Last Year’s Adventures Make Me Ready For This Year’s #TBT #JusJoJan

My
favourite blog post of last year
was about a trip I’ve always wanted to take, a writer I admire, and the ocean I discovered when I got there.

I was proud to be approached by
Expedia
to be featured on their site and then I wrote a blog post to go along with that.

As I approach the five-year anniversary of this blog next week, I will always remember when I went to prince Edward Island and New Brunswick and wrote about it.

I look forward to more travel and adventure in 2019 and see all of you back for #JusJoJan in one year’s time.

Thanks Linda.

What Lovers Believe, #TBT #JusJoJan

Great lovers from period series Downton Abbey both told each other, during two separate crisis points in their love story:

“Do you ever doubt?”

“No, and I don’t doubt that the sun will rise in the east either.”

Now that’s beautiful faith, but more so it’s a belief in what really does happen, ever morning on earth. It is predictable and undeniably inevitable.

I don’t doubt the
sunrise
taking place in the eastern sky either and I do always try to look on the bright side of things.

Okay, all cliches aside. I may see the sun rising over the horizon less clearly than I once did, but I still find the sun appearing in the sky fresh every morning to be one of the best parts of living in this world, in this life. I can expect it and count on it. I like that.

It’s what happens the rest of the day I can’t quite count on or predict quite so easily and that’s what has me feeling uneasy on an ongoing basis, as this new year goes along and gets going.

KETCHUP ON PANCAKES: Episode 15 – Farewell 2018…By The Fireside #Family #Holidays #TBT #Podcast

Welcome, everyone, to 2019 – where on Ketchup On Pancakes, we don’t make New Year’s resolutions, but we do like to look back and look ahead.

On this final episode of last year
Episode 15: Farewell 2018…By The Fireside,
we reflect on the 365 days of 2018 and guess what we’ll have to reflect on when end of 2019 comes around.

I am in a bit of a solemn mood for the first part, but years are big things, and they weigh on me as one ends and the next one begins.

Join us, by our cozy fireside, as we discuss family celebrations and goals and achievements we’re proud to say happened in 2018 and don’t forget to find us
on our page
on Facebook.

KETCHUP ON PANCAKES: Episode 12 – British C Or B Columbia #Travel #TBT #Family #Podcast

We’re so far keeping up with our goal of recording one episode a month in 2018 – we’re getting this one in, just under the wire, as May turns to June.

Episode 12: British C or B Columbia – KETCHUP ON PANCAKES

Travel is one of our favourite topics and this one takes us back to our trip to western Canada at the start of the month.

Sound clips included, to bring us back and you along with us, and we end with a Throwback Thursday and an odd Niagara Falls memory of sibling silliness.

Check out our podcast page
over on Facebook
and give us a like.

British Columbia – Vancouver and Victoria are some of the most splendid spots in Canada and we invite you to come along on the journey. Come stand in the Pacific Ocean, ride the Vancouver Sky Train, and then return to Ontario and stand with me, at the railing of Niagara Falls.

Adventure is just around the corner, the next bend up ahead.

Bumps Under Fingers #WorldBrailleDay #JusJoJan

January 4th is Louis Braille’s birthday, French inventor of the braille code.

I think two of the best qualities any person can have are passion and compassion. I believe we’re all passionate about something.

Just Jot It January, #JusJoJan

I am passionate about braille literacy, as an extension of literacy as a whole.

Braille is hard to learn for many people who lose their vision later in life. I’ve known braille since I started to slowly learn it in my first five-seven years.

I am practically allergic to math and numbers. I am deeply passionate about words and braille.

In this world of technology, there is less and less push for blind people today to need to learn braille at all. That, to me, would be like never learning to read. Though many prefer to listen to the talking programs on computers and phones, I still wouldn’t trade that for the feeling of those bumps beneath my fingertips.

Thank you, Louis Braille, for what you did so long ago.

This first-Thursday-of-the-month JusJoJan post comes from
Rosemary Carlson, Writer
with her prompt word-of-the-day: passionate.

What is it you’re passionate about?

Fearing The Unknown, #AtoZChallenge

I didn’t do it when all the other girls were doing it.

Was I afraid it would hurt?

The A to Z Challenge – E is for Earings

My sister wanted her ears pierced and our parents got them pierced for her, for her tenth birthday. I remember sitting beside her, in that chair, thinking there was no way.

I am two years younger. Two years later, I chose a McDonald’s birthday party instead.

I couldn’t possibly be afraid of the pain, or was I?

Just a few more years and I had to face any fear of pain, fear of needles, as I was required to have a lot of them. A diagnosis for how sick I felt was badly needed. Blood tests (needles) confirmed the suspected diagnosis of kidney failure.

I would soon have many scars, including the scar tissue in my arms, from the needles.

I had no choice but to face my fears. In my early twenties I finally decided I should get my ears pierced.

I’d been gifted a pair of heart earrings, one day, while I sat at dialysis, by a favourite nurse. I could not wear them.

For years I liked to play with those stick on earrings, but one day I decided it was time, far passed time, and off I went.

