Sorry to disappoint, but I’m taking a day – maybe the week – off journalling. It’s not you, it’s definitely me. But I couldn’t resist sharing this “dad joke” that we saw posted on a sign at a nearby used car lot.
Have a gentle Monday and thanks for coming by. All is well, and I hope that it is with you, too.
Erin
Just a thought… Time passes, but memories linger. [Eddie Stack]
As I write from the road, I will beg your indulgence to watch today’s journal, as it was late last night that I put it together in video form, unwritten, just spoken from the heart. You’ll be rewarded with moments of video and pictures and the story of how my sisters and I are learning that we make memories for ourselves, not our parents, when they we are all living with their dementia.
You can watch it on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.
Just a thought… Advice from a Dog: Unleash your talents. Chase your dreams. Have a happy attitude. Wag more and bark less. Love with all your heart. Learn new tricks no matter what your age. Show lots of affection. Shake it off. [Author unknown]
You can watch a video version of this journal (it includes a little clip of video and more pictures!) on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.
Welcome to our first time together this new month. It was back in March that a furry little sweetheart joined our lives. In case you missed it, Dottie, whose registered name is Lily Elise Dot Calm, came to us through a breeder about an hour up the road called Misty Trails. A one-year-old Havanese, she has turned out to be the absolute perfect dog: she sleeps all through the night, uses pee pads when she needs to go and we can’t get her outside for a walk (we don’t have a yard we can access from the main floor of the house), she lets us know when she needs to go, she doesn’t bark, she is attached to me and is just a little bit shy.
She was in her final show on Mother’s Day weekend and flunked four days in a row: instead of allowing judges to examine her on a table after she had strutted her stuff, she would just lie down on her back becoming all submissive. It seems that being around new people (us) changed her disposition. She’s become a more timid dog, and while we don’t love that she shakes more, we’re hoping she’ll come out of that. I promise you it’s nothing that she did, but she was chased when she and her leash got loose on a busy street one time, and that may behind a fear of men, as it was a man who ran after her? Who knows.
Anyway, I promised you before and after pictures of her grooming. This is Dottie when we first got her…all show dog pretty.
Between then, two months ago, and this past Wednesday, Dottie was lucky to get a trim from Auntie Brooke, our daughter-in-law who has a natural talent with scissors and clippers. She did a great job, and here’s how Dottie looked: all eyeballs and sweetness. Oh and eyebrows, too!
But Dottie’s do-over isn’t the only big news around here. When Rob and I went away for 8 days last month, Dottie made such an impression on Brooke, Phil and our grandkids Colin and Jane that they really missed having her around when she came home to us. That’s where we all got lucky: it turned out that right after the Mother’s Day weekend shows, Dottie’s breeder had a one-year-old, who was born just a few months before Dottie in 2022, who was going to need a home.
Her name is Sammy – short for Samara – and she, too, comes from a long line of show dogs and champions. Honestly, we don’t care about the pedigree, although both will still be in a breeding program and may well be mamas together. But the most important thing is how well the two get along.
It’s a little bit crazy the way they run around together when they see each other in Phil and Brooke’s yard and, yes, in our house, too, where Dottie even whines and looks at the front door after Sammy’s been here. She truly misses her “sister.”
Last week, Dottie and Sammy had a girls’ day out and both got their puppy cuts. If you can stand this cuteness overload, here they are.
So, life is good. We have a family who loves to keep our Dottie when we travel – which we are always ready to do, last week to Sooke and this week when we head over to the mainland and visit my Dad in Kelowna for a few days. Dottie has a sister she loves. And everybody is getting along just great. Right Uncle Phil?
Thanks for coming by – and we’ll talk to you again next week from the road. Kelowna’s a beautiful place and we’re very much looking forward to reconnecting with Dad and two of my sisters again. Enjoy your week.
A reminder that a new Drift sleep story awaits you tomorrow (yes, two weeks in a row – something I’m trying to make a habit again) with a second chapter from Winnie the Pooh. This Thursday, Lisa Brandt and I drop a new Episode 23 of Gracefully & Frankly and I can promise you that we take you in a direction that we’ve never gone. Do catch up with all of our previous episodes including and especially #21 where we look inside Lisa’s summer at a nudist resort. It was an amazing chat and I only hope I asked all of the questions you would have. Take care.
