“Rissa, come look!!” I yell. “What? What?” She slides in the kitchen in her socked feet. I point out the window. “Look! The snow is falling all in slow motion! Isn’t it beautiful??” “OOOOOOOOH! It’s so pretty!” (Given this year’s snow ridiculous accumulation, I don’t know how we can still be impressed, but there it…
It was one of the worst days of my life. My friend Shannon had died. It was about 2 weeks after she’d had a successful stem cell transplant – her prognosis had been good. Except now she was dead. I almost threw up when her partner John told me, my knees threatened to buckle, white-knuckled…
I used to be a terrible sleeper. Before I gave birth to progeny. My brain wouldn’t shut down. If something woke me at 6:25 a.m. on a Saturday morning, no matter how tired my body was, I was incapable of returning to slumber. Thoughts would careen from synapse to synapse. Bits of songs, lines from…
Boxes… and boxes… and still more boxes. And there I was, on my ass in the Rec Room, sorting through them. Boxes of books and fabric. Boxes of craft supplies and more fabric. Boxes of Tae Kwon Do equipment and MORE fabric. And the mother lode of nostalgia… a box of letters. Decades of correspondence…
I must have a symbiotic worm hole in my house. I swear to God that for every lost sock in the dryer, a Tupperware container also disappears. I could earn a doctorate in this area. I’m going to get a grant for the next phase of my thesis. We have a billion Tupperware lids –…
We are on the hunt for a sofa bed. On account of the fact that our new house does not have a guest room. As Canadians, we need to be able to offer extreme-weather lodgings. It’s in the Canadian Manifesto. Or it would be if Canada had a Manifesto. My Mom took great pride in…
It was a revelation. With the first one I thought I’d just been lucky. Even the second. What a happy coincidence! How delightful! It was only upon savouring the third that I thought something was up. I looked at the box. Ladies and gentlemen, Pot Of Gold makes a CARAMEL collection! I am undone. Dear…
“Mummy, do you know where the plastic container with the clicking lid is?” “No. I do not. I’m not sure where it went. Maybe Daddy took it to school.” Rissa sighs deeply. I barely hear her say, “I call her ‘Clicky’.” “Pardon me?” Rissa now speaks loudly and clearly. “I call her ‘Clicky’.” “Did you…
Thud. Thud. Thud. Yowl. Yowl. David and I share a glance. Shake our heads. Thud. Thud. More pitiful yowl. “I don’t understand why she has to be in here with us. Rissa’s door is wide open – she could just be in there.” Thud. Thud. THUD. We jump. “She put her whole body into that…
Rissa asks. At bedtime. “Pardon?” “Which face? If you had to rate them?” “This?” She does her best impersonation of a bucktoothed gopher with a cold. “This?” She looks like she’s been hit in the head with a shovel at her left jawline – lips all askew across her face. “This?” She sticks her tongue…