out of shape.

(On a side note, not one person got offended about the Blacks & Whites game, which I thought was the worst thing on the display.)

I guess people would rather jump to conclusions first.  My family used to call it 'eating a hamster' because when I was a kid my hamster vanished.  Just disappeared.  No visible holes in the cage, and the other two hamsters were enormously fat.  Of course we decided (all of us, I'd like to note, not just us kids; Mom and Dad jumped on board with us) that these two plump matrons had eaten my lovely pet.  We directed a lot of hate at them for the next three days.  Then I found my hamster behind the stove, alive and thin and thirsty as all get out.  She'd squeezed out between a couple of loose bars and escaped.

Anyway.  Sometimes people get offended at the past too.  They get righteously indignant when we show them what life was like - people having large families, segregation and racism, prominent Christian-Judeo religion, an oil can for a company called Sambo with a super-racist picture of a black kid on it.

But that's how it was.  Making things "politically correct" and un-offensive won't help.  It isn't the truth, and it won't help us learn and grow and not repeat mistakes.  Whitewashing history is harmful.  It hides the horrific realities from us and refuses to make us accountable for our actions as a nation, as humans, as a people, both in the past and today.

Maybe that's why people would rather get offended than read and learn.  Because it's easier and it doesn't involve any introspection.  It's like watching the snow fall outside and then driving like it's July and you're immortal.

Stupid.  Dangerous.

Easier.

At least until you crash.

We're Awesome - Until You Interrupt Our Schedules

Z. is sitting by the closet door, whining for her 6 o'clock scoop of food.  She likes things to go according to schedule.  Her schedule.

So does S.  He likes things done according to his schedule.

I guess I like things done according to my schedule.

How we all manage to get along is anybody's guess.

Must be how awesome we all are.

Never Trust Your Photocopier

Did you know photocopiers have hard drives?  And that they store copies of everything they print/copy/scan on that hard drive?

o.O

I didn't know that.

Now I'm wondering if I've ever copied my drivers license or birth certificate or pay stubs or SIN.

But I also feel a bit vindicated.

I always knew that damn photocopier had it out for me.

Crack-Pup

We took down the Christmas tree today.

Our living room looks so much larger, and Z. had no special place to hide and chew on her crack-pup anymore.  Yes, she has a crack-pup.  It's a stuffed toy golden lab, a children's toy, and the way she looks at it you'd think it was full of drugs and she was a lifelong addict.

It's full of stuffing and her favouritist thing in the world is to disembowel stuffed animals.  This toy must have been high quality because she's barely got the nose ripped open.  She growled at me when I tried to take it away, like really growled at me.  So then I had to take it and play with it myself until she got the message.  All your toys belong to us.

She got it.  She's pretty smart.

For an addict.

Girly-Girl

Yesterday I didn't write. That's because yesterday I went dress shopping. Not just for any dress - I went shopping for my wedding dress!!!

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

Sorry.

It was so much fun but I won't write about it here as S. could read this and he's trying to guess what it looks like already.

I will say this: there are some days when being a completely girly girl, surrounded by other women who are being just as girly as you are, is the perfect way to spend a day.

Shrivelled Roots

I work at a museum.

It's been very slow - numbers have been dropping - but it's not just us.  Lower attendance is something most museums are fighting with right now, all across North America.

I read recently a quote, from who I can't remember, and the exact wording has escaped me as well; but the gist of it was that when a people lose their history, they become vulnerable to manipulation.

I wonder what will happen when people stop learning about their past and museums shrivel up and die, or turn into amusement parks for light entertainment instead of historical truth.

Ecclesiastes

There are two things I don't like about myself, two things that I fear I will never change:

my forgetful nature,

and my instinct to lie about little things.

Happy New Year

Well.

The world didn't end last year so now I am faced with the prospect of making New Year's Resolutions.

I usually don't - or rather, I usually make one, because I figure I can manage to improve one thing in my life at a time.  The problem is that a year isn't always enough time to incorporate a new habit into my life, so sometimes when the year is up and my focus is...um, refocused, I forget to continue with whatever it was I tried last year.

One year I decided to stop slouching.  I still slouch, but now I'm aware of it so I think I slouch less often.  I hope.

One year I decided to stop mumbling.  Yeah.  That one didn't stick.  I'm going to have to continue to work on that one.

This year I think I'm going to write every day.  I'm pretty sure I've made this resolution before but this year I'm going to keep it.

Why, you ask?  What magical thing has changed from the last time I made this resolution?

Well, I'm putting out here on this blog, which is where I will write every day.

I know, I know.  At the beginning of the summer I said I was going to write on here every week and that fell completely flat.  I think I managed four or five entries.

But something else has changed.  It might not seem magical but it is, at least to me.

My attitude towards writing has changed.  Evolved.  Grown.

I've really realized - finally - that if I want to be a writer, then I have to write.  All the time.  Every day.  No excuses.  No procrastination (or at least, not eternal procrastination).  Otherwise I can't call myself a writer, and I'll be damned if I'm going to be an 'aspiring' writer, which is just a fancy way of saying "I'd like to do this but it's too much work and I'm a lazy bastard".  If I want to improve, I have to be okay with churning out crap sometimes.  If I want to be taken seriously, I have to put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, every. single. day.

