Don’t Blame Mercury

April 19, 2017 / Diane Henders / 43 Comments

Last week I postulated that Mercury was causing my recent communication failures, but I’m reconsidering. I think there’s a more pervasive issue here – maybe it’s something in the air. (Hmmm, wacky tobacky? I’ve seen a few Skidmark lookalikes out here…)

Anyhow, here are some captions that made me think, “Wait, what?” this week:

An inexplicable popup ad (I think it was on Facebook):

Is there an Anti-Makeup League?

“Stop makeup?” As in “Eradicate cosmetics from the planet”? Which twice-daily activities of 50+ ladies could singlehandedly stop makeup in its tracks? And what does Dragon’s Den have to do with either of those captions?

But regardless of Facebook’s supposedly accurate demographic targeting, the ad clearly wasn’t aimed at me – it’s common knowledge that I ain’t no lady.

And then there was this:

If there are children ON the highway, shouldn’t I stop?

The big yellow sign makes perfect sense without any further explanation: Be watchful and reduce your speed because there may be schoolkids in the area. Duh.

But no; apparently somebody thought the pictogram needed clarification. They should have considered their wording a little more carefully, ‘cause now it looks as though there’s an optimum speed for running over children; like the signs they post at speed bumps where anything over 20 km/hr will rip out your car’s undercarriage. I guess children are softer, so you can hit them at a higher speed.

Another thing that always gives me a giggle is the Accuweather forecast:

Now we know who hires the English majors.

In Calgary, any forecast that includes water falling from the sky uses one of two words: “Rain”, or “Showers”. Here, the forecast is quite creative: “a touch of rain”, “spotty showers”, “a little rain”, “drizzle”, “downpours”, “periods of rain”, “patchy clouds”, etc.

Only a few weeks after we’d arrived, one forecast really made me laugh. Accuweather had predicted “Downpours amounting to 2 inches over the next 24 hours”.

I thought, “Oooh, downpours!” and waited for the sky to open in a deluge.

But nope; nada. Just the usual soft gentle rain.

By the end of the day I was snickering. On the prairies where I grew up, it ain’t a downpour until you get 2 inches of rain in half an hour. Now that’s a frog-strangler. (But Accuweather hasn’t discovered that particular description yet – shhh, don’t tell them.)

From the above forecasts, you may be getting the impression that we’ve had a wee bit of precipitation this winter.

Um, yeah. It’s a record year. Even the locals are whining and bitching about it.

But I don’t care. Yesterday I went down to the ocean and stood in the morning silence, watching the mist shroud the mountaintops and the calm water ripple against the shore. Everything was the colour of silver and pearls, and a loon’s haunting cry drifted across the water.

It was sublime – even a 180-degree panorama doesn’t do it justice. (And it’s not stinky anymore.)

And, on a more prosaic but just as important topic: Even the pizza is a work of art here.

They named it “La Principessa”.

Truly we’ve found heaven. 😀

Whacking Off In All Directions

April 12, 2017April 12, 2017 / Diane Henders / 36 Comments

You know how sometimes everything goes out of whack and somebody says, “Oh, it’s because Mercury is in retrograde”?

Well, it’s been one of those weeks. With metaphorical tongue in cheek I was thinking, “Mercury must be in retrograde”… but when I looked it up on the internet, Mercury actually is in retrograde right now, from April 9 to May 3. And apparently Mercury rules communication.

Well, that explains a lot.

A digression: Now I want to name a band “Mercury In Retrograde”. Maybe Tyler Brock’s band “The Ballistic Rutabagas” will dissolve and he’ll start “Mercury In Retrograde” instead. It seems like a suitable match for his musical style (or lack thereof).

Anyhow, back to my original point.

I blamed the following miscommunications on poor cell phone reception, but now I’m beginning to think it was actually Mercury doing its chaotic stuff:

A few days ago I was talking to our project manager about moisture in our crawl space and telling him we’d rented some fans. He couldn’t seem to understand what I was talking about. After I’d repeated “fans” about five times, he finally said in tones of enlightenment, “Oh, sand! Okay… so, um…” The enlightenment faded and a dubious note crept in. “What are you going to do? Soak up the moisture with the sand and then sweep it up…?”

I thought he was kidding. “Smartass,” I said.

Silence on the line. Then, “No, really; what are you going to do with the sand?”

“Fans!” I bellowed. “FANS! ‘F’ as in ‘Frank’!”

