About Being Perfect

Posted on May 26, 2022 by bonniedonily

[Some weeks I realize a little too late that I am one day behind. So today, I’m sharing one of my favorite poems – maybe because it’s in the form of a to-do list , my love language – ha! Enjoy.]

HOW TO BE PERFECT

BY RON PADGETT

Get some sleep.

Don’t give advice.

Take care of your teeth and gums.

Don’t be afraid of anything beyond your control. Don’t be afraid, for

instance, that the building will collapse as you sleep, or that someone

you love will suddenly drop dead.

Eat an orange every morning.

Be friendly. It will help make you happy.

Raise your pulse rate to 120 beats per minute for 20 straight minutes

four or five times a week doing anything you enjoy.

Hope for everything. Expect nothing.

Take care of things close to home first. Straighten up your room

before you save the world. Then save the world.

Know that the desire to be perfect is probably the veiled expression

of another desire—to be loved, perhaps, or not to die.

Make eye contact with a tree.

Be skeptical about all opinions, but try to see some value in each of

them.

Dress in a way that pleases both you and those around you.

Do not speak quickly.

Learn something every day. (Dzien dobre!)

Be nice to people before they have a chance to behave badly.

Don’t stay angry about anything for more than a week, but don’t

forget what made you angry. Hold your anger out at arm’s length

and look at it, as if it were a glass ball. Then add it to your glass ball

collection.

Be loyal.

Wear comfortable shoes.

Design your activities so that they show a pleasing balance

and variety.

Be kind to old people, even when they are obnoxious. When you

become old, be kind to young people. Do not throw your cane at

them when they call you Grandpa. They are your grandchildren!

Live with an animal.

Do not spend too much time with large groups of people.

If you need help, ask for it.

Cultivate good posture until it becomes natural.

If someone murders your child, get a shotgun and blow his head off.

Plan your day so you never have to rush.

Show your appreciation to people who do things for you, even if you

have paid them, even if they do favors you don’t want.

Do not waste money you could be giving to those who need it.

Expect society to be defective. Then weep when you find that it is far

more defective than you imagined.

When you borrow something, return it in an even better condition.

As much as possible, use wooden objects instead of plastic or metal

ones.

Look at that bird over there.

After dinner, wash the dishes.

Calm down.

Visit foreign countries, except those whose inhabitants have

expressed a desire to kill you.

Don’t expect your children to love you, so they can, if they want to.

Meditate on the spiritual. Then go a little further, if you feel like it.

What is out (in) there?

Sing, every once in a while.

Be on time, but if you are late do not give a detailed and lengthy

excuse.

Don’t be too self-critical or too self-congratulatory.

Don’t think that progress exists. It doesn’t.

Walk upstairs.

Do not practice cannibalism.

Imagine what you would like to see happen, and then don’t do

anything to make it impossible.

Take your phone off the hook at least twice a week.

Keep your windows clean.

Extirpate all traces of personal ambitiousness.

Don’t use the word extirpate too often.

Forgive your country every once in a while. If that is not possible, go

to another one.

If you feel tired, rest.

Grow something.

Do not wander through train stations muttering, “We’re all going to

die!”

Count among your true friends people of various stations of life.

Appreciate simple pleasures, such as the pleasure of chewing, the

pleasure of warm water running down your back, the pleasure of a

cool breeze, the pleasure of falling asleep.

Do not exclaim, “Isn’t technology wonderful!”

Learn how to stretch your muscles. Stretch them every day.

Don’t be depressed about growing older. It will make you feel even

older. Which is depressing.

Do one thing at a time.

If you burn your finger, put it in cold water immediately. If you bang

your finger with a hammer, hold your hand in the air for twenty

minutes. You will be surprised by the curative powers of coldness and

gravity.

Learn how to whistle at earsplitting volume.

Be calm in a crisis. The more critical the situation, the calmer you

should be.

Enjoy sex, but don’t become obsessed with it. Except for brief periods

in your adolescence, youth, middle age, and old age.

Contemplate everything’s opposite.

If you’re struck with the fear that you’ve swum out too far in the

ocean, turn around and go back to the lifeboat.

Keep your childish self alive.

