There are many things I would like to speak about, on an ongoing basis. Listening to stories of survivors of the Holocaust, their strength and bravery in speaking on such horrid things, makes me feel like not enough is said as of yet, from all of us and that we all must say something.
There are a lot of things going on, past and present, that I’d like to address
and then something stops me from saying anything at all. Fear, but of what?
I am stuck on the Holocaust and I have been for a long long time. I take breaks from thinking about it, to preserve my sanity, but ultimately this historical event creeps back into my thoughts. I am lucky I can take those breaks. I didn’t experience it, though I know many who did have gone on to live perfectly wonderful lives. It feels haunting, even if I often wonder how I’d have moved on if it had happened to me.
I want to speak on things, to write about them, to make sure people don’t forget. Mistakes are repeated. Humans are doomed to repeat what once was. We can’t seem to help ourselves.
If I speak up on such things, I am told I worry too much, as if I am supposed to forget that if I had lived during the time of World War II I would be considered a waste, as one of the disabled.
Yes, if I’d lived in Europe during that time, if I lived anywhere back then, and even if I lived here, years ago, kidney disease would have killed me.
Morbid, perhaps. Speaking up, or addressing the things that haunt my mind, this unsticks those cobwebs from the furthest corners of my brain.
I am lucky to have an address and a roof over my head, even if my heat does keep crapping out on me. I am lucky to be living in 2018 and celebrating that I was born after the inventions of dialysis and organ transplantation.
I saw Nazis marching in North America, I hear that Poland just made it illegal to mention Poland’s involvement during the Holocaust, and I wonder what to say, what I can say about these furious subjects.
I see people are saying things aren’t so bad, and they aren’t really, but they are for some people and they could be, any day, for more of us. We need to stay vigilant and on guard to halt dangers from reoccurring.
Sexual misconduct and resignations as a result are happening in Canada, in Ontario politics now too. Forget presidents and porn stars. This is not so hard to get, is it?
The men who complain this is going too far, that they can’t even talk to women now, make me want to bang my own head against the wall repeatedly.
Pop culture. Politics. Personal space. Is it really so hard for men to not act inappropriately with women and young girls? Really? Reeeeeeally?
It is maddening. I want to keep addressing all these things, to make people get along, and to practice tolerance and compassion. What is it going to take?
I’m thankful for the never ending list of ideas that come to me, as potential topics to write about.
Writer’s block, no way, at least not in the usual way of things.
When I am given the job of writing something, I may get a block, but that’s more from my fear of not being able to do the job I was asked to do, not being good enough.
I’m thankful for a return to my writing group in 2018.
It was a difficult day/week/month, but those people are there for me.
I wrote about a young woman, musician, who was hearing the news that Kurt Cobain had died, and wondering how to navigate the perils of fame.
It is a question on my mind. The group listened to my clumsy story and seemed curious, as curious as I am about what I’ve been thinking since I heard Dolores O’Riordan was gone.
I did smile and even laugh, with my group of local writer friends. Worth it.
I’m thankful for a list of tough questions to answer, to better know myself.
I am a writer, but I have a lot to learn. Sometimes, it requires that I look deep into myself, to find the truth. Otherwise, my writing will not keep on the forward momentum I hope to have.
It’s hard work, difficult and painful and sensitive stuff, but I am determined to see things more clearly on the other side.
I’m thankful for a contract opportunity to write about something so important to me.
Braille is not a well understood thing, for many, even as technology takes on bigger parts of all our lives.
My early literacy is thanks to my parents and to the school I was in and braille is a large part of all that.
So, to share about the value of braille is so important to me. I just hope I can do it justice and give to it as much as it has given me.
I’m thankful Canada’s government didn’t shut down.
Disfunction at the highest level.
I know very little about trade agreements, but Canada is doing the work and staying involved with other countries, while moving away from what the US seems to be heading for.
They are being run by someone who only pitches America, America First, or whatever, all things made in America. Whatever, to bring more jobs. I guess that is left to themselves, in their own country. Isolation.
If his government can’t even work together, to stay open a year after his inauguration, how well will they do, on their own, if that is what they prefer?
I’m thankful I could be in on a meeting to discuss traveling out west, for a convention in British Columbia.
The Canadian Federation of the Blind have a convention, every May, where issues important to blind Canadians are discussed.
This year, Ontario is coming to western Canada and we are going to make our mark.
