A few weeks ago, I got some interesting feedback on a short story. The story is written from the point of view of a guy. (Although the character is male, I would not call him a man.) The woman who read the story -- someone I'd never met before -- said that she was sure it had been written by a guy.

In March 2010, I received a grant from the Ontario Arts Council to support the creation of a short story collection.

Since then, five of the ten works I proposed in the collection (and revised extensively, thanks to the $upport) have found homes.

• * "Iceberg," The Blind Hem www.theblindhem.com, May 4, 2012.
• * "Improvisation," chosen as part of the Liar, Liar project of Northern Mosaic, an integrated arts organization based in Thunder Bay.
• * "Walking Out," South Dakota Review 49.3 (Fall 2011). 
• * "MacDonald Variety," Prairie Fire 32.3 (Fall 2011).
• * "Thirty-Two Faces," 11th edition of Ten Stories High, the annual anthology of short fiction published by the Niagara Branch of the Canadian Authors Association.

My short story, "Iceberg," is featured at The Blind Hem today and throughout this weekend. You can find it here: http://www.theblindhem.com/1489/iceberg/

The Blind Hem is a site related to fashion. Let me repeat that, for those who have seen my extensive collection of jeans and t-shirts (and flipflops, though they are mostly for show up here) and may doubt the validity of that statement.*

Fashion. The clothing kind. Oh, here, I'll let them tell you:

Our mission is to portray fashion and personal style in an intelligent & honest way, through words and art. We believe in diversity, inclusivity, feminism and truth. Our features range from non-fiction to fiction to art and photography. We are interested in the different lenses through which personal style, feminism and society can be viewed – and we are interested in the stories behind the clothes.

Go there and read -- and although it would be great for you to read my story (and send your friends to read it, too), you should bookmark the site. Visit it early and often. They cover a LOT of interesting ground.

I've written before about time, and about how suffering for 25 minutes works for me. (Thanks, Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project.) It still works for me. Doing the taxes this year has been far less difficult (one country down, one to go). I maintain some knowledge of the complex financial tapestry that is my life, 25 minutes a week (Money Monday). I've worked through nearly all my photos and have a list the length of my arm of other projects to assign to a day.

Little bits of time add up. Recently, I noticed that process in reverse.

The other day, I used the last coffee filter in the package. (Yes, we use paper coffee filters. We're quirky geezers in some ways, and dadburnit, we like our paper coffee filters. Also our traditional 12-cup coffee makers.)

The last coffee filter: one of those moments I wasn't sure would ever occur, which is why I noticed it. We (I) go through a carton of milk in less than a week, so I'm always aware of the milk supply.* We buy coffee nearly every time we're in a grocery store, just because. But coffee filters?


The thing is, coffee filters come in bargain packages of 450. At one pot of coffee a day, that's more than a year's supply. (Ha, one pot a day! Good one!! But even at 2 pots a day, it's still eight months' worth of filters.) That's a lot of filters. It feels like a lot of filters when you're buying them, at least.

One added benefit of buying coffee filters in bulk is that they aren't, uh, bulky. The bargain package can fit into the awkward corner cupboard into which little else fits and which is conveniently  located above the coffee maker.

So in my mind, we had tons of filters. In spite of the central role coffee plays in my life, I hadn't really paid attention to the steady dwindling of our supply until there it was, gone.

So, because this is what I think about, I started thinking about characters, the frog boiling in a pot of water, the camel and the straw. What is it that makes a person decide to start (25 minutes) or stop (coffee filters)? And then -- how does that person show it? What actions does that person take that shows the different way of thinking?

I set a timer every day. Every morning, I reach for a coffee filter. I suppose that someday, I might do neither thing. What do my characters do? What do they do next? What do they do differently? What does it take to make them change?

Obviously, it's time for a cup of coffee. Except that I'm out of milk.

* People here sell/buy milk in bags instead of those plastic gallon jugs. They put these bags into a plastic poury-jug-thing and serve from that. Bags! Seven years here, and I still can't do it.

So here's the deal. I'm home from vacation in Tucson, which I enjoyed mightily. It was a well-filling experience.

But, as an adult with allegiances in two countries, I allocate the entire month of April to income tax. Actually, I pay someone else to do my Canadian taxes, which helps, but there's still a lot of paperwork to assemble. 

Plus, I have this "thing" about paying someone else to help me tell the US IRS that I don't, in fact, owe taxes, because I pay up here and the two countries have signed a treaty. Therefore, I do my own US taxes. Which mostly involves whining, since the paperwork is all assembled for the Canadian accountant. But it's still a project.

 All of which is a big over-explanation of why today is another picture day. Two pictures, actually -- taken the "Day of Two Sunrises."


Sunrises actually aren't straight "up" from a spot on the horizon (a factoid I didn't really understand till I lived here). In March, one day the sun rises from behind the far peninsula, where we see it briefly, and then passes behind the island, and then "rises" again from behind the island.

 So: two countries, two sets of income tax forms. But to compensate, two sunrises to look at on the calendar. Not a bad trade.

The specific day that's like a command: March 4th. Thank you, Peggy of Otowi Station Bookstore.

Here are the two shots I used for my family's calendar in March.



If you've only been here in the summer, it's hard to imagine scenes like this. Which is why I include so many winter shots.

As I mentioned last week, I'm vacationing. (Strange concept for a writer.) While I'm gone, I'm sharing photos from the calendar I create for my family every year.


I should mention that, being a word person, I often include words with these shots. In the past, I've used poems that were meaningful to my mother and grandmother, and excerpts from various other bits of writing that my mother left behind. This year, I used a quote for M. Scott Momaday, which you can read here. I divided the last three statements on the page among the twelve months of the year.