Shawn L. Bird

Original poetry, commentary, and fiction. All copyrights reserved.

Liebster award April 27, 2013

Filed under: anecdotes — Shawn L. Bird @ 4:37 pm
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I have never actually accepted a blog award nomination, but I’ve decided to give it a whirl.  Thanks to http://thisandthat93.wordpress.com/ for nominating me for the Liebster Blog Award.  Thanks Beckarooney!

.Liebster Blog Award

As with all blog awards there are several rules – they are:

1. Accept the award, post the picture of the Liebster Award on the top of your post and say who nominated you for the award and list their blog site.

2. List 11 random facts about yourself.

3. Nominate 11 other bloggers for the Liebster Award and list their blog sites.

4. Notify the bloggers of their award.

5.Ask the award winners 11 questions to answer when they accept their Liebster Award.

6. Answer the questions left for you by the blogger who gave you the award.

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So here are 11 random facts about me. . .

  • I have owned poodles exclusively since I was six years old.  
  • Presently I live with OJ the standard poodle and Dusty the miniature poodle.
  • my first writing award was for a poem I wrote about my mother in grade four.
  • my first rejection letter came from a kids magazine called Jabberwocky when I was in grade five.
  • I bought my husband’s wedding ring with the prize money from a college short story contest
  • I have a very tender spot for musicians, particularly pianists and classical guitarists
  • I speak 3 languages quite well, and a few others very badly
  • I have lived in 15 places since I met my husband, but we have been 12 years in our current house.
  • I have never had a job contract that was for longer than a year.
  • I originally wanted twelve children.  My husband persuaded me that two was a better choice.  (He was probably right).
  • Left to my own devices, I go to bed at 4 a.m. and get up at noon.  I write, play music, and clean house in the peace of moonlight.

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Here are the questions I was asked:

1. Why did you start your blog?

When Grace Awakening was in the process of being signed with Vancouver’s Gumboot Books, Crystal the publisher said I should have a blog as a way to begin my author platform.  I’d been pondering having one for a few years, but that was the impetus to buy my domain and get started.

2. What’s your favourite time of year and why?

I live in a 4 season playground, and I really love all 4 seasons.  I love spring for the new beginnings and the excitement as the grads move on.  I love summer for the time that I have to play with my assorted projects.  I love autumn for the excitement of a new school year and the potential for awesome connections with students.  I love winter for the beauty of fresh fallen snow and the crisp air.   I can more easily answer my favourite time of DAY, which is night.  🙂 (see above)

3. Do you have any unusual ways of curing writer’s block and if so what are they?

My only cure is to sit down and WRITE.  There is procrastination, but whenever I start, there are plenty of words.  I don’t ever have writing block.

4. If you follow my blog why did you start following it?

 I’ve only been following Beckarooney’s blog http://thisandthat93.wordpress.com/ for a week or so, but I was drawn by the insightful and lovely poetry I found there, and the interesting information about The Eden Project, which I’d never heard of.

5. Who is the most important person in your life?

My husband, who holds me together.  Since I was twenty he’s been the stolid stability that allows my flight.  He is quite generally awesome (and handsome, too!).

6. Where do you live and what do you live in?

I live in a house above Shuswap Lake in central British Columbia, Canada.  (See photos below)  I have beautiful mountain views, and I’m trying to figure out how to rig up a writing suite on my roof so I can see the lake all year round not just in the winter when the neighbour’s lilacs are leaf-less.  (I need to sell a lot of books to make this a viable option, feel free to contribute by clicking the book cover at right! lol).

7. Are you a Facebook fanatic?

Sadly, yes.  I have 3 accounts ((cough))

8. Can you dance?

Yes.  I have studied ballet, jazz, tap, folk, and belly dance.  Sadly, at the moment I’m on a dancing hiatus due to knee injuries.  My husband hates dancing though, so if we’re at an event, as soon as the dancing starts, we leave.  :-S

9. What are 3 things you couldn’t live without?

Air, water, shelter.  🙂

Beyond those basics: the computer (or at least pen & paper), good dark chocolate, and a good book to read in the bathtub.

10. Who is the one person you would love to meet, from the past, present or even the future, and why?

Since I’ve already met Diana Gabaldon, I’ll go with Francesco Petrarca, the poet, diplomat, and cleric from the 14th century.  I am writing a book about him, and I have developed a rather profound crush on him. (blush) I’d also really like to meet my grandmother whom I apparently resemble physically and temperamentally.  She died when I was a baby.

