Erin's Journals

Just a thought… Cleaning house while children are growing is like shoveling snow when it’s still snowing. [Phyllis Diller]

Ah, Monday. What an incredibly fun and busy weekend in our part of the Ottawa area! One of my highlights came from the sky; I know you’re probably done with the white stuff already, but this is the first snow I’ve seen since last year when I was on the book tour in Ontario.

Funny how the last few major snowfalls in Ontario have hit during weekends, isn’t it? Almost like commuters are being spared the worst of it, while plows get a chance to do their work. And we are grateful.

Yesterday 5-year-old Colin and I were joyful partners in snow-shoveling as the wet, heavy flakes accumulated throughout a gently mild Sunday. We moved and piled it, then watched through the window as the slushy pavement we’d exposed gradually returned to its previous white. But of course, everything is relative, isn’t it?

When we think of our neighbours just a few provinces east of us, and what they’ve endured, it makes my mildly sore back (yeah, I’m blissfully out of shape for this kind of activity) seem pretty darned inconsequential. I’ve got something along those lines to share with you further below. But we made snow angels and a few memories to pack up and take home with me when it’s time to go.

I’ve just a few more days here with our sweet grand babies and I’ll be sorry to be heading out to Toronto on Wednesday, although it’s the original reason for my trip east to begin with, as we embark on the Facebook Live adventure I told you about here last week with Home Equity Bank. 

I’ve got my fingers crossed that the techie gods are in our corner and that you’re able to join in, share your stories, your questions and even your concerns. More here. And a reminder it’s at 8 pm Eastern Time; my post reads 5 PM, but that’s the Pacific Time upon which my trusty laptop is set.

A few people have asked if Rob is with me for this trip, or where Molly is; they’re together at home in the warmer weather. He’s keeping extremely busy and every time I call it seems he’s either up a ladder or with a set of pliers in his hand.

As for Molly, we don’t travel with her any more than absolutely necessary, as she is 15-and-a-half years old. As you have seen from the videos in which she romps and runs, she hardly shows her age in any way except in the evenings: that’s when she migrates between the front and back doors, softly pawing at the glass to go outside.

We will let her out, she wanders around and then strolls back into the house, half the time not having done anything on the grass. (And please don’t warn me about coyotes in desert neighbourhoods; she’s always being watched and we have a fully fenced yard.)

I’m just wondering if her new evening habits are the result of a bit of senility setting in with her age. I’ve Googled it and this doesn’t seem to be too unusual. In addition to her SierraSil Leaps and Bounds dog chews, I’m wondering if maybe Omega 3s might be in order to help her brain to keep functioning as best it can. It’s not at all worrisome and our job for the next few years is just to keep her happy and comfortable, living her best life!

I’m sorry I didn’t get to the story about my unusual travel mate, but there was so much going on this weekend: the lightheartedness of my time with two beautiful kids and their parents, and then the shock of one of sports’ biggest names losing his life at the age of 41.

As you probably know by now, Kobe Bryant was killed yesterday in a helicopter crash, along with his daughter Gianna, on his way to coach one of her basketball games. All nine aboard the chopper died, including the pilot, as well as one of Gianna’s teammates and her parents.

I’m afraid I’ll save the travel anecdote for another time. And our thoughts are with Vanessa Bryant and her and Kobe’s surviving daughters, along with the families of all the victims. Such a tragedy on so many levels.

Now, something good for all of us.

I saw this on the weekend and had to share it with you. Mark Critch is a lovely man and obviously has a huge heart. When you watch this little ode Mark put together last week to the people of his native Newfoundland, I guarantee you’ll be touched, as I was. Enjoy this and I’ll be back with you – from Toronto – on Thursday.

Just a thought… Be willing to be a beginner, every single morning. [Meister Eckhart]

So who takes a trip to Ottawa in the middle of winter – and leaves California to do it? (Raises hand.) Yep – this kid. And I couldn’t be happier!

Sure, the only boots I brought south with me come up just over my ankle and have a bit of a heel but I think they have a tread. They do sell Ugg-style boots down in CA (there’s snow in the mountains near us), but knowing that I have a couple of pairs of boots sitting idle in Victoria, I’m too darned cheap to pick up another. So we’ll see where this goes. (Spoiler Alert: probably on my butt.)

After a non-stop flight to Toronto and a connector three hours later, I arrived in Ottawa around midnight last night (or this morning). My wait at YYZ was almost exactly as long as my time on the phone Monday night with Air Canada to make adjustments to a previously planned in-and-out flight to Toronto for 2 nights next week for a FaceBook live I’m going to be doing (more down below).

