The Seated View

Some people can be social smokers, some people can’t. When I quit 2 ½ years ago, I knew it was forever. That I could never as much as have one more drag, because… well, here’s a hint. Although I generally am not much affected by cigarette smoke when I pass a smoker on the street, it’s all in my head, pure willpower – I’ve told myself I don’t like it anymore, hence I don’t like it. When caught unawares, however, it smells like heaven. I’ve been known to follow (subtly, y’understand) someone down the street, taking a few sniffs of second-hand smoke. My addiction is always lurking, waiting to pounce. I either smoke or I don’t. All or nothing. One drag will be my undoing and I will be sucked back into the pit. It’s like that with knitting. When Stephanie , Juno and I met for my inaugural blogmeet, Steph showed me a ball of Trekking sockyarn. I couldn’t let go of it. I even petted it, without being aware that I was softly stroking the soft (oh, so soft) grey s...

I thought I'd heard about most of the music genres out there...

I stopped knitting a while ago when my hands and shoulders couldn’t take it anymore. It’s been part of my life since I was a little girl, second nature really. I miss it still, but have found other ways of creating and amusing myself. That is, until Stephanie’s latest brainwave. Sometime last week, we had a conversation that went something like this: Me: I thought of joining the Knitting Olympics , but then I realized I’d screw up my shoulders even more. Steph: You could do a bookmark. Cast on 16 stitches, do one stitch a day. Me: Hey! I could do that! Silence Steph: ONE stitch! Not two! Me: How’d you know I was thinking that? Steph: and not one row, either Me: Shut up. So, yes. I’ve joined the Knitting Olympics. And at some point before the flame is lit, I hope to figure out how to add the funky button to my sidebar. In a comment here , rams talks about how this may be “gateway knitting” for me. And… well… have I mentioned my sma...

This post was supposed to be about three “disability” movies I’d rented, which deal with things in a pretty positive way. As a sort of antidote to last week’s rant . Then I started watching them. And then I got mad. I’ve had a hard time writing about them. I keep veering off in academic land, citing sources (this book , 40 years old, is hands-down the best on the topic I’ve ever read) and distancing myself with quotes and finding the good in the movies. Of which there is much – my favourite is Murderball (about the US Paralympic quad rugby team - the box scene alone is worth the rental), although Warm Springs and The Brooke Ellison Story were good, too. The truth is… I’m beyond high dudgeon and well into incandescent with rage. The New York Times (reg.req.) says of Murderball that “[t]he film consciously steers away from the tears and gooey inspirational uplift associated with disability movies”. I loved it. It is unflinching in showing the truth about souls and...

Some time ago, I had a contest . At the time, we were doing everything we could to persuade the Tinks to stay inside my sister’s belly for as long as possible and given that I couldn’t actually be there to whisper encouragement on a daily basis, I came up with a plan for karmic bribery. If you have a contest to guess the date of birth and ban any guesses prior to Dec. 6, then they won’t be born until after that, right? Wrong. Unfortunately, the Tinks’ insistence on doing it their way, means that there was no winner. However, when you promise something to the universe, you ought to honour it. Even if you’re a little late (hey, a lot happened for quite a while after they joined us). With thanks to McMaster Hospital for taking such good care of Janne and Liam and Morgan, I have made a donation to McMaster Children’s Hospita l in the name of the kidlings.

My apologies to those of you utterly uninterested in my on-going issues with Angels & Demons. I promise this will be the last post on the matter, but as I’ve just finished it, I thought I’d let you know the final verdict. I’ll keep it short: 1. Alright, so clearly Mr. Brown owns dictionaries and other word-tools. After all, he uses big words like “cognition” and “sepulchral” accurately and in context (although I’d have much preferred e.g., “looked around the room” to “surveyed the circumference of the room”). This is why I don’t understand why none of the characters “run”, “hurry”, “fly”, “hasten” or “sprint” – they only “dash”. Which is a fine word, but when a large portion of the last several hours of the book have people racing around the Vatican, could you maybe mix it up a little? 2. I wonder whether it’s possible to plagiarize yourself? 3. When Kohler – the older director of CERN, who has been unable to walk since childhood - arrives at the Vatican and se...

Normally, the rule here is that I don’t diss authors. Someday, I might be in their shoes (if you dream, dream big) and I’d probably like it if people kept their critique of my work constructive and refrained from pointing and laughing. Today, I… well, I won’t go as far as breaking my promise to be civil, but I am going to be opinionated. Luckily, the guy in the line of fire is a Big Name, has likely heard this type of thing before and with the amount of success/money he has, I doubt he’ll be terribly wounded if he sees this. I’m reading Angels and Demons by Dan Brown this week and a little over a third of the way in, I’ve developed A Problem. I read The DaVinci Code this summer and had a blast. A pure rollercoaster thrillride that had me reading compulsively wherever I went, breathlessly trying to keep up. Reading it on audiobook (vs. actual book) was alternately making me happy because if I were reading it as a book, I’d have skimmed to get to the next chapter(s) and mi...

Suffering under the double whammy of reticence from spending the first 20 years of my life in Denmark and the next 23 (so far) in Canada – both of which are not exactly known for ebullience in their citizens – I find myself getting all shy about blogging this one. Ever since I knew what a writer is, I've wanted to be one. Anything else I have done has been a second choice, brought on by fits of being “realistic” and having “something to fall back on”. I’ve had some interesting second choices – corrections, social worker, policy work in human rights – even felt passionate about some of them, but never like writing. Writing is the holy grail for me, it’s a magical place where I've always felt a sense of belonging, a sense of rightness and for a long time, I wrote for myself, leaving being serious about it for “some day”. Then last year, I decided that “some day” was now, that I had dreamed long enough and it was time to take a leap of faith and buy the tick...

I felt like Tippi Hedren ...

The Tinks came home just in time to ring in the new year in the proper way, which appears to have a lot in common with their normal M.O.: keeping their parents awake. Despite the sleep deprivation on the part of the adults, all parties are doing well. Liam and Morgan are here seen in their natural habitat: And the first-born (so to speak) is making sure Janne never leaves again: (pictures by either Janne or John)