I was only in B.C. in the airport, changing flights to the Yukon. I intend to go back, to speak about the project to make audio description in movie theatres a common thing, and I will see the Pacific Ocean while I’m at it.
I’m thankful that the marching continued, one year later, with all the more reason to do so.
I wondered, did worry, that it was a one year hit action/movement and those who like to criticize would be able to point at the one time visual as a sign that making our voices heard isn’t needed or productive.
I did not see all the signs, but had a few read to me. Some smart sign writers in those marches.
This is a current US president thing, true, but it is bigger than that guy. It is a stand against what has been.
It leaves a bunch of us out, those who find marching in the streets difficult, but it is heartening to me anyway.
I want things to only get better, going forward, in the years to come. I have a vested interest in that, in compassion and in empathy, for not only one gender or class or whatever.
I understand the fatigue that can set in, but we all must keep doing something, however small. I am still working out what that something is for me.
I’m thankful for a chance to listen to a local orchestra, playing my kind of a symphony and to see a movie live, that I missed the first time around.
I saw Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the film, on a big screen at a sport stadium.
Then, I saw the soundtrack being played by live orchestra. It was a strange experience of my senses.
I heard parts of the soundtrack, differently than I’d ever heard them, when blended into the background of the movie on DVD at home.
Int was strange, seeing with a crowd of other major Harry Potter fans, with all the cheers and the comments made by nearby fans.
The bells and the percussion section and the other main instruments that make up that famously known and heard Harry Potter musical sound.
I’m thankful for things that happen (or don’t happen) for a reason.
Maybe I don’t get what I want, in one moment, but that leads me to something else. Maybe I am getting what I can handle, what I need to teach me what I need to know.
Who knows.
I resisted the “door/window” line of optimism.
I am ending, this week, with another comforting song from The Cranberries, the Irish band that was and is no more.
My brother generously added it to his playlist on the radio show he hosts, every Friday morning, on a college radio station in London, Ontario.
In Ontario (the province where I live) and out east in Nova Scotia there have been two awful house fires in the news the last few weeks, killing multiple adults and children.
Sometimes it is human error and sometimes there is no-one to blame, though blame is rather off point.
We humans like to spread it all around, but where does it get us?
I hear all of these disasters, going on all around, and I remain untouched where I reside, but my mind races and can’t keep pace with world events.
Then there are those fires that some start, metaphorically, to distract and divide and destroy.
***
Hearts are worn in these dark ages
You’re not alone in this story’s pages
The light has fallen amongst the living and the dying
And I’ll try to hold it in, yeah I’ll try to hold it in
[
Chorus] The world’s on fire
and It’s more than I can handle
I’ll tap into the water (Try and bring my share)
I try to bring more More than I can handle (Bring it to the table) Bring what I am able
I watch the heavens but I find no calling
Something I can do to change what’s coming
Stay close to me while the sky is falling
Don’t wanna be left alone, don’t wanna be alone
[
Chorus]
Hearts break, hearts mend Love still hurts
Visions clash, planes crash Still there’s talk of
Saving souls, still the cold Is closing in on us
We part the veil on our killer sun
Stray from the straight line on this short run
The more we take, the less we become
The fortune of one that means less for some
[
Chorus X2]
Tim Hortons is the place to get your coffee in Canada and I believe the US even has them, possibly along the border of our two countries. I seem to recall, when watching some US television networks through cable, that there was a commercial for the company, but its called Tim Hortons, Coffee and Bake Shop or some such thing.
So, the minimum wage hike that went into effect here at the start of 2018 has everyone in the province of Ontario talking, and now the story spreading across Canada because it isn’t only concerning Ontario, not at all.
Minimum wage, up to $14 or something, and still to rise to $15 in the future. Good for those working certain jobs, but apparently bad for those companies (Tim Hortons) who have to pay more.
The real trouble started when Tim Hortons started cutting back on other benefits their employees did have, supposedly to make up for this change.
There are two sides: the side of those supporting those workers and those workers themselves I guess and the companies and those who have always said rising minimum wage will break us as a province and as a country.
I know very little about the economy and never have. I try to read and listen to the news, but it’s hard enough keeping up with all going on in the world. I don’t have a mind for the study of our economy, (economics). I know it’s good and important knowledge to have, I know that, but I can barely figure out my own affairs, budgeting and bills and the money I’ve started to make, still so new to it all.
Trying to figure out how the province and Canada as a country runs is beyond my capabilities.