11. What do you do on a typical Friday night?

Snuggle poodles, read a book, write a book, play the harp, enjoy a great meal with hubby, often in the basement in front of a movie.

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My eleven nominees are blogs I’ve enjoyed this week:

http://karinwiberg.wordpress.com

http://amidereve.wordpress.com/

http://mypenandme.wordpress.com/

http://finnishnessinmycanadiana.wordpress.com/

http://ianmooremorrans.com/

http://angelogalindo.wordpress.com/

http://greendaughter.wordpress.com

http://notanyonething.wordpress.com/

http://barsetshirediaries.wordpress.com

http://mapofmymind.com/

http://voidpoetry.com/

http://geosans.wordpress.com/

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The eleven questions for my nominees to answer:

1. What teacher from your youth or childhood had a profound impact on you?  How?

2. Who is your greatest literary inspiration?

3. What is a favourite quote from another person, and what do you like about it?

4. What is a favourite quote from your own work, and what is the story behind it?

5. Tell us about one of your pets.

6. What is the greatest barrier in your life?

7. Where is your favourite travel destination?  Why?

8. What is the most interesting place near where you live? What makes it interesting?

9. What is your writing space like?

10. When you were eight, what did you want to be when you grew up?

11.  What is your goal for your writing?

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Views from my living room window on this grey day:

(just to the left of that yellow sign you can just see Shuswap Lake through those budding lilacs)  Plainly our next door neighbour needs to borrow our dandelion puller tool.  This is northwest.

DSCN0254

and this is southwest.  That’s Mount Ida (which is mentioned in Grace Awakening)   in the middle left with the snow still on it.  There was a fire on the mountain in the 90s, you can still see the charred remains.  Across the valley are the Fly Hills which burnt at the same time.  Love all the new green of spring!

DSCN0255

 

Best acronym ever March 8, 2013

Filed under: anecdotes — Shawn L. Bird @ 10:47 pm
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I’ve just come across the  best acronym ever:

NASA’s  Commercial Crew and Cargo Program Office, in charge of private enterprise working in space is known as C3PO!

How did I learn this?  Why, in the official White House response to the petition to build a Death Star, of course!

Truth is stranger than fiction.

 

inadvertent blue brow March 7, 2013

Filed under: anecdotes — Shawn L. Bird @ 11:42 pm
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I have a blue brow.

This certainly doesn’t indicate any blue blood (though my children can trace their patrilineal descent to Charlemagne four ways).

What it does indicate is a lack of care during the rinse cycle, I suppose.

As you know, from the photo at right, I wear coloured streaks in my hair.    At present, all the lower couple of inches of my scalp all the way around is a fuchsia pink, and there are long midnight blue strips on either side.  On the right it’s just above the ear, on the left it goes right up to the top of my head.  (This sounds strange, but looks quite nice, and garners compliments all the time, so don’t worry about my sanity).

The top of my head is very white.   (To effectively camouflage the instant roots I get because my hair grows so fast).

Usually, my brows are almost black (like my hair used to be.  >>sigh<<) but lately half of one has lost its pigment.  Today when I finished rinsing out the dye and blow-drying my hair, I looked into the mirror and discovered that my formerly white brow, is now blue.

I’m not sure what I think about this.

It’s not that I’m adverse to colour, obviously I’m not.  Perhaps it’s just that this seems like an awful lot of blue.  I usually wear blue mascara and eye liner, and the gem in my left nostril is blue, as well.

I like serendipity, though.  It is what it is.

Blue.

I suppose next time I could accidentally dye it pink…

😉

 

so this is Christmas December 25, 2012

Filed under: anecdotes — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:30 pm
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My husband is not one for crowds, whether in malls or in his living room.  He dislikes shopping.  He thinks the house is full enough of ‘stuff.’  He dislikes forced traditions.  He thinks gifts are wasteful and pointless. As a teen, he’d make his sister wrap all his gifts, including her own.  In short, he’s a bit of a Scrooge.

I’d bake up a storm (“I’m going to get fat!”),  decorate the house (“There are fake pine needles all over the floor!”) and shop all year to fill stockings for the family (“We don’t need any of this!”  or “I can buy my own socks and underwear!”).  For years, I just picked up his slack and let him bah humbug to himself.  There were never big, expensive of gifts, but there was a festive atmosphere, and sharing of home made clothes and baking, plus the items that would be cherished by the kids.

