The Woman in the Backseat

Okay, so it's Saturday. It's snowing softly and the kids are playing in the yard across the street with the neighbor. I'm getting into my car to go meet a friend. I'm about to drive away when I notice some snow that needs clearing on the corner of the windshield. Just enough to make a left turn slightly unsafe.

Ah! The joys of winter in Saskatchewan. 

I get out, clear the thing, get back in. Good to go—but when I try to run the windshield wipers, nothing happens. They're stuck in the ice on the bottom of the windshield.

This problem's a little harder to solve. The ice is thick and I'm not wearing mittens. How does winter catch me so off-guard, every single year, bare-fingered and bare-toed? Snow in mid-November isn't exactly a strange concept, even if it is a crappy one. I hack at the ice for a few minutes with my bare hands and the wipers pop loose. Good. 

But when I get in and try them again, they only go halfway up. Progress, I guess, but there are small flakes of snow collecting just out of reach of the wiper blades. Ugh, I'm going to be late. 

I sheepishly climb out of the car, yet again. Barclay's inside the house; I'd left him in the living room on the couch in front of the bay window, reading a book. I have a fleeting, self-conscious thought about how I hope he's not in there watching me get in and out of the car, like I've lived in California my whole life and don't know how to properly clean snow and ice off a windshield. 

Here's a wonderful thing though: when I finally free the blade and get back in the car for the fourth time, I check the clock and see that, though it felt like I was clawing at that ice for three hours, it's only been five minutes—I'm no longer going to be five minutes early, but I'm not going to be late either. I smile at the win and rummage in my purse for my phone.

At this point, out of the corner of my eye, I notice a woman walking down the sidewalk toward me. I don't pay much attention to her though; Regina has been known to contain a woman or two—yes, even in my quiet little neighborhood. There are dozens of us.

I set my phone in the cup holder and press play on a podcast and that's when the back passenger side door of my car opens and the woman—the one from the sidewalk, the one I've been paying very little attention to—climbs in. 

I push pause on the podcast. We look at each other. 

"Hi," I say automatically. "How may I help you?"

That's really what I say. As though my car is a customer service kiosk and it's a very normal thing for me to wait on people in it. I cannot, for the life of me, tell you what she says in response. I just don't know. My brain is making a whooshing noise; it's doing the same helpful thing it always does where it shuts everything down so it can use all the power to compute the worst possible outcome for any given scenario and make strange suggestions in response. Stranger in the back of your car? Probably wants your car. Probably has a weapon. Did you smile at her? Don't be rude. She probably has an accomplice hiding behind a tree. You're definitely going to die. What are you going to do about it? Meh. Why would you do anything? Just sit there. Raise your heart rate a BPM or two. Make a sweat droplet. Smile at the stranger! Say hello! Be hospitable; she's in your car! Did you push pause on that podcast? Wouldn't want to miss something interesting.

We look at each other some more. She says another thing, and it doesn't make sense to me why she's saying it. Something very casual, something about the weather.

"You know what," I say, finding the override switch for my overwhelmed, inefficient brain. "I'm going to come over there and talk to you. Give me a second." 

I get out of my car and walk around to her side. 

She opens her door and we size each other up, her sitting in my car, me standing beside it on the sidewalk. I'm wondering, again, if Barclay's watching this from inside the house. She's looking at me expectantly and I have the strangest feeling, like I'm the one who has walked up to her car and tapped on the window and she's sitting there, bewildered, like, what do you want? Why are you bothering me in my car? I'm on my way somewhere!

There's another brief pause. I guess I feel like she should be the one to lead the conversation, but she's not doing that, so here I go. I try to think of something less pointed than, oh, I don't know, Why are you in my car? "How's it going?" is what I come up with. It's better than the stiff formality of how may I help you, for sure. Right?

"Good," she says. She's really calm and sweet. I don't think she wants to steal my car. I think she's just more than a little drunk. An afterthought: "...but I've hurt my leg."

"Oh!" I'm so relieved. A hurt leg is a very physical problem with a very tangible solution. A somewhat reasonable explanation for a person to crawl into the back of a stranger's car. I live for physical problems and reasonable explanations. "Can I call someone for you? A friend? An ambulance? Do you need to go to the hospital?"

She snorts at me. "No." 

"Okay."

We talk for a bit about the weather, again, for some reason, and then she tells me that her kid is in my kid's class at school—which, I find later, is verifiably false but it endears her to me in that moment anyway so whatever—and I ask, again, what I can do for her and this time she points down the street. "I live right there," she says. "Just around that corner. Actually, can I get a ride? My leg just hurts so much."

Reader, she does not live right around that corner. We drive down the street, we drive around the corner, she shakes her head. "Not it," she says, surprised, as though her house has moved. "Maybe over...there?" We drive down more streets and around more corners, on the hunt for the hiding house. "Just one more block," she keeps saying. "I'm pretty sure it's just one more block." Frowning in consternation at unfamiliar streets. Smiling apologetically in my direction but never quite making eye contact. Shaking her head in disappointment at all of the houses in which she doesn't live—until she sees one in which she does. 

"That's it," she says.

I pull over. She puts her hand on the door handle, but before she gets out of the car she looks hard at me and says, "It just sucks, you know?"

I nod. I don't know. 

"It just really sucks. It hurts so much."

I nod. I think she's talking about her leg. I'm not sure.

I ask her if she needs anything else and she laughs. She gets out of the car and goes into the house and I watch to make sure she makes it. She's limping a little. I feel simultaneously like I haven't done nearly enough for her and like I shouldn't be driving strangers around the city. I wonder, suddenly, if Barclay saw me drive off with the woman in my back seat and is worrying about me.

I text my friend to say I'll be late. I text Barclay to say that if he happened to look out the window and see an injured woman climb into my car, not to worry, everything's okay.

He texts back. He knows my track record and he thinks the injured woman must be me. "You wipe out pretty hard?"

So at least, I guess, he didn't see me get out of my car three times to clear the windshield? 

Sorry I Missed You Goes to Russia!

 Last week, my Russian publisher sent me the proposed cover and promo text for their translation of Sorry I Missed You—or, as it'll be titled over there, Sorry, But I Miss You. 

This might be one of my favorite parts of publishing. It's super fun to see your work described in another language, what elements of the book they pull out to put on the back cover, how they translate the title—your own name made of symbols you don't understand. 

I posted the cover on Instagram and some friends wanted to know about the behind-the-scenes process of book translations and foreign rights from the author's perspective. It's very long and complicated and involved, so I thought it deserved a whole blog post. Are you ready? Here it is:

So first of all, you sit there and wait for an email from either your agent or your publisher (depending on who holds your world rights) to say that someone wants to buy your book and translate it into another language. And then you sit there and wait for a contract to sign. And then you sit there and wait for the foreign publisher to send you the cover and promo text. And then you sit there and wait for your pub date, which will likely be a surprise (they might tell you which month they're considering, maybe). And then, someday, you'll see your book on Instagram or someplace and go, Oh, hey, it must be out there now! and you'll get some physical copies in the mail, if that's in your contract, and you won't be able to read them but you'll put them on your shelf and say to yourself, "Neat!" 

Phew. Lots of work. Very grueling. 

Are you interested in seeing the promo text? Sure you are! 

“Three women. Each has an intimate question.

One letter - it contains all the answers. Who will get it?

