Suzanne Craig-Whytock's Blog, page 7

Tweet Tweet, Twiddle Twiddle

There are numerous reasons to get off the app formerly known as Twitter: the majority of people on there now are racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic. It used to be that Twitter brought people together—for example, I thought that there were many things about myself that I thought were specific to me, and then I learned I was not, in fact, unique, which was actually a comfort. What the internet taught me mostly is that the things I thought were strange and quirky about myself (“mydangblog…strange and quirky?!” I hear you whispering in shock) are traits that a great many other people share. Imagine 100 years ago not knowing that having upwards of 8 decorative pillows on your bed was perfectly reasonable? Or that there were other people who not only knew what “the good tea towel” was, they also got upset when someone used it to wipe the counter? Here are a couple of other examples:

I was shocked to learn that I am NOT the only person who does this. Whenever I take a plate of chicken out to the BBQ, I grab the tongs, and the first thing I do, immediately, is to click the tongs together, like “Clang, c-clang, clang”. The only difference between me and the author of this tweet is that I don’t REALLY do it to make sure they work. I mean, that’s part of it for sure, but for me, it’s more of a swashbuckler-y type thing. I like to imagine that I’m a grilling female Errol Flynn, and when I clang them, I also do a little lunge and a quick parry. I sometimes end with a flourish and a bow because that’s how I roll.

A while ago, Ken and I had a family get together, and someone left a fork behind. It was a f*cking weird fork, all flat and plain and whatnot, completely unlike all my other normal, human forks. But every time I reached into the cupboard to grab a fork, IT was the one I always came out with. Once, I actually said out loud to it, “I hate you, stupid fork.” Then one day, I got fed up, and I threw it in the garbage. So I apologize to whatever family member it belonged to, but seriously, if I come to your house and see the rest of your terrible forks, they’re all going in the trash.

This is kind of like the opposite of Number 4, and while the person who wrote this tweet doesn’t understand proper punctuation (and thanks to the internet, I know I’m not the ONLY one who cares about things like this), it’s true. Just the other day, Ken came into the room. My first reaction was to say, “What are you doing?!” His response was to pause for a moment, so that he could do a mental scan to try and figure out why I was asking him that.

Ken: Um…nothing?
Me: Why are you using my mug?
Ken: (nervously scoffs) This isn’t your mug.
Me: Uh, yes it is.
Ken: No, it’s not—your name’s not written on it.
Me: There’s a giant f*cking “S” on both sides, Ken.
Ken: We have tons of other mugs. Use one of those.
Me: I could offer you THE SAME ADVICE, KEN!!

So yes, social media has some positives. On the other hand, I’m seriously thinking of getting off it completely for one reason and one reason only: TEMU. Every time I go on any social media, I’m immediately inundated by ads for Temu. I don’t know what Temu is, I don’t know what Temu does, except that it has annoyed me to the point of rage. Especially this ad which appears on every third post as I’m scrolling, regardless of what platform I’m on:

Who the hell is this child and why is she wearing that cheap-ass T-shirt?!! Why would I want to buy that T-shirt??!! And why has Temu been showing me the same godforsaken ad for a small girl in a stupid T-shirt all day and all night for several weeks now??!!! And what is it that her MAMA HAS???!!! I’ve never bought anything from them and now I NEVER will, but I can’t even block the ad, because when I try, it takes me IMMEDIATELY TO THEIR WEBSITE BUT DOESN’T SHOW ME THE T-SHIRT SO I WILL NEVER KNOW. Temu? F* u.

