My hope for 2021 (and many other’s hopes as well) would be to see this virus kicked to the proverbial curb, just as #45 was in their elections). Hopefully, by the end of this year, COVID-19 will be on its way out, along with (hopefully beginning of year for #45).
I know he lost, not according to him, but he did. And now I’m waiting for his exit from his position/status on top of the world.
I guess this viewpoint could cost me a few readers here, but in this case, I can’t care about that. I need to speak out on this man here, more than/over any politics I could discuss. He is no king and never will be. I need to be able to look back, years from now, at this blog and see that I spoke out about the damage he’s inflicted.
When I was growing up, often I’d visit a friend from school. We’d have sleep overs and swim in her above ground pool. She had three younger siblings and one of them would get in trouble while I was there and into the corner they’d go.
I didn’t have this parental technique in my house growing up and so I was intrigued by it, as punishments go. Every family was different in how they disciplined their children like in any other generation.
Go stand in the corner to reflect on what you did wrong. I think, as January 20th approaches, this image of that man in the corner stands out.
Not that he’ll do any such thing, real image being slightly amusing and symbolically, he would need to stand there a long time to satisfy me. There are worse punishments, things people experience every day. He has been getting away with so much crap for so long now. He is, sadly, too far gone to ever come back to decency.
It’s like how people in positions of power over the lives of others (politicians) here in Canada are in need of a bit of time in the corner themselves. The finance minister here in Ontario was caught vacationing over the holidays, somewhere tropical. He came home, in shame, which is supposed to be bad because we’re told that people never learn that way, but he isn’t a child. He should have known. He did know it was wrong to do while people back here are trying to stay afloat and following a rule in today’s society that helps stop the spread of a nasty virus. Then, it was discovered that another politician, in Alberta this time, she was found out doing the same sort of thing. But no punishment (no standing in the corner for her), right Alberta’s prime minister?
People are upset because the same rules don’t seem to apply for those with power and thus a high desire for them to be responsible as they apply for the rest. The rich/poor gap does feel extremely prominent these days.
I am writing every day on this blog in January, except for every Wednesday when I’ll take a break, but I’m doing this to be able to look back on this time period we’re all experiencing together: same boat but all looking through different portholes. Or we’re all inside a submarine and we’re all looking through the scope at slightly separate moments in time.
The years of #45 at the top of the world practically are, hopefully, coming to an end and he isn’t very happy about it. I, on the other hand, I grin about it multiple times a day now, when I’m not letting dread cloud over that glee, at the thought that it’s not quite over just yet and some seem hell bent on extending our misery, with this so-called leader’s ungraceful exit.
I don’t normally admit to that kind of pleasure, in another’s downfall as you might say, but this is my exception to the rule, rules this man has never had to follow like the rest of us and now, by some, following rules in our society is considered weak and sheepish which I just don’t get at all.
I’ll end by saying I am one of those who hasn’t seen Dirty Dancing all the way through. I don’t know if it’s a particularly blind friendly movie. Or is it that it was from a very specific decade, time period in the 80’s and I wasn’t there to experience it all live, in its glory, as I was not even six at the time.
“Nobody puts Baby in a corner.” Isn’t that what Patrick said in that dreamy role of his? #Rip
Where’s a certain friend’s mother when we need her to put this man in the corner, not some vague-to-me Dirty Dancing line, but he has been compared to a baby plenty, with all his tantrums – okay, so put “baby in the corner” for a time out for a long long while.
In mid March our PM told us this and I’ve been interested to see how things happened since then. This has been the last few months and we’re just now starting to gradually, very gradually open things back up a bit, and we shall see what happens over the summer ahead.
Long before all of this coronavirus talk, for me, it’s been five years of Ten Things of Thankful #10Thankful
and I’ve found great value in this exercise in gratitude along with several other bloggers every week, especially now.
Current host says: Friendships were formed, and a community was born.