Larry inherited a mansion, but in order to live in it, you need to follow a bunch of strange rules. For example, not listening to modern music or planting flowers nearby. Since Larry is already full of problems, he decides to rent the house. 

It is occupied by three women, Maud, Sunnah and Mackenzie. It soon turns out that each of them had a person in their life who disappeared without explanation.

 

Therefore, when they find a tattered letter in the mailbox, where only one thing is clear - they want to meet with someone in a coffee shop - everyone hopes to see a "ghost" from their former life. 

 

But Larry is not interested in this, he has a lot of other concerns, and he is also convinced that ghosts, and real ones, have settled in the attic. Anyway, in their usually quiet city, something amiss is going on. Someone threatens to smash the gallery where he works. There is certainly no time for mysticism!"

 

Is this a good time to mention that, with Halloween just days away, Sorry I Missed You has ghosts in it but is not too scary for wimps like me who don't love being toooooo too scared? Because, contrary to the Russians' promo text, there is certainly time for mysticism, and the time is certainly now. So if you or someone you love wants a Halloween-appropriate read that won't keep you up at night, you know, I'm just going to drop some buy links here. (I don't really hustle much, so please bear with me when I get the urge...)

BOOKSHOP / BARNES & NOBLE / CHAPTERS / AMAZON.COM / INDIEBOUND / TARGET / PENNY UNIVERSITY (local to Regina) / FOUND (local to Cochrane, AB) / 

Out of Gas—But Also, Some News!

The kids' bus was a half hour late this morning, and for a minute there I thought it wasn't coming at all. Which would be fine if it were Monday or Wednesday or even Friday, but not today. 

Not. Today.

Today is one of two days I have, every week, where both kids go to school, where I have a glorious seven and a half hours of alone time. Where my house is silent, except for the occasional sound of me talking to...well. The appliances, mostly. (Don't pretend like you've never told your coffee grinder to hurry up or accidentally apologized to the fridge when you banged your toe into it on your way past.) 

If you're a mom who works from home, you know how valuable seven and a half hours can be. You know how much time that is and also how little time that is, how helpful it is and how greedy it makes you, how it's never enough, no matter how much it is—like a serving of lasagne. Yes. Seven and a half hours is exactly like a serving of lasagne.

Anyway, the bus came, much to my utter relief, and I put my kids on it and I waved at them through the window as they disappeared down the street, and I went into my house and I yelled, "HALLELUJAH" because that is now part of my daily routine on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I made coffee and baked one of those pre-baked-but-not-all-the-way croissants and I sat at the kitchen table and smiled at the wall. Alone with my appliances and thoughts. At last.

Oh no! My thoughts!

That's the problem lately. My thoughts. 

I used to really enjoy being alone with my thoughts. Even when they weren't particularly positive, I still enjoyed the room to hear them out, move them around, write them down. Often, that would lead to little bursts of creativity, and I could take the things I was thinking about and put them into fictional characters' heads and build stories around them. 

But one day I stuck the key into the ignition of my brain and it made a sad little trying noise but wouldn't turn over. No sparks. No interesting thoughts, nothing inspiring, nothing creative.

It's probably a combination of a lot of things, and I've been troubleshooting in my head—is it the pandemic? Is it the lack of quiet time? Did I grow out of creativity? (Is that a thing?)

I think I've figured it out though: the thing it boils down to, mostly, is that I am more creative when I believe in myself, cheesy as that sounds. I'm more creative when I take myself seriously, as counterintuitive as that sounds. I am more creative when I think of myself as being creative—which, come on, brain. How do you manufacture a feeling about the way you are when you're not that way? 

The thing is, I have never felt less sure of myself, less confident in my writing ability than I have since publishing that first novel. That was when the brain ignition thing happened. I don't know if this is a super common writer thing or what [feel free to weigh in if this applies to you] but it's not something I anticipated. I always thought that getting an agent would make me feel like a 'real' writer, and then I would never struggle with self-doubt again. And then I got an agent and struggled with self-doubt even harder and thought that getting a book deal would be the thing that legitimized me in my own brain. Then it was actually holding a physical copy of the book, and then it was selling another one (because maybe the first book was a fluke?). The goal posts move so fast it's like they're on wheels, and I am realizing that I'm probably just going to feel, always, like I'm not a real writer, unless I can figure out a way to make myself less dependent on my feelings about myself. 

Which...help.

ANYWAY. That's a problem I'm having. And I have to confront it every time the kids leave me alone in my house to go to school. Which is probably not a bad thing? And until such a time as my thoughts become friendly and creativity-sparking again and I learn to rely less on external validation, I am trying very hard to celebrate the milestones that give me even a temporary feeling of being "a real author." The proverbial equivalent of taking a taxi since my car is out of gas. This week, it's this:

Sorry I Missed You was translated into Estonian and is now on sale there! And if you click on the screen shot above, it'll take you to an article or announcement or something of the sort which I can't read because it's not in English. Hopefully it doesn't say, "Suzy Krause is a big phony and not a real author."

...

...hopefully.

Jeg Elsker Deg

The Prince of Wales Library isn't on Prince of Wales Drive, it's on 14th Ave. There is a library on Prince of Wales, but they've named it Sunrise. It's as though someone got the signs mixed up and then didn't want to admit they'd made a mistake. I used to go to the Prince of Wales branch a lot, in the winters, to find a quiet corner and write. It's in my neighborhood, sort of. It's not too busy, but busy enough that I'd always bring my headphones and something to listen to.

I'm thinking of one Monday morning in particular, a couple of years ago, sitting in a quiet corner at that library, working on my book and listening to the radio, turned way down so I wouldn't be distracted by it—I like to listen to unfamiliar music when I'm working so my brain doesn't snag on lyrics I know. That's why it was so strange when, in the middle of a song I'd never heard before, a lyric jumped out at me as though the music had been temporarily cranked up. Even stranger: the words weren't in English, but I knew what they meant—knew intrinsically, the way you know the phone number of your best friend from elementary school. You know it almost without knowing you know it, without trying to know it, and you'll probably always know it even if you forget other, actually important information. 

At first, I wouldn't have been able to give you a literal translation, I just knew that it was a phrase that meant something affectionate, something you'd say to someone very, very important to you. 

Jeg elsker deg.

I love you? 

I checked the name of the song—Norway. 

A memory came to me like my eyes were adjusting to a dark room. Sitting in my grandparents' living room on my Grandpa Glen's lap, him teaching me to count in Norwegian, teaching me an old Norwegian prayer, saying to me, "Jeg elsker deg," all in his deep, rumbling voice that I could feel reverberating in my spine. 

I loved his voice. It was familiar and comforting, one of those distinct, constant, grounding things from my childhood. He talked and laughed just like he sang, and I heard him sing often. He sang bass in a band with his brothers. They did hymns and old country music, and there was even yodeling sometimes. They often did this old Jim Reeves song called Suppertime; the chorus goes, "Come home, come home it's suppertime, the shadows lengthen fast. Come home, come home it's suppertime, we're going home at last."

He passed away yesterday, and ever since I got the phone call I've had that song in my head, on repeat, like a sweet gift, sung in my grandpa's familiar, comforting voice. 

I've been thinking about how beautiful it is that the words you say to a little kid can mean so much to them thirty years later, that they can remember what you meant even if they don't consciously remember exactly what you said, and that if you sing to someone enough when you're with them, they'll still be able to hear you long after you go away. 