So, though Canadians have seemed obsessed with Tim Hortons coffee for longer than I can remember, some are calling for that to change.
It’s not about a greedy corporation at all, some say, because this wage hike issue is put on each individual franchise.
I don’t run one of those either. I don’t know and hardly feel like I should speak.
I got my coffee from McDonald’s today, but that isn’t anything all that new. I simply prefer it and I don’t like being told I have to follow the crowd and be like all other Canadians who can’t go without my Tim Hortons fix.
I tend to look at the subject of corporate greed as a thing that happens. I see minimum wage as affecting real human beings, people who need understanding, but so do all humans I guess, even those who run the giant corporations and companies.
As a writer and creative, one who wouldn’t be all that good at matters of crunching numbers and running a business, I see things from the human perspective. Not to say all creative people are that way. I only know what side I end up falling on, though I try to see any issue from more than just one side whenever and wherever possible.
I don’t know if boycotting the company in question is the answer here, or ever, but that’s what Canada is talking about this week. Well, like other countries nearby, it’s that and Fire and Fury too. Rumour has it that even demand for the book is growing here in Canada. I can’t say I’ll read it, but I think the whole thing is wildly bizarre, and yet unsurprising to say the least.
Fire and fury is a good way to sum up how hyped everyone seems to be. I do feel all the greed that does exist, more than ever from those who make the most money, but I can’t claim I know what I’m talking about on what Canada’s economy has done in the past or will do in the future.
I bet the woman who runs these prompts
likely has some thoughts on all this.
Linda is to thank for me not feeling totally lost at the start of a new year, as a writer, and she, as a fellow Canadian, might know more about Canada’s economics than I do.
Either way, I thank her for Stream of Consciousness Saturday, all the weeks of the year, and for Just Jot It January, for the first month of each brand new one.
To drink from the fountain
Of the little you know about love and god
—Sarah Slean
I can’t see silver and gold anymore, but at least Canada still has net neutrality.
Photo caption: Max and Auntie Kerry. My favourite picture, though I cannot see it.
I have been watching many of the holiday programs in the run-up to Christmas: Home Alone, Rudolph, and an old Frosty classic.
My jolly holiday spirit has been waxing and waning this year, all depending on the day, which is why I am still here with my third Christmas season with Ten Things, keeping the gratitude going and written for the record.
It’s funny, that the Christmas song I ended last week’s TToT post with (all about the kind of snow we get here in Canada) and then that is the one Christmas song Sarah Slean chose to perform at her concert that night, the one I am happy to report I got to enjoy. This leads me to my first thankful for this last week before Christmas finally arrives.
I’m thankful for the weather holding back, if not the bitter cold, at least the blowing snow.
I live over an hour from Toronto and where most of the concerts are. I am thankful the weather cooperated and that I had family willing to make that trip, to drive me to see Sarah Slean and her band live.
December in Ontario, Canada can be unpredictable, but though it was so bitter cold, I was eventually warm inside the intimate venue, with some lovely music and a good friend.
I’m thankful for a truly uplifting early Christmas gift of a concert, with a friend and fellow writer.
Sarah sang beautifully, with a woman who doubled as backup and cello. She also had a guy on the drums, violins, and viola players. Slean herself, as well as being lead singer, played piano.
She even forgot the first line of her big single (Sarah) and had to stop the music and shout out for the lyrics. It was a sign that nobody’s perfect and we all forget things and make a mistake, if you can even call it that. We are all human. It happens. She has been writing songs for something like twenty years and her audience of all us fans were understanding.
Sarah spoke, in between songs, about the shelter she volunteers at in Toronto and the people she’s met there. The concert was raising money for food for Christmas for St. Felix Centre on Facebook.
She spoke of the snap judgments we are all guilty of making in our daily lives, using one of many hashtags during the evening (#GOTrainPhenomenon) for what happened the night it was just her and one scary looking man on a GO Train. When you’re trapped on a moving vehicle, you have nowhere to run and hide, which can open your eyes in unexpected ways.
She considers herself something of a #SongWitch for what happens to her when a set of lyrics and piece of music come to her and become something special.
Her lyrics are heartbreakingly beautiful and wise.
I’m thankful my friend and guest (her birthday being the next day) and I could talk, even during intermission, and her spirit could be lifted just as mine was.
We struggle with writing, at times, but we shared our experiences, back and forth. I know we inspired each other to never give up and to continue on this path we’re both on.