This is true. Thanks, Thankful Me,
and thank you to Lizzi and Josie, those who have kept it going ever since, when one person needed to pass the torch and someone stepped right up to take the TToT on to keep it going for us all for all these years.
After I discovered the TToT, I was lead to another and there’s a partnership between the two weekly blog hops, at the moment for this thankful birthday celebration.
I’m thankful for this extended blogging community. I’ve done better in life with a place to go to remember gratitude in the tougher times and in the joyful, celebratory or reflective weeks.
From Annedemic
to Janndemic, Jann Arden is one of my favourite Canadian musicians and she’s been going on daily walks with her little pup and taking her fans along on Facebook live. She is wise and talented and she has a calm voice of reason and comfort during corona, all the way out there in Alberta where she lives.
I call these walks Janndemic jaunts.
I’m thankful for our, let’s just say, more stable and practical leadership and direction during the first few months of the coronavirus.
The longest pause on record, it felt like, but what should he have answered?
As a certain #45 is nearing the end of his first four years, I hope he will be gone but I’m just trying to make it to November so we can see him go. I need to focus on what I’m grateful for because all that’s scaring me can feel massive and distracting.
Black lives matter.
Canada is muddling through the coronavirus like any other nation and we have racism here and discrimination—and discrimination with incidents involving cops and African or Indigenous Canadians. We aren’t as bold and in-your-face as all that goes on in the US, but we are hopefully seeing where we need to shape up and I look for signs of change. This appears to be a global movement, along with all the others, global warming and pandemic and economic etc.
Privilege. Apathy. These are just two ways I’ve benefited or faltered with our society’s white supremacy. I’ve done advocacy work with disability long enough to know I have nowhere near all the answers, I will make mistakes and frequently do, but I won’t stop trying to do better because we’re all interconnected, but must remember we don’t know another’s pain or experience in their own body.
I’m thankful I have people that I look to, learn from, and wish for their success and ability to be seen and heard. I want things different, for my nieces and nephews, for their future but also for the present they are growing up through, for every disabled child being born now, every Black child throughout the world, and every black, disabled person.
I write about these days we’re living through and also to document this year, here on my blog. I know, the perfect storm, but pandemic or no pandemic, these demonstrations are bringing people out, speaking of antiracism so nobody will be able to look away anymore.
I’m thankful for the daily diary I’ve started where I write to my grandma (gone 15 years next month) and share with her about this historic time she didn’t live to see. I have a place where I can go to express my biggest fears and anxieties of this pandemic.
I’m thankful for a few writing wins to focus on while the world is on fire.
I wrote this about my journey to finding a safe space to explore movement, through yoga and then Pilates.
I’ve also got an essay about reading and braille that is likely coming out this summer sometime.
I’m thankful for the old rerun episodes of Young and the Restless, airing while new show taping is taking a pause. This is a different year from the almost fifty years of this particular soap opera they play and usually have a theme for one week’s shows, like greatest romances or villains. I can go from an episode I remember watching, at a younger age in life, or I can see an old enough episode that I was barely born when it first aired. It’s taking me back, distracting me once a day for an hour, and it reminds me of my oma who watched for years. She’s been gone ten years next week and I wonder what she’d make of this virus, after she faced war and moving to Canada and all.
I’m thankful for some of the shifts this virus seems to have ushered in, even though much about this time is hard, along with those brought on by systemic racism and prejudice, though these injustices are unacceptable and I am cheering on the protests and this time where a bunch of the best of 20th century are making an appearance in a bundle of fun: 1918 pandemic, 1930s economic woes, and the unrest of the 1960s in the Civil Rights movements to follow. (Sarcasm here, but it all feels like that.)
I’m thankful for the virtual Crip Camp I’m attending this summer, every Sunday, where presenters speak about internalized ableism and activism and mentorship in the disability community. I know I’m not alone in feeling helpless, but I must move beyond that if I want to get anywhere.
I’m thankful for tonight’s strawberry super moon taking place on my kidney transplant anniversary: twenty-three years and counting.