Present and Accounted For

Last week, I received funding from The Writer’s Union of Canada to go up North and do writing workshop presentations at the local high school there. I’ve done this before at other schools and it usually goes well, despite the incident in the spring where the teacher in charge confided that she hadn’t told the students I was coming. When I asked, “Why not?”, she said if they knew, NONE OF THEM WOULD SHOW UP, and if that isn’t a boost to the old ego, I don’t know what is. But the kids this week all knew I was their guest speaker and they seemed pretty jazzed about it. As for me, I was exhausted for a variety of reasons. First, after haranguing Ken about taking too long at work and making us late KEN, we set out on the 4 hour drive. We were about 20 minutes down the highway when Ken asked where I’d put the copies of the books I was taking to raffle off to the kids, and I realized with horror that I had forgotten an entire bag, which also contained the memory stick with my PowerPoint presentation. I actually started to cry at the thought of going back and losing even more time, as if I wasn’t stressed out of my mind with anxiety already, but there was no choice. Luckily, Ken isn’t the kind of guy to give me grief over things like that—goodness knows I felt bad enough. And not only was I exhausted after the now 6-hour drive, I also have a terrible time sleeping at hotels. I also felt grubby, because the motel we had booked smelled terrible and had no hot water. It made me appreciate social distancing even more because I kept 6 feet between me and anyone who could catch a whiff of ‘motel stank’.

But the students were lovely and very enthusiastic—until it came time to share their writing ideas with the whole group. Their reluctance was palpable. Luckily, I have a little trick up my sleeve that I use in times like this.

Me: I’m working on a new book right now, a murder mystery, and I need victims. So if you put up your hand and share your writing, I will name a character after you, and you get to choose how I murder you.
Students (all hands go flying up in the air): Me! Me!

Here are some of my favourites:

Matty – killed on stage during a musical number, possibly electrocuted by her guitar

Kennedy – flaming arrow to the chest

Zack – burned in a public place on a giant pyre

Grace – pushed off a rollercoaster at the top by a very strong 5-year-old

Jimmy – killed fighting a bear

It was simultaneously adorable AND terrifying how much thought they’d put into this. And it all reminded me so much of Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies. If you haven’t read it (click link if you want to have it read to you but it’s gruesome, just an fyi), it’s a very darkly humorous alphabet book: A is for Amy who fell down the stairs / B is for Basil assaulted by bears…and it goes on, only getting worse, as you can well imagine, but the illustrations are hilarious. Anyway, it was a good time and Ken and I made it home that night without having to stay in motel hell again.

But doing things like this is getting harder and harder for me. When did I stop wanting to explore the world and just stay home? I know it’s not just me—I was having a conversation with a friend the other day:

Friend: How did it happen? When did I become so old?
Me: I know, right? Like, all I want is to putter in the garden, write, make miniatures, and watch TV in bed with a glass of wine—that’s the dream.
Friend: One of my friends had extra tickets to the Pink show last week, and I LOVE Pink, but it was in Toronto, last minute, and I was like, go ALL THE WAY to Toronto and see a concert AT NIGHT without any chance to prepare? Hard pass!
Me: Ken wanted to go to a restaurant last week and I begged him to let me cook for him at home. Why would I want to spend all that money to WAIT for my food to come?!
Friend: EXACTLY!

Stick, meet mud. Maybe I was always like this, but I had the youthful energy to overcome it. Who knows. At any rate, if you’re looking for me, you can find me at home, nestled in my office writing a story about a boy who gets killed in a bear fight. I already have the last line written: “It was a bear, Jimmy. What did you expect?”

Contest Winners; Quince-A-Rama

Contest Winners; Quince-A-Rama

First, I’m happy to say that several many of you guessed that the thing missing from my tiny room was indeed a clock! Well done, and now you will all be murdered in nefarious ways in my new comedy book Murder Most Novel about a young woman/aspiring author who becomes embroiled in an Agatha Christie style murder scenario. If you have a particular preference for your murder (poison, machete, bashed with a clock), let me know, and I’ll try to accommodate. You were all very clever, but I have to say that Anonymole’s poem/riddle/guess really took the day:

Dueling portraits invite conversation,
while the bird tweets its irritation.

Below, the blood bright Persian,
offsets the walls’ psilocybin excursions.

A Tiffany, a punch bowl, a violin,
speak of parties, a present left to atone for prior sins.

Yet the room exists in silence,
it enjoys no ticks, no tocks,

For nowhere amongst its fine refinements,
do we see a cherry clock.

So thank you, my friends. You all rose to the challenge and proved that you really do know me so well!

