Category: Mulling

March 13, 2017

Mitzi Bytes: Shoes Dropping All Over The Place

Last month I was lucky to be chosen as a first-reader for a new Canadian novel as part of the Harper Collins Canada First Look program. What a delight to read Mitzi Bytes, the first novel by indomitable blogger Kerry Clare whose words and thoughts I’ve long admired and giggled over. And due to this admiration, what a relief that I really did enjoy the book – whew!

Here’s the back-of-book blurb so you have the gist of the plot:

Sarah Lundy has a secret online life, and it might all come crashing down.

Back at the beginning of the new millennium, when the Internet was still unknown territory, Sarah Lundy started an anonymous blog documenting her return to the dating scene after a devastating divorce. The blog was funny, brutally honest and sometimes outrageous. Readers loved it. Through her blog persona, “Mitzi Bytes,” Sarah not only found her feet again, but she found her voice.

Fifteen years later, Sarah is happily remarried with children and she’s still blogging, but nobody IRL—not even her husband or best friends—knows about Mitzi. They don’t know that Sarah’s been documenting all her own exploits, as well as mining the experiences of those around her and sharing these stories with the world. Which means that Sarah is in serious trouble when threatening emails arrive from the mysterious Jane Q. Time’s up, the first one says. You’re officially found out.

As she tries to find out Jane Q’s identity before her secret online self is revealed to everyone, Sarah starts to discover that her loved ones have secrets of their own, and that stronger forces than she imagined are conspiring to turn her world upside down.

A grown-up Harriet the Spy for the digital age, Mitzi Bytes examines the bonds of family and friendship, and the truths we dare tell about ourselves—and others.

It’s funny to sit down and write a blog about a book about a blogger! But here we go. I’ve not read Harriet the Spy – but a quick internet search and synopsis-read reveals the book’s parallel/homage relationship to Mitzi Bytes, with protagonist Sarah’s blog serving as a modern-day notebook full of wonderings – not always kind – about those surrounding her now that her own life is happy but hum-drum and no longer exciting fodder for blog content.

I admire how utterly and absolutely author Kerry Clare captured Sarah’s life as a work-from-home, artistic-sort mom to two little kids of 5 and 7 years. I am just such a human, very much in the throes of balancing mom duties to two young kids, my work-for-pay from home, and my own creative work. I laughed and sighed and felt many feelings of camaraderie with Sarah. I had the sense throughout Mitzi Bytes that Sarah and I would be able to have a cup of tea and be instant kindred spirits. There is no doubt that I am the living, breathing demographic for Mitzi Bytes!

The part of Mitzi Bytes that was most unputtabledownable for me was when Sarah (who blogs under the pseudonym Mitzi Bytes) finally gets outed, the ramifications are as varied as are the characters she wrote about. It’s a fantastic array of reactions once the truth is out! As things fall apart for Sarah, I enjoyed this imagery:

“She’d been waiting for it. There were so many shoes. The sky was raining with them.”

I’m glad that Clare didn’t subject her protagonist Sarah to an about-face in personality upon her reckoning. Sarah is stubborn and complicated and lucky through to the end. She’s not an entirely likeable character, but she is utterly relatable – she feels real and dimensional, her inner dialogues like so many I’ve had with myself-as-audience over the years. I loved that Sarah was as much sorry about being caught as she was for hurting anyone she’d observed or portrayed in her Mitzi blog over the years. I couldn’t help but cheer for her in the end!

I so enjoyed the inclusion of Mitzi’s “archival blogs” that were well-woven in-between chapters, giving us a sense of Mitzi’s voice and evolution over time. I fact I would have happily read more of them – though to be left wanting more is probably a good thing. I had the urge to go check the Mitzi Bytes blog a number of times while I was reading, only to remember that it’s a fictional blog! It felt like a blog that could/should exist.

As someone who’s blogged a bit, sometimes regularly and sporadically of late, I enjoyed the descriptions of blogging now versus in the early 2000s throughout Mitzi Bytes. The ubiquity of blogging today is so different than 15 years ago when there were fewer options and the form was in it’s infancy. Clare is a master blogger herself – she teaches the art and work of it at university – and it’s interesting to see her thinking, experience, and evolution creep into Mitzi Bytes, giving me a real sense of “now” as I read.

***

PS: I’ve taken up my practice of cross stitch pattern design again after months away from it. Looking at the Mitzi Bytes cover, it struck me that it offered a great challenge to work with colour gradients. And so crafty readers, I humbly offer up my interpretation of the excellent graphic cover of Mitzi Bytes! If you’re a stitcher and you enjoy this image, you’re welcome to the pattern (download below) – I don’t have time to stitch it up right now, so if you do, please share!

