Sandy Day's Blog, page 10

The Powder Room

Next to the urn of knitting needles on the couch I set another clear glass vase. This is step one in renovating a powder-room: the removal of vases and knitting needles from the cupboard. There are more than a dozen clear glass vases in this house, many of them out of sight since the day they were placed on the floor and nudged to the back of the large bathroom cupboard after Mother’s Day or Thanksgiving or some other occasion when someone sent someone in this house flowers from the florist. The flowers wilted and died, the vases last forever. Will the florist want these vases back?

The powder-room closet is about to be transformed into a walk-in shower eliminating this storage space.

But the knitting needles. What in the woolly world should I do with a jar of old knitting needles? Some of them are so old, green with round numbered ends, that I remember them from the long-ago days, back at the bungalow, back before my life changed more than half a century ago. They survived that house move, and a house move since then too. No one in this house knits.

Buttons, a jar of buttons because you never know when you might need a button. More likely these days, a niece or a cousin will make some fabulous creation with buttons, a wall hanging or a decorative cushion, or a doll.

In the meantime, the jar of buttons nestles up next to an old wicker sewing basket. A dusty decrepit sewing basket, which hasn’t been opened in years and years and years. Better keep that.

I have lived through at least two bathroom renovations in my life and I don’t even remember them; they didn’t make a blip on my radar. But this one is a big deal. Let me explain why.

We’re doing it so that the 92-year-old we live with, I’m just going to call her 92 from here on, she’ll be able to roll right in and get into the shower without any supervision. It’s independence and dignity we’re after. 92, like most 92-year-olds, is hanging on fiercely to her obstinate personality as if her life depended on it. Let’s just say, she’s freaking out about the mess, and the strange man in the house, and where is she supposed to go to the bathroom?

The coffee table in the living room is piled high with shoeboxes and stationery boxes full of photographs. Without the cupboard in the powder room, we have to find places to store all this stuff. Store and store and store. Until when? What for? What the heck is this life we live where we amass knitting needles and buttons and photographs and all the while we’re leaving our dusty skin cells everywhere? It’s like an archaeological dig happening in the cupboard of the powder room.

Tomorrow, the room will be stripped down to the dry wall, is what the workman told us. There will be dust.

Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.

Photos to come.

Wanna buy a button?

Just kidding, I’m sure you have millions of your own. (And apologies to my friend who suffers from Koumpounophobia for this post; she is why I added the trigger warning.) But I love hearing from readers who aren’t afraid of buttons so please reply to this email with your thoughts and comments and memories. You keep me inspired and dedicated.

If you received this in your email inbox, you are already a subscriber. No need to do anything more. But if you’d like to support my writing with a paid subscription, I will send you an autographed copy of my new book, Odd Mom Out.

Have you read Chatterbox, my book of poetry? Below is a recording of me reading the first poem in the book . My voice is a little crackly, but I hope you enjoy it.

For links to all my books, please visit my website sandyday.caThanks for reading, see you next weekend!

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Vast Affection

I’m reading a book by an author I only recently discovered, Crow Lake by Mary Lawson. It's fiction, Mary writes fiction, but it takes place in a small Ontario town, up north, near a lake, not unlike the place where Mary is from. The father in the novel has the same profession as Mary’s father. The book contains the phrase, “I remember, I remember,” over and over again. 

I’m sitting on the beach at the cottage looking out at the lake, its dancing colour, drinking in its sound. The horizon is distinct on this clear day, a white silo on a barn across the lake signals me, where the blue-grey water meets the far shore. 

When my family moved to Toronto, to the Beaches neighbourhood, my mom told me she didn't like Lake Ontario. She was accustomed to looking out on Lake Simcoe; and Lake Ontario was too wide and barren for her. No land in sight. 

(That was back before the Leslie Spit, and back when I used to think I had to hold the same opinion as my mother.)

Reading books teaches me to write books, and I have vast affection for writers, gratitude for them taking the time to sit down and write page after page after page for me.

Books entertain when time is creeping along too slowly, like the summer I was 16 and spent most of it lying in a hammock under those cedar trees over there reading Watership Down and waiting for my life to begin. 

I’m reading this afternoon to pass the time. Dipping into the words of this memoirist pretending to be a novelist, and I am inspired. She's trod down a path to the story for me, leaving footprints on the beach which I will follow until the waves wash them all away. 

Book Recommendations?