Answer letters promptly. Use attractive stamps, like the one with a

tornado on it.

Cry every once in a while, but only when alone. Then appreciate

how much better you feel. Don’t be embarrassed about feeling better.

Do not inhale smoke.

Take a deep breath.

Do not smart off to a policeman.

Do not step off the curb until you can walk all the way across the

street. From the curb you can study the pedestrians who are trapped

in the middle of the crazed and roaring traffic.

Be good.

Walk down different streets.

Backwards.

Remember beauty, which exists, and truth, which does not. Notice

that the idea of truth is just as powerful as the idea of beauty.

Stay out of jail.

In later life, become a mystic.

Use Colgate toothpaste in the new Tartar Control formula.

Visit friends and acquaintances in the hospital. When you feel it is

time to leave, do so.

Be honest with yourself, diplomatic with others.

Do not go crazy a lot. It’s a waste of time.

Read and reread great books.

Dig a hole with a shovel.

In winter, before you go to bed, humidify your bedroom.

Know that the only perfect things are a 300 game in bowling and a

27-batter, 27-out game in baseball.

Drink plenty of water. When asked what you would like to drink,

say, “Water, please.”

Ask “Where is the loo?” but not “Where can I urinate?”

Be kind to physical objects.

Beginning at age forty, get a complete “physical” every few years

from a doctor you trust and feel comfortable with.

Don’t read the newspaper more than once a year.

Learn how to say “hello,” “thank you,” and “chopsticks”

in Mandarin.

Belch and fart, but quietly.

Be especially cordial to foreigners.

See shadow puppet plays and imagine that you are one of the

characters. Or all of them.

Take out the trash.

Love life.

Use exact change.

When there’s shooting in the street, don’t go near the window.

About When Things Go Wrong

Posted on May 19, 2022 by bonniedonily

Rick and I took a little trip east this last week, to Montreal and our nation’s capital. We flew to La Belle Province and after a couple of days there, rented a car to drive the two hours to Ottawa. On the last night in Ottawa, after supper with a friend, we drove back to the hotel and talked about what a good holiday it had been: the weather was hot but not unbearably so – we enjoyed a Friday night in a park close to Notre Dame listening to a busker and Saturday night walking home from a jazz club along Rue de St. Catherine among the young and hip of Montreal; both cities were very walkable and we (hopefully) worked off all the poutine/smoked meat/seafood calories we over-ingested; and really, all of our loose plans had fallen into place.

But talking about how good something has been before it’s over is like saying “shutout” at the end of the 2nd period of a hockey game. Cue the proverbial fat lady.

As we exited our rental, Rick looked askance at the trunk of the car, which didn’t look exactly closed. And when he popped it open, the latching pin came loose and the realization dawned on us that we could not travel in this car with a trunk that would no longer close. Hmmmm. After the initial pseudopanic – someone (probably me) bemoaned the fact that we didn’t have a bungee cord handy – Rick macguyvered it closed and then we went to our room to call the rental car’s after-hours help line. When I finally got a real person on the line – we’ll call her “Shelby” – which is the fake name she gave me so I couldn’t complain about her later – she said there was no problem, she would send someone to tow the car and amend our rental agreement to switch out to a new car. The only catch was we would have to get ourselves to the rental car place in the morning – the day we had planned to sleep in a bit. Oh well. An hour later the tow truck showed up and we sent our VW Lemon (I mean seriously? Have you ever had a trunk latch pin fall out before?) off to the lemonade stand.

Rising early, we decided that the 30-minute walk to the rental car depot that “Shelby” sent us to (assuring us that they had plenty of cars) was better than taking a taxi. Or for fighting for a reimbursement later. And really, it was so much better. A bit cooler weather but no rain and we got more steps on the Fitbit.

But then we got to the depot where they informed us that: 1) they could not view the agreement online from that particular location; 2) that they, in fact, did not have any cars available; and 3) that we would have had better luck with probably any other location, including the one DIRECTLY ACROSS FROM OUR HOTEL.

And so, we walked back. The service at the new location was excellent but guess what? There were no notes on our rental agreement from “Shelby”. [Do you think it had anything to do with the fact that when I found out that she was from Calgary and I, confessing we were from Edmonton, made some offhand comment about the upcoming Battle of Alberta that was about to commence?] Our new best-car-rental-friend, however, believed our story, tracked down the towed car and gave us a new rental with a full tank of gas.

