PEN Canada and Freedom to Read Week

It's Freedom to Read Week.
Why not support the right to read what you want, to say what you want and to write what you want- rights we take for granted in Canada-by joining PEN Canada.

What's PEN Canada?

Click here.

http://tinyurl.com/agwauq
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Why every Canadian Writer needs a GST

Here is an article I wrote for PWAC Guelph about the GST number and why every writer needs one.

http://tinyurl.com/dxmd93

Mars and Venus and Sick Time

Why are men and women so different when it comes to illness? Why are big, burly, manly men felled like trees when a cold or flu hits, and women seem to be able to cope better? Why is it that most men turn into children when they're sick and women keep going?

• Women are trained from an early age to nurture and take care of others...often to the exclusion of ourselves. I'm going to be having surgery later this year for "woman" issues, which may include a 6 week recovery period. My mother is already reminding me that the day she returned from hospital after having the same surgery, she walked down a big hill with me to take me to the park. Now, in my defense I was about 3-4...and this was back in the day when she had already spent a week in hospital, instead of the 2-3 days that I'll be there.
• Women have to tough out a variety of things monthly, from bloating to mood swings to cramps that can double you over. We learn in our teens to suck it up and keep going, because it comes back month after month...It wasn't until I had a cycle that lasted over a month and featured passing blood clots the size of marbles that I went to the doctor about it...and only because I was going broke buying feminine products and had become anemic from loss of blood.
• If momma doesn't do it, it often doesn't get done. That includes dishes, laundry, getting the kids to and from school, daycare, activities, and food preparation. It's often easier for us to do it than to re-do it later. Moms don't get sick days.
  
• Most women have a higher tolerance for pain...otherwise there would be no child born in this world...and certainly no siblings to the first one.

I have sung opera choruses with a migraine so fierce that I almost fainted, I have hosted house guests three weeks after a car accident left me with a cracked leg and hip (that at the time of the visit was undiagnosed and I was walking on it) and severe whiplash, I have continued to function despite anemia so bad that it makes me weak and dizzy, I have sung concerts on crutches, on a cane and with my right arm in a sling, I have vaccuumed on crutches and for the last two weeks, I have kept the house going, sung at 2 funerals and 2 masses and kept my work humming along with pneumonia. When the wait at the ER was going to be 6 hours, I left and came home. I didn't feel well enough to stay, so I waited and called my doctor the next morning. One of the reasons I left was I was afraid that I would be admitted, and who would look after my daughter the next morning? My husband has spent the day there a few times this year and then come home and beached in the Lazyboy with a headache or a sick stomach.

I think women can be too independent. I know that I have pushed past my limit often, powered only by stubborn and determined. My body and I have an adversarial relationship, and it will often flatten me when I take inadequate care of myself. I'm teetering on the edge right now with the evil twins of anemia and pneumonia...but I'm still on deadline, I'm still a work from home mom...and the pancakes for tonight's dinner will not cook themselves and despite my best visualization, the dishes are not washing themselves. So I will make another pot of tea, take a break to play a game with my daughter, try to go to bed early and soldier on. As Helen Reddy said, "I am Strong. I am Invincible. I am Woman." (and I'm tired...)

Stupid Cupid...

Charmian's blog http://christie-corner.blogspot.com/2009/02/belated-valentine-day.html on Valentine's Day has inspired me to my own true confession...

I hate Valentine's Day. I always have. My husband and I celebrate it on the day before or the day after. Why?

• I was not a popular kid in school. I was the Charlie Brown of Wilder Penfield Elementary School. In retrospect, some of it was my own doing because I hadn't learned yet that being smart did not mean you had to tell the whole world all the time. I also have a loving, if somewhat overprotective mom who sent her only child to daycamp with a pillow to sit on...Anyway, I did not get a great deal of Valentines, although I painstakingly filled mine out each year, for each person in the class. (my mom's smart rule, which I will also be enforcing when my kid hits school)
  
• In high school, I went to St. Mary's Catholic Girls' School. (Complete with kilt. To this day, I will not wear plaid) St. Jerome's Catholic Boys' School was across the road (literally). Some bright light somewhere thought it would be a good idea to allow the boys and girls to send flowers to each other on Valentine's Day in homeroom. I never got a flower. ever. Only 2 or 3 girls in class got a flower...and 25 of us were left feeling like a piece of crap. For someone with self-esteem issues to begin with, it was not a big boost to the ego, ya know.
• I had two serious relationships break up on Valentine's Day. Enough said about THAT.

