Category Archives: challenges

Waiting for the right train

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If you are a blogger, or an aspiring novelist, you may have seen the acronym NaNoWriMo, which is an abbreviated version of National Novel Writing Month.  The eleventh calendar month has been designated as the month when writers challenge themselves to write 50,000 words, or more, in a time span of 30 days.

I thought this year I would board that speeding locomotive of creativity but, as the train neared the station, I stepped back and watched the silver bullet speed past my stop and continue on its journey without me.

As the caboose rattled down the tracks and the last of the smoke had cleared from the air, I realized I don’t want to put so much pressure on myself that I scare my characters away.  I want them to tell their story at their pace.  I have developed a relationship with these unique personalities over the last couple of years and I don’t want to be the bully in the school yard making these other kids make decisions based on any peer pressure I put on them.   I will push their swings as high as they want to go but let them slow down when they want to stop pumping their legs.  This is their journey and I am only here to tell it as they tell it to me.

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I envy those who can focus so intently for thirty days, and perhaps if I were starting a new project I would be more eager to dive in and lose myself in the process.  But, for now, I have chosen to create my own acronym – NaNoWriWin……  National Novel Writing Winter.

My writing train will still stay on track, but a track that doesn’t have such a condensed schedule.  It will meander along its path, at a rate of speed that is conducive to its creativity and not just its deadline.  And I can only hope that by slowing down the velocity of my train, that my silver bullet with travel through beautiful, and sometimes scary, landscapes over the next few months.  I’m anticipating some bumps along the way, and perhaps a few derailments, but it is the journey that I am looking forward to and not just the moment I finally reach my destination.

 

Getting the green light

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The lodge where I am employed is closed for the season, our quaint little village resembles more of a ghost town with a few tumbleweeds rolling down the main street and the silence at night can be deafening.

But in these times of serenity, behind the doors of seemingly empty kitchens, a group of women and men are readying themselves to wield sharp knives and give even Gordon Ramsay a run for his money in the chopping department!

Our small group of devoted volunteers meet for a couple of hours over a couple of weekends to create crockpot freezer meals to help a few families who may be struggling, for whatever reason.  Last year, it was a young family who had lost their home in a fire just after delivering twins.  This year we are doing our best to spread the meals to a few families and not just one.

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There have been a few hurdles along the track to finding these families but the ribbon at the finish line is getting to be within striking distance.   Although the meals are being prepared in an inspected and certified kitchen, many of the choppers have not taken a food safety course, so there was a question as to whether the food bank was going to be allowed to accept our donations.

The joy of living in a small town is that you can literally ask your neighbors if they know of any families who could benefit from our knife skills and they will immediately give you a list of names.  And I have recently discovered that, as long as the meals are labelled with all ingredients (which they are), the food bank will give us that long awaited green light and accept the meals – so the only thing left to do is shop and chop!

 

 

 

 

Putting the “jerk” in knee-jerk reaction…..

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On Saturday, I spent a couple of hours at our local Foodland trying to promote our small curling club.  We  had a tiny table set up with a lone chair, our club banner and some flyers with information about our open houses and our membership rates.  What I thought was going to be a couple of hours of chatting about the club turned into a very eye-opening experience and a great deal of fodder for this blog post.

If you have ever shopped in a grocery store, you have undoubtedly seen small town clubs raising awareness (or funds) for their groups.  Having never been on this side of the table before, I was ill-prepared for the events that transpired.

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Many locals did stop at the table.  To their good fortune, and our misfortune, they were snow birds counting the days until they left for the sunny south.  We did receive a collection of names to add to our list of possible new members.  But what I didn’t expect were the reactions of the multitude of people going by who would do anything to avoid eye contact with me.

Let me remind you, I was not selling anything or asking for money.  Most shoppers picked up their pace as they passed me, looking straight ahead as if trying to remember where they parked their car.  Several people didn’t even want to know why I was sitting in that cold lobby, they just told me they didn’t have any cash and kept moving.  One lady went so far as to tell me she had already donated!   This generous stranger had somehow anonymously given money to our little curling club and nobody on the executive committee were any the wiser.

The crowning glory was a middle-aged woman who, as she pushed her full grocery cart past me, simply responded “NO” when I had asked, “How are you today?”.

I was in awe of how quickly people were willing to dismiss  me, to turn a blind eye and not even take a moment to understand why I was there.  My presence wasn’t threatening.  I was not holding my hand out asking for anything.  To say I was disappointed by the reactions of those people is an egregious understatement.  And I can only hope that if I ever have a knee-jerk reaction to a similar situation, that I’m not such a jerk about it.

Like sands through the hourglass…..

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Yesterday was a very important calendar date.  It had been looming and, as each day brought me closer to it, the dread I felt increased exponentially.