Years ago, I read – and loved – the book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller. Part of the book chronicles his Pacific to Atlantic bike trip. Sounds pretty cool, right? Biking with friends for a good cause, seeing the sights, building up your quads, getting a stellar tan. But also: flat tires, torrential rainstorms, bicycle butt, and a lot of asking “What was I thinking?” And much as I thought that that bike trip was cool for him, all that yucky stuff would be too much for me. It was more about avoiding the bad than gambling for the good.

Now, granted, sometimes EVERYTHING goes wrong and then you wonder if traveling is really worth it, but most of the time it doesn’t go all wrong. Sure, we’ve drowned a cell phone, been stuck on Splash Mountain, had trouble at the American border, forgot Simon at the bathroom in Disneyland, had a wheel come flying off our holiday trailer in an epic manner, thought our car was on fire, and I once got instant food poisoning from eating one peanut dusted with ghost pepper. But those things were just sprinkled in with all the other really good and great things we did, like a good spice. (But seriously, don’t mess with that ghost pepper.)

Long story short, it’s all worth it. I mean, you could stay at home and still have all kinds of things go wrong, right? Or you could think about all the fun you had on your last vacation while waiting for Air Canada to deliver your luggage to Vermilion because it didn’t make it on your connecting flight. Which is what we’re doing right now while watching the first game of the Battle of Alberta.

I hope we beat “Shelby”. Just sayin.

About Hockey

Posted on May 12, 2022 by bonniedonily

*This one was probably in my secret collection.*

[A annotated hockey throwback – I guess this would be a backhand shot?]

Now that Easter is over, our household has entered the next holiday season: Hockey. I can call it a holiday because just like after a big meal at Christmas or Easter, it’s difficult to get my husband off the couch – unless, of course, he’s actually going to a game. I consider it fortunate if Rick agrees to do something else with me if the Oilers are on TV. [We’re currently on vacation, in a city whose team thankfully did not make it into the playoffs, while Rick’s beloved Oilers did. But my husband, while he still loves his hockey, forgot to factor in that he’d be missing some first-round playoff hockey in the safety of his own province when we planned this getaway. Clearly, he now has too many other things on his mind.] It’s also not worth it if the activity is something where he can talk a lot, openly reminding me what he’s missing while he could be enriching his mind with the edifying commentary of Ron MacClean and Don Cherry. [We all know what happened to Don Cherry but Ron is still holding down the fort.]

I’m not sure exactly why I’m not a hockey fan. Along with Edmonton [football team] games, it was one of the times I really enjoyed, because most or all of the family would gather around the television like it was a fireplace on a frosty Canadian evening. But, out of a family of seven kids, I am probably the only one who has never watched an entire game on TV. I’m more the type that comes in for the commercials and goes to fix snacks when the game resumes. My brothers were diehard Black Hawks fans: it was a banner Saturday night in our house when the Hawks were on and a cause for real celebration if they won. My two sisters had more focused interests, namely Bobby Orr and Bobby Clark, but they, too, actually watched the game.

When I became a teenager, however, I did begin to show an interest in hockey, but it manifested itself in a covert Wayne Gretzky newspaper clipping collection. You see, in my house the Edmonton Oilers had become the equivalent of watching Oprah Winfrey win another Emmy for Best Talk Show. [This is called Toronto Maple Leaf Fan Syndrome now.] But Wayne was only a few years older than me and his long flowing locks did the same thing to me as Guy Lafleur did for other women 10 years earlier. [R.I.P Guy Lafleur April 22, 2022.] Years later I married an avid Oilers fan (begrudgingly accepted by my big brothers). When I confessed to Rick years later, after the said clipping collection had gone the way of the burn barrel, that I had once harboured a secret Wayne Gretzky adoration, he said he would have felt the same way if he was a girl. [My mother saved those clippings for years after I had left home. She must have liked him, too.]