“OH! Fans! Yeah, that makes more sense.”

*facepalm*

Later in the day I was talking to my step-mom and mentioned I was planning to do my taxes.

Another uncomprehending silence on the line. “What…?”

“Taxes. I’m going to do my taxes!”

“OH! I thought you said cactus.”

Another facepalm. (Also… ‘do my cactus’?!? Owie.)

But Mercury still wasn’t done with me. Hubby and I had to hash out a bunch of small issues regarding the house, and you’d think we were speaking entirely different languages. It was frustrating as hell, but we did finally manage to communicate enough to figure everything out. Then we relaxed with a much-needed beverage and the conversation turned to golf.

Hubby said, “Man, if the long-ball champions could put together any kind of short game they’d be unstoppable. Those guys are easily hitting it over 400 yards.”

And I replied, “Yeah, but a long drive is no good if you’re three fairways over. Those long-ball guys are just whacking off in all directions…”

Much laughter ensued.

So, yeah. My communications are completely out of whack this week, and maybe it’s Mercury. Or maybe the gremlins that live in electronics are whacking off in all directions and that’s what’s causing the problem. After all, it’s spring; and a young man’s fancy turns to…

Eh, never mind. I think that topic was pretty much covered in last week’s post.

…And my cell phone just got into the act again. I had an incoming call; tried to answer; and despite all my poking, tapping, and sliding (on the screen icon – get your mind out of the gutter), it steadfastly refused to pick up the call.

Mercury or frisky gremlins; either way it’s gonna be a lo-o-o-ong retrograde.

Is Mercury messing with you, too?

P.S. Just to add to the chaos, we’re moving again today; for the third time in three weeks. Fingers crossed that it will be the last time before our big move-in to the new house!

Seagulls And Other S-Words

April 5, 2017 / Diane Henders / 32 Comments

Alert the medical community: Stress suppresses the juvenile-humour centres of the brain!

The proof: Last week I completely missed the opportunity to make a dirty joke about herring spawning. Millions of fish were coming their little brains out, and all I did was remark on the pretty jade-green water caused by all that fish-spunk.

Good Lord. After 50-odd (okay, extremely odd) years of childishness, I’d hate to grow up at this late date. But now that I’ve realized I’m on the slippery slope toward maturity, at least I can step off and reconnect with my inner adolescent.

So… speaking of sea-sex: I have suspicions about those frisky seals. All that frolicking and barking seems a lot like the human equivalent of “Here, hold my beer and watch this!” They’re definitely angling to impress the chicks.

The sea lions, on the other hand, are only thinking about stuffing themselves. Sex, schmex. Mating season isn’t until June or July for them, so this is all about the foodfest. On calm mornings the ocean is crowded with clusters of twenty or thirty sea lions bobbing along, bulging bellies to the sky and languid flippers in the air.

Which leads me to my next suspicion…

Actually, never mind that. It’s not a suspicion; it’s a certainty: Those sea lions aren’t just pigging out. After they’d been around for a few days, the water wasn’t jade-green anymore. It was brownish. And, um… pungent-ish.

With the sea lions polluting the water and the herring roe decomposing in malodorous drifts along the shore, I rerouted my daily walk a little farther inland and enjoyed the ocean view with the windows closed. The route revision wasn’t much of a hardship, though, since I’d already altered my walking habits due to the millions of seagulls. The beaches were white with them as far as the eye could see:

No, that’s not snow on the beach; it’s wall-to-wall gulls

It wasn’t so bad when they were on the ground, but if something startled them (say, some foolish human walking along the beach) they’d rise in a solid wall and shit-strafe the beach.

It’s like something out of Alfred Hitchcock.

According to folklore, it’s good luck if a bird scores a bullseye on you; but it’s unclear whether it’s good luck for the shittee or the shitter. I’m inclined to think it’s the latter. Especially if the shitter is a seagull. All I’m gonna say is: Seagulls are sick, sick birds.

Apparently eagles don’t like seagulls any better than I do. It’s easy to tell when an eagle shows up: The shit-hawks take flight en masse.

I’m pretty sure the eagles are just messing with the gulls – they’ll swoop in and land on the freshly vacated beach, and then just sit there. They’re not hunting or fishing; they’re just hanging around like schoolyard bullies hogging the playground while the seagulls circle anxiously overhead. (No word on whether the eagles get shit-strafed, but they’re probably too cool to admit it if they do.)