Of course, it’s worth everything to wake up and see Colin’s and Jane’s little faces. And I guess I’m not truly Canadian if I don’t swear when the cold hits my cheeks, which I did when I exited Ottawa’s Macdonald-Cartier airport!

While we all reconnect and I catch up with beautiful baby Jane (who’s now almost four months old!) I’ll also be preparing for a first: next week’s Facebook Live session. It takes place at 8 pm ET and I’ll be sitting down with Yvonne from Home Equity Bank, whom you’ve likely seen on TV morning shows, no matter where in the country you are.

She’s a lovely person and Rob and I are looking into partnering with her ourselves and have a lot of questions, and I’ll ask you to think of any if you’re over 55 and are the least bit interested in turning up to 55% of the value of your home into tax-free cash.

I wouldn’t even be considering this if I didn’t believe it’s on the up-and-up; there are so many differences between our system in Canada and the one in the US that has (deservedly) gotten a less-than-favourable reputation.

Reputation. To me, that’s what it’s all about, and hopefully how I’ve built my life, my career. Going in with full knowledge – knowing which questions to ask and how to follow them up so we’re feeling fully informed.

And so, that’s what I’m up to in Toronto next week. I’ll remind you of the time and date again (it’s one week tonight) and hope you’ll stop by and join us. I can even help you do that – since I’m pretty new to it as well. Here’s to new adventures, steep learning curves and staying busy in all of the right ways.

Have a gentle weekend – I’ll be seeing my breath just as you are, for a change – and I’ll be back with you on Monday. CH-ch-ch-cheers!

Just a thought… A journey is best measured in friends, not miles. [Tim Cahill]

Welcome to this Tuesday journal. I’m adding an extra one this week because our partners in a very special Canadian Thanksgiving Cruise in October are hoping that in the next few days we can secure the boat with just our group. Let’s call it Travel Tuesday. Get on board and share a moment, will you?

By now, you’ve likely heard me mention last year’s Tulip Time cruise from Amsterdam to Belgium and back with AMA Waterways, some of the most luxurious riverboats there are. (As one boss with a rival company told AMA’s execs: we have the ads, but you have the boats.) And it’s true. Having been on a Viking boat during our last cruise (occasionally you pass through other river boats to make your way to the dock) I can honestly concur.

It’s the people aboard the AMAStella who truly made our trip memorable. Not just our group (more on them in a moment) but the incredibly kind and efficient crew: every staff member made us feel like Royalty. The cruise director on last year’s trip has even agreed to helm this one for us, too. You won’t be disappointed.

My friend-for-life Mike Cooper and I are recreating the experience this fall with our exclusive Thanksgiving on the Rhine trip. We set sail from Basel, Switzerland down the Rhine past glorious castles with many stops en route to Amsterdam.

At this point, there are only 24 staterooms available, and we want to make sure that the ship is filled with people there to enjoy each other’s and our company. I heard from Valerie F. from Quebec on Sunday; she said that she didn’t know of us before, but can’t wait to join Mike, Rob and me, as well as the new friends she made last spring, for the next one!

Yes, our folks are just that nice. And it was so much fun cycling with Valerie and her husband – something we hope to do again with them, and with you.

In addition to last year’s activities – walking tours, bike rides through unforgettable sites, excursions we’d only dreamed of and which are all complimentary and included in your cost – Mike, Rob and I are promising a couple of evening “Coop’s Classics” dances that will have you throwing off your shoes and joining the fun. (Or watching and laughing – that happened a lot, too.)

There are all kinds of extras that other cruise companies add on – which add up – like pre-dinner and sail away party cocktails, wine (including alcohol-free!) and beer with dinner and so much more that could cost an arm and a leg, if you were travelling with another group.

Mike and I take part in tours and every social event on the boat; unlike some “celebrity hosts” who are supposedly a draw on these trips, we don’t squirrel ourselves away or just hang out together until we are forced to make an appearance. This is all about having huge fun as a group and making sure everyone has a good time. And besides, we love it.

To that end, our host Gerry Koolhof of New Wave Travel in Toronto – a lovely gentleman with whom Rob and I booked cruises long before these “CHFI-themed” trips were even a dream – is reminding us that time is short to take the plunge (um, my words, not his) and book your cabin if we want to make this trip just our group. There are some extra incentives to make sure you’re getting the best price, and even more.

Gerry writes: “Encourage family, friends and neighbours to join us…as an incentive new couples will receive an additional $250 Cdn savings off the cruise fare per person. Book by Feb. 1 2020. *Additional savings for any guests who book “suite” category Violin Deck.”

