Posted on in family, humour

Conversations with an 11-year old

reflection of girl in window

My 11-year old is one of the funniest, coolest people I know. She’s more comfortable in her own skin than most 40-year olds.

Here’s a compilation of conversations with Clare over the past week.

—————–

This kid Austin in her class tells her he’s planning a big summer blowout. It’s in 2019. Austin brought in a list for all his classmates to bring to the party. The list went something like this: bow and arrow, swan and pink flamingo floaties, Sunny D, chicken nuggets, and beer. Did I mention they are 11? Now that’s a party.

—————–

We’re driving in the car one morning, and there’s a news story about a NHL player who’s back playing after being injured. Now when injured players return, the NHL allows them to wear “red shirts” which means no contact.

I say to Clare, “Wow, isn’t that fantastic—I think that’s new, I don’t remember the NHL doing that before.”

Clare says, “What’s new for you Mom is 10 years old. What’s new for me is a few months old.”

Then a jingle comes on the radio for an adult fun store in Kingston. She starts singing along, then stops and says, “It’s really sad I’m singing to this right now.”

—————–

I ask her what time we need to be at her volleyball tournament. I say, “Okay, let’s leave at 7:45.”

She says, “No, let’s make it a quarter to eight.”

—————–

Clare asks if we can watch a movie. I say, “Can I choose the movie for a change?” Clare says, “As long as it’s not a chick flick or some old person’s movie.” Her favourite movie right now is Deadpool.

Her favourite line is “That’s why Regina rhymes with fun.”

—————–

She recites the full lyrics to Salt n Pepa’s Shoop at least three times a day.

“Bright as the sun, I wanna have some fun
Come and give me some of that yum-yum
Chocolate chip, honey dip, can I get a scoop?
Baby, take a ride in my coupe, you make me wanna
Shoop shoop ba-doop (Baby, hey)”

—————–

Then she lays a Yo Mamma’s joke on me.

“Yo Mama’s sooooo fat, I took a picture of her last Christmas and it’s still printing.”

—————–

I’m trying to convince her we should visit the Diefenbunker museum when we’re in Ottawa.

She says, “Mom, I don’t learn about history. I make history.”

—————–

It’s 9 o’clock and we’re playing HQ Trivia. Clare is sitting beside me. I bug everyone in the house to join in so we have a shot at winning. Third question, and I know the answer, but Clare is yelling in my ear the wrong answer and I tell her to be quiet.

She leaves in a huff and says, “You know Mom, sometimes with you, it’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

She knows me so well.

At least it’s nice having a kid in the house that will actually talk to me.

This week’s #HappyAct is to have a conversation with a cool 11-year old. Mine’s free if you want a kid for a week.

Clare shooting a bow and arrow
Clare practicing her archery for Austin’s big summer blowout
Posted on in lifestyle

Take me out to the ball game

baseball stadium

Special guest post by Mark Gauthier

The weather is easing up and I’ve seen a few robins out in the backyard which is a sign of good things to come. Some people smell that earthy dog smell that’s uncovered after the snow washes down the gutters but I smell Rawlings, peanuts and beer.

Baseball.

The word’s been around for almost 150 years and yet it’s become the Hamlet of our sports culture with phrases like,

“Bottom of the ninth, bases loaded and a full count” or this beauty, “Gettin’ to first base”.

We all know these sayings and I bet you can walk down King St. and the majority of people would know exactly what you’re talking about.

It’s a beautiful game. Not only what happens on the field but off the field.

There’s the scoreboard–every statistic tells a story from an RBI to a stolen base, you can pick up exactly what happened at what time throughout the game. No other game can tell a story like baseball.

Off the the field there’s the chatter. Every fan has a tale to tell on what brought them to the game. Don’t believe me? When the Chicago Cubs won the World Series after a 108 year drought, it affected so many people’s lives and not just because of the drought being over, it was the fans that were affected. Generations who never saw them win a championship were remembered at grave sites, arm patches and photographs. That’s what baseball does to a nation, or the Chicago Cubs.