Join me for a DIFFERENT kind of journal today: it’s a sentimental journey that you’ll need to watch – and it may even include a godwink from my late mother. See what you think….
You can watch it on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.
Talk to you next week.
Just a thought… Don’t be distracted by criticism. Remember – the only taste of success some people have is when they take a bite out of you. [Zig Ziglar]
You can watch a video version of this journal on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.
I was writing today’s journal and an email came in from a site called Chartable. Having absolutely no attention span, especially when I’m trying to write, I opened the email. I think I was enrolled in Chartable back when my Drift with Erin sleep stories first came out through another company almost exactly two years ago. Through it, I get reports of rankings of my stories, how many downloads in the past week, if I have risen or fallen in the standings, that sort of thing. So here we are after last week’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Delightful!
Unlike when I was in radio, and where we stood determined whether the show was a success and would keep going, or the powers-that-be would give us performance bonuses or start making changes, the rankings for the podcasts I do don’t really matter. I know the RealTime one I do for the Canadian Real Estate Association is out of my hands, so I can only hope it’s hitting the target: realtors.
Gracefully & Frankly, which I do with Lisa Brandt, is growing now with our 21st episode about to drop on Thursday (we talk about the nudist camp Lisa worked at as a teen, medication for hot flashes and information every woman over 50 should know about a faulty study, plus more). But we saw a bit of a drop last week when we ever-so-slightly dipped our toes into politics and it was heard first in the teaser clip. Just that one segment about passports had a woman posting on my Facebook that she hoped I didn’t support Trudeau as he’s, in her words, a “monster.” I thought: Okay, let’s just not mention anyone’s name again, ever. Don’t want to alienate anyone, right?
With Drift, the steady climb towards 200,000 downloads shows me that I’m going in the right direction and I have numbers and comments like the beautiful ones on Facebook the other day, to confirm that. While I was poking around in Chartable, though, I saw this as my overall ranking:
There was this lovely recent one that I’m reluctant to share because it’s so nice. But I will.
Then, because I’m me, and I have to find something to make me feel unworthy, I scrolled the ratings a bit. I found one – yes ONE – from last November. And once I got over my surprise, I thought, oh, you’ve gotta see this.
One star in one review. And that’s the one I gave more time to than any other as I scrolled through. Then I remembered a nasty exchange via email that I had with someone who had seen me on CTV’s The Social at about that time, who called me all kinds of names. I basically told her to go away. I mean, that had to be it, right? Not definitely, but most likely.
It does happen. People who don’t like another’s politics go on to slag their book without having read it. Envious competitors – and to be clear, I don’t think there are mean people in the sleep community – go on the sites of others and try to tank their ratings. In the movie business, if someone has a near perfect ranking on Rotten Tomatoes, some so-and-so will post a negative one, just to keep them from the cherished 100% Fresh rating.
But then again, maybe, this person thought that my telling of, oh, Cinderella, The Frog Prince or Alice in Wonderland was disrespectful and arrogant? What part: the five minutes of relaxation with spa music, the gently-told story or the five minutes of waves at the end, I wonder?
Clearly, I have given this far too much thought. But it happens. Someone will always try to put you in your place. I was inadvertently slighted by a CBC piece I stumbled upon (and since haven’t been able to find again) on sleep podcasts that didn’t include Drift, and as far as I could see at a glance, excluded any Canadian podcasts. That was disappointing, as I’d love another chance to spread the word of our sleep stories on which I spend about 30 hours each re-writing, recording, editing and then producing – all a one-person crew here – but it’s not personal, I know.
What’s important is that you’re there, and I’ll keep putting these stories out as a labour of love. It’s not to get rich, that’s for sure, but because I always wanted to do something like this, and I love it. So, if this person decides she wants to take me down, let me ask you to help me out. It’s easy to leave a rating for a podcast on Apple, for example: just scroll down any show page and select a star rating, then type “write a review.” You can leave one per story if you want. The next tale (tail?) to come next Tuesday is The Little Mermaid, the Hans Christian Andersen version, just in time for the movie’s release next week.
In the meantime, I thank you. For being here, for listening to Gracefully & Frankly and, of course, for joining our Drift sleep community. And I thank Chartable for reminding me “NEVER READ THE REVIEWS!” You’d think I’d know by now, right?
Have a great short week and we’ll talk Monday.