Thoughtful Thursday - Remembrance Day 2

Today is about a favourite wartime film, poem, or book.

I have to go with In Flanders Fields. This poem was written by a Canadian soldier named John McCrae and it was the first poem I can honestly remember from my youth. It's beautiful and it's sad. It speaks of how the birds continue to sing and fly as they always have despite the dead humans buried all about them. It speaks of how life ended so soon for the brave soldiers who went to war so our loved ones didn't have to. It also speaks of finishing the fight for those who sacrificed themselves.

I'm feeling pretty awful. I have a lot of flu symptoms. A muscle by my ribs feels pulled, my throat is scratchy, it's hard to speak, my lips are chapped, and I cough here and there. The thing is, that's about as bad as things get for a lot of people today because of those people who gave their lives to let us be free. Sure, some are still having a lower standard of living that absolutely needs to be remedied, but we aren't being dragged out of our homes and thrust into concentration camps where we starve or get murdered because someone was bored.

We can thank our veterans for this.

Guid cheerio the nou,
R~

2020 Vision

Mostly, I’ve been planning for the new year, but I discovered I know Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. It was a recollection under the influence that brought this to light. I also discovered I still suck at drawing, but I’m okay with that. I used to think I had to be good at everything, and I’ve realized that’s just not so. Some friends and I recently hit up a local board game pub. It was a pretty fun night. The first game was Balderdash and I was terrible at it. Because I was the writer in the group, some of my friends thought I should be more embarrassed about it and hide the fact that I don’t spend all my free time learning advanced vocabulary. But I’m not upset about it. Why? Two reasons: 1. I now know what I don’t know. 2. If one takes a close look at the top selling novels on the market, the level of the language used is not the level of many of the words in Balderdash. Not that I’m comparing my own work to those, but audience is what matters in writing. To me, it is far better to e...

Merry Monday - A beautiful day for taxes

[caption id="attachment_4711" align="alignright" width="300"] Image created using Bit Strips.[/caption] With French done, I have a lot of other things to catch up on. It seems like I have Mount Everest ahead of me, but I'm just going through the list one at a time. I've gotten a couple of things done and some started. Renovations Before the weekend, my new kitchen floor was installed. After the credits that Jiffy gave me, install cost less than $40. The old floor was light grey peel and stick tile, which was peeling itself up on the edges. Because I couldn't get all the glue up from the floor underneath the peel and stick, I needed to put new floor in. Oh, I started peeling it up with a hair dryer. I really don't recommend that. It doesn't get hot enough to work well. It was taking around 20 minutes each tile with the hair dryer. With a proper heat gun, a couple hours for the whole floor. Old floors: [gallery ids="9630,9631" ...

Fortifying Friday - Rejection

Yesterday, I received my first rejection from an agent. It stung. It wasn't that it was bad. It was worded in a way that it may have even been personally written. Regardless, rejection never feels good unless you were secretly hoping to stay home and do nothing when a friend made plans with you. Then it feels great! I might be an introvert ;) Anyway, it hurts a bit extra when you have other things going on. Between the worries of the state of the world and being unemployed, it felt much like being kicked while I was already down. The agent said she couldn't connect with my book though she really wanted to. She also said not to take her rejection as any kind of sign that I should give up. It was nice as far as rejections go. So, I lay there for a bit. Then I let my friends know via social media. Several said that I had hit a milestone and I should try to collect as many as possible this year. Rejections, they said, were a badge of honour awarded for putting myself out there. See...

Rae Roy

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