My three sons have yet to develop any sort of attention span when daddy settles down to watch a hockey game. All I have to do is dangle the Berenstain Bears or Dr. Suess in front of them and I have company. But they love wearing the Oilers hats that Dad got them and pretty soon they’ll probably sit with him for longer that it takes the theme song to play out. [This has definitely come to pass. Now, if we’re all together, WE gather around the TV like it’s a fireplace.] At that point, I’ll have probably have time to do my thing. Or maybe I’ll actually have to learn to enjoy watching hockey as Rick is always hoping. Chances are good that I’ll be hanging out in the living room, still doing my thing, but enjoying the four of them jumping and cheering when the right team scores. [I actually do enjoy watching hockey now, but even more, I love being part of Team Donily – of which Oil loyalty is a given. Go, Oilers, Go!]

About Nothing

Posted on May 5, 2022 by bonniedonily

“There’s nothing I hate more than nothing. Nothing keeps me up at night. I toss and turn over nothing. Nothing can cause a GREAT BIG FIGHT.” – Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians

We’ve been cruising through the Seinfeld catalog of episodes, watching one or two every couple of days. Its basic premise is that it’s a show about nothing, the minutiae of daily life. Every episode is ridiculous and inane, but like coming upon a relationship accident, I can’t look away. We will finish watching the whole series. Nothing is going to get in our way.

Unless something does. On any given day, all of my best-laid plans – to exercise, to not procrastinate writing my latest blog post, to watch the next episode of Seinfeld – can so easily get derailed by…nothing. Nothing is another word for regular life. “What’s new?”, an friend will ask and the first thing that comes into my mind is: nothing.

Which isn’t true, right? If you keep any sort of diary or journal or even if Facebook assaults you with some weird anniversary (Celebrate 10 Years of Friendship with Your Accountant!) and you look back two, five or ten years ago, you can quite plainly see that things do change – maybe at a snail’s pace but still. Even a snail moves at 0.048 km/hr. That’s better than the average couch potato. I can plainly see my routine has changed from two years ago (because: Covid), my face looks different from five years ago (hello: wrinkles) AND I have a different accountant from ten years ago.

This blog is sort of about nothing. I’ve been trying to shape it and figure out what it’s about since I started. I write about writing (very meta!), about memories (how ephemeral!), about what I read lately and occasionally about stuff that happens. It’s a pretty good antidote for thinking that nothing happens when I read a post from two years ago or a throwback from twenty years ago.

Sometimes I wonder why I keep writing. And then when I write, I figure out why I do. It’s nothing, really.

About TV

Posted on March 31, 2022 by bonniedonily

Recently, while reading through Amy K. Rosenthal’s Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, I was amused by her “Table of Most Memorable TV Shows and Movies”. AKR was born shortly before me so a lot of her choices were happily familiar – The Carol Burnett Show, The Electric Company, The Love Boat and (not the re-booted) Fantasy Island. Thinking about them took me back to the living room(s) of my childhood – how differently we used to watch television.

First of all – the word television: does it even apply if you watch a show on your laptop or tablet or phone? Often you don’t even hear the phrase “I’m watching TV” anymore. Instead, we’re often watching Netflix or YouTube. I do still watch THE TV – the news, the shows we’ve PVR’d and of course, Netflix (and Disney and Prime) when we’re looking for commercial-free binge-ability.

What struck me this last week while my husband was away for a week-long convention and I wasn’t watching any of “our shows”, was how different the experience of watching TV was from when I was a kid. The physically obvious: there was no such thing as a remote control. If I wanted to change the channel, I would have to get up off the couch (or reach up from where I was laying on my stomach in front of the TV) and turn the channel dial. No buttons, no electronic lights. If my Dad or any of my older siblings wanted to change the channel, again, I would get up off the couch and turn the channel for them. (Little siblings everywhere were a prototype for the universal remote.)

And channels? The word barely registered as plural. We had three and sometimes one didn’t work. And that was only after my dad had a rotor installed so we could actually turn the giant antennae on our house to catch our choice of network: CBC (which was CKSA Lloydminster), CTV (CFRN in Edmonton) and if the airwaves aligned correctly, we might also get CITV from Edmonton, which was somehow kind of cooler because it was a new station in the ’70s. Our antenna wasn’t quite like a tuneable satellite dish – Rick’s grampa had one the size of a hot tub parked on his front lawn – but it did the trick.

