TToT: Just Passing Through – Relative Pitch, #FirstDayOfSpring #10Thankful

Spring has sprung!

What’s up everyone?

Ten Things of Thankful

I’m thankful for a spot on my local television channel.

What’s Up Oxford – Rogers TV

I’m still nervous to be on camera, saying “um” a lot, but I was happy overall.

I’m thankful my local newspaper gave my story a chance.

Woodstock resident hopes to help blind people enjoy the movies with better descriptive audio – Woodstock Sentinel Review

I made the front page. The Ontario premier was on the second page.

It’s frustrating that my own local theatre didn’t even respond to interview requests, either because they were busy or avoiding the whole thing, but I don’t intend to let them stay silent on this issue for much longer.

I’m thankful for a few recent opportunities from my irregular appearances on Twitter.

I hesitate to get into these really, yet, and what they actually are or might become, but I am feeling pretty good about it. At least, with this whole recent set of realities about the risks of Facebook, at least Twitter is a totally risk free platform, right?

Yeah, right. Sure. Still, I know the risks and they must be weighed rationally.

I’m thankful for modern medicine here in Canada.

I take all the modern hospital facilities and equipment for granted, as I’ve always had it available to me. Here in a country such as Canada we have so much. In 2018 I have no reason to believe my loved one won’t be safe and taken care of.

I’m thankful for universal healthcare…not free like some people like to say/think it is.

Like the great and powerful gun debate, the one over what universal healthcare system Canada has vs what the US has and how both countries compare to many others, this rages on and on and on.

Nothing’s perfect. Certainly Canada is not. Yet, I am glad I was born here and have no tough insurance choices to make, no mega medical bills or debts hanging over my head and neither do my loved ones.

I’m thankful my brother is doing better, that it wasn’t something more serious.

He had stomach pains, but it wasn’t on the side where his five-year-old transplanted kidney sits. That brought me relief when I heard, even though I wanted someone to find out why he was having pain otherwise.

They thought it was his appendix, but no sign that that is the case. Frustrating, the mystery of the whole thing. For now, he’s doing better, and I hope it will stay that way.

I’m thankful for a gathering of strong voices.

I do worry for all the pressure put on those who are still young, fighting and speaking for safety and an end to gun violence, but they are strong in spite of it all. I hope they can survive it, but I am glad the adults aren’t silencing the younger generation.

I’m thankful for an Easter egg hunt, with the kids, in the yard.

The sun was out, but it was still a bitterly cold wind blowing as they searched. Thankfully, it didn’t seem to bother them much.

I’m thankful for spring.

Even though I don’t agree with most about how horrid winter can be, I do admit when it’s a lovely feeling to sense the start of a new season in the air.

I love the birds and even the rain.

Speaking of Easter and spring…this one plastic egg got discovered by a wild creature, instead of a child; child proof and critter proof too.

I’m thankful for nature. (More to come on that as April draws nearer.)

What animal, would you guess, tried to make its way in for what treats were hiding inside?

TToT: Extra Thankful For These Last Eighteen Years

The first week of June showed me just how thankful I am for everything in my life. Here’s why:

Ten Things of Thankful

Tuesday: for precious gifts and beautiful flashbacks.

I was babysitting my nephew. I can’t believe how much he’s grown, over these last few years. He celebrates his third birthday this summer, but it feels like just yesterday that he was born and I was there the moment he came into the world.

Ordinary Miracles

As the first year of his life flew by, many times I used to hold him while he slept. I did this, the first few weeks, at night so my sister could get a few hours of restful sleep and then many times afterward. He used to sleep against my chest, so small, peaceful, and still.

As I was babysitting him this week, he fell asleep in the afternoon, for the nap he still takes and I decided to have a little rest with him.

I am thankful for the chance to feel him sleeping on my chest, maybe for the last time. I held him tight and felt his steady breathing as he slept and it brought back those early memories, reminding me of those early days as his aunt.

Also, I am thankful for old friends and my desire to stay in touch.

I have been afraid to contact this one certain old friend of mine recently. I got over my ridiculous fear, borne of unnecessary worry that I might be bothering her, and I am glad I did.

I was worried over nothing, like usual, and I got to here her voice and feel better about things I was letting make me crazy these past several weeks. I also got to hear her remarkable newborn baby daughter through the phone.

Wednesday: for countless opportunities for reinvention.

I get the sudden urge, every year around this time (for reasons of which I will explain a few thankful’s down) to make a change, to reinvent myself and do something bold and daring.

This doesn’t always work out like I hope it will, but I did decide to cut off my long hair and go short, at least through the hot summer months.