What are you reading? Anything I’d like? Hit reply and let me know or comment wherever you saw this post.

New Book Cover!

I am delighted to announce a new cover for An Empty Nest: A Summer of Stories.

What do you think?

As a member of this email list you are welcome to a free copy of the e-book. Please contact me if you haven’t got yours. If you’d like a paperback, click here: An Empty Nest Paperback. Below is a lovely review the book got when it was first published:

I am so thrilled that Sandy Day offered me a copy of An Empty Nest to read and review because I absolutely loved this short story collection. At just under a hundred pages, I had assumed the book would be a swift read, but actually found myself lingering over certain stories and rereading others so I came away from the collection almost with the sense of having read a whole novel, and an emotionally charged one at that. This sense might also be because of how each story fits so beautifully into the whole work.

Set across the course of a single summer, An Empty Nest depicts one woman’s coming to terms with herself when there are suddenly no family members or pets to demand her time. At first angry and bereft at her abandonment, she gains perspective both from looking back into her past, and out into her present. I felt this book to be a coming-of-age story for women at a point in our lives when we are often overlooked. I loved the progression from our narrator’s fraught emotional state at the beginning, to a serene tranquillity at its close. In fact reading An Empty Nest, for me, had a lot in common with a meditation. I could feel myself calming and focusing in step with our narrator. I’m not sure I have ever experienced this physical reaction in quite the same way from a book before.

Day has a sensitive and evocative turn of phrase and I felt as though every word was here for a reason. Her writing is rich with observations and memory, but never feels bloated or padded out. Yet stories of less than half a page in length are just as satisfyingly complete as those of several pages. I admit to being envious of not only the summer cabin around which many of the stories take place, but also of Day’s ability to evoke this location! I think An Empty Nest is a stunning achievement. I would highly recommend it to introspective readers and women who, like me, are rapidly yet nervously heading towards that Certain Age. ~ Stephanie Jane (Literary Flits)

If you have a friend you think would like An Empty Nest please feel free to share this email!

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For links to all my books, please visit my website sandyday.caThanks for reading, see you next weekend!

Pebbles Flintstone

Can we talk about Pebbles Flintstone?

I saw a picture of her the other day on Instagram and was immediately compelled to share it. 

A blast from the past, little Pebbles Flintstone! 

When was the last time I thought of her?

Soon after I shared the image to my story, I started having uncomfortable feelings, which were somehow connected to Pebbles. 

I wracked my brain to remember anything memorable about her other than her one line of dialogue, “Bam Bam, Bam Bam.”

That’s all she ever said. And she giggled.

She was really into Bam Bam.

And I didn’t blame her. He was a bit of an alpha male.

I feel like I have to go wade through a million episodes of The Flintstones to uncover all there is to Pebbles Flintstone. I dread googling her name and finding that others have already written about her, cultural essays, PhD theses perhaps: The Influence of Pebbles Flintstone on Women Who Love Too Much.

Without analyzing any of The Flintstones plots, why do I have the sneaking suspicion that a lot of the time, Pebbles was the brains behind the operation? Wilma was no dope, but I think Pebbles often delivered intel about how best to proceed with whatever problem Fred was currently causing in their lives.

Wilma was often crying. Do you remember that?

Pebbles was cute and sweet and cuddly and everybody loved Pebbles. Bam Bam was no slouch himself in the cute department but he was loud and arguably dangerous. Pebbles was clearly a better role model for me, a child, a girl. 

The Flintstones was a cartoon show about a family in which the father was a bufoon; a down-trodden numbskull of a guy; big eater, lazy, impressionable, and impulsive. 

At my most impressionable age, as I tried to make sense of the world around me, I, along with millions of others, probably you too, watched this show daily. Let that sink in. 

Obviously, Pebbles was the most redeemable character but my admiration for her was not sanctioned in my family. To revere or aspire to be like Pebbles, cute, adorable, sweet, was taboo. I wasn’t to admire girly-girls. Their frilly white ankle socks and patent leather shoes were to be reviled and ridiculed. Some girls in my kindergarten class had Pebbles Flintstone on their narrow slip-on running shoes. My shoes were sensible PF Flyers, which required tricky lace tying and untying to get them on and off my regrettably wide feet. I was not one of the girly-girls, and I was supposed to be pleased about that.

