Posted Apr 3 2020 in About Jen, Covid-19, Family, Friendship, Home, The Wishing Tree in Irish Falls, Writing
When this is all over… I hear that phrase often these days as everyone, me included, wants life in 2020 to go back to ‘normal’ as soon as possible, whatever that ‘new normal’ will be. For the moment, though, life (and for me, writing), have to go on in lockdown. As such, I’m finding new ways […]
Read More...Posted Mar 20 2020 in About Jen, Ballet, Community, Family, Home, Reading, Small town life
With the rapid spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, in only a few weeks life as we know it has changed almost beyond recognition—and in ways unprecedented in my lifetime—so we’re all adapting to a new normal. Yet, as I stay apart from others (and social distancing is one of the many new expressions I’ve learned […]
Read More...Posted Nov 29 2019 in About Jen, Community, Home, Small town life, The Wishing Tree in Irish Falls, Writing
Last weekend, something extraordinary happened for my hometown (American) football team. After twenty-nine long years, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers won the Grey Cup, the Canadian Football League (CFL) championship. Unlike my late mom, I’m not a football fan. I gleaned the little I know of the game from glimpsing my high school team practicing […]
Read More...Posted Aug 23 2019 in About Jen, Family, Friendship, Home, Reading
One of my favourite series of books, loved in childhood and which I still return to as ‘comfort reads’ as an adult, is the Little House stories by American author Laura Ingalls Wilder. Those books taught me about resilience, cheerfulness in the face of difficulties, and finding a silver lining, no matter how grey the […]
Read More...Posted Aug 9 2019 in About Jen, Family, Home, The Wishing Tree in Irish Falls
I’m writing this post from my hometown in the Canadian province of Manitoba, a place I left when I was in my early twenties and, apart from brief visits, I built my adult life elsewhere. Now, though, I’m doing the final clear-out of my late parents’ home in preparation for selling it—those four walls and […]
Read More...Posted Apr 5 2019 in About Jen, Family, Home
One of my dominant memories of English Rose’s primary (elementary) school years is of a constant search for lost items. At that time, she wore a dark-green school uniform, and I spent many minutes before and after my then day job sorting through an almost entirely green pile in her school’s lost property (lost and […]
Read More...Posted Feb 22 2019 in About Jen, Canada, England, Family, Home
As you may have seen on Twitter, Tech Guy and I got a new washing machine last week. Not only did it mark a milestone in my complicated relationship with laundry but, and in a clear indication of advancing middle age, few things in recent years have brought me so much excitement. The wringer washer […]
Read More...Posted Jan 25 2019 in About Jen, Home, Reading, Winter
I grew up in a Canadian city (profiled in a documentary “Colder Than Mars”) that is either celebrated, or depending on your perspective, reviled for the harshness of its winter weather. Now I live near a place that this week garnered the dubious distinction as the world’s coldest capital city. Yet, despite proximity to this […]
Read More...Posted Jul 6 2018 in About Jen, Conferences, England, Home
If, like me, you’ve spent half your adult life living outside the country of your birth, “home” is flexible. Although “home” for me is wherever Tech Guy and English Rose are, beyond that, I often picture myself straddling a little island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, one leg stretched towards the UK, the […]
Read More...Posted Apr 13 2018 in About Jen, Back Home at Firefly Lake, Books, Canada, Community, Family, Firefly Lake, Home, Prayers for Humboldt, Small town life
A week ago, on a remote Saskatchewan highway, sixteen people were killed and thirteen others injured in a crash between a semi-trailer truck and a bus carrying players, coaches, a trainer, a local radio announcer and others associated with a Canadian junior (ice) hockey team, the Humboldt Broncos. Before then, Humboldt was a small […]
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