It’s only hair, after all. It will grow back, if and when I want it to.

Along with this, I am thankful for the fact that I’ve got my very own hair stylist in the family.

Okay okay – so she hasn’t yet agreed to sign on as my personal, daily stylist, but I’m wearing her down, slowly.

It sure would be nice to have someone to do my hair every morning, as I have so much trouble knowing what looks good and thus, I rarely do anything with it at all.

For now I am just happy to have a cousin with a lovely salon here in town.

KEEP CALM AND GET YOUR HAIR DONE

It’s a place I can go, where I know the stylist and trust her to do a good job.

Also, I am thankful for the fresh and plentiful food I get to eat.

As I ate dinner out with my father, we sat in the warm June air of the evening, out on the patio.

He read from the newspaper, an article about the play of Anne Frank that we are going to see in a few weeks, and it made me think of Anne. I know this article was just about the actress who plays the role, but I couldn’t help thinking about the real family and the young girl who were stuck in that attic all those years and the war they were all in.

I have been watching a lot about World War II lately actually. June 6th is the anniversary of D-Day also. I know the food shortages that went on and the starvation. I know it is still a problem around the world.

I am thankful for a fresh salad. I ate my salad, out on that patio, and let my taste buds fully take in the fresh, crispness of the lettuce. I had a huge menu of items to choose from, right there in front of me and at my disposal. Not all today nor in days past are/were quite so lucky.

Thursday: for the release of new songs and albums.

This week I discovered music from a music group and an artist I listen to.

On June 2nd the newest Florence + The Machine album came out (How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful) and also the newest single by LOLAWOLF.

The first has a voice infused with raw power. This song by Florence,

“What Kind of Man”,

had me finding a place and a way of releasing a little bit of my anger. We all need this from time to time, which helps us learn what we are most thankful for once more.

Also, I am thankful that I can share interesting music with my brother, when on a rare occasion it is me sharing with him what I’ve found, not the other way round.

I showed him this song from LOLAWOLF,

“Every F—in Day”,

which is the band of Lenny Kravitz’s daughter – Zoe Kravitz. It’s a strange song, likely not to everybody’s taste, but it’s the weird songs I send my brother’s way, just to see what he thinks.

I’m thankful for the tiny perfection of baby clothes. I got to pick some out for a little girl I already love and I haven’t even met her yet, but she is the daughter of someone I couldn’t love more if she were my own sister.

I love clothes, and these small garments are perfection, just like the little beings who wear them.

Baby clothes are so cute and I have only really gotten the chance to buy them, on any regular basis, in the last five years. I hope to buy even more now.

This includes the softest of soft little baby blankets.

Friday: for anniversaries, good health, and lack of dialysis.

I couldn’t let a week of things I’m thankful for go by, specifically this particular week, without mentioning the importance June 5th has to my past, my now, and my future health and well-being.

I wrote about it just the other day on my blog, my thoughts on this particular June 5th.

It’s now eighteen years and counting since I received a kidney transplant. My father donated his kidney to his youngest daughter and I owe him more than most children owe their parents.

June is Father’s Day for many fathers, but for myself and my dad it can’t quite compare with our anniversary.

Most fathers and daughters don’t have anniversaries. That is what we call it, but in many ways (like I said in “New Month, New Me”, I also think of June 5th, 1997 as my birthday of sorts. It was the day when my life began again, after feeling so sick for the previous couple of years. It was one of those life-changing days that you look back on as being when your life was forever altered, one of those days when your life would never be as it was.

So I am thankful to my father. He went above and beyond what a father usually does and he gave me a new lease on life.

I hope I’ve made him proud of me since then and that I continue to do so. Our connection as father and daughter grows ever deeper.

Saturday: for vanilla lattes.

McDonald’s really does make the best ones. Who’s with me?

So thanks to:

Lizzi and the rest of the Ten Things of Thankful group.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend everyone and don’t forget to be thankful for your health when it is good.

But Trust Me On The Sunscreen

Last week was a free post week with:

My Free Five.

It’s mid-March already. The weather is just starting to become reasonable, Dairy Queen was giving away free cones to celebrate their birthday, and I came home today to some good news which I will write about for this week’s upcoming Fiction Friday.

It’s been a pretty good last few days for me, always offering up possible topics I can write about here.

🙂

Now, back to business.

For today’s Memoir Monday I answer another question for the challenge…

“The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientist; whereas, the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_Sunscreen

The above advice (in quotes) is given by others. It was first published as an essay in a newspaper and turned into a song that goes by multiple names.

The next part is all me.

***

Q: What would you tell someone who has recently been diagnosed with your disabilities or disabilities that you are familiar with?