So this weeks’s S-words are stress, spawn, shit-hawks, spunk, suspicions, slippery slopes, sexy seals, sleepy sea lions, sea-sex, sick seagulls, and shit-strafing. And of course, a healthy dose of silliness.

‘Maturity’ just doesn’t suit the subject.

See…?

Off The Wall(s)

March 29, 2017 / Diane Henders / 35 Comments

Well, we’re moving again: Out of our current rental (our term expires Friday) and into our friends’ place to housesit for a couple of weeks while they’re on vacation. We’re really hoping our place will be ready by the time they return. (Not that they’ll kick us out when they get back, but we’d really like to be in our own house!)

So… yesterday afternoon I was sitting in the mostly-empty-but-still-disorganized rental, trying to come up with a blog post in fifteen minutes or less while the phone rang frequently with house-related questions. My mind was in red alert mode: “AWOOGA-AWOOGA! NEXT CRISIS INCOMING AT TWO O’CLOCK! DECISION-MAKING CAPACITY CRITICALLY LOW! TOTAL SYSTEM FAILURE IN THREE… TWO…”

I took a deep breath or ten and thought, “It’s okay, I’ll just quickly write something off the wall…”

That’s when my overstressed brain got nitpicky: “No, idiot, you meant ‘off the cuff’; as in ‘informal, without preparation’, not ‘off the wall’; as in ‘eccentric, unexpected, unconventional’! How do you expect to write an intelligible blog post if you can’t even form a coherent thought?”

It was an excellent question; and one with a very simple answer: I can’t.

So I’m going with ‘off the cuff’ and ‘bouncing off the walls’, as in ‘nervous, confused, hyper’. That, I can do.

Here are a few events from this week’s jumble:

One of my favourite aunts died this week at age 82, of complications from diabetes and heart disease. Even though distance prevented me from seeing her as often as I would have liked, her passing still leaves a hole in my life.
The herring spawned in the strait outside our rental a few weeks ago and we’ve been enjoying all the action from front-row seats: the water turned milky jade-green (yes, the entire ocean – that’s a LOT of herring milt); scores of fishing boats rushed back and forth; thousands of seagulls swooped in; followed by thousands of ducks; followed by hundreds of seals and sea lions frolicking and barking only a few yards offshore. What a show!
It’s almost spring: After the longest, coldest, snowiest winter on record (which must have been scheduled just for us newcomers), the snow is gone, the grass is green, and the rhododendrons and cherry trees are beginning to bloom. And I saw this cute little guy on one of my walks:

He was moving very slowly – it’s still pretty chilly for salamanders.

Our housesitting gig comes with a friendly roommate: Blue the cat. After only one day he hasn’t quite forgiven us for not being ‘his people’, but it seems his affection can be bought with a can of Fancy Feast.

Blue the cat is a little blue without his ‘people’. (Actually he’s a LOT Blue – he weighs 22 pounds.)

Apparently my brand new 2017 Ford Escape had a leak from the factory-installed roof rack, so the body panels and spare tire liner have been marinating in stagnant water for the past six months. The whole thing smells like stinky socks when I turn on the heat, but I’m on my third trip to the dealer and it should be fixed soon.
Work is proceeding on our house: We now have electricity, a working septic system, half a heating system, and most of a water supply. The walls of the garage/workshop/addition are all framed and the roof trusses are arriving today. It’s happening! It’s really happening! 🙂

Aaaaand that’s the wrap-up for this week, folks. What’s new with you?

Fail! Part Deux… Or Is That ‘Duh’?

March 15, 2017 / Diane Henders / 34 Comments

Last week I began the sordid confession of my failure as an interior designer. Here’s the rest of it:

The very first project we were assigned in university was ‘design cards’: Once a week we were given a short paragraph describing a design concept. We were to choose or create artwork that illustrated the concept, mount the artwork on the card, and copy the paragraph in our best drafting hand. The only guidance we were given was, “It should look like a piece of jewellery”.

Uh-huh.

Apparently I’m not good at designing jewellery. Most of mine looked more like “a piece of shit”.

The card that launched me to the front of the class for public ridicule was titled “Texture”. I’d had a brilliant (or so I thought) idea: ‘Way back in grade school we had rolled coloured tissue paper into small balls and glued the balls to a backing to create a textured design.

So that’s what I did, in a tasteful blue-green that was the current colour fad at the time.