The Voicemail

It's 11:45 on Sunday night and I'm doing that thing you're not supposed to do where you burn your eyeballs out on your phone screen before going to bed. Barclay is reading Dune, because Barclay is always reading Dune, because Dune is a migonstrous novel that would take any reasonably literate person ten years to finish.

I'm watching a funny video on Instagram and I turn my phone to Barclay so he can see it too, because don't you love it when you're reading a difficult book and someone keeps interrupting you to show you mildly funny videos of strangers from a social media realm in which you've specifically chosen not to partake? Barclay loves that.

As I turn the screen to him, he says, "Oh, someone's trying to call you."

Which is interesting, as it is 11:45 on a Sunday night. Generally, at this time, all the spammers, the scammers, the telemarketers, and appointment reminderers have gone to sleep. Generally, you don't call someone at 11:45 PM unless it's an emergency. So my heart beats a bit faster and I check the number. Local, but not a number saved in my phone. Which is interesting as, if you are having an emergency, you would generally, generally call someone you know, who would have your phone number saved in their phone. Right? I think.

I ask Barclay if he knows the number, and he says he doesn't. He shrugs. "Probably a wrong number."

So I watch the phone ring. The screen goes black and then lights up with a new voicemail.

Curious, I access the message and put it on speaker phone. Barclay has set his book down; he's probably thinking, too, about how people don't call at 11:45 PM on a Sunday night unless they have a very good reason, and he wants to know what the very good reason is.

It's a man's voice, not one I recognize. "Hey Suzy," he says, "I missed your call earlier today."

Which is interesting, because I didn't call anyone earlier today. I swear. 

I think. 

Did I? I rack my brain. It's funny how someone can make you doubt yourself. I know I didn't call anyone today; I spent the entire day with Barclay and the kids. But this stranger on the phone says I called him and why would anyone lie about that? 

But wait, it gets weirder.

"I can't wait to meet up," he says. "I know I messed up before but I really want to try this again."

WAIT WHAT.

"Since the moment I met you, I just thought you were really cute and—"

It goes on like that. Rambling, weirdly intimate, apologetic. On speaker phone, with my wonderful husband lying beside me looking completely bewildered. Understandably so, I'd say. If the roles were reversed I don't even know what I'd be up to at this point. Climbing into that phone to drag some lady out of it by her hair.

He ends with, "Okay, call me back. I love you," and the phone beeps at me, same as it does after every old innocuous message. 

"End of message. To erase this message, press 7."

"Okay," I say, completely gobsmacked. I might be asleep, I think. "So first of all—" First of all what? There is no first of all. There is nothing. I'm just more confused than I've ever been in my entire life. But I should probably say something to reassure Barclay that I'm not, like, cheating. I should say something reassuring. "I don't know this, I didn't call this, I don't know who, I'm just as, I'm not sure what..." This is probably not reassuring. This sounds super guilty, actually. But I'm legitimately questioning my sanity at this point, checking my recent calls screen to see if I made any phone calls earlier today, as though I could possibly have done something like this without knowing it. 

Barclay's cool though, save for those first few moments of looking like my phone had grown legs and kicked him in the face. 

"I know," he says, "I believe you. Spam?"

"But...he called me Suzy," I say. "If it was spam, wouldn't he have used my real name, not my nickname?" I have changed lanes very quickly, from trying to reassure my husband that I'm not having an affair to brushing off his plausible explanations that it's anything but. If my name were Susanna or something like that, I could see a spammer calling me Suzy. But my name is Elena. How...?

So then we spend a bit of time trying to figure out if there is a place on the internet where my nickname is connected to my phone number (there isn't, as far as we can tell). We reverse look-up the number, but come up with nothing. (I reverse look-up both mine and Barclay's phone numbers and come up with nothing there too—is reverse look-up a thing that actually works for anyone?)

Finally, Barclay's like, "Welp, I guess we'll never know." 

And he rolls over and goes to sleep.

But I, even though I know for a fact that I did not recognize that voice and do not know that person and did not call that person etcetera etcetera, just lay awake and keep being stumped.

So now I come to you, dear internet. Is this a spam call? Have any of you received one like this? What is the end game here? How did he know my nickname? Have I lost my mind? 

Plz advise. 

And may we all learn to be as chill as Barclay.

A Lesson to Share

 I was sick this past weekend! It was so weird! Where did it come from? (Costco, I think, actually, come to think of it.)

Pre-pandemic, Sully and I used to catch colds every month or so. It was fairly predictable and, in retrospect, maybe a sign that our immune systems suck? But this past year we've been cold-free and loving it. I know a lot of people are like, "Burn the masks! Bring back the handshake! Let's lick stuff!" But honestly, I'll be pleased as punch if I don't have to touch strangers anymore, if I could minimize the number of times a person literally hands me a virus that's going to knock me out for four days. What even are handshakes? And why? Let's normalize warm, effusive, full-upper-body nods and believing people when they say it's nice to meet us without having to shake parts of each other's bodies to affirm it.  

Anyway.

My first instinct, upon realizing that the tickle in my throat was real and not, once again, my overactive imaginary-symptom-amplifying imagination, was to get a covid test. It was negative, which made sense. I'm first-dosed, I'm conservative with my in-person visits, and the community numbers are super low. It's a regular old common cold which, like I said, I probably picked up at Costco. I'd forgotten how rotten common colds are though; I've forgotten how to tough them out. I've forgotten how your head gets so close to feeling like it's going to break open and how claustrophobic I get when I can't breathe out of my nose. Like I almost wish my head would break open so I wouldn't feel so confined inside of it.

I also feel like this past year has turned the cold into a creepier thing than it ever was before. It's like I always thought of the cold as a cheesy 90s movie villain—bumbling, disgruntled but not evil, easily foiled after a couple of hours of setting up the appropriate traps (liquids, naps, vitamin whatever)—but now it's gotten more sinister in my mind. You just hear story after story of, "I had a cold, and it felt like a normal cold, and then it was COVID AND I COULDN'T BREATHE AND I SPENT THREE MONTHS IN ICU ON A VENTILATOR" and I guess, after a year and a half of that, we're all primed to think that a tickle in a throat is a big huge hairy deal.

Anyway. 

Scarlett, who is four and hadn't seen me sick in, like, a year and a half, literally didn't remember what "being sick" even meant or what it looked like. She kept eyeing me, bewildered and skeptical, asking me to explain myself. Demanding it. "Why do your eyes look like that?! Why do you sound like that?! Did you swallow a jalapeño without chewing it?! Can you stop doing that [coughing]?!"

Sully was a bit more sympathetic, but he is still seven years old and his sympathy isn't as helpful as, say, Barclay's sympathy. I woke up on Friday morning to the sound of clattering and shuffling in the kitchen, and I slowly became aware of two little voices discussing butter—specifically, how to soften it. 

"We could put it in this bowl and pour boiling water onto it?"

"We could blow it with a hair dryer?"

"We could put it in the oven?"

Sully had, apparently, decided to make me breakfast in bed. He had enlisted Scarlett to help him, and they had a stack of magazines, all flipped open to the recipe pages. They had narrowed it down to Very Berry Smoothies and Candy Cane Christmas Cookies and then, because they are 7 and 4 and nothing if not ex-treeeeme-ly practical, decided on the cookies. Heartwarming, TO BE SURE. But that is how I ended up baking myself cookies at 7 AM on a morning where I was so sick I could barely see straight and eating them even though all I wanted was warm honey water. 

