Today is where your book begins: 2009 revisited

I am unwritten,
Can't read my mind
I'm undefined
I'm just beginning
The pen's in my hand
Ending unplanned

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words
That you could not find
Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions

Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten

I break tradition
Sometimes my tries
Are outside the lines

We've been conditioned
To not make mistakes
But I can't live that way

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words
That you could not find
Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions

Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
 The rest is still unwritten

Natasha Bedingfield -- Unwritten

I took the Sea Monkeys home for the holidays. I poured them into a Ziplock bag and got them home only to realize I had forgotten their tank on my desk. I gave them accommodations in Bill's old fishbowl, placing the bowl on top of Bill's tank so everyone could get to know each other. They're like distant cousins I figure, and isn't family what the holidays are all about?

Normally on Christmas Eve we go to the 11 o'clock church service with my Grandma but this year my dad was on call and I wasn't really feeling it so we stayed home. I promised Elmo I'd take him for a walk instead. I like going to church for the singing and the warm glow of the lights and candles. I feel grounded by doing something that is traditional and has a long history in my family. When I thought about it though I realized that my spirit feels most at peace when it is surrounded by nature and in the company of a pet so a quiet walk down the bicycle path and into the forest with Elmo did just fine with bringing me closer to God. I spent the rest of the holidays eating, sleeping and reading. Oh how I needed that break.

My parents, sister and I got together on Sunday night to exchange gifts. Tracy was working again this year on Christmas and she spent Christmas Eve with her boyfriend and his family so things got shifted around a bit. I had a lot of clothes on my wish list this year because most of my wardrobe didn't fit me anymore and I needed to up my sweater count. I had an outfit picked that included a black satin skirt with velvet polka dots and a mustard yellow boyfriend cardigan. The skirt reminded me of one that came with the Aja doll from Jem and the Holograms, making it a truly truly truly outrageous rock star piece (yes, I am taking fashion inspiration from a 1980s doll, isn't that what I am after all?). I actually bought it for myself before Christmas, not on sale, only to return it the same day because it felt so wrong to splurge $65 on something for myself when money was feeling tight this month. I kind of got into a shopping addiction this year. I had fallen in love with fashion again when I looked in the mirror and saw a lighter and brighter me this spring. It just felt so nice to give things to myself when the year seemed to be so full of change and losing things that were important to me. So when I opened a present from my mom and dad and found the skirt I hugged it. My mom knew.

My sister got me the yellow sweater which I again hugged. "Now I can be a rock star," I said.

"But you already are a rock star, " my dad said.

I grinned. "Yes, but now I can look like one."

I've been blogging now for just shy of four years. When I first started it was just a way to keep in touch with Rob and Vince. My audience expanded to include new friends, even other bloggers like Duane and Kasia that I still haven't met. Over the years there have been several times I wanted to quit because I got tired of having to censor myself, tired of trolls who try to hide behind their anonymity and tired of unwanted blogstalkers. I kept coming back because I like to write and it was a good place to practice my writing, which I had mostly been trying to hide. I also got a lot of feedback from people who admired my honesty in my posts. I write a lot to laugh at myself (such an important skill) and to say the things that others are afraid to say or can't find a way to express. The world feels a lot less lonely when you can share an experience with another human being.

I wrote some posts this year that I was pretty proud of. When I explained to Kasia last week the real reason I had erased 2009 she said, "I love your writing and more people should have access to it." I then started to realize just what I had publicly disowned with my "It was Just a Dream" post. 2009 felt like a lot of up and down, but each and every moment was a part of my story and I survived it. I still killed the '09 dragon and rescued the Princess and I did it in heels (and sometimes the heels were the dragon). There may be some of those moments that I don't care to go back and have tea and cake with right now, but erase them completely? I wouldn't trade any of those moments away. I am proud of each and every scar and beauty mark 2009 gave me. I erased 2009 because I didn't want to make Swiss Cheese out of my blog as an act of submission and compliance. That's all I'm saying. I restored it the best I could because my silent protest was only shooting myself in the Betsey Johnson-shoed foot. What couldn't be fully restored without compromising the story I just put under a password protection.