When my husband and I were first dating, I flat out refused to go out with him on Valentine's Day. I told him I would see him happily the day before...or the day after, but February 14 was verboten. We had a nicer dinner on the 13th, without the jacked up price of the 14th, at the same place we would have gone on the 14th.

We have continued this tradition through our 12 year relationship and 10 year marriage. Since our daughter arrived, Valentine's Day is a more of a big deal now that she's in pre-school. She got Valentines, and we made Valentines for everyone in her class (and I sent a couple of extras just in case) We went out for dinner en famille (on the 13th) and I made a nice dinner last night for a belated celebration. I did wear red on Valentine's Day, but I was working a booth for my friend at the Total Woman's Show and wanted to look presentable.

I would rather get a "just because" present on an ordinary day than a "duty" gift on a date on the calendar. We exchanged cards, gave my daughter a sugar rush and got on with our day. I don't need a fancy gift on February 14th to know my husband loves me. Bringing me a coffee from Tim Hortons on a night when I have to go out and it's been a challenging day tells me that far more eloquently than a heart shaped box of crappy chocolate ever could.

So begone Cupid. You bug me.

Patience

There are points in every marriage when it's all you can do not to kill your spouse...I am fortunate that I have a kind and caring spouse, with whom I share the same values and beliefs, same sense of humour, and a mutual tolerance and respect for the interests that we don't share...we get along pretty well most of the time. Every once in awhile, however...

• 5 years ago he wrote an IOU in my birthday card...the week after he'd gone out and spent a ridiculous amount of money on computer junk that was still in the original packaging a year later...his rationale for it was that we were being paid in a few days and he would make good on it then. (I can hear the groans from the women from here, and I can see the puzzled expression of the men wondering what my point is...) His head did eventually grow back...and I was sent roses for Valentines Day (to the office) a few weeks later. He has never forgotten my birthday again.
• He arrived home after Boxing Day shopping this year (his favorite thing) with a big grin on his face. He first pushed a grind and brew coffeemaker into the house...and followed it up with a robot vacuum-the kind that is supposed to clean the floors for you. He told me the vacuum was to "help me keep the house clean." He was smart enough to give me the coffeemaker first... And the vacuum? I have named it Spot and refuse to find out how to use it. If he wants to "help me keep the house clean" he can operate it...
• And this week...he woke me first thing in the morning to tell me that he felt sick and that he'd seen blood in his stool. He's been having ongoing medical problems for the past year, and has had every test, scope, oscopy, xray and scan known to modern medicine and they have found nothing. After he insisted on a "show and tell" (before coffee...) I agreed that something looked off...so off he went to the ER for what turned out to be the day. Our daughter was turning 4 the next day, and she was going to be taking pink and purple cupcakes to pre-school the next morning, and that night we were having the grandparents. I spent the day getting the house ready, baking, icing and decorating cupcakes, fielding calls from my mom and his parents and his work colleagues and refusing to think the worst...When he arrived home, he announced that the red in the stool had not been blood...it had been too much red licorice.

Sometimes, you just have to walk away...and pour a very large glass of white wine.

Late Bloomers...

Michelle Obama, the soon-to-be First Lady of the United States turned 46 yesterday. That means she's a handful of days older than I am. I will be 46 in, well, a handful of days.. She is a lawyer, social advocate, working mother, and about to be co-pilot of the United States (sorry VP-elect Biden...). I am...um...a wife and working mother. I'm a late bloomer.

According to Wikepedia, a late bloomer is:

The term late bloomer has several distinct but related meanings:

• The term is used metaphorically to describe a child or adolescent who develops more slowly than others in their age group, but eventually catches up and in some cases overtakes their peers, or an adult whose talent or genius in a particular field only appears later in life than is normal - in some cases only in old age.

There is a link to other sections of the same article that deals with writers, specifically.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_bloomer#Writing Apparently, it's not uncommon for writers to be "late bloomers" which is comforting, because I'm having a "jeez, I'm almost 46 and what have I done" moment.

This little foray into introspection was triggered, not by Ms. Obama, but by a blast from my very distant past in the form of a fellow Wilder Penfield-ite who had found my website and contacted me. Gary e-mailed me this week. He's been a busy lad since we were classmates at Wilder Penfield in the 1970s. (since I just confessed my real age, there's no point in being coy about when I was in grade school, is there. ) He is now a math prof at the University of Ottawa, publishing papers on topics that baffle me...and cause me to break out in a sweat and hives at the mere thought of formulae...I remembered him immediately, have a vague recollection of a fairly significant crush on him and will now be making a trip to my mom's to look at my old school things that she still has, including class pictures. No, I will not be posting them, unless to prove my assertion that I have always been a geek, I just dress better now.