It was different songs that spoke to the two of us, but all that matters is we got something special and unique out of it.
Mine was the first song Sarah sang, about there never being a perfect sky and right away I was listening. She had my attention for sure. I am often afraid I will one day no longer even see what sky is, but the message about not waiting for some perfection that will never come was duly noted.
For my friend, it was a song about finding the right words and that endless search to say exactly what it is any of us wants to say.
I’m thankful for more speaking up and activism from a powerful advocate and friend, after an unexpected piece of news.
I went to the Sarah Slean show, happy to avoid hearing the news of the vote in Alabama that I’d been hearing, frankly, too much about.
What happened in that state was and is a smaller scale example of the disbelief I have for who is POTUS right now. It is all so nonsensical and disgusting. I feel like I live in some kind of upside-down world, on a daily basis, even from my semi-regular life here in Canada at this time.
It’s a sign that sure things shouldn’t be assumed/presumed or counted on. It felt like all those who mocked anyone for their confidence in Hillary Clinton winning the presidency, like it was such a sure thing in 2016, were given a taste of their own medicine here in 2017. Cockiness is not such a good attitude to have when it comes to these things.
Enough people, the right people weren’t having it and I will let Kerra speak on the rest.
I am so proud to know her and that she has found this place for her opinions on the fate of her birth country.
I’m thankful for people to check on me when I’ve had a bad day and couldn’t be found.
I stay in touch with someone, as I am on my own a lot, and then I have my bad days when the pain makes me want to sleep and shut out the world.
I appreciate being left to this sometimes, but I know I am always being watched over and protected.
Whether it’s family or neighbour, it is a nice thing to know.
I’m thankful for a pleasant and successful final National Foundation of the Blind Peer Advisor conference call before the holidays.
We are a team in many ways. We support each other in our limitless pursuits. It’s a good group.
We speak, by phone, one Thursday evening each month. This was our evening to hear about holiday plans and traditions. Still, I am the only peer advisor from Canada in the group. One woman calls from Australia.
Maybe we will all meet in person one day.
I’m thankful for such fun kids in my life.
It was a wonderful pre-Christmas Saturday with my niece and nephew.
My niece has herself a dollhouse, which is actually for a family of bunny rabbits. My nephew played with his big sister and her rabbit family.
I sometimes like to join in their games. Other times, I love to just watch and listen as they play. They fight, like siblings often do, but they love to play together too. It’s super sweet to witness the fun they have with each other.
I’m thankful for Chippy.
I believe that is his name, their Elf On The Shelf, who shows up somewhere new every morning leading up to Christmas.
My niece and nephew enjoy looking for him in a new spot every morning, like hanging from a light, as he was the day we were there.
I guess, I don’t really know the rules, as this wasn’t a thing when I was growing up. Still, they seem to love it. It is one of the special holiday traditions they have as a family.
I’m thankful for such smart kids in my life, asking questions.
My brother had the new Blue Planet oceans shows all downloaded and my niece was all into learning about sharks. She could become a scientist (marine biologist perhaps) or an artist. That’s what is so amazing about her. Her future, with all that curiosity and intelligence, is wide open.
My nephew is settling in at school his first year and making friends. He is so inquisitive and full of life. He makes me smile, the sweetest little soul.
They asked questions and seemed to begin to understand, more and more, about what blindness means in their aunt and their uncle.
I am glad we could share a love for marine documentaries and colours.
I’m thankful for old champaign still tasting good.
Thanks for the hospitality goes out to my brother and sister-in-law, for the snacks, and the holiday cheer.
S…A…N…T…A
S…A…N…T…A
S…A…N…T…a
And Santa is his name-o!
“I dreamed I saw a great wave climbing over green lands and above the hills. I stood upon the brink. It was utterly dark in the abyss before my feet. A light shown behind me, but I could not turn. I could only stand there, waiting.”
—Lord of the Rings
I was recently brought back to my love of LOTR and this quote jumped out at me when I heard it again. I feel this way a lot now.
People tell me not to be scared, but I can’t help it. I can take up violin and yoga and other things, to keep focused on the positive, but I feel this quote intensely and I wish people would stop trying to make me feel something that has taken root and is, for better or for worse, how I feel.
It’s nearly Christmas and I am making my way through these last few weeks before it arrives upon us. The news around the world, this week, was not much improved from previous ones.