Remember how shiny and proud I was that day in September when something I had written at work got read out loud to a small audience? I just sat there glowing because I could see people around me feeling and reacting to the testimonial story I had put together. I said that day that I felt a little closer to the dream of standing at a podium and bringing my work to life for an audience. I couldn't take a day like that and wipe it from record forever. That was my first unofficial reading. I was shocked to discover on Tuesday night that I had my second one in mid December without even knowing it. It's too bad I couldn't be there for it, but I'm glad I stumbled upon a recording of it.

Do you remember when I met Canadian poet Christian Bök at the Winnipeg International Writers Festival this year? Do you remember how he picked up that post and linked to it on his Twitter page and I suddenly saw my blog inundated with hits from what I affectionately called the Bökies? (I finally looked up the umlaut code. It was bugging me.) Christian's book publisher did a special holiday tribute to him earlier this month entitled A Very Christian Christmas to celebrate the release of the updated version of Eunoia. The event was live streamed and has a permanent home here. It's all very lovely but jump ahead to about the 12 minute mark where the second reader, Suzanne Zelazo, incorporated into her Christian Christmas tribute an excerpt of my blog post that described my 45 second encounter with the charming poet who said I was gracious. As I watched I was a little embarrassed at first, but then the more I thought about it the brighter the awesomeness factor glowed. The audience laughed. They were entertained by my words, which apparently were outstanding enough for the reader to want to share them out loud. Is there a bigger compliment? I wrote that post three months ago and it still has charm and appeal, enough, in fact, to earn a moment at a public literary event. Happy Belated Birthday to me!

I'm rock star! And when I think about it, I'm a rock star on (virtual) tour! Suzanne Zelazo encouraged the audience to go find the blog post through Google. Bökies: another fine reason to not obliterate 2009 from my blog.

Maybe not today, maybe not even a year or two from tomorrow, but one day it will be my own voice bringing to life an authentic jill story.

"Watch out here I come"
--Dead or Alive, You Spin Me Right Round

Just a dream

One of my new favourite TV shows is Being Erica on CBC. The main character on the show is a 30ish year old woman working in publishing. She sees a therapist to talk about her regrets. The twist is, her therapist can send her back to the moment of her regret so she can make a positive, informed change in her present. It takes an interesting look at how we blame ourselves for problems way bigger than us and of course how hindsight is 20/20.

2009 was a tumultuous year for me. What if I could go back and change things? What would I do differently? What would I just not do? I don't really believe in regrets. I think they're just things we can't forgive ourselves for. Whenever I feel regret coming on I remind myself that I did the best I could given the resources I had at that moment--time, money, energy, information and wisdom.

To be perfectly honest though, I can't recall another year in my still short life that I have wanted to lock away as much as this one. So today I gave myself some limited magical powers and I undid 2009.  You will see that aside from today's post it has been wiped out from record here (well, I'm not one to throw away any of my work so I do still have it, along with your well wishes, tucked away safely for now). Imagine that for Christmas '08 I got a free pass straight to Christmas '09. Everything in between was just a dream.

Part of the family now

This post is encrypted: ***

I believe in Santa!

This post is encrypted: ***

Of Limbs and Lattes

Holy Mother of Christmas my arm hurts. Got the H1N1 shot today. Thank goodness my weights class was last night. The sheet of paper they give you after they stick you with what must be a combination of lactic acid and muscle wasting disease says that to alleviate discomfort you can exercise your arm or put an ice pack on it. Are you kidding me? Right now I think I just want to cut it clear off. My horoscope today didn't warn me about this. It certainly didn't mention anything about making a public spectacle of myself either but I guess sometimes they miss these things.

This part is encrypted: ***

Keeping one step ahead of the afghan trap

On Sunday night I hosted the first meeting of Book Club. A while back a novel caught my eye in the bookstore and I decided to use a gift certificate I had to pay for it. Beginner's Greek by James Collins was compared to works of Jane Austin and the story reminded me of Serendipity, one of my all time favourite movies. The back 20 pages featured an interview with the author and questions for book groups. I mentioned the book to Amara in an email and she replied with, "I'd love to do a book club!" We rounded up some friends to join us and set the date.

What a doozy. Is there anything worse than trying to plow through a book you don't enjoy? Yes, trying to plow through it on a tight deadline. I finished it on Saturday night.

I felt bad. I picked a lousy read and got three girls to come out in the sub-arctic temperatures to my house to talk about it. To make it up to them I made a cheeseball and rolled it in Cloddhoppers.

