Blog Articles About Life

You Know Spring is Coming When…

Your neighbour gets the first bulb and flower catalogue of the year. Shoestores are putting flip-flops in the window. Each day features a sneezing fit of at least 10 sneezes in a row. The windows are not frozen for a whole week. Denmark and Victoria report snowdrops and crocuses. Daytime Savings starts (although I still…

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More Follicular Blogfodder

The hair continues to provide moments too good not to share. First there was the Badness, then the improvement and now… I could pad this, could write a lot of words leading up to what this post is really about, but too many words would take away from the sublime ridiculousness of the moment. And…

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Attempting Maturity

After a couple months of doing really, really well, to the point where taking painkillers made me stoned because they didn’t have any pain to deal with (and hence, I had a lovely, yet very freaky period of time in which I took hardly any – freaky because they’re as much part of my daily…

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Ribbit

It all started with the shower curtain. When I moved into my own apartment (after years and years of waiting for one with attendant care attached to become available), AB sent me a fantastic shower curtain with a frog on it. Charming, whimsical, doesn’t matter what you call it, it makes me smile in the…

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Dear Winter. Again.

Winter, Last year, I asked nicely. I’ve even asked nicely this year. In December, when you showed a remarkable degree of commitment to your image of being cold and snowy, I rolled with it, asking only that you keep it to a dull roar in the week before Christmas so I could get all my…

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Letters from the Past

During one of the latest excursions into my landfill of accumulated crap – why am I such a packrat? – we found, buried in the back of a shelf somewhere, a harmonica folder stuffed with letters and cards from the early 80s to the mid-90s. As nothing is safe from my attempts to minimize aforementioned…

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Dignity Schmignity

I used to have short hair. Really, really short hair. Then my neck got hurt and I couldn’t go to the hairdresser for a while, which meant my hair grew and grew some more and after 25 years or so with a coiffure shorter than 1 1/2 inches, I was enjoying being able to feel…

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A Job Opportunity: Solving the Challenges of Writer Overwhelm

Updated November 30, 2021 The impossibility of juggling chronic illness, everyday tasks and writing good books at a decent pace pops up on a regular basis in my life. Every time, I look at my list — or List — and despair at ever catching up or being even vaguely proactive and organized.  Did I…

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Sidestepping into Happiness

I was talking to a friend the other day about how this particular set of holidays used to be my annual experience of manic depression. Well, not the actual disease, but perhaps a little bit of insight into what it feels like. Christmas is my favorite holiday of the year and there is nothing about…

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Holiday Stream-of-Consciousness

Sometime late yesterday evening, it occurred to me that it was Sunday. Which means that it would very soon be Monday. Which is one of the days I traditionally post. And I had nothing. Because sometime on Saturday afternoon, I remember being unsure about what day it was and it was officially the moment where…

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A Christmas Wish

Holly is the nicest person I’ve ever met. I don’t remember the first time my friend Andrew introduced me to his new girlfriend – I think it was dinner somewhere – but I remember coming home and when asked by my mother and sister what she was like, I told them about how incredibly nice…

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I Don’t Know Why She Fights It Every Year

Every December, when Steph realizes that’s she’s overcommitted herself with the knitting again, I make her a schedule. Or rather, a Schedule. In this document, I tell her exactly what she knits (and bakes, wraps, etc.) and when in order to get it all done by Dec.25. It’s our Christmas present to each other –…

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