One of my sisters had Johnny West dolls. Do you remember them? Who even was Johnny West? I don’t know; probably something to google later. Anyway, I remember Jane West (Johnny’s wife? Sister?) in her tight turquoise breast-pocketed shirt; Jane had boobs like Barbie’s. And I remember Geronimo—his leg was missing from the knee down; my mom must have bought him on sale. He wore a groovy brown fringe vest and chaps if I remember correctly; or maybe he borrowed them from Johnny. More research is needed. The Johnny West dolls came with horses, and the dolls were all bow-legged so they could ride them, unlike Barbie who couldn’t ride a horse to save her life.

Riding horses had the nod of approval in my family. 

Pebbles wore her hair in an interesting fashion. Top knotted with a bone from a chicken or some other animal. The Flintstones were limited in their fashion accessories. 

My hair was fastened into pigtails daily—a painful hairstyle. My pigtails were held in place with rubber bands, and for one very groovy year, with thick strands of wool to tie over the elastics. My bestfriend down the street, a girly-girl, had a different sort of elastic; hers had plastic balls which wrapped around her pigtails and slipped over each ball to stay in place. It was approximately a million years later when I came to understand the difference between pulling a covered elastic off a pigtail and a rubber band. Ouch.

Here and now, I’m reclaiming my inner Pebbles. I’m getting in touch with her and finding out who she grew into. 

I’m sure there are episodes where Pebbles and Bam Bam grow up (and naturally) marry one another, providing Wilma and Betty with grandchildren.

Can we talk about Wilma and Betty? 

They were good friends. And unlike Fred and Barney, they were really smart. 

“A yuck-yuck,” as Barney would say.

Let me have it!

I’m dying to know your thoughts about Pebbles, Johnny West, or any other sensational blast from the past. Hit reply and let me know or leave a comment wherever you read this post.

Are you a word puzzle fan?

I am. That’s why I was thrilled to meet Lawrence Lloyd in an author business class. He lives a zillion miles away in the little coastal city of Batumi in the Republic of Georgia but that’s the beauty of Zoom—we meet kindred spirits from around the world.

Lawrence’s specialty is creating fun and challenging puzzle books to keep you mentally sharp and engaged. These include Word Search, Sudoku, Mazes, and combination books of different word-based and number-based puzzles. I ordered one to give to my mom. She loves doing the crossword puzzle in the newspaper once a week so I figured she’d be thrilled with a whole book of puzzles.

Readers, I was wrong. I don’t know what her problem is (curmudgeon comes to mind) but she wasn’t in the least bit interested in Lawrence’s book, wouldn’t even flip through it. She just harrumphed and went back to listening to the radio. (P.S. I give up!)

Anyway, check out Lawrence’s books on Amazon. The quality is excellent and I’m having fun!

Ratings and Reviews help authors like me sell books! If you’ve read Odd Mom Out and would like to leave a rating or review, I greatly appreciated it. In Canada click here, and in the US click here. The E-book is $0.99 this weekend so if you haven’t bought a copy, now is the time. Thank you!!

If you received this in your email inbox, you are already a subscriber. No need to do anything more. But if you’d like to support my writing with a paid subscription, I will send you an autographed copy of my new book, Odd Mom Out.

Expo 67

Janie and I met Ping-Pong the Siamese cat on our trip to Montreal for Expo 67. I was six that year, Janie was nine.

The climax of the trip was getting lost in the Ontario Building when Janie and the rest of my family went in to watch North of Superior in the theatre and I was left behind wandering around the pavilion on my own—those were the most terrifying minutes of my young life. 

But the topic of today’s story is Ping-Pong who lived in the house that belonged to an old family friend named Gretalise. When she was younger, Gretalise had been a waitress at my grandparents’ hotel, as had my mother; my father had been the dishwasher. So, that was how we were all acquainted. 

It seems to me now, that those relationships were forged in bronze, because a lot of those people, other hotel staff and guests, kept in touch with my parents for years, even after the hotel was long gone. 

Anyway, we were staying that week in Montreal in Gretalise’s house, while she and her family stayed at our cottage, looking after our cat. 

In retrospect, I believe my parents may have driven as fast as they could from Lake Simcoe, up through the Canadian shield to Montreal, because they had a cat to attend to at the other end. And let me tell you, Ping-Pong was crazy! From that day forth, I believed all Siamese cats were crazy.