Because that was all I knew. I memorized the TV schedules (didn’t we all?) – at different times during my growing up years Sundays was The Waltons, Fridays was Dallas (and Good Rockin’ Tonight after my parents went to bed), Thursdays was St. Elsewhere, Saturdays was The Bugs Bunny and Road Runner Show. And if you missed it, you missed it. If you weren’t home the day that Mary Ingalls became blind or Mary Richards finally moved out of her studio apartment and then you missed the re-run (and who knew when that would happen?), then you might have to wait until the nineties or the aughts to find the show on VHS or DVD.

As a teenager, I would often spend a week of my summer vacation staying with my older siblings once they moved to The City and graduated to the fascinating world of cable TV. Most of my “vacation” with them was spent with the television while they were off at work. For the first time, I watched The Price is Right, Eight is Enough, even Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood – all offerings that my local networks didn’t offer. While I was there, I also read all their magazines or listened to all their record albums, but I could also ask (nicely) to borrow them when I went home. Cable TV stayed where it was so that kind of made it special.

Isn’t it funny how we need the entertainment, the news, the sports? One of the first things my roommate Reva and I did when we moved into an apartment before we started university was to sign up for cable TV. Annnnnnd Superchannel which was (gasp!) Only Movies. If the U of A had offered a course on Terms of Endearment, I would have aced it. Because there still wasn’t that much choice when I turned on the television. If the choice was between Terms or studying for mid-terms, the TV probably won – at least until the panic set in 24 hours before said midterm.

And now, if I need to go to the bathroom or fix a snack in the middle of a show, I just hit pause and go. There was a moment last week when I did just that and it triggered the memory of how we used to only do that during commercials. As soon as the break happened, when watching TV in real time, you would run to the bathroom or the kitchen because otherwise you would miss the show. And I kinda missed that. For maybe a minute. Then I sat back down with my snack and resumed my show.

About the Fridge Door Art Gallery

Posted on March 24, 2022 by bonniedonily

[It’s been a while since I did a throwback. I wrote this one is about the accidental art gallery that happens in so many kitchens.]

Show me a person with nothing on their fridge door and I’ll show you someone who just had a new refrigerator delivered. The metal exterior and wide-open space seems to lend itself to magnetizing everything and anything to the fridge door – well at least anything that a magnet can hold up. Before you can say “What’s for supper?”, someone has christened that gleaming exterior with a take-out menu and matching magnet.

The fridge door is really a microcosm of the household, showcasing what’s important and memorable to the family that lives here. At the very least, it’s a great place to stick stuff that you’re not really sure what to do with. Nearly every home has at least one or two photographs on their icebox, a collection that usually grows into a multi-people collage just shortly after school pictures and Christmas cards come out. And of course, if you’re a parent or a grandparent, or even a neighbor to a family with children, chances are you’re going to have some wax crayon, glitter glue and egg carton creation adhered to the fridge with at least a dozen magnets or more likely with some glitter glue that seeped to the back of the project. Because the fact of the matter is children are prolific artists. Even if your three-year-old had just scribbled a two-second blue circle with a nearly dried-up marker, they will insist that you hang it on the fridge because (apparently) that blue circle is a picture of you and it goes with the series of twenty-five identical pictures of you already layered on the fridge door. (You probably never guessed you were so complex until you had children.)

But the short people in your household aren’t the only culprits. The fridge may be the place where you stick a funny comic strip you cut out from the newspaper (usually mirroring your life is such an eerie manner you wonder how the cartoonist got into your house.) In our home, the refrigerator is close enough to the garbage where I go through the mail. Therefore, the fridge is the place that all those reminder notices from the dentist get pinned up. There are other reminders, too. I have something up that’s called “Prayer for a Tired, Irritable Parent”. Although I don’t actually read it that often, just seeing the title reminds me to be thankful for noisy, wrestling children because (apparently) that’s a sure sign that they’re healthy. Well, healthy except for reaching abnormally high sugar levels on cookie baking days. And another clipping encourages me to be thankful for things like high gas bills because it means we’re warm and for snug fitting clothes because it means we have enough to eat.