A: I hesitate to offer up too much advice or to give my version of what anyone else should do in their own unique situation.

I spent a year listening to people on the other end of a crisis hotline telephone. They poured out their anger and their loneliness and occasionally they asked, point-blank, for me to tell them what to do.

Actually, they wanted to know what I would do if I were them, in their position.

This, I will readily admit, can become a highly intoxicating feeling, but this feeling did not last more than two seconds for me on the other end of that phone line.

I have hesitated to offer someone my advice ever since. Perhaps one good lesson to come out of that whole experience, for me.

I gave them what they asked for, grudgingly, and now I will again because it was in the question today.

However, it leaves the advice giver in an awkward position of their own, when, as it often does, the advice does not live up to the promise of itself.

I have made a friend this past year who is going blind. The friendship exists online. I met him over a Facebook group or some such thing. Funny that I can’t now even recall where or how exactly.

He has a lot of education and a good job, but is finding it harder and harder to keep up with certain demands and expectations as his vision worsens.

I won’t go into too much detail about his situation, in case I betray any confidences without meaning any harm.

I will say that he seems to find something valuable in the way I have handled my own life with a lack of vision. He asks me how I’ve handled this or that and I tell him the truth of how I myself have muddled through.

I hope he takes what I say with a grain of salt because I’m just making it up as I go along. I have no answers on how to cope and I don’t even feel all that successful most days, if I’m being honest.

He has it a lot better than me in many ways, a start I did not have, as he is just now starting to really feel the affects of lack of sight.

I guess he finds comfort out of hearing that another person can relate. He simply relays to me the stories of the barriers he’s encountered during his days and I listen.

That’s all I can really do. I know it’s hard and life just seems to keep getting harder all the time.

I don’t sugar coat anything when it comes to losing sight. I would just say that it is made easier when you have others to lean on.

Without that, I don’t know how anybody copes. I talk to others, seeing that life is a struggle for many people, for all sorts of reasons, and the feeling not being so alone is what keeps me going.

Why do any of us look to others for the answers?

It’s because we can’t so easily see clarity of how we can go about our own lives, but can best see these truths in other people.

I can’t live someone else’s life for them. I can’t possibly accurately show them what mine is like either. I don’t know how closely any of us can really relate our life to another person’s life.

disability of any kind presents the kind of challenges unique in life, in a way that roadblocks are put up at every corner. Problem-solving is a key skill to develop. Patience with life is mandatory. Support from others is essential. The world is not fair. People are going to give up and get frustrated with you, just hopefully these people aren’t your only support network.

I could go on listing a string of platitudes here and a lot of it would be true, but some of it might not apply at all. I think inspirational words, pep talks, and advice can be a dangerous thing if we come to rely on them too much.

Instead, we must learn to lean on others for support, all while learning how to best trust our own individual instincts. I haven’t figured these questions out myself yet, thus I feel inept at presenting any fully formed answers to anyone else.

My friend writes powerfully about these instincts and these missing answers to life’s questions and I show him my writing too.

Perhaps we don’t get any answers, from each other, but we do get something from the words we have shared on all that we’re still just beginning to discover.

***

This might not have been your run-of-the-mill advice column formula, but I hoped I could use an example or two from my own life to express just how shaky any advice can be. We still crave it from others and offer it, in my opinion, much more often than we probably should.

The well-known: ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!

This is a warning sign and it should be applied to all advice, when sought out, and offered up.

JMO

🙂

What would you like the general public to know about your disabilities, disability in general, or any other relevant subject?

This is next week’s question for the

Redefining Disability Awareness Challenge.

In the meantime…

“Take care of your knees. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.”

This was my favourite track of 1999 and I thought it might add a humorous element to this post.

Do you remember this song?

What was the best or worst advice you’ve ever been given?

What was the best or worse advice you yourself have given someone else?

Spotlight Sunday: Single Strides

Welcome to February: first day of a new month, shortest of them all, and just days away from celebrating one year of having this amazing platform for expression and sharing that I’ve discovered.

More on that to come.

Before that, today I am pleased to highlight my first Spotlight of February: Sonya Matejko, more commonly/well-known as:

Single Strides.

Below I question her on all the wisdom I have found at her blog, on writing, and more importantly on life.

There is a second part, a set of travel questions I hope to post on my travel website very soon.

But now I am thrilled to bits that she has agreed to speak to me here. So here she is.

***

She says, first and foremost on her blog, that Single Strides is:

“A blog about falling in love, falling apart, and traveling the world in between.”

This, I read on discovering her, and I was totally hooked. These are the things I write and think about every day.