Ping-Pong had the requisite crossed blue eyes, and a body that could curve around doorways at lightning speed, front paws in the room where he was headed, and back paws skidding across the polished floor of the room he was leaving.

Janie and I were delighted. Our big black cat at home never played with us. We played with him, but he merely flicked his big fluffy tail and made those bored half-eyes cats use to humiliate you.

Ping-Pong was all in with me and Janie as we watched cartoons in the morning, before being dragged along to Expo 67 with our two older teenage sisters.

I need to address the cartoons in Montreal in 1967. They were all in French. The only one we could follow was Hercules, which we sometimes watched at home, though it was mainly for boys, so we mostly didn’t. In Montreal, we laughed ourselves silly at the pronunciation of Hercules’ name throughout the show. We sang to each other for the rest of the trip, “Her-Q-Law!” Additionally, there was Hercules’ pal, what was his name? Newt? He basically played the role of Robin from Batman, except that half of his body was a horse or something, and he may have played a flute.

I liked the more minor characters from cartoon shows, Robin and Newt, and even Rocky the Squirrel. They weren’t the stars of the show, but they played large roles. Being the youngest of four sisters, and the side-kick of Janie, I felt I played a pretty significant role in life. Mind you, when I was given a Skipper doll for my seventh birthday instead of a Barbie, I was none too happy. Her hair stayed glossy, her flat feet stayed unshod; no one wanted to play with Skipper.

One of the things I remember about the drive to and from Montreal that summer was that when we got thirsty, the car was stopped at the side of the road and the trunk was opened. In the trunk was a cooler and when the lid was opened, I was amazed to be handed a can of Mountain Dew. I don’t remember ever having it before, it was weird and green, but it was cold and hey, I was getting a treat!

I think there is a single photograph from our family trip to Expo 67, maybe. My two older sisters, black and white, jeez, what on earth were my parents doing on the one and only family trip we ever took?

We had a cottage, no need to go anywhere else; no need for any of us to go to camp. We were cozied into a small world across the street from my grandparents’ hotel. 

And then suddenly we weren’t. 

Suddenly, it all came to an end. 

But I won’t go in to that today. 

Just trust me, it all ended, and when we moved to Toronto, our fluffy black cat ran away from home.

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I’m dying to know…

…who here went to Expo 67? Please reply and let me know, or about any summer excursions with your family, or encounters with Siamese cats. Reply to this email or post a comment wherever you saw this post. I’d love to hear from you.

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If you received this in your email inbox, you are already a subscriber. No need to do anything else. But if you’d like to support my writing with a paid subscription, I will send you an autographed copy of my new book, Odd Mom Out.

Primal Landscape

It feels as if the key is about to break off in the lock. I struggle to turn it. Is it to the left, or the right? I can’t remember. The lock gives way suddenly and the door swings open. Inside, the cottage smells like a birch-bark box. And the air is snappy. Cold. Locked inside for the entire winter it stirs around me, slipping past, through the screen door, a small sigh, a held breath, a secret.

The porch furniture is crammed into the living room. We will pull it outside later. Every year we vow to power-wash the white wicker and give it a fresh coat of paint, but every year it remains on the porch, chipping and greying, the crevices filling with the grime of living.

I walk down the cavernous hallway. Aunt Madge’s oriental runner under my shoes feels like millennia, a familiar wrinkle, a soft crush.

At the utility panel in the corner of the bathroom, I throw the electricity switch up and push in the lever that will start the hot water tank twitching and creaking.

My bedroom is a vault, dim, even in the morning light, the pine tree outside the window shades the light. Leaving the overhead light off, I set my suitcase on the bed.

In contrast with the cool grey of the rest of the cottage, the kitchen glows with a soft golden light. Natalie is emptying a grocery bag of vital supplies, an enormous box of Yorkshire Gold tea and a bag of milk. “There!” she says as if she’s accomplished an enormous task.

I feel unhinged and restless. I don’t know how I’m going to live with my sisters, if I’ll be able to hold my own, or stay in one piece. I don’t know how to make this place my home, though I’ve been coming here all my life.

Unpacking, I take out the crystals. I’m going to hang the angel over the front door—she’s stained glass, made by a friend, she’ll welcome in the good spirits—and a heart prism, given to me by another friend on my fiftieth birthday, is going over the back door.  When the lake is rough and roaring, this hallway is a wind tunnel. In the morning, there’s often a biting little breeze from the east, from the sunrise, which sneaks in the back door and thwarts the chill from lifting inside the cottage even on a summer day. This yawning hallway worries me. It feels as if the air between the two doors runs unimpeded and all the blessings I’m trying to lay down will be swept out in a draft. At least the crystals will catch the spirits and give them a swirl before allowing them to pass through the doors.

