The First Person in the World To Get Covid and Play Wordle

I finally got that virus everyone's been raving about. It got to a point in my community where I knew it was inevitable, but it's still weird to finally have it after two years of hearing about it, seeing it in the news, watching the people around me get it. It's like a new iPhone or a Netflix series everyone's talking about on Twitter. I'm always a couple of years behind, but when I finally get around to jumping on the bandwagon I tend to sort of act as though I'm pioneering the thing.

Which I am definitely doing now, if only in my own head. 

We've been holed up at home for almost two weeks (as of tomorrow) in an attempt to keep it to ourselves, and it's been fine. Isolation just doesn't feel like the big deal it once did. The weather helps, a bit. Nothing like a little cluster of April blizzards to make staying inside feel like less of a punishment for being sick and more like a punishment for living in Saskatchewan. Hooray? I guess?

Ohhhhh well. Maybe this will end someday (am I talking about blizzards or body aches? Nobody knows...). Until then we have the Worldle and the Wordle and the Quordle and the Octordle and the Sedecordle and the Heardle and the Movli and the Bookli to keep us occupied and if this sentence made no sense to you, text me and I'll hook you up. Although, chances are it made perfect sense to you because, as per usual, I was one of the last to jump on the Wordle bandwagon and am now acting as though I pioneered the thing.

Hey. At least I'm aware of it.

Remember The Dress?

Do you guys remember The Dress? The one that was either white and gold or blue and brown or whatever and whatever and the whole internet lost their minds because everyone was looking at the exact same picture but it seemed impossible to get everyone on the same page about what they were seeing?

I had to know the science behind it, because it was driving me up the wall, and when I looked into it I learned that the differences in the ways people perceived the color of the dress had a lot to do with...assumptions. Which I was not expecting.

A neuroscientist named Bevil Conway (what a great name, Bevil) believes that the phenomenon had to do with assumptions the brain made about the lighting of the dress. People who thought the dress was white and gold subconsciously assumed it was lit by daylight in the picture, so their brains ignored shorter, bluer wavelengths. People who saw it as blue and black thought it was lit by artificial, warm light, and their brains ignored longer, redder wavelengths. If you saw it as blue and brown, your brain probably assumed neutral lighting. And to make it even more interesting, older people and women were more likely to see the dress as white and gold, and the researchers speculated that this could've had to do with the fact that older people and women were more likely to be active during the day and spend more time in natural lighting(!).

I've been thinking about that dress this week. That dress, ultimately, helped me understand color better—because it kind of dismantled my idea of color as a thing that was universally experienced in one certain way that almost everyone could agree on. It also helped me understand people better. It made me realize how much of our 'objective reality' is not objective at all, but based in perception and assumptions. That our brains are literally designed to work that way. They're designed, for the sake of survival, to map the things about reality that will keep us alive—they make assumptions, fill in blanks, and actually *disregard* a lot of information. They are both adding and subtracting, all the time.

Take peripheral vision. Your peripheral vision is really bad for seeing color accurately—unless you already know what the thing in your periphery is. For example, there's a blue book sitting on the table beside me right now. I can see it out of the corner of my eye, and I can see that it's blue. But I BET if I take a pack of Phase 10 cards, shuffle it up, draw one randomly (yes, I'm doing this right now) and hold it about where the book is, my brain can't tell what color of card I've drawn. Yup. The card looks black, while the book still looks blue. That's because my brain knows the book is blue and it's filling in the blanks for me, making an assumption while framing it as perceivable reality, but it doesn't know what color the card is so it's just phoning it in there. I wonder—if you held a blue banana in my periphery, would my brain tell me it was yellow because it knows bananas should be yellow? I wish I had a blue banana on hand to test this...

Anyway, if I understand this correctly, the color that I perceive in the room at the edges of my field of vision is not my eye measuring wavelengths; it's my brain making assumptions based on memory and what color it thinks things should be and telling me that I'm seeing the colors beside me just as well as the ones in front of my face. And because I 'see' it, it is VERY HARD to believe that it's not objective reality. I have read the articles and mostly understand what's going on here, I think...but I still see this blue book out of the corner of my eye even though science tells me that my eyes can't measure those wavelengths at that angle. 

I was listening to a podcast this morning (one that was recorded in 2015 and has nothing to do with this current moment in time) and a scientist on there was talking about massive social movements that polarize people—I can't remember; he may have been talking about BLM—and the science behind why someone can deliver a passionate speech and half of the crowd can feel moved and convicted and inspired to action, and the other half can feel even more set in their ways, offended, and upset. I'm just going to quote him (his name is Mike McHargue and I can't paraphrase him because he just always words things so perfectly):

"Because it's essential to human cognition that human beings self-identify basically as good people, they unconsciously filter any information that undermines their self-identification as a good person. So, if you're inside a power structure...and someone raises evidence that your way of life oppresses another people group, not only is it likely to make you defensive in one case; it's actually more likely [to make] you tune out and forget [that evidence] later." 

Brains disregard facts, on purpose, without us knowing. That is a fact. And it's weird and unsettling. 

