Something outside caught my attention. Just there, through the crack in the curtains.

Just there. Do you see it?

Look closer.

Ah! There it is!

Nature. Better than any reality TV programming.

As you’ll recall, these balloons took up residency on February 14th, 2012. Around two and a half months ago. They all stayed floating high and proud for the first month. Clearly they were having a competition to see who would remain the floatiest for the longest.

After that first month they started to drop, one by one. When they hit the floor, Corey would deem them out of the race and…uh…”dispose” of them.

About a week ago a rogue balloon turned on us. My only guess is that it witnessed the disposal process, and decided it would try to take us out before it was its turn. So it did what any self respecting balloon would.

It tried to choke me in my sleep.

In the middle of the night I awoke to a tickling in my throat. I opened my eyes and there it was – a pink balloon sitting on my face, trying to smother me! It had positioned it’s curly ribbon in my mouth and was waiting for me to take a nice, long, deep breath. If things had gone according to plan I would have inhaled the damn thing.

Well played, pink balloon! But, as always, I had the last laugh!

I kicked the balloon out of the bedroom, checked under the bed and in the closet for fellow conspirators, then went back to sleep.

The next morning, Corey hunted out the traitor.

Warning, the following pictures may disturb delicate viewers.

Since the public execution, there have been no more attacks.

Six balloons are left. Who will outwit, outlast, and outplay?

PS, does anyone else think it’s crazy that helium balloons are lasting this long?

And guess what?

Sometimes, there was no heat.

You see, one especially cold day in January, the heat broke.

Some men in blue jump suits came to look at it. They had to go below the office to look at the pipes in the basement. They sat down there and smoked, and the smoke came up through the radiator, and choked our unidentified heroine.

The men in the blue jump suits came back into the office and declared the heat fixed and went away.

And the heat did indeed come on. And on and on and on. Full blast. It would not stop. Not even when the suffocating girl turned the thermostat off. The heat still came and came and came until the girl started to feel like an over cooked, chewy pot roast.

The men in the blue jump suits came back, and sat and smoked and choked the girl, and once again declared the heat fixed.

The heat did indeed turn off. And off and off and off. It so enjoyed being off, it refused to turn back on.

Repeat this cycle of either heat on full blast all the time or no heat ever. Repeat it several times. Repeat it until it’s funny. Repeat it until it gets really old, and then keep repeating it until it gets funny again.

Repeat it during a crazy winter of scary climate change weather, and then match up the days of full blast heat with the days of 28°C weather, and the days of no heat with the -20°C  weather.

Repeat it until one day, when the men in blue jump suits declared that it was our thermostat that was broken, and not the actual heat. They gave the girl a brand new thermostat, and walked away, declaring the problem fixed.

It was not fixed.

The girl was back to the heat not coming on at all.

Finally, FINALLY, one of the blue jumpsuits figured out that the new thermostat didn’t work with a steam radiator, and that one would have to be special ordered. It would take weeks. Apparently it is coming from Jupiter.

However, he did install a temporary fix for our poor, totally anonymous friend.

The options are still full blast or nothing, but at least the girl can control it.

The men in blue jump suits haven’t visited for weeks now, and the girl kind of hopes they never come back. They will likely only make things worse.

The end.

* Me.

Our apartment came with blinds, and that was good enough for me.

Until the winter.

Then came the cold seeping in through the glass, and the glare off the snow easily penetrated our blinds, filling our bedroom with blinding light all through the night. Blinding!* I’m not exaggerating!**

So, Corey hung a quilt over our window to serve as temporary protection against both the cold and the light. (No, we’re not vampires. Why do you ask?)

Effective, yes, but was a little to reminiscent of my late-teens-first-apartment-living-in-squallor days. I vowed to make curtains.

Four months later…

On Saturday I attempted to turn this:

Into curtains. Armed with this tutorial from Butterfly Boutique, suggestions from my facebook friends, a large pot of tea, and six episodes of The Good Wife, I launched into the project.

I meant to take more pics of the process, but I forgot…

I think they’re a step up from the quilt.

Do you like how the curtains are a different shade of green in every photo?

* Okay, maybe just really bright.

** Yes, I am.

This one was disqualified for being caught underneath the kitchen table. It eventually freed itself, and now cowers in the corner, full of shame and self loathing.