Everyone agreed that the book was a stinker. Me, I've slipped in my reading discipline but I consider Amara, Kerry and Erin to be well-read people. Kerry is a published poet and she wondered how Beginner's Greek got to print. But it seems we are alone in our evaluation of the book:

"Pure Pleasure Plus Wit: The arch and romantic read of any season, James Collins'Beginner's Greek makes you half-believe in miracles. With his triteness detector in high gear and his sights trained on social hypocrisy, Collins spins a chance encounter on an airplane (shy guy meets his dream girl) into a perfectly calibrated comedy of missed opportunities and muddled loves." (O Magazine 2008)

"unabashedly romantic" (New Yorker )

"A witty romantic comedy." (People Magazine )

"A satire of modern love that will charm both sexes equally" (Vanity Fair )

Admittedly, I have a hard time with satire so I thought maybe it was just me not getting the humour of the story, but again, nobody else seemed to pick up on it.

After a collective shaking of heads we all took a plate of snacks and I served up something to wash them down with. Amara took me up on my offer of some flavoured coffee and I decided to join her in a cup.

It was eight o'clock on a Sunday night. My body is not very familiar with caffeine. I don't drink Coke, or any soft drinks for that matter, and I take my Starbucks heavy on the milk and syrup with a splash of espresso as a once-in-a-while treat in the mornings or afternoons. I crawled into my warm, soft bed later that night, closed my eyes and willed my brain to please shut up as I tossed and turned my way into exhaustion. I know I slept eventually because I woke up from a crazy dream, checked my clock and saw that it was 4:45 am, exactly one hour before wake-up time, rendering any further snoozing futile.

I didn't exactly have my A-game with me today at work. At lunch it was like the girls were talking to me via satellite. Someone would say something to me and it would first take me a second to realize she was talking to me, and then another second to process that she was making a joke and respond appropriately.

When I got home I called my mom while I prepared a plate of food. It occurs to me now that I talk to my mom almost everyday. I used to be baffled by people who said they talked to their moms everyday. What could they possibly have to say on a daily basis? Zoom forward a few years and now my most frequently dialed number is filed under Mom and Dad in my address book. Book Clubs, cheeseballs, daily chats with mom, you know what comes next right? Afghans and multiple cats. Hello, I'm your crazy Aunt Shirley.

After eating I layered up again and headed to the gym. I didn't feel like doing the aerobics class today and, after recently relocating both Nan (my iPod) and her charger, I figured I would give the treadmill a shot. I've never been on a treadmill before so I had no idea what settings would be appropriate. Speed? Five miles an hour? Whoa! My heart rate soared to 190 beats. I knocked it down to three but then I just felt like I was walking with pep so I bumped it back up to four. I was still walking but with a bit more vigor. My heart rate seemed to be in the right zone though so I figured that was all that really mattered.

I started to sweat a bit and I could feel my face get flushed. God I am loving this gym thing right now. It feels so good to get hot and sweaty these days when it is minus a million outside. Sitting at home it seems that all the knitted afghans in the world can't keep the chill off.

After 30 minutes I didn't really know how to get off the treadmill so I pressed the red STOP button. That worked. My feet still moved the tread but quickly slowed and then stopped. I stepped off the machine and found that my feet had forgotten how to walk without a moving belt beneath them. I stumbled a little but regained most of my control. My arms were still kind of into it though and I accidentally swatted a girl on the bum as I passed her at the water fountain. I avoided eye contact with her when we met later at the sinks.

The next book club meeting won't be until February. We will probably choose our book in January. Between then and now I am going to try to do some reading in the Young Adult genre. This is my favourite genre and the area I'd like to work in as a writer. Kerry, the poet and fellow book club member suggested that I join the Manitoba Writer's Guild and apply for their mentorship program. Submissions are taken in October so it is my goal to get some share-worthy work done between now and then and hopefully get accepted. It seems pretty competitive, they only take five mentees each year, but even if I don't get accepted and matched up at least I'll have done some work and committed myself to my craft. The alternative plan is to take up knitting afghans...

Those moments when you are reminded that someone loves you

Now that my birthday is done and properly documented for another year I can turn my focus to Christmas.