If you're Canadian, you probably know where I'm going with this. We have a thing going on up here where we're all looking at a different kind of The Dress and we just cannot get on the same page. I've been having conversations that go in circles with people who are seeing the same videos and reading the same articles as I have but we can't agree on what's right and wrong in them. Last night I watched the emergency debate about the protests going on in our capital and after a while it felt as fruitless as arguing about color. Each MP stood and defended their perception of the situation, passionately and certainly, only to be challenged by another. They used phrases like, "I have spoken to my constituents personally, and they have said..." or, "I have seen this myself, with my own eyes..." And maybe none of them, or us, or anyone, is conscious of the fact that our brains are actively filtering, amplifying, and disregarding—just the way they've been designed to. That we can't actually trust our own eyes. Our eyes were designed to have blind spots, and that's why we need...ears. And other people to listen to. (There's a rabbit trail to be had here about how people have developed a massive distrust of experts over these past couple of years, and how this makes this whole mess even more convoluted. I don't even know what to do about this! I do trust experts—medical professionals, especially, right now—and I know that this has drastically affected the way that I see this 'dress.' I don't know what to do with that except acknowledge it as one particular facet of this discussion.)

Another interesting thing about that dress, though: A group of researchers in Germany showed it to a group of people and had them adjust the color of a disc on a screen so it matched the dress. This group, rather than describing the dress as white or blue, reported seeing a spectrum of shades. I wonder if this is because they realized, when forced to look closely, that they couldn't rely completely on a glance, a first impression. 

Which makes me wonder: what if we started looking at this current situation from a place of understanding our limitations as humans to see objective reality? What if we knew going in that our brains are going to filter things to get rid of stuff that makes us feel badly about ourselves, and fill in blanks based on assumptions we have and hold maybe a bit too closely? If we learned to rely on other people to help us see what's going on in our blind spots instead of insisting that we already can do that on our own? 

I have my opinions about what's going down right now. I think that there are things we can objectively point to as true, false, good, bad, etc., and I'm still open to having these conversations because I think they're important. But I also think it's important that as we talk we, you know, remember the dress. 

The ABCs of 2021

Let's all say it together and get it over with:

That was not how I expected 2021 to go.

I don't know what I did expect. More live music and in-person events? Maybe...I dunno...a trip? On an airplane? Maybe just a simple, straightforward, gradual decline of COVID cases? More parties. Less missed school. 

Wishful thinking, all of it. And I'm usually SO GOOD at being pessimistic! I've learned a valuable lesson here: pessimism is great, and will protect you from the disappointment of going into a year like, "LIVE MUSIC IS BACK" when live music is, in fact, not super back. 

Oh well. Here's what 2021 actually looked like:

A - A lot of evenings at home with Barclay. Which I really, really enjoyed. HOWEVER, I have realized that maybe I'm enjoying them a bit toooo much and am losing the desire to leave my house after 7 pm (or ever)? Which, yikes, 24-year-old me would be ANGRY with 34-year-old me for what I've become (even if she understood that it began out of a heart to contribute to the greater good and continued out of a heart of I really like my husband and just want to hang out with him all the time). If you are my real life friend, can you kick me in the butt on this a little [when omicron is less omnipresent]? I don't even know who wants to hang out with me anymore but if you do, let me know. Drag me out of my cozy blue robe and away from my books, puzzles, video games, and Netflix, even if you're just dragging me to YOUR books, puzzles, vids, and Netflix. Hey! Maybe I can wear my cozy blue robe at YOUR house! Depending on how close we are. 

B - Baked less bread than usual. Just not a year for bread baking, I guess. Bought a lot of those croissants that you have to throw in the oven for five minutes and pretended I baked them from scratch. It was a year for that.

C - Changed my mind on a number of things.

D - Deck hangs. This was our first year with a functional deck in our back yard. We bought real patio furniture and we LIVED out there. We ate out there, laid out there when we were sick, sat out there with friends and family, drew pictures and played games out there... It was so great. I'm a very outdoorsy person now.

E - Estonia! Sorry I Missed You was published in Estonia in October (my very first translation and massively exciting for me. I even got an email from a reader who told me she'd found my book in an Estonian library and I had one of those rare, fleeting moments of feeling like a real author) (I think most authors will tell you this: none of us feel like real authors and most of us are chasing that feeling constantly and when it shows up we're always very surprised about it). 

F - Firsts. 2021 had a few 'pandemic firsts' for me. I don't think anyone reading this who knows me IRL will be super shocked by this, but I am definitely in the more cautious camp as far as pandemic living—no indoor dining, no plane trips or major road trips. Haven't slept in a hotel or enjoyed live music indoors since before Covid hit. No judgement on anyone who's done those things, it's just what we decided early on and it's not been a huge deal for us to keep on keeping on. If anything, I've just been excited to enjoy those things again when it doesn't feel at all iffy for me personally—and anyway, what is life without creatively entertaining yourself and your kids while also giving everyone something to look forward to and a renewed appreciation for the small stuff, right? Still, 2021 held a few golden baby steps back into normalcy (between major waves in our city)—my first time eating [outside] at a restaurant with my friend Becky, the kids' first time back at their favorite museum down the street, my first haircut, my first and only indoor coffee date with Karlie, our first time back at the Science Centre down the street...and my first cold since March of 2020. 