I’m thankful for my kidney, after a few scares with my creatinine and then my potassium level since the start of the year. Things are stable again, for the moment, and I’m thankful for the dedicated specialists monitoring things, always there, and the continuation with phone clinic visits.
I’m thankful I’ve been able to get through such a stressful time and that I practice the attitude of going with the flow (while lying low), even on my worst days of fear and weariness.
He’s making science news today, here in Canada and the north, in a big, expansive way.
It’s St. Patrick’s Day: green beer, green rivers even. Everything is turned the colour green. Over the skies in Alberta, I believe, it is purple dancing in the night though, not the usual green of Northern Lights, ones I won’t likely ever see, like the colour green I miss and still try to hold onto inside my head.
I don’t care for all the revelry of this day, the kind that makes people let loose and get out of control even, arrests made, but it’s a celebration and I don’t fight that. I do believe some people don’t need much of an excuse to act ridiculous. I may be no wildly outgoing partier, but I love Ireland and I’d celebrate its existence any old time.
The colours seen in the sky are named Steve and I find that curious. Steve sounds like an Irish name to me.
My favourite character in Downton Abbey is Irish, the chauffeur Tom Branson. He is one of the best in that series.
I am away from all the noise today, no drinking for me, but I can practically hear the laughter from here, of a day where people let it all out. It’s green and I like green, green Ireland. What could be better?
“We should continue all the time to look out for those who have less, to stand for those who can’t, to reach out across differences, to use our land intelligently, to open our borders and welcome those who seek harbour, and never, ever cease to be curious, ask questions and to explore and search.”
—Julie Payette, Canada’s 29th Governor-General
I may try to keep this short and sweet again, with all the nonsense and horrors happening lately. Sometimes, when I am feeling tense I write a lot and sometimes I don’t. This week, I don’t.
Tom Petty’s song is about perseverance. He says it all already. I am determined to be thankful, but I’d rather let Petty and Payette say what I am thinking. They do it so well.
I am feeling the weight of the world, but I won’t give in to that feeling for long. Promise.
I am thankful the heat wave from last week finally broke and fall has taken its place.
Today is back up a bit, but tolerable. I am loving the fresher air I’ve been smelling, even if I was already complaining about being cold.
Yeah, I know I know, but that’s just how it goes. I am still grateful my favourite season has arrived.
I am thankful for a good idea for something special.
I am bad at birthday gifts and things most of the time. I owe my cousin for the idea for something meaningful for my mom’s upcoming 60th.
More to come on this next week.
I am thankful for my new darker hair colour.
Also, pic coming next week.
I am thankful for one opportunity that leads to the next and the next and so on.
This is true with my writing and in every area of life really.
It’s what makes life exciting and such an adventure, that you never really know what could be coming, on the horizon.
I am thankful I got through writing the rough draft.
I really really stressed myself out for this piece. I worried I’d taken on something I wasn’t actually ready for and I began to panic that I couldn’t do it.
I even started to think that the writing was the hardest part, but I don’t honestly think that: This is
the hardest part.
I did it and now I wait to hear from those who will edit it. I can relax, for the moment, but this is the kind of challenge I know will make me stronger, and hopefully, a better writer.
She speaks six languages, plays the piano, and has been to space.
She is the kind of intelligent and capable person we need and I am grateful to live in Canada and to learn about her and have her as a voice for the country.
I am thankful nobody was killed thanks to a madman who attempted a terrorist attack, it is believed, out west in Edmonton, Alberta.
He has been arrested and has been charged. There are no official terrorism charges at this time, so I don’t really know. If he was trying to terrorize people with his car and with a knife, it worked, but not for long.
I do hope Edmonton, Alberta, and Canada won’t let this guy win and won’t turn on each other. We remain much stronger if we fight that human instinct and choose the human instinct to come together.
I am thankful guns aren’t everywhere here.
I won’t share a link just now, though I am sure it isn’t hard to know what story I was thinking of here, because I have seen enough of those already.