The professor was Not Amused. (In fact, I seem to recall him asking, “Is this a joke?”)

I still don’t understand. I thought it illustrated texture perfectly.

My near-failures mounted, mercifully blurring together in my memory. The only other one that stands out was a study of structure, in which I attempted to create an archway by gluing sugar cubes together. ‘Nuff said about that.

It soon became obvious that I should be either ejected from the faculty or euthanized to prevent further suffering to both me and the interior design profession; but Fate (vindictive bitch that she is) had other ideas.

Halfway through second year my mother died of cancer, and the professors were far too sympathetic. They cut me some slack and didn’t fail my crap projects outright; and in the ultimate irony, my stellar marks in all the non-design courses dragged my grade-point average high enough to land me on the Dean’s Honour Roll.

Then came fourth year. By that time I knew I sucked, but I didn’t know what to do about it and I didn’t realize quitting was an option. I struggled with my thesis all year and finally handed in a steaming heap that reeked so badly even the most merciful professor couldn’t find enough redeeming qualities to pass it.

I failed. I’d never failed anything academic in my life.

With characteristic bullheadedness, I slogged away at it until they finally granted my degree; probably because the professors were sick of the sight of me. It certainly wasn’t for the merit of my work.

And so I was unleashed on the unsuspecting design community.

I won’t go into all the humiliating details. Let’s just say that by the time one of my employers announced in a staff meeting that “Diane can’t design her way out of a paper bag” (her words verbatim), it was almost a relief to have it confirmed aloud.

I switched to drafting and project management, which I enjoyed and was good at; and from there I transitioned into an IT career I loved.

The funny (or sad) thing about all this is that I could probably have done all right in almost any other career. I’m actually good at quite a few things, but design is just not one of them.

And after that convoluted career path, I’ve ended up writing novels for a living, which is the best career yet.

I love happy endings!

Fail!

March 8, 2017 / Diane Henders / 44 Comments

Well, it’s taken nearly 35 years; but I think I’m finally ready to laugh about my interior design days.

The handwriting was on the wall right from the start: I wanted to take engineering, but my mom suggested interior design instead, “So that when you get married you can make a nice home for your husband and family”.

So this country-bumpkin kid moved to the Big City (Winnipeg, Manitoba – a veritable mecca of highbrow sophistication) and attempted to obtain a degree in interior design.

It didn’t go well.

Let’s just say I was at a bit of a disadvantage, since I’d never even heard of Architectural Digest (or any design magazine) and I’d never been inside any professionally designed home or office. Far from it:

Our house on the farm started out as a 16’ x 20’ shed that my dad bought for $450 in 1957. He and Mom gradually enlarged it into a comfortable and modern home, but they didn’t have a lot of budget for extras (like indoor plumbing, which we got around 1970). The “interior design features” consisted of sparkles in the sprayed-on ceiling texture and a long strip of finished plywood that concealed the fluorescent lighting tubes in the living room. (That lighting valance was the pinnacle of discerning taste. We always referred to it in capital letters: “The Valance”.)

So.

Imagine, if you will, our first interior design assignment at the University of Manitoba: “Design your dream bathroom”.

For me, a “dream bathroom” was any bathroom with a flush toilet. A “fantasy bathroom” would be one in which the shower pressure stayed constant instead of diminishing to a trickle before blasting out with enough force to peel the skin off your body when the pressure pump kicked in.

So I picked out some nice brown tile that looked as though it wouldn’t cost too much, and drew up a bathroom with… *gasp* an infrared heat lamp in the ceiling! It was the most decadent thing I could imagine. And my bathroom had a separate shower stall in addition to a standard 30” x 60” bathtub. What luxury! The brown tile seemed like a practical choice, so I used it on the floor, ceiling, and all the walls. My coloured drawing elevations looked like giant chocolate bars (or some other brown substance).

The interior design department had a sadistic tradition of displaying all the finished projects on the studio walls so we could learn from each other’s work. In addition, particularly good and/or bad projects were held up by the professor for discussion at the front of the class.

My bathroom didn’t make the ‘particularly bad’ list (though I did make the shit list on a couple of other occasions, to be confessed in future posts).

But the ‘particularly good’ bathroom that was held up as an example? Mind = blown!

It had acres of creamy tile accented with green and purple, and a giant sunken tub surrounded by pillars. There was probably a toilet in there, too, but I don’t remember it. I was too stunned by the grandeur of the tub. I couldn’t conceive of such an extravagance of money and space.