I just kept thinking to myself, "This is very cute, and it's a story I'll tell Sully when he's older and we'll laugh about it together and it'll be good for our relationship and stuff."

Anyway. 

The next morning, I sprained my neck (just existing, nothing fancy; I am a very tense person and if I get stressed out I sprain my neck, it's fun). If I thought I couldn't move before that, I really couldn't move after. So I spent the rest of the weekend on the couch, in the bed, and on the patio furniture. Finished two books and started two books (I am, suddenly, a person who has about five books on the go at a time). Did a lot of Sudokus. Did a lot of just laying there staring up at the trees. Watched a thunderstorm roll in and out. And now I feel better—but not just physically. I feel rested mentally in a way I haven't in a very, very long time.

So maybe that's the upside of getting sick—the laying down and chilling out. There's probably a lesson to be had about laying down and chilling out even if you're not being forced to by your crappy immune system so, here, I pass this lesson along to you. Go outside. Lay down. Chill out. Stare at the sky as though you physically cannot move. 

Go! Now! 

And then bake yourself some cookies. Sully's got a good recipe he can share with you.

Call Me Garden Girl! Call Me Plant Person!

Plant people: I get you now. It's fun. I see it. 

Years ago, a friend brought me a succulent. I didn't know how to take care of it and I told her that and she said to me, "It's okay! These are hens and chicks and they're impossible to kill. You don't have to be good at plants. Just water them sometimes, and that's it."

I got excited. I had never, ever, not ever, not once, been able to keep a plant alive in my house. Or outside of my house, for that matter. 

Exhibit A: The Garden.

The lady who lived here before us kept an immaaaaaculate garden. She was, like, really into it. She left me a binder full of details about it—what the plants were called and what they wanted and how I should, what's the word you garden people use, tend them. 

Well, I destroyed that beautiful garden. Decimated it. Enjoyed a few years of dazzling, fragrant blooms, and then watched stupidly as the whole thing fell into ruins like an old Scottish castle. A few of the lilies still poke their heads up, year after year, cautious and pessimistic, but they're ghosts of their once glorious selves. Straggling up through the dirt like zombies, mourning over their lost kingdom, hopelessly beholding the dandelions that have begun to advance across the sparse lawn toward them. I am fairly certain they're hostile, the lilies; I think they know I'm the problem, think I should fix it all and banish the weedy dissidents, restore the flowers to their rightful place as illustrious rulers of the block, just as their previous gardener would have done, but, you know. Alas and alack and everything.

So anyway, the hens and chicks. I thought to myself, sure, I couldn't manage a whole garden, designed and grown and cared for by an older woman who had, no doubt, years of experience and knowledge under her belt and years of dirt under her fingernails. But a tiny clay pot of hens and chicks? I could probably—

It was dead within the week. 

So I...gave up? The other option was to buy one of those ridiculously big books about gardening and try to learn how to fix the problems, and I didn't have time to do that. Giving up is always the easiest thing. I did buy some very realistic-looking fake plants to hang over the piano, and one of my more planty friends congratulated me on them, thinking they were real. A win! 

But then. 

I met this person on Instagram who lives in my neighborhood and they offered me a little houseplant (thanks, Steph!). I almost said no, because I felt bad in advance for killing it. But then I thought about how much I wanted that particular plant. 

It was very cute.

So I said yes, and she brought it over and gave it to me and I put it in a place of honor and respect in the kitchen windowsill and whispered to it, "I'll try so hard to keep you alive but you're going to have to be pretty forgiving."

I think the plant understood, because it has now been three weeks and one day and the plant is not dead. THREE WEEKS AND ONE DAY AND THE PLANT IS NOT DEAD. 

Furthermore, the plant is getting bigger and making more leaves. I'm no expert, but I think this means I am taking such good care of it, that I am doing it exactly right. 

So suddenly, after three weeks and one day of doing it exactly right, I'm just really super overconfident. I went and bought seeds and I'm growing vines for my fence on the windowsill and I'm nurturing a brand new apple tree in the backyard and I planted flowers in the front...I am a whole new lady. I get excited to come home and look at dirt because what if something sprouted something? What if something bloomed? What if something grew? 

And I think there's a moral to the story, and I think the moral is that it's okay to decide that you hate something and that it's not for you and that you never want to give it the time of day and that the thought of it makes you tired and grouchy but then to decide on a whim and for no particular reason that actually it's your favorite thing EVER and is, in fact, your entire personality now. 

Stuck in a Loop

 This morning I read an article in The New York Times titled, 

Heads Up! A Used Chinese Rocket Is Tumbling Back to Earth This Weekend.

Basically, there is a 10-story, 23-ton piece of rocket tumbling out of control in orbit, expected to fall to earth in an uncontrolled reentry on Saturday or Sunday. It's traveling at 18,000 miles per hour and a change of mere minutes can shift the debris (such a polite word for a 23-ton piece of anything) by hundreds or thousands of miles, so it's impossible for them to be able to tell where it's going to land until...well, until it's a few hours away from landing. 

I don't know how many of you read this blog on the regular and remember what exactly it is that you read, but let me quote a post from July of 2020 real quick:

"It's July! We made it to July! 

Maybe you're like, whoa, Suzy, none of us thought we weren't going to make it to July; did you think we weren't going to make it to July?

Well I don't know. Kind of? It's been one of those years, and you can't tell me it hasn't. I had a dream the other night where I looked up into the sky and saw a glowing ball of fire headed straight for earth and I knew we were going to die, and in the dream I just sighed as though I were a little disappointed and calmly said to Barclay, "I'm not even surprised, with the way this year has been." Like 2020 was my disappointing teenaged child who had, yet again, failed me in some major but not unusual way.

And then we just stood there with our arms around each other and stared into the huge night sky as the ball of fire grew bigger and bigger...

So my subconscious is, like, over it, right? My subconscious is like, WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE AND I'M NOT EVEN GOING TO BE SURPRISED JUST TERRIBLY, TERRIBLY DISAPPOINTED IN YOU, 2020.

But look at us! July!

Okay! 

So now that I've jinxed us good, on to the blog post..."

I still think about that dream often (my dreams are always extremely vivid; I remember them afterward as much as—or better than—I remember actual events). We were standing in this crumbling ruins of something that felt familiar but was now unrecognizable, as though whatever was coming had already come and we were stuck in a loop of anticipating terror and beholding destruction with no space between the two—which probably accounted for the subdued reaction to our imminent danger. The feeling was less, "WE'RE GOING TO DIE!" and more, "Welp. Here we go again."

And I don't mean to be dramatic (it's my default setting; I can't help it) but if this isn't the perfect metaphor for this past year or so, I don't know what is. It's been a year of feeling like we've just lived through something big (and I'm not talking about the virus alone, but also the debris: financial damage and relational damage, loss of trust in things and people and tensions that have finally and fully split into gaping chasms) but also like there is always something terrible on the horizon. Not something new though, just more of the same. Standing in the ruins awaiting our demise. 

So.