“And for a long time yet, led by some wondrous power, I am fated to journey hand in hand with my strange heroes and to survey the surging immensity of life, to survey it through the laughter that all can see and through the tears unseen and unknown by anyone.”
The rain comes down. It keeps coming. Rough weather and natural events going on all over: flooding and tornados in the United State’s southwest and an earthquake in Alaska and Canada’s Yukon. One year ago a giant wildfire spread in Alberta. Homes were destroyed by the flames.
I can’t see the colourful flowers and buds in my yard. I can’t see the photos of earth, seen through saturn’s rings.
Okay, just getting the bad stuff out of the way. Now the gratitude can begin.
I am thankful for a pitch acceptance to start off the week.
I almost hate to talk about it at all, for fear that it will always wind up as a dead end, but it wasn’t a bad way to kick off a week.
I am thankful for a morning visit with my writer friends.
We met on Facebook and decided to meet in person when we, the three of us, all realized we lived so close.
One is a mother of teenagers and has had several years in the world of freelance writing. The other is a young, first-time mom, who is a science writer. Then there’s me.
We make for an interesting mixture, but we all love writing.
I am thankful for a suggestion made.
The three of us try to offer ideas for publishing opportunities we think might fit for one of us. We help each other out. That is how new opportunities are found.
I am thankful for time with my brother.
He’s been so busy, finishing school and playing with his band, but we just got a chance to hang out. We made some food and talked about where he goes from here, now that he’s graduating, and where I go with things in my own life.
We talk about that a lot. We hope to add a plan of action to all that talk now.
We plan to get back to the podcast we started last year, before things got crazy busy, but we needed one time to discuss how we want to return to it.
I am thankful for the birds that make a nest in the roof of my porch.
They fly away when I come out onto it, to sit on my porch swing, squawking at me from the tree in the front yard. They are afraid of me and angry that I dare disturb them.
Maybe by the end of the season they will get to know me and we can share the space.
I do like that they feel secure to want to build their home there and I can hear them singing, just outside.
I am thankful I got to meet and the chance to know this writer.
We got to do a teamwork writing exercise in a town square in Mexico together and she showed up at the airport, so I wouldn’t be alone to start off my long journey home.
I am thankful a brown immigrant got to exercise his right of freedom of speech. (His words.)
I am thankful I survived the entire month of A to Z.
I decided to put together a summary of all 26 days.
You wouldn’t think this could happen. This did happen, in a town, not far from mine.
My father drives a wheelchair van. He helps people get where they need to go. Things can happen when you’re picking up random people.
I am thankful for a season finale.
I was pleasantly surprised to like Anne The Series. It became my reason for loving Sunday night. I really started to look forward to that day of the week.
This wasn’t my favourite episode, but it did end the season on a cliff hanger and I really hope there will be more episodes to come.
I will miss it while it is gone, but I can re-watch, as they are online and will be on Netflix next week.
No quote full of wisdom can possibly be any greater than the ones that come from young kids and their imaginative little minds. I am feeling that most acutely and holding on, looking for a little bit of that in me, while the little ones in my life remain this age and teach me so much.
For some reason, some reason we can’t figure out, his mother can’t quite explain, my nephew calls his lungs boulder slipper lungs.
The things the children in my life continually come up with are things that are constantly surprising me and making me smile.
My nephew, for example, he loves noodles and he wants them plain, with only butter. He loves what he refers to as “Grandma’s noodles,” but I think my brother, for example, may pick out the Simpsons quote from the title of this week’s TToT post if no one else has the foggiest clue what I’m referring to.
I was thankful my sister, brother-in-law and nephew made it home safe from their first vacation together out west to visit family. It was my nephew’s first airplane ride. Western Canada and Alberta means dinosaurs for my nephew and fishing for my brother-in-law. My sister was just glad to get away with her two favourite boys. With my nephew starting JK in a couple weeks, things are about to get busier.
For their affect on my life.
They teach me to keep an open mind, even though they often feel like they are right, so who’s to say who’s right anyway?
