Category: Living
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Peer pressure
I’ve been hearing phrases lately that I last recall hearing as a teenager. “Everyone is doing it.” “No one will find out.” “It won’t hurt anything.” These kinds of arguments were usually reserved for PSAs with stilted acting warning thirteen -year-old me not to do drugs. But now I’m hearing them from family, coworkers, neighbours, […]
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#icreatedtoday
I turn 38 today. I’m not one to hide my age, or get terribly overwrought about it, but it does inspire some reflection. What exactly have I accomplished with those nearly 14,000 days on the planet? Quite a bit; lots of it good, some of it hard, most of it worth it. The trouble is, […]
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How do I explain this; how do I put it into words?
I woke up this morning to the radio news telling me Gord Downie has terminal brain cancer. We’ve had many significant losses in the music department these last few months, many of which have touched my heart and my history, but this one cuts me to the quick. I am not a fan girl type, […]
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No break this spring–and I love it
Many friends and co-workers have disappeared to tropical locales this week. The kids have been sleeping in and complaining about ‘everyone else’ getting to go to Hawaii (not to mention the work I’ve had them catch up on). Our week off probably does seem a little boring on the surface, and my husband and I agree that […]
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The parable of the mistaken oak
Last fall I sat on a lawn under an oak tree, surrounded by music and children. I brought home some acorns, researched, prepared, and planted one. It lived in the back of my fridge, in simulated winter, annoying family members just trying to put away the yogurt. Last month, I decided it was time to […]
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Maybe I just can’t take a compliment
Recently, an acquaintance of mine gave me a knock-you-over, stop-breathing kind of compliment. As a single woman with marriage likely in her near future, she said, and I quote, “I love what you guys have. I want a family just like yours.” More specifically, she explained, she wanted the relaxed, convivial atmosphere she felt in our […]
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Before you post that…
I love how Facebook can be a place to share and learn different perspectives. I hate, hate, hate, how Facebook turns too often into skirmishes of opinion. In case you don’t know, I live in Alberta. Rural Alberta. In case you don’t know, Facebook has turned into a battleground (at least on my feed) over […]
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Renaissance girl?
I envy my husband sometimes. He’s an artist with tunnel vision, the classic absentminded professor. He jumps head first into things and doesn’t look back, working with feverish abandon on the project of the moment until the next idea strikes, oblivious to the debris field in his wake. The trained eye can look over his […]
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The dark days
Every once in a while, a word floats to the surface of my memory, a phrase dredged up from the days when I lived and breathed theatre. Waking up in the winter grey this morning, the word in my head was “dark”: a term for a day when no rehearsal, no performance is scheduled. The […]