If you’re the least bit curious and want to see what we’re going to experience together this fall, just click this link.

And please don’t hesitate to email gerry@newwavetravel.net if you have questions. He is a lovely man and there’s no pressure; every conversation we’ve had with Gerry has been friendly and patient (and trust me, with our requests and queries over the years, we know!).

Join our friendly group and see the glorious sights on the Rhine – maybe stay a few nights in Switzerland or in Amsterdam to bookend your extraordinary trip. And we look forward to meeting you this fall.

I’ll be back with a “regular” ­journal here for you on Thursday.

Just a thought… If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward. [Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.]

Here in the US, this is Martin Luther King Day. As we do every day, we remember him for his wisdom, his convictions, his strength and his courage.

On another spot in the calendar – but one that is significant in its own way (read on to find out why) – those who figure these things out say that this is Blue Monday, supposedly the saddest day of the year.

Why? Because if you factor in January weather (and goodness knows it was a headline across Canada this past weekend), lack of daylight hours, post-holiday bills arriving and the realization that your best, most fervent New Year’s Resolutions might not be coming to fruition, you’re supposedly “bluer than blue, sadder than sad,” as the old song went, more so than any other day of the entire year.

I call BULL. There is nothing – no date, no weather, no worries – that can combine to make any day sadder than the next because your mood is not dictated by a date on the calendar. In fact, it’s not even a real thing – no more than bad luck can be expected on a Friday the 13th – and it’s only been going since 2005. It began, supposedly, with something put out by a travel company. Got the blues? Take a cruise! (More on that later.)

Dismissed as pseudoscience, maybe this whole Blue Monday thing is actually a chance to reset and take real stock of the way we’re feeling. More to the point, what are we going to do about it?

Change Your thoughts – Change Your Life

Just Googling that phrase shows you how many people have come up with that very idea, whether it’s “your life,” “your reality” or “your world.” It sounds overly simplistic, but it’s true.

Our thoughts are just that: thoughts. Whether we conjure scenarios that we think could happen, or might be happening, or we dwell on old conversations and wrongs (as in, what did happen), we’re poisoning our own happiness by letting those thoughts dominate our minds. I’m guilty of this: an unpleasant conversation will replay over and over in my head until I push the STOP button.

How? By changing the focus. Part of the trick is in stepping back and seeing things from a different angle; perhaps not as they really are, but as they could be. By remembering that what people say and do is far more about them than about you. Don Miguel Ruiz made this point beautifully in his book, The Four Agreements: Don’t Take it Personally.

I translate that into “It’s their movie.” We’re not starring in anyone’s show but our own; often we’re barely even making a cameo appearance. Yet it’s their screenplay – tragedy, comedy, horror movie – that is dominating our thoughts.

Is the person who’s upsetting us thinking about us at the moment that we’re lying in bed awake at night, letting their unkind or insensitive comments run on a loop in our heads? The answer is almost always NO.

The person who forgot your birthday or accused you of saying something that you most definitely didn’t say – or mean in the way that they interpreted it – is not thinking about you. They’ve moved their attention to something else: that glass of wine, the TV show they’re watching, the YouTube cat video that is making them smile. Just forget them.

If someone is wrong – whether in a ridiculous comment online or in the way that they are perceiving you – you can’t change their mind. All you can do is your best. And if that’s not good enough, there are two words for them, and they most definitely are not Happy Birthday. You get to choose.

And finally, look at what has happened to you, whether a sprained ankle, a traumatic loss (and that includes your job), or a nasty break-up, and decide what YOU are going to do about it.

Our lives are divided into Before and After: what happened prior to the event that caused you such pain, and what comes in its wake. Much of what happens in our lives is not about the actual earth-shattering event, but how we handle it. What are we going to do to keep going, to make things better?

Sometimes there is no making better what happened. But how you deal with it – whether you give up, stand up or speak up – is entirely your choice. They can’t take that away from us, no matter what we’ve suffered. We have more power and strength than we can imagine.

So that, my friend, is what I have to say about Blue Monday.

I’ll be back with you here on Thursday, but tomorrow I’ll post a special Travel Tuesday journal as we close in on the final few days of pre-cruise specials, in case you’re just thisclose to making a decision to join us in October for Thanksgiving on the Rhine.

Just a thought… Working hard for something we don’t care about is called stress. Working hard for something we love is called passion. [Simon Sinek]

I was going to write back to everyone personally, but forgive me, I just can’t – at least not yet. My days are busy, as I’ll soon explain. So let me say here how deeply touched and hugely grateful I am if you are one of the hundred or so people who wrote after Monday’s journal with new book ideas. They ranged from a children’s book to delving more deeply into the ideas surrounding grief. Nothing yet to report…perhaps that idea of “patience” is a good one after all.