One year (well over a decade ago), to my great astonishment, he gave me a big box.  The kids sat with gleeful anticipation as I unwrapped consecutively smaller boxes.  I got more and more curious.  I’d had no expectations for a ‘big gift’ (having received absolutely nothing from him the year before), but all the chuckles, knowing looks back and forth between him and the children, got me excited.  Maybe he was making up for the meanness of the previous Christmas.  What was going to be at the end of all this?

In the end, it was a ring box.  Pretty as a picture.  I stared at it in disbelief.  He’d bought me jewellery?  Aside from my wedding rings, he’d never bought me jewellery.  It was a good company name.

With joyful astonishment I opened the lid of the box.

Inside was a little, round container of  lip balm.

I burst into tears.

I left the room.   I wailed in the privacy of the bedroom.

The year before, when “I couldn’t think of anything you’d actually like, so I decided not to get anything,” I’d been hurt, but this was, to my mind, deliberately malicious.  To deliberately build up hope, and then to dash it for entertainment was not just in poor taste, it was deliberately cruel.  It was the behaviour of a school yard bully, not someone who  loves his/her spouse.  I have had some experience with bullies.

It was one of those ‘last straw’ kind of moments– the moment when one looks the bully in the eye and informs him that he is going to shape up, or life as he knows it will change.  Some  ‘little jokes’ are not appropriate, and they can have decisive, empowering consequences.

I now buy myself Christmas gifts.  I get whatever I want at whatever price.  So far, I haven’t bought myself a yacht or cottage, but I could (in theory, at least).  This year I imported a lovely little kantele from Finland  and ordered a pair of funky Fluevogs from California.  Both arrived Christmas Eve.  I opened the parcels with happy anticipation, knowing I was going to love what was inside.

Sometimes surprises are not all they’re cracked up to being.

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May all your surprises today be happy ones.  If not, may you experience decisive empowerment, that improves your future.

Merry Christmas.

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Here are the kantele and ‘Vogs! 🙂 (specifically they are the Fluevog Teapot Lady Grey)

MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

 

Pilgrimage to Fluevog Gastown October 27, 2012

Filed under: anecdotes,fun,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 2:59 pm
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I discovered Vancouver’s Fluevog shoes just in the last year or so, and ever since I have been developing a collection of gorgeous shoes.  Fluevogs are very well made, beautifully designed, unique and interesting shoes.  I’m discovering that there is definitely a Fluevogian attitude that celebrates creativity.  People who wear ‘Vogs are people I enjoy meeting.

I have purchased all my ‘Vogs online, either through www.fluevog.com or eBay, but I dreamed of the day that I would be able to make a pilgrimage to the flagship, original store in Gastown.

When I went to Surrey for SIWC2012, I took the opportunity.  I parked Sheila the Bug at the hotel, and took the bus and Skytrain into Gastown.  55 minutes X 2 trips in order to spend a few minutes in a store that had originally been a car park.  It’s all glass front and roof, and log slices artfully display the most brilliant shoes on the planet in the abundant natural light.

Red and purple Fluevog K2s

I had two shoe styles that I wanted to try on.  The first was  the new Elizabeths with the ball and claw heel that mimics Chippendale style furniture.  So cool!  Unfortunately, the Elizabeths rubbed in a bad place, so I will have to wait for future shoes coming out with this amazing heel.

The second shoes were the K2s.  I have worn similar shoes (in boring black) and had them until they fell apart. I know Oxfords are a great, every day style shoe for me.  The K2s were a perfect fit, soft leather, fun vibrant colour combination, great heel height, and eye-catching, as well.  My kind of shoe!  They were an easy, “Yes!” and into the lovely paper bag they went.

After my shoe purchase, I headed across the road to The Coffee Bar to have dinner with Citieguy Paul Schellenberg who is a local impresario.  Paul and I were Rotary Exchange students together years ago.  He went to Belgium when I went to Finland.  It’s been quite a few years, and it’s fun to see where we’ve taken the skills we developed as exchange students!  It turns out that The Coffee Bar is a favourite haunt of my son, who works for 49th Parallel Roasteries,  which supplies the coffee that is served there.  The cashier raved about how wonderful my son is, and  I told them to tell him that they’d met his mother. <g>  Nothing like embarrassing your kid, right?

The visit with Paul was all too short, because I had a big night ahead of me!  The lovely Fluevog paper bag dissolved on the way back to the hotel, in the humidity of  the miserable rain, but nothing could wash away my enthusiasm!  I put my new shoes onto my feet and headed off to Chapters at Strawberry Hill to meet authors JJ Lee, Michael Slade, CC Humphreys, Mary Balogh, Jack Whyte, and Diana Gabaldon.

Like the finance minister wearing new shoes to present a new budget, my new Fluevogs set the tone for a weekend of creativity, exhuberance, and promise.  I was introduced to a lot of wonderful people who had to stop to ask me about my various shoes.  I wore Fluevog Bellevue Pearl Harts to the 1920s dinner for perfect vintage style.  My Fluevog Ice Blue Macchiatos made the SIWC Facebook page, and at dinner one evening, I was asked to come meet a table of ladies all wearing unique Fluevog shoes. Author CC Humphreys complimented my shoes, and pointed out that he, too, was weaving ‘Vogs!  The people at SIWC are clearly MY PEOPLE! <g>

Of course, besides helping to meet amazing new people, the best thing about having distinctive shoes, is that whenever I wear these awesome K2s, I will remember that I was wearing them when I met my favourite author, Diana Gabaldon!  <g>  It will remind me of her writing advice and generous spirit.

Creative shoes.  Creative people.  Creative spirit.  Creative life.

 

filial effort October 24, 2012

Filed under: anecdotes,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 7:50 am
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I recently met a mother and a son who are both writers.  She has years of experience and several books out in various genres.  He studied writing at university, and has a few novels out.   At one event, I asked him how having a successful author already in the household influenced his own ambitions.  He looked a little irritated at my question, and assured me that his work had nothing to do with anyone else but himself.

I felt a bit sorry for him when he said that, because I recognized a common theme of kids struggling to establish identity and break away from their parents’ influence or expectation by adamantly denying its existence.  It is never going to be a simple thing to follow a parent into the same profession or calling.  Comparisons are inevitable.  It seems to me that recognizing and acknowledging the role his mom played in his success would be a natural sign of maturity as a man and a writer.  He could accept the leg up, and then ride the horse with grace, demonstrating his ability and rights to be there.

I watched interactions over the weekend, to see how he handled himself and whether he demonstrated the independence that he vehemently declared.

He didn’t.

Despite his respectable literary credentials, he is obviously uncomfortable presenting workshops.  He seems like a shy kid forced to present to crowds of people older than him, and that’s not an easy situation.  He mentioned earlier that he had been worried about this particular workshop.  I had wondered if he had the skill and maturity to pull it together or at least fake it successfully.  People are paying money to hear him and learn techniques.  He owed it to the attendees to be prepared with practical information.

I wondered if his mom would attend his workshop.  I confess, I hoped for his sake that she did not.

She did.

He opened with apologies and suggested people go to other workshops because his wasn’t going to be very good.  He admitted to not being ready.  He pulled out his notes, spoke nervously for a few minutes, and then he was stuck.  He had not prepared adequately.  He had some notes, but only about 20 minutes worth.  It’s quite possible to make 20 minutes worth of notes fill an hour, but it takes skill that he didn’t have.  He apologized some more, desperately asking for questions.

His mom watched him fall apart.  She tried to help.  She asked him questions that he should have been able to answer and that would have filled five or ten minutes if he’d picked up on her hints.

He didn’t.

He grumbled at her in typical kid fashion.  The audience laughed, recognizing a familiar family dynamic.

He provided a weak answer, one that was almost contrary to fact.  She couldn’t let that lie.  She had to add, “Don’t you think that…” and then she provided a fascinating and informative few minutes.  He was irritated that his mother was speaking in his workshop and grumbled at her some more. “You are a bad audience member!”

To be fair, for the period of time when he was presenting the information that he had in his notes, he was amusing and informative.  While he was floundering, the audience was forgiving and pleasant with him.   He obviously knows his material, he just didn’t have enough material, or hadn’t figured out how to properly expand it enough or analyze it enough to fill his allotted time.  He looked a lot like he was roasting on a spit.

What I found most interesting, however, was that by-play between mother and son.  It was a clear example of rejecting opportunity.  Being truly independent means you are not afraid to take advantage of the tools at your disposal, even if you hate that your greatest asset is your mom.

I felt sorry for him.  He seemed like a mortified introvert, forced to do something that was painful for him; however, an appearance of confidence and capability is important when people are spending money to learn from you.  You have to make your audience feel like it’s received value.