I think I got a ‘C’ on that project, which I’m pretty sure was given out of pity. But there was much worse to come…

…Stay tuned for Fail! Part Deux (or is that ‘Duh’?)

Puddles!

March 1, 2017 / Diane Henders / 24 Comments

We have puddles! *does happy dance*

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you’re undoubtedly studying that first sentence and trying to figure out where to find the double entendre. That’s a valid and downright laudable reaction. If you find one, I hope you’ll share it – I do love a good double entendre! But that wasn’t actually my intention (for a change).

No; this post is in celebration of spring. It’s my favourite time of year – crocuses and tulips and daffodils peek out, the grass turns green, the birds come home, it snows two feet… you know; the usual stuff.

Back in arid Calgary, spring puddles are fleeting – the snow seems to evaporate instead of melting. But here on the coast we have good old-fashioned puddles that bring back delightful childhood memories.

I grew up on a prairie farm where the terrain was dead-flat for miles. That and our heavy clay/gumbo soil made it prime puddle territory. Venice had nothing on us. I remember riding the school bus along our country road and looking out at water as far as the eye could see, neatly divided into a one-mile grid by the raised road allowances that were the highest point on the prairies (and only a foot or two higher than the water level).

Every kid had a pair of rubber boots: the taller the boots, the better. Puddle-wading was both art and science. We learned about refraction early – the place you thought you were stepping wasn’t always where your foot ended up. The penalty for that was a boot full of icy water, which didn’t dampen our enthusiasm at all. It was a sport to see how far we could wade into a puddle before we filled our boots.

We also had a small inflatable dinghy that we could row across our puddles (we had serious puddles on the farm). And there were always ditches full of water that required all sorts of digging in the mud to produce complex drainage trenches and dams.

Sometimes it turned cold enough to freeze the puddles hard. That was prime ice-skating: glassy-smooth, with grass and fallen leaves locked below the surface as if cast in crystal. But it was always tricky to determine whether the ice was strong enough to bear our weight… which brings to mind another favourite sound: a slow ominous creak followed by the buzzing crack of ice failing, usually accompanied by squeals and splashing.

I still love going out in the early morning when temperatures are below freezing. Overnight some of the puddle-water seeps into the ground, leaving a white fragile ice shell floating over empty air. There’s nothing like the sharp hollow sound it makes when stepped on – it’s almost as addictive as popping bubble wrap!

At 52 years old, you’d think I’d have developed enough dignity to leave the puddles alone; but nope. Not even close. I’m still incapable of walking by a shell of ice without breaking it, and last week I went out and bought myself a pair of tall rubber boots that’ll make me the envy of every kid in town.

I’m going out to play in the puddles now… how about you?

P.S. Here on the coast I’ve discovered a ‘new-to-me’ type of spring ice: long silky filaments that form as water is pushed up out of sodden soil into freezing temperatures. How cool is that? (Literally.) 😉

Soaring Like An Ego

February 15, 2017 / Diane Henders / 25 Comments

When I grow up I want to be a bald eagle.

First, they’re the biggest meanest birds in the sky. Nobody messes with bald eagles. The babies occasionally get eaten, but the adults have no natural enemies. (Except humans, but we’re a menace to everything so we don’t really count.)

When the evolutionary goodies were handed out, eagles got flashy plumage, a massive wingspan, a formidable armament of beak and talons, and the ability to soar ‘way up in the sky to look down on all us pathetic earthbound types. Who, incidentally, all look like dinner to them because they can and will eat just about anything.

You’d think that would be enough perks for one creature; but no. Humans treat them like nobility, too. Here on the west coast, landowners have to be aware of Eagle Trees: any large tree where an eagle might nest.

If you have an Eagle Tree on your property, you aren’t allowed to cut down the tree, and you can’t even disturb the natural vegetation within 60 metres (200 feet) in all directions around it. That restriction stays in place until no trace of a nest or any possible nesting activity has been seen in the tree for 5 years.

How’s that for a sweet deal? Imagine flying over any place you’d like to live; choosing the best location for a house, and building there regardless of who currently owns the property. And then the government makes everyone keep back a respectful distance from your house, even if you haven’t lived there for five years. I want some of that.

But wait, there’s more.

