We received some unwelcome news yesterday.
Dwayne's shoulder surgery has been postponed another month.
He hurt his shoulder at the end of plow season last March and has been going through the process with WCB of getting it fixed. After months of physio which I think made it worse, he finally saw the surgeon in mid-August and at the beginning of October, heard his surgery would be November 17.
All good. Couldn't come soon enough, in fact. I went and booked our New Year's trip to Atlanta.
Yesterday, the WCB booking nurse at the surgeon's office phoned and said they had to rebook a bunch of surgeries and now, ho, ho, ho, Dwayne's operation is December 15. In New Glasgow.
Prior to that, he has to go to their lab in Halifax for blood work and at another date, to be fitted with an entire-arm splint that he will wear for ten weeks.
And we leave for Atlanta on December 27! Ho, ho, ho!
Granted, it's better than waiting 2 years for surgery like non-WCB patients do but when I see that his right shoulder is three inches lower than his left and he tells me that his right hand keeps going numb, having the surgery postponed another month is hard.
My husband, however deflated he was by that bad news, did have the grace to admit after watching the day-after news reports about Sandy's devastation: "I suppose postponed shoulder surgery isn't quite as terrible, is it?"
I'm not going to tell him, either, that this could be my "Be careful what you wish for" vibe coming true: as the years go by, I kvetch more and more about Christmas and how commercial and overdone and expensive it is. Well, I guess I'm getting my very simple Christmas this year.
As long as he can kiss me on New Year's Eve and lift a glass of champagne with his left arm, I'm fine with a twig tree and a ceramic Santa from the hospital gift shop in my stocking.

For once, and only once, am I very grateful that the family we have in the States doesn't live north of Washington!
For as many times as I've begged my sister to move her family a few states north so they can be less than a three-days' drive away, I'm glad she never listens to me. Especially since my mother is visiting in Georgia right now!

What I'm also grateful for are the wonderful friends and relatives who bless me with their love and support. Put out a call for help and they respond. The acknowledgements in just expanded like, well, like Hurricane Sandy travelling over warm water.

So I've created a FB "fan" page - a public page to promote myself as a writer and show prospective agents that I'm creating a platform from which to launch my book.  Since I can link my work blog through the FB profile, I decided against a website.
I've managed to put up a few photos and posts but I'll be damned if I can figure out anything else beyond the profile!
There are two essential parts to this promote-myself project: 1) Content. That I have no problem providing, and 2) Likes. This page needs as many likes as it can get
To build an audience, I can import emails from my personal account but should I? Do you want to be contacted like that? Since I don't have an existing personal FB page, I can't use my existing FB contacts.
The weird thing is that I can't find a Search option. I feel like I'm stuck with my Admin page with no way of getting beyond it. Frustrates me to not be able to figure this out. I know what the login for a personal account looks like and how to search for friends that way but it doesn't seem possible from a fan page. I want to feature the FB pages of some of my fave writers but I don't know how to find them.
And I don't know how to tell you how to find me! If you can search for me, use my first and both my last names; since I write under both, I'm FBing as both.
I'm keen to use this FB page as a writer but at the moment, I seem limited to posting -- and no one reading.

The signs are piling up.
I've learned that even when I feel at my lowest, my clumsiest, my doubtiest, the trick is just to wait. It's like the weather in the Maritimes: Wait ten minutes and it will change. Rain then sun. Sun then rain. (A gross under-generalization. More like wait ten days whoch is more realistic about how life unfolds.)
So, the first sign this week: the arrival of the cardinal. Although it's not the male, it suggeststhat he is not far behind. Cardinals are a symbol of power and pride, both in a positive sense (confidence, not ego; belief in self, not arrogance). They are a symbol of hope and brilliance.
The second sign reminds me of the greater value of doong work that I maynot want to do but have to right now. While cleaning one of my houses on Thursday, the structure of the novel I'm thinking about writing, a novel inspired by the events of the past summer (as Mum keeps saying, "Don't they remember that you're a writer?"), burbled up from those murky depths of my creative mind and made itself known. It's a sign because that new idea - from a few notes I made in my notebook - means my memoir is done. It's ready.
(Yes, but am I? Brilliance! Confidence!)
Finally, the third sign: When I logged onto my blog this afternoon, the first thing I saw was a
post by an agent that I follow: "I love reading memoirs," she wrote. She started agenting for the Christian book market but has been representing mainstream writers for awhile. Perhaps this lover of memoir will be interested in one about the spirituality of Alzheimers.