“This field, this game — it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.”
—Terrance Mann, Field of Dreams.

Even with the digitization of America, there’s something about the game that peels back the skins of time and reveals its heartbeat, our childhood, our innocence and our love of all that was good in its most simplistic form. It’s in the sounds of the game from the pop of the bat to that heckler in the stands the best and the worst of who we are. It’s in the smells of the turf, the beer and the hotdogs. Seeing the score board and reading the game and one of my favourites, the taste. Hot roasted peanuts and hot dogs. Baseball makes a lot of sense.

This #HappyAct is a little project that will take you into the summer, and hopefully if the stars align, the autumn.

Go see a baseball game. There’s many to choose from The Blue Jays, The Chiefs or the Ottawa Champions. If you’re feeling ambitious, take a trip and make a pilgrimage to Cooperstown or one of baseball’s greatest parks. Go by yourself or best yet, bring the family.

For more Cubs action, visit Mark’s blog, canuckcubbie.com.

Posted on in inspiration

Time for a spring makeover

Girl with hair cut

 

It’s another crisp, cold wintry morning. A blanket of snow covers our yard and the ice is reforming on the lake. Dave is in the final throes of his annual sap boil off. Spring feels like it is weeks away.

One way to usher in spring early is to give something in your life a spring makeover.

Yesterday, Clare and I went to get new haircuts for spring. Clare had been growing her hair with the goal of donating it for cancer. I was planning to join her. While I had to defer my pixie cut because my hair was still too short, my beautiful girl cut off her golden locks and is now rockin’ a new look for spring.

I also refreshed my blog this week. I hope you like the new look. I was going for something sunny, bright and inspirational.

It’s still easy to follow my blog and share my posts. Just click on the three dots in the upper right hand corner, and enter your email. Social sharing icons appear at the end of each post. If you read something you like, share the happy.

Thanks for continuing on with me on this journey to make the world a happier place, one happy act at a time.

Girl with long hair

Girl with long hair

Posted on in family

Enjoy a sick day

Dog on couch
My faithful companion on sick days

Last week, I came down with a nasty cold Clare gave me. I ended up taking two days off work, uncharacteristic for me.

This may sound crazy, but I actually enjoy sick days. Sick days are the only days of the year that I give myself complete, unfettered permission to do absolutely nothing. No chores, no laundry. No dishes. No phone calls. No social media. No emails. Nothing, except rest.

This particular virus left me weak and sleepy, but hungry, so I still cooked. I slept. I read in bed (unheard of!). On day four, I worked a little, listened to podcasts, but mainly slept and rested. I didn’t even watch TV.

Murphy and Bella were by my side the entire time, although I did have to fight them for the couches.

This week’s #HappyAct is to enjoy a sick day. Take one day and give yourself permission to do absolutely nothing.

Ed. note: Clare and I are still dragging and have been debating this question: would you rather be very ill one day, but then recover quickly, or have a long, drawn out, but milder illness? I said the latter–she says the former. What do you say?

Posted on in inspiration

Have a Happy Do Over Day

I watched a movie about time travel last week called About Time, a charming British indie film that was warm, thought-provoking, and witty.

In the movie, the father and son have a special gift: the ability to travel to places and times they have been before.

There is a critical scene in the movie, where the father tells the son the secret to happiness is to live each day twice: the first time normally with all the tensions and worries of every day life, and the second time doing the exact same things but noticing how sweet life is.

The film shows an ordinary day for the son. His morning is stressful, juggling making breakfast and lunches for his children, then fighting the morning commute downtown to his job as a lawyer, and endless meetings that seem pointless and bring little joy into his life.

The next scene is the son living the same day over. This time, he sees how beautiful his children are, and cherishes the precious moments with them over the breakfast table. On his morning commute, he looks out the window at the sunshine and marvels at the gift of another day. He sees the humour in the office shenanigans and celebrates success in court.

This week’s #HappyAct is to pretend we are time travellers. Choose an ordinary day this week, and relive it doing the exact same things you do every day, but this time, noticing how sweet life is. I’m going to try it and see what happens. Leave a comment and share your experience.