Then, another man and his family were targeted, in a racially motivated attack,
by a man with a bat in a WAL-MART parking lot.
And this was just in Ontario mind you.
So, I sometimes start off my weekly TToT post sharing my fears and concerns and the things that feel so out of my control and which are so often wildly unfair about the world.
Then I list what I am thankful for, to help me get through the week and focus on the beautiful things and the magic to be found all around me.
From last week’s TToT…the audio piece I did with my brother will be included in the holiday marathon radio show.
The man in charge asked how to pronounce our last name. He isn’t the first to ask that. He also asked how we’d like to be billed and the question was a new one, hadn’t been asked that way before.
Whose name should go first?
I am thankful for more writing support/discussion with those who know and understand.
My two writer friends, I originally found on Facebook, are such a pleasure to spend a few hours with.
We talk writing and I found out one of them wrote a children’s book about Helen Keller.
The other is a knowledgeable scientist/science writer.
I learn so much from them, have learned so much, in this last year since we first met.
I am thankful for a pleasant holiday mall experience.
I found a bright and friendly deer.
I found my favourite holiday scent, vanilla bean. I got myself some hand soap, shower gel, and body spray.
I found a few gifts in my favourite store, that which is full of mostly books, but not all.
I went in for books and came out with a super soft blanket. Still, I hope bookstores never disappear like Blockbuster has.
I am thankful for my mom’s delicate and detailed Christmas care.
Clever, original, and inventive.
She decorates my home, even though I can’t see much. I don’t put in the work and she comes over and makes the place feel like Christmas.
This year she only made the pine branches she had look the shape of a Christmas tree, but soft pine this time. I see the bright white lights she adds and then comes the star.
No photo can capture it, but the star wouldn’t stay up on such a soft pine branched tree and so she used one of my old white canes. She put it up the back and this was enough to steady the star on top.
I am constantly in awe at the things she comes up with. It’s always been that way, as long as I can remember.
That’s my mom alright, all three of those, the exact definition of ingenious.
I am thankful for a second favourite Christmas gift.
My sister loves Pinterest and found a Harry Potter quote, printed it out and framed it for me.
This has been the week of surprises, let’s call them semi Christmas presents, both I was not expecting.
As for another Christmas present I was given early, Canada and all the snow might want to put a damper on that one tonight.
“Here is my secret. It is very simple. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
—The Little Prince
I like alliteration in my titles and I like this time of year. I am busy during the days and try not to think too much, about those things that keep me up at night.
I’m thankful my family and I are safe and far from natural disasters and that my friends are safe too.
Here in Ontario we get tornados sometimes, but we aren’t out west where the fires are, nor are we by the coast where the flooding happens.
Then I woke to the notification of a strong earthquake in Mexico and I feared for my friends living there.
Mexico is big enough that those I care about weren’t touched, but these natural disasters seem to be everywhere lately.
Just not here. Our weather has been beautiful, if not a little cool for this time of year, but I am loving it.
I’m thankful for such a fun and energizing writing group.
A pack of three crayons (red/blue/green) were brought in for the mystery object, those packs you find at a restaurant, to keep the kids entertained. Well, I love crayons, but many of us in the group wondered and commented on the lack of a yellow crayon.
Our group was larger than usual and I liked the energy each person added. I was entirely entertained, myself, by everyone in that room.
The stories were diverse and all about crayons. Ah, the life of a crayon.
There were two new people there and they were both J names. This, somehow, had its own influence on someone’s story. I hope they both come back.
I’m thankful my brother had his adventure and made it safely home from Iceland.
I’m thankful he returned to his radio show.
He is getting better and more comfortable, every time he does it.
I’m thankful for a another Saturday family day.
The guys went to a baseball game and us girls and Max stayed home.
There were family photos taken out in the back yard.
I’m thankful Saturday family day spilled over to Sunday.
It was a lovely afternoon spent sitting in a circle in the yard, with beers, wine, and snacks.
My family are some of the most interesting people I know.
I’m thankful a piece I’ve been working on (from pitch to publication) is finally out, starting all the way back last May.
Read to the end and the part about the drumsticks.
This is a prelude to my audio piece for SiriusXM.
I’m thankful for two more “acceptances” and for the fear that’s accompanying both.
I wasn’t expecting it, in a way, and I am back to square one. I must come up with a piece of writing that they will want to publish. I worry about not coming up with anything and instead letting them and myself down.