All that to say? I don't anticipate being smack dab in the middle of the Long March 5B rocket debris' uncontrolled landing path, but if I am then, I guess, let it be known that I KNEW IT LAST JULY. This is what blogs are good for, I guess—saying I told you so if you're too dead to say it yourself. 

Happy Friday! 

Manifesting Writing Tools

I don't believe you can "manifest" stuff, but I have been known to do it a time or two anyway. There was the time I was in Saskatoon and I said to my friend that I wanted to meet Little Richard. We sat down outside the Bez and he came out the front doors five minutes later, like he knew I was there waiting for him. There was the time I wanted a skirt like one I'd seen Daphne Moon wear on Frasier so I went to the thrift store and it was there and it fit and it was $1. And, of course, there was the time I moved to Regina and met Barclay, completely by chance, on my second day here, after a friend in another city had told me about him and what a good couple we'd be. 

It happened again just this morning.

I was painting at the kitchen table with Scarlett. I'd just gotten her a new watercolor set and we were testing it out. She painted flowers, butterflies, animals. I painted the alphabet and a xylophone.

When Scarlett asks me to paint with her, she means business. She doesn't like me to stop to think about what to paint or take pictures or blink (in both of these pictures, she is saying, "Stop that and paint!"). As soon as I set one page aside, she hands me another and tells me to fill it. She's like a personal trainer, asking for more reps, and more reps, and more reps. It makes me feel scrambled and I end up painting really random things. 

Like, today, after my xylophone painting, my brain shorted out. I couldn't think of a single thing to put on the paper, but her little eyes were on me. "Paint something," she demanded.

"What should I paint?"

She shrugged, her eyes burning a hole in my blank paper. She didn't care at all what it was, she just needed something there, and she needed it there now.

I painted—and I really don't know why—the words 'fountain pen.' 

Then I painted a [really crappy] picture of a fountain pen. She frowned at it. "What's that?"

"A pen," I said.

"Doesn't look like a pen," she said.

So then, of course, Sully came over to see my pen that didn't look like a pen. He studied it. "What's that?"

"It's...a pen?" Crippling insecurity. What kind of grown woman can't draw a convincing pen?

"Why's the end of it look like that?"

"It's called a nib," I explained, shriveling up under the critical gaze of these two tiny art connoisseurs. "This kind of pen is—" But Sully had abruptly left the room. 

"Keep painting," said Scarlett. 

So humbling, attempting to create in the presence of children.

I bent over my paper once again, but then Sully came back into the room. He had a little tin mint case. He opened it and set it on the table in front of me. Inside? Five little pen nibs.

We don't own pen nibs. "What..."

"Are these nibs?" he asked.

"Yes," I said slowly, picking one up, pointing to one end of it. "If you had a fountain pen, you'd stick this part into the—"

Without a word, Sully went back into his room and came out again carrying a fountain pen. "Is this a fountain pen?" 

"Yes," I said, completely flabbergasted. "Where—"

"So how do you make it write?" he asked, offering no explanations. This is where I began to think, I am legitimately manifesting a fountain pen, piece by piece...

"Well," I said, trying to read Sullivan's inscrutable face, knowing, somehow, that whatever came out of my mouth next would be in his bedroom somehow. I wondered if I should tell him you need a million dollars to make a fountain pen write. I looked down at my painting, which was, apparently, a magical painting. "You would need an ink bottle—"

I looked up. Sully was gone. And when he returned, guess what he had?

"Is this an ink bottle?"

It was. But it was empty.

"You...wouldn't happen to have ink in your bedroom, would you?"

He smiled. 

He went back into his room and came out again with another little black bottle. On the side of it were these words: 

Calligraphy Ink. Stuart Houghton. Made in Great Britain.

Which did not, in any way, explain how it came to be in Sullivan's possession.

I showed him and Scarlett how to insert the nib into the pen, how to pour the ink into the bottle, how to dip and write.

Everyone was enthralled. Fountain pens are soooo fancy.

"Okay, Sullivan," I said at last—and maybe I waited so long to ask because I knew the answer was going to be ridiculously boring and ordinary and not at all magical. (And I was right.) "Where'd all this come from?"

"Grandma gave it to me."*

Mystery solved. I manifested nothing. ALTHOUGH, one could ask the question: how did my subconscious brain know to draw the very thing Sully had that I didn't know about? Or, I suppose, maybe one should be asking the question: what else does he have in the depths of his bedroom that I don't know about?

Anyway. I'd forgotten how fun fountain pens are and I might have to make a trip to the Paper Umbrella for new ink sometime soon. 

(*She gave him a bag of dress-up clothes for his birthday, and this was in there. I had no idea.)

All My Last Things

 If you're tired of people talking about what they were doing a year ago when This Whole Thing began, click away quickly. I love this conversation and I'm going in.

A friend asked me the other day if I could remember what it was: the last thing I did before the world shut down. What was my last outing, my last date, what was I doing the night before we found out the schools were closing and everything was cancelled?

I laughed, and laughed, and laughed. I snorted. I groaned. Because, yes, I could remember. I could remember vividly. And even if I couldn't, these things are documented on Instagram with dates and summaries included, shocking and adorable in their naiveté. Haunting, even. So incredibly on the nose, they almost feel psychic in retrospect. 

I hereby present to you: All My Last Things: An Instagram Anthology

1. The Last Restaurant 

It has officially been more than a year since I've eaten in a restaurant (we have, however, enjoyed takeout a LOT this year, shoutout to Vic's, Leopold's, the Lancaster, and Lakeshore). I'm trying to remember if there was a point where I realized we were going to have that option taken away from us but where it hadn't been yet, and if it crossed my mind to have one last hurrah. If it did, I didn't follow through on it, leaving the McDonald's on Park Street as my last real in-person restaurant experience, and this my last photographic keepsake of simpler in-person restaurant times:

2. The Last Declaration

On March 6, I sat and worked in a coffee shop for the last time. In my subsequent Instagram post, I declared to the world (or, the bite-sized portion of the world that reads my Instagram posts) that I would choose "this meek sun" over "sun that blares down on a tropical beach" every time. 

Don't get me wrong, I still quite like this meek sun. But I do hereby publicly apologize to the blaring tropical sun: I didn't mean to anger you. Please let us have airplane rides again. 

3. The Last Date

It was the beginning of March. Barclay's parents took the kids overnight so Barclay and I could have a belated Valentine's Day date. (Typing these words sends sharp pangs of nostalgia and longing through my chest like forks and knives—sleepovers at the grandparents' house? Be still, my weeping, shaking, temper-tantrum-throwing heart.)

What did we do with our one wild and precious evening? Did we eat in an actual restaurant (you already know the answer to that, don't you)? Did we drive to Moose Jaw for a night at the spa? Did we go to a concert, the theatre, improv night at the Artesian? 

Oh heck no, not us. We decided to get creative. We decided to disrupt our status quo. We walked around the Cathedral Village—outside, away from other people. We shopped Safeway for Nicer Ingredients Than We Usually Buy and we made a gourmet meal in our own kitchen. Then? We stayed home and watched a movie. BLESS US.

4. The Last Family Outing

Last winter, the kids and I went snow clearing with Barclay as often as we could—provided the school schedule allowed it, provided we didn't have other plans—and it always felt like such a fun and special little family outing. The museum? Fine. The movie theatre? Never got around to it. Driving around in the car drinking coffee? Familial bliss. So that is what we did, the last time we could've done anything.

