The Pits and Pieces

  A little bit of sriracha makes everything taste better. I bought some hand-crafted (what exactly does that mean?) Bourbon Pecan popcorn. It was too sugary, but a few dashes of sriracha transformed it, giving it that unexpected hit of spicy lurking beneath the sweet. And then that got me thinking about people, and how some come across so treacly sweet and perfect. But then, just when your eyes start to glaze over, you get a glimpse of something so much more interesting when, in an unguarded moment, they reveal a streak of imperfection; a sarcastic tone; a morose countenance; a ‘fuck-it-all-I’m-outta-here’ attitude.  I prefer my people to be down-to-earth, insightful, a bit quirky, outspoken and unafraid to make mincemeat of their words. There’s one woman in my writing group just like that. In fact, they’re ALL something like that! How lucky am I to have these zany, genuine women to share my writing with, to read their stories. Friendship has been on my mind a lot lately....

Lately I’ve been wanting to read more memoir (I’m in the process of writing one myself), as well as more Canadian authors. Alison Wearing’s "Moments of Glad Grace " delivered on both. The story unfolds during a week in Ireland, where Alison and her aging, gay father, Joe, go to search for their genealogical roots. Well, the search is significant to Joe . Alison herself is not that interested in looking through dry, dusty tomes in libraries and archives.  She questions the reasons for wanting to find out about our ancestors. Does it matter whether they were farmers or bakers? How does that knowledge benefit us today? And – what if one discovers that their gr-gr-gr-grandfather was a murderer or a thief or someone unkind? What then? Throughout the story, a witty and well-crafted memoir, the reader can feel the strength, love  and playfulness between adult daughter and aging father, even when they disagree or have  philosophical conversations about transcendenc...

  One of the effects of the pandemic lockdowns is that many women have decided to allow their hair to go grey.  I arrived at that decision myself earlier this year, tired of being a slave to my roots every six weeks. Going grey is fashionable now, even with celebrities like Andie Macdowell, who played the bipolar mother in the Netflix series, Maid. Andie’s mass of wild, untamed silvery grey curls are magnificent.   And look at Jane Fonda . Sure, she’s had a bit of help with nips and tucks, but the woman is 83, she can do anything she wants to do. She looks marvelous, and not ‘just for her age.’ My mother was a beautiful woman (my dad often said she resembled Queen Elizabeth).  My mother at her 93rd birthday party. Two months later she died, unexpectedly but peacefully She coloured her hair right into her seventies, when she then decided to go grey. At first I was against it. Selfishly, I suppose. I liked having a youthful looking mother. But the silvery grey suited h...

I have a tolerate/hate relationship with Amazon. In the past 20 months, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve ordered something from the retail monster.  It’s been mainly art supplies, when stores carrying non-essential items were closed. Something about the guarantee of next day delivery bothers me. Who desperately needs or wants something from Amazon the very next day? I know I don’t. And what’s the human and environmental cost of all this frantic handling and packaging and dispatching? This week I received a parcel I had ordered from the GAP: a new sweater and sweatpants in a soft greyish-black.  This was unusual for me (I never order clothes online). In-person clothes shopping is also at the very bottom of my list of fun things to do. I’m one of those women who detests shopping. And the endless choices available often paralyze any decision-making. During the pandemic, I can’t think of anything new that I bought for myself or my home, apart from consumables: groc...

  My friend, Catherine A., she of the croissant-making in my Buttery Bliss post, wrote an essay recently for our writing group. I persuaded her to allow me to publish it as a guest post. So, with her permission, here it is. She is an artist, writer and musician but has neither a website nor an Instagram account (she should, her work is lovely) so I cannot provide you with any links to find out more about her. Enjoy. It certainly made me think.   A neurologist wrote that an emotion takes 90 seconds to work its way through the body. If we hook into it, it may keep on running, spoiling our day and likely someone else’s. If we stop, breathe, and let it finish, “the chemical component of my anger has completely dissipated from my blood, and my automatic response is over”.   These are the thoughts of Jill Bolte-Taylor, whose massive stroke at age 36, led to devastating damage to the left side of her brain. Ironically, she was working in post-doctoral brain research at the ...