centre of the universe

Tag: True stories

  • Displacement

    When I was in high school, I had a friend whose family home was just a few blocks from mine. Three generations of their family had lived there, which, to me, was wild. Nobody in my family had lived in the same house (or even on the same land) as their parents. I remember meeting […]

  • 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 […]

  • Just Keep Stabbin’

    I used to be the sort of person who could walk into a clinic, slap myself down in a chair, and have the ghoulish blood collectors therein remove as much of the red as they needed. I donated blood on a regular basis; I never had a problem with blood tests. In addition to being […]

  • 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 […]

  • Olfactory Sense

    I was cleaning the bed linens this morning, which always is accompanied by a spraying down of the mattress with hydrogen peroxide & essential oils (no, not lavender; I don’t especially like lavender). Into the “warsh”, as my great-step-grandmother would say, with the sheets and mattress cover. I love doing the bed linens in summer […]

  • Chimney Ducks and David’s Irises

    I was feeling pretty cruddy today; a kind of nonspecific languishing that makes no sense to me given it’s a perfect day in the perfect month of the perfect week. Everyone is relatively healthy, Child the Eldar is getting ready to strike out on his own, and generally I am extremely blessed. *EXTREMELY* blessed. So […]

  • I wish I were joking

    But I’m not. If I wrote this as fiction my editors would cross it out as too far fetched. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/comedy-holiday-horrors-jillian-bell-1.4960005

  • A Canadian (Thanksgiving) Parable

    Once there was a Queen. She reigned over many lands, in the manner of constitutional monarchies with their own parliamentary systems based largely, if not wholly, on the parliament of the Queen’s own land. The Queen had many great powers, not the least of which were Longevity, Great Hats, and Mechanical Aptitude. But one of […]

  • Back to Back to School

    A Story of Parenting, Told in School Supplies Kindergarten, First Child: I purchased these school supplies over a year ago, have been awake since Friday labelling every pencil, every marker, every individual crayon, every eraser, and every individual tissue in the box. I have labelled every article of my child’s clothing, and moved on to […]

  • Remembery

    Remembery

    Do you remember the time you took me with you to your sister’s wedding? It was in small town somewhere and I was jonesing for a cig but no place was open and not even the bar was holding. I think I opted to spend the service itself in the tub in our weird motel […]