For instance, if you were to try and convince my nephew that lungs are not called boulder slipper lungs, he likely might not believe you, but school will soon start and who knows what sorts of logic and teachings he will be introduced to then and there.
🙂
Reminds me of that song by Canadian band Rush, “The Logical Song”.
That my family puts up with my writing and this blog, are as supportive as they are, when I know many writers aren’t quite so lucky.
A lot of people write memoir and non fiction which involves stories of their family members in it. This can create resentments and other issues. Recollections are different for everyone. I needed to express myself, but how to do that without alienating those I care about?
Of course, if I write (even in my fiction), people in my life are going to appear because they are most of what matters to me.
I know they respect my need to express myself through words, but I never want to sacrifice their trust in me or their needs for that self expression.
Hmm. Perhaps I really should just quit with these pesky words and return solely to visual art instead.
That all my family survived the destructive, unpredictable tornado of August 7th, 1979
I wanted to mark the anniversary and write an interview with my parents. It was too late to speak to my grandparents about their recollections, as I only started this blog after they both passed away, though I had spoken to them both about it many times before.
It’s raining as I type these words, hard and noisily just now, and I imagine or I try to. One of those things I can’t really fathom without experiencing how it must have felt firsthand, which I am lucky and hope I never have to do. I am just glad my father survived to tell the tale, or else I wouldn’t have been here to be able to help him tell it in the first place.
For that moment that I often find myself awake to witness, at three or four in the morning, when the sound of the nighttime crickets and the start of the early morning first chirping of the birds intermingle with one another.
If I am unable to sleep in those moments, at least I am awake and tuned in to hear such a natural thing as that.
For a nephew who just turned four.
We had spaghetti and meatballs (noodles) and cake (which I received a big bite of just icing when finishing). We may need to whisper Happy Birthday for his fifth birthday, if he doesn’t grow out of the shyness he had this time when we sang out loud.
I will never forget his birthday, as I was there the day he first arrived.
It was a very special day for me for so many reasons.
This includes “THE DEEP UNDERGROUND” from my nephew’s favourite movie “The Land Before Time”.
The underground, in this case, is the front entrance which is down two steps. The Sharp Tooth is inevitably pushed off the edge by Mother, Littlefoot’s mother with the long neck.
For a chunk of days of rain, whether the weather is a loud, hard downpour or a sprinkle off and on throughout the day. We needed the rain, something to break up all the intense humidity.
For a gift from my father. I know he feels bad when he hears how much I miss the vision I used to have, but he still brings me markers when I speak of wanting to revisit all that anyway, despite my worsening sight, an activity which will likely bring back both joy and sadness all at the same time.
I heard my favourite scented markers from childhood, a somewhat brighter time in my life, visually I mean.
I have been thinking about colours, flowers, rainbows. I am going to try art, which I have been aching inside to give myself another chance to do for a while, but kept on putting it off because it will never be what it used to be for me again.
I sat down with my pack of colourful markers this afternoon, with a piece of braille paper because it is the perfect thickness, at my kitchen table because the light from the window there is the best place for maximum brightness.
Well, it was frustrating some moments and at others I had hope, with the slightly damp texture these particular marketers leaves behind and with the correct colour of marker fitting to the corresponding scent all coming back to me. I want to make something for Ivy’s Art Challenge and maybe involving 10 Things of Thankful because it has been so important for bringing light and colour back into my life these last fifteen or so months of extra reminders of the things I have to be thankful for.
That my five-year-old niece has a love of art and colouring and drawing pictures.
She got that from my brother I’m sure, her burgeoning artistic talent, but she reminds me a little bit of myself at her age and I feel somehow comforted by that notion.
I know she will continue to create beautiful things because that’s just who she is and where she comes from.
For this old favourite of mine from fifteen years ago.
This song perfectly incapsulates my feelings about the August birthday boys in my life. I celebrate their birthdays and I selfishly want them to remain young like this and never grow old, as Dolores sings, but I know that’s neither fair nor plausible.
