Oddly enough...

I don't like to miss a deadline. So I'll write a post while I lie here watching Oprah's Where Are They Now, a show that revisits guests from Oprah shows of long ago. This episode has featured a male showgirl, a teen who murdered her baby, and a woman who dresses like a porn star.

My brain is pretty blank. Did anyone else find Even's last entry to be heart-wrenching and shocking beyond words?

I usually write in the morning but I didn't want to bump E's post. And now that it's almost 9 pm, still, I feel like I shouldn't be bumping that post from the front page. Shouldn't be replacing it with this.

We both had fathers with problems.

And though I fully expect us to explore those memories here, we can never forget to remind ourselves where we are now. Which is a pretty good place. And I think I'll shut'er down now and go enjoy it.

Moldova? Now that's odd.

Odd here.
Both Even and I have been looking at the blog dashboard to see if anyone has been reading this.

Yesterday - as a break from speedwriting more than a hundred product descriptions - I checked and saw that someone from Moldova had read us. I mean, someone from Moldova had at least clicked onto our Dirty Little Feet.

And to greet that most-welcome Moldovan guest I shall hereby put on my very best Robin Williams impersonation and say ...

"Goooood moooorrrning Moldova!!!"

Your readership is sincerely appreciated. Thank you. And thank you, Blogger.com, for bringing us this very special visitor.

Moldova, may I call you Mo? Since you're here, Mo, please take a seat and let's talk about something I'll take the liberty of assuming we're both interested in: Writing.

According to my observations, there's a phenomenon that many writers and would-be-writers share: a reluctance to write anything that will never be read. A resistance to writing non-starters. A refusal to invest more than 2 SI units of energy into any project that's doomed to fail.

Pushing a boulder the size of the Rogers Centre up the north face of Everest would be a smoother, more effortless process than the unbearable grind of writing a page of stuff nobody wants to read.

But there's a whole complicated chemical process involved in writing material that gets read. I like to think of it as "writing well".

Plain old writing helps a Moldovan seeking "Seasons in the Sun" lyrics give your blog an accidental click. Writing well makes that Moldovan come back the very next day. Writing well makes tears come to that Moldovan's eyes and elicits silly chuckles from their stubborn Moldovan lips. Writing well makes words and ideas dance across the Moldovan mind in a rhythm so alluring that even the busiest Moldovan cannot resist. If something is written well - that Moldovan will never stop reading. Not while there's still another word to be read.

Hmmm. It's been really nice talking to you, Mo. You've certainly helped bring up some important thoughts on writing. Important thoughts, indeed. It seems good writing is pretty important to you. You've got high standards and you're as entitled to them as anyone else.

But now you've got me thinking, too.

Listen, Mo. I'm not saying we don't want you here - that's not the case at all. But to be perfectly honest ... and with all due respect ... and as nice as it is to have a real audience ... I'm starting to wish you wouldn't put so much pressure on us. I just had to get that off my chest.

So, good bye for now, Moldova. Here is the link you were actually looking for:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYsrKDSKzWg

Another odd day in the life.
This day is significant because I'll be picking up R from camp after two weeks that she has been away.

For me, time passes abstractly for the most part. "I gave that to you last week" I'll say to someone I haven't seen in a month. It's all a blur and if it really matters I'll check the calendar on the fridge.

But when my 11-year-old (or 10, or 9, or all the ages she's been over the past 5 summers) goes away to camp, time takes on a new meaning and a level of consciousness I'm not accustomed to. I literally counted the days until she returned, and today that homecoming day is finally here.

When the big coach bus rolled out of the parking lot, taking my freckly-nosed girl away from me that Sunday afternoon, I was mopey for a while. But then, on the Monday, there was a big storm in Toronto with record-breaking rainfalls that knocked out the power for an entire evening. As I watched our street turn into a shallow river (we're on a hill and are unlikely to flood like the Don Valley would), and realized there would be no internet, no TV, no lights, no cooking, no phone (except the old cobwebby one attached to the wall in the basement) ... I felt a luxurious sense of delight wash over me.

It didn't matter that the cupboards were bare. I poured myself a glass of wine, lit three candles, cranked up R's tiny pink lootbag radio to treat my ears to a live, all-French Chopin festival, and opened my already-renewed library book for the first time. I would be alone for just over three hours -- the time it took for my husband to walk home from downtown, soaked beyond recognition, since the subways were closed.