5. The Last Night

The crown jewel in my week of fantastic pre-pandemic decision-making. It was a Saturday night. Barclay had a friend over to listen to Slick Shoes albums in the living room, and I locked myself in the bedroom with snacks, a book, and my laptop for a luxurious evening ALONE. Because I was tired of people, events, going out, all that NOISE. I was so excited about it, so pleased with myself, and very determined to make this a regular thing—I remember saying to Barclay, "I should do this more often!"

LOL. 

LOL. 

Lol.

lol.

lollllllll

So there you have it. If anyone's wondering what brought this pandemic upon us, it was probably me. I tried to disrupt the status quo just a little and accidentally disrupted it all the way. Is there a moral to this story? Something about seizing the day. Or maybe it's a flagrant display of Murphy's law or the long-lost fourth verse to Alanis Morissette's Ironic. 

Mrs. Girls Night Out 

Wanted a night at home

She packed her sna-a-acks and drinks

And crawled into bed alo-one

She watched her TV shows

And she took a break

And when the world shut down she thought

I've made a big mistake

And isn't it ironic?

Don't you think?

The Nightmare House and The Butter House

Someone bought the house next to ours a couple of years ago and tore it down. They cut down all the trees, got rid of the lawn. Then they built not one but two new houses in its place.

The house that had been there before was not a house that made you think, Boy howdy, this house is the size of two houses! It had been a modest one-story house, less than a thousand square feet. So the two new houses occupying its footprint are, obviously, even smaller. Much smaller. It goes without saying, but I've said it. 

The one closest us is a nightmare house. It's tall and black and skinny, like a tooth in an old man's mouth. I'm looking at it out my kitchen window right now; I used to be able to see the sky out my kitchen window. Now all I see is the black rotted-tooth house.

The second house in the lot, on the other side of the black one, is short and yellow—that creamy butter yellow that all the houses were in the seventies—and it has no front door. I don't think it has side doors either, just a back door. Weird, right?

I think there are two main things that cause a person anxiety when the house next to them disappears. Two worries. The first is that the house built in its place will be super ugly, and the second is that your new neighbors will be...exciting, but not in a good way. 

 Welp.

That black house is like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. You never see anybody moving in. You never see anybody moving out. But you know there are people in there because of the drug deals going down from midnight to five am just outside our bedroom window. You know that something's gone wrong by the line of police cars snaking down our quiet street. Sometimes there's been screaming, sometimes there've been contractors coming in and removing all of the carpets while police stand by and interview people we've never seen before but have apparently been living next to for months. Ah, the stories I have to tell about that house. Next time you see me, you should ask for the one about the play pens. (I will say, for a while there, a wonderful little family moved into the suite on the top floor and we quite liked them. They had a three year-old boy who didn't speak much English but he'd come out on their balcony and he and Scarlett would yell back and forth at each other and sometimes he'd come running into our yard to hug everybody and Scarlett called him The Friend, which was cute. I miss them.)

That big black house is so obtrusive and loud and exciting, that I find I usually forget about the little yellow house with no front door. I forget it's there. I mean, I used to. Until recently.

Apparently, while the black house is a rental, with three suites, one of which I think might actually not be legal, the yellow house is a group home for adults with intellectual disabilities. One of the men who lives there is about my age, and I know this because now that it's warmed up a bit (we're hovering around 0, FINALLY) he goes to the grocery store, on foot, several times a day. Like, enough times a day that Scarlett has noticed, and will look out the window and say, "Oh, George (not his real name, obviously) is coming back with more groceries!" 

We ran into each other for the first time a couple of weeks ago. He was coming back with more groceries and he saw me getting into my car (I was, coincidentally, also going to the grocery store) and came over. I got the feeling that someone had warned him about the social distancing thing a time or two, because before he spoke he took a moment to assess the space between us. He took a little step back and then, satisfied, he introduced himself and asked me my name and whether or not I have air conditioning. 

"I do," I said.

"That is so great," said George, genuinely happy for me, in a way that felt absurdly nice—and maybe it just felt so great because we're in a pandemic and I don't have a lot of in-person interactions with people. But having a stranger be so wholesomely happy for you is a really great feeling that I now intend to heap upon all of you when this is over and we're hanging out again. Thanks, George. "I have it too," said George. "That's so great that we both have air conditioning." Like I'd told him that we were both millionaires.

"It's so great," I agreed.

"Well, but not right now," said George. "Since it's winter. Don't really need it. Might not be good to put it on right now."

"True," I said.  

"But in the summer..." 

"It'll be so great."

"My mom has air conditioning!" said George, genuinely happy for his mom.

"That's great," I said. "My mom does too."

"Oh, wow," said George, genuinely happy for my mom. "That's so great. Do you go to school?"

"Not anymore," I said. "Too old."

"Hey! Me too!" George's smile grew even bigger. "And do you have kids?"

"I do," I said. "You probably see them out in the yard all the time."

"Yes!" George said. "And do they go to school?"

"They do," I said.

And then George blindsided me by ending the conversation. He said, "Well, have a great day, Suzy!" and then he turned on his heel and headed off toward his little yellow house. I almost felt worried that I'd offended him or given him the impression that I didn't want to talk anymore, but now I know that this is how conversations with George go. He gets you into a rhythm, he asks you a lot of questions, and then he slams the whole thing shut like a front door and disappears down the street with his one bag of groceries. I kind of appreciate it? I'm not a person who knows how to end conversations. I feel awkward and rude being the one to say, "Well, I gotta go." Especially now, when I don't really have anywhere important to be. I don't, technically, 'gotta go' and everyone knows it. Another thing I could adopt from George, maybe.

Anyway. 

George and I are friends now, is what I'm saying; we have brief but wonderful conversations every time we cross paths (which is often, because we both do love our groceries) and I'm glad the Butter House is there, even if it came with a Nightmare House, like a beautiful flower with thorns on its stem. I think there's a popular saying somewhere along those lines—"Every Butter House has its Nightmare House," or something like that. 

Jessikah & Keysha

Well hey! I'm just popping in to brag about a couple of talented people I know and love. These amazing women (who were about three years old maybe four hours ago, I swear) are my cousins (one from my mom's side and one from my dad's) and they've both put songs out into the world this month. I'm really proud of them. Writing a song is hard. Putting that song in front of other people is harder—but maybe it's easier when your voice is as beautiful as theirs? 

I've shared both of these on Instagram but I'm sharing here too and I'll probably continue to plaster their music everywhere as long as they make it. And when this pandemic is over and they start playing shows I'm pretty excited to be their embarrassing older cousin who sits near the stage and knows all the words. 

Jessikah, Keysha: You should collab. Love you both. 

The Baby Stage

It was Sully's birthday a couple of weeks ago. I officially have a seven-year-old and a four-year-old in my house. I've been out of the baby stage for a while (we've given away the high chair, the baby gate, the crib, all that stuff) but I haven't really felt the distance from it until now. I guess, all this time, I've still been thinking of myself as a "new mom." 

(I think of myself as a new mom but I also cannot imagine life without kids everywhere. I know, I only have two of them. What can I say? For some of you, "kids everywhere" is eight. Nine. Ten. Forty-five. For me, "kids everywhere" is...is two.)