August, within ten days of each other but spanning a year apart in age, are my two amazing nephews. They have inspired these songs today.
It’s the two boys and my niece who inspire my attitude that all art is open to me because I’ve seen the amazing things that come from their imaginations and my own imagination is the one thing I haven’t lost. They help me never to forget that.
And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays;
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten …”
The above song, by the Beatles, turns fifty years old. I loved it because it reminds me of my dad, and his love for that band which goes way back, but also because it is about a paperback writer, something I wanted desperately to be, myself.
So guess what was discovered off the coast of Canada last month?
Something so rare and beautiful; sometimes, the rarest of the rare ends up being most precious of all.
Some things aren’t meant to be, no matter how much we wish they were. That is a hard reality to face. One of those weeks, with some stress and anxiety, many ups and downs, but I am thankful overall.
This happened across the country from me. I didn’t experience these horrible wildfires up close. I can’t imagine what it’s been like for the residents of Alberta who did experience the wrath of nature.
This story about the firefighters from South Africa who came to offer their assistance to the people of Fort McMurray made my day, when so much injustice and anger exists, but then these guys came all this way, to do what they could to help.
For a dramatic return to my writing group this week.
Okay, so we usually talk a little, casually, before we get down to the actual writing. This time, things got a tad intense for my liking, but it got me thinking.
It started with nobody remembering to bring in a mystery object for us to base our stories around. I just happened to have my keys and the beaded, handmade pink cross from my grandma. I keep it because it reminds me of her, helps me feel close to her, but on this occasion it seemed to spark a whole religious thing that I never would have expected.
The one member of the group spoke up and held up his new found religion, his bible. This launched us into a discussion where he swore the earth is flat.
By the time the debate had gone on and I should have just got the ball rolling for the purpose of us all being there, meaning I should have just started to write, but I broke down and had to challenge some of his statements.
“So, can you heal me? Can you cure my blindness?” I asked. This may have been a mistake.
I have a lot of feelings on this, possibly better suited for a story because I don’t begrudge anybody their beliefs or the faith they’ve found. I just can’t spend my life hoping to be cured.
It got my brain working, anyway. Thankful I can think these matters over in my own head, as well as discussing them with people I’ve grown to love spending two evenings a month with.
For progress seen by my violin teacher, if not entirely noticeable by me.
There is this thing called long tones. I am loving all this violin lingo.
Doesn’t “long tones” sound so smooth and lovely?
🙂
Well, it’s like practicing scales. You just go from one string, back and forth with the bow, and then onto the next.
I need to keep my shoulder down and move through the note with my elbow, and less with my shoulder or wrist.
Well, my teacher said she noticed somewhat of a breakthrough, a milestone I’ve arrived at. I don’t feel it the same as she sees it, but that’s okay. I’m getting there and it feels really good.
For the cooler weather this week.
I love having my AC there when I need it, but it’s nice not to need it too.
While the end of May grew to be quite humid, June is starting out with cooler temps and even rain. I don’t mind.
For a beautiful song for me to try writing more lyrics to.
My brother has recorded a full version of “Decade Adrift” and now I will spend the coming week writing the lyrics.
They will be based around the theme of feeling lost for an entire decade, but I plan to use being swept out into the ocean as the metaphor for the feeling.
For care of loved ones when I felt like crap.
I regretfully had to miss out on a family day, due to one of my more nasty headaches. I was sorely disappointed, but it wouldn’t have been any fun if I had attempted it.
So, my parents felt bad and knew I would too. They told my sister and her husband to check up on me and they did.
I was feeling nauseous and couldn’t eat much. The fruit smoothie they brought by was greatly appreciated.
For a thunderstorm overhead.
I enjoyed the cool air that ushered in a storm this weekend. I enjoyed staying indoors, upstairs, with my nephew watching the rain through an open window.
