What Is Going On?

Welcome to the handful of new subscribers to Rose-coloured who turned up just as I became overwhelmed with life and stopped posting briefly. I suppose that was either confusing or else one doesn’t think very much about a newsletter that doesn’t arrive, and it didn’t occur to you that I’d missed a couple. I hope the latter, but if the former—apologies, nothing bad happened, it was just life. But this seems like a great time recapitulate what Rose-coloured actually is.

What is it? It’s the newsletter of a middle-aged woman in Toronto who wrote a bunch of books, reads many more, is always writing and reading other stuff, and wants to write freely in a newsletter about all that. Also about my cats, husband, Toronto itself, things I saw on transit—and transit itself—sometimes my friends and family, occasional recipes, life lessons I’ve learned (the hard way, often) and want to pass on, sometimes music or art or TV or film stuff, musings about swimming pools, and very occasional political posts or literary announcements if I or someone I know is up to something. This newsletter also has a Linguist-in-Chief (we’ve gone a different way from many more mainstream newsletters, who opt for some reason not to have a linguist-in-chief), the venerable Anne-Michelle Tessier, who writes mainly about dogs and life and the intersection of the two. Someday she might write for Rose-coloured about linguistics, but then again she might not. There are also more occasional guest-posters who write about writing, or other animals, or pawn shops, or whatever. It’s a real mixed bag around here. I like having a space to do WHATEVER in all glorious caps. I love Rose-coloured very much, even if I do not follow the posting schedule I made for my own self. I hope you enjoy it too. Feel free to comment or like by clicking through the web version of the post, or just reply to the email to tell me something privately.

What’s been going on lately? I’ve started volunteering on a board, which is fun, and taking the last class of my communications certificate, which is not. It is spring so people are available to be social much more and so am I, which is great, but after the winter of my discontent (wherein I barely went outside for a month!) now everything fun is an emergency and if I don’t do it immediately I feel bereft, so I do everything and am always tired. But having fun! Tomorrow night is the National Magazine Awards gala and I will get to see the winner of the category I judged announced, which feels very special. I hope they are there, though I know not everyone comes. Also if they come it might become some sort of hugging situation, but hopefully I can contain myself. We shall see!

Sunday is Father’s Day, a day I would like to hear vastly less about. I am at the point now when I think there are really no universal holidays, except maybe January 1 because no matter what your deal, in North America at least we can’t really avoid the Julian calandar. For the rest, we should just all enjoy the ones we enjoy—in good health, with joy and pride!—and quit trying to make them palatable to others who are excluded in some way. It’s the foisting that’s the problem, not the holidays themselves.

Father’s Day is just not an ideal day when your father is dead, as mine is. On the other hand, it is a day I still choose to observe, as many children of dead fathers might not, and that is because of other context—how my own mind works, what type of person my father was, also how my living family operates so I have people to spend the day with whose minds work similarly. Here is something I wrote about going to the cemetery to see my dad (among other things), which is also what I’m doing on Sunday.

Other things going on: I am watching Four Seasons on TV and I love it, even though it is a show about marriage and my own person-I-am-married to persists in sleeping through every episode. A friend recommended the podcast We’re Here to Help and I was smiling so much while I listend to it on my lunch walk I frightened a crossing guard. I made a terrible cannelloni recipe and also accidentally bought too many cannelloni noodles. While googling other recipes to make with the leftover noodles, since I will clearly never make that one again, I discovered that things people put in cannelloni include: eggs, pumpkin, corn??? I’m just going to make normal spinach and ricotta as nature intended, I guess.

And finally, a two-part dialogue to round things out:

Part 1, at No Frills cash register
RR (loading things on to conveyer, pauses, yelling to MS, who is bagging): Hey, you got rosemary?
MS: Yeah.
RR: The recipe calls for sage. Sage was on the list.
MS: They didn’t have sage. So I got rosemary.
RR: That’s different—that’s a different herb. You can’t just swap.
MS: Ok, well, I’ll use it.
RR: In what?
MS: I’ll eat it, don’t worry.
RR: You’re going to eat a handful of rosemary?
Cashier (bemused)

Part 2, walking with a friend after lunch
RR: You know, I’m just going to duck into that Metro and see if they have any sage.
MS (explaining to friend) There was an herb mixup. The recipe called for sage but I got rosemary and Rebecca doesn’t want to use that.
RR: They aren’t the same! Just because they look alike doesn’t mean they can be used interchangeably! Like sugar and salt, right?
Friend: Like potatoes and rocks!
RR: Thank you, yes, that’s very apt.

PS: I found sage but then it went in the terrible cannelloni recipe so it’s all about the journey, I suppose.