One by one they are slowly learning to fly at a lower altitude. They drift through the house, pausing at items of interest. Sometimes they are down right creepy.

Corey and I were watching TV the other day, and a red balloon floated into the livingroom, stopping suddenly when we turned to look at it. We returned our attention to the show. A few minutes later I looked around.

Where is the red balloon?, I asked.

Don’t move, Corey whispered. Look up, slowly. The damn thing was hovering a few inches above my head.

What do you want, Red Balloon!?!?

I may have foiled the Red Balloon’s evil plans, but it’s sister, Pink Balloon, got even the next day, when it popped out of the closet door and scared the s%*# out of me.

 Surprise! MWAHAHAHAHA!

Yes, balloons can cackle evily. Who knew?

PS, has the word “balloon” lost all meaning to anyone else yet?

But apparently it really means learning how to use a photo editing software to pimp my photos.

So, here are some (highly edited) pictures of our apartment building. We’re on the second floor, on the side that is being eaten by shadows.

Next up, a tour of the inside (subtitled Why I Have 1000 Balloons for Roommates).

The weather in Halifax has been crazy this winter. One day it has been -20° C, the next + 12° C. Springish in the morning, snow in the afternoon, capped off with an evening wind storm.

And the rain! Don’t get me started on the rain! It competes with life on the west coast. Except it’s colder. Much, much colder

It’s kind of exciting. I never know what I’m going to see out our living room window when I get up in the morning.

Take, for example, my short story My Body’s Rorschach.

Seriously. Take it. You can! It’s been published in the fine literary journal, Pilot!

Yesterday I was out for a walk with my friends Sam and Tina, and we wandering into Atlantic News so they could buy lottery tickets. I swung by the writing section of the magazine stands (why is it always hidden away on the bottom shelf?), and there it was! Issue 9! With my name listed as a contributor!

(If you’re interested in reading my story, along with the rest of the journal, this is a list of stores in Canada that sell it, and over here is where you can buy a copy online.)

Yes, I’m excited. It’s delightful to see your name in print. But getting this one story published was a long journey. And since I love lists so much, I thought I would put together a simple time line for your enjoyment.

Spring 2002 — I first wrote the story under the title A Few Weeks In The Summer. Yes, that was a horrible title. Yes, I am terrible at coming up with titles.

November 2004 — I first submitted the story to a literary journal for publication. It was rejected.

August 2005 — I submitted it for the second time. Also rejected.

2006 — 2007 — I was working on other things. The story was all but forgotten about.

2008 — I stumbled across the story and reread it, expecting to hate it. It was messy, but there were some parts I still really liked. So I reworked it, came up with a (marginally) better name, and starting to submit it more regularly.

April 5, 2011 — I submitted My Body’s Rorschach to Pilot Project. They were the 12th publisher to get it.

August 12, 2011 — I received an email from the Pilot Project editor accepting the story for publication. Woo Hoo!

Fall 2011 — My editor and I went back and forth 5 or 6 times on some changes they wanted me to make. Yes, even when something is accepted to be published, it still isn’t finished!

February 2012 — Six months after it was first accepted, and ten years after it was first writing, My Body’s Rorschach (along with several other stories) is sitting on shelves of a handful of book stores across Canada.

A stack a other stories, including a novel and a screenplay, are going through the same process. It is possible that nothing else will ever see the light of day again. And this, dear friends, is why I have two other day jobs.

Clue # 1

Clue # 2

What? Isn’t it perfectly clear? Fine! I guess I’ll tell you the whole story.

Three years ago I walked up to a Virgin Mobile kiosk, and I said “Sell me a phone! No price is too cheap!”

$30 later, I walked out with a small red flip phone that won’t let me use apostrophes without crashing. I called it Eddie.

Sexy, no?

Three years later Eddie and I were still going strong. Sure, he couldn’t hold a charge for long, and if I talked for more than 10 minutes my ear got uncomfortably hot. But that’s no bother. Thanks to Moss on The IT Crowd, there is an easy solution for “hot ear.”

Yes, everything was going smashingly. Until last Tuesday night.

I was talking to my sister (hi Angie!) while preparing dinner. My hands were full of raw chicken when we said goodbye. I tried to close Eddie’s flip-top using only my shoulder and chin. Surprisingly, this technique didn’t work. As Eddie slipped from my grasp and stumbled to the ground, my right had shot out instinctively to grab him. Way to go, right hand!