Posted on in community

Scour a book sale

Books on table

There’s one sale we watch for every year: the Kingston Seniors’ Association annual book sale. It was yesterday, so we hopped in the car and headed down to see what printed treasures we could find.

I love books, and while I see why people like eReaders for times like when you’re travelling, to me, there’s still nothing like the feel of the printed page in hand.

Here were some of the books I scored yesterday:

  • Steve Jobs’ biography by Walter Isaacson
  • A Good Year by Peter Mayle. If you’ve never read any of Mayle’s books about living in Provence, you’re missing out on a real treat
  • Flags of our Fathers—the New York Times bestselling book by James Bradley about the six United States Marines made famous by Joe Rosenthal’s photograph and statue in Washington D.C. of the flag raising at Iwo Jima, also made into a major motion picture
  • A lighthearted read by Judy Blume called Summer Sisters—perfect for the dock this summer
  • The Wonder, a story about a mystery in an Irish village over a century ago written by the same author of The Room, Emma Donoghue
  • Catching Fire—the second in the Hunger Games trilogy—I read the first one and have seen all the movies, but haven’t read the other books
  • Nelson Mandela’s biography, Long Walk to Freedom

I also picked up a Pride and Prejudice retelling, a novel based in Paris for Grace , a Vince Flynn book for Dave, some sheet music and more.

A bagful of books was only $20.

This week’s #HappyAct is to scour a book sale in your area and see what printed treasures you can find.

Posted on in Technology and social media

Conquer the Savage question

HQ trivia screen

On Friday, my most awesome co-worker Jess invited us to a secret meeting at 3 p.m. The meeting was to play HQ Trivia.

HQ Trivia is a live trivia game that broadcasts each night at 9 p.m. and on weekdays at 3 p.m. You play along on your phone and the prize money is split between all the winners. The prize tonight, Sunday, February 18this an epic $25,000, their biggest prize ever.

I played twice on Friday and was hooked immediately.

There were six of us playing at 3…along with 668,000 other people. You read that right. Six hundred and sixty-eight thousand people! At 9 p.m., there was Clare and I….and just under a million other people playing.

Both times, we killed it on the first three or four questions, but here’s the skinny—they make the first questions really easy to hook you in. After each round, the questions get harder and harder. Just when you think you’ve got this, the host lays it on you–the Savage Question–the question that knocks out hundreds of thousands of people.

Not only is HQ Trivia fun and addictive, it’s a social and technological marvel. It boggled my mind to think I was online with hundreds of thousands of other people at the same time doing the same thing and watching the elimination numbers each round: from 998,000, to 924,000 to 762,000 to 682,000 then down to 324,000 (after the Savage Question) until the final round when only a handful of players claim victory to split the $2,500 jackpot.

This week’s #HappyAct is to download the HQ Trivia app and play along tonight. And whatever you do, don’t call our house at 9 p.m. We won’t answer the phone.

Posted on in work

Epic fails and lessons in writing from the school of hard knocks

Mark Zuckerberg

This week, on the 14th anniversary of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg shared a posted about his failures. He wrote, “Over the years I’ve made almost every mistake you can imagine. I’ve made dozens of technical errors and bad deals. I’ve trusted the wrong people and I’ve put talented people in the wrong roles. I’ve missed important trends and I’ve been slow to others. I’ve launched product after product that failed.”

There are many days when I feel like an epic failure as a writer (or mother, or wife for that matter). The other day I read something I wrote a year ago. It was crap.

Writing for someone else’s voice is probably one of the hardest things for a writer to do. I need to do this a lot in my work. Here are some of my epic failures in writing over the course of my career.

  • Assuming someone’s spoken voice is the same as their written voice. I worked with one leader who was personable, funny and engaging in person, but whose written prose was formal and stilted.
  • Creating a narrative that wasn’t the narrative of the person giving the presentation. I prepared a presentation once for a leader and weaved a theme through it that I thought would resonate with the audience, using references to popular culture. It fell flat because it was my narrative, not their narrative.
  • Not using enough stories in my writing and not digging harder to find stories. Everyone has a story.
  • Slipping into corporate puffery. If something I’ve written sounds like a company wrote it, not a person, I’ve failed at my job, and I have.
  • Being too wordy.
  • Not being able to convince people to use clear language; people will often default to language they are used to or think others want to hear.