In other news, I’ve been very busy because it’s one of my favourite times of year—the quince is finally ripe. Many years ago, we had a pear tree on our property which started to die. But as it did, another plant sprouted from its base, and that plant was a quince bush. Apparently, quince have hardier roots than some pear species so they’re often grafted onto quince. And while I missed the pear, I soon realized the (labour-intensive) joy that is the quince fruit. They are rock hard and can’t be eaten as is, but if you cook them first, they turn a delightful pink colour and taste amazing. Every year, I become super-home-maker-y and produce several batches of jam as well as some wonderful quince crumble. Of course, I always have more quince than I need so I can sell off the rest to quince lovers in the area and make some money to fund my miniature obsession.

In other other news, I also completed a miniature outdoor courtyard. I think it’s very cute but I’m at the point where I don’t quite know what to do with all these miniatures—maybe I can throw them in with the quince, like “Buy some quince, get a miniature room for free”. It’s a vicious/delicious circle.

Read For Filth; A Mini Challenge

One of the things that I do as a writer, something I simultaneously love AND hate, is live readings. While it’s a wonderful experience to share your work with an appreciative audience, at the same time, I spend days beforehand worrying and stressing about it. What will I read? How long do I have? What if someone reads something similar to me right before it’s my turn? Also, I write some pretty dark stuff and I always have to preface a live reading with “this is fiction” or “my parent are really lovely people” or “I have never killed anyone…that I’m aware of” or “Why are there small children here?!” I’ve had a couple of really awful readings in the past, like the time that I was invited to an online poetry reading. I don’t usually read my own poetry and don’t consider myself a poet, but I DID have a poem that I was quite proud of. It was about the nature of time, and how doing something kind in the moment led me to avoid getting hit by a deer on the road later by about 10 seconds, the same 10 seconds I didn’t take to think about being kind earlier. But then the person before me told the audience a horribly tragic story about a family member who’d been hit and killed in a deer/car accident, which left me scrambling for another poem to read. And then there was the time that I was invited to a reading and wasn’t told until I got there that the theme was love. And I was like, have you even read ANY of my work? Because most of my writing is VERY dark. I didn’t feel too bad though, because the woman before me read a story where the two “lovers” are murdered in a very gory way by a vengeful ghost, and it made my selection seem tame by comparison. Then last weekend, I was at a horror writing conference and I was asked to read. “Perfect,” I thought. “Finally an audience who can appreciate some of my darker stories.” So I picked a couple of short stories that I NEVER read aloud because they are VERY violent. I got up to the podium and began. When I got to a particularly gruesome point in the story, I looked at the audience and stopped reading. “Wow,” I said. “I’d forgotten how nasty this was.” Everybody laughed, but it was that kind of uncomfortable laughter where you want to be supportive of the person who’s just bombing. I’m pretty sure that was all in my head, because when I’d finished the second piece, there was a lot of applause and some people came to buy my book. But still. I guess the problem is that I tend to overthink things. I mean, if you ask me to do a reading, you should know ahead of time exactly what you’re in for.

The last two readings I’ve done though, have been from my humour collection. I didn’t think anyone but me would GET me, but apparently they do, and both times, instead of having to apologize in advance, I just read and people laugh ( and buy even more of my books). Which made me realize that my audiences ARE responding appropriately. They laugh when I’m funny, and scream and cry when I’m scary. Mission accomplished.

The other thing I did this week was (almost finish) my new miniature dining room. I don’t know why I love doing these things so much, and I don’t know whether it’s going to lead to me being a full-blown dollhouse person, but it makes me happy. And here’s a challenge–take a look at the room and if you can identify the one thing that’s still missing (because remember, I said “almost finished”), that will cement you as one of the people who know me the best (Anonymole, I’m looking at you), and I will name a character in my next murder story after you.   

Also, the other day, I yelled at a crow. Why? Because it wouldn’t stop cawing and I was trying to write. So I went to the door, opened it, and yelled, “Shut the f*ck up, would you?!” And the crow stopped cawing. Another mission accomplished. And that dead mouse on my porch? Who knows where it came from…

Phoning It In

For today’s post, I’m sharing the last four pictures I took on my phone.

