For Shame...

I sit here this evening ashamed of myself; not as a person but as a would-be Canadian writer. For years I have dreamed of writing not just for my pleasure but for the pleasure of others. I have looked up to authors such as Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, H. G. Wells and Aldous Huxley as shining examples of what I wanted to someday evolve into; shining examples of what truly great and substantial writing should be. Embarrassingly not once did it occur to me that there was a comparable writing. I mean obviously there are Canadian authors, and I had heard of Margaret Atwood and Margaret Laurence, but for whatever reason I dismissed them. Not as unworthy of reading but I believe it was part of what some Canadians face; an inferiority complex in comparison to the United States. I feel that considering 90% of what is available to me on television and media is American I can hardly be blamed for feeling insignificant.

I now feel myself feeling quite proud and pleasantly surprised. I will be taking some Canadian literature courses during the summer term and have been reading course material now to get a head start. I find myself reading a novel which I have never heard of, from and author who I am not familiar with, and wondering how such a sparkling gem of literary wit escaped my notice all these years.

I do not profess to be the most intelligent nor the most informed literary student but I AM an avid reader and have been for at least 23 of my 28 years. I have a propensity for searching out new authors and new genres out of sheer curiosity.I am slightly surprised, in light of this, that I have not sought out more relevant -and by relevant I mean Canadian- literature.

Regardless here I find myself for the first time in quite some time, as most of my reading now consists of textbooks, completely and utterly enthralled by a Canadian author. This surprise is compounded by the fact that he wrote the novel almost 70 years prior to my birth. Not only do I associate with the characters but I feel absolutely transported to his little town of Mariposa. The novel which I speak of is Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town by Stephen Leacock. If you haven't read it I highly suggest it. It follows the events and humourous characters in a small Ontario town and even though the setting is nearly a century past, manages to stay startlingly relevant in the portrayal of inner workings of small town society.

So here's my epiphany I've been leading up to. Canadians have made a substantial literary mark on the world. That may not mean a lot to some people but to me that means my inferiority complex is unfounded and I also have the potential to someday *knock on wood* make a substantial literary mark myself.

So wish me luck! Oh, and rave wise.

So I decided to look up my blog for old times sake

So I'm sitting in my apartment feeling slightly stir-crazy and then it hits me... I started a blog a while back and rather than sit here and wonder what to do I could do something. I know, crazy thought huh. Work with me here. So I think to myself, "How does one find a lost blog?" The Internet is a vast wasteland of media and random blogs. Should I put up a picture hoping someone brings my poor blog home? Then it occurs to me. I'll Google some of the words I had in the blog title. Well that didn't work very well. Try Googling "ravings lunatic". Surprise! I'm not the only one. Apparently my title wasn't as witty as I had previously thought. Scratch that idea off the list. What else might work. How did I find my blogging engine? I Googled blog! *type into Google search bar*. Brilliant! Oddly enough I was still logged in.

So now here i sit with pen...err keyboard in hand, relaying how I found my sad little lonely blog that only I know about (I can only assume since there is nay a comment on my page). Why am I here you ask? (Well you didn't but my story requires I presume you do) I need distraction. My husband --previously mentioned, never named-- has angered me off to the degree that I will be sleeping on the couch tonight. Not because I did anything wrong but because I hope to convey just how infuriated I am with him. For those of you who aren't married, husbands know their wives are mad when they get kicked out of the room, they sleep with one eye open when the wife refuses to sleep in the bed. What ispired this wrath you ask? Well I have the good fortune of being married to a man who --by his admission-- is stubborn. Not normal stubborn but ridiculous, bang your face on things you're so frusterated, stubborn. If he decides the sky is green, and you point at the sky and show him it's blue, and ask all your friends what colour it is and they say blue, and you talk to sky experts and they say it's blue, he'll still insist it's green.

The man makes me boil.

Anyway, he INSISTED that I was doing something that I know I wasn't (not that it matters but he thought my finger was in my mouth, resting on my teeth to be specific, and I maintain it was not in my mouth). You cannot possibly know how infuriating it is to have this sort of conversation with someone.

"It was in your mouth"

"It was not in my mouth it was on my lip like this"*demonstrates thumb on lip*

"I saw it in your mouth"

"Well you saw wrong because my finger was near my mouth but it wasn't in my mouth"

"I saw it in your mouth"

"There is no way you saw it in my mouth. It wasn't in my mouth. I can understand how you might have glanced and thought it was cause it was near my mouth but it wasn't acctually in my mouth"

"I saw it in your mouth. I know what I saw. I'm not delusional"

Now here's the part where I, despite all that is stacked against me, resist the overwhelming urge to slam my face into the table. It's bad enough to know someone is wrong, but even worse when they will not even meet you halfway. Regardless, I am now mad, he is now sour cause I yelled at him, and my back will hurt in the morning because the couch is old and has springs missing. Tune in next time for the episode where we argue about who touched the remote last.

Sleep well and rave wise.