In this first of her blog posts I wanted to highlight amongst my questions, she speaks on how to deal with the “what if’s and the what not’s”.

You Are So Much More Than Your Mistakes

She says:

“If you were to look up and see the sun you’d realize there are things bigger than your past mistakes.”

Some excellent perspective she offers here.

K: Explain, what is your website all about, what does the name mean to you, and how did you come up with it? What made you start it when you did?

S: Single Strides is a blog about falling in love, falling apart, and traveling the world in between. I started it, truthfully, after a breakup.  Now it survives as a place to share my journey of falling back in love with life and the world around me. Because sometimes, in order for someone to be a muse… they have to be the heartbreak too. 

“There are far too many expectations – don’t meet them. There are far too many rules – go break them. There are far too many risks – take them all.”

6 Things Every 20 Something Should Be Grateful For

The second of her posts I’ve chosen to highlight is one for all the twenty something’s. It is a very popular blog niche out there, as it is a decade for learning and growing in this generation’s youth. I especially loved points 5 and 6 for her unique perspective on the morning commute and on the promise of a new day, every day.

K: Have you always loved writing and why? 

S: Yes. Ever since I can remember I was a writer. Even in Kindergarten we were to all publish a book, and mine made it to the city’s newspaper. From there my love for writing only grew. It’s an escape to a different world. As a writer, you live in your imagination and it brings a different kind of light into your life. And now, I’d have to say my biggest joy from writing comes from messages from people who have been positively effected by my writing. It’s an indescribable blessing to inspire.

“She dreams of better days and of feats achieved. Her imagination runs as wild as the breeze and it joins with the rain while it floods the fields – only so life could grow. She dreams of a bloom but fear is keeping her from planting the seed. So she lives in her past and smiles out of practice. She’s happy with the present as slowly as she lets it come. but she’s stuck on the memories that no longer ring true. And the people that are gone but she still clings to.”

This third of her posts I’ve selected is my favourite, for sure. I had trouble picking just one quote from this one. Do yourself a favour and check out what she had to say. She so perfectly describes the state of me at many times in my life. It’s kind of scary actually, as if she has seen into my mind.

🙂

Sitting With The PAst

She has inspired me with all she says here about how to live with and accept the past, while learning to let go and move forward.

K: Where and how have you learned the most about how to become a writer or how to improve and grow as a writer? 

S: Honestly, I still work on it every day. My grammar is still not where it needs to be, and I could definitely increase my vocabulary. Yet I do think my most valuable lessons on writing have all come from the simple mantra of “write what you know.”

“To my ex thank you for breaking my heart. If it weren’t for the heartbreak, this blog would never exist. This is the home of all the emotions that you spilled out of me that had nowhere to go.”

Thank You For 2014

In this post she thanks people, from her friends and family to her readers and to the one who broke her heart. This is giving credit where credit is due because love, even when it ends, shapes us and it brought her to the point where she had to write this blog. Very glad of that.

K: What do you believe writing can bring to our world or achieve for a better world. if anything? What, for you, is the connection between love and writing? 

S: Writing can change you once you’ve read it – even if for a moment. There have been countless books that have inspired me to live my life a different way. Countless articles that can given me the courage to act, the will to laugh, and the hope that things will get better. Writing has an intense power to sway your heart and your mind. Us writers need to keep sharing our words not for the sake of sharing, but to change just one life.

“Single strides will get me there. They may not always be straight, they may sometimes be clumsy, but they will always be moving forward. So how many decisions did it take me to get to where I am now? I could ask the tide, or I could just let it cool my feet ant just be happy I am simply alive to feel it.”

Ramblings and Reflections

This has been her path and I can’t wait to continue to follow her through her posts.

K: What are your future hopes, plans, and dreams for your writing and for Single Strides? 

S: I really would love to grow my brand. I’d love for people to really resonate with it and look forward to upcoming articles. I’d eventually like to have a big enough fan base to begin (or edit) my novel. My end goal has always been to publish a book, and not just to get on the B&N shelves… but to be the book people tell their friends “you absolutely have to read this.”

“Because you’ll never get to where you’re meant to go by standing still.”

Six Months of Single Strides

And here’s to many many more.

***

I want to thank Sonya for agreeing to answer these questions I had for her and for being her true, authentic self. She, in her early twenties, has discovered things I am just now learning as I enter my thirties. She does it all, by sharing her journey with heartbreak (which is what I first majorly related to in her writing) and by being independent and strong in every single stride forward she is taking in her life.