I certainly know how to piss away an afternoon but I really have to be on deadline to make good use of Wednesday afternoon. After two and a half intense days at the paper -- it's non-stop work unlike at home where I take a two dozen tea breaks, a dozen bathroom breaks and walk the dogs six times a day -- so by Wednesday at noon, I need a break from sitting at a computer.
Since it was a sunny afternoon with a cold wind blowing, we went for a drive. Once in the car, once on the bike. The first two pictures are blueberry fields just outside of town; the light on them caught my eye on the way home from work so we went back to take some pictures.
The rest of the photos are from our bike ride through the woods to the duck pond and home again.

A doe and her fawn at the far left and right sides of the photo.

A Ducks Unlimited pond so close to home!

That sky looked like snow.

Here's some really big news: a female cardinal landed this afternoon on the bird feeding station that is Mum's balcony!
"I knew they'd come eventually," Dwayne said. "I knew it."
Traditionally, cardinals aren't found in Nova Scotia but in recent years, as the winters become milder, there have been spottings on the island and in the valley. Now in Riverview!
She's a little skittish so I had to sneak up to get these photos.
Mum promptly made a few phone calls to find out who sells safflower seeds around here -- the cardinals' preferred food -- and off she and Stella went to Truro. She is very dedicated to feeding the birds.
"I knew they'd come," Dwayne said again.

Just because they are easier to photograph, here are some of Mum's blue jays:

I like reading the obituaries. Some people's lives are very interesting. Most are long-lived, others are not.
A nine-year-old girl was in today's obits in the provincial paper. She died of a brain tumour. But that's not the only thing that defined her. She was in Grade 4 French Immersion and she was a Girl Guide. She liked to make sculptures out of clay and she liked to draw.
I like reading the obituaries because sometimes they remind me of how fortunate we are.

SEEKING INPUT and OPINION:

I have to create a greater online presence, I think, in order to build what agents and editors want an author to have: that is platform. Platform is the network, connections and contacts that a writer brings to a book deal. No matter how great your non-fiction book is, apparently your platform is more important.
I have connections and contacts across Canada but they don't amount to a great big bunch of "followers" (does anyone else flinch at the idea of being a "follower"???); I don't have a network and definitely not online. Writing columns for my weekly newspaper is fine but it isn't reaching many people. Leading classes, hosting workshops, and giving presentations is very limited to me because of where I live, because of saturation (small province with a lot of writers trying to grow their own platform), and because I'm busy writing and submitting articles. So I'm having to read and consider ideas for building my platform instead of sending out my query letter and book proposal.
I'm in serious need of a direction sign right now.


So my question is, if I were to develop an online location for myself as a writer, would it be better to do it through Facebook or through a website? Where would you rather go? Where would it be easier to find me these days? Please provide your insight and opinions through comments.

GREATLY APPRECIATED.

Sometimes I run out of the house in the morning shouting, "The sky is pink, the sky is pink."
Because it is. Because you want to catch the beauty before it fades or dulls to grey as the rain arrives.
And yes, we have two osprey poles now. 

 

It's a gorgeous day today, my half-day of work, so I should be taking advantage of the lovely weather to let the chickens roam the yard and to start cleaning up the gardens but instead, I'm being "kidnapped" (in quotes because I ain't a kid anymore) for a drive to Moncton.
Apparently, mention the phrase "Fisherman's Paradise" and Dwayne's in. So supper is settled.
Then Mum pipes up: "Chapters."
And I say: "Michaels."
"Chapters. Michaels. Fisherman's Paradise. Where else do we need to go?" Dwayne says and I can tell by the look on his face that it's not a rhetorical question. He looks too excited for a trip to Moncton with his wife and mother-in-law.
"You want to go to Better Buy Sports, don't you?"
The grin told me I was right.