Mitzi Bytes Cross Stitch pattern – pixels

Mitzi Bytes Cross Stitch pattern – pixels w/ symbols

*To save pattern, click on link, choose “export as pdf” under Files and save to desktop.*

October 11, 2013

Apple Picking, Autumn Savouring

I grew up in Alberta where there are not a lot of fruit trees. And somehow, I have reached my mid-thirties without managing to pick a single apple from a tree. So when a friend suggested we take ourselves and our 2-year-old sons to Avalon Orchards, an organic orchard near Barrie, Ontario, I leapt at the chance.

We had a beautiful, crisp day to pick. The boys revelled in the wandering and the eating and the tripping over ground-fall. Eating different apples in quick succession was like sampling wine, tasting the different notes in each fruit, sweetness, spicy, tart. I just felt so absolutely, utterly good. Solid, sweetness-in-the-belly good — full of friendship, the freshest fruit and the nostril tingling, mustiness of nature hunkering down.

I love apple names, they sound so thrilling — Nova Spy, Nova Mac, Freedom. All 3 of these late harvest apples are sitting in my kitchen ready for eating and baking, apple crisp season is here. I adore this time of year and it’s way too brief, so off I go to get some hand sewing done on the porch. Happy thanksgiving, for the large and the the small, for each other and for crisp autumn days that sharpen our edges in the best way.

September 16, 2013

Filling a Friend’s Fridge

I have a dear friend, the indefatigable Lindsay Zier-Vogel who came over to visit last weekend. She filled my fridge. Literally. She arrived with a laundry basket of supplies, cracked a bottle of wine and proceeded to make us dinner, then also massive amounts of delicious chili and soup for the freezer. She pulled out pre-made banana bread and homemade jam and jelly. She even cleaned up.

Life is fast and full for me these days and I have a hard time keeping up with 2 little boys. I find the shifting identity that is part and parcel of staying home with the little folk challenging, sometimes downright paralyzingly overwhelming, along side the attempt to fit my own work into the days. Lately, paralyzing-overwhelm has been winning. Lindsay knows this, we chat and text often. Her act of kindness reminded me that filling the fridge of someone who’s stumbling, if you have the means and time, is one of the very most awesome things you can do.

Chili, sausage-pesto pasta, red pepper jelly, ginger jam, carrot cake and there’s also sweet potato soup in the freezer. My cup runneth over.

I imagine one day I will waltz into her house, on a day when I have my s*%@ together a little more than she (that day will totally come, ahem!) and fill it with news and booze and delicious homemade goodness. And she might just have a glimmer of just how truly excellent her instinct was to march in here last week and own the kitchen and the conversation for a while. It made a huge difference.

August 24, 2013

End of the Nursing Epoch

Epoch ep·och (ˈe-pək, ˈe-ˌpäk) | an event or a time marked by an event that begins a new period or development | an extended period of time usually characterized by a distinctive development or by a memorable series of events | a division of geologic time less than a period and greater than an age

I knew the time was coming. And in many ways I was so very ready — to have my body back (more or less), to not be tied as intensely, as literally, to someone else. On a more practical note I am profoundly relieved to not have any more f*%#ing yeast infections on my nipples. Good times!

And yet, and yet … as I write this I feel the prickle of tears and have been a puddle of moodiness for the past couple of months as Gene weaned himself. And now it is complete. No more milk. He already forgets how to latch so when he tests out the boobs in a moment of half-sleep it feels weird for both of us and he smiles up at me and says, “done!” and snuggles in for huggy-loveies (how did I become the lady that says things like that?! But I did. Ah well.)

The end of an era, though “era” doesn’t seem like a big and juicy enough word for this event in my life. Inside it feels like a seismic shift, and the landscape of my body has altered quickly. My natural small-boob-ed-ness is returning, though things are settling a lot lower on the map of course! I walk around and feel freer, but also bereft. It’s evolution, I delight in Gene’s growth and enjoy his wee-man-ness as he finds his words and his sense of humour finds legs. He’ll be two years old in a few days. And yet.

Gene weaned in his own time, he was ready and he’s fine, I just need a little time to find my feet on the other side of this epoch in my life and body. Less than a period and greater than an age, I am ever grateful and powerfully changed for this time in my life.

A friend posted a link on Facebook to a lovely blog about mothering though somehow I found my way to this post accidentally, though so appropriately. It really moved me, it’s beautifully, hilariously written. Worth a read if you want some more on the topic.

April 5, 2013

The Really-Real-Make-Believe Collective

I am up to my neck in 5th birthday party preparations, but I had to stop and say, nay SHOUT, that this week marks the second anniversary of my lovely, indispensable editing/sanity-maintaining/friendship-over-miles collective The Veggie Vag! I wrote about it last year, so if you’re curious, hit the link and read on, the VV continues to be all it was a year ago, but better, deeper: solid goodness. I doff my hat to fellow members Christa Couture and Lindsay Zier-Vogel. And to our imaginary assistant Dane.