And I probably have to stop using periods for emphasis like I just did.

Baby steps.

A Ridiculous Habit

I've been thinking about my blog.

What is it about?  What is the purpose of writing here?  One person I know writes about her journey through weight loss and increased health and happiness.  Another writes about her journey through addiction towards health - physical, mental, spiritual.  Yet another writes a blog about Canadian history.

What do I write about?

I muse.  I ponder.  I observe and write about the people around me and I do an absolutely shit job of hiding their identities.  I worry sometimes about friends reading back through old posts and deciding they don't want to be friends with me anymore because of what I've written.

I was a different person when I started this blog.  Younger, yes.  Definitely more naive.  I wrote on here as if it were a private journal, oblivious to the fact that once it's online anyone - anyone - can read it.

I've learned the hard way not to use people's names.  I've learned the hard way that people can figure out who I am extremely easily.  That what I write here is read by other people and that what I write here can come back and bite me in the ass, oh, so quickly.

All of that and I'm not sure I even have a purpose here.  I started this blog because someone told me to, back when I was young and naive and highly suggestible.  I started for no real reason and I just haven't ever stopped.

Well, not permanently, anyway.

What started this train of thought was, in part, chatting with a co-worker who is starting a blog.  She keeps asking me for advice and I don't really know what to tell her.  I'm not a consistent blogger nor am I a terribly wide read one.  I don't do all the upkeep you're supposed to do - reading other blogs, leaving comments, creating a trail back to my own blog to generate traffic, all that stuff.  I write sometimes.  That's it.

And I was thinking about what I do - writing - and how ridiculous it is.  I take words, ideas, out of my head and put them down on a piece of paper - not even always a real piece of paper, sometimes it's virtual which makes this even more abstract and ethereal - and that's it.  That.  Is.  It.  Carefully thought out or randomly flung, either way it's just words, intangible thought bubbles, set onto a page.

It's absurd.  Absolutely insane.  I don't build houses or cut out tumours or make food for hungry people or plant seeds in a field.  I write shit down.  The end.  And I want it to matter for some reason.  But really, it's fucking insane!  I laughed out loud at the ridiculousness of what I do, right there alone in the car, laughing like a lunatic.

But I still want to write.  I'm not going to stop writing just because it's such a bizarre habit.

It might be pointless.  It might be crazy.

And I might never find a real purpose behind it.

But I'll never be able to stop doing it.

And I'm not sure if that's a blessing or a curse.

No Visitors

Today I took Z. for a walk.  I learned a few things - she's much less of a wuss about cold weather than I am.  I guess that's all I learned, really.  That and I should have worn a toque.  My ears hurt when I go out in the cold without one.

On our walk I saw a house with a paper taped to the door.  "NO VISITORS".  It strikes me as an odd sign.  No solicitors, sure.  No junk mail, no sales people, no Jehovah's Witnesses or door to door evangelists.  But no visitors?

I hope that person isn't sad and lonely.  I hope they just couldn't figure out how to spell solicitors.

Shit Just Got Real

My mom has cancer.  For real this time.

That makes it sound like she's calling me up all the time, being all like, oh, I've got cancer!  Haha!  Psych!

Just to clarify, she doesn't do that.

The reason I say 'for real this time' is because a few months ago the doctors mixed her test results with someone else's and told her she had cancer.  Days before they were scheduled to cut off her boob they realized their mistake.  They did some extra tests to be extra-special-sure, and this lump, this 'for real' cancer lump, was one they hadn't even noticed before.

They gave her the option of having it removed, or ignored.  "It's probably benign," they said.

She said something along the lines of "Get the fucker out of me.  Now."

So they did.

And this fucker is malignant.

They think they got it all.

I hope they're right.

But they're kinda batting a shit average right now.

It's summertime I guess

So.

I could write a laundry list of what I've done in the past month but that bores me.

Although I did get engaged, which is exciting (for me, anyway).

It's super hot outside.  The hottest day of the year so far.  I don't like being hot.  It makes my brain slow and my body lethargic and I really have no thoughts that I feel are worth writing down here.

But I wanted to say I'm still alive and I'll (hopefully) have something more in-depth to say tomorrow.  Or next week.  Or whenever I remember about this blog next.

Also, I've been reading The Year of the Fat Bastard and for some reason I feel like mentioning that here.

Time Keeps on Slippin', Slippin', Slippin'...

I was going to apologize - once again - for not writing for a while.  Then I realized that a lot of my blog posts have been apologies for not writing.  So screw that.  I'm sounding stale.