I’m placing shrines in all the rooms—some element of earth, air, fire, and water in each. My grandmother’s cowry shell is going in the living room because I want to tell our kids how we used to play a game with it called Huckle Buckle. The kids are grown now—all in their twenties and thirties—but still I have this desire to impart a piece of our collective past. My sisters and I grew past our teenage years, and for a short period, we’d bonded. I want to tell them about that uproarious time—a time of hilarity and revelry. The years before we fell to one form or another of the family curse and disintegrated.

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Family Curses

“Primal Landscape” is from my collection An Empty Nest: A Summer of Stories, which is available for free in E-book by clicking here and available in paperback on Amazon here. Read it for more info on family curses, bad weather, and rodents.

I’d love to know about your family curses! Please hit reply, or leaving a comment. I promise I’ll keep it secret.

Review Time

The reviews for Odd Mom Out are continuing to come in. Reactions from readers are crucial for me and so far, I’m thrilled that most people seem to like the book! The following is a review written by author, MJ Porter on her blog.

Our main character, Trudy, is quite frankly a mess. Recently divorced, massively unhappy, all but estranged from her daughter and forced to live with an overbearing mother, she’s also deeply unhappy with her weight and general well-being, not helped by the fact she runs and bakes for the local bakery…. Her battles are very relatable, and while the reader might be a little frustrated with the lack of information concerning her daughter’s upcoming wedding, Trudy presses on with her plans to be the best Mother of the Bride she can be. Along the way, she makes some new friends, and reconnects with some old ones, and even her relationship with her mother improves, as does her business…. The story has some unexpected twists and turns, which all build into it being a relatable story, and I powered through the last 50%, keen to know how everything would work for our main character. A really engaging story.

Ratings and Reviews help authors like me sell books! If you have read Odd Mom Out and would like to leave a review, I greatly appreciated it. In Canada click here, and in the US click here. The E-book is $0.99 this weekend so if you haven’t bought a copy, now is the time!

If you received this in your email inbox, you are already a subscriber. No need to do anything more. But if you’d like to support my writing with a paid subscription, I will send you an autographed copy of my new book, Odd Mom Out.

For links to all my books, please visit my website sandyday.ca
Thanks for reading, see you next weekend!

A Mouse Tale

Kindergarten. We sat in a big circle on the floor. The teacher passed around a mouse. It was a very small mouse. It fit in the palm of thirty-one five-year-olds. Until it got to me. I didn’t know that I was about to do what I was about to do. There was no prior thought or plan. I was sitting cross-legged, quietly, obediently as usual. And then, it was my turn. The mouse landed in my hand. Its little feet were scratchy. It twisted its tiny whiskered nose at me and blinked its small red eyes. And then its tail. It slithered across my fingers and I screamed.

It took a long time for the teacher and the janitor to locate the mouse. Everyone was mad at me for flinging it so far.

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Not A Mouse Fan

“A Mouse Tale” is from my collection An Empty Nest: A Summer of Stories, which is available for free in E-book by clicking here and available in paperback on Amazon here. Lots more creatures and mice creeping through those pages.

Please share your Mouse Tales with me by hitting reply, or leaving a comment. I promise I will try not be squeamish, but *shudder*.

If you received this in your email inbox, you are already a subscriber. No need to do anything more. But if you’d like to support my writing with a paid subscription, I will send you an autographed copy of my new book, Odd Mom Out.

For links to all my books, please visit my website sandyday.ca
Thanks for reading, see you next week!

My Teacher

In grade two, Miss Lennie handed out slips of paper. On each was written a few words. She instructed the class to write a story about the words on the slips of paper.

My slip said, “My Teacher”.

Of all the topics in the world, Miss Lennie wanted me to write about her? Was this some kind of trick?

I decided to teach Miss Lennie a lesson. Rather than tell her the truth, which she obviously expected, I wrote about her buggy green eyes, her fat knees, and her streaked hair—like a skunk’s is how I described it.

I wrote comments that were partially true, but were not compliments. I wrote, not knowing how a woman in her twenties or thirties might react to remarks about her personal appearance. How they might hurt her feelings. How they might reverberate every time she looked into the mirror for the rest of her life.