But wait! Now Eddie is covered in raw chicken slime. Gross!

Don’t worry, my left hand said. I know what to do! And before my brain could intersept, my left hand turned on the kitchen tap, and my right hand plunged Eddie into its icy stream.

What are you doing???? My brain screamed.

Helping! My hands sang out in unison.

Ack! Gurgle! Splaaphyyyy… Eddie hollered in shock and pain. Then all was quiet.

Oops… My hands said.

For three days Eddie cycled through symptoms that would have baffled even the diagnostic genius of Greg House. He wouldn’t charge. He wouldn’t ring. Then he would ring, but not let me answer. He randomly called out in different ring tones, as if trying to select his final swan song. His buttons would work, then not work, then work, then only load the camera.

On day three I was ready to send poor old Eddie to electronics heaven, where our printer, Samuel, had recently gone. At least you won’t be alone, I whispered into Eddie’s mouth piece.

Oh, what the hell, maybe one more try…

I opened him. He didn’t automatically load the camera! I tried to access my address book…it worked! I wrote a text, and it sent!

He’s alive!

Eddie with Squash — Post Chicken Incident

Thank goodness, as my disposable income for this month had already been spent on that new printer (yet to be baptized, but I’m thinking it looks like a Joel).

My phone survived drowning and salmonella. What can your phone do?

Photo Credits

Chicken @ Flickr

Water Faucet @ Flickr

But hopefully, somewhere in that pile of words, you’ve learned a thing or two, and maybe you’ve even put something together that someone, somewhere, would want to read. This is every writers darkest fantasy. Getting published.

It’s a long and hairy road. A lot happens between “writing” and “being published.” If we call “writing” step one of the process, I’m currently on step two: querying. You take your novel, (50-100 thousand words, with another million on the cutting room floor), and you try to condense it to roughly 250 words that are exciting enough to entice a potential agent or publisher to read more. You send this query letter out, and you wait patiently for the rejection letters to come pouring in.

And pour in they do! I have a folder filled with polite thanks but no thanks letters. But if you keep sending it out, maybe, just maybe, one day someone will be interested.

That’s what happened to me on Friday, January 27th. I received an email from a publisher asking me to send in a hard copy of my novel.

SQUEE!

Shipping  a manuscript is about a $50 investment in printing costs and postage. Good thing there’s a bus strike in Halifax. I can put my unspent bus ticket money towards shipping and handling. So I printed it, and packaged it, and mailed it with pride.

I was so excited, I wanted a picture of the packaged manuscript. Something to show the grandkids...

And this would have been the end of my little story. Except, the publisher wasn’t in the office when the package was delivered on February 1st, so it was returned to the nearest postal outlet, awaiting pickup.

And there it sat.

For 14 days.

Every day I checked Canada Post to see if it had been retrieved, and every day my heart shrunk just a little. What if they didn’t get the delivery notification? What if they lost it? What if they forgot?

What the heck is the protocol for this? You really really REALLY don’t want to harass publishers. But you also don’t want to miss the chance to get it to the only person interested in reading the damn thing.

I hemmed. I hawed. Finally, I broke down and sent the publisher a gentle, friendly reminder that they only had a few days left to get it. They promptly replied saying they’d just gotten the first notification of it that day (damn you, Canada Post!), and to basically hold my horses.

I checked Canada Post. I checked again.

And I can (finally!) say that as of 9:11am (EST) this morning, my manuscript is in the hands of a real live publisher.

I feel obliged to point out that this doesn’t mean anything at all. It’s non-news. There are many-a steps between having someone ask to see the full manuscript and publication. So don’t go telling people I’ll be a best selling author by Easter (Granny, this means you!).

But, hell! Someone besides friends and family is volunteering to read more! I say it again:

SQUEE!

Yes, I took another picture of the package on a clean tables, with flowers. I was that excited.

Post Script:

For those that are wondering, here are the possible outcomes, in descending order of likeliness:

1. I never hear from the publisher again (49.999999%)
2. I get a form rejection from the publisher sometime in the next 6 months (49.999999%)
3. The publisher is actually interested in it (0.000002%)

Fingers crossed!