Ahem. **mic tap** So, it's Labour Day. Which, as we all know, means
the end of summer (here in the northern hemisphere, at least!). My
kiddos go back to school tomorrow. We'll have a few last gasps of hot,
sticky weather, but the nights have already started to cool.
We've had a few really gross winters here, with extremely cold temps, a
ton of snow, and they seemed almost never ending. When this summer
began, I promised myself I was going to make the best of it. I think we
succeeded: we went to the beach twice as often as we usually do. We went
on a great family trip where we saw parts of Ontario that we've never
been to before.
And now I'm thinking, why can't I make the same
commitment to myself for the fall? I don't usually mind September &
October too much (October has my anniversary in it, after all), but
November is a challenge. Daylight savings ends, it gets dark at five
o'clock, the leaves are off the trees, and the world is gr…
Gord Downie, lead singer and songwriter of legendary Canadian band The Tragically Hip, has been diagnosed with a glioblastoma, an aggressive brain tumour that is incurable.
The Tragically Hip is from Kingston, Ontario, about twenty minutes from where I grew up. This band has been a fact of my life since 1987. They've been the background music of my life since I was twelve years old.
There are so many memories of their music during my school years that it's difficult to choose one from during that time. The memory I want to talk about actually is almost exactly twenty years old - May of 1996.
I was in Ottawa with my husband for the annual tulip festival. We were waiting in line at a BeaverTails stand, staffed by 8-or-so university-age students. The radio was playing (loudly) in the stand. And this song came on:
And the crowd. Went. Wild.
By the crowd, I mean the crowd of students in the BeaverTails s…
Hi! Gosh, it's been over 7 months since I last posted. Almost enough time to gestate a baby, and certainly enough time to have gestated a new book...if only I hadn't failed so profoundly at item 2 on that list (and no intention of ever going near item 1 again, pinky-promise). The worst of the weather is behind us, and already halfway through the month of April. I love spring. It is good for my soul to see the grass green up, the light green haze that appears in the trees seemingly overnight as they bud out, the warm days and longer evenings.
It hasn't been an easy half-year in the Annie K household. This winter we lost my grandmother and my husband's uncle in the space of a couple of weeks. Parenting a teen has been a challenge and, at times, a heartbreak. Unfortunately it has really taken a toll on both my creativity and my motivation, and while I've done a bit of work on it, I've found it's been way too tempting to find other things to do, or to just wast…
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