I was seven years old, and I had a pencil like a chainsaw.

I gleefully wrote the piece knowing that the last line was going to be the clincher. The last line, after all my insults and jibes, was going to be, “but everybody loves Miss Lennie, because she is so wonderful.” Which was the truth.

I knew that the last line would pardon me from all the sins I’d committed in the rest of the creative writing exercise. I smirked that it would probably be the last time Miss Lennie went fishing for a compliment from her Grade 2 class.

A few days later, Miss Lennie handed back our pages. She’d written in red pencil across the top of my story, “Very interesting” and given me an A. I was accustomed to A’s. But she also said, and she told my mother, that she’d like me to do the exercise again.

So I did. And this time I played it straight. This time I wrote that Miss Lennie was pretty and delightful and taught her students so well that there could never be another Grade 2 teacher as magnificent as she was.

This time I got an A+.

What did I learn?

I learned that I had observational powers that, with only the slightest provocation, could be summoned to record a multitude of details. I was astounded at how quickly and precisely the specifics I needed flooded into my mind when I decided to portray Miss Lennie in her worst light. On the other hand, when I was writing to an expectation, rather than my own mischievous voice, I noticed how phony and inferior the words sounded.

I learned I had the power to rebel. I had the power of words. The power of prose. The power of interpreting the observable world in my own unique way. I was a writer. I was seven years old. I was a writer with a voice.

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Do you remember Creative Writing in grade school?

I’d love to hear about it. Reply to this email, or let me know in the comments. And thanks for reading me!

If you received this in your email inbox, you are already a subscriber. No need to do anything else. But if you’d like to support my writing with a paid subscription, I will send you an autographed copy of my new book, Odd Mom Out.

Podcast Time

This week, I was interviewed on The Writing Coach podcast by Kevin T. Johns. In it, I told him about the events in the story, “My Teacher,” so, I thought I’d post it for you today. We talked about many things, and it was a learning experience for me. Mostly, I learned that I needed to buy myself a better microphone! I sound like a gravelly frog. But I hope you enjoy it, The Writing Coach Episode 188 wherever you find your podcasts. Or click here, to listen: https://www.kevintjohns.com/2024/01/2...

If you’ve read Odd Mom Out please leave a star-rating or review, using one of these links which go straight to the Amazon review page:
Canadian Reviews
USA Reviews
Reader reviews are so valuable. They let other readers know that they can take a chance on an unknown author (me!), buy the book, and hopefully enjoy it as much as you did. I appreciate the arrival of each and every rating and review.

To order a signed copy of Odd Mom Out please choose one of the following options:

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Thanks for reading, see you next week!

Philodendron

I paced around my son Derek's apartment while he took a shower. It was Christmas Eve morning, and I'd slept over the night before. The apartment, which he inherited from me, was filthier than it had ever been, even under my neglectful housekeeping. 

“Don't do the dishes!” he commanded from behind the bathroom door.

The place smelled.

I had to do something. After hunting around for some scissors, I started snipping at the dried brown stem of the philodendron, pulling it away from the string of twinkle lights across the windows.

Many years earlier, the chick from two doors down the hall, who sported blond dreadlocks and a pierced lip and worked at the coffee shop up the street, she’d come knocking on my door. We'd never spoken in the few years she’d lived in the building — never even made eye contact — but apparently, on that day, she was moving out, and for some reason, she’d chosen me to take possession of her philodendron in its white plastic pot. She placed it into my hands, saying earnestly, as though I'd understand, “I don't think it will survive the move.” 

I assured her I'd take care of it, and closed the door. What a weirdo.

Drawing together the multiple trailing strands, I twined them into the pot. After watering my new houseplant, I then stuck it on the top of the refrigerator, at the back. 

By the time I moved out, ten years or so later, leaving the apartment to Derek, the philodendron had crawled its way along the wall from the fridge, over a painting, up the curtains to the curtain rod, and had twisted and curled itself along the line of twinkle lights I'd run across my windows. 

Friends had often remarked on the prolific philodendron, and I accepted the compliments, admiring it myself, though honestly, I had nothing to do with its ability to endure.

“It's easy to take care of,” I’d told Derek when I left him and his roommate to live in the apartment; also leaving them with the yucca plant I’d received as a wedding present, and a dusty old cactus. “Just water it every now and then.” 