Here’s something I don’t have to wait for: Mourning Has Broken is being released by HarperCollins Canada in a soft cover version in one month and two days. February 18 (how I love eights and eighteens) is the book’s due date. And again, I thank you for making it – and so much in our lives – possible.

I realize that a great many who wanted to read the book have already bought it, but I’m told to expect the unexpected and that the book will have “legs” as they put it…as people continue to discover it. I’m grateful for that.

Just yesterday I sat in my dark little studio and talked on Skype for an hour with broadcaster Ralph Benmergui about the book, grief, our lives and so on for a podcast. It was really interesting, as his take is more spiritual than most. I’ll let you know when and where you can hear it, if you’re interested. Legs, indeed.

I’ve been spending a lot of time inside, despite the sunshine and warm temperatures beckoning out on the deck, as I continue to pursue my freelance voice work. I subscribe to a couple of sites, which put out auditions throughout the day. I look at them, see if I’m a fit, and then practically run into the studio, hook up my computer, record into it and then edit (to cut out breaths and mistakes) to send to the firm doing the hiring.

It’s laborious and not too fruitful; I get about 2 out of every 100 I try for. Even seeing that my auditions have been listened to is as much as I can hope for; a “thumbs up” or actually getting a job are icing on the cake.

I decided really to tackle this voice stuff in 2020 as a hobby more than a living. If I had to subsist on the money I get from these little jobs, I’d be panhandling near the Sonny Bono statue in downtown Palm Springs. But for now, until something really grabs hold, it’s keeping me occupied and giving me a sense of accomplishment. Even if it is just recording other people’s words and trying to give them what they want.

Mostly they are looking for younger, higher voices: listen to ads on tv or radio sometime and you’ll hear what I mean. Rob reminds me that I’ve had this older, deeper voice since he met me in my young 20s, and that I’ll never sound like that perky girl that gets so much work. But, as the saying goes, she persists.

I sometimes feel guilty for not getting out and doing more things, meeting more people and filling my time in ways that make my Fitbit not want to call 911 because it suspects I’ve fallen into a crevasse and can’t get out.

But then I think about my mom. She was a lot like me and when she spent winters in the sunny south, she’d stay inside and paint a lot of the time. Sure, she’d play some golf, or the ever-growing sport of pickle ball (kind of like tennis but with wooden paddles and a whiffle ball with holes in it, if I recall correctly).

She and Dad would socialize with my sister, brother-in-law and their friends. But mostly she quenched the creative thirst in her soul by painting. She didn’t do it to sell them or get exposure or praise; she did them to feel that she was using her gifts for her own enjoyment.

I guess, in my way, that’s what I’m doing, too. So no more guilt. (Or so I tell myself.) Besides, I’ve learned a new skill in editing (Rob always did it for me) and I really love it. My next step: learning to run my own AV for when I give my keynote speech and Rob doesn’t accompany me on the trip. I can do this…I think!

We’re feeling more fortunate than guilty to be here in the sunny climes while the palm tree outside our house in North Saanich is covered in snow. I read that Victoria broke a 49-year-old record for a single snowfall on January 15 with some 20-30 centimetres hitting the land of February flowers (19 centimetres since midnight), and then turning to rain, from Tuesday to last night. (That 1971 record included a mere 9 centimetres!)

I can’t even tell you what havoc this wreaks on a part of the country that is, for the most part, smugly and joyously unfamiliar with the white stuff. You may recall me telling you that when Rob and I moved out to the island three years ago, we didn’t even take our snow shovel with us. And it was a new one, dammit!

This is definitely the “new normal”; prior to our move out in 2016, significant snow accumulation was almost unheard of. But there’s been a significant snowfall every year since. (We’re very fortunate to have our friends Nancy and Charles looking in on our place back home to make sure everything is okay.) So yes, we’re counting our blessings here in California.

But – insane as this sounds to be leaving sun for snow – I do have a quick two-day trip to Ontario coming at the end of this month, for a special Facebook Live event that’s in the works. I’ll tell you more about it in the days to come, in case you want to join me.

We’re on a big learning curve right now, but maybe I’ll find that I enjoy stepping up onto another social media platform and we can find yet another way to be together, if you like. We shall see! Just two weeks into 2020, I’m trying to find new ways to create and to challenge myself. Now that my mind is clearer, I feel that I’m up for just about anything.

Take good care and thanks for coming by today. I’ll be back here with a fresh journal on Monday. Here’s to pursuing our passions – wherever they may lead. Even to snow.