That was 12 days ago.

Today at 11:45 the bus will roll into that parking lot and I'll be looking into her green eyes again - green eyes framed by a deeply-tanned face and wild, sundrenched hair and mosquito bites on her forehead and scrapes on her elbows and an army-coloured rumpled shirt I don't recognize - one she probably wore every day despite the full suitcase of perfect Gap Kids and Triple Flip.

Today.

In four hours and thirty-one minutes.

Memories of my Odd-awa Childhood

I remember the car ride. CFRA radio was playing the latest hits. Songs by Terry Jacks and the Four Seasons and Stevie Wonder and Elton John and Bachman Turner Overdrive and even a little Anne Murray and René Simard underscore the car rides of my childhood, when I look back, as I'm doing now.

The lyrics weren't always clear to me and I think that says little about auditory function and a lot about a mind's developmental age - like, I remember a song that went "Long distance love affair, lovin' on the phone." But at the time I had no idea the singer wasn't saying "Long distance Loverbear". I wouldn't have known about love affairs, let alone long distance ones. So I figured it was some kind of big, really awesomely friendly bear who called you up using Bell Long Distance (hopefully on the weekend when the rates were two thirds off).

I don't hear that song played on Golden Oldies nights but with all the people meeting over the internet it really could be resurrected as an anthem today. They were just ahead of their time, whoever "they" were. Oh and by the way, one of the nicknames I've given my husband? Loverbear.

You know, really, every sentence here could begin with "I remember", but I think I'll self-edit as I write this and spare you that level of gravitas and self importance. At the end you'll see why.

The car was big and long and flexible-seeming like an archer's bow and the back seat was smooth and firm like the bench seat in an old 50s diner. The seatbelts were long enough to wrap around 3 or more children at a time. The seatbelt clasps were as massive and unwieldy as those you'd find on a Boeing 747. Forget to put on your seatbelt and when the car stops suddenly it'll throttle you worse than any car accident could have. That's why we usually shoved them down between the seat and the seatback.

As my Dad drove, and my mom looked ahead, all the neighbourhood landmarks wizzed by the backseat window. There were a lot fewer landmarks built at that time than there likely are now, and some of them were 2-storey heaps of dirt. It didn't occur to me that these mountainous fixtures weren't permanent, though. That they were harbingers of another subdivision to come. This was Orient Park Drive in what was known as Blackburn Hamlet, an eastern suburb of Ottawa.

My brother was there too. He is in a lot of my memories because he is only three years older than me. In this memory I think I must have been 7. He's the one I'd share a piece of Juicy Fruit gum with. Or he'd be the one sharing a piece with me. We'd sit in that back seat and very carefully, with great deliberation, tear the flat stick across the middle. But the tear would always angle-out in a way that gave one of us the "bigger half!". A short while later when the flavour wore out that dispute would happen all over again. Why didn't we each take a whole piece in the first place?

That day, in the car, we were going somewhere. Not sure where. Maybe church. Maybe hockey. Somewhere mundane, that I'm pretty sure of. So it wasn't a special day or anything like that, but I remember getting a very special idea I had never thought of before. I see my young, tanned, curly haired self as though I'm the camera and not the person. I see the lightbulb turn on in my eyes. I see the smile spreading outward, and the relaxed, knowing, satisfaction of it all. I see the scene that played out on the screen of my child-mind's imagination: a lovely home, palm trees, an abundant spread of candy, a swimming pool, handfuls of shimmering coins (yes, coins). It would be a secret plan - one I wouldn't share. Until now.

Like the overlooked puzzle piece that you turn around a different way and suddenly things start fitting together, I came to a realization. When I grow up, I thought ... when I grow up I'm going to be rich.

I am Odd. Yes, in that sense too, but here I am referring to the days of the month on which I am supposed to write. It's an agreement I made today with the other writer - the one who is Even.

Expect to hear from E tomorrow. Unless E forgets. But forgetting things will be a recurring theme in E's narrative anyway. A few missed entries are actually important contributions, in a way, and no less convincing than anything E could write if she remembered to.

And me? I guess I'll be referred to as O.

I have quite a few stories to tell you. You might even find one interesting. Stay tuned.

Today is the first day of telling small stories really well.