Skip to content

Marilyn Carr

  • Home
  • About Me
  • Nowhere like This Place
  • Marlinee Podcasts

Marilyn Carr

Looking at life through a funhouse mirror

March 7, 2021 / Houses

Marching Forth

April is supposed to be the cruelest month, but in fact it’s March that deserves that crown. At least in these parts, April doesn’t regularly erupt into spontaneous snow squalls and spawn northwest winds that fling the snow shovel across the street into the side of the neighbour’s minivan. Luckily, the shovel doesn’t have any …

Continue Reading
February 14, 2021 / Houses

From Russia, With Love

There are ghostly cat paw prints on the floor. You have to look at just the right angle to see them on the hardwood, but when the sun comes in through the sliding glass kitchen doors, like it’s doing today, they are as obvious as dinosaur tracks on the marble tile. There are dust bunnies, …

Continue Reading
January 29, 2021 / Houses

Cat Scratch Fever

It has come to my attention that I am not the only household harbouring criminals. There have been two usurpers prowling in the backyard lately, a gray tabby and a calico. Henry oversees all of this from his perch on the railing of the second-floor deck. He likes to sit on the northeast corner in …

Continue Reading
January 17, 2021 / Middle Age

A Former Librarian Repents

The other day, I did a walk-up curbside pick-up at the library to collect two books I borrowed for my English 1002 course. Although there was only one copy of each in the library, they were easy to reserve and, I hope and expect they will be easy to renew if required. They are Slaughterhouse …

Continue Reading
January 5, 2021 / Customer Service

K as in Knight

January is pretty much always the same. Dead Christmas trees get kicked to the curb. The tenth batch of turkey soup arrives with only a fraction of the enthusiasm that greeted the first. And we’ll spend countless hours we’ll never get back sitting on the phone with customer service trying to figure out what’s gone …

Continue Reading
December 13, 2020 / Middle Age

In Which I Assay an Essay

Back when such things were considered amusing because nothing more amusing had yet to be invented, my grandfather was fond of reciting limericks as part of the Presbyterian after-dinner frivolity, as we drank tea as viscous as crude oil from the depths of the north Atlantic. Tea fully capable of walking on its hind legs …

Continue Reading
November 15, 2020 / Middle Age

Suburban Status Report 20201115

This is a suburban status report because the cottage is a wrap for 2020. That means we are now entering the phase of ‘things I’m pretty sure I forgot to bring home.’ These things reveal themselves slowly and it will likely take the entirety of winter for them to make themselves fully known. The upside …

Continue Reading
November 1, 2020 / Middle Age

Only Two Sleeps until Official Book Release!

Here’s an Excerpt The very, very, very best Grade 2 art day is asbestos clay day. Asbestos is a wonderful material in the 1960s. Not only does it cover our floors and insulate our walls, it is a mighty fine modelling clay: malleable, full of texture and most of all fire proof. Ideal for making …

Continue Reading
October 16, 2020 / Middle Age

Isn’t it Ironic?

It’s been twenty-five years since Alanis Morissette released Jagged Little Pill. For each and every one of the years between then and now, she has had to suffer the scorn of English 101 students everywhere, because they are experts in recognizing and using irony as a device that can be verbal, dramatic, or situational, but …

Continue Reading
October 4, 2020 / Houses

October, it’s Over

Okay. That thing I said a few weeks ago about having had my last lake swim of the season? I was wrong. My definitive final lake swim was the last weekend in September. That weekend, and the entire week preceding it, was gloriously warm and sunny every day. Although I had not dipped my toe …

Continue Reading

Posts navigation

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • …
  • 24
  • Next

Goodreads

The Book is Available Now! Click on the image.

Book Cover: Nowhere like This Place: Tales from a Nuclear Childhood

Recent Posts

  • Marching Forth
  • From Russia, With Love
  • Cat Scratch Fever

Tags

Barbie birds books calendar cats CBC colour consulting cooking cottage Deep River education fashion fitness flowers food france friends houses jobs lake math music Ottawa Valley pop culture reading real estate school seasons shopping sleep suburbia summer swimming technology theatre trains travel U.S. vacation weather women work Work Culture writing
©2021 Marilyn Carr - Powered by Simpleasy