centre of the universe

Category: When There's Weather

  • Small Kindnesses

    Small Kindnesses

    When my mom died, we asked people to bring rocks (she liked this Jewish tradition of remembrance) to put in a basket in her memory. Some folk painted rocks, some folks brought little ceramic knickknacks and gewgaws, others brought rocks from their gardens or farms, or maybe just from out in the parking lot. I […]

  • School’s Out

    I was going to make this big ranty post about the SK provincial government’s attitude toward education, citing the absolute farce of our premier scolding school divisions for instituting or increasing school fees for parents while at the same time his government has been underfunding primary and secondary education (and likely post-secondary as well) for […]

  • Burnt Out

    Burnt Out

    I woke yesterday, or maybe the day before, and heard the Radio Doctor (as in, the physician who is often interviewed on radio, and not the person who repairs ailing radios. Not that there’s anything wrong with the latter; radio repair is a noble profession. It’s just that in this instance, it was the physician […]

  • The Last Thing

    Grief is an oscillation between want and have, between need and want, between here and gone. It does strange things to a person. When my mother died I kept saying to my aunt, over and over, “this must be so hard for you”. A Freudian might call it transference. My aunt finally broke and asked […]

  • Labour

    There comes a point when a woman is labouring in childbirth when she says “I can’t do this”. Usually that’s a hallmark of what’s called transitional labour, and it usually means she absolutely can do it, and is likely about to do it with aplomb. Well-seasoned labour and delivery midwives have said when you hear […]

  • Home – NaBloPoMo Day 6

    Pretty sure that in most prairie homes there is someone’s gran’s needlework that says “home is where the heart is”. We never had that on the wall at our house because my grandmother was a nurse and she used to say things like “the thoracic cavity is where the heart is”, and also she hated […]

  • Close to Home

    Sometimes something happens that hits pretty close to home, but you can’t describe why it hits close to home and you don’t really understand why it’s hitting as close to home as it is. You just know you hurt and this kind of hurt isn’t something your amazing group of support peeps can ameliorate. Then […]

  • Frozone

    I have Seasonal Affective Disorder. I have, in the past, taken medications to deal with some of the symptoms. I have used light therapy (I had this great doctor who had therapeutic lamps in his office and I could just stop in a few times a week to read/study under them). I make sure to […]

  • A letter

    I wanted to write to you, to tell you that I’m trying really hard to be positive right now. That I’m trying really hard to think about the things that can go right instead of the things that have gone wrong. I wanted to write and tell you about my friend who’s had his heart […]

  • Two Princes

    I leave the doctor’s office, where I have just been shirtless in front of two men I have never met. I’m feeling a little scared, because in meeting with this doctor, I have basically consented to surgery. Elective surgery, but elective surgery that may change my life and make it possible for me to run, […]