1) You might be squinting right now and saying, “Is that some kind of bug?” and you would be correct. I was staying at my brother’s to be there for my nephew while my brother, who has a PhD, was involved in some very important work stuff. I, being retired, was more than happy to fill in. We were going to have one of my nephew’s favourite meals, ‘Thai-Inspired Beef Bowls’. It was in a bag in the fridge from one of those ‘meal kit’ places, and on Monday night, I got it out and started to prep it. I poured the rice into a pot, and one of the grains looked very dark. I put a different pair of reading glasses on (one for REALLY close-up viewing, unlike the pair I was already wearing, which was for medium viewing, and also unlike a third pair in my purse which is for ‘things that are approximately four feet away’), and I scrutinized the rice. And forgive me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe that rice grains have legs. I called my nephew over for his opinion:

Me: Hey, do you think that’s a bug?
Nephew: Definitely.
Me: It looks dead. I could pick it out…
Nephew: You could.
Me: The rice has to be boiled anyway. That would kill any bug corpse germs, right?
Nephew: It would.
Me: Then we’re in agreement?
Nephew: We are.

Seemed a shame to waste a meal that had been so obviously packaged with care. And the ‘inspired’ part? I’m going to try making this at home—without the bugs.

2) This ad is confusing. Mainly because I never get cranky when I drink. But these boxes…and I’m not sure how it works. Do you put the drinks IN the boxes? Do they play music WHILE you drink? No wonder they’re cranky. I’d be pissed off too if people kept clogging up my wind-up mechanism with alcohol. And they’re all in perfect condition except that one…is a plate. It always amazes me though when, rather than looking up the actual term for a thing, someone chooses to just post an ad like this:

Box Owner: I need to post an ad for these weird alcoholic boxes but I don’t know what that thing is called that winds them up.
Random Friend: You could look it up.
Box Owner: Looking up things makes me cranky—oh wait!

3) I took this screenshot from LinkedIn. After my last post ABOUT LinkedIn, I got a message teasing me that people had been looking at my ‘profile’. I get these quite often but they won’t tell you WHO was actually looking until you give them money to upgrade your plan. But now I think LinkedIn is just f*cking with me, because the Canada Revenue Agency is the government taxman, like the IRS, and the Attorney General oversees the court system and I HAVE COMMITTED NO TAX CRIMES, LINKEDIN SO NICE TRY. The other two companies make sense, but when I saw the last one, I was inordinately excited, like why is a steakhouse looking ME up? Cuz it’s usually the other way around and maybe it’s a sign that I should go and get some steak.

4) This is the cutest cat on the planet. Period.

Profiled

This weekend, I’m doing a book event called dReadCon, so here’s a throwback for you!

A few days ago, I saw a red flag hovering above the LinkedIn app on my phone. “Ooh,” I thought. “Is someone interested in being my friend?” Now, I know that connections on LinkedIn aren’t technically called ‘friends’, but what exactly DO you call them? ‘Business peeps’? ‘Corporate posse’? ‘Kudo Klub’? (If you know anything about LinkedIn, you know it’s always pressuring you to send kudos to people as if the mere fact that you’ve been connected to them for five years is cause for celebration, like ‘You’ve never once LIKED MY POSTS, MARCIA, so kudos for that.’ (I spend most of my time on LinkedIn wishing people happy birthday or congratulating them on their work anniversaries with lovely, personalized, auto-generated kudos.) At any rate, when I opened the app, I was even more excited to see that it was a personal message.

So I clicked on the message icon in breathless anticipation. There was a message from ‘Jarod’. It read, “Hi Suzanne! I wanted to reach out because, based on your profile, I thought you might be interested in discussing your sports flooring needs. Please reach out to me anytime!” Now, there were several questions I had about this message:

1) Who the hell is Jarod?

2) What’s with all the exclamation marks? This is LinkedIn, not Twitter/X.

3) What in the name of all that is holy could possibly have led Jarod to read my profile and glean from it that I had ‘sports flooring needs?

