Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee #AtoZChallenge

Many people are afraid of heights. I seek them out, to a point.

This does not mean I mountain climb for fun.

The A to Z Challenge – Z is for Zip Lining

I will admit that being blind means I can’t look out (from the edge of a tower or overlooking a waterfall) and see how high I am. This may detract from some of the fear most people understandably hold.

I may not be able to see it, but my rational comprehension tells me where I am. I will go zip lining at Niagara Falls in June, 2017, twenty years after I went to sleep living one kind of life, waking to a whole new one.

I will do it, surrounded by family and friends, overlooking my favourite natural wonder of the world.

Do not take anything in life for granted. We may not get to all live one way or another. We should be appreciative when we get to experience the things in life that make living so worthwhile.

***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. I look forward to discovering some interesting new blogs too.

My One and Only #AtoZChallenge

The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do was to stay away from you, not to hold you close to me every minute of the day.

I love you deeply, but lord knows, you don’t make it easy. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

The A to Z Challenge – V is for Violin

This is a love story of a different sort. Last year I discovered my love for the violin.

It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. From the moment I laid my hands on its body, I wanted to make beautiful music with it. I’d soon find out it wouldn’t be quite so simple as that.

I love everything about it, but it is the most difficult thing I’ve ever attempted, to try and make anything resembling music with my hands, a bow, and four strings. There’s so much more to the violin than I ever imagined.

Angle. Pressure and weight. Force. Technique.

Most times I can get a decent sound from it, if I don’t think too hard, but that’s the trick. I work at just feeling the music, letting it flow through me, but there’s something missing.

If it were easy, I’d be better by this time, one year and counting. If it were so simple, I’d have gotten farther by this point. If I didn’t adore the violin, I’d have taken the easy way out and given up by now, saving myself the pain and frustration.

You don’t make it easy to love you, but I do. After all, some things can’t be explained. Love. When you know something is right, you just know.

***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. I look forward to discovering some interesting new blogs too.

The Only Sure Things #FTSF #AtoZChallenge

“grief is the price you pay for love you see.”
—Miss Josephine Barry, “Anne The Series”

Truer words have never been spoken.

The A to Z Challenge – T is for Taxes

How we pay for everything else.

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes and nothing free either.

After love, all we are left with is grief, but that love is always there.

Then there are those dreaded taxes. I consider myself lucky that my sister works at a tax office. She is learning the ropes. It’s nice to have that in the family because I am absolute rubbish with numbers.

So this time is a tense one, for many people and reasons, full of stress. April is tax time and time for bloggers to decide on whether or not to tackle doing the dreaded A to Z thing. It’s a lot of work and I haven’t even arrived at the hardest letters of the alphabet yet. Oh boy.

I’m tempted to keep this post light, but talk of grief is on my mind, as it is impossible to escape forever. Love and loss are wrapped up in one another. It’s inevitable. I may keep my distance, afraid of loss and getting hurt, but love is still the best thing I know. I can’t close myself off from it, simply because one day it will end in heartbreak.

I’m facing down thoughts of death all the while, I’m leaving the tax part in my sister’s more capable hands.

***This is my late contribution to
Finish the Sentence Friday
(three days late) because the prompts just happened to fit.

Finding Ninee’s perspective is an interesting one: nothing to lose and everything to lose, all at the same time. Check it out.

***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. I look forward to discovering some interesting new blogs too.

Why Oh Why #AtoZChallenge

Oh, why oh why do I love it so?

Well, let me count the ways.

The A to Z Challenge – O is for Ontario

This province is located, nicely, centred in the middle of Canada, between the west and eastern provinces and the north.

I have had a good life here, growing up out in the country, surrounded by farmer’s fields and the agriculture of the area.

I have family living in Ontario’s capital, Toronto.

I’ve got family in eastern Ontario, near the border with Quebec.

My favourite Niagara Falls, tourist spot that it is, but I love it so.

I love Toronto for its hustle and bustle of the big city.

I love The Forrest City.

The town where I live isn’t much, but it’s mine.

We have our issues, small town and big city, but overall this is a pretty nice place to live.

Up north we have some of the most beautiful landscape there is, known as Cottage Country.

We have Great Lakes and rivers. We have islands and Georgian Bay.

I want to travel and see so many places, but I always return back to Ontario, my home.

***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. I look forward to discovering some interesting new blogs too.

A Balloon In My Mind #AtoZChallenge

In my dream, the balloons were in the yard, trying to get in the house.

My grandma once told me of the time she was walking along a beach and came across this blue balloon thing on the sand. She gently reached out toward it. She wasn’t shy, even when she had no clue what something was.

The A to Z Challenge – J is for Jellyfish

I have seen jellyfish in my distant memory, but since I’ve lost more of my vision, the image of what one looks like has faded.

So now, after my grandma’s description and the dream I had, I think of a balloon whenever I try to imagine what a jellyfish looks like.

I have studied them intensely, on the many ocean documentaries I’ve watched in my time. They aren’t something I would like to touch in the near future. I fear walking along the sea or swimming in it, for fear of coming up against one. I hear the stories of stings and still, for some reason, the jellyfish is still one of my favourite marine creatures.

There is a place, an inland lake, somewhere in the south Pacific Ocean, on an island known as Palau. I want to visit Jellyfish Lake, if I could go anywhere, because then I could stop imagining what a jellyfish looks like, and actually swim with a bunch of non stinging jellies.