I'm also well aware that seven years is nothing in the grand scheme of things, and that there are people reading this laughing to themselves and thinking, "Suzy, you are a new mom." Yeah, yeah, I know: time is weird, and old and new are super relative—not unlike "kids everywhere." But right now, in this moment, to me, I feel like I've stepped through an important doorway in motherhood, from being a new mom to being...I don't know. What is this room? What comes after New Mom, but before Seasoned Old-Hat MOM Mom? Because I'm not a MOM mom yet. I'm not fully a mother of school-aged kids, not a mother of fully-independent children, not a woman of leisure whose days are her own. And I don't do the things seasoned moms do—I don't carry Bandaids in my purse, for example. But I definitely feel more confident making decisions for these kids. I don't spend hours on Google every time they develop a weird rash or a fever. I've figured out what makes them tick and how to communicate with them and how to calm them down and how to make them laugh hysterically. To sum it up in the simplest way possible, I feel like I'm getting the hang of it.

Maybe this is a hallway? Maybe there's no name for it—but wow, I love it here. I keep saying to Sullivan that we're pausing time and he has to be seven forever, and he keeps shaking his head and telling me, "Mom. I'm going to be eighteen soon and I'm going to move out." 

And I'm like, "SULLY DO NOT SAY THAT."

And he's like, "Don't worry, Mom. I'll come visit you. We visit your parents all the time."

(Which is categorically FALSE, especially in this, the year of our pandemic.)

I think the Exact Thing that marks the shift from that room to this hallway is that I have, like I said, a bit of distance. I can see the baby stage objectively from here. 

The baby stage was really hard, and I spent a lot of it wishing we were past it but not feeling like I could admit that to anyone. Because when you're in that stage everyone (from the cashier at the grocery store to the woman who walks past you on the street) spends all their breath telling you that those feelings are wrong, and that you'll regret them later, and that you'll miss the baby stage intensely when it's gone. Ah, the countless lectures about cherishing and treasuring. If I had a nickel for every one I could buy the entire Jimmy Eat World discography. As though you cannot possibly love someone without also wanting them to stay exactly as they are forever and ever.

WELL GUESS WHAT.

I don't miss that stage. I'm thankful for it! I'm thankful to have experienced it, absolutely, and I'm even thankful for how hard it was. I miss a lot of specific moments from that stage. Sometimes I look at pictures and videos from a few years ago and marvel at how tiny the fingers were, how high the voices were, how long the snuggles were. From day one, I have loved these kids more than I could have ever imagined loving someone, which made the hard parts worth it, and there is, for sure, part of me that would pay billions of dollars to travel back in time for an hour to hold my sleeping newborn baby. I treasure those years in such a weird, paradoxical way. So much it hurts, but also, please don't send me back.

But this stage? With a four and a seven year old? I never want it to end. I miss it already. I'm no longer pushing through time; I'm leaning back into it with my heels dug in.

I guess I'm finally coming to understand that not being "a baby person" isn't a moral failure, it never made me a bad mom or meant that I didn't love these specific babies enough. And you're probably thinking, "Well duh," but for some of us it's not very obvious in the moment. 

So anyway. Be careful what you say to the harried, sleep-deprived mothers of colicky babies, is maybe the moral of that rabbit trail.

And if you're one of those people who miss the baby stage, or are in it and loving it: I'm genuinely happy for you. That's really great. Some people are made for it, and I think that's cool. Isn't that cool? 

I think it's cool.

My Timely Grandma

 My mom told me the other day that my Grandma Enid* read my latest book twice—once to herself and then again, out loud, to my Grandpa. And then she called my mom and told her she was sending her 100 dollars. She was pre-ordering all of my future books.

If that isn't the sweetest thing you've ever heard, you get your money back. (Luckily, you never gave me any money in the first place, so.)

When I was in grade seven (or eight or nine) this same Grandma mailed me a clipping from her town's newspaper—it was one of those student spotlight things where they interviewed local kids and put their picture in the paper with their answers. The kid in the interview that week was a girl named Jessie, someone I'd met at camp one year and become best friends with, though my grandma couldn't possibly have known that. 

The last question in the interview was, "Who is someone you want to be like?" and Jessie had answered "Suzy" and my grandma had circled this question and answer in red pen and drawn exclamation marks around it. Accompanying the clipping was a little sticky note that said something about how Grandma "just knew" I was the Suzy this Jessie girl wanted to be like. Like I was the only Suzy in the world, or at least, the only noteworthy, role-model-y Suzy in the world. At the time, I remember feeling particularly not noteworthy or role-model-y (I was in junior high, after all, and good self-esteem was allotted to only one or two people per grade in junior high), and that note was pretty timely. 

As timely as pre-ordering all of my future books while I'm struggling very hard to even write said future books and wondering every day if there will ever be future books. How does Grandma Enid do that? The timely thing? 

I'm digressing and digressing (for that is what I do best) but all this to say: There is one of two morals to this story (or maybe both):

1. Going out of your way to say something extra kind or encouraging is a good idea, because it might be more timely than you can imagine and/or:

2. I should call Grandma Enid this week and tell her I love her. 

*This is also the Grandma who once sent me the obituary—just the obituary, nothing else, not even a sticky note—of famous piano player Anthony Burger when he passed away of a heart attack on a cruise ship, because she knew I had been to one of his concerts and quite liked it.

My First Prairie Hurricane

 I attended my first hurricane last night. 

Okay, it wasn't a hurricane so much as a snowstorm—but it had hurricane-level winds, they said, topping out at 126 km/h. I believe them. It sounded like an airplane flying around the streets of the city, like something that could bust through your window at any moment. At around 11, a friend texted me a picture of a huge tree that had, only yesterday, been standing in their front yard, but was now resting contentedly on their bedroom.

I tried to go to sleep after that, but we have trees too. So I began to do that thing Barclay loves where I shake him awake every three minutes to run worst case scenarios and show him all of the terrible things I'm seeing on Twitter.

He loves that.

Eventually, though, he became harder to wake, and soon, even when I could wake him, he wasn't coherent, so I had to doomscroll alone. 

But then! Something kind of delightful happened. I was scrolling through the #SkStorm hashtag on Twitter, where people were doing the usual storm Twitter thing—posting pictures of the damage they'd incurred so far and Tweeting at Sask Power that they were having outages. Then someone mentioned that they were starting to feel worried about their house blowing over, and someone else was like, "YEAH I'M TERRRRRRIFIED" and soon there were a whole bunch of local people (myself included) comforting each other and freaking out together and clucking our virtual tongues at the fact that our loved ones were sleeping through the storm of the actual century.  It felt weirdly old-timey and small-towny, but in an on-liney sort of way. 

The internet has not been a place of connection this year, not the way that it once was, but last night from about 11:30 to...2? 3? (I honestly don't know) it was, and that was nice. 

I leave you with this screenshot from SaskPower's Twitter account—an important reminder that Christmas trees make great paper airplanes.

Villa Elaine

 I found my lost Remy Zero CD—not that you knew it was missing. But it was, and do you know where I found it? Behind some books on my bookshelf. I shrieked. I'd thought it was gone forever, or that Scarlett had captured it and made it into a dinner plate for stuffies and I would find it buried at the bottom of her toy box in two years, covered in glue and animal crackers. Anyway. Rejoice with me, Internet Strangers! I'm listening to it right now, and it's all the sweeter after its long absence, after I thought I'd never hear it again. Villa Elaine. 