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Last year, on that precise calendar day of October 18th, my dog had her first Petit Mal seizure.  I was a mess and I called my friend in a complete panic.  He calmed me down and made me realize that I must control my hysteria.   I needed put on a brave face so my dog knew that I had my shit together.  It was tough, but I did it.

Poor Callaway lost a great deal of her freedom after that, only because I was too afraid to let her out of my sight.  What if it happened again?  And if it did happen again, what if she was somewhere on the property I couldn’t see her and didn’t know what was happening?  We bonded a great deal more over the weeks that followed her seizure because I was afraid to leave her alone.

As the days turned into months, I became less of a “helicopter parent” and eased the reigns a bit on her leash.  And then April 18th came – six months to the day after her first one –  and she had another seizure.  Like the first, it was a Petit Mal seizure.  But unlike the first, I kept my composure and soothed her through the episode.

Yesterday was October 18th.   Callaway has not shown any signs over the last six months of having had any incidents while I have been at work (or at home) but that date glowed in neon on every calendar in my peripheral vision.  It was my waking thought yesterday.  The number 18 hovered above my head like a cartoon balloon and spent the entire day threatening, like that too-close pair of glowing eyes in the dark.

But thankfully the day ended with as little commotion as it began.  And as she sits chewing on her rawhide sticks, I am thankful – thankful because I am now able to focus on all of the days she hasn’t had a seizure and not just the two that she did.

 

Can we be honest for a moment?

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“Three things cannot be long hidden – the sun, the moon and the truth.” ~ Buddha

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I have lied.  I have told untruths throughout my life.  Whether it has been to protect another or to surreptitiously protect myself, words born from the fictitious have previously escaped my lips.  But as a great student of life, I learned early in the game that lying only creates a web in which we will eventually become entangled.

Lies beget more lies.  Soon enough, the merry-go-round of deception increases its momentum and those who intentionally expound on their distorted reality are eventually hurtled into the real world at full speed.  And when their trickery finally meets the facts of sensibility, the results can be disastrous.

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Small white lies aside, I like to think of myself as an honest person.  I leave the fiction in my life to my writing and deal with my life in the most honorable way I can.  Being honest simply means I am living my truth.  Being the most sincere version of me allows me to never have to think twice about the words that have escaped my lips.   And just being truthful with myself grants me the luxury of never having to second guess the reflections I share with anyone else because I don’t ever have to keep track of what I have said in the past.

Big or small, lies are lies.  And when you know a lie has been spoken aloud by another, it is enough to make you question the factual integrity of anything else they say.  Knowing you are being lied to is bad enough….but knowing you aren’t worth the truth is excruciating.

Are you there, blog? It’s me, Susan.

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Frenetic pace aside, the last few weeks have been draining.  It’s a good problem to have when your resort is so busy that you cannot find the right moment to take a day off.  But it is a bad problem, personally, when you cannot find the right moment to take a day off.

For anyone in the seasonal hospitality business, the start of the school year is a dreaded reality.  The summer staff are solely focused on Frosh Week and moving into residence while I am busily focused on the treads of my new running shoes, hoping that they will carry me through until Thanksgiving.  And while I am intent on putting forth 100% to make everything at work a glowing success, my personal accomplishments become non-existent.

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But the past two and a half days have been, thankfully, concentrated entirely on my needs.   I slowly morphed back into all of the roles I had been ignoring and gained some of my life back.  My lawnmower is fixed and the ridiculously long grass has been cut.  Order has been restored to my life and all of the menial jobs I had been unable to accomplish have been triumphantly completed.  I am currently sitting back with a glass of red wine, happy with the amount of tasks I have been able to complete over the last two days.

Now it is time to get some balance back in my life.  It’s time to allow the words to become more of a focus than the numbers – the number of people at the lodge, the number of meals I serve and the number of steps I complete in a day.  It’s time to get back to the things that feed my soul and not my punch card.

Are you there, blog?  I’m back….and I’ve missed you.

 

What is THIS lovely fragrance?

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There was no sweetness.  There were no flowers.  And the only thing that was stolen was my breath.   What began as a restful few hours between a long day and an abbreviated sleep turned into a rolling profusion of expletives followed by a few moments to regain my sense of composure.

On any other occasion, these moments could have been used to describe a much more pleasurable evening.  What really happened will live in my mind, and my nasal cavity, for years to come.

It was a routine outing.   Callaway never strays far from the house for her late night relief before bedtime so I didn’t think twice about opening the door to let her out.   But I certainly thought twice about opening the door to let her in when the pungent stench of skunk met the sensory cells of my nose.  She looked extremely pleased with herself and I’m certain she sensed that I was not so pleased.