This is all otherwise known as Procrastination. My query letter is written, the book proposal is done, I'm even thinking of a brilliant writing website I could start -- and since I don't think along those lines, it's freaking me out how excited I am by the idea -- and Mum has okayed my opening pages so the time has come to start querying agents.
Ick.
I can't bring myself to start because this feels like IT. Now or never. Do or die. Shit or get off the pot. If I can't get an agent's interest who will get me a publisher, I'm going to have to go to Plan B.
And I don't have a Plan B.
Well, perhaps I do. Plan B is going to Moncton.

This may be why it's not a good idea for us to live together. Too much togetherness, methinks. Thank goodness Dwayne is out in the garage refurbishing his 1955 tractor.
I'm in the bathtub when Mum hollers.
"You'll have to come in. The radio's on. But the curtain is closed."
So in she trots to the bedroom (which is on the main floor with our bathroom ensuite) with a phone message for me. We chat about that for awhile, me in the tub, Mum in my bedroom, then she hears a buzzing coming from under the lampshade in the bedroom.
"You have a fly," she says.
"You have two flies," she adds.
My mother is obsessed by flies. Particularly with killing them.
"I'll give you two toonies if you kill them," I say. That's the price of one way through the toll booth on the Cobequid Pass and I know she's going to Truro tomorrow.
But she doesn't need the incentive.
"Don't look behind the furniture," she says.
"Don't YOU look behind the furniture," I answer. "But I need to see the corpses for proof."
"Oh, I have two bodies," Mum says. "I've just killed another fly for free."

When this kind of stuff happens, I think, "Why not get another dog? We should have three dogs. Maybe even four!" Then they get off the couch with a big, long stretch and I hear their toenails scraping against the oak floor, which was laid last summer but now looks like we've had it ten years, and I know that two dogs, four ears, and eight legs are enough.

 

Fern doesn't count as a dog -- and don't let her hear me even think that she might -- but she certainly fits in when it's time for supper:

 

I found a photo of my sister and me in our Holly Hobby dresses!

Original post linked here. 

And now I remember the details: December 1976, Christmas party at Barnum House near Grafton. This photo was taken in the living room of the apartment above our funeral home in Cobourg. We were 4 and 6 years old. And totally rockin' the shawls. 

Tweeting is not writing. It does seem like a conversation, however; one-sided, of course, but conversational.
This from Anne Lamott's Twitter feed:

"Here is how I'll write: not beatifically, not with great self-esteem, not with any real sense of what I'm doing. But I'll do it because I get to."

I love writing. Writing is the only thing that takes my mind off all the other shit (like people obsessing about us instead of seeking psychiatric treatment for their own inability to be happy) and when I write, I feel free.
It's like swimming. I don't bump into walls and coffee tables and buildings when I swim. In the water, I am graceful and fluid and strong.I don't sink like a stone because I suck at small talk, I don't drown because I'm socially awkward. When I write, I am a fish in water. Where I belong.

Life continues to trot along quietly and uneventfully. It's raining today which always makes me more productive. Not making it easy to start cleaning up the garden before winter. If it stays wet, I won't get any bulbs planted. What would spring be without daffodils?
I'm working on my book - editing the proposal and trying to believe that those first five chapters are as good as they get and good enough to get an agent - but it's come to the time to start querying agents again. Nerves! For the first time I'm going to focus on Canadian agents initially and see if I get lucky.
Good quote about luck (but I don't remember who spoke it - it's in a notebook somewhere): Luck is where persistence meets opportunity. Well, I feel I have the persistence part covered.
Once I get the querying started, I hope to have time for pitching stories to magazines. That list of ideas is getting longer every week.
Remember, I wished for this: to be writing full-time. Now I'm just trying to make it more specifically about books!

