Looking at life through a funhouse mirror
The thermometer outside my bedroom window fell to its death on the patio below the other day. I am not sure if it jumped or if it was pushed. I must admit it was not the most accurate temperature measurer, except for first thing in the morning when the sun had not yet climbed high …
This tweet came to my attention the other day. As you can imagine, there are several things I take exception to with @JoyAndDefiance’s post. First, did something happen in the email-universe in 2017 that I am unaware of? I should point out, @JoyAndDefiance, that I have been using one form or other of email since …
If you visit this blog regularly, you may know that I’ve been taking university English courses. For fun. If you visit this blog regularly, you may also know that I have a supremely misguided notion of what constitutes fun. Just in case you are contemplating having the same kind of fun I’m having right now, …
This important news item may have escaped your notice in the past couple of weeks, and I completely understand why. There have been many news-worthy things going on than journalism space to recount them. Some prince and his not-good-enough-to-be-a-princess wife and their not-allowed-to-be-a-prince son (except when he will be, which will happen when said prince’s …
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 …
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, …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …