What’s That Rusty Colour?

May 11, 2016May 12, 2016 / Diane Henders / 59 Comments

A few years ago I confessed my lack of regard for fine distinctions in paint colour, and I should have known it would come back to bite me in the ass.

This week I’ve been doing some touchups around the house. Nothing big – a couple of swipes of drywall compound, light sanding, and a feathering of paint to blend in the patch.

I’ve done it dozens of times over the years and usually it’s easy. But sometimes the stars and planets misalign and the patron saint of painting goes on a bender and can’t be roused from the hangover. Then everything that can go wrong, does; and several things that couldn’t possibly go wrong, do anyway.

The drywall repairs went smoothly (pun intended). Then I trotted out to the garage to find the leftover house paints, which were all labelled, colour-matched, and ready to go (I thought).

I decided to start with the small patch on the bathroom ceiling. There were two paint cans, both labelled ‘flat white ceiling paint’. Fine. I optimistically pried the lid off one, mixed it, and applied a test swatch.

It wasn’t white. Nowhere near. Nope, it was an odd rusty colour.

I repeated the process with the second can.

Same weird colour.

I was beginning to question my own sanity when I realized the rusty colour was spreading like some vile algae on the test swatch.

Yep, there were rust flakes in the paint. I’d like to say ‘I’ll never understand why paint comes in cans that rust and wreck the paint ten seconds after you open them’, but the truth is I do understand. It’s a diabolical scheme to force us to go out and buy a whole new batch of paint for every single project, no matter how minor.

So I succumbed to the inevitable and headed for the paint store. Little did I know that my karmic debt was about to be called in, with interest and penalties:

I was in a hurry (first mistake) so I asked the paint person for a quart of flat white ceiling paint, took the can she handed me, paid, and left.
She screwed up. It was untinted neutral base, which is translucent. Back to the store, stand in the returns lineup, then go back to the paint department.
Decide to get drywall primer instead, thinking that’s what I had used as a finish coat last time anyway. (Second mistake: relying on my shitty memory.)
Discover the drywall primer is also translucent. Back to the paint store.
Find FLAT WHITE CEILING PAINT. They don’t have any quarts; only gallons.
Buy a gallon of paint (approximately 20 times what I need for my small patch) because it’s only $7 more than a quart, and I’d spend more than that in gas, time, and annoyance going somewhere else.
Take the paint home, open it, ascertain that it is in fact the right paint and the right colour.
Paint over my patch and feather the edges onto the existing painted ceiling, finally accomplishing the ten minutes of work that I set out to do about eight hours ago.
Go to bed, not exactly happy but at least relieved.
Wake up the next morning to discover the new paint has dried to a different shade of white than the original, so now I have to repaint the entire ceiling.
Slit my wrists, staining the ceiling a very unpleasant rusty colour indeed…

How was your week?

P.S. I’ll be away from the internet most of the day today, so I’ll catch up with comments as soon as I can in the evening or tomorrow. ‘Talk’ to you then!

New discussion over at the VBBC: Is John selfish or supportive? Click here to have your say!

Riffing On The ‘Raff

May 4, 2016May 4, 2016 / Diane Henders / 66 Comments

Every now and then reality smacks me upside the head and shouts, “Hey, get a clue!” This has been one of those weeks.

It started the other day when I was in my gym uniform of yoga pants and T-shirt with a fleece jacket over top. I looked down and realized I was colour-coordinated from my shoes to my sunglasses: Black sneakers with green and turquoise on them, black yoga pants, turquoise T-shirt, black jacket, and sunglasses with the same green as my sneakers.

It was a wholly unnatural state, and I felt like a poser because I’m normally neither yoga-panted nor colour-coordinated. (Granted, pairing black with black isn’t much of a fashion achievement, but it’s still far more presentable than I usually look.)

Other than a momentary twitch of surprise, I didn’t think much of it at the time. But it came back to me later while I was talking with a real estate agent who had apparently mistaken me for a member of the DINK upper-crust. (That’s an acronym for ‘Dual-Income, No Kids’; not the lowercase ‘dink’ as in ‘prick’. But I suppose some might dispute the distinction.)

Anyhow, she was promoting a property that had stringent architectural controls and restrictive covenants. She dropped the name of a big celebrity who lived down the road, and rhapsodized about how wonderful the restrictions were because they maintained the property values. She didn’t actually go so far as to say “It keeps the riff-raff out”, but the subtext was clear.

While she nattered, I was thinking, “But what’s wrong with having a flagpole? And if it’s a 20-acre property surrounded by trees, nobody will ever see the house anyway – so why should it matter what colour it is? And what’s wrong with leaving a dirt bike parked beside the house?”

That’s when reality jumped up and bitch-slapped me.

Well, shit. I’m the riff-raff that they want to keep out.

I’ve always thought that someday I’d grow up and develop taste and sophistication, but y’know what? I’m over fifty. If it was going to happen, it would have already.

The stark realization is staring me in the face: I’m never going to wake up in the morning with a burning desire to wear expensive designer clothes. I’m never going to want to live in a fancy gated community where the cream of society looks down on people who are gauche enough to park their recreational vehicles… wait for it… outside the garage where the neighbours might see them! *gasp*

I’ll always be the woman who, when Hubby asks if we need to fuel up before driving out of town, replies, “Nope, I’ve got gas. Oh, and my car’s fuelled up, too.”

So maybe it’s time to leave my matching gym ensemble in the drawer and embrace my inner riff-raff in my baggy faded work jeans with the contact cement on the knee and grease smear on the ass. And maybe I should get some ratty T-shirts with obnoxious slogans like “Love me, love my dirt bike” or something equally shocking.

After all, if I’m gonna take my place among the riff-raff, I’d better do it right. It’d suck if I wasn’t good enough for them.

* * *

New discussion over at the VBBC: How important is realism in fiction? Click here to have your say!

How To Be A Slacker

April 27, 2016April 27, 2016 / Diane Henders / 64 Comments

*F-BOMB ALERT* – CONTAINS (more) COARSE LANGUAGE (than usual)

My internet research frequently goes off into the weeds and/or down rabbit holes, so I wasn’t particularly surprised the other day when I found myself reading a list of impromptu speech topics.

I used to enter public speaking competitions when I was a kid, and I enjoy presenting prepared talks to audiences large or small. But I’ve always loathed impromptu contests, where they assign a random topic and you get one minute to prepare before giving your speech. (Or, in my case, you get one minute to sit frozen in sheer panic before standing up to mumble humiliating gibberish.)

So it was with a shudder of sympathy that I read the list of topics designed to torture juvenile victims: Deadly stuff like “Why I deserve an allowance” and “Interesting things you see in the sky”. Then I came across this one: “How to be a slacker”.

Wait, what?

Where was this topic when I was a kid? Not necessarily for an impromptu speech (nothing could have helped me through that) but as a life-skills course. The more I thought about it, the clearer my realization dawned: I don’t know how to be a slacker!

I mean, I guess I know the basic recipe: Sprinkle incompetence liberally over the task at hand, lock up your flying fucks and rat’s asses (you don’t want to give any of those), and marinate the whole thing in apathy before leaving it half-baked.

But it just doesn’t seem to work out for me.

I’ve never quite managed to chase every last flying fuck from the vicinity – there’s always a little one hovering around somewhere. And I’ve been down to my last pox-riddled rat’s ass a few times, but I’ve never been completely out of rat’s asses to give.

I’ve got a decent supply of incompetence, but I prefer not to use it – it leaves an unpleasant taste in my mouth.

And by definition apathy is hard to procure: as soon as you attempt to generate it, you’re trying too hard.

There must be some trick to slackerdom. Maybe I need to drink more. I’ve heard that rat’s asses and flying fucks dissolve in alcohol, and booze also seems to bulk up incompetence nicely. Even the elusive apathy precipitates well from an alcoholic solution.

When I told Hubby I was writing a post on how to be a slacker, he inquired, “Why didn’t you ask me? I could have advised you.”

I replied that I didn’t think he was good enough at it… but on second thought, I’ve reconsidered. After all, he’s the one who introduced me to this concept: If you do it badly enough the first time, they won’t ask you again.