Which most of us do. And because the Pavlovian response to any sort of anxiety, from high gas bills to wrestling children to “How am I going to get this glob of petrified glitter glue off my brand-new fridge?” is to open the fridge door. So many of us will use this spot to strategically display some sort of deterrent to doing just that. One does need to weigh the matter carefully, since fridge doors are somewhat like public property. Everyone who walks into your home is going to look at what’s on your fridge and some will even go a step further and check the contents inside. (These are good people to play the marbles-in-the-medicine-chest-trick on.)

If you choose to put up an inspiring picture of yourself at your fittest and thinnest, some may look at it and think, “Man, did she ever let herself go!” If you put up a picture of yourself at your worst, some may look at it and think, “Man, did she ever let herself go!” If you put up a picture of some attractive girl (which really doesn’t work any way), you may have a problem with your husband making too many trips to the refrigerator and some clueless people will still say, “Man, did she ever let herself go!” And finally, if you put up a picture of some attractive male, people will assume your marriage is on the rocks.

Which is why I have a nice, unassuming calorie wheel on the fridge that will tell me that eating that cookie dough myself will sentence me to seven and a half hours on the treadmill. Seeing this induces such stress, I find myself struggling to open the fridge door, anyways. Luckily, I can’t. It’s been sealed shut with glitter glue.

About Failure

Posted on March 17, 2022 by bonniedonily

Failure – in the conventional sense – is not an attractive word. It’s the kind of event – whether it’s getting turned down for a date or the demise of a multi-million-dollar company – that we never wish for. Indeed, what precipitates failure is the optimistic progression towards what we hope will be success. No one, in the particular sense, hopes for failure.

In the general sense, however, failure is actually not such a bad thing – it will, in fact, teach you way more than success. For example, in high school English, my teacher took one look at my name at the top of my paper and assigned me exactly the same grade almost every time. I was 85%. But in university, I learned that I was only 50%. But I didn’t want to be a 50% student forever – in English, anyways – so I learned that I had to learn, to listen, to try, to fail if I was going to succeed.

It’s not a lesson that’s easy for a semi-perfectionist – my husband reminds me that I fail at little, but mostly because I risk little, but I resist hearing the message from him, as we often do from our nearest and dearest.

I just finished another book by Neil Pasricha – You Are Awesome – and it’s all about resilience. Pasricha’s style resonates with me but the chapter Lose More to Win More really hit me. (Don’t tell my husband.) At the end of the chapter, he writes: “Admitting failure is hard. But you can do it! Trumpet them! Be proud of them. Because you learned from them and they were fumbles on the path that got you here. You wouldn’t be here without there. And you can’t get there without here.”

So this is me trumpeting my failures, of which this is by no means an exhaustive list:

In Grade Two, I peed my pants in school. For years, I felt such humiliation – and failure – about this incident. It helped once I realized that I was not alone in this experience and it gave me empathy for pants-wetters everywhere. When a co-worker had an accident when we were both in our twenties, I covered for her as she slunk home and then never mentioned it again. I was the only one she invited to her wedding.
The story of me trying to do better in my university English class? That didn’t hold true for Intro Physics – a course I enrolled in and dropped – twice. I had no desire to get better and it helped me recognize that pursuing a degree in the Sciences was totally wrong for me. And I can enjoy learning about Einstein without a full appreciation of E=mc².
When I was 21, I saw my car’s dashboard light up with “check engine” when I was two hours away from my destination. I ignored it. I will NEVER do that again. R.I.P. Chevy Nova.
I failed to visit a dear friend in the hospital when he was dying of cancer and I deeply regret it now. I hope I never make that mistake again.
I have barely read any classic novels. I have yet to add any Dickens, Dostoyevsky or Doyle to my list. But I have learned that while actually reading the classics is kinda boring – especially if I already know all the plot points – listening to one on audiobook is a painless way of increasing my literary street cred.
When our boys were little and I was first starting to write publicly, my hubby and I created a family newsletter – the kind you needed people to subscribe to and pay real dollars for and that we would send in the mail in a manilla envelope. How quaint! We did four issues, had even less paid subscribers and I thought the whole thing was a silly mistake. I was reminded of it in Pasricha’s book when he recounted how many years and blogs he went through before his 1000 Awesome Things landed. I no longer see that as a failure but as a stepping stone. Plus, the kids had watermarked scrap paper to draw on for years after that.
I have started more days with the effort to “eat perfectly” than not and most of those days have ended up in perfectionistic failure. I have tried programs, paid for classes, bought fitness equipment and I’m still unhappy with the size of my pants. But: I’ve learned that working out – especially on a regular basis – and eating lots of vegetables and not so much artificial food, FOR REALS makes me feel sooooooo much better. Maybe someday the message will get to my heart. Both the metaphorical one and the beating one.
I haven’t written as much as I should have. I haven’t risked, haven’t prioritized, haven’t queried enough in my writing career. To my own detriment. Because if I don’t fail, I won’t learn. And if I don’t learn, I won’t get better. Which is what I want to do. *Sigh.* But for some reason, this blog gets written every week – somewhat mysteriously. Not like elves who helped the cobbler, but like I don’t know yet what makes me write this every week and not work on my other projects.