The excitement is there too though. I am honoured, after ending last week with a rejection email to a pitch, to hear anything at all to start off a new one.
I’m thankful to have an available store full of food to shop in.
As I meandered through the isles, the shelves, and the freezer section and prepared foods, I know not everyone has such choice right there in front of them. It felt like a lot, but it is an abundance I am thankful for.
“Isolation offered its own form of companionship: the reliable silence of her rooms, the steadfast tranquility of the evenings. The promise that she would find things where she put them, that there would be no interruption, no surprise. It greeted her at the end of each day and lay still with her at night.”
—From “The Lowland” by Jhumpa Lahiri
Recently, I’ve only wanted to stay home with my cat. Maybe I really am becoming a cat lady.
I’m so sick of the idiots (and worse) in this world. There is so much immaturity and lack of care or concern for other people. Animals are where it’s at.
All I wanted was an enjoyable visit with family, but I was the one who didn’t choose to leave my phone at home that day, the day of rallies and violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.
I’m thankful that my brother’s band got back together, to practice for a gig, by playing in my basement once more.
It was all the songs I love, those I became so familiar with after months of hearing them in my basement.
Secrets Revealed
This is a photo of their set list from the show the other night. My brother wrote it out in braille. They thought their fans might like to see. My brother didn’t really need it. He had the list memorized already.
I’m thankful to join in with a friend in a worthy cause.
He wants to start a branch of the National Federation of the Blind/Canadian Federation of the Blind in Ontario. The one currently going is out west only.
The biggest organization for the blind in Canada is still the CNIB (Canadian National Institute of the Blind) and yet it isn’t enough. It isn’t fulfilling all the needs, according to us, the ones who are in need of the service.
This sounds like a lot of work, but my friend sounds up for the job and I want to do what I can.
I feel so helpless with so much going on. I need to be able to do something good.
I’m thankful for peaches and ice cream for my nephew’s birthday.
I may have had both a small sundae and then a small cone.
Fresh peaches are the best part of August. When you mix that with my favourite vanilla soft serve, I am in paradise.
For the birthday, we did things backwards: ice cream first and then dinner. Dinner was pizza anyway.
My nephew is still grasping the concept of what a birthday is. He isn’t overly interested in why people sing and light candles, depending on the day. You say Happy Birthday to him and he says it back to you, like it’s a greeting. He makes me smile with his total innocence. I need more of that to fight the overwhelming stress and gloom that often threatens to bring me down.
I’m thankful for a mild night out on a patio, listening to some relaxing music, until the rain came.
A friend of ours was playing at a local restaurant. We got through ordering drinks and appetizers before the rain started up.
Until that point, I was enjoying the guitars, both with his singing and as instrumentals.
I’m thankful for all the amazing art my niece made at art camp.
She is artistic, like her father. She is the little girl who loves to create things. She reminds me of myself at that age.
She is a natural at making things.
They made letters for their first names out of crystals and jewels. She showed me an ocean in a jar, made with water and oil and food colouring. She made a polar bear mask. She tie dyed a pillow and made another pillow, so soft and with many knots around the edges instead of sewing.
At this camp there was something called the splatter paint room. Nothing but bright colours, paint splattered all over the floor and walls. You can go wild, make as much of a splatter mess of colour as you want, and it’s all okay.
I thought, since I am so bad at interior decorating for my own house, even though I can no longer see colours: why not make myself a splatter paint house?
Her love and pride for the things she made, as she was showing us, made me miss colour, art, and made me so happy for her and so proud to be her aunt.
I am thankful for the bottle of water my newly four-year-old nephew gave me when I said I was looking for something to drink.
He just opened the fridge and got it for me.
He is the master of his fridge and his home at this age and it is so sweet to witness.
I am thankful for what a thoughtful little sweetheart he is.
He told us, the moment we arrived, that he wanted to get his mother some flowers. He had previously told his dad that he was “thinking” about getting her some flowers.
He’s been thinking about this. It constantly amazes me, the kind of kids they are, and the sorts of things they think about, before deciding to share with the grownups in their lives.
I am thankful for the Max Mix.
My brother is a music fan and he has a lot of it himself. When he noticed my nephew had a love of music, he made him a mix of all the songs my nephew seemed to love.
He remembers lyrics and loves to sing in the car. He is so cool, cooler than me anyway.
I am thankful for a beautiful day to sit outside for a five-year-old’s birthday party.
People gathered, kids running and playing, while I sat and had a cool drink.