Because Mum and I were in Toronto for my Uncle Harry and Aunt Pat's 50th wedding anniversary celebration (just a 24 hour trip but SO glad we went), Dwayne was in charge of preparing Thanksgiving dinner. We arrived home in time to do the dressing and the gravy.
Plus the most essential part: the centrepiece! This is my favourite part of Thanksgiving: sure, we serve our own carrots and a locally-raised turkey but I love that the centrepiece is homegrown and homemade, too.

The Wannamakers didn't come from Ontario this year, after showing up two years in a row, so we had a small crowd at the table with Dwayne's parents and brother and sister-in-law. As always, it was my job to the say grace but I hadn't had time to plan out what I wanted to say. I knew when I got onto "the bounty of the county" that I was in danger of losing control of the blessing! It was a bounty, though; even the cranberry sauce was made with fresh (never frozen), Cumberland county cranberries. The sauce was lighter in colour but sweeter, too.

Even the dogs get a Thanksgiving dinner! Abby's first.

We do our chickens and turkeys in an electric roaster now -- 3 hours to cook while freeing up the oven for dressing, and warm/hold -- so the dogs look forward to helping Papa clean up.

After all the hard work of cleaning the house and cooking the food and carving the turkey and eating a big meal and cleaning up, it's time for a well-deserved rest.

What? You were expecting a picture of Dwayne asleep in his recliner??

Final update on my right arm:
The doctor at the "collaborative emergency centre" -- which every rural hospial in NS is now called but I have yet to figure out how it works any better other than the emergency won't ever be closed "due to a lack of doctor coverage" -- took one look at my arm and called a dermatologist at a hospital in Moncton.
Well, that's getting somewhere. She prescribed a topical steroid cream which, after only two applications, is doing the trick.
I'm not sure if Dr. No. 1 got the diagnosis wrong -- two nurses before him said it was shingles, too -- but I saw three different doctors so there was no continuity in terms of seeing the progression of this virus/bacterial infection/dermatitis on my arm. Maybe the dermatologist can explain it. Although Tuesday afternoon, my arm will be healed right up -- no idea if it will scar or not -- I'm still keeping the appointment because I'd like to know for sure what it was and what it became. Was it shingles? Or was it contact dermatitis from the start?
When I went to the drug store with my third prescription in two weeks, I said, "It's me again. Now they think it's -- " I was starting to feel like a patient of Dr. House.
I'm always saying, "I got a scratch while working in the garden this afternoon. If I end up with some horrible outbreak on my arm, it'll be necrotizing fascitis caused by that scratch." Seriously. That's all it can take to bring on n.f. But the flesh-eating disease didn't even occur to me when this whole thing started. What's wrong with me?

THIS JUST IN!
My article on the ospreys nesting next to the house, "Circle of Life," that was published in Saltscapes last fall and was a Silver Finalist at the AJAs in May...received an Award of Merit in the category of General Feature at the International Regional Magazines Association (IRMA) awards in Arizona.
(Award of Merit is the equivalent to an Honourable Mention.)
You know, I'm with Taylor Swift, who apparently is criticized for her "shocked face", the look on her face when her name is announced at an awards show: She says she can't help but be excited and surprised when she wins an award. Every time.
Blase is so blah.


****
The article was highlighted in this month's e-newsletter from Saltscapes so I can provide the link for you to read it again:

http://www.saltscapes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1575&catid=22&Itemid=63&utm_source=Saltscapes.com+Viewsletter&utm_campaign=0f8d442f13-Saltscapes_Viewsletter_Vol_3_Number_19&utm_medium=email

Maybe I should get an osprey tattoo...

Two more things:

I smell like oatmeal. Three oatmeal baths, so far (and I'm supposed to do three a day), and I smell like a cookie (without cinnamon and raisins). Jane, MFJ, said to me this morning, "Watch yourself around a Scottish man. You'll get licked."