The real success, it would seem, is in failing better and dwelling just long enough on it to learn the lesson behind it.

About Ukraine

Posted on March 3, 2022 by bonniedonily

It’s been a sobering week watching events play out over the borders between Ukraine and Russia. I sometimes think that I’m not a political person, but there’s something about hearing the words “World War Three” that make me sit up and take notice. It’s actually made a lot of people notice: countries, companies and individuals are imposing sanctions on Russia and voicing their support for Ukraine. Even Saturday Night Live made New York’s Ukrainian choir Dumka the headliner last Saturday and another choir sang the Ukrainian national anthem before an NHL game in Winnipeg. With the modern-day capability of being able to film everything, nothing that the Big Bully of Eastern Europe does goes unnoticed.

One look at a map, comparing the size of Ukraine to Russia, is enough to make one furious. It reminds me of something my preschool son Simon once said to a playground bully: “Hey you mean guy! Leave him alone!”

When I was in university some thirty plus years ago, I took a course one spring session in Ukrainian Folklore. It was actually a required course for anyone who had been hired to work at the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village for the summer as an interpreter – someone who dresses up in period costume and provides an immersive experience for visitors. I wasn’t working there, my part-time job as a bank teller was too good to give up, but I wanted to knock off some credits towards my degree and thought it would be an easy mark. After all, I am Ukrainian – I should know this stuff.

It turns out I got a lot more than I bargained for, namely a new minor for my degree. I fell in love with the subject – especially of material culture, the objects that remind us of who we are and what we do as a particular people. A lot of it was due to an infectious teacher, Dr. Andriy Nahachewsky, one of the few professors whose full name I remember. We watched the movie Taras Bulba in class, we learned the poetry of Taras Schevchenko, and we started calling any person named Terry by their new nickname, Taras. But a good part of it was the awakening of an affinity to my heritage, the pride that comes with identifying with a historical people.

It was during my time at the University of Alberta, taking lots of classes from the Slavic Studies department, that the Soviet Union fell apart. Nations that had supposedly been absorbed started to rear their nationalistic heads, those heads adorned, so to speak, in Ukraine with vinoks and sheepskin hats. It was heartening to see that self-determination was so stubborn. The nations were still there, no matter how hard the Soviet Union had tried to subdue them.

After Little Simon stood up to a much bigger boy on the playground that day, we found out that it was actually his own little brother that he was bullying. People, just like countries, want their own self-determination. Russia is the economically and geographically bigger than Ukraine. But that doesn’t mean that Russia gets to boss Ukraine around. It’s heartening to see the world stand united to tell the Mean Guy Russia to leave Ukraine alone.

About Romance

Posted on February 10, 2022 by bonniedonily

[Another throwback: here’s what Valentine’s Day looked like for us twenty years ago!]

My husband and I are approaching a benchmark in our marriage. With nearly ten years behind us since we uttered those fateful words, “I do”, you would think that the idea of romance has been crystallized in our mind. After all, we’ve been living together for a decade. We should know what turns one another’s crank. And for the most part we do. Rick cleaning the bathrooms in our house is infinitely more romantic to me than say, laying down his coat over a mud puddle for me to walk over. (Don’t forget: I still do the laundry.) And if I would just sit next to my husband on the couch for an entire hockey game and actually pay attention, he would consider himself the luckiest man in the world.