Sometimes apologies happen at the start of a presentation, then the nerves pass and the presenter gives value.   That didn’t happen in this instance.  I felt sorry for him, and I thought I knew how his mother was feeling: knowing that she could have have helped.  He was determined to fall by himself, and he did.  Such moments are painful for mothers!

I hope he is able to come to terms with his advantages and his skills, while developing the ability to schmooze with the public in order to promote his work independently.

A very tired mother (me)  at the end of SIWC and a confident, capable son who came to visit before she went home.

I got thinking about those mother son relationships.

My own son lives 6 hours away, and we don’t get to see him as often as we’d like.  He is much younger than the young man who was presenting workshops, but he is much older in many ways.  As a teen he went through the stage of believing that being independent meant he had to live far away and refuse help from his parents. He did not achieve many of the goals we had set for him, but he forged his own path.  As a result, he has been completely financially and emotionally independent for several years.  He markets his skills.   He knows how to behave with clients.  He is aware of his appearance and the need to present a professional image, albeit a youthfully hip one. He exudes confident capability, as he schmoozes and charms like a pro, despite his youth.  It takes effort to look as relaxed and stylish as he does.  It takes experience and practice to be confident in himself when teaching skills to others, often older than he is.  I like hearing  that my son acquits himself admirably in those situations.

I kind of wish he’d been presenting workshops.  I think if he’d stepped to the podium, the audience would have been enchanted, entertained, and informed by a confident, thoroughly prepared young man.  No one would have been embarrassed.

But I’m his mother.   I might be biased.

 

suicidal raccoons & automotive carnage October 22, 2012

Filed under: anecdotes — Shawn L. Bird @ 11:51 am
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After a blissful and inspiring weekend at the Surrey International Writing Conference, I was driving home, listening to Davina Porter narrating the audio book of A Breath of Snow and Ashes, breaking into giggles every once in a while recalling conversations or events at the conference, pondering a workshop I thought I should propose for next year’s conference, and generally minding my own business on the highway, when out of the blue a suicidal raccoon strolled onto Highway #1 directly in front of Sheila the Bug.

I hit the brakes.  He hit his brakes. He stared me down.  Sheila the Bug had been coasting along at 90 km/hr.  If Ranger Rick had decided to keep moving, either forward or back, he would have been fine, but his death wish was strong.

If I’d swirved at that speed and distance I would have rolled Sheila, and I was on a mountain with a long cliff to the lake below me.

Ranger Rick was going to die.

He hit Sheila the Bug. There was a loud thump of collision, and several smaller thunks and bumps as he travelled beneath the car.  I sighed regretfully.  I have never hit a creature before, beyond birds which flew into me.  I was imagining the carnage beneath my vehicle: blood, guts, fur.

Suddenly my temperature gauge light came on, then it started flashing madly.  I was entering a small town 30 mins from home.  I pulled into the empty mall, parked beneath a light and looked beneath.

There was no raccoon carnage whatsoever.

Instead, there was automotive carnage.  The bumper was smashed in half, something black and important looking was missing on one side, the radiator had a dint in it.  Pale, glistening autoblood was streaming from radiator.

Damn raccoon.

I phoned my knight in shining armour, and he rode up on his trusty Honda steed and rescued me, tow truck following behind.  When I called ICBC to report the damage, the operator said, “Wow.  That must have been a huge raccoon!”

I have to say, I was stunned at the revenge extracted by that striped bandit.  Not content to kill himself, he had to take out poor Sheila!

Sheila the Bug will be in the car hospital for quite some time.  No doubt Ranger Rick is lying in wait for the next unsuspecting VW Beetle!

Plainly, I should just have stayed in Surrey with all those wonderful writerly people.

 

Diana Gabaldon said to me… October 20, 2012

Filed under: anecdotes,OUTLANDERishness,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 11:24 pm
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The green shoulder is mine. I’m cropped out because I look like a troll in this shot! lol Diana does not seem to be able to take a bad photo! Check out her funky turquoise nails!

Today I had a blue pencil appointment with Diana Gabaldon at the Surrey International Writers’ Conference.  A blue pencil is 15 minutes of time in front of a professional author, who reads a very short selection of your work, and provides some general feedback.

I knew I’d be completely starstruck, so I asked her a month ago via Facebook if it’d be okay if I recorded the conversation, and she was fine with that.