And don't tell me that dogs live in the damn moment. I kicked Abby off the bed last night shortly after she hopped up and snuggling up behind Dwayne's bent legs. Sometimes she lies in between us in such a way that neither of us even knows she's there but lately, she's been rolling around a lot and snuggling up and that wakes me; trying to roll over with a 50-pound dog on my legs wakes me!
So I told her to get off and sleep with her big sister on the couch. I covered the two dogs up with their afghan and slept fine until the cat wanted out at 4:30 am.
When I got up an hour later to make my tea and do some yoga (prior to oatmeal bath #1), Abby was giving me the pissed-off face. She wasn't happy to see me (Stella has adopted a constant "Whatever." attitude unless what you want her to do involves a drive to Tim Horton's for a Timbit.
So even though "experts" say dogs don't hang onto the past and don't hold grudges, Abby appeared to be mad at me.
She can be mad all she wants; I'm still the boss and I'm the one that feeds her. Funny how the hairy-eyeball disappeared when the dog dish appeared on the counter.

Two things: I figured out how type for this blog on my tablet - it's hunt-and-peck and now I know why no one capitalizes anything! - and I don't have shingles.
Or maybe I did but now it's a rather nasty bacterial infection PLUS a rash all over my upper chest, neck and shoulders. So for the next few days, you'll find me in the bathtub soaking in oatmeal;I think it's for the itchiness, which is rather extreme. And now that I think about it, the doc in emerg asked me if I'd been gardening so he thinks it could be poison ivy.
I told him that I'm from Ontario and I know what poison ivy looks like. Kids in Ontario learn that early.
Hopefully when I return to emerg for a check-up on Thursday - yes, it was a "real" doctor who I saw today so there's actually follow-up - I'll be much improved.
And bloody hell, typing like this doesn't inspire great eloquence!

In anticipation of a move, my sister has been going through boxes (and boxes and boxes) of, well, her life’s history that has been stored in her basement for years. 

(In her defense, every time my parents drove to  Georgia for a visit, they took more of A’s stuff to her, not wanting the responsibility of deciding what to keep and what to toss.)

Last week she called to say that she and her four kids were having a grand time going through a box of her clothes from when she was a little girl. 

The biggest hit? The Holly Hobby dress.

What I remember of this dress is that my mother had them made up for a special evening at Barnum House near Cobourg. The dresses were long, with poufy sleeves. Mum crocheted shawls for us using colours in the dress (other than brown): peach for my sister, purple for me. We also had matching handbags made as well. 

Weren’t we the stylin’ girls? We might have been 4 and 6, around those ages. 

“I doubt Sara has her dress,” my sister said to Mum on the phone. Was she boasting because she never throws anything out? Or because her youngest son desperately wanted to wear his mother's Holly Hobby dress? 

“I’ve moved across the country three times,” I answered. “You can’t keep everything.”

Except that I was wrong. I have one plastic box labelled “Childhood  Mementos” and in that box, along with cards and toys and a few stuffed animals, I knew I had some clothes, like the dress I wore to my sixth birthday party and a towel with my name on it. 

But I had forgotten that my Holly Hobby dress and shawl were in there as well. 

The dress I wore to 6th birthday party. You can see the cake crumbs on the front!

The title for my next book is "The Girl in the Red Wool Dress". This is all that's left of that outfit.

This is the outfit I wore for my Grade 2 school picture.

But the one you really want to see...

THE HOLLY HOBBY DRESS! Vintage clothing.

Except for the elastic in the sleeves, neckline and empire waist, this dress is in perfect condition; so is the shawl. For the record, the girl on the dress is not Holly Hobby. She just reminded us of her, I suppose. We've always, even then, referred to it as the HH dress so that's what it is.

Funny, out of all the clothes I had and can remember, these are the ones that meant the most to me. How do we decide what to keep and what to let go? There is only one shirt I wish I'd kept; I remember at the age of 7 feeling ambiguous about the colours of my "Cool as a cucumber" long-sleeved shirt -- as a child, I wasn't drawn to yellow and green -- but now I wish I had that shirt in my collection. 

Wait...I'll bet my sister finds it in one of her boxes!