But of course Derek didn’t. And on that day before Christmas, while he showered, instead of washing the pile of dishes in the kitchen sink, I snipped the dead philodendron remnants away. The place looked a million times better.

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Adventures in Parenting & Housekeeping

I bet you have some, and I’d love to hear about them. Reply to this email, or let me know in the comments. And thanks for reading me!

If you received this in your email inbox, you are already a subscriber. No need to do anything else. But if you’d like to support my writing with a paid subscription, I will send you an autographed copy of my new book, Odd Mom Out.

Review time

This was a 5 Star Amazon review I didn’t expect, but was delighted to receive!

“Yes, I know I’m not the intended audience for this book. However, I had the opportunity to read a small portion of it before publication and, based on that, decided to buy and read it. Funny yet relatable even if I am not a woman. Having been divorced twice before and having the new relationships thrown in my face, I can relate to Trudy. She is the “every person” in an unwanted breakup doing her best to survive and thrive. I found this to be an excellent read and this from someone who doesn’t often (never) reads this genre. A refreshing change.” ~ Rick in USA

If you’ve read Odd Mom Out please leave a star-rating or review, using one of these links which go straight to the Amazon review page:
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Reader reviews are so valuable. They let other readers know that they can take a chance on an unknown author (me!), buy the book, and hopefully enjoy it as much as you did. I appreciate the arrival of each and every rating and review.

Life just got life-y…

Frumpy, floundering, and forced to live with her martini-swilling mother, Trudy Asp is swamped when her ex-hubby gets engaged to her dental hygienist, and her daughter announces she’s getting married in Europe, forcing Trudy to face a paralyzing fear of a transatlantic flight. She’s got three months to squeeze herself into a gown and claim the role she wants more than anything: Mother-of-the-Bride.

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The Ski Lodge

I ate a whole package of Twizzlers by the fire waiting for my friends to finish skiing.

I gave up on skiing just after lunchtime, while they took off for the black diamond runs.

The morning had gone okay, but in the afternoon, on my way up a blue hill by myself, I neglected to get off the ski-lift until I realized my skis weren’t making contact with the slippery surface. 

My chair turned the loop at the top of the hill with me still on it. 

Panicking, imagining being crunched by the machinery at the bottom of the hill, I jumped from the seat, falling about four feet into a pile of fluffy snow. 

Fortunately, the seat following mine didn't knock me in the back of the head because a sharp-eyed operator turned off the lift. 

I crawled out of the snow pile, mortified, and returned to the ski hill as though I wasn't the biggest klutz there that day.

My legs were trembling with excess adrenaline as I made my way down and when I got to the bottom, I decided to walk in my skis over to the baby hill. 

I learned to ski here years ago when my kids were little and I tagged along on their class ski trips. The baby hill has a rope tow, which seemed like all I could handle today. I grabbed onto it, and amid a line of noisy three and four-foot people, slid uphill to the top of the gentle slope. 

Skiing down looked easy, and I told myself not to feel silly that there were no other adults to be seen. When I started down the hill, I fell. And I couldn't get up. 

It felt like there was no edge on the slippery packed-down slope. And worse, I couldn't get my fat thighs to cooperate. Cold and shaky,  I finally managed to get to my feet. Small people in bright snowsuits whizzed past me as I cut back and forth across the slight slope, descending as slowly as possible. 

At the bottom, I snapped off my skis and turned them in at the rental desk. 

The ski lodge beckoned. Fireplace. Hot chocolate. All the good things about skiing. Maybe I'd get another grilled cheese. At lunchtime, I was fairly sure I’d noticed Twizzlers by the cashier.

By the time my friends had had enough of skiing, it was dark. One by one they plunked themselves into chairs around me at the fireplace.

“When did you finish?” someone asked, her cheeks rosy, her hair flattened to her forehead.

“Oh, a while ago,” I answered truthfully.

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Review time!

The reviews for Odd Mom Out have started, and I must tell you, the reaction from readers is the most anticipated part of the book writing process for me. The following is one of my favourites from this week, written by someone I’ve never met or heard of named Amy Dora. She posted this on her Instagram.

This book was everything that I needed right now...and more!

When I read the synopsis I was instantly hooked - the MFC Trudy, seemed horrifically relatable and I was already laughing out loud in a sad understanding way!