What might you envision in your mind, if you’d never before seen a jellyfish? Balloon or something else? Balloon with stinging tentacles of course. Such cool creatures, but it made for one hell of a bad dream.

***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. I look forward to discovering some interesting new blogs too.

Silver Linings #SoCS #AtoZChallenge

Give thanks for the things that make life worth living and for those that make appreciating life itself possible, even when they are sometimes hard.

Given all that there is to complain about in the world, I am often surprised I am here and doing this at all, on my best days or at my worst.

The A to Z Challenge – G is for Gratitude

I need this and I come back to it every weekend, with very few exceptions. I like who I am better because I make an effort to think about the things; good and bad; big and small.

Ten is the chosen number of things, what there is to be thankful and grateful for, but it’s the intention behind it that matters most. I take things for granted, as we all do sometimes, but gratitude really must become a routine practice of living, as a way of finding those reasons, the reasons why we must continue getting up each morning.

Just try it.

Give thanks. Giving thanks really does help with perspective.

It’s a given and a giving thing.

***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. I look forward to discovering some interesting new blogs too.

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.

Past and Passing, #SongLyricSunday

Okay, so I decided to try the A to Z Challenge, on a whim yesterday, but the trick of it is that you are supposed to blog for every letter of the alphabet, each day except Sunday. Well, the challenge began on a Saturday this year, so I guess I can use today to prep for Monday’s post.

And also I can do my favourite thing of the week.

Song Lyric Sunday #SongLyricSunday

In the month of March (of which we just completed a few days ago) a friend was posting for an 80s music challenge on Facebook. She shared a song from that decade, every day, and then she extended it. I discovered some great ones from her. I joined in for a week, stopped for a week or two, and then thought I would end the month (on the final days which were 30/31st) by posting two more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NvsMKYgCsM

This is the first of the final two I posted, on March 30th.

I like it because it is a beautiful song by Richard Marx and I love the saxophone solo and the fantasy feeling throughout. Apparently he wrote it about him and his wife and a trip they took to Hawaii together.

Endless Summer Nights, 1988

Sounds like paradise to me.

***

Summer came and left without a warning
All at once I looked and you were gone
And now you’re looking back at me
Searching for a way that we can be like we were before
Now I’m back to what I knew before you
Somehow the city doesn’t look the same
I’d give my life for one more night
Of having you here to hold me tight; oh, please
Take me there again Oh, oh

[Chorus:]
And I remember how you loved me
Time was all we had until the day we said goodbye
I remember every moment of those endless summer nights

I still recall the walks along the beaches
And the way your hair would glisten in the sun
Rising in the afternoon Making love to you under the moon, oh
Do you remember all the nights we spent in silence
Every single breath you took was mine
We can have it all again
Say that you’ll be with me when the sun brings your heart to mine Oh, oh

[Chorus]

There’s only so much I can say So please don’t run away from what we have together
It’s only you and me tonight So let’s stay lost in flight Oh, won’t you please surrender

[Chorus]

Endless Summer Nights (Lyrics)

******

So, I went with A to Z Lyrics because that kind of mirrors the A to Z Challenge and I like coincidences like those.

I like this Richard Marx song because it feels nostalgic and that’s what the eighties feels like to me. He’s looking back on a past memory, a passing thought, vacation in paradise with a lover. The story is told well from Marx’s POV.

I, myself, was born in 1984 and so it’s the decade where I was able to just be a kid, with my family, a simpler time in reflection.

I’ll never get that back and that makes me sad, despite everything I’ve been lucky to have and experience since those years of innocence, when everything was under control in my world and I was taken care of. It feels like so long ago now, a time long gone by.

In the moment, sometimes, it feels like it will last forever, an endless perfect moment or night with someone you loved. Sadly, realistically, it never does.

And one more, likely lesser known 80s song, from my favourite movie of the decade: 3 Men and a Baby.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aznod0Ij43g

BONUS.

Boy, do I love 80s music.

Misinterpreting Laughter, #SoCS

HadaHada

That’s what my sister used to hear from my JAWS voice software, when it was really me laughing at something someone had said on MSN. Seems like so long ago now that I talked to someone I was in a long distance relationship with, back when I still talked to people on that program. Now I’ve moved on. Texting is how it’s done nowadays.

Well, most people hear the voice software built in on a Mac, which is called VoiceOver, and are baffled by the racket it’s creating.

“Is that speaking another language?” This was the latest question I received concerning the sound it makes.

My computer talks and I understand it, almost like another language. You’d likely have to train your ear to comprehend, but that’s how I do it.

A lot of misinterpretation occurs when other people overhear my computer talking to me, reading what’s on the screen. Sometimes I use headphones, so only I hear it, otherwise it can become irritating. Other times, even I get sick and tired of the electronic sounding voice babbling away.

I could hook up a braille display, to read with my fingers instead of having to listen. I haven’t found that quite as easy to do, so the voice continues.

Lots of people wonder how I use a computer. I am a pretty speedy typist, but I do better if I hear what letters I am typing, just to be sure.

🙂

If you have a Mac, try pressing Command F5 and see what happens. Even my iPhone has it.

But still my sister and I recall those days when she would hear “Hadahada”, from the next room, back when we were roommates. It did sound funny, was meant to represent my laughter, and we “hadahada” about it to this day.

Hahahaha.

Another A to Z Challenge for

They are up to “H” on this second

Stream of Consciousness Saturday

of April.