P.A. Moed (if you have not yet made your way over to her blog and read her wonderful writing, you are missing out–go on over there right now!), has challenged me to reveal 10 interesting facts about myself.
So here they are (I’m not sure if all of these would be considered interesting. Maybe weird. I don’t have many secrets, so I’m digging deep here, folks!):
1. I like to talk to trees.
2. I was a thumbsucker until well into my teens.
3. I grew up in a sea of women. My father had four sisters. My mother had six sisters. I have three sisters. Most of my many cousins are girls.
4. Though I have lived in the US for 27 years, I still have not applied for citizenship.
5. I have been to nearly 40 National Parks in the United States and Canada.
6. My husband and I drove 19,000 miles around the country and of that 19,000 miles, I was behind the wheel for 100 miles. I hate to drive.
7. I nearly choked to death when I was five. I slipped while climbing an apple tree in winter and my neck got caught in the V of two branches. My sisters were with me and didn’t know what to do other than yell. My mum saw me from the window where she was washing dishes and ran out in her bare feet (in winter, in Montreal) to save me. I wasn’t allowed to climb trees after that.
8. My mother was overprotective.
9. I didn’t learn how to ride a bike until I was ten and taught myself in the back yard (see above).
10. I wasn’t allowed to spin in circles and get dizzy because my mother feared I would have a seizure like I had when I was a baby (see #8).
To read P.A. Moed’s blog (i.e. someone’s whose interestesting facts are truly interesting!), click on
And now, it’s my turn to pass the baton to:
That’s right folks, you are looking at a new and improved, stitchless Myfanwy. And I could not be happier with lovely, lump piece of tissue grafted to my lower gum. Soon, they tell me, it will smooth out and look pink and healthy, but for now it continues to leech off the blood source and find its home. Attractive, eh?
So, while you sit back and enjoy your fruity beverage, why not nibble on this tasty morsel from the one and only Jordan Rosenfeld: Last Nerve.
The sun is shining this morning, and so the snow looks beautiful.
We took a walk in the woods. The snow was up to my knees. It is heavy snow and the trees are bent with it.
Darby loves snow. He likes to eat it. He likes to stick his snout in it. He likes to sleep on it.
There are many small ponds like this, not yet frozen over.
Big, fat heavy snow fell today and so I could not make it to my appointment to get my stitches out. Thus, I am depressed. But it’s awfully pretty out nonetheless.
Here’s Allen shoveling a path in our backyard.
This one has a weird ghosty in it.
Dark and snowy at 5PM. Ahhh, winter!
Today, for your reading pleasure, I give you:
Was just posting about book blurbs in one of my comments here and thought I’d link to this great little essay by Annie Proulx, which I found a few years ago–Blurbs & Pufferies:
I have mixed feelings about the utility of the blurb. On one hand, in the bookstore often read them and sometimes buy a book on the strength of the blurbs, and sometimes, reading between the blurb lines, put the book back on the shelf because I have learned that certain blurb-happy writers cannot be trusted: they will tell you that Joe Stirrup is the Chaucer of our time. The hell he is.
Correct. I am going to go right to the link I got in the email below leading me to a site on the world wide internet and commence shopping (note: as you read this imagine it in the voices of Dan Akaroyd and Steve Martin when they did the Two Wild and Crazy Guys skit–and if you’re too young to remember that, then I just don’t know what to say):
Hey guy,
Hey bro, just wanted to spill to you my latest gift purchasing secret- glance over this message!
Thank you for your attention,
Stefanie
—–Original Message—–
From: Gawayne
Sent: Monday, January 16, 2006 8:34 PM
To: Stefanie
Subject: Wear our special accessories and show others you have got the best.Hey missy, Stefanie
You recall how you’ve always yearned for an exclusive wristwatch but didn’t have enough funds? I think I may have stumbled on the site.