4) What even IS sports flooring?

And because I had no interest in engaging with Jarod about his weird flooring fetish, I will answer these questions myself:

1) I have no damned idea. He is neither a Business Peep nor a member of my Corporate Posse.

2) Jarod is very excited about sports flooring and the idea of potentially connecting with me over it. Perhaps he envisions us, sipping wine on a terrace somewhere, enthusiastically discussing whatever the heck sports flooring is.

3) I re-examined my profile. It says my name and that I’m the author of several books and that I’m the editor of DarkWinter Press and Literary Magazine. It also says I’ve been endorsed for Public Speaking and Educational Leadership despite the fact that the only thing I ever post on LinkedIn is my blog. Where, in ANY of that, is there the slightest indication that I’m a) athletic b) interested in sports c) interested in floors? I looked further down and realized that someone had endorsed me for ‘Coaching’. Could that be the tenuous link?

4) The only thing I can even think of is astroturf. Why would I ever in a million years need astroturf? I HAVE GRASS, JAROD. Or is sports flooring that bouncy stuff? Because that MIGHT be cool, maybe in like one room where you could go when you were stressed and just bounce around on your sports flooring like Tigger until you felt better. Then it occurred to me—could ‘sports flooring’ be a euphemism? But I couldn’t for the life of me think what it might be a euphemism for, so I asked Ken:

Me: What could an interest in sports flooring be a euphemism for? Like, you’re a professional killer and you bury someone under concrete at an arena?
Ken: That’s very dark. Hmm. The only euphemism about sports I’ve ever heard is ‘Water Sports’.
Me: Water sports? Like water polo?
Ken: No, like…you know, ‘Golden Showers’.
Me: EWWWWWW.

So I immediately wrote back to Jarod: I DON’T DO THAT. What a creep. Then I looked and realized I had two other messages, one from ‘Matt’, who wanted to know if I was interested in an AI Training Pilot Project. Now, if that’s a euphemism for teaching my robot butler how to bring me wine, count me in. The other was from someone who thinks I like camping. I don’t. And the best way to get me to LIKE camping is definitely not to send me a metal cylinder FULL OF FIRE. So guess which message I’ll be responding to based on my profile?

Kit and Ka-glue-dle

Right now, I’m covered in white glue and seething with anger. Why, you ask? Because—and I should have known better—I bought another miniature kit from Amazon, and this one is a veritable nightmare. It looked so adorable on the website—a 2 story apartment with a four poster bed, a grand piano, vintage accessories INCLUDING a desk made from a cast iron sewing machine base, and best of all—an UNDERWOOD TYPEWRITER. And then the kit came. And once again, the instruction were incomprehensible, having been reverse engineered into English from Chinese.

But the worst part was that EVERYTHING had to be built from scratch. Therein lies the problem. I have never been known for my manual dexterity. I have very large hands and enough arthritis that they just don’t work very well. In order to built this kit, I have to manipulate pieces of balsa wood so thin and tiny that I’ve already broken several parts. LUCKILY…there is white glue to put it all back together. Oh, not the glue that came with the kit—that was dried solid—but good old Lepage’s white glue. I gave up early on trying to be accurate with my glue spurting, and now I just layer it on everywhere. It dries clear, which is the only good thing about it, aside from the fact that it eventually sticks thing together. So I glue a bunch of stair treads, hold them in my fingers until they’re fairly stable, and then try to pry my hands off without pulling apart the stuff I’ve just glued. And I’m not always successful, so then it’s back to SQUARE F*CKING ONE. Pardon my language, but the typewriter? The one I was so jazzed about? It’s literally half an inch wide and it took TWENTY-TWO pieces of miniscule balsa wood to construct! You heard me—TWENTY-TWO. And don’t get me even started on the stupid grand piano. I would have given up days ago (and it’s been days…many, many days) but if you know me at all, you know I’m no quitter. I will complete this monstrosity, right down to the ridiculous lamp that requires me to glue 8 pieces of plastic and two pieces of metal together, or my name isn’t Player One. The only thing I refuse to do is the insane wireframed eyeglasses that are supposed to sit on the paper feather that I had to carefully cut out (and then locate once it landed on the kitchen floor, and that was eighteen minutes of my life I’m NEVER getting back), because I can’t even see it with my OWN glasses. I hate it. I hate it so much. But I will glue-fully triumph…and then I will throw it onto our firepit and watch it burn like the hellspawn it is.