I guess I could've just listened to it on Spotify or something, but it really does feel wrong to listen to anything recorded in the 90s on Spotify. Not when I've already experienced it on my $10 Varage Sale CD player, when I've already read the whole CD liner and have heard all the songs in their intended order with no ad breaks. 

But listen. I'm not going to tell you not to listen to it on Spotify. But if you do, and if you like it, you should buy yourself a physical copy, and a $10 Varage Sale CD player. You could be as happy as I am right now.

A Sunny Winter Morning With Sullivan

I'm sitting at the kitchen table once again, listening to Sully do his schoolwork. I'd had this idea that it would be fun to sit with him and try to write a blog post while he worked on his weekly journal entry assignment (what am I, new?), but it turns out it's kind of difficult to construct coherent sentences while someone is sitting next to you saying, "THIS. T-H-I-S, this, this, this weeeeeeeekend—WEEKEND, W-E-E-K-E-N-D, was fun, F-U-N. This weekend was fun, this weekend was fun...hmm....what did we even do this weekend? Mom, what did we do this weekend? I need four more sentences..."

Oh well. I'll look back on this in ten years, as one does, and think to myself, "I miss those sunny winter mornings, sitting at the kitchen table across from six-year-old Sullivan, listening to Nick Drake and quietly writing together, pausing every now and again to share a smile or a joke, him to ask me how to spell the occasional word, me to let him know how proud I was of his neat writing and his advanced sentence structure. I did my best writing in those special moments, too. His very presence sparked my creativity. Now I can't get two words down because all I can think about is him speeding around town in that old car of his with no adult supervision..."

Is this what people mean when they talk about living in the moment—trying to capture that rosy ten-years-in-the-future feeling before you've left the present? It's just one of those phrases I've always heard that I thought I understood...but now that I'm thinking about it, maybe I never have? 

I was about to say that I'm not even sure how to go about that, exactly, but then I realized that, even if it wasn't a conscious thing, this is actually part of the reason I like blogging and taking pictures so much—because if "trying to capture that rosy ten-years-in-the-future-feeling before you've left the present" isn't the most accurate description of blogging and taking pictures, I don't know what is.

2021

Okay, looking ahead now, because far be it from me to write a post about, I don't know, our basement renovation on the first day of a new year:

2021. 

Never before (at least, never before in my lifetime) has a year been so universally, almost desperately, anticipated. Me? I feel...quietly optimistic, I guess. I feel like it'll still be a while until the vaccination is widespread enough to achieve that Back to Normal effect we're all craving, but it's pretty thrilling to think things are trending in that direction. I also feel quietly pessimistic, but that's fine.

It's strange, stepping into this new year. It's the first one in a while I haven't been looking ahead to a specific, year-defining personal Event. No book releases, no concerts or music festivals, no trips, no incoming (er...out...coming? I guess?) babies, none of those milestone-type things that inform the shape and speed and feel of the upcoming twelve months. And not only are there no big things, there aren't even very many little things. In-person school isn't guaranteed. There will be no weekly coffee dates in friends' living rooms, no trips to the museum down the street, no date nights at The Exchange or The Artesian. How will I know it's Tuesday and not Wednesday? Trick question: the answer is WHO CARES. Tuesday and Wednesday are the same now. Calendars are purely decorative.

I usually feel, at the start of a new year, like I'm walking into a framed building, like my job is to add the walls and windows and drywall. Paint it, decorate it, live in it. This year I'm just like, where are we building this thing? What, exactly, are we building? 

...Are we building something? 

2021 has no tent poles, no structure. I have arrived at the construction site, and the foreman is taking a nap in a wheelbarrow. 

I've been seeing people all over instagram today "setting their intentions" and "choosing their word for 2021" and I'm one part Good for you!, one part I should do that!, and three parts LOL no.

Set intentions? For 2021? That's like going on a road trip through an uncharted wasteland and saying, "On our way through this uncharted wasteland, we're going to stop at McDonald's for Egg McMuffins." You don't know there'll be a McDonald's. Why set yourself up for disappointment? 

Then again, maybe a trip through an uncharted wasteland is easier if you have something to look forward to, even if that thing may never actually materialize. Maybe that's the trick in a nutshell—to hope for a McDonald's as opposed to, say, a locally-owned coffee shop that roasts their own beans and has a nice, clean bathroom for you to use.

Or maybe you just go all out, set your expectations up by the moon, and practice being flexible. 

So, okay, sure. I'll set some...intentions. (Goals, resolutions, whatever. People are very anti-resolution/goal these days, very precious about the exact wording here, but I don't get it and I don't care.) I'll make a few plans. Somewhere between McDonald's and the moon. 

1. I would like to blog a lot more. 

(I have completely forgotten how to write for fun, and this is making it very hard to write for work. Blogging is what made me love writing in the first place, so I'm going to cross my fingers that putting words down here, where it doesn't matter at all, will rekindle something in my brain. They say that's how it works. I hope they're right.)

2. I would like to finish this book I've been working on for two and a half million years. 

(Item 1 should beget item 2, if they're right and if I'm lucky.)

3. I would like to pick up some other random hobby or skill, OR pick up an old one. 

(Just something creative that isn't writing. I would like to make time for it and work hard at it. Maybe something I could include the kids in.)

4. I would like to read more books than I read this year. 

(Barclay has become a major book worm this year and he read more books than me and I feel insecure about it. This year: IT IS WAR—I mean, IT IS A CHANCE TO SPEND SOME COZY EVENINGS ON THE COUCH WITH A BLANKET AND A DECAF LATTE AND A GOOD BOOK.)

5. I would like to emerge from this pandemic once and for all and go...I don't know...to Winnipeg! Saskatoon! Calgary! I don't even CARE I just want to stay in a hotel and eat at a restaurant. Maybe hop on an airplane! I COULD GO TO TORONTO! I COULD RIDE THE SUBWAY. That's the dream, right there. I sincerely miss riding the subway.

(This feels closer to the moon than McDonald's.)

6. I want to use the caps lock key a lot less. I need to chill out.

7. Oof. That reminds me: I would like to spend a lot less time on Twitter feeling irritated at people. This morning, I saw a lady on there Tweeting about how she went up to a stranger in a bookstore and shamed them in front of their kids for the book they were buying and everyone on Twitter was like, "GOOD FOR YOU THAT BOOK IS STUPID AND THAT PERSON IS STUPID"  and then someone was like, "Maybe you shouldn't shame people in bookstores for buying books you don't like" and she blocked that person, even though the person in the bookstore didn't have the option to block her when she shamed them for buying a book in a bookstore and I felt so upset about all of it even though it had nothing to do with me. But really, people are just going to be ridiculous on Twitter and I just need to learn to not go over there. Also, there I go with that caps lock key again.

8. Same as 7, but Facebook.

9. I want to learn how to do a mirror glaze on a cake. 

(Watch out, all of my friends. You're going to start receiving so many crappily-mirror-glazed cakes from me in the coming months.)

10. I would like to drink less coffee and more water.

I could go on, but wow this is getting long. And, like, I'm not even taking breaks in between numbers; these are just flying out of me. This is either a sign that I have SO MUCH IMPROVING TO DO THIS YEAR, or that the whole blogging-to-remember-how-to-write-for-fun-again thing is already working.

Either way, happy new year, and talk to you soon.