A magpie just walked along our balcony railing with a peanut in his (or her) mouth.  It stopped and peeked in our window, took a look at me with the dog snoozing on my feet and kept on walking.  Smart choice, bird.  I've never understood why people hate magpies, and by people I mean my dad.  They're beautiful and smart.  Sure they don't sing worth a damn (or at least I've never heard them sing well) but who cares?  We caught a baby magpie once, after my dad got tired of their parents waking him up at 5 o'clock in the morning every day and shot a hole through the bottom of their nest, killing one parent.  The other parent took the near-fledglings (seriously, if he'd waited another few days they would have left on their own) and led them, hopping from branch to branch, to a safe place way, way out back by a grainery.  While they were thus occupied my brothers and I managed to catch one - it took ages, because they're so smart - and brought it to the house.  Mom ki-boshed the idea of us keeping it for a pet, which was too bad because I'd heard that they could be taught to speak and wanted to give that a try, but within minutes of catching it the little birdy had figured out that we were a source of food and stopped trying to get away.  It just sat on my finger waiting for us to produce more delicious scraps.

That's pretty smart for a wild animal.

My dad didn't like a lot of birds growing up.  Blue Jays chased smaller birds away.  Seagulls were pigs that would eat a chickadee whole.  Magpies were pesky farm-destroyers.  None of them sounded nice.  I'm not sure where he got all of his prejudices from - except the seagull one, that one he saw happen so I can understand why he didn't like them.  Seeing a chickadee get eaten whole and alive would be upsetting.  But Blue Jays make lovely noises when they get going.  Magpies don't destroy farms in any way I can see - perhaps I've just never seen them descend upon a field and eat the entire thing.

I think those views came from his dad though.  Grandpa has - or at least had - some pretty strong opinions.  Some of them are interesting, some are valid, and some are really...how shall I put it?  Antiquated?  Bordering on racist? I guess that's the generation he comes from.

I work in a vintage car museum and Dad brought Grandpa by the other week.  I got to learn some things about my grandpa I hadn't known.  He learned to drive on an Overland - we have one in our collection - but after that he only drove Willys until he moved away from home.  Him and Grandma owned a grey 1955 Chevrolet Bel Aire.  And he's aged a whole hell of a lot since the last time I saw him.

Someone told me that babies and the elderly age the same way - constantly and surprisingly.  It's the middle part where things stay static.  I guess that's true.  It's a little sad for both - you have the chance to miss so much more with both the young and the old.

I guess that's a reminder to be present with them when I am with them, and pay attention.  Otherwise I'll miss out on that short, precious time and suddenly the babies will be adults and the old ones will be gone.

Just like the magpie on the balcony railing.

Shit, Shit, Shit!

Whoops!  I totally forgot to post anything on here last week.

Sorry.

I've been busy?  Is that a valid excuse?

No.  Years ago I decided to stop making excuses.  I still make them, but I am more aware of it now when I do and I (usually) stop and make myself take responsibility for whatever it is I'm making excuses for.  The honest answer here is that I forgot.

I have been busy though.  We just finished training the seasonal staff and getting things underway; I've been putting in longer days just to try to get everything done.  It seems like I just get caught up and then new things need doing.  Isn't that how life is though?  I guess I shouldn't have expected to 'catch up'.  And then I'm in rehearsals (which started the same weekend as seasonal training...yeah, didn't think that one through).  And then Diablo III came out.  So yeah.  I've been busy.

I've also been doing The Artist's Way.  I've owned the book for years and now I'm finally reading it.  And doing most of the exercises.  I didn't do morning pages every day though.  I think I need to do afternoon pages, because morning is busy and there is really no way I'm getting up an extra half-hour early to write gibberish on three pages a day.  Not long hand.  Not with my cramping wrists.  So I think I'll wind up doing mine in the afternoon, which I hope is allowed because it just fits my schedule better.

If it isn't I guess I'll never know, unless Julia Cameron notices this post and informs me in the comments that it just isn't kosher to do them in the afternoon.

Oh, I also got a working spinning wheel.  I'm still figuring it out - it's amazing how much you can forget in 10 years.

Gah.

I'm going to stop now...and probably go play Diablo III.  Priorities, you know.

Bring on the Wonder

So it appears that I forgot to post last week.  Whoops.

I am forgetting things this week, so at least it fits in with the theme of my life.

It's been very busy at work - we're in orientation and training, leading up to the grand summer opening.  Tourist season is upon us, folks.  Let the tourons begin massing.  Tourons is a real word, invented by someone who obviously worked in tourism.  Tourist + Moron = Touron.  I (at least partially) jest.  They aren't all morons.

(Which I just hilariously misspelt as Mormons.)

Yeah.  I crack myself most consistently up.

I've been watching a lot of Bones and wishing I was an anthropologist.  My two most recent television addictions involve anthropologists - Lie To Me and Bones.  I think I'd do better as a Lie To Me kind of person rather than a Bones kind of person.  Dead bodies do ick me out a bit.  Live bodies intrigue me.

But I'm not an anthropologist.  At least not right now.  So I watch Bones instead.

The last episode I watched had a lovely song at the end.  It made me cry and then I bought it - actually bought it off of iTunes, people, this is a big deal - and listened to it multiple times on repeat.  I am turning into my mother.

Here's the song.  I can't find an official video, so this is what you get.  There is one of her playing the song accoustically in a shed, which is neat, but I like the non-accoustic version better.

That's where I'm at right now.  Another short post, but it's better than not posting at all.