G - Grade Two, for Sully! 

H - Had a very nice time getting to know my neighbors better. There are so many good people living on my block and I honestly don't think I would've really gotten to know most of them very well if it hadn't been for Covid. My kids love all their kids and they're all around the same age and it's one of those things that just feels so lucky.

I - I decreed every Wednesday and Saturday Noodle Night in my house. It alleviated the pressure of having to think of a thing to make on those nights that everyone would eat, and since I do most of the cooking around here I figured it was okay if I had my favorite meal twice a week. Right? Or am I just a selfish mom?

J - Joined Barclay's snow clearing crew—and quite loved it. (Except the one week where the snowblowers broke and it blizzarded. I had an actual moment of honestly believing I was having a very vivid nightmare. It was -50ish and it was blowing and snowing as we were shoveling and the homeowner opened his door and visibly recoiled when he saw me and the literal icicles hanging from my eyelashes. I pulled my mask down (worn for warmth, not covid reasons) and my eyelashes stuck to it and some of them ripped out. "S...s...stay...warm..." he croaked and, if I'm being honest, the fact that someone felt so sorry for me made me feel a little bit better.)

K - Kindergarten, for Scarlett!

L - Live music: Marissa Burwell (at the RFF outdoor stage in the Conexus parking lot), some 70s cover band on a beach stage at Moose Mountain, and MxPx (online). This is the shortest list of live shows I have had literally ever (I am prettttty sure I saw more shows than this as a one year old baby). Just the other day someone was telling me that there would be live music at the book thing I was planning on attending and they said, "It's just a guy with a guitar." I said to them, "I would sit and listen to a guy with a FLUTE right now. I am desperate." 2022 better deliver to me MORE LIVE MUSIC. Pleaseohpleaseohplease.

M - Made some progress on Books 3, 4, and 5, but finished none of them. Feeling hopeful that 2022 will be the year I finish ALL THREE (and if I can sell even one of the three to a publisher, I'll be thrilled).

N - Number of books read: 18. A mix of audiobooks, ARCs and "regular" books. I went through long stretches of time this year where I couldn't read (or write) because life felt stranger than fiction and fiction couldn't hold my attention. It was frustrating. But ohhhh well. 

O - Ordered in a lot more than past years—Vic's, Cathedral Social Hall, & Fat Badger were probably our top three places.

P - Planted more things this year than all the other years of my life combined. Hostas and dazzleberries and sweet peas and dogwoods and carrots and hot peppers and tomatoes (those died) and strawberries and rhubarb and basil and hollyhocks and a cranberry bush and chives and assorted lettuces and even a couple of apple trees. Other things too! Barclay kept bringing home extra plants from landscaping jobs and, for a while there, every time I had Feelings of any kind (I am a lady of many Feelings) I went out and planted something from the extra plants pile. He'd come home from work and be like, "Ah, I see you've been having Feelings today." And I'd be like, "Yes, and in four years my Feelings will produce actual apples."

Q - Quite a lot of work accomplished on the basement. It's not done, but it's looking spiffy. Barclay is, in fact, down there right now hanging ceilings. I can feel things getting done beneath my feet. 

R - Russia! Sorry I Missed You came out in Russia in December. (This link here will take you to the publisher's website where there's a write-up on the book and a recipe for sweet little Ghost cookies! Awww.)

S - Said goodbye to Grandpa Glen in the fall. 

T - Twelfth wedding anniversary. A dozen years! That's bizarre. 

U - Updated my website once, a tiny bit. Completely forgot to send a single newsletter. (I'm not great at these things.)

V - Vaxxes; we gots our shots. 

W - Worked out four times per week, every single week, for the entire year. This is the first year in my entire life I have been able to say that.

X - XXXIV (I turned 34 this year. It's weird, because I remember 28 feeling 'old.' 29 felt 'young.' 30 felt UTTERLY TERRIFYING. 31, 32, 33, and 34 have all felt 'young' again. I'm dreading 35, but Barclay is 36 and that seems okay. Does anyone else feel this way about specific ages? Or do you all think in decades, or what?)

Y - Yay! The kids learned to ride their bikes this summer and we spent so much time at the BMX track and the Conexus parking lot and the neighbors' back alley with their kids.

Z - Zoom, again. Less Zoom than last year, but still. I did a presentation through the library over Zoom, helped a friend launch her book over Zoom, chatted with some book clubs over Zoom, and hung out with my family over Zoom. 

And now, here we are in 2022. I'm going to be intentionally pessimistic, so as not to repeat the mistakes of last New Year's Day, and I'm recording it here: 

This year will probably suck. I'm expecting an asteroid or an alien invasion. 

(Okay, I'll allow for a glimmer of optimism, for those of you who need that sort of thing: maybe the aliens will play some live music for us.)

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!