This year Lindsay wrote about the VV and you should check it out here, we are a charming trio if I do say so! She says of the VV: “We are each other’s backbones and backup dancers and I don’t think there’s a single word I send out that these two brilliant women haven’t read / edited / weighed in on.”

Fron L to R: Christa Couture, Lindsay Zier-Vogel and Susan Kendal (that’s me!) cheers-ing their awesomeness and 2 years of formal Veggie Vagging.

Christa sent us a photo of herself cheers-ing with her 1st anniversary mug, saying, “It’s more than a mug – it’s a reminder every morning I’m home of the dearest friends, the biggest laughs, the quickest rallying of support/bat signal replies, the best edited grant applications, and the feeling of shrinking the geographical spaces between us.” Which of course meant that Lindsay and I had to promptly stop what we were doing and also Instagram photos of ourselves cheers-ing … the best kind of procrastination!

Cheers VV.

February 19, 2013

Quinoa Brownie Success (Avec Vegetables!)

I don’t often post about cooking or baking, because while I an a tolerably good cook and a moderately successful baker, I am not exceptional. I’m too busy crafting and choreographing! However, I signed up for Rudi’s school bake sale. I said I wouldn’t, trying to dial down the volunteering in order to focus on my own work, but then he filled in the form himself with mystery 4-year-old letters and I felt bad returning it without being a joiner.

Quinoa Brownies in the morning sun. Yes, it’s true, er, obvious: I did indeed get an iPhone for xmas. And yes, that’s correct, I’m currently obsessed with taking pictures of food and daily minutia on Instagram and Hipstamatic. It may or may not pass …

What to make? Well, I thought I’d try chocolate quinoa brownies I’d seen on the PC site! A lot of the comments said that they were too wet so I immediately added some psyllium and flax to mine to bulk them up. Plus Rudi can always use a bit of extra fibre (can’t we all?!). And I thought I might as well try adding some vegetable-matter as well, in a for a penny, in for a pound. They turned out great! They’re lighter in texture than a standard brownie but quite satisfying. I’ve made them a few times now and always play with the veggie/fruit content depending on what I have lying around.

Honestly, they’re not Rudi’s favourite. He’ll eat ’em sometimes but doesn’t adore them. However, adults seen to LOVE them! A bunch of the staff at his school all wanted the recipe (so now I’m a popular mom, operation-joiner was a success!) and when I typed it up I thought I might as well share it here too. So enjoy, play with it, tell me if your kids actually ends up loving them … if they don’t I’m pretty sure you will!

January 25, 2013

Turns Out I Need a Calendar

Calendars. Perhaps they should be obsolete with all the devices surrounding us that can tell us the date. But I’m a spatially sensitive person who likes everything in its place when it comes to referencing things, like the date, regularly. Turns out I just really love calendars. Actual on-the-wall calendars.

I also love fabric (just to state the obvious). And tea towel calendars are wonderful — kitschy in the best way. I really wanted one this year and was holding back, thinking maybe I didn’t need a calendar for 2013, maybe I didn’t even need a physical daytimer, maybe I should just use the iPhone as intended… I was wrong on both accounts. I’m pretty digitally savvy, or at least functional, but I do love to look at a calendar and to write appointments and notes in a book. My brain likes it, my fingers like it, I feel more grounded and sure with paper and fabric and tangible-ness around me.

So I got my usual Moleskin daytimer and felt a little bit more myself. Which isn’t to say I don’t also use my iCal for appointments, I do, but I don’t trust it totally yet in spite of years of use. And I waited too long on the calendar, my fave was sold out by the time I decided I should do it. So I thought perhaps it was a sign, perhaps I’d try without. Then I saw one of my favourite Canadian textile artists Averil Loreti at the Toronto One of a Kind show and her calendar was so beautiful, a burst of joy in a surprising and pleasing colour palette. But I still held back thinking iPhone and iCal could, possibly, fulfill me.

I didn’t even last a month into 2013. I got the calendar. All is well in the world — I am moored, no longer adrift. Whew.

January 16, 2013

Happy 1st Blog-Birthday!

Today I am 1! Or rather, this blog areI are 1. I find that my usually-verbose self is quiet, not much to say of late, lots of percolating. And having moved to a new city and a new house over the holidays, I seem to have a moving/displacement hangover that’s taking a while to lift — probably the time of year too, I just want to hibernate, sigh. But alas, I am not a Bear and so I solider on!