Trudy is having the worst time of it - she finds out her ex is engaged to her dentist (eugh), her daughter is eloping to Europe to get married, she ends up forced to live with her horrendous mother, she has put on loads of weight and feels like sh*t at the thought of being up for scrutiny in front of all of the above people and more at the wedding. What more could go wrong....

This book had me howling in laughter and empathy for Trudy who is literally in the thick of it, however it is written in such a hilarious way that it reminds me of Bridget Jones and I really felt so connected to Trudy that she felt like a best friend I had never met. I loved that it was set across dual countries - Canada and Croatia which really adds to the adventure.
You can't help loving Trudy and her go-getter attitude in the midst of her chaos fueled life and really feel like giving her the best air fist pump by the end.

It read this so quickly and it was such a pleasure to read that I forgot I was even reading, as I was so immersed in the story! Without doubt, a 5 star from me!

Available in paperback or ebook on Amazon. Thank you for buying Odd Mom Out . I appreciate your support! To all my writer friends:

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Fish Bone

My father often swallowed a fish bone. He’d complain, picking his way through a fleshy piece of sole, fork in hand, “Cheryl, are you trying to kill me?” Then he’d pluck a hair-thin white bone from his atrocious mouth. 

My dad had bad teeth. Brown, from pipe smoking, bridged with gleaming hardware and shiny pink plastic gums. When he grinned wide, or laughed, well, no one wanted to look into that pie hole.

Eating fish may have been a death wish for my father. I don't know why he persisted, except that unlike me, he liked fish. To me, fish tastes fishy, like a lagoon; a mouth full of pond water; a gulp of pollywogs. But Dad often requested it.

He complained chronically about Mom's cooking. Mostly because she avoided serving him his preferred dinner of creamed corn, fried potatoes, and meatloaf. He was like a baby, with a baby's appetite for mashed foods, easier to swallow, less to choke on.

It turns out, all those years when my dad thought he was choking on fishbones, a platoon of cancerous cells was forming into a lethal button on the back of his tongue. No amount of soft white bread could’ve escorted those traitors down his gullet.

I know, I know, there should be a qualifying fact inserted here about him having some sort of congenital throat defect that one of the cancer specialists spotted later on. Dad had a faulty valve, which was supposed to flop over his windpipe when he ate, but sometimes glitched causing him to inhale his food, cough and sputter, hold his napkin to his mouth, eyes watering, while we mostly ignored him, and continued eating our dinners and talking.

“You're trying to kill me, Cheryl,” he'd announce to Mom, once the morsel of food had found its proper receptacle. For some reason, he relished this joke.

During radiation treatments at Princess Margaret, Dad had to remove the glossy bridge from his mouth. After he died, when I was sorting through his outdoor clothes in the basement, I reached into the pocket of his plum-colored parka, the one he’d worn during the last winter of his life, and amid a handful of crumpled tissues, I discovered his dental apparatus. 

Shoving the parka into a bag for the Sally Ann, I wondered what to do with the bridge. It didn’t feel like my place to make the decision to just toss it in the garbage. Instead, I left the pink bridge and its cockeyed molars on the kitchen counter, along with a note of gallows humour: “Mom, I found dad's teeth.”

I don’t know what she did with them. I let that be her problem.

I hope you enjoyed my irreverent little story about Dad.

Let me know if it raised any thoughts or memories for you, I’d love to hear about them. Hit reply, or comment in Substack, or wherever you are reading this post.

If you received this in your email inbox, you are already a subscriber. No need to do anything else. But if you’d like to support my writing with a paid subscription, I will send you an autographed copy of my new book, Odd Mom Out.

Thanks for reading me!

Sandy Day is a reader-supported publication. To receive a signed copy of my latest book, consider upgrading to a paid subscriber.

Do you love Bridgerton?

I do.

When Bridgerton first came out, I had no idea I would become a fan of Regency Romance, but like millions of viewers, I fell in love.

Then I met Louise, aka GL Robinson, in a writers’ group last year. She’s a writer of Regency Romance, and I was immediately drawn to her spunky, no-nonsense personality. Even though her books are set in the early 1800s, when women didn’t have the rights and choices they have now, Louise’s books contain themes that resonate with modern readers. If you are looking for a good read, please check out Louise’s upcoming book, Repairing a Broken Heart. Ireland, horses, a fella named Finn…I’m in!

Thank you for buying Odd Mom Out . I really appreciate your support! To all my writer friends:

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