What’s that? That doesn’t sound very romantic to you? Ah, well, don’t you remember? We have three small children. When it comes to romance, our paradigm has definitely shifted from the days of dating and smooching and holding hands. Not that that stuff is unheard of around here. Let’s just say we’ve become a lot more, uh, efficient. The trouble with Valentine’s Day is that it’s all about someone else telling you what to do and what to say in order to guarantee the appropriate swooning from your mate. And the flower and chocolate shops aren’t completely to blame. Let’s take a look at the origin of Valentine’s Day.

Although many myths surround this lovers’ day, Valentine’s Day is named for a priest, the patron saint of lovers, who secretly married couples against the wishes of the emperor. Erroneously, Mr. Emperor thought that this ban on marriage would encourage more men to join the army. It’s sort of a tragic Romeo-and-Juliet-forbidden-love-thing, which incidentally was also set in Italy. Hello? Italy? How are we supposed to get to the birthplace of romance if we’ve only accumulated 157 airmiles in the last 10 years? And no wonder those personal ads seeking romance always claim an affinity for candlelit dinners and long walks on the beach. Italy is surrounded by water! And Valentine’s Day was invented in the Middle Ages. They didn’t even have electricity back then! Clears things up a lot, doesn’t it?

You have to give credit to those Italians, though. Notorious as they are for their romantic reputation, they also have big families. Maybe we have the whole idea wrong over here in North America. Romance isn’t for twitter-pated teenagers. It’s for the seasoned veterans of love who know romance doesn’t have to fall between the confines of red roses and serenades. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) Romance CAN fit in between the laundry and the bedtime stories. But sometimes, a babysitter is a pretty good thing.

About My Pants

Posted on January 27, 2022 by bonniedonily

Last week, a button popped off the waistband of my pants. Thankfully, it wasn’t because of undue strain due to Christmas binging or two years of Covid (over)eating. No, this favorite pair of pants have just started getting old: first the sporty emblem began to rub off, then one of the zippers on a side pocket went kaput, and now, the threads holding my button in place gave up their ghost.

Rather than change out of said pants into another, nearly identical pair for comfort and fifty-something style, I just grabbed a large safety pin and used that to fasten my pants and prevent them from sliding down every time I stood up. And I thought to myself, I guess this is what I’ll be like when I’m old and don’t want to go out and buy new clothes anymore.

But then it hit me: Who am I kidding? Apparently, that time has already arrived.

Actually, I’m not really sure if my swift employment of safety pins is about my age , my laziness to sewing on the button or my aversion to buying new clothes. I think I’ve always been one to resort to a quick fix when I’ve got better things to do. And for the most part, I work from my chair, drink lots of coffee and water, and only get up for hourly bathroom breaks so maybe the pin wasn’t even that necessary. I mean, I could hold my pants up for the ten seconds it takes to traverse the hallway to my urgent destination. Plus, there is the added efficiency to getting the job done: no button in the way. And who am I kidding? Most of the time, sitting in my chair, with my Christmas/Covid indulgences pressing the matter, I often undo the button and relax into a (girlish) Al Bundy posture in front of my laptop.

But there is a certain decency to wearing clothes that are in good repair. Granted, these particular pants have crossed over to the designation of “Home Pants”. They’re too shabby to wear to the grocery store (unless I’m wearing my uber-long winter coat, shhhhhh!) but they will do if I need to answer the door for a signed delivery or a surprise bottle-driver. (I will quickly run to change before I answer the door if I am caught still in my pajama pants because, I need to at least provide the illusion that I’m working, both to myself and to strangers. Covid dress-code, be damned. For me, anyway. You do you.)

Those pants have lasted me a very long time – I’m guessing about seven years. The replacement cost would be about $70 meaning the originals only cost me about $10 per year. By my Starbucks reckoning, that’s only two fancy-schmancy drinks. A year. So yes, I think I do need to go shopping, whether I like it or not.

Or maybe I just need to sew on that dang button.

Bonnie 2.067

the journey of a century

Category Archives: Real Life