In other news, Ilana, my favourite cat, is back living with us while the kids are home. And she continues to be completely adorable, as you can tell from the picture below, and is slowly getting over her fear of Atlas, who loves her SO much that he wants to be near her all the time. Sadly, she does not reciprocate his affection. Still, it’s such a joy every morning when she comes running to see me (and my bag of kitty treats) and lets me pet her to my heart’s content…with my glue-y hands.

Moving On, Thankfully

It’s been an absolute whirlwind of a week. Our daughter and her boyfriend had agreed with their landlord that if he could find a tenant by the end of August, they would move out early and not have to pay September rent, and live with us for a couple of months while they looked for work closer to home. Which was all fine and good, but the landlord called them on TUESDAY AFTERNOON to tell them he’d found a tenant. And so it began. First thing, finding a rental moving truck on the busiest end of the month/long weekend/students returning to university in Canada. After several calls and being told that nothing was available, we managed to get a truck in a city on the way to their apartment, which was around 4 hours away from us. Second thing, figuring out the driving—Ken would drive the truck back, Kate’s boyfriend would load up his vehicle with boxes, and Kate and I would drive her car back. We got to their place at 4 pm on Wednesday and started frantically packing. Ken and I had a hotel room for the night, and we got up early to go back and finish. By noon on Thursday, the entire place was cleared and Ken was on his way in the moving truck, having taken a head start since he would have to drive more slowly. I’m no use with heavy lifting thanks to my bad shoulder, so I spent the time packing up the kitchen and cleaning the apartment.

By 1 pm on Thursday, the landlord ( a very nice man) came, oohed and ahhed at how clean everything was (YOU’RE WELCOME, CHILDREN) and we were on our way. Or were we???

45 minutes outside of the city we’d just left, we were in heavy traffic when an alarm sounded…

Me: The car says it’s turned the air conditioning off because the engine is very hot!
Kate: Weird. I’m sure it’s fine. It’s a hot day and we’re just crawling along. Put down the windows.

2 minutes later…

Me: The car says the engine is overheating and to switch to idle!
Kate: We should pull over.

The car was toast. And there we were, alongside the busiest highway in Ontario, transport trucks zipping by, almost 4 hours from home. I called our roadside assistance:

Me: I need some help. Our car has broken down on the 401 West.
Dispatcher: We’ll send someone out. Under your plan, the driver can tow you up to 10 kilometres—every additional kilometre will be $4.50. He will be there in approximately 132 minutes.
Me: WHAT?

And this is when I went into full blown panic mode. And for me, that doesn’t mean freaking out externally—it means I go into complete silent shutdown. How the f*ck were we going to get home? I was too upset to even cry. Then I got a text message that the driver was on his way, and that he would actually be there in 30 minutes. We could track him in an app and sure enough, he arrived in under 30. When the driver, a really young guy, looked at the car, he shook his head and said he couldn’t tell what was wrong, like maybe we needed oil or maybe it could be more complicated, like a part. We checked the nearest garages on google maps, and they were all over 10km away. I’d resigned myself to paying the extra charge to get towed to a repair shop, Uber to a car rental, and do the 4 hour drive another day for the car, when suddenly the driver said, “Hey—if you call right now and ask to upgrade your plan to Premium, I can tow you all the way home if it’s under 320 km.” AND IT WAS 297.4 KM. I immediately called and paid for the upgrade, and we were on our way, Kate in the tow truck passenger seat and me in the back on a bench seat with no seatbelts, but he assured me that “it was safe.”