I still wasn’t feeling my best. Whether or not he was just pretending is debatable, but every time there was even the slightest rumble of thunder in the distance, he would run whimpering over to me and would hide his face beneath a sheet.
Then he cuddled up against me and we sat there, not moving, for a time. It was the best.
For nineteen years and counting.
I put out a request for suggestions on Facebook earlier, but sadly I got no responses.
😦
I am looking for something HUGE to do next year, on the 20th anniversary of my kidney transplant from my father: any ideas?
I hope more of the world comes to see blindness, not as something to be frightened of at all costs, but as something many people deal with, successfully, on a daily basis.
I hope the stigma is worn clean away. I hope…I hope…I hope.
I do know I am grateful to be here, even with all the downs, because I eagerly anticipate the ups that follow.
“I seldom think about my limitations, and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is a touch of yearning at times, but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers. The wind passes, and the flowers are content.”
I have been published on this witty, satirical, thought-provoking website, full of writers who want to get the conversation going and who do that very well.
and I went on to expressing my feelings, which meant criticizing the authors involved in the writing.
They were only being humorous, provocative; yet, due to the news of a two-year-old girl and her father being murdered in Alberta (which could be the inspiration for a more on time response I could write for this week’s prompt), this heartbroken Canadian wasn’t able to see any humour whatsoever.
It made me think about writing and its possible consequences because I was able to have a productive discussion with these writers, after-the-fact, and I wanted them to know why I may have sounded at all harsh. That is not how I usually am. Just a bad day.
Something seems odd about this day. What could it be?
Oh yeah, I am pulling into my driveway. Yes, me.
For years it was me, in the passenger seat, the passenger. Shotgun was where I was designated to be.
Now I am driving. All those self driving cars in the works, for so long, well they are out and they are becoming the norm. Sure, it could lead to some sort of science fiction nightmare, cars becoming intelligent and driving their riders into trees and over bridges, but I overlook this fear because things are perfect now, right here, as I don’t have to have sight to operate a motor vehicle.
I enter my house and notice a suitcase sitting out, ready for packing to commence. We are soon off on another trip.
We met at TBEX, a travel expo I finally made it to a few years back. It was in Honolulu, my dream spot. I’d always wanted to visit there and this travel writing/blogging conference was the perfect chance. Two birds with one stone as they say.
I didn’t expect to meet him, but, I must admit, I hoped it would happen, sooner or later. I am comfortable with some independent travel now, after a lot of practice, but it’s still nice to have someone there to experience the world with.
He is a photographer and knows about technology and websites.
I may be able to drive a car, but I haven’t wished hard enough for perfect sight, at least I guess not. Huh.
If I had that, I wouldn’t be The Insightful Wanderer, as the whole position of my travel blog would be altered. I am insightful, just as I am, but I will never stop wandering. It does not have to be a bad, lost, aimless way to go through life.
I struggled to learn about my blog and website, for a few years, but am glad I can leave that responsibility to him.
I am still The Insightful Wanderer and Her Headache. I am KerryKay.com too. Bought that domain ages ago, as my writing needed my real name to be known and featured more prominently.
Branding is a strange thing, but I have embraced it and now am known as three brands in one.
I haven’t given up on my writing, memoir and literary mostly, because fiction is a beautiful thing, but not where my natural talents are.
I walk past one of the many bookshelves in my house, and there are some of my books there, a few are fiction. I had modest success with that, beginning with the anthology I was accepted into, my first real big break really.
I have written three books and am currently working on a fourth, two memoir and two fiction: Piece of Cake, Connecting the Dots, Till Death, and Out Beyond the Hedgerows.
The first two are memoirs about my life, struggles, with disability, being a visually impaired woman in a mostly sighted world.
The third is a fictional story about how death and loss affect three different generations of one family.
And the fourth is an historical novel, based on family who lived through World War II.
I did not start to write a string of genre books, ones that get put on Amazon and Smash Words and of which I would have needed to keep on putting out to gain any momentum in the book world. I found my own path to success.