If you’re an eagle, it’s illegal (see what I did there…? Okay, sorry…) for people to “possess, take, injure, molest, or destroy” you, your eggs, and/or your nest. So that crappy nest you built 25 years ago in that tree you haven’t visited in a decade? It’s still there, just in case you ever want to move back in. Nobody can knock it down – they can’t even go near the tree.

Better still, even your castoff feathers are venerated. In the U.S. people can be fined up to $100,000 for possessing eagle feathers they don’t lawfully own. (In Canada it’s $25,000.) Since eagles molt and replace their feathers once a year, it sucks to be the person who gets caught with feathers they innocently picked up from the ground; but from the eagle’s perspective, it’s all good.

I’m imagining what it would be like to have people following behind me, carefully preserving my crummy discarded feathers and creating complex laws around them. After a while my ego would soar like… well, an eagle.

It wasn’t always sunshine and raptors, though: There’s the small issue of their near-extinction about 40 years ago. But after battling their way off the Endangered Species List, eagles deserve a bit of adulation.

At least, that’s how I’ll rationalize it when I become an eagle and allow my eagle ego eager egress. (Okay, you can smack me now; but I just couldn’t resist.)

Bald eagle not amused by my feeble human joke. (Public Domain photo from United States Fish And Wildlife Service.)

Diagnosis: Writer

February 8, 2017February 8, 2017 / Diane Henders / 54 Comments

So many of my readers are also writers!

Nelson is serializing his book on his blog,

Jono just posted a sneaky two-part story,

Carrie Rubin has two medical thrillers published and is working on a third,

Nancy Roman blogs, writes for Huffington Post, and has written a novel,

Andrew will soon be releasing a collection of poems,

…And I know @SomeRandomGuy is over 600,000 words into the draft of his epic sci-fi fantasy, and others have mentioned works in progress or in planning.

So I thought now might be a good time for a diagnosis. Are you or someone you know struggling with writer-itis? Use this handy checklist to find out:

Symptoms: Uttering random words at inappropriate times; unexplained giggling, crying, and/or scowling.

Differential Diagnosis: Writer, Tourette Syndrome, or psychosis.

Tests: Observe the subject’s behaviour after the outburst.

Diagnosis:

If the subject scurries off to write immediately after the outburst, they’re a writer.

If the subject acts as though nothing untoward has happened, they might have Tourette’s… or they’re a writer in the throes of plotting.

If the subject carries on an animated conversation with invisible companions, it might be psychosis… or they’re a writer planning dialogue.

Symptoms: Unhealthy attachment to word processing programs

Differential Diagnosis: Writer or computer geek

Tests: Observe the content of the document.

Diagnosis:

If you’re still reading and completely riveted after ten pages, they’re a writer.

If your eyes glaze over after the first line and your brain explodes after the first page, they might be a computer geek… or a writer.

Symptoms: Separation anxiety when leaving a computer; obsession with backups; paralyzing fear of data loss

Diagnosis: Writer, computer geek, or conspiracy theorist

Tests: Confiscate the subject’s data and destroy it before the subject’s eyes.

Diagnosis:

If the subject bursts into uncontrollable weeping and/or guzzles alcohol until they throw up and/or pass out, they’re a writer. Or they were; before you destroyed the only copy of their life’s work and with it, their will to live.

If the subject curses you in Klingon and produces three redundant backups, they’re a computer geek… or a sci-fi writer.

If the subject sidles away with a furtive expression and disappears only to resurface several weeks later with a new name, identical data, and a blog decrying the censorship of the establishment and the oppression of free thinkers, they’re a conspiracy theorist… or a writer.

Symptoms: Forgetfulness; changes in behaviour; social withdrawal

Differential Diagnosis: Writer, dementia, or drug addiction

Tests: Restrict the subject to a controlled environment for 24 hours, then provide a laptop loaded with a word-processing program. Retest at two-month intervals.

Diagnosis: If the subject breaks into a cold sweat and suffers tremors, nausea, vomiting, hallucinations, and/or seizures, it might be a drug addiction… or they’re a writer.

If the symptoms resolve instantly when a laptop is provided, they’re a writer.

There’s really no way to differentiate writers from dementia patients in a single test. Writers will forget to eat, sleep, and bathe; will walk away from stoves leaving the elements on high; will drop the keys in the sugar bowl; will wander away from home and get lost even in familiar neighbourhoods; and may even fail to recognize close friends and family. Retesting is the only way to know for sure: At some point, writers will likely resume more or less normal behaviour (at least until they start their next manuscript).