And you know what? It was a long drive but we had a great time. He stopped at a roadside service centre for a bathroom break and snacks, we made fun of personalized license plates that we saw on the road, and he played very cool techno music. He got us home in under 5 hours (the traffic going through Toronto was horrifying) and dropped us and the car at our literal door. I gave him a huge tip, rest assured, and then Kate and I both collapsed into the arms of our loved ones.

So while this post might not be as funny as usual, and maybe not even funny at all, it’s full of gratitude for the guy who drove us almost 300 kilometres and then had to drive back home himself. And yes, he said it was fine because he got paid by the hour, but he could have just towed us to a garage and left us there to figure it out. He didn’t, and for that I’m truly thankful.

That’s My Name

Last Tuesday, I was in full recovery mode from our trip—jetlag was over, the unpacking was finally done (yes, I took my time, don’t judge me), and we were back to routine. I was at the computer, working on the new book that DarkWinter Press is releasing soon (a poetry collection titled Ever Striding Edge by the wonderful Paul Brookes, and you can see the gorgeous cover, created by wonderful artist Jane Cornwell, at the end of this post) and revising my own manuscript for Nomads of the Modern Wasteland after receiving a lot of feedback from both Kate and Ken. I decided to take a break, as one does, and peruse my social media. Lo and behold, there was a notification that I had received a comment on a vacation photo (I believe the photo was one of the whale tails from our excursion). I checked the comment and it was this:

Not only am I charming, but also attractive and stunning? Wow! I was almost sold on this guy but then he said: “You have the name with my late wife”? Do you mean to tell me, James Sam Gibson, that your dead wife was ALSO called Suzanne Craig-Whytock?! What kind of crazy coincidence is THAT? And how did it come to be? Your last name is Gibson, so wouldn’t she be Suzanne Craig-Gibson? Or did she take on the name, kind of a nom de plume, after reading about the semi-famous writer, Suzanne Craig-Whytock?

Donna Gibson: My darling James. I have come to a sudden decision. I hope you won’t think it too impetuous of me.
James Sam Gibson: My darling honeyboobookins. Whatever is it that you have decided? A new hairstyle perchance? I do love a good bob, as you are well aware.
Donna Gibson: Alas, no. Please gird your loins against that particular disappointment. The decision is regarding my name. I have recently come across a marvellous writer—a strange person yes, but someone with a wonderful way of words, nonetheless, a true inspiration. And thus, I will be changing my name from the somewhat mundane Donna Gibson to…SUZANNE CRAIG-WHYTOCK!!
James Sam Gibson: Oh my darling! What an incredible choice! And of course, when you die, I shall reach out to your namesake and attempt to rekindle our love with HER!
Donna Gibson: It is indeed a wise path to take. And now I must go and buy several clocks.
James Sam Gibson: But my darling turtledove, we already have a clock.
Donna Gibson/Suzanne Craig-Whytock: As a wise, charming, attractive, and stunning woman once told me, you can never have too many clocks.

Anyway, as you can imagine, I deleted the comment and blocked the troll. What is with these bot accounts anyway? If you knew anything at all about me, you’d know that if I was single,  “former military Christian widower” is the very last thing I’d ever be interested in. Now, if the profile said “Retired clockmaker and man about town with a penchant for designer handbags. Ask me which bathroom in my Victorian mansion is my favourite”, then you might have a shot.

In other news, I forgot to tell you that the weirdest thing about our cruise was that one of the lounges was booked every day for a “Private Function.” And that function was “KNITOPIA”. Yes, a very large number of passengers on the ship were there as part of a large knitting group. No, not a company that specialized in woollen textiles—an actual unrelated factum of knitters. While the rest of us were on shore excursions exploring Greenland, they were sitting in their windowless lounge knitting. While we were watching incredible Cirque du Soleil type shows, they were sitting in their windowless lounge knitting. While we were enjoying the social activities or watching the glassblowing in the Hot Glass Studio, they were sitting in their windowless lounge knitting. At one point, Ken and I were coming back from a fun game show in the Observation Lounge—it was after 10 pm, and as we went by the knitting lounge, there were about 50 people in it and they were all watching A KNITTING VIDEO and following along as the person in the video knitted one’d and purled two’d. I ask you—what the hell is the point of spending that kind of money on a cruise, if all you do is sit in a room and knit? And apparently, they had to pay EXTRA to reserve the lounge for 12 days. I actually saw one of them when we were in Greenland—she was sitting at a café table inside the local grocery store and SHE WAS KNITTING. Seriously—give me 10 grand and I will make your meals and turn down your bed every day while you knit in the comfort of your own home. And I’ll be charming and attractive and stunning while I do it.