They have a big yard, the yard we had as children, and so much room to run and play games.
It wasn’t too hot. It wasn’t humid. The air was perfectly summery and pleasant.
I’m thankful for his amazing little mind and imagination.
My nephews are both so smart. He knew people were coming and he worked on a show to perform for us, all week long. He prepared a screen with a border, like a TV, but when we were all outside, he set it up like a play or puppet show, using chairs as the stage.
It was a form of fan fiction with his favourites: Littlefoot (from Land Before Time), a T Rex, and Curious George.
It turned out to be this whole epic adventure story and it all came from him.
We found this cracked robin’s egg on the driveway and I thought it a sweet discovery. My mom improves on the nature and this sign of spring.
I wondered then, where the inhabitant of the egg went. How did the egg land and not crack into even more pieces? I wondered things.
I’m thankful for leftover wine.
My sister had a wedding shower for a friend and there were leftovers. She was kind to share them with me.
I’m thankful for a writing group built around a hand sculpted wand.
One of our members of “The Elsewhere Region” brought in a birthday gift she’d received. It’s like the Harry Potter wand I bought, even the box, but made specifically for her, with love from a friend who knows her well.
The stories we all came up with were interesting. Mine was about a teacher of the blind who started a braille club in her class and her wand accidentally fell out of her desk drawer. She almost had to reveal to all her students that she was magic, until her visually impaired student saved her.
The others used their very interesting imaginations and came up with wild tales of magic and I was once more blown away by their storytelling abilities.
I am thankful I could help spread hash tags about the disabilities many of us were, in some cases, born with.
The hash tag “I Am A Preexisting Condition” is making the rounds on Twitter since the shocking revelation that the GOP and the House voted in their horrid healthcare plan, which is making many people I know with chronic illnesses and conditions afraid for what will happen.
I felt helpless and wanted to do something. I couldn’t think of what that could be. It’s just so outlandish.
I am thankful for my nephew’s creativity, imagination, and the ideas that are all his own.
He drew an X on a piece of paper and tacked it up on the door. We saw it there when we arrived the other day and I was smiling when I heard what it’s for.
He put it up to keep the spiders out.
NO SPIDERS
I am thankful I could give my niece her bottle and put her to sleep.
My nephew was staying with his grandparents overnight and he was a bit sad as bedtime approached. My mom comforted him and I fed Mya her bottle. That girl loves to eat.
Then she fell asleep over my shoulder.
I’m thankful for echoes of a memory with a lullaby.
My mom started to sing an old lullaby that her mother, my grandmother, used to sing. This seemed to bring back memories for me, something so vague, about my grandma singing to me.
“Go to bed my little darling. Close your big blue eyes. Soon you’ll hear the sandman calling, far beyond the skies.”
It’s funny that you can sense a memory from the past, so long gone, and even start to wonder if it really happened. I remember being sung to like that, but I don’t know when or how old I might have been. I seem to remember being held, but can any of us remember back that far into our pasts?
Well, I held Mya and the entire time I tapped that song out on her back, gently, over and over again, trying to sharpen my own memories. It didn’t work, but the song is a beautiful one.
I am thankful that France did not make the same mistake the US made.
France is a totally different country than the US of course and I knew they would make the right choice with Emmanuel Macron.
Just a few weeks ago, Canada gave a giant sigh of relief, when our own (he was being called Canada’s Donald Trump) and he was running for the Conservative Party of Canada, dropped out.
Kevin O’Leary is a businessman, like 45, known for his role in Shark Tank, but he didn’t feel quite as outrageous. Maybe that was just my wishful thinking there, but he decided on his own that he couldn’t stay in the race.
I don’t know what will happen with the EU and I hope no more terrorist attacks occur in France or anywhere else, but I am sure we aren’t done with all that, sadly.
I am thankful for the sun to make its reappearance.
Even I grew weary of all that dreary weather, day after day after day. The sun does shine again, but unfortunately, some are dealing with major damage to their homes and their lives. Rain has power to mess with us. The sun revives.
And this last photo isn’t the most pleasant sight. I begin with a beautiful flowering bush and I cap off this TToT with the scene we came across in my back yard.
I have squirrels living in the top of my garage and this one came to a sad end, landing in a tree and hanging there until we noticed it. Poor thing.
Loss and endings. I just hope those affected by the flooding, in Quebec mostly, can salvage something of their homes.
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.
Her Headache 