I am putting the finishing touches on my work space, the room-of-my-own that I am still silly with excitement over! Here’s Rudi helping me put paint to wall. I’ll share when it’s all done. And once it’s done, then the work really begins, creating stock, opening shop, joining craft fairs. It’s a big year ahead, I’m scared and excited and ready, especially since I put this plan on ice in September for the move. So I am ready to work … if I could only get over this hibernation hump : )

September 18, 2012

The Travelling Treasure Jar

I went on the longest road trip I’ve ever taken this summer. My boys and I drove all the way from Southern Ontario to Alberta — Prairies and Rocky Mountains and my family — then back again. We wondered if we might be insane to attempt such a drive with a 4-year-old and a 10-month-old, but off we went, and it was truly a great adventure. There was only one roadside timeout for the kid (there probably should have been a few for me, ahem, lucky I’m in charge!), occasional nursing breaks for the babe and the usual gas/pee/food/photo-op stops.

I wanted to do something crafty with Rudi to keep him engaged along the way. So in addition to borrowing a portable dvd player (a total godsend) and the required colouring materials and books to read, we made a diary book for each day and prepared an antique glass canning jar to collect simple treasures along the way: Rudi’s Travelling Treasure Jar, a.k.a. The Jar!

The Jar itself is a beaut with its glass lid and metal flip attachment. And every day, once or twice, we’d gather a stone or pine cone from the roadside, parking lot or forest path of the day, or a coin from the US, or an arcade token from the movie theatre, or some grain or oats from the fields we were passing, or a beer cap from mommy and daddy’s adult pops in the hotel room (we drink beer with really cool caps okay? It’s all for the kid. Honestly) .

I only had to suggest collecting pieces the first couple of times, after that Rudi would gather things for his Jar in his pocket and in the evenings in our hotel, or at Granny’s house, we’d open The Jar and review the contents, talking about our journey thus far and then add the new trinket/s to the collection. A couple of favourites are the little white figurine of a man with a walking stick and rifle, his paint all but gone. Rudi spotted him in my aunt’s garden and she said, “take it! the bird’s are always dropping crazy things in here!” We can hardly imagine what adventures the wee old fellow has endured! And the mini horseshoe, which was smithed for Rudi right before his very eyes at the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village where I worked in my teens.

The final result is a jar full of prairie flotsam and jetsam, a beautiful collection of the in-betweens from our trip. And those were my favourite parts — the in-betweens. Being cooped in a car with my husband and our boys for 5 days of driving each way was my favourite. Kicking stones in the hotel parking lot in Lake Louise and then running through a forest path to catch the sight of the passing train was my favourite. Stopping for an emergency pee on a prairie back road that looked so quiet only to be overwhelmed by the earsplitting cricket song outside was my favourite. Standing on the car to get a better view of the massive hoodoos in the North Dakota badlands … you get the drift, I could go on and on about the favourite moments that The Jar conjures.

Of course there were the standard squabbles between all of us, usually to do with hunger, exhaustion or sore butts (around hour 5 Rudi would always moan spectacularly and say, “my bum hurts!”) but really there was more harmony than I’d anticipated and I loved that it was just the 4 of us in our Toyota Matrix ship, rocket or pirate depending on Rudi’s mood, zipping across the miles and miles and miles and miles between my adult and childhood homes. I’d do it again in a heartbeat. And I look forward to opening the jar from time to time with Rudi and remembering.

August 31, 2012

Rearview Fridays: One Year Ago …

It’s time to revive Rearview Friday again, now that the summer is waning. For those of you who are new here, on Fridays I generally do a Rearview Fridays post where I look back at an old project, craft or dance or costume. I think it’s appropriate to share my best creation of all time* since it’s a year ago tomorrow that he began to breathe the air. September 1st, 2011, Gene joined us.

*Save for my other equally “best” creation, a little man who came to light on April 7th, 2008. His name is Rudi and he is awesome.

One year ago I went to sleep and had a restful night, dreaming about the little passenger in my belly. It was just 2 days til my September 2nd due date. I woke up to my waters breaking — just like the movies — and within 7 hours (an a beep-load of work, ahem, thank-you) little Gene-bean was born.

I am, more than ever, more even than at the moment of his safe arrival, overwhelmed with gratitude for this wee person. Our family is infinitely more rich with this addition. We see each other better, we are more harmonious than ever and I think and have more space for the joy — and the madness of course! The 4 of us are corners of out little unit in the world. I count my blessings, I am profoundly lucky.

And while I had pledged to myself that I won’t show photos of the boys faces here on this blog, I decided I want to share this one today. I was so inspired by the blog and photos of Adele Enersen on her blog Mila’s Daydreams, which I enjoyed while Rudi was a toddler. Enjoy my little postman, the scene is entirely made of baby blankies, hats, socks and washcloths!

Gene the littlest postman. Inspired by the baby scenes of Adele Enersen.