I'm Breaking Up With You, Bonehead

I just adore romance.  I just don't adore arguing with smart people who suddenly choose to be stupid, no matter how cute they are.

Dating Superman for Valentine's got me thinking about how easy it is to be with him, and well, that led to funny memories of how impossible it is to be with others.

These are the top two reasons I walked off a date and went home annoyed;

• We argued (briefly, I really I didn't have time for people this annoying) over if Casey from Mr Dress Up was a girl or a boy. Idiot. And don't get me started cause I will unfriend you over this and slam the door in your face, facts are facts after all.
• We argued (somewhat longer than the other argument cause this bonehead was adorable and I was willing to take the time to teach someone this cute) over Crocodile Dundee. Another idiot. He clearly checks Walter's watch before he pretends to read the sun for the time. Why would someone even argue that unless they were just trying to annoy me? Still, I gave my cutie a chance. About ten minutes later, for whatever reason, we were arguing about whether Casey was a girl or a boy!?! I had to walk away. I mean, that's my breaking point.

Mom always told me when it was the right one I'd see pass comments like this and let them slide. I was horrified. No. I would not pretend Casey was a girl and Crocodile Dundee wasn't a horny sap trying to impress a city chick. Casey is a boy, Mr Dress Up said so. I was there. Dundee checks his watch and then pretends to read the sun for the time. These weren't people's opinions, these were facts. I clearly needed to be with someone who paid attention to the world around them. Especially the imaginary one. Geesh.

What's the funniest reason you walked off a date? 

Happy Valentine's Day! Hope all your kisses are super and kinda magical.

You Wanna Write a What? On a What?

My blog is two this month. Means two years ago, I was a blogging virgin, and I believed a post was still a post. In fact, the first time I heard the word blog was a little baffling. I was at a writing workshop in a small town rural library. A published Saskatchewan author was mentoring writers from all over Southern Saskatchewan.

Let me set the scene...

We were sitting around the table. The author in charge asked us to introduce ourselves, the genres we write, and what we hoped to get from this weekend. Now this was a long time ago, back before I had Internet at my house and way back before I left comments on posts.

We were quickly looking to the woman to my left. She was dressed in burgundy with some accentuating bling that showed she actually put effort into her wardrobe. (Unlike me, rubbing at a sad stain of baby vomit on the nicest blouse I owned. Eurk.) She smelt nice too. Weird what I remember. But I was used to smelling baby puke, I guess.

Anyway, she says something like this; "I blog."

Yup. She said I blog.

Up until this point, I had almost understood everyone at the table, (the sci-fi writers were speaking their own language and even though I love sci-fi, I didn't know which planet they were from) but I blog clearly had them stumped, too.

Just an aside, blog actually comes from the words: WEB LOG. Eventually it turned into one word, weblog, and that looks so cool people started saying we blog and so we became bloggers. See how we work, just creating words?

Well I could see the dictionaries looming on the shelf. But! I figured it would be rude to ditch the group to look up this word.

So I waited, figuring she'd dish out more clues. Eventually, I could ask her in private. Well, the author in charge did not miss a beat. If she didn't know what blogging was she did not let on. She said, "Tell us about it." There that would help. Well, I'm going to paraphrase here because I don't remember her exact answer but it went something like this, "Well, I was thinking about making my own blog."

So now it was a noun? Something she could make and had to attend a writing workshop to help her with. These clues were getting me nothing.


Oh and then she said something that truly stumped me. "I enjoy leaving comments on posts and would like to sound professional."

Comments on posts? Holy Writing Wizards. I mean... what the heck was she talking about? I suspected that maybe, just maybe, she was creating words. Us writers, we do that.

Break time. I beelined for the dictionaries. Blog. Was it a type of writing like a book or poem? How was she leaving comments on posts? 

Well, the dictionaries were by the author's book display and when she saw me rush toward them... well...  I never got a chance to look it up until I got home and well, a post was still a post, and blog- be it the verb or the noun- wasn't in my ancient dictionary. Wow. Time to update my dictionary.

I had talked to her about it and got the impression it involved the Internet. Which was like a sea of information I couldn't access so I left it at that for a few years.

Getting dial-up Internet meant I could contribute to writing groups. I hit it off with a few writers and they referred me to their blog. Now at first I ignored such invites cause it felt a lot like they were giving me directions to their private posts. Why was everyone so trusting with these posts?

Then on an agent website I see the words, "MUST HAVE A WRITING PLATFORM INCLUDING A BLOG". huh. It was requested by an agent? So I went to check out these links I had. I was sucked in instantly. Not because some agent wanted it, I mean really who would do that? It was because wow...

They basically had their own mini website on which they could self-publish their thoughts (each entry being a blog post) and ideas whenever the heck they felt like it. Others could comment, like a game. OMGosh! Why the heck hadn't anyone told me such a thing was possible???????? Oh yeah, they had, I was just stuck in a field somewhere looking at a post I couldn't comment on.

And so two years later, here I am. On a blog. Waiting for someone to comment on my post.

My fav part about blogging is chatting around our posts about writing.

The worst thing is that I don't have enough time to post weekly. I don't want to give it up and so I fit it in when I can. I visit new blogs, familiar blogs, and posts that intrigue me. I wish I could read every post. (Okay I might be coming off an addict. Hi. I'm Tanya and I have a bloggling problem, going on two years now. I went to Google about it and was referred to several posts I could comment on.)