When we were little my sister and I would put out a plate of shortbread cookies and two beers for Santa before bed (Dad always made a fuss about Santa, the swine, drinking his beer). In our letters to him we would always ask him to bring something for our dog, and he would, wrapped in paper with puppies on it. During the years when we used to go cut down our Christmas tree Tracy and I would get our own little tree to put up and lay our stockings under. Remember how magical it felt to wake up on Christmas morning and find that special item you had been asking for, or that you didn't even know you wanted until you saw it there under the tree? I got a Garfield telephone once that I thought was the coolest thing ever. It was just like the one on the local TV program, Skiddle Bits. Another Christmas Day I got a Nutcracker the same year I first heard the Nutcracker story. I think I was eight. I was only a little disappointed when he did not later turn into the Nutcracker Prince.

I miss those years.

I got an email from Santa this morning. The old guy not only knows email but he's got an AV team up there too. I waited until I got home to play the video message which made me laugh and cry all at the same time. I don't know who called him up for me but I'll let you watch it here. Maybe you'll get inspired to ask Santa to send a special message to someone you know who would benefit from being reminded of the magic and spirit of Christmas.

Black and Gold

I had been planning this party since before I had a house to hold it in. Finally, I did it. I had my black and gold birthday party.

The living room was painted and I even got some pictures hung on the wall. The cake was fabulous as I had imagined it would be. The spread of party food was plentiful. I put on my little black dress, brought out the Betseys and then the friends came and made my 28th birthday golden.

Twilight: Full Moon

It's a full moon today, did you know that? I did, at three am when the sirens wailed by my house. With all the sensitivity of a toothpick I pulled the covers over my head and wondered why, if someone was going to have some kind of emergency, they couldn't wait until 5:30 at least.

I have a new recurring nightmare. It used to be the one where I was late for school and didn't have my gym clothes. I also occasionally had ones where I was shot. Haven't seen that in a while. No, lately it's been animal attacks, specifically grizzly bears. Both times now I've tried to hide in a public washroom but the bear somehow gets in anyway and grrr, attack ensues, I wake up. This is the interpretation the Internet gave me:

To see a bear in your dream, symbolizes independence, the cycle of life, death and renewal. It may signal of period of introspection and thinking. The dream may also be a pun on "bare". Perhaps you need to bare your soul and let everything out into the open.

To dream that you are being pursued or attacked by a bear, denotes aggression, overwhelming obstacles and competition. You may find yourself in a threatening situation.

Hm. Let me think on that for a bit and get back to you.

So yesterday was the cookie exchange party and tonight I managed to bake, ice and ganache a cake to take to work tomorrow, so yes, here I am, back at the blog spot. I'm also currently being distracted by Kurt Browning skating sans shirt. Wouldn't that be kind of cold?

I did not win the cookie exchange contest. Amara did though, so I'm happy enough with that. But next year man, next year I've gotta get it. Funny though, Amara won with a cookie recipe almost identical to one I was considering. Doh! Or, rather, Dough! On the weekend I baked two recipes and decided to enter a chocolate shortbread cookie drizzled in caramel and topped with pecans. The other option was a cherry shortbread dipped in white chocolate and sprinkles. Here is the winning cookie:

Here is the cookie I did not enter:


Amara did get a much more uniform shape. Next time I would roll the dough into a log too.

Here is the cookie I did enter in the contest:


I never want to see caramel in my kitchen again.

Here is the 2009 Collection:


I'm getting tired, I can tell. I forgot an ingredient in the cake I baked tonight. More full moon madness, I think. I don't think it will make much difference really but we'll see. Tomorrow I will bake what will be the fabulously stunning cake that will grace my table on Saturday evening for my birthday soiree. Let's hope I have all my marbles about me when I attempt that one. When you come into my house these days it smells like sugar. I'm starting to think I am the witch in Hansel and Gretel and my house is made of gingerbread and gumdrops. Here's a pic of the cake I am going to use to try to win the affections of my co-workers with:

Chocolate fudge cake with peppermint butter cream icing and white chocolate ganache, garnished with crushed candy canes. Because I let it drop that I was bringing in cake this week in honour of my birthday on Saturday, a birthday lunch was organized for me. Nice huh? I've also been regularly eating lunch with some girls my age. My Sea Monkeys are flourishing again, I almost feel ready to name them, and yesterday in the mall I saw an old high school crush and he gave me the ol' elevator eyes. Things are coming around, yup indeed.