I scoured the cupboards for the age-old remedy of tomato juice but came up empty-handed.  I glanced at the clock and it read 10:30 pm, so a trip to the local, small town grocery store was out of the question.  I then relied on the only endless source of information I had readily available – Facebook.

As much as I have expounded in great detail about this social media icon being a complete mind sucking website – it became my lifeline and my hero.   After a bath of Hydrogen Peroxide, baking soda and dish soap, the putrid odor dissipated to the point that I could tolerate her and allow my dog to come inside.   Since I would never leave her out at night, I wrapped her in blankets to help her dry off and put her to bed.

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The “lovely fragrance” still lingers on my dog and in my house.  And I’m sure it will be a phantom smell that follows me for months.  But I have since forgiven her for the reminder that she is more canine than human, and she has forgiven me for forgetting that she is a dog and that she will continue to behave as a dog.   Lessons learned…..and from now on, we walk together….Callaway on a leash, and me with a flashlight looking for any eyes in my peripheral that may pose an olfactory threat!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ll have what she’s having….

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I have several friends who suffer from chronic pain.  Some have a mildly annoying dull ache that never goes away and some are almost immobilized by debilitating pain.  My dog recently became a victim of that chronic pain but, unlike my friends, she had no voice to tell me how uncomfortable she had been until it was alarmingly noticeable.

If you read my most recent blog post, you’ll know that I took Callaway in to the vet on Tuesday and the vet prescribed an anti-inflammatory with a mild pain-killer.  After one dose and about six hours, she was a brand new dog.  She regained some of her youthfulness and we seemed to move the clock back by four years.

I immediately became jealous of my dog’s new vitality and joie de vivre.  I told the vet I would call the day after her appointment to report how she was doing on the medication and my first sentence began with “I don’t know what is in that Meloxicam, but I want some”.

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But as much as I feel the oncoming burdens of aging, I consider myself very lucky that I have not fallen victim to the same incessant pain that my friends must bear.  It seems so unfair that the people who are able to voice their symptoms still suffer the same torment from their chronic pain, try prescription after prescription, and feel no relief at all.

I can only hope that each of you will eventually find your Meloxicam and enjoy the freedom of movement that so many of us take for granted each day.

 

 

What’s a few grey hairs between friends?

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The grey whiskers appeared almost overnight.   In the blink of an eye, my dog had matured beyond the youthful puppy I have known for 9 years.  Sure she still has the spunk of a young pup on occasion but I can slowly see time creeping up on her faster than I would like it to.

My solace lies in the fact that our affection for each other is timeless.   Her devotion to me, whether her joints are currently aching and she has no desire to jump on my bed, is endless.  She is, and will continue for years to be, my true companion.   She is happy to see me when I have returned home after four hours or four minutes.  She never judges my idiosyncrasies and she still manages to hear my soft sobs when I am trying to quietly cry and she comes to clean away the salty tears.

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I thought my life was full before she came along.   I was dead wrong.  We have always had dogs.  Growing up, my life was filled with hairballs and doggy kisses.   But Callaway is a unique soul.   There is not a doubt in my mind that she was meant to be my dog.   The picture we fell in love with on the adoption website (the one above) was a picture of her brother but it was Callaway who came into my life and into my heart.  I fought for her during my divorce because I couldn’t imagine my house without her in it.

I know I must face the inevitable – time will not go backwards and those grey hairs on her muzzle will slowly multiply, but so will the grey hairs on my head.  We will face this truth together knowing that however long we were destined to be in each other’s lives, we will make the most of each moment.

 

In sickness and in stealth

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It happens at the end of every summer season.  Between the concentrated efforts we all put in for the 9 weeks of our summer season, the short hours of sleep and the continual decrease in the staff roster, sickness strikes.  It is stealthy at the onset, seeming to only target one person, but the snowball of affliction slowly picks up speed as it plunges down the slope, accumulating the remaining staff members like helpless snowflakes.  Yesterday, I became one of those snowflakes.  

I didn’t feel unwell when I woke up yesterday morning but, when I greeted my dog, my usual alto voice was expressed as a baritone.  It came as a shock to us both.  I tried to get through the rest of our morning routine, essentially in silence, and made my way into work.

The three cups of coffee did nothing to negate my feeling of infirmity and, although I gave it my best effort, I eventually conceded the loss to my state of ill-health and came home.  What should have been a restful sleep, thanks to some nighttime medication, became a series of small naps interrupted by superfluous coughing spasms.

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Being sick in the summer is a truly undesirable ordeal.  I struggled through my work day again today but now find myself wrapped in a blanket on my couch on a balmy summer day.  I’m giving this cough medicine one more chance.  If it doesn’t work – it’s Hot Toddies for me tomorrow!