Hilarious Family Moments

Tomorrow my kids start Grade Three. For parents, the first day of school is like a combination of Christmas and Lent. It’s Christmas because there’s newness, there’s excitement, and you’re broke from overspending on back-to-school supplies like Ziploc bags, boxes of Kleenex, and fifty pencils. It’s Lent because you make promises that are hard to […]

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you likely heard that I landed an agent and a book deal. Apparently this means I have to write a book. Don’t get me wrong. It’s mostly written. It’s just that the 60,000 words are a bit staccato right now, and I’d like them to be […]

1. ON REPRODUCTION On Tuesday, I had the pleasure of guest posting at Kevin Haggerty’s blog, The Isle of Man. Kevin and his wife Kim just had a baby. In honour of that, I got their son’s name wrong three times in the post; this is not a Canadian pastime but may become one. My […]

We drove 950 kilometres across the Canadian praires today (which translates into 8,654 miles in Americadia). Our car grill looks like this: My brain is mush. One hour into our journey, however, my neurons were firing slightly faster. I thumb-typed this dialogue into my phone. I wasn’t driving. At least, I don’t think I was. […]

I just attended a four-day teaching conference in Orlando, Florida. I took my husband with me, because I’m that kind of wife. I left my eight-year-old twins with my mom and dad, because I’m that kind of daughter. I didn’t tell Vivian and William that the conference was in Disney, because I’m that kind of […]

Humour emerges naturally out of disasters. Weddings are no exception. On Monday, I posted this on my Facebook page. The comments are proof that my readers are hilarious and that wedding disasters are funny. Read on. Any other wedding stories out there? Either yours…or someone else’s?

During the first week of holidays, I had an editing crisis that sent me to the edge of a writer’s cliff, I had more needles in my mouth than an addict in her arm, and I blogged at StuffKidsWrite.com about a “memorable” thank you note I received from a student. Here, though, are ten additional […]

My husband has a booth at the local flea market every Sunday. He sells other people’s useless surburban junk, which becomes someone else’s treasure. It’s old world recycling for the new world economy. Usually I avoid the flea market. It’s crowded, it’s cluttered, and it’s shopping. I drag my butt there twice a year, on […]

Yesterday, I finished work. As in for the whole summer. When I got home and sat my tired butt on the couch, my husband told me he’d read all the comments on my Book Deal post. “They’re really nice,” he said. “Are you surprised?” I asked, teasing him. “No,” he said, ” but they’re so […]