Category: Life
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Make Something
I started to write in this space yesterday morning. Once. Twice. Three times, a slip of my finger caused me to accidentally delete what I had just written. I should have taken that as a sign, but I’m slow to understand things sometimes. So, I persevered in frustration, until I felt tension in my body…
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What A Difference A Week Makes
Daffodowndilly She wore her yellow sun-bonnet,She wore her greenest gown;She turned to the south windAnd curtsied up and down.She turned to the sunlightAnd shook her yellow head,And whispered to her neighbour:“Winter is dead.” ~ A.A. Milne When last we met here, less than a week ago, we were still in the depths of a deep…
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Thoughts From the Frozen North
It’s ridiculously cold here in Saskatchewan—minus 40 this morning. It doesn’t matter if you measure your temperature in Celsius or Fahrenheit, -40 is -40, and it’s cold. Darn cold. Gerry and Molly and I are sitting in the living room undercover of blankets watching the 4 Nations Face-Off Canada vs Finland hockey game. It’s the…
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How’s Your Heart?
I stumbled across this question in something I was reading this morning and remembered that we asked it of one another a few years ago when things were dark. I don’t know about you, but I can slip into experiencing the world as dark and scary again these days if I’m not careful. This is…
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Things I Would Tell My Younger Self
A conversation with my best friend from high school on social media yesterday prompted me to give this some thought. It also kept me awake last night thinking about it. Step into the wayback machine with me and let’s visit 1976 when I was 17. Use your scholarship. Leave Princeton. Cultivate friendship. Find and follow…
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Seventy-Nine Days
The notification popped up on my screen yesterday afternoon: snowfall warning. Again. This morning, when Molly and I got up shortly after 4, the first thing I did was look out the window. Yup. The white stuff had arrived. Gerry, eternally optimistic, said, “it doesn’t look like much” when we were enjoying our morning coffee.…
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Sorry. Not Sorry.
The stereotypical Canadian is polite and nice and, to an extent, we are both of those things. We don’t boast; we’re not brash; we don’t believe the world revolves around us. We display the Canadian flag prominently when we travel internationally because people like us. As a rule, we live contented lives in our beautiful…
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Layover
I’m sitting at my departure gate in the Calgary airport waiting for the connecting flight from Regina that will take me to Kamloops, where I’m spending a few days with my daughter and granddaughter and enjoying a visit with my bestie. I’ve positioned myself facing a window onto the tarmac. There’s no snow. It seems…
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Easing In
We have just finished lunch after attending the Eucharist service at church this morning. This is Epiphany Sunday and, as such, the priest marked the doorframe of the church sanctuary with chalk. 20✞C✞M✞B✞25 Wrapped within the new year are initials for the traditional names of the magi (Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar) separated by crosses to represent Christ.…
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I’m Not Optimistic About 2025
The liminality of the days between December 25 and January 1, paired with an ice storm making it unsafe and unwise to venture out, keeps us home. Having consumed too much fat and sugar, we feel dim-witted and lazy. A jigsaw puzzle on the dining table, books on our devices, and a little Yorkie who…
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My Top Twelve Photographs Of 2024
I live in Saskatchewan, Canada, the land of living skies. It’s impossible not to take gorgeous photos of this province. It’s beautiful here. And yes, I understand that it’s all in the eye of the beholder. Recently, someone commented that some of quick phone images of the Saskatchewan prairie I posted on social media make…
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Top Ten Fiction Reads in 2024
At the end of the year, I enjoy looking back at the list of books I read in the previous twelve months. I often remember specific times and places when a particular book held my attention, and browsing the titles takes me back to moments sitting on the back deck in the heat of summer…