The Red Balloon

Thanks SO much for all your responses to my Birthday Post. They meant a great deal to me. 

I received some wonderful gifts from friends and family for my birthday. Part of Jeff's gift, for example, was focused on my obsession with tea. 

And my friend Walter made me cry.

Walter's gift

The photo above is of The Red Balloon DVD and children's book adaptation. The 34-minute movie by French filmmaker Albert Lamorisse was one of my favourites from childhood; Dad had rented it from our public library and brought it home. I loved the book.

The story itself is very simple; if you don't mind spoilers, read this Wikipedia entry. The film won a bunch of awards, including an Oscar for Lamorisse for writing the best original screenplay in 1956 and the Palme d'Or for short films at Cannes.

One of my many early Red Balloon doodles
I had no idea that it was available on DVD until I opened Walter's present. I cried for somewhat complicated reasons, but partly because I was so touched that Walter knew how much this gift would mean to me, and that he had taken the time to track down the DVD and book.

I painted a Red Balloon on my office door!
Plus, ever since I saw that movie and read the book, red balloons have always been one of my very favourite things. It's not just about the children's story for me, but about the innocence and joy of childhood.

Another early Red Balloon doodle. You can tell my early drawings because I signed them "ohi" instead of "d.ohi".

I've told the following story in Blatherings years ago, but I can't seem to find it for linking, so am going to re-tell it here:

Shortly after graduating from university, when I was living on St. Patrick St. in Toronto with friends, I was feeling a bit down (I can't remember why). On impulse, I bought a red balloon and tied a little note to it with my address and a cartoon drawing of me.

I wouldn't do this now -- sending a balloon out into the wild isn't exactly environmentally friendly, and attaching my home address is just crazy. Anyway, some months later I received a letter in my mailbox from a little boy in Lockport, New York, where his father had found the balloon in one of their fruit trees.

Gift from a friend familiar with my Red Balloon obsession

We became penpals, and wrote for quite a few years before the correspondence finally stopped.

But my obsession with red balloons continued. :-)


Thank you, Walter, for your gift and your friendship.

I'm getting together with Allison and Jodi tonight for our last practice before FilKONtario. Only a few more days!

Yet another Red Balloon doodle from years back.

Birthday post

Above: Jumping on a frozen lake in northern Ontario this past winter. Photo by my sister.

(UPDATE March 30, 9:22 am: Thanks to those who have posted birthday greetings here, Facebook, e-