July 2018

My Brother’s Reply

Your target-shooting brother here. Tell me this. If you were to be convinced to give up your beloved paint brushes, the ones you’ve used and coveted all your long, long (long) life, the ones you sorted through using trial and error to eventually collect your favourites at no small expense, the ones that gave you enjoyment and peace, interaction with like-minded  people and camaraderie,  the ones you used for decades with zero harm to anyone and then found out the arguments used to convince you were  based on biased information that was totally wrong but once you found out it was too late and you could never own paint brushes again, would that be cool with you? It’s ok, I know the honest, unemotional answer. Of course it’s ‘no’. That’s the proposition legal gun owners are looking at right now.

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Happy Birthday Mom!

Today is my Mom’s birthday. We celebrated last weekend, knowing that this weekend was packed and we couldn’t get away. We delivered the hall tree Derek made for her condo, we had cake and sang, poorly, in our family’s traditional way.  Derek sings with confidence, my brother murmurs and I tend to alter the words into something that makes sense only to me. It’s chaos in every key! …

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Thankful Thursday – The Gift of Distraction

There’s something to be said for keeping one’s mind off the thing that’s being a bother when all you’re doing is repeating the same information on a loop. It’s alluring to keep going over it in your head, again and again. But I’ve found that distracting myself can be just as healing. Instead of running repeat laps on the same mental track, when I come back to the issue or the thing, it’s like driving a car with a fresh set of tires. …

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scattered cream-coloured cards with thank-you written in silver script

Thankful Thursday – On Being Grateful

Life is hard. Stuff happens that’s out of your control. People move, leave, die. You have to take your cat to the vet and not come back home with him. (Us, on Monday) But people also do amazing things for others with no other motivation than it’s the right thing to do, and it feels good. …

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