I am a late bloomer. I started Grade school in grade 1 rather than kindergarten because we moved. Friendships are built in Kindergarten, and my mom, who is very private and still has only a handful of friends she's had since her teens, was not very good at encouraging her painfully shy, introverted, bookloving, solitary and insecure daughter to make friends. I loved school because I loved to learn...but the social aspects of school were torment for me. I especially dreaded that quintessentially female rite of passage...the sleepover...because I was inevitably the kid who fell asleep early (confession time...I didn't fall asleep, I pretended to, and how does that adage go...eavesdroppers hear no good of them...) and was ridiculed and picked on by the other little girls. Little girls can be heartless and cruel. Little boys settle things with fisticuffs; girls use emotional and psychological warfare....calming breath, calming breath...I didn't know how to cope and spent a great deal of time wandering the schoolyard alone, unless I happened to be the girl with the skipping rope...and then I was popular until recess ended.

I started high school in Grade 1o rather than grade 9 because we moved...and I was smart. I attended a private Catholic girls' school in Dorval, QC for grade 7-8 (which is first and second year of high school in QC, because grade 7-11 is high school, and then there is 2 years of CEGEP before university) Queen of Angels Academy was an academic school, an entrance exam was required and the school only accepted 50 young ladies a year...competition for top marks was fierce. I maintained an average in the high 80s. We were exempted writing a final exam in any course that we had over 85% in, and I wrote one final exam (math) in 2 years...and I think even then my average for that subject was in the low 80s. To this day, I remember walking into that class for the final and hearing "Lisa is writing a FINAL?" like I had just posed nude, ran naked through the chapel AND gotten a tatoo. I only had 1 close friend at QAA. I remember walking the corridors at recess and lunch alone...a lot.

When we arrived in Kitchener, I was supposed to start Grade 9. One look at my academic transcript, and the principal bumped me into Grade 10, and Grade 11 for French. The only things that St. Marys and QAA had in common were uniforms, girls-only (then) and Catholic. They were diametrical opposites. It was okay to be smart at QAA-in fact, it was expected. At St. Mary's, the emphasis was more on sports and school involvement, or so it seemed to me. It was not okay to be smart. The all-boys school, St. Jeromes, was across the street, and the schools did silly things like allow the boys to buy flowers on Valentine's Day...and have them delivered to home room. In reality, maybe only 2-3 girls actually got flowers...and 28 of us felt like lowlife scum. (I never got a flower...)I remember my friend Clare got 2 flowers one year...I bet she doesn't remember...but I do.As the words to the song "AT 17" by Janis Ian (1975) so eloquently stated:
"To those of us who knew the pain of valentines that never came
And those whose names were never called when choosing sides for basketball..."

I survived high school...barely. I was suicidal by the end of it. My only salvation was my twin discoveries of theatre and music. I hung out with the "theatre crowd", mainly boys. We were smart, we read (and understood) Thoreau for fun, listened to Springsteen, and didn't really fit in at either school, except with each other. A number of that group are still my close friends.

I found myself in university. I completed my undergrad in French and Political Science (double honours) (and a few years later, my MA in Poli Sci) and found out, especially in Poli Sci, that it was okay to be smart again. Many of my classmates have gone on to become professors, lawyers, successful businesspeople, Hollywood screenwriters etc Poli Sci is not a discipline for the faint of heart, because the future lawyers like to debate...everything. Being able to hold your own in an intellectual debate (although I still make it a point never to get into a battle of wits with an unarmed person...) was essential, and a quick wit and sarcastic take on the world stood me in good stead.

Since university, I have been a customs inspector, French supply teacher, grad student, teaching assistant, manager of a call centre, administrative assistant, collections officer (aka debt collector), customer service representative, legislation analyst, compliance consultant and a writer and editor. If I had been paying attention, I could have skipped straight to the "writer" part, because I started writing when I was about 10 years old, after reading "Anne of Green Gables" and deciding if she could write, so could I. I also remember saying in QAA days that I wanted to be a writer.

Late blooming applies to all aspects of my life. I didn't marry until I was 35, and became a parent at 42, at a time when some of my friends are becoming grandparents. Many of my friends are sending their offspring to university; I'm getting ready to register mine for junior kindergarten. I didn't really learn how to make friends until my 40s. I'm still working on that, and I'm only now accepting the person I am and my unique strengths and abilities.

