On the street where you live

Call the police, yo, two posts in two nights!

Ok, this one my brain can't quite process yet. When I was in my chemo fog, back in the cancer dancing days, I drove down my little street to drop the girls off at school one rainy morning and in a car coming the other way I swore I saw my oncologist, Dr. A. But the red syringe of death plays tricks on your mind, y'all, so I chalked it up to diminishing brain cells.

Then a few months ago, Pete said he swore he saw Dr. A. on our street, near this house at the end of the road with a gigantic yard and fruit trees galore that Pete steals from regularly to get some bona fide organic apples for juicing. Dr. A has a pretty distinctive look - jutting eye teeth, Olive Oyl height and weight and that tight, short Victoria perm of a certain vintage - so I was inclined to believe him, but not quite prepared to.

Then just this past Saturday we were driving the girls to swimming and there she was, standing on the edge of the street where I live, near the place where I saw her driving and across from the house that Pete suspected she lived in. She was grinning like an idiot at us as we drove by but I just stared at her all Invasion of the Body Snatchers-like.

I mean, seriously? My onc lives on my street? I die.

I have this back story about why we moved to Victoria... my mom had been seriously sick a couple of times and I wanted my kids to be closer to my parents while they were still young old people. But two years after we moved, I got sick and my mom and dad took care of me and my kids while the intake board at the Cancer Agency read out my diagnosis and Dr. A, who could serenade me from her balcony, put up her hand to take my file and save my ever-loving life.

I am the least religious, spiritual, kismet, karma, fatalistic gal you'll ever meet, but goddess if that ain't somethin' else. 

Write what you know

I went to a corporate communications offsite last week in Vancouver and am just now dusting off the last of the family guilt from being away. Two things getting together with a bunch of professional communicators will do to you:

1. Inpire you to write more.
2. Make you feel guilty for not writing enough.

When I was off work for a year, I exercised my word muscle almost every day and it was glorious. It was more than a habit, it was the stuff of survival. Since going back to work my muscle has atrophied.

I write for work, yes, every hour of every day, but the creative process is a little different. And it all makes me feel like not writing anymore when it's late at night and I'm spent. I feel like Jerry's masseuse girlfriend who would rather do anything than rub another god damn back after a day in the parlour. So stop trying to force my hands on your shoulders, dude!

But if you ask me what it is I'm supposed to be doing, it starts and ends with writing. Not because I'm the next Margaret Atwood but because I don't know how to do anything else. I have no other special skills. This vegan thing has me in the kitchen more than ever, but I ain't no natural at it. I'm a slave to the recipe and an idiot at improvising. I'm raising daughters, but by the skin of my teeth. I can run 5k in a pinch, but still hate 75% of the experience and can't seem to make it stick. Not that I could actually make a living out of any of those things if I were half good at them, but at least they involve honing some kind of skill or making use of experience.

So the writing is because I suck at the other 9,999,999 things that humans can do.

Tonight I signed up for a 5-day webinar in December with a woman I've been reading for as long as the intertubes have been around: Penelope Trunk. She'll be teaching me how to find the thing in my life to write about, how not to be boring at it, and how to make money from it. I've read so much of her shizz over the years for free, that the $150 I'm spending on the webinar seems like chump change.

If it gets me nothing else than an excuse to quit work at 6 pm for a few nights, then I'll be golden. And it might just help me figure out what the hell I'm supposed to be writing about for the rest of my life.