So far he’s successfully applied that technique to dusting, being my administrative assistant, shovelling snow, and bookkeeping. I guess I should’ve been watching him and learning; but every time I try, those pesky flying fucks keep getting in my way.

Any advice? What’s the best way to be a slacker?

* * *

New topic in the VBBC discussions: Do you trust Hellhound? Click here to have your say!

Subversive Shorts

April 20, 2016 / Diane Henders / 63 Comments

I was chatting with my nephew about university and its associated hi-jinks, and he mentioned Bermuda Shorts Day. It’s been an end-of-term tradition at University of Calgary since the 1960s, but there was a kerfuffle this year because the administrators prohibited the campus pub from serving alcohol during the event.

My mind boggled. It’s a university end-of-year party and they’re shutting down the pub?!?

I guess I’d understand it if I pretended to be a responsible adult for a moment. A massive piss-up isn’t healthy for the participants or pleasant for those who have to clean up afterward, but still. The twenty-something rebel inside my brain was scandalized. It’s university! End of classes! It’s supposed to be a piss-up!

The funny part was the apparent implication of Bermuda shorts as culprits, as if none of these mature and responsible students would ever even consider partying hearty except while under the influence of evil garments.

I made some crack about ‘subversive shorts’, and my nephew laughed. “That sounds like a title for one of your blog posts,” he said.

Well, dang, he’s right.

So what constitutes subversive shorts? Judging by the news photos in which they’re wearing either long pants or Daisy-Dukes, these kids wouldn’t recognize real Bermuda shorts if they crawled up their legs and gave them a wedgie. But that’s okay. I wasn’t sure what was so special about Bermuda shorts, either, so I looked them up. Turns out the only defining characteristic of Bermuda shorts is their length, about 1” above the knee: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bermuda_shorts. How anti-climactic.

But I speculated that since the military have worn them for so long without causing chaos, there must be something else about them that incites people to the kind of uncontrolled drinking and mayhem that the U of C apparently fears.

When I envision Bermuda shorts, my mental image isn’t of the restrained and dignified version described in the Wikipedia article. I tend to think of them in bright madras plaid, which might be enough to incite violence among those opposed to plaid. So maybe the psychotropic component of Bermuda shorts is loud patterns paired with pasty white legs:

Okay, now I need a drink. And those aren’t even Bermuda shorts.

But maybe this is all merely the deranged imagining of a heavily medicated mind. I’m currently stoned on antihistamines, so my brain function isn’t to be trusted.

In fact, neither are my optical functions: A few days ago I served myself a slice of pizza at the table before turning away to replace the pan in the oven. Hubby’s laughter made me turn, only to realize that the plate I’d seen in my mind wasn’t actually there at all. My hot slice of pizza was lying in the middle of a naked placemat.

And get this: I had modelled those loud shorts only a couple of hours earlier.

Coincidence? I think not. The shorts must’ve subverted what was left of my brain. An uncontrollable drinking binge can’t be far away.

Loud shorts: Love ‘em or hate ‘em?

* * *

P.S. The first VBBC (Virtual Backyard Book Club) discussion starts today! Check it out here!

Hedge-Sabres And Sky-Mice

April 13, 2016April 13, 2016 / Diane Henders / 41 Comments

We watched Star Wars Episode VII a few days ago. I’m not a rabid Star Wars fan, yet I still found myself re-enacting the epic lightsabre battle in my front yard for the amusement (or possibly bemusement) of the neighbours.

It started with a shrub.

Our house is one of those crappy layouts with vehicle access from the front, resulting in an unattractive “garage-with-house-attached” look. Most of our front yard is occupied by the concrete driveway, but we’ve created a perennial bed beside it. The bed contains a bunch of flowering plants, plus a single cotoneaster shrub that I keep trimmed to a manageable size.

The cotoneaster is not, however, in a convenient location. The driveway is on one side and there’s a stepping-stone path on the other, but the shrub is smack in the middle, just out of comfortable reach.

Enter me, stage left, wielding an electric hedge trimmer.

I had two choices: step into the perennial bed to get close enough to use the hedge trimmer with both hands the way it was meant to be operated… or balance precariously on one leg while leaning over to decapitate the cotoneaster with one-handed swipes of my deadly hedge-sabre.

Yeah, you know which one I chose. (For the record, about the worst time to get the giggles is when you’re balanced on one leg, flailing around with a power tool that’s capable of shearing off twigs the diameter of your finger. Fortunately I managed to escape a well-deserved painful injury.)

We also have a small decorative pond and waterfall in front of the house. We take the pump out for the winter, but the piping remains year-round. Somehow the water in the pipes manages to get stagnant and stinky even though it’s been frozen solid for six months, so we usually restart the pump on a breezy day. Even so, the area around the front of our house always reeks for a few hours.

The pond last spring. It looks benign, but don’t inhale for a day or so…

So imagine me, surrounded by stink and locked in a duel to the death with the cotoneaster, then add this to your ridiculous mental image: a swarm of frenzied sky mice swooping and chirping around me.

What are sky mice, you ask? Maybe you’ve heard pigeons described as ‘sky rats’; I call sparrows ‘sky mice’. They’re just as annoying, useless, and prolific as pigeons, just not as big. (I exclude song sparrows from this category – I’m talking about Chipping Sparrows, the little brown-capped guys that relentlessly repeat the same strident tuneless chirp from dawn to dusk. It’s like a dentist’s drill to the eardrum.)

The Chipping Sparrows love our pond, our sheltering trees and shrubs, and the bird-friendly seed and berry plants in my garden. I enjoy watching them through the window, but outside their incessant chirping drives me nuts. I once christened a scare owl ‘Rodney’ because he got no respect from the sky mice, but they don’t respect me, either.

Maybe I oughta go after them with my hedge-sabre. There’s a tiny chance that it might throw a scare into them, but more likely they’d just crack up with birdy giggles that sound just like their regular irritating chirp, only more derisive. They’re laughing at me, I know it.

Then again, considering my performance a few days ago, I can hardly blame them…

P.S. The Virtual Backyard Book Club kicks off today! Please click here or use the new Book Club button in the right-hand sidebar to join me on my virtual backyard patio for introductions! (I’m still ironing out the last of the wrinkles, so please bear with me…)

UPDATE: Speaking of wrinkles… If you tried to access the Book Club site and got stymied with logins and passwords, that was my fault. I messed up the settings, but they’re fixed now – please try again. I’m very sorry for the inconvenience! 😦

Coastal Cogitations

April 6, 2016 / Diane Henders / 43 Comments

I’m on vacation this week! We’re on Vancouver Island, and I’m enjoying both the change of scenery and the change of pace. My senses seem sharpened by the glorious sea air that smells so good I could make a meal of it.

Sometimes the enhanced sensory experience is wonderful; sometimes, erm… not so much. Here are my observations to date:

My paranoid writer’s mind never quits. Doesn’t this look like a concealed camera to you?

It’s in the ceiling of our hotel room and the rest of the knots are solid, but not this one. And you guessed it, it’s right above the bed. There’s even a shiny thing that looks like a lens inside the knothole.

Suspicious as always, I stood on the bed and poked my finger into the hole. All I could feel was plastic vapour barrier, so I’m hoping that’s the source of the gleam. But if you happen to discover amateur porn videos featuring Arlene Cherry on the internet, please don’t tell me. I’d really rather not know.

Pacific loons are the Fonzies of the ocean. Clad in sleek black, they kick back casually on the waves, far too cool for the rest of the seabirds. When they dive, it’s with a laid-back ease that makes the mergansers look like skinny little punks who are trying too hard.

I love good oysters, but there’s nothing worse than a bad oyster. And once it’s breaded and fried it’s impossible to tell the difference until after you’ve eaten it. You don’t want to know how I discovered this. But, as the saying goes, “This, too, shall pass”. And it did, quickly.

‘Moving’ right along…

I can’t decide whether I like the ocean better…

…in the sunshine when it’s blue and beautiful:

Or under cloudy skies when it looks like molten silver:

I love it when it’s stormy, too, but we’ve had beautiful weather the whole time we’ve been here so I didn’t get to photograph any big waves. Maybe next time.

I don’t know this for certain, but I suspect that the designer of the Hyundai Elantra’s seats sneaked into my house while I was sleeping, measured every inch of my body, and designed the seat contours specifically to torture me. (Fortunately the car rental company exchanged it for us, or I’d be in serious pain right now.)

No matter how devastating the damage, nature will eventually recover if it gets the chance. I was lucky to have visited Cathedral Grove before the big storm of 1997. It was still majestic after the storm, but the mossy grotto beneath the towering trees had become a brighter place criss-crossed with the massive trunks of the fallen giants. Now, nearly twenty years later, I’m happy to see that it’s slowly returning to its green and shade-dappled glory.

And best of all, the trilliums and daffodils and camellias are in full bloom, along with cherry trees, magnolias, tulips, hyacinths, forsythia, and just about everything else. I could keep snapping photos all day long, and the scented air is divine!

What’s blooming in your neck of the woods this week?

* * *

P.S. We’ll be on the road today, so I won’t have a chance to respond to comments until we’re back this evening. “Talk” to you then!

P.P.S. If you haven’t had your say on the format for the Virtual Book Club yet, please click here to offer your comments. The Book Club will start next week!

Ping-Pong Brain

March 30, 2016 / Diane Henders / 32 Comments

It’s a small feather-weight sphere containing nothing but air, and it ricochets wildly off hard surfaces (such as the inside of my skull) at approximately Mach 2. Yep, I’ve got Ping-Pong Brain.

Between the release of Book 11, a Bookbub¹ promo for Book 1, and my website redesign, the past few weeks have slowly drained my brain’s contents while accelerating its activity until there’s nothing left but a frantic sense of urgency and the attention span of a super-caffeinated gnat.

For instance, moments ago I clicked over to the internet to find out whether the Style Guide recommended capitalization on the word ‘Mach’, and I found a site dedicated to those pesky word usages that are so easy to screw up: http://stage-door.org/stampact/traps.html. The first few paragraphs are standard fare, but if you scroll down to the alphabetical list below there’s a fascinating (and immensely time-sucking) list.

I got sidetracked and wasted a good 15 minutes before I smacked my brain back in the direction I’d originally intended.

After a few more attempts at concentration, I realized that the probability of producing a coherent post for today was approximately equal to that of being picked up by a squadron of flying pigs for a nice aerial tour of the frozen flames of hell.

So I’m not even going to attempt it (neither the coherent post nor the scenic flight with AirPorcine). Instead, here are a few random things that have made me giggle lately:

The following article is a few months old by now, but I still find it funny (in a sad sort of way) that the people of Siberia preferred Barsik the cat to any of their other political options: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/barsik-cat-siberia-russia-barnaul-1.3373334. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a follow-up article, so I don’t know whether Barsik actually won the election.

Next there was a salvo in the ongoing good-natured culinary skirmish between Hubby and me. I tend to get creative when I’m cooking, while he prefers to follow detailed recipes. This creates a certain amount of friction when he’s trying to duplicate one of my dishes:

Hubby: “How much (ingredient) do you put in?”

Me: “Um… a bit… Maybe, um, a teaspoon? Or maybe a bit more. This much.” *dumps ingredient into palm and displays the small heap*

Hubby (long-suffering): “And how long should I cook it?”

Me: “Until it’s done…?”

Hubby: *grinds teeth*

So he sent me this:

Measuring spoons for a tad, dash, pinch, smidgen, and drop

These are the official conversions:

Tad = 1/4 teaspoon = 1.25ml
Dash = 1/8 teaspoon = 0.625ml
Pinch = 1/16 teaspoon = 0.3125ml
Smidgen = 1/32 teaspoon = 0.15625ml
Drop = 1/64 teaspoon = 0.078125ml

(He thinks this will help, but in fact he’s only given me more obscure units of measurement with which to annoy him. Shhh, don’t tell.)

And finally, my diminished concentration resulted in yet another silly misread. A couple of days ago, this article came up in my news feed:

I must have a nostril-hair fixation, because I read “Your Nose Hair Is A Bad Conditioner”. It speaks to my disordered state of mind that my mental critic said, “Well, yeah; duh. Who’d use nostril-hair as a conditioner?” I had actually scrolled down about three articles before I went, “Wait, what?”

And that’s my brain this week, ping-ponging from cats to cooking to conditioners. How was your week?

* * *

If you’re interested in the Book Club, I’ve posted a few thoughts about the format for discussion. I’d really appreciate your input on 4 questions – please click here to reply. Thanks!

¹ If you haven’t discovered Bookbub.com yet, you may or may not thank me for mentioning it. It’s a bargain e-book notification service, and you can sign up to receive emails (daily or weekly) containing free and discounted e-books in the genres you select. It’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to my to-read list… but then again, I’m happy at the sight of 50 books piled up ready to read. If a burgeoning TBR list stresses you out, you may want to skip Bookbub. 😉

A Sticky Situation

March 23, 2016 / Diane Henders / 61 Comments

Adhesives hate me. No matter how they’re ‘guaranteed to stick’, I’ll somehow create a situation in which they won’t. Or they’ll stick exactly long enough to lull me into believing they’re set, and then fall apart. Or worse, they’ll create an unbreakable bond at the wrong moment, in the wrong place, and with the most unpleasant consequences possible.

Take Crazy Glue, for example. “Glues Anything!” they shout. “Super Strong! Bonds in Seconds!”

Maybe that’s true for everybody else, but not for me. They don’t call it Crazy Glue because it’s crazy-strong; they call it that because it’s guaranteed to make me crazy in short order.

I carefully peruse the instructions. Prepare all the surfaces as directed. Apply the glue, hold the pieces together…

And hold.

And hold…

Five minutes later, I’m still holding the damn thing and it’s still not stuck.

Apply more glue. Repeat the process.

Nope.

Then, after the third attempt, it finally sticks… long enough for me to breathe a sigh of relief and gently, carefully, place it on my workbench to cure.

Then it falls apart.

If I’m smart, that’s when I quit. But I’m not good at admitting failure.

So I try one more time. By now glue is oozing out of the joint and it sets up like stone, creating great gobs that are far more durable than the original material. So there’s no way to clean it off without damaging the item (farther) beyond repair.

I don’t have any better luck with other products.

Shoe Goo is supposed to be ideal for repairing boots or shoes (unless you’re trying to repair hiking boots that have been waterproofed with mink oil). Tuck Tape will stick to vapour barrier without fail (unless you’re outside in sub-zero temperatures trying to rig up a plastic shelter to keep the snow off your grapevines).

A few days ago I tackled a simple project: mount a 2’x3’ poster on a painted wall. I asked Hubby for some of the sticky poster-putty he’d used (successfully, I might add) only last week.

Putty in hand, I eyed the poster. It wasn’t thick or heavy, but it had a glossy finish. Already I sensed impending doom. But I squished it onto the wall, hoping for the best.

By the time I got to the fourth corner, the first one was already peeling off.

Not off the glossy poster. That would have made sense. No, the putty was peeling off the painted wall, where it should have stuck.

I tried again.

Failed.

Fine.

Got out the masking tape and taped the poster to the door instead. Done deal.

I’d walked a whole ten paces away when a derisive whisper reached my ears: the sound of a poster slithering to the floor.

The masking tape had let go of the door. It bonded permanently to the poster, though, so of course it wrecked the edges when I tried to peel it off.

But wait! I will wrest triumph from the jaws of defeat!

I’m gonna wash down my door and walls, bottle the result, and sell it to politicians in a fancy canister labelled “Spray-On Weasel Grease – Inconvenient Promises Will Never Stick To You!”

And then I’m gonna NAIL that goddamn poster to the wall.

I anticipate this:

Note: I’ll be doing website updates over the next several days, so expect some changes around here! I hope it’ll all be fine, but I never quite know what’s going to happen until I press that final button. If the site looks odd or doesn’t seem to be working properly, please comment below or email me. Thanks in advance for your patience and assistance!

Serious, For Once

March 16, 2016 / Diane Henders / 73 Comments

(Don’t worry, this is a temporary aberration. I promise I’ll be back to my usual foolishness next week.)

I try to avoid being serious whenever possible, but my father-in-law lost his battle with cancer last Thursday so I’m not quite myself this week. We knew his time was getting short so we were able to say our goodbyes, but many people aren’t so lucky.

The following is a post I wrote ‘way back in 2013. I didn’t share it at the time because it was more solemn than I generally like to be, but today it seems fitting.

* * *

I’m at the age where mortality starts to get up in my face a little more each year. One of our friends just died of a heart attack at age 47, another at 50. Other friends are being diagnosed with cancer, heart disease, diabetes, you name it. “Catching up with the news” used to mean hearing about happy things like weddings and babies. Now it’s diseases and funerals.

You just never know when your time is going to run out.

I drive the highways quite a bit, and I see lots of memorials beside the road. One I pass frequently is a white cross with a hard hat and safety vest hanging from it. There are bouquets of flowers beside it in the ditch, along with hand-lettered signs that say, “Miss you, Dad”, and “We love you, Dave”.

The little roadside shrines always make me sad. Sad that somebody lost a loved one in an accident, but sadder still that Dave’s buddies probably never said, “We love you, Dave” while he was alive.

Why is it so hard to tell people what they really mean to us? Imagine how Dave would have felt if one his buddies slapped him on the back and said, “Man, I love working with you. Your sense of humour makes my day.” Or whatever they loved Dave for.

Maybe he made up rude song lyrics and sang them off-key and it made everybody laugh. Maybe he bought a round for the guys every Friday night. Maybe he was always willing to swap a shift so a co-worker could go to his kid’s hockey game. Or maybe he was the sympathetic ear everybody turned to when they needed to blow off steam. Whatever it was that made him special, I’ll bet Dave never knew how much they appreciated him.

And now it’s too late to tell him.

We’ve got so many commercialized occasions for “heartfelt” cards and gifts. Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and Valentine’s Day are fine, but they’ve become obligations and you’re in trouble if you miss them. So you stuff a card in an envelope; buy some flowers; go out for a nice dinner; bang-boom-done-for-another-year. All the “heartfelt” your money can buy.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we created a new occasion? No cards or gifts allowed. Just one day out of the year where our only obligation is to say something nice that we’ve thought to ourselves but never said.

And not just to parents or spouses. How about to co-workers, doctors, baristas, teachers, or cleaning staff? No big embarrassing fanfare, just a quiet, sincere “You make my life better”. Or “We love you, Dave”.

Nobody else even needs to know we said it. Only the person who truly needs to hear it.

Maybe we could do it more than once a year, too.

It’s just a thought.

* * *

And on that note, thank you to all my readers. I don’t blog because I like flapping my virtual gums; I do it because you wonderful folks brighten my day with your comments. Thanks for taking the time – you’re the best!

What’s Your Hippie Name?

March 9, 2016 / Diane Henders / 84 Comments

This week’s post comes to you with many thanks to @glbryant, whom you will likely recognize as one of my dedicated commenters on this blog.

Last week he emailed me to say he was re-reading Book 10 in preparation for the release of Book 11, and he’d realized all over again how absolutely irritating one of the characters was. (Fortunately I had intended Tyler Brock to be annoying.)

For those who haven’t read the series, Brock could make a saint blaspheme, which led @glbryant to speculate that even Moonbeam (an earth mother from Book 9 who renames everyone with hippie-type handles) wouldn’t be able to tolerate him.

This quote from his email says it all: “…if Brock had spent any time at the commune, his name would’ve been Astral Penis-Pox Douche-Weasel.”

Which left me both inspired and rolling on the floor in tears of laughter. Not only that, but it was remarkably prescient on his part, because both Moonbeam and Tyler Brock are in Book 11. (Unfortunately, Moonbeam doesn’t assign a hippie name to Brock. Missed opportunities. *sigh*)

So, without further ado, I present the Earth Spirit’s Name Generators, one for the good guys and one for the bad guys. Discover your hippie name below by looking up your initials in the tables, or feel free to make up one of your own. Post your good-guy name below (and your bad-guy name if you dare).

