Make My Day

Yesterday we had a meeting at work with an RCMP constable and she was so cool and tough, that I think we were all in love by the end of her presentation.  She brooked no bullshit and would be there to cover us if we chose to join the law and order team.  It felt great. It was like a Harlequin romance hero had just materialized to enclose us in her sheltering, and armed embrace.

Our workplace isn’t highly unsafe but has the potential to become so in that we deal with the public.  Sad that most of us do and therefore are at risk from members of that public who either are or should be medicated, should be in psychiatric care or are breaking the terms of their probation. This is the new normal in the public sector and we need to prepare ourselves for it if we wish to work there.  Luckily, our manager has jumped all over this project and thus, the meeting with a member of the local constabulary.

There must have been reverberations through the canine universe because our dog decided to join the war on cats, just not ours.  Oscar is 14 and has spent most of his life cowering from all cats and our cat in particular who admittedly, is a bully. When he wouldn’t respond to my husband’s commands to be quiet, due to his selective deafness, Jerry was forced to track him down.  He found him next door barking up at the neighbour’s cat who was perched up on their back deck. Oscar never leaves our yard, in fact he seldom wakes up so it was a surprise to see him there letting the cat know the new rules. “And furthermore, don’t even LOOK at the mice at our place …”  With jaunty, divot loosening kicks of his stumpy hind legs, he decided to spare the cat further humiliation and accompany Jerry safely back from enemy lines.

As it turned out, my co-workers and I had cause to use our training shortly after our meeting yesterday and everything went very smoothly – right down to the snick of handcuffs.  I’m not sure but I think the dog tried to high-five me when I got home.

Break Out the Champagne!

Freshet the e-book is almost born! (Check out the sample chapter on the blog under the Freshet Synopsis tab.)

Laurie and I are about to pop the cork on the champagne (actually we’ll uncap the bottle – a local winery’s finest) and celebrate our small victory and the addition of a few new wrinkles to our brains. I haven’t been this excited about an educational group project since grade three.

Like any new parents, we are getting nervous now that the big day is almost here.  We’ve been fussing with the cover, acknowledgements and table of contents, etc. etc. etc.  We are positively end-of-term pregnant with all the detailed palaver that went into the production of this literary delivery. We know that everyone (by which I mean, a small group of friends) will be looking for 10 fingers and 10 toes!

Now that Laurie has a handle on production, she is already nagging me for a baby sibling to format. I’ve got to admit that I’m feeling a smidgeon of pride for the end result of what started as an on-line, Tuesday night writing exercise that we started just to get the juices flowing. Snippets of prose eventually added up to a bit of bulk on a subject that I was enjoying writing about. With the encouragement of other writing friends, it became a book sized manuscript. Then Laurie signed on to e-publish and as they say, the rest is history or will soon be.

The great thing about completing a project, whether or not it is perfect – it never will be, is that you can move on. I’ve felt the stirring of new writable themes and it is really charging my engine. It is exhilarating to be free to focus on a new project and not endlessly slog through posting and reposting your kindly rejected manuscript although once was enough for me, thank-you. If your objective in writing is to enjoy free expression and the ability to see your work in print, the e-publishing world is for you. And don’t tell me that the body of published literature will become diminished in quality – I have read and seen tons, literally, of “properly” produced by a publishing house, paper books that should never have left the author’s mind and never leave the shelves of the library. Why not let the book consumers of the world decide what is worth reading?

Speaking of free choice though – I’ll make my way to the cenotaph first today in order to remember all those who fought and still do for our right to express ourselves freely.

Remembering those who fought:

Harold A.S.Molyneux

Alexander A. McArthur

Hugh T. McArthur

Nora K. Molyneux

… and those who suffered collateral damage:

Saida Leru, Aino Nilsson, Bjorn Nilsson

Thank-you and God bless.