Sonya has been published in such publications as:

Elite Daily,

and

Thought Catalog

And has written guest posts for:

The Fickle Heartbeat

As Told Over Brunch

and

Young and Twenty

Also, you can keep up with her on the following social media outlets:

Twitter

and on

Facebook

Sonya is making single stride after single stride and little does she know it, but she has helped me work through hard times and difficult transitions. Her story, my own, and many others is:

“PROOF HOPELESS ROMANTICS AREN’T SO HOPELESS AFTER ALL”

10 Reasons Why Hopeless Romantics Aren’t Hopeless After All

Good to know.

🙂

Thank you, Sonya, for all this and much more.>

My Voice Amongst the Thousands

A week after the attack on the French Charlie Hebdo I woke up to find a movement beginning and spreading across my social media and the blogosphere: 1000 Voices Speak For Compassion.

I have been watching the news every night, feeling helpless, and then I read about this campain,which started small only the other day, aiming hopefully for 1000 participants; now growing.

On February 20th the movement hopes to post as one on blogs everywhere, all over the world. I thought…hey, this is something I could do. I can write about compassion.

It may not seem like it, in a world so big, but even a movement such as this one can be a powerful tool. It feels good to band together, in any way possible, to say something and speak about the good we want to spread. This, in a world where so much hatred and ignorance seems to spread like wildfire every single day.

I know issues like censorship and freedom of speech and of the press are hot button issues in the world today. Again, apparently I can’t seem to just choose a side and stick with it.

Should cartoons such as the ones in this case even be created, if it is at all disrespectful? Should freedom of speech, no matter who it insults, be what’s most important? Should we think before we act?

I am writing this because I have the freedom to do so. I may not be writing anything particularly inflammatory or I might. It all would depend on who you’d ask I suppose. I don’t take this freedom for granted. As a writer, I know the power of the “pen” or, in my case and as is so often the case these days, the keyboard.

There has been great support for the Paris newspaper that was attacked. Last weekend there was a march in France for Charlie Hebdo. News media outlets all across the world have come out condemning the attack and I agree it was a seriously cowardly act.

Now, I know about writing and words and how the written word is clearly powerful.

“Sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you.”

This is bunk!

As for these cartoons:

I have enjoyed art as a child, but I can no longer see it. I have not seen these cartoons at the centre of this story.

I know there is not enough sense of humour around the world and different cultures take offence to things, widespread degrees of sensitivity.

I don’t know and can’t really speak on the issue. I don’t know what the need was, so strong of satire and freedom of the press.

Perhaps I wish every culture of the world could be on the same level to understand why one is so offended by something the other does.

I wanted to participate in 1000 Speak (which is now the official hashtag) because I believe compassion and understanding of others is the key.

Also in the news lately, at home here in my own country of Canada is another very disturbing story that has been on my mind.

It’s the issue of the lack of respect for females in our culture and in youth, on college campuses and it’s something I fear nobody, not students or grown adults who should know better, takes seriously enough.

It’s been in the news, for weeks it seems, but maybe it takes precisely the news media to make a dent in the problem.

It took place at the dentistry school, at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

A group of male students was caught posting horrible things on Facebook about female classmates. Such nonchalant discussion about drugging and hate sex are probably more common than I want to believe. I really do not know what makes anyone, at any age, think that is okay to think, let alone say about another human being.

Red tape. Channels. What is the appropriate way to deal with this and why has it been handled the way it has to this point?

It seems like this story has been going on for a while and just today I heard on the news that the cops finally received the information they requested to aid in their investigation. What would take the school administration this long? Were they dragging their feet?

Surely they have daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers. What is this pervasiveness in our society to downplay something so important?

I don’t know that writing can have any effect on these moral questions and serious events whatsoever. Perhaps, the extra news coverage on the problem at Dalhousie is just the thing, public pressure, to bring about just the necessary punishment for those involved.

As for the deeper questions of freedom of speech and expression I don’t know what will happen. France is in the spotlight right now, but it’s just the latest in a never-ending parade of headlines. Why can’t we all just get along? Ha!

I don’t always articulate my feelings so well here, but I wanted to jot down these two examples as I announce my intention of being one of those bloggers who plans to write about compassion on February 20th. I want to speak up along with others who intend on speaking.

There’s a lot being discussed back and forth over my social media today about how to best get the message across. I can’t promise I will keep up with all the social media avenues of awareness for this thing, but I can do what I do best: I can share my own unique perspective, on my blog, for the sort of compassionate world I never lose hope of waking up to find one day.

As I said in an interview I did on a blog just yesterday, I wish I could shake the world into seeing reason. I will continue to set my own small example of what it means to find compassion for all human beings and empathy for what they might be feeling or what has brought them to where they are today.

I will be one of thousands and that’s a start.

From a Distance – Bette Midler on YouTube