I arrived into the empty seat in front of her desk in a flurry because I’d been in a line and lost track of the time, so I was nearly late for my appointment (and we’re not going to even discuss what a trauma that would have been after counting down, sometimes by the hour, for 135 days!).  I pulled out my scene, which is a very early, poorly cobbled together start to Grace Beguiling, which is/will be a historical/fantasy novel set in 14th century France.  The scene is 6 pages, which is way too long for a blue pencil, so I’d highlighted parts I particularly wanted her feedback on.  She just smiled, said that she was a fast reader, and zipped through the whole thing, laughing out loud in places, and making corrections of typos.  It is very cool to have your favourite author laughing out loud while reading your writing.  It’s a little embarrassing to have your favourite author correcting your typos.

When she was finished reading, I turned my iPhone’s memo recorder on and recorded her observations, suggestions, and reminders.

The part I most wanted to know about (and had spent months researching) she dismissed with a wave as, “Fine.”  We had some discussion about language choice in historical work and development and structuring of a ‘very beginning’ where there needs to be some action to grab the reader and the story must be established right away.  I am so glad I have that recording to remind me of my focus.  Grace Beguiling offers a number of stylistic challenges, and she’s helped me think about how I’m going to solve them.  There was nothing earth shattering, just common sense reiteration of basic principles.  It’s good to hear those words from someone whose knowledge you trust implicitly.  “Remember that…”  Oh right.  I know that.

Do it.

I wish the piece I’d brought wasn’t quite so rough, but it was a worthwhile endeavour.  One quote is going to be artistically rendered and put above my writing desk.

My favourite author, Diana Gabaldon said to me, “You know how to tell a story.”  That will keep me inspired for a very long time.

 

Four years ago… October 9, 2012

Filed under: anecdotes,Grace Awakening,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 8:00 am
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The week before Thanksgiving in 2008, I was given Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga to read by one of my English students.  That Thanksgiving weekend I bought my own copies of the books, read through the series again, and then poured over Stephenie Meyer’s website, reading everything I could about the genesis of the story, the process of writing, what she’d done to find an agent, and the adventure her life had become.

I was completely, totally, thoroughly inspired.  An idea sparked.  I’d had a story floating in my head for decades.  I’d written it down in a couple of versions before, but it wasn’t right.  I had known I needed a hook, but I just couldn’t figure out what it could be.  Stephenie gave me the solution: mythology.  Just as she had used vampires and werewolves, Greek mythology could be melded into the experience I wanted to share in order to provide the depth and conflict that had been missing in previous drafts.

The Tuesday after Thanksgiving (that is, this very day four years ago) I began writing Grace Awakening.  That first day, I wrote about five double spaced pages.  The second day I did the same.  Then the third.  By the end of three weeks I had 75 pages of writing.  I set the goal to keep writing 25 pages a week. I met or exceeded that goal each subsequent week.  Twenty three weeks later, the first draft was complete.  It was the week before Easter, and I had 155,000 words.

A couple of weeks after Thanksgiving in 2009, I went to the Surrey International Writers Conference.  I pitched the book to a small Vancouver publisher.  She was interested and asked to see more.

A week before Thanksgiving in 2010 I signed the contracts with Gumboot Books.

In 2011, Gumboot Books went out of business, but Grace Awakening Dreams was released anyway through Lintusen Press in July.  By Thanksgiving 2011, it had been in the list of  Top iTunes Fantasy books in Canada over a hundred times.

In 10 days, I’ll be back to the Surrey International Writers’ Conference to pitch Grace Awakening Myth, a companion novel that tells  Ben’s version of  his battle for Grace.

It’s a lot to be thankful for: four years of creativity, empowerment, challenge, excitement, growth, and adventure.  It’s been an amazing ride!

Four years ago, when I started typing, I would not have been brave enough to imagine that I’d be in this place today.  But here I am.   My friend Heather observed, “Where will you be in another 4 years? Do you not love the “wait and see”‘ of life?”   The thought of it hit me in the gut.  Where will I be? I can only dream where Grace will be, keep writing, and hope I’m holding tightly to her coat tails as she explores the world!

 

 

the mysterious rotary phone October 2, 2012

Filed under: anecdotes — Shawn L. Bird @ 8:10 am
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My Drama 9 class hovered with fascination over a rotary phone in our prop box last week. I heard, “How do you work one of these?” I watched fingers fumble with the dial and chuckled to myself at the anguished, “It would take *forever* to call my house this way!”

We had the time then, I guess.