Yes, I have failed miserably time and time again. But there is one thing that makes me happy. I’m in good company.

 

Posted on in humour

Ten inventions that would make the world a happier place

Jetsons comic of the family of the future

The other day I read about a new invention: a tiny implant for your brain that injects medicine. Modern technology has led to advances in communications, medicine, and business. And yet, there are still so many basic necessities of life we still struggle with.

Here are ten yet-to-be inventions I’d like to see in 2018:

  1. A dryer that automatically sorts your socks
  2. A zip-up bathing suit top so you don’t have to wriggle out of your wet clingly suit like Houdini trying to escape from a straightjacket
  3. A teapot that doesn’t spill when you pour it
  4. A massage jacket that gives you a soothing massage when you wear it
  5. A device that could magically remove moles so no one would ever have to worry about skin cancer again…while you’re at it, a cure for cancer, Alzheimers and diabetes please
  6. A jet pack like the Jetsons so you never have to be stuck in traffic or drive your kids anywhere ever again
  7. A blender that doesn’t spout hot liquid like lava from a volcano
  8. A toilet paper roll that automatically refills itself
  9. A duvet cover that has zippers or buttons at both ends so when your husband tosses and turns and all the duvet winds up on your side of the bed and he blames you, it’s easy to fix
  10. A robot that will go around the house and pick up all the mitts, scarves, hats, markers, dishes and clothes that your kids have just left even though you tidied the house twenty minutes ago

Maybe for Mother’s Day, I’ll get my robot. In the meantime, if some smart inventor out there can work on numbers one to nine, that would make me happy.

Posted on in lifestyle

Spice it up

carrot and squash soupWhen it comes to food, I have a terrible handicap. I’m Scottish.

Scots aren’t exactly known for their culinary prowess. I had a meat and potatoes kind of childhood. Growing up, the only spices I remember in my house were salt, salt, and more salt.

Today we are blessed to live in an era when delicacies and aromatic spices from around the world can be found in any market. We just need an adventurous spirit to experiment with different flavours and combinations.

My favourite “go to” spices these days are cumin, curry and coriander. This weekend I made a yummy carrot squash soup with coconut milk with these three spices from Greta Podleski’s new cookbook, Yum and Yummer. I was too lazy to roast the sweet potatoes and carrots, so just dumped them in the pot. It was spicy and delicious.

When Dave and I were in Zanzibar, we toured a spice plantation. Zanzibar is known as the Spice Island—it was a key trading route and stop in the nineteenth century for slave traders and spice merchants off the coast of Africa. We learned about the medicinal properties of spices, ate cinnamon shaved right off the tree, and brought back a treasure trove of spices in our suitcases. I still use all of these spices in my dishes.

man in coconut tree
Our guide climbing a coconut tree in Zanzibar

Most spices have medicinal properties. Cinnamon has been called a medical powerhouse, lowering blood sugar, aiding digestion and battling ailments like bronchitis. I sprinkle cinnamon on my coffee at work every day for a healthy, tasty start to my day. I even use cinnamon in some of my rice dishes and most of my baked goods.

And then there’s the Italian spices—oregano, basil, thyme. So many spices, so little time!

Four spices that I haven’t cooked with as much are cardamom, tamarind, saffron and garam marsala. If any of you have any great tips or recipes for these spices, please share.

This week’s #HappyAct is to spice it up. Put the salt shaker away and discover the spice of your life.

Inspired reading and viewing: I watched a movie a few weeks ago that will inspire you to spice up your culinary creations—The Hundred Foot Journey. It’s the story of an Indian family that starts a restaurant directly across from a French haute cuisine restaurant in the French countryside. The story centres around Hassan whose secret spice box propels him to become one of the top chefs of France. It was one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time—I’m reading the book right now.