Now available for pre-order!

Land Ho!

I’m finally back from our trip to Greenland and Iceland, and it was an amazing time. The food and room were excellent, the entertainment was top notch, and the shore excursions—wow! Greenland is incredible and the north of Iceland is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. We went whale watching (saw 3 different humpbacks), toured around with locals, and renewed our wedding vows in a mass ceremony presided over by the ship’s captain. Overall, I couldn’t be happier. But of course, it wouldn’t be a mydangblog trip without some funny things to share as well, so today’s topic is Weird Signs That I Saw On My Trip:

This isn’t technically a sign–it was the name of the pilot boat that helped our ship get out of the bay in New Jersey. “Cape Fear” seemed like a very ominous name for a boat—personally, I prefer boat names like Boaty McBoatFace or Ship Of Fools, because they’re much less prophetic-sounding (I originally had Full Of Seamen but Ken said that wasn’t very PG-13, so I changed it. Sorry.). But we had nothing to fear—we said farewell to the Statue of Liberty under dark but beautiful skies and then we were on our way. (Also, if you look carefully, you’ll notice that the other boat seems to be named Double Skin 27, and I don’t know why but that makes me think of serial killers).

The reason this sign is hysterically funny isn’t found on the sign itself. You’ll notice that from 1875 until 1903, the building was used as a Catholic School for Girls. Beginning in 2001, it became The Cotton Club. What you can’t see is that The Cotton Club is a STRIP CLUB. So it’s still a “school for girls”—just naked, naughty ones. The Sisters of Mercy must be rolling in their graves.

This one is just funny in its simplicity:

Tourist: Whose food is this?
Icelander: Is Moe’s Food.
Tourist: What kind of food is it?
Icelander: Sheep eyes and rotted shark.
Tourist: You eat that kind of thing here?!
Icelander: Já. Would you like some sour milk and fermented testicles?

Yes, according to our one tour guide, Icelanders eat a lot of strange food. About the rotted/fermented shark, she actually said, “It tastes like shit, but we love it.” I can’t really judge though—I’m Scottish, and people say the same thing about haggis. It also explains why the restaurant looks kind of like a dumpster. (And yes, I know that IS is short for Iceland, but seeing it on all kinds of signs made it incredibly funny and had me randomly pointing at things and yelling “Is souvenir shop, Is seal fur processing plant, Is waterfall”, and so on.)

This sign was outside the oldest bookstore in Iceland. I was pretty hyped by the whole “magical world” thing, and it set up some pretty high expectations, which were immediately dashed when we went inside to discover that there was NO magic at all. Just an Icelandic guy selling books, candles, and jam. Still, he was very nice, and the other people in our taxi van were super-jazzed by all the Icelandic refrigerator magnets. We did see an actual magician on the ship who performed in the theatre. He came into the audience to get a volunteer and before I knew it, he’d grabbed my hand and hauled me up in front of about 300 people. Normally, I would have been terrified that he was going to cut me in half or make me quack like a duck but I’d been drinking a lot of free champagne at the art auction, so I went along with it. Turned out to be just a card trick, but it was really cool and fun, and for days after, people would see me in the elevator and say, “Hey! You were the girl on stage” so he made me kind of famous in a cruise ship way.

But now we’re back, and I’m playing catch-up with everything that I missed over the last two weeks, because ship wifi is crappy, as anyone who has ever been on a cruise ship will tell you. Oh, they HAVE excellent wifi, but to get anything other than the basic connection, you have to pay an exorbitant cost. So when they asked if I wanted to upgrade, I just said, “All signs point to NO.”