I can own the label of late bloomer. I am not a lawyer, or first lady or university professor, although in the case of lawyer and professor, it is by choice rather than ability. I had the smarts; I didn't have the inclination. I am a fiercely loyal friend, a daughter, a daughter in law, a wife, a mother, a writer and an editor. I am a singer, a choir member, a crafter, a reader and a creator of books and poems. Maybe it's taken me this long to be comfortable with who I am and to build on it rather than tear it down. If late blooming means that I can use all of that "experience" to write great novels, (and I'm being pulled to write YA novels-all that unresolved teen angst) then so be it. I may bloom late...but bloom I will.

Confessions of a Clutter Junkie

Every parent has moments when they feel like the worse parent on earth. Some of these moments are monumental, like the time my husband sat helpless a foot from our daughter as the tricycle she was riding tipped and broke her leg in two places before he had a chance to react. In the vast scheme of things that I will encounter as a parent, my recent plummet into crappy mother regions was not on par with the first broken heart, but it still left me feeling inadequate and useless. You see, I lost my daughter's report card for swimming, and had to send her back to a new session without her report card to prove that she'd graduated from Bubblers to Floaters.

We had the report card before Christmas. My in-laws remember looking at it just before Christmas when they babysat so that we could attend my husband's work social. My husband and I clearly remember a conversation about stashing the report card in our daughter's swimming bag so that it WOULDN'T get lost in the pre-Christmas panic to hide the clutter. I vaguely recall placing said report card in said location...and now have no idea where it is.

I have always been a stacker. From the time I was small, I filed my things in piles. It drove my "packer" mother crazy (Packer-noun-someone who places things away in drawers or cupboards. Whose desk and dressers are pristine, coffee tables free of magazines, mail, bills or clutter...she starts to twitch after about 20 minutes in my home) and she once threw out all the notes for an essay that I was working on because she thought it was junk, because it was in a pile on the floor near the garbage. Like any stacker, I can lay hands on anything on my desk in seconds because I know what is in every stack on my desk...as long as no one moved them. The company I worked for instituted a "clean desk" policy, so that all the piles of paper had to be cleared from our desk every night....Packers rejoiced; stackers cleared out the bottom drawer of filing cabinets, lifted our stacks FROM the desk TO the drawer at night, and then reversed the procedure in the morning, complying with the spirit if not the letter of the dictate...My stacks were under control...until I married the Clutter King.

My husband is an Uber-Stacker and has a genetic predisposition to hang onto things. When 2 stackers marry, chaos and clutter can result, and factor in a small house, a small child, 2 cats and a ton of toys, books, crafts, yarn, tools and other miscellaneous stuff...and the results aren't pretty. My husband will move my stacks to look for things that should be in his stacks...the cats will knock OVER the stacks...the kid will move the stacks...you get the picture. I no longer know what is in the stacks...and chaos results.

The added piece to this is that my daughter must have been a squirrel or a magpie in another life. She loves to stash her treasures...but never in the box that they orginally came in. The Mr Potatohead case became the new home for the plastic menagerie. The Barbie box holds the tea-set, and who knows what treasures I'll find in her Dora backpack...She also moves her treasures periodically, so even if I think I know where to locate something...it's often been relocated when I go looking for it again. I've put a moratorium on removing game pieces for Shoots and Ladders or Candyland, after Backpack went AWOL for a number of months and we had to substitute Lumpy. Diego went missing 3 times in 12 hours..until Mommy dropped the boom and issued the moratorium.

Our house has been out of control for a few months now, and persistent health challenges have sapped my strength and allowed the dust bunnies to stage a coup and take over the house. My husband arrived home on Boxing Day with a Grind and Brew Coffeemaker...and a Robot Vaccuum. He was wise enough to give me the coffeemaker first, because the vaccuum was "to help me keep the house clean"...it's one of those vacs that drives around the perimeter of the room in concentric circles, sweeping as it goes. It's a wonderful plan in theory...but you have to pick UP all the stuff from the floor first, and that's a full time job in our house. "Spot" as I have called the vaccuum, and flat out refuse to learn how to operate it, is no match for a 4 year old with playdough and Barbie shoes...

I know I have to get a handle on the clutter and the chaos. I'm overwhelmed by the enormity of it...but it has to be done. The mere thought of tackling my daughter's room leaves me shaking...but it's a small room with too much stuff and it needs a thorough sandblasting. If I approach it from the standpoint of a treasure hunt, maybe it will go better, or I'll try the "set the timer for 1 hour and see what you can accomplish" method of clutter busting. That MIGHT get me in the door...about a foot.

I know the report card will materialize eventually. I have to tackle the clutter shortly because I need to find all my tax documents, which are currently in hidey holes because I didn't have time to file them before Christmas. If I tackle the clutter, it will make things easier on all of us, so I need to square my shoulders, take a deep breath and start...now if I can only find the broom and dustpan.