I’m baby-sitting my boyfriend’s two dogs this week while he is working in northern Manitoba. “The boys” and I are on a learning curve—and I’m aghast to admit that I am the student and not the teacher (at least not yet). “Pepe” is a short off-white (needs a bath) wire-haired […]
Beth Caldwell – The View From Here
To contact Beth, email her at caldwellandcompany@gmail.com
I believe ice cream has magical properties and, when scooped into a pretty glass dish in big round spoonfuls, and topped with homemade caramel sauce and savoured ever so slowly, moves me to write. Despite the fact that my core temperature has plummeted from eating more than my share of […]
I was sitting at the kitchen table one night earlier this week—one hand holding up my head while the other made circles with a spoon in my homemade turkey vegetable soup. I make a mean turkey vegetable soup. It’s a powerful medicinal bastion that can kill a virus just by […]
Twenty pieces of underwear, all my socks (each divorced from its mate), multiple pairs of pantyhose of tortuous sizes, and all the trinket junk that covered the bottom of my panties’ drawer were flung around my bedroom such that a tornado couldn’t have left a bigger mess than I did […]
A few nights ago, in the midst of writer’s block, I pulled two books from the bookcase on “things to write about.” I opened a section and read the first thing I saw. “You’ve long suspected that your best friend is a CIA operative. Now your child is in danger […]
I had just finished a 30-minute, job-related mish-mash questionnaire of 50 hypothetical scenarios—the results of which were supposed to magically reveal what kind of a person I “reeeeally” was. I answered honestly and felt pretty good about that. Then someone, who’d never met me before, came in, pulled the questionnaire, […]
There is an old story about a writer who goes to his teacher and says, “Teacher, all the stories have already been told. There is no need for me to write. “Everything that needs to be said has already been written.” “It’s true that there are no new stories,” the […]
The last sunset of August hovers on the horizon as I write this. If you really want to know how fast time flies, watch the sun set. In the time it takes to realize how beautiful the purple-hued light is, reach for the camera, and turn back to the beauty, […]
I came home Monday night to 12 C in the house and so turned the heat on, crawled into a wool sweater and sweat pants, and had a cup of tea for breakthrough chills. I hit the shower soon after that, and turned red like a lobster as I cooked […]
I have so much to write about and yet I don’t know where to begin. How do I priorize four weeks of great summer adventures and memories? How do I pick which life byte gets the top spot in this space? My writing cup runneth over. Above all else, I […]
First of all, I wish I could say I invented the title of this column, but I did not. I opened the cover of the August edition of “O, The Oprah Magazine” and there it was in an “IKEA” ad. Sometimes my themes cook up that way, like instant potatoes, […]
There’s a downside to throwing all of myself for months into a passionate hobby like sailing. Nothing else around here gets done. The grass grew eight inches, and dust settled in thick layers on windowsills and end tables—reminding me of what an abandoned house must look like. The laundry was […]
