Better together

A warning, dear readers: I’m about to climb onto a soapbox. I rarely do that, however, so I hope you’ll bear with me.

Recent tragedies in my small town have touched my life and broken my heart. They’ve also made me think much about community. Old John Donne had it right: no man is an island. We can’t do life alone. As my DH pointed out recently, our deepest human need is for community. (Sorry if I’m misquoting you, honey – I know it was something like that!) My point is simply this: we need each other.

I’ve often seen communities reaching out to help others in times of need and tragedy. And I’ve been the recipient of gracious acts of kindness myself. People are so often good at offering a needed helping hand. What we aren’t very good at is asking for one. Somehow we think we have to be independent, that asking for help makes us weak. It doesn’t. It makes us human.

I guess what I mostly want to say is this: keep reaching out. Keep watching for those who are stumbling under the weight of life’s difficulties, and walk with them. But if it’s you that’s stumbling, if it’s you that feels like you’re going under, tell someone. Say hey, life’s really rough right now and I’m having a hard time.

Sometimes we don’t know who to tell, or we just can’t bring ourselves to admit to our family or friends that we’re struggling. So tell a stranger. Pick up the phone and call a crisis line. In fact, why don’t you look up that number now and stick it on your fridge or doodle it on the front of the phone book, just so you’ve got it. There’s an organization for teens called Your Life Counts! that offers online help, too. Why don’t you check it out now? Bookmark it. Share it on Facebook. Equip yourself and your friends, so someday if you need help, you know where to find it.

Take care of each other. Take care of yourself.

Thanks for reading. Peace….

Pink shirts can change the world

Today is Anti-Bullying Day in BC. Students in many areas – plus teachers, politicians, and others – wore pink to school and work to show their commitment to stand up for kindness, tolerance, and respect. The campaign was a direct result of the actions of two made-of-awesome teens in Nova Scotia last fall. Kids standing up for kids… how cool is that!

Unfortunately, most bullying stories don’t have such happy endings. Some bullied kids turn into bullies themselves; some remain victims their whole lives; some see no other solution than suicide — yes, at age 12, 13, or 14…. It’s horribly, heartbreakingly tragic. And while I’m not usually one for heavy thoughts on this blog, this topic won’t leave me alone.

Barbara Coloroso’s book The Bully, The Bullied and The Bystander is great if you want a thorough look at the issue. One thing Coloroso says is that there are no innocent bystanders. We all need to act. Every person who decides to take a stand against bullying can make a difference. I admit it feels overwhelming, but I hope when I witness bullying, I’ll have the guts to act, to speak out, to make a difference. I hope every student, every teacher, every parent will stand up and make a difference. It’s a huge scary topic, but without our action, it’s not going to go away.

The pink T-shirt campaign is an awesome start. What a great way to raise awareness! Now personally, I don’t have any pink in my closet, so this year I’m going with the metaphorical pink shirt. (But I might have to buy myself a shirt for next year’s Anti-Bullying Day.) What’s important is that we grab onto the attitude and commitment behind the wear pink idea — that bullying is not okay, that no one deserves to be bullied, that we’ve gotta be champions of tolerance and respect — and change our little corner of the world.

Peace….

On book-banning and censorship

Book-banning and censorship are alive and well in North America. The latest? A few parents in Depew, NY, are objecting to the book Looking for Alaska being taught to eleventh grade students. These parents do not have eleventh grade students, but they’d like to be able to dictate what other parents and teachers allow eleventh grade students to read. Yikes.

John Green is the Printz Award-winning author of Looking for Alaska. Contrary to what the above-mentioned parents would like you to believe, he is not a pornographer:

For more sad-but-true tales of book banning and censorship attempts, check out the ASIF blog (Authors Support Intellectual Freedom).

Sleep-deprivation stole my creativity…

…so this blog post has no title.

Okay, I’m definitely spending too much time on YouTube. But you have to check this out! This guy knows all the moves. Yes, ALL of them.

Personally, I know none of the moves. Not that that stops me. But that’s a good thing, right? It’s like that whole dance like no one’s watching thing, which I guess really means live with no fear of being judged, or just be yourself. Hmm, that’s what my mother always told me. “Just be yourself, dear, and you’ll be fine.”

Now I must sleep for a while. I’m so sleep-deprived it ain’t funny. I just read this article about how not getting enough sleep can double your chance of dying from heart disease. Eep. Apparently, adults need seven hours — not less, and not more, cuz that isn’t good for you either. (I think my mother has always known this, too.) I’m not even close to having had seven hours sleep in the past 24, so I’m thinking it’s nap time.

Take care of yourself — dance, sleep (but not too much), and always listen to your mom.

Peace….

It’s time for back-to-the-war-zone shopping

This is sad. It’s inventive, I suppose, and proactive. But sad.

I just did the back-to-school shopping thing with my youngest the other day. I always loved new school supplies when I was a kid — and I still do! Pencils, pens, fresh new notebooks. Yes, I know I’m a dork. But I always love an excuse for new post-its or pens. Like, you wouldn’t want to mark your needed edits to your current writing project with the same colours you used for the previous one, right?

New gym shoes and jeans and backpacks are part of the back-to-school thing, too, but I can’t foresee ever, ever buying bullet-proof packs or clothes for my kids. (It’s not like I’m Cody Banks’ mom, or like I’m employed by CTU or something.) It’s horrible that there are very real, tragic events that prompted the invention of the bullet-proof backpack, and I’m all for working to ensure the safety of kids everywhere. But I can’t buy into this one. I refuse to see our schools as war zones. Maybe some people will think I’m in denial, but somewhere in the midst of the risks and fears, I think there must be room for a measure of faith.