You completely deserve a classy item and this shopping site posesses a great assortment. These beautiful timekeepers are created to be sported by classy dames… I’m talking about you! I’m not happy seeing your look of regret whenever we go to the mall and you can’t afford luxury things.
Anyway, I truly hope you are delighted with the e-store because I already saw a few styles that are going to look smashing on you!
The site bases itself on its industry leading patient service record.a strange state relation of agitation. He glanced fearfully towards the Heights, begging she would remain another half-hour, at least. get married No man beanstalk likes to on acknowledge that he has made a mistake in the choice ncP Had he not close are himself
Best regards,
Gawayne
Okay. Everyone. Stop what you are doing right now. Put that DOWN! Stop! And go and read this–The Upside of Turning 60, by Diane Keaton:
There is great value in being fearless. For too much of my life, I was too afraid, too frightened by it all. That fear is one of my biggest regrets. I wish I had put myself out there a little bit more and experienced people more instead of protecting myself.
Well, I sorta love this: November Blue by The Avett Brothers (note: you need quicktime to view and listen)
There is a large platform in the sky–it is the size and shape of a football field, but transparent (still I think it has lines on it) and there are ladders from the ground up to the platform.
The thing is that it as high up as an airplane. So if you are on it (as I was) and looking down, it’s a long way to the ground from where you are. There is something within you that tells you that you’ve been here before, on this platform.
And say you are with this family–a mother, father, and three kids (maybe four, maybe two)–and they are enjoying their time on the platform but eager to get back down. They want you to come with them but you are scared. The rope ladders down seem rickety. If you fall, you will die.
As you stand at the edge, the family begins to descend, prodding you, “Come on, Myfanwy! You can do it!” But you are too afraid to follow. Then something in you changes and you bend down and take that first step onto the ladder. You are still scared and the wind picks up a bit but you are on your way down.
And then you wake up.
This was my dream this morning. What say you?
And here is a line from my daily horoscope: The less concerned you are with outcomes today, the better.
For your reading pleasure today: The Winter Issue of FRiGG–a gorgeous ezine, filled with tantalizing writings. Go on and read it!
Julie Orringer’s How to Breathe Underwater is a heartbreaking collection about lost children, oblivious adults, dying parents, dead girlfriends, cruel brothers, brutal friendships, and girls on the edge. In short, it was right up my alley and I really loved it.
If pressed to pick a favorite story, it would have to be “What We Save”–on the surface it is about a family trip to Disney to meet up with old friends. But below, it is about a mother, Nancy, who is a dying and–more importantly–letting go and a daughter, Helena, who is learning what it means to be a woman–all of the glorious and terrifying parts of it–and who hopes to bring her dying mother back to life within her artwork, and within herself:
Helena had done everything she could think of to hold on to what her mother had lost. She’d imagined her mother’s organs going through a kind of re-forging, a kind of mystical cleansing, after which they’d start their lives again in Helena’s body–her mother’s sick breasts becoming Helena’s new healthy ones; her mother’s ovaries, reborn, shooting estrogen into Helena’s bloodstream. She’d seen herself as the woman on the right side of the collage, the outline into which her mother’s organs were been transplaced. She’d saved strands of her mother’s hair, fingernail parings, eyelashes, things she’d be able to touch six months or two years from now. She hadn’t been able to say what it was she was dreading–not her mother’s death, because that was beyond imagining. But as she watched her mother walk through the Magic Kingdom, eyes half focused, arms limp at her sides, past six-foot-tall mice and cotton-candy vendors and pink benches, in the shadow of Brian Sewald and his family, Helena knew that this was what she’d feared: her mother’s decision to let go, to shrug off the things she’d saved.
From one scene to the next, from the beginning to the end, this story breaks you in two–indicative of the impact of this collection as a whole. These are stories told with great care, brutal honesty, and much love. I say, buy this book and read it and cherish it.
p.s. To give you a taste, here’re a couple of stories also from this collection:
* Care
* Pilgrims
myfanwy collins 