Sadly, I watched some bloggers I adored vanish this past year. Just gone. Some posts are still there, buried under a sea of grass and weeds.

But!! I laughed a lot, too. Blogging is fun, it's unique, and it's very in-the-moment real.

I blog.

Best words ever.

Happy Blogoversary!!! (Look at me- just creating words.)

Why do you blog?

Magical Spots

When my kids were born, people said things like “enjoy the magic” or “these are rare precious moments”. Sure, looking back I remember my daughter sitting in awe watching her new brother. As if he might actually do something magical. It was hard to tear her away from him, and I was sure she could be doing better things than staring at an infant.

And then?

He’d smile and make her whole day. She’d found a spot where magic blossomed. And it changed her life in a way no one else will ever understand and I doubt she even gets the true depth of.

Surprisingly, those magical moments don’t vanish as your children grow, they just sometimes take you off guard because you’re not sitting there in awe anymore, waiting for one action to sweep you away.

Of course, given that the holidays just passed, I did have all these magical moments creep up on me, but this post is about magical spots and so I thought I’d share with you the spot in our house that holds the most magic.

It’s a spot that only exists for a brief moment and will knock us into a deep peaceful sleep.

It’s created unexpectedly when Superman gets a call in the middle of the night. His alarm goes off making the rest of us jump up like we’re on fire. He’s out the door with his super speed and we are left with one pulsating guilty thought; “He just left a warm spot that smells all safe like him.” Umhum, that’s what you’d be thinking too, admit it.

I won’t roll into it until I’m sure one of the kids won’t brave the cold floor to enjoy the magic of it. Either way I win.

If the little guy falls into the magical spot, I’ll listen to it sweep him away. His breaths grow quick and shallow, tinted by happy dreams. The magic from the spot pours out to me, reminding me of how innocent a child is.

If the older one wins the spot the smile never leaves her lips. Like she won the lottery. Her breathes will fill me with this weird pride that I never expect. She doesn’t sound like a child sleeping anymore. Each breath is deeper, taking her away to a magical place only she knows. And that reminds me of how fun it is to grow up. How intriguing and appealing the world was to discover.

Nothing is scary when we lay in Superman’s warm spot. It’s just perfect and happy; magical.

Of course, when I win the spot, I fall off into some deep coma that I wake up from feeling all guilty, cause while Superman is off saving people, shouldn’t I be doing something beside sleeping in his spot? Something, I don’t know, all heroic and magical? I suppose I could, but somehow, I think he purposely leaves this spot to lure us in. It’s a comfort for him to know we’re safe at home and when he finds one of us enjoying the magic of his spot, it somehow gives him that push he needs. That’s his moment and I wouldn’t want to take that away from him.

What magical place have you discovered?

Acquire-Apply-Automatic

I was watching what was probably the best hockey game I ever watched, last night. When I got thinking about how they looked like artists out there. Let me set the scene:

These 15-17 year olds are among the best in their province. It was clear they had all the knowledge they needed to play this game and they were applying what they learnt--daily. You could see them thinking out there. They would try something and watch how it was stopped, study how the defense brought it back into their favour. The same mistake was never made twice. Every shot was planned and appreciated. It was so cool to watch. When they scored, it was earned and it showed. Very little luck was involved, it was skill and brains at work. They weren't just taking penalties by accident, well... maybe a few, happens while we learn.

Since I am a writing addict, while I sat there on the edge of my seat it dawned on me that I used to write like this. Well not on skates, but I mean I used to Apply what I had Acquired in just this way: testing out the competition, watching my peers, trying things, pulling back and trying something else.

What surprised me was the words USED TO. I used to write like that. What happened? What was I doing differently?

Watcher says it best so I'll let him explain:

“I can do anything. I acquire knowledge, apply what I learn, and eventually it’s automatic. I don’t want a copy of your cell. I want... the real deal. I want my magic when I demand it. This is what makes me powerful... ” --Surviving the Storm

There is a certain power when we work in the automatic stage because it gives us freedom to break rules in a new way. I was reading Grammar Girl-- gosh I love her, she's so fun-- and I was hoping she could teach me something but somehow I have this knowledge, and so I watched how she applied it because somehow I don't always do this. Still, I smiled when she wrote something that implied that dead is dead-- don't qualify it. And the old me, the one applying this knowledge would have agreed. Because let's face it, dead is dead, she's right. However, the new powerful me who works in the automatic stage knew that it was possible to qualify dead. In fact, in The Hunt for Julia, Steve looks at the poor sap he just killed and... well here is the scene:

Steve laid Bobby by the shed but already it was too late. And by the looks of him, Steve was pretty sure this wasn’t the type of body Julia could bring back. Zombie came to mind. Yeah, leave these guys dead, Julia. --The Hunt for Julia

You see that is very dead as opposed to Julia's brother who is a soul hanging around his body trying to figure out how to get it breathing again. That is kinda dead. Of course I would never tell you they were kinda dead or really dead, I wouldn't break the rules to that extreme.

These are not the type of writing decisions I would have made while I was applying the rules. These are made because I applied them.

Don't get me wrong, you never stop learning, you always need to apply what you learn, but certain things become automatic. Like how to use a red herring, or describe a character, or where to put a question mark. Not long ago I had an editor show me how to use knowledge I already had in a new way and I was speechless. All I could do was apply it, over and over again, and marvel at the new power I had Acquired.

Take a look at your life. What skills did you Acquire that you Applied endlessly and now find that the Automatic stage gives it new magic?