Symptoms: Immobility and non-responsiveness when addressed

Differential Diagnosis: Writer, deafness, or death

Tests: Obtain a lightweight object at least six inches longer than the subject’s reach. Gently prod the subject.

Differential Diagnosis:

If the subject startles, yells, and/or flails, they’re either a writer in deep concentration or deaf.

If the subject now responds when addressed (and particularly if they respond with creative expletives), they’re a writer.

If the subject still doesn’t respond when addressed, they might be deaf. Or a deaf writer. Or a writer in extra-deep concentration.

If the subject falls over and lies motionless, call the coroner… but the subject might still be a writer in extra-extra deep concentration. Make sure the medical examiner checks for a pulse before starting the autopsy.

If you were reading this hoping you’d find a cure, well… sorry about that. There isn’t one; there are only short remissions between manuscripts. But the disease itself is so much fun, who’d want a cure anyway?

Do you have writer-itis?

* * *

P.S. I’m poking fun at myself and my fellow writers, but I don’t mean to trivialize the social and emotional consequences of dementia, Tourette Syndrome, mental illness, hearing impairment, or addiction. To gain awareness and understanding of these conditions:

Tourette Syndrome

Alzheimer’s and dementia

Mental health

Hearing impairment

Addiction

Submariners And Sea Monsters, Oh My!

February 1, 2017 / Diane Henders / 50 Comments

Moving to a new place always comes with a learning curve, so this week I thought I’d share some of the discoveries I’ve made since we arrived here on Vancouver Island.

For example, I’ve recently learned the correct Navy pronunciation for ‘submariner’. I always thought it was ‘sub-ma-REEN-er’, but a true Navy man pronounces it ‘sub-MARE-in-er’. (Coincidentally, I also learned some Navy slang for a gay man: ‘diesel-driven turnip’. Don’t look at me like that; I don’t have a clue how that expression came to be. But it made me laugh.)

Speaking of the Navy, I haven’t met a ringer for Aydan’s Uncle Roger yet (in the Never Say Spy series, he was the favourite uncle who taught Aydan her best cusswords); but the other day a Hellhound lookalike roared past me on his Harley with his guitar strapped to his back; and I actually got to meet a real-life Dave Shore:

Paul was one of the truckers who delivered our shipping containers, and watching him finesse an 80’ tractor-trailer into our tiny driveway off our narrow road was education and entertainment combined. I just stood there with my jaw dangling while he eased those big tires perilously close to the ditch, sometimes hovering a couple of trailer wheels over empty space. Then he used a brilliant technique to squeeze into the driveway: he locked up the trailer brakes while he continued to reverse the tractor, pivoting the 53’ trailer neatly around the 90-degree corner and into our yard. Wow!

Talking to him was like gabbing with my fictional Dave: He’s got 700,000 kilometres on his current rig, which is the third his current employer has issued him. As he explained, “I keep miling them out.” (Translation: Driving so many miles that the truck has to be replaced, usually at 1,000,000 km.) He’d rather sleep in his truck than in a hotel, and when asked about his retirement plans in a few years, he admitted, “I’m going to get an RV and drive around visiting my kids. I just like to drive.” It’s very cool to know there are real-life ‘Daves’ out there!

Marine life has been another novelty for me; some of it beautiful and fascinating…

Starfish come in an amazing variety of shapes and colours from white to orange/red to blue/purple, and they have the ability to go from soft to rigid in mere seconds if you touch them. (Guys, did you get that?)

…and some of it quite horrifying:

I have no idea what creature wore this head before I found it bobbing gently in the surf. It was nearly ten inches across and it looked like some hideous sea monster, although it’s probably a mundane fish to a true West-Coaster. But I’m going with ‘sea monster’.

I’ve seen misty sunrises:

Serene moonrises:

Dramatic nighttime cloudscapes:

Rainbows after a storm:

And harbour seals playing. (I was too far away so they only look like black blobs splashing around, but you get the idea):

…And we’ve only been here a month. I can hardly wait to see the strange and wonderful things the Island has left to show us!

But here’s the best photo yet: They broke ground for our house on Monday! Hooray! (Speaking of finesse and expertise, Sam the excavator operator is an artist. His touch with that bucket is so delicate and precise you forget that he’s moving literally tons of earth at mind-boggling speed. Apparently he began operating a small excavator when he was 8 years old.)