Erin's Journals

Just a thought… You know great things are coming when everything seems to be going wrong. Old energy is clearing out for new energy to enter. Be patient! [from PeacefulWarrior.com]

As always, you can watch a video version of this journal on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.

Welcome in and happy Monday. Well, where do I start? I told you on Facebook, if that’s where we connect, about the disaster – and no, I’m not overstating it – that befell my laptop last week.

A full cup of coffee was resting beautifully on my bedside table, all ready to do its half-caff magic. When I got up to grab something, always in a hurry, my phone cord pulled that cup right over on top of my laptop, which was resting in an open drawer (my “bed desk” if you will) and completely flooded it.

Yes, we have Apple Care in case of such an emergency because that computer travels with me everywhere and contains my life. Not just photos, but hundreds of thousands of words, including the stories I write for Drift. By the way, tomorrow’s new story for paid subscribers is Nice Threads: The Emperor’s New Clothes, and the one that slides over into free territory is The Island of the Nine Whirlpools. I hope you’re subscribing to Drift with Erin Davis and enjoying these sleep stories. Thank goodness I had them written, edited, produced and sent before Coffee-geddon happened.

But here’s what’s keeping me awake these nights: the techies at the one Apple-approved shop in Victoria can’t even get in to fix my lap life until later today – a full five days later – because of a Find My Device setting. Don’t ask me to explain it; I don’t understand. Today, Rob’s going in again to try to talk them through. Meantime, we wait.

I am working on an old laptop with a very sketchy charging cord that has no updated files since 2018. Rob is sending me speech documents and things I need from his computer for keynote speeches I’m giving in the next few weeks because, yes, it appears it’s going to be at least early November before I get my new computer. I understand these people have steps they have to follow, but in the meantime, I’m in a very bad place of patchwork purgatory.

So there’s that. Fighting technology all the way and just kicking my own butt for letting this happen. But there were a lot of helpful comments on that FB post. A lidded cup? Good idea – but I hate really hot coffee. I’ll think about it. Use iCloud to store files? Hard no – my security comes first. Breathe? Yes. Doing that.

In the meantime, I thank you for your patience as we work through all of this. Mercury moves out of retrograde today, which makes for a really happy Monday – and whether you believe in it or not, it’s been a really rough month for us in terms of communication. That all being said, though, I wouldn’t trade this connection with you for anything. It’s the next best thing to radio and, these days, I’m glad to be far away from it, thanks!

Be well, back up your files and I’ll be here (hopefully) on Thursday.

Just a thought… Dance is a prayer for the future, a remembrance of the past and a joyful exclamation of the present. [Amelia Attwater Rhodes]

You can watch a video version of this journal on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.

I’m sorry to have missed doing a journal earlier this week, but life has been busy in the most joyful of ways. Colin turned seven on Monday which, of course, is just the whipped cream on the pumpkin pie of our Thanksgiving every year. (And there’s birthday cake, too, naturally.)

What we also missed on Monday, besides a journal here, was something Rob and I have been doing for two weeks now. It’s an exercise in intimacy. Now before any pearls get clutched (not that that’s who you are, I know!) it’s not S-E-X. No – although we’ve been warned that it could lead to it! I’m talking about doing something where we’re close, where we’re looking in each other’s direction instead of at a hockey game or a computer screen (guilty!) as we usually are: it’s dance lessons.

Last month for my birthday, Rob gave me a printout of the program he’d signed us up for. I laughed because we had just been telling friends about the last time we took lessons about 20 years ago in north Toronto. It was fun, but he remembers far more about it than I do!

So why take them? Initially we thought we wanted to go on a cruise and look like we knew what we were doing (a bit). Rob’s not a dancer; he’s a bass player and would rather be in the band than one of the people enjoying the music with their feet.

Me? Oh, I can dance – just not sober or without a two-year-old (in Jane’s case) leading the way!

So when we got on the cruise, we took more lessons and they taught us the steps we thought we knew, only backwards, for foxtrot sake! So that was the end of that – ’til now.

There’s something so connecting about touching your partner and letting them lead you around the floor. Because if you know me, I don’t follow very well. Take the pancakes I made last week: instead of a tablespoon of sugar as the recipe required, I put in the same amount of salt. Ugh. Can’t even follow a recipe.

Also, I panic when I’m doing something other than talking in public, and am thinking oh, I look so stupid and then I don’t absorb the instructions. So, we’re going to our third dance lesson in a middle school gym on Monday night, along with about 12 other couples around our age. (Which reminds me – we have not been practising those steps. Bad students!)

This time there will be no cruise at the end, although we have just booked our flights for next May’s Amsterdam-to-Basel river cruise that Mike Cooper and I are hosting with Ama Waterways. 

There will be dances held for our group (still trying to book that entire boat just for us and we have only until Nov. 1 to do so; if you’re interested in more info, click here to send an email to our friend Gerry at New Wave Travel) but Mike, Rob and I will be working those dances, so no reason to kick off our shoes and take to the dance floor!

We’re not doing this for a participation trophy; it’s for Rob and for me. A chance to put on footwear other than slippers or skates (in Rob’s case) and learn something new. As someone wise once said, “We’re fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.”

Have a great weekend and I’ll be back with you here on Monday.

