Hey All You Wonderful Blog Readers, I hope this finds you well and, if you're in Canada, not considering something drastic with THE TERRIBLE DARK OF DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME. Except all you smart people in Saskatchewan who don't have to worry about it. So, I'm not sure if you guys get notified when I put up a NEWS post on this GD website, so I wanted to make sure I put out there that...after SEVEN YEARS AWAY FROM THE TORONTO CABARET STAGE...I'm doing two shows at the HISTORIC RIVOLI IN TORONTO on December 16th and 17th to start working out…

    A year ago I turned fifty-five. Once, I heard someone call fifty-five the double nickel birthday…which always reminds me of Sudbury, which is the nickel capital of Canada. Sudbury is where Canada mines it's nickel AND to celebrate that fact the town erected a giant nickel that I’m not sure is actually made of real nickel…WHICH reminds me of the trips that my mom, step-dad, gramma and I took up to Sudbury when I was little to visit gramma’s sister…and sometimes we'd also SEE the giant nickel, if I was lucky. My great aunt was a maid for…

I was supposed to be doing writing of a different kind today, but here I am…and I feel compelled to share a very big secret with you. Jolene Josephine Matthews has fairly severe anxiety. For those who don’t know her, she’s a dog. Now, to be fair, I ALSO have anxiety but felt VERY much reformed UNTIL I started working on Jo’s anxiety. Ma’am. Some would call her reactive. She is. I would also add on that she’s anxious and scared. Also true. I’m going to be even more honest and admit something controversial…this is NOT the dog I thought…

“Aunt Sharron, have you ever thought about doing a mud obstacle course” I stared at the text for about a minute. Well, of course I had. Most people have, right? We’ve thought about it, right?…considered it…weighed the pros and cons? We’ve all seen socials showing a bunch of our very capable friends…smiling…covered in mud…crossing a finish line. They look like they’re living their VERY BEST lives. Then, if we do a little research, we discover what they have to do to GET to that mud covered finish…and it’s no GD joke. These kinds of events have been going on for…

Less than a year ago, my sister Gwen called me and said I should probably go see Mom in the hospital. I will be very honest and say that my Mom and I have a complicated relationship...or very simple, depending on the way you look at it. I won't go into any details, but suffice it to say that after a lifetime of struggle, I've gotten myself to a happy place in which I usually only see my Mom at family gatherings. I don't fight with her, I don't harbour a grudge about anything...I've done and keeping doing the work...and…

…a SMALL mountain, but still. I know. Two posts. Two days in a row….but I climbed a mountain, people. I drove down the coast from Half Moon Bay to Big Sur today. The sun was shining, the car was vrooming, and Barbra has just gotten to the part of her book where she excuses Bill Clinton for “whatever happened behind closed doors at the Whitehouse”…girl…as well as her marriage to James Brolin…which is hour 46 to 47, for anyone keeping score. I’m in the home stretch of Barbra Streisand’s fifty hour memoir on Audible, in case you don’t follow me…

Hey Humans!! How are you? It’s been a while, I know. I hope you’re all well, happy and healthy. A couple months ago, I was on the FACEBOOK…a place I seldom visit much anymore, and that’s not a humble brag, or a coolness declaration, just a fact about a gal trying to focus her energies off the socials whenever possible…and while doing a little curious lurk and scroll, I saw a post that asked the following paraphrased question… “Why do people take pictures of themselves and post them…like what’s the point? No really, I’m honestly asking.” Something else I seldom…

When you get an early morning phone call or early morning message from someone who you know, who is associated with someone you love…someone who tells you that they need to talk to you right away…there is this sort-of blissful span of time in which the world is still exactly the same at it ever was…but the possibility for it to deeply change looms large and hulking inside that blissful span. So, I guess it’s not really blissful span after all…it’s just a stasis, really. A weird pocket of time in which almost nothing moves and everything stays the same…

So, I’m in a cottage somewhere in north-eastern Ontario and it’s 4:30am  AND after pizza and cake for dinner…LATE dinner…such a late dinner BUT cake, am I right?…yes, it seems the late-in-the-day food combo and this bed being somehow firmer than a cement floor and Jo’s VERY VOCAL forever wish to be on the bed…it seems that sleep will be eluding me for a while. I used to get very anxious when this would happen, counting the hours as they rolled by, sleep (and happiness) moving farther and farther away from me, and feeling the negativity demon fully take over…