Turns out my good-guy name is Starry Shining Poem (which is a little lame). But I totally make up for it with my bad-guy name: Deranged Zit-Nibbler.

(Note: I swear I didn’t purposely assign words to the initials of people I know. That would have required far more forethought and evil intent than I can muster.)

Good-Guy Hippie Name

First Name	Middle Name	Last Name
A – Astral	A – Misty	A – Dreamer
B – Venus	B – Floating	B – Song
C – Blessed	C – Flowing	C – Karma
D – Starry	D – Singing	D – River
E – Heavenly	E – Cloud	E – Stream
F – Moonbeam	F – Shining	F – Dancer
G – Cosmic	G – Desert	G – Whisper
H – Aurora	H – Soaring	H – Poem
I – Sage	I – Sky	I – Breeze
J – Sunbeam	J – Earth	J – Heart
K – Beloved	K – Soul	K – Journey
L – Zen	L – Rainbow	L – Miracle
M – Dharma	M – Star	M – Butterfly
N – Infinite	N – Peace	N – Prophet
O – Harmonious	O – Sparkling	O – Seeker
P – Emerald	P – Crystal	P – Spirit
Q – Summer	Q – Flower	Q – Nirvana
R – Ambrosia	R – Blazing	R – Freedom
S – Feather	S – Glowing	S – Universe
T – Crimson	T – Daylight	T – Quest
U – Sundance	U – Serene	U – Daydream
V – Autumn	V – Secret	V – Hope
W – Wind	W – Brilliant	W – Utopia
X – Dusk	X – Sunray	X – Singer
Y – Tranquil	Y – Truth	Y – Ocean
Z – Azure	Z – Revelation	Z – Jewel

Bad-Guy Hippie Name
(Firstname with hyphenated Middlename-Lastname)

First Name	Middle Name	Last Name
A – Sleazy	A – Douche	A – Groper
B – Stoned	B – Pox	B – Gargler
C – Creepy	C – Rat	C – Bucket
D – Deranged	D – Toad	D – Humper
E – Slimy	E – Spit	E – Fondler
F – Easy	F – Zit	F – Waffle
G – Wacko	G – Weasel	G – Blister
H – Pantywaist	H – Poop	H – Nibbler
I – Diseased	I – Dong	I – Gobbler
J – Sucky	J – Scum	J – Juggler
K – Nutjob	K – Booger	K – Poker
L – Whiny	L – Pube	L – Chomper
M – Brown-nosing	M – Donkey	M – Squeezer
N – Snivelling	N – Wombat	N – Butt
O – Obnoxious	O – Jizz	O – Guzzler
P – Babbling	P – Vulture	P – Muffin
Q – Wimpy	Q – Goblin	Q – Licker
R – Lecherous	R – Monkey	R – Stroker
S – Sick	S – Platypus	S – Whacker
T – Twisted	T – Snot	T – Crumpet
U – Skeezy	U – Puke	U – Banger
V – Sketchy	V – Turd	V – Picker
W – Wasted	W – Meat	W – Jiggler
X – Bombastic	X – Pus	X – Sucker
Y – Squirrelly	Y – Slime	Y – Dongle
Z – Wanking	Z – Pecker	Z – Tickler

* * *

And in other news…

I’ll be updating my blog and website in the next few weeks, and since you’re the ones who have to look at it, I’d very much appreciate your input. I’m just in the planning stages right now, but here are a few things I’m considering:

A larger font
More obvious menus to get to pages like Books and Guest Book
A link to Pinterest boards where we can all indulge our fantasies by selecting actors to play each of the characters
A techno-geek page on the inventions
A trivia page
A virtual book club where readers can discuss questions supplied by me and/or readers.

Any requests/suggestions/comments?

Also, since the virtual book club would require frequent contributions from readers in order to make it worthwhile for everyone, would you please vote in the poll to give me an idea of how much interest there is? Thanks!