Did I need to enter a medical crisis, in order to be forced to face my fears, before I could risk the pain of having holes punched in my earlobes?

I love my pierced ears now. They allow me to walk around with a little bit of adornment and ornament, as I am not usually a jewelry and accessories kind of a girl.

***This is my first year of joining the A to Z Challenge and so I’ve decided to post randomly, as a way for new visitors to my blog to get to know me a little better.

Three Years and Counting: Blogging and Birthdays, #TBT

So, here’s the thing: Blogging –
Everybody’s Doing It,
at least according to Brevity Magazine.

But, you know what, so what! I like it. It’s helped me grow as a writer, take first steps and chances for exposure, possible ridicule from which to learn and grow from, and has produced wondrous connections with readers and other bloggers/writers,
starting with this one.

I started out with this blog, afraid to be a writer, like the post I’ve just included speaks about.

And here I am, three years into it, and I love having this space that is mine to say what I want to say.

I’ve been writing down several quotes of a particular kind lately. I’ve been using them for motivation to keep trying new things and striving for more for myself.

This is a big year for me, but I am trying really hard to hold onto the proper amount of perspective in my life.

I started the year 2017 on a high note, in several ways, but now I am marking three years here and I like to think on where I was, one year ago and then one year before that, when this blog felt like the huge step to be taking, as
I left my twenties and entered my thirties.

Last year I rounded up all the posts from the previous twelve months of
1000 Voices Speak For Compassionlove/
that I’d written. I thought it would be a nice way to commemorate two years of having this blog.

For my one year anniversary before that,
I gave thanks.

So, now what? Where am I with Her Headache? Where am I headed?

I blog less here during the week these days. Monday through Friday I often use Facebook as a blog of sorts instead, one where I write shorter things, reflections and observations. I am writing a lot of other things now and it’s still sometimes tough to decide when to write a particular piece here or if I should save it for possible submission or publication elsewhere. It’s nice having this space to come and write and share my thoughts, but I’m learning that sometimes it’s best to hold onto an idea and to find a different home for it, one that may help me grow as a writer, somewhere else.

My weekends are still for blogging:

I finish sentences on Fridays,

write stream of consciousness stuff on Saturday,
and
participate in the sharing of song lyrics on Sundays.

Of course, I still feel strongly about writing down the things I am thankful for. I use that as my weekly checkin point.

I can see how much I’ve achieved here, when I look back to a year ago, and I like having that perspective. I don’t know what 2017 will bring, though my plans are in the works. I do hope I will be able to look back at those, whatever they may turn out to be, from this position, in 2018 and beyond.

Ketchup On Pancakes – Episode 3: The Great Gong Show of 2016 #election #TBT

For this Throwback Thursday I thought I’d throw it back to last month’s U.S. election.

I know. I know. You’re probably as sick and tired of hearing about it as I am, but this is the world we live in.

I hate politics, but I care deeply about this world we share. Listen to our Canadian perspective, our sister/brother take on the situation:

Ketchup On Pancakes _ Episode 3 – The Great Gong Show of 2016

We promise to return to other, more productive subjects for 2017.

Wit…wary…wisdom…weary.

We try to hit on it all and more.

If you are needing a break from all the other noise, check out what we thought on the before/after election special edition of
Ketchup On Pancakes – Facebook
But honestly, I just needed something to distract myself that night and I sensed this outcome we now have. I kept referring to what we now have as the end of the world, but this world goes ever on. And me, as dramatic as ever.

😉

This podcast gave me something to focus on and I hope our unique brand of humour and positivity came through in the end.

What a way to finish off 2016 eh?

Clock Striker Crashes Through Courthouse Ceiling, 1935

Time standing still.

BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog

Novelist and essayist Lee Martin reflects on the violent attacks at Ohio State University this past Monday:

When the cable broke and the striking weights fell, the janitor, Ben Conover, found himself trapped in the belfry, where he’d gone to wind the courthouse clock. The clock stopped at 8:30 a.m., the time when the strands of the cable that held the weights unraveled. Seven hundred pounds of iron weights came down, demolishing the belfry staircase, crashing through two ceilings, and coming to rest, finally, at the rear of the Bar of Justice in the Circuit Court Room.

How the plaster dust must have risen and coated Ben’s boots, the legs of his coveralls, perhaps even his eyebrows and hair.

It was Friday, April 12. The year was still a year of economic depression. The unemployment rate was 20.1 percent. There in the small towns and farming communities of my native…

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Ketchup On Pancakes – Episode 2: Ingredients Listed, #TBT #Family #Humour #Creativity #Podcast

We’re back! About time, right?

It’s been over two whole months since our first episode of Ketchup On Pancakes. We made it back. We’re getting better and I am constantly in awe by the kind of production value Brian brings to the project. I come up with the ideas and write a lot of our content, but without my audibly knowledgeable brother, this would be a very different podcast.

So, what do music, cooking, and stories all have in common?

INGREDIENTS LISTED

Click on the above link to find out and to listen to Episode Two.

Unless, that is, you’re completely new to this whole thing. In which case,
perhaps you might want to go back one.

Or to follow our adventures, go to
our Facebook page.