I have books everywhere, which brings me peace and solace when I’ve had a bad day.
It’s so nice to have found a partner who loves travel and we are a team. He takes care of the site and its visual elements, while I write. Writing has its place, but the world is and always will be a visual one.
I think a world of all blind humans is worse than the one where the cars take over, but I can’t say. Science fiction writing is not my area of expertise.
I have checked off many of the items on my bucket list, which brings me great pleasure, but it’s nice to know I will soon have a husband who is committed, not only to me, but to helping me achieve the rest. Life is precious and it goes by like that! We are making the most of every day.
I have broken the record for longest living kidney transplant recipient and the medications have made it possible that this won’t change anytime soon. When I reached my twenty year mark (June 5, 2017) I had a huge party to celebrate and everybody I know came.
In this fantasy, we have not cured cancer yet, but we are actually getting close this time, no fooling.
We’re still trying to decide what kind of a wedding to have and where to have it. Being the travellers we are, a destination wedding is most appealing, but I don’t want to put that pressure on the people I hope will attend.
I want to have it at the hotel in Niagara Falls, the one from my childhood and its precious memories, moving to the closest hotel to the falls for the wedding night. I will finally feel that vibration of the roaring falls through the window of our room.
Maybe we’ll get married on a beach or on top of the CN Tower in Toronto. I loved it up there, the first time I tried it, and a wedding on that ledge sounds strangely perfect to me. After all, isn’t marriage a little like standing on a ledge?
It’s scary but exhilarating. It’s freeing, once you find love and let yourself feel worthy of having and holding onto it.
I can admit, finally after years, that wanting marriage, a wedding, this does not make me weak. I am not some Disney fairy princess, waiting to be rescued. I want a partnership and that commitment is and always has been important to me. I’ve been shown what that can be like, through the examples of my wonderful parents and their parents before them. It’s in my bones, just like writing and travel.
I can make a living from my writing now. I was afraid that was holding me back from finding a guy who could understand, accept me for me, and not let money and pride and the pressures of that get in the way. I am not rich, but I am rich in all that I really will ever need.
I have seen my words in print, in a book, on my shelf and in a bookstore.
I have an advice column which helps people. I can write and offer my advice, which can be a tricky thing to give others, but I know I’ve had more experience with the hard stuff than most. Plus, this side work allows me freedom to travel. I can answer people’s questions from anywhere I might happen to be.
Blog. Writing. Travel writing is my first love because the world is everything. It’s all around us. We are it.
I had to build up my writing portfolio. I had to practice my craft, art as pure as anything.
Now, I can admit that making a reasonable living off of that is no crime. People are paid for all kinds of things, some that might seem less deserving, but that’s how the world works. It’s all about money, for so many, but it doesn’t have to be.
We discuss having children, after we decide on a wedding spot, but the jury is still out on that. I can accept that, even as I know the rules of this writing challenge aren’t at all limiting, because sometimes life means accepting some realities and hard truths.
It’s still open for discussion. Age doesn’t have to matter because I want to freeze this day, in time, so my parents are here and the children currently in my life stay the sweet age they are.
We will deal with the future tomorrow, but let this day and the moment linger.
Anyway, we are off, to make our flight. I will finally get my chance to swim with jellyfish, in their lake home, on the island of Palau in the south pacific.
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Why do we feel so guilty, why do I, just for speaking up and admitting what it is we want for ourselves?
Why do I feel so selfish and awful to be so open with the things I dream about having, the life I would ideally wish for myself?
Do you ever feel that way?
If you could have an ideal day in your own life, what might that include?
I know I am worth it, I am worth everything, and I want to say so. I know what some people say, about the universe and just by saying it, you are actually letting into your life the things you believe you deserve. This is what I am doing here, today, because I am tired of holding myself back.
Yes, believe it or not, this blog has been me holding myself back, up until this point.
🙂
I have been blogging for a year and a half now and I continue to be myself, to let my self shine through here. That is what is at the essence of Her Headache.
Her Headache 