Just a thought… It’s all about finding calm in the chaos. [Donna Karan]

You can watch a video version of this journal on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.

Well, here we are on the precipice of the last long weekend of the year in Canada (except Christmas, sort of) and that is, of course, Thanksgiving.

I want to start by thanking you for being here. The past year has seen a lot of changes in the way that I bring you this journal: from written form to shooting in a little basement setting, to moving up to a guest bedroom in front of a painting that we love, to a few on the road, to the wonders of green screen and everything we can put up on it behind me.

Our green screen game isn’t quite 100% there yet, but we’re continuing to try and to tweak. Anyway, thank you so much for coming along for the ride, for sharing this journal and for subscribing on YouTube so that you don’t even have to go to Facebook anymore if you don’t want.

Ah, Facebook. And Instagram. And WhatsApp. All down on Monday. I joked on Twitter that this could be the most extreme trick that Mercury in Retrograde has ever played on us. Yeah, it’s a thing – and Rob and I happen to believe in it. We back up our computers just before the space cycle begins (we’re in the last one of the year) and play it careful. Can’t hurt, right?

Mercury in Retrograde can also mean other kinds of difficulty in communicating. Like what to say to Aunt Arleen or any family member you’d like to have at your Thanksgiving dinner table this weekend who has decided they know better than to get the vaccine? I think I may just have the solution for you, my friend, thanks to @NYinLA2021 on Twitter.

That, my friend, just about says it all. I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving, remembering the giving part, just as long as it’s not the blessed Covid virus.

And I’ll be back next Thursday with a new journal; our guest room is in use with Colin’s Grandpa staying here for Thanksgiving and Colin’s 7^th birthday Monday, so the green screen comes down. But I’ll talk to you next week. And thank you again.

Just a thought… I know for certain that we never lose the people we love, even to death. They continue to participate in every act, thought and decision we make. Their love leaves an indelible imprint in our memories. We find comfort in knowing that our lives have been enriched by having shared their love. [Leo Buscaglia]

I hope that you had a gentle weekend and I thank you for coming by today. Although you’re here because you prefer the written form of this journal, I will ask you to click either this YouTube link (to which you can subscribe so you don’t miss a video journal Mondays and Thursdays) or via Facebook to watch a video that our daughter-in-law Brooke did with me back in mid-September.

We were staying together, our little family, at a house in Nanoose Bay, near Parksville and Nanaimo here on Vancouver Island. In Part 1 of our chat we had fun as she quizzed me on modern terminology on the internet (I failed miserably and mirthfully) but then I thought, let’s keep talking. So we did – about her stepping into the role of Colin’s mom and taking on, not just a place in their home and lives, but a spirit who made herself known in the house as well.

I think you’ll enjoy this video, as we also had some pretty charming visitors (thanks, Mother Nature!) while we were shooting. So have fun with this and I’ll be back with you here on Thursday.

Just a thought… True reconciliation does not exist in merely forgetting the past. [Nelson Mandela]

As always, you can watch a video version of this journal on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.

Today marks a special day on our Canadian calendar: a National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, Orange Shirt Day. This video from Global News is excellent, in case you wish to learn more about what this day means to us and to the Indigenous Peoples.

Today Colin is off school and doesn’t yet understand, as a second-grader, what these orange shirts or this particular day really mean. He will. I felt when we moved to British Columbia that this province seems much more vocal about and respectful of the people whose land this is than we had ever experienced before. Is it enough? Of course not.

But as such, I will acknowledge that this journal is done on the lands of the W̱SÁNEĆ People, one of three distinct tribal regions here on Vancouver Island. And I am grateful. W̱SÁNEĆ means “the emerging people.” In fact, the neighbourhood where we are so blessed to live is on a mountain known as the “place of refuge.” I did not know that when we moved to this spot on the Saanich (W̱SÁNEĆ) Peninsula, but it could not have proved more true in the case of our healing family. We too are emerging through a place of refuge.

Today at 2:15 pm PDT (or 5:15 EDT in Ontario) we remember those who were separated from their place of refuge, at a time chosen to reflect the number of residential school students’ remains found in Kamloops earlier this year. Tragically, many more have and will be found.

But this is also a day for happy remembrance in our own lives, as we celebrate the 2^nd birthday of this sweet girl, our granddaughter Jane.

When she was born, we couldn’t have imagined how much joy and love she would bring to our lives, and eventually from just a few miles down the road from us.

The celebration of Jane’s arrival and the life she has injected into our own also dovetails with the remembrance of children who were not at home with their families where they could celebrate milestones and learn their own histories and traditions, surrounded by those who loved them most.

And so it is with a sense of added gratitude that we wear orange today, and carry the familiar dual emotions of sadness and joy, as Rob and I so often do, but for a much different reason. Jane will always be a source of great appreciation, love, and wonder. And with her September 30^thbirthday falling on Canada’s proclaimed Day of Truth and Reconciliation, we are doubly aware of the closeness of our family, both in proximity, and in our hearts. This day reminds us that it has not been like this for countless other families – many very near to where we live.

And we are grateful that our Jane is here, safe and loved by hers, by us, in her home, where, ideally, every child belongs and Every Child Matters. “Hay’sxw’qa” – Thank you.