True, I’m not the one heading into the war zone… er, classroom. So what do you think?

Emerging characters and 10-foot waves

Isn’t it great when your characters start to let you know who they are? Little bits and pieces of the characters in my new WIP (work in progress) are emerging, and I’m loving getting to know them. My word count isn’t particularly impressive yet, but I have a good feeling about the people who are taking over my daydreams.

3,295 / 55,000 (6.0%)

In real-people news, I was VERY happy to have my daughter home for a visit. She arrived Thursday afternoon, but left again Friday for a weekend of surfing. At this very moment, she’s on a board in 10-foot waves off the west coast of the island. Probably shouting “yahoo” (or something more typical of a 20-year-old) at the top of her lungs. The air is only marginally warmer than the sea today, but she’ll still be loving it. She’s coming back in time for dinner on Sunday, so I’ll get another short visit with her then.

Wishing you peace and joy this Easter weekend….

The ABCs of my day (Anatomy, Books, and Chauffeuring)

Not a lot happening on the writing front today, although I’ve printed off one of my critique partners’ submissions to have a look at this afternoon. The evening, or part of it anyway, is reserved for Grey’s Anatomy. I’m telling you, this storyline better get resolved tonight. I hardly EVER watch anything three weeks in a row, and I can’t imagine actually managing to watch it again next week. Whether Meredith lives or dies, she better do it tonight.

The rest of my evening is for reading: I’m looking forward to starting Vincent Lam’s Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures, the winner of the 2006 Giller Prize.

Before I do anything else, however, I’m on chauffeur duty. Time waits for no parent….

It’s called a shovel, people!

I walk my eight-year-old son the few blocks to his school each morning. Along our route, there are a total of three — yes, THREE — homes whose occupants cleared their sidewalks. The rest of the sidewalks remain a treacherous mess. We had about two feet of snow in the last week or so, and now the more-typical-for-here rain has started. It has reduced the two feet of snow to about six inches of hard-packed uneven ice/snow covered with six inches of slippery slush. My son and I have tried to make a game of it (who can get to school with the fewest sprained limbs?) (no, actually it was Arctic Explorer to him, and the sprained limb game to me), but it’s just getting bloody annoying. Not a pleasant way to start your day, you know? We’ve resorted to walking on the side of the road — which is actually more like the middle of the road, thanks to the piles left by the snowplows — but with the busy before-school traffic, this isn’t a great option. You shouldn’t have to risk life (or limb) to get to school. So, yeah, it’s called a shovel, people….

By the way, to those three home-owners who did shovel, you are angels. Cream of the crop. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

::stops ranting, takes deep breath, returns to laid-back status::

In praise of the OTHER end-of-October holiday

Call me boring, call me a party-pooper, but I’m just not into Halloween. I once tried explaining to a friend my lack of enthusiasm for Halloween traditions. “Part of it,” I said, “is the fact that 364 days of the year, we teach our children not to take candy from strangers, then one day each year we dress them up and send them out to take candy from strangers.” He acknowledged the irony, but was not swayed from his pro-spook stance.

I continued in defense of my position, trying to help him see the extent of the weirdness surrounding the eve of All Saints Day. “It’s bizarre,” I said, and I described in great detail the mock graveyard I’d discovered on a suburban lawn while I’d been out for my morning run.

“But it’s fun,” my friend said.

“It’s nonsense,” I said.

“What do you like?” he asked, a little exasperated with my apparent lack of fun genes. What else is there to celebrate, he wanted to know, when Canadian thanksgiving is over but it’s too early for Christmas revelry?

“What is there to celebrate?! The time change!”

“Excuse me?”

Suddenly I realized the reason for his naivete: he is not a parent. How could he possibly understand the significance of Daylight Savings Time coming to an end? “We get an extra hour,” I explained, “to sleep.” He looked at me with a glance that said “Oh, you poor dear, you’ve fallen off the edge of sanity and can’t get up.” Admittedly, it’s a sad thing when one gets so excited over an extra hour of sleep, but I’m the parent of four lovely night-owls, and as all parents know, sleep is more precious than gold – or candy.

At Halloween, the usual sleep-deprivation issue grows more complex, and my friend simply could not be expected to grasp the exhausting ramifications of asking your child the loaded question, “So, what do you want to be this year?” He just has no idea. Perhaps we can work something out, some kind of candy-for-sleep free trade agreement. A Mars bar for a nap, some Sweethearts for a snooze. Yes, this has potential. Maybe I’ll even start to appreciate Halloween. Hey, you never know…. On October 31, stranger things have happened.

Writing to the beat of a different drum

Wrote 700+ words on my WIP in between appointments today. I have no idea yet where my characters are taking me in this story, but I guess that’s part of the fun. I tried to do decent character sketches before I started writing so that what they said and did would be right for each of them. We’ll see. For now I’m happy just plugging away at my “shitty first draft” with the hope that it will someday become a really great story!

Now I’m off to take my son to his first drum lesson. There will never be peace in my house again. Not that there really is any peace now: within our family we have a baritone player (eldest son), a flute player (daughter), a clarinet player (middle son), a guitar player (me), and a piano player (me again). Plus, we have two stereos, two TVs, a GameCube, and a computer. Oh, and the four children who use all that stuff. Will the addition of a drumset make that much difference? Maybe not. Well, maybe. Yeah. What was I thinking?

By the way, yes, I can write in the midst of all that noise — I’m actually pretty good at tuning it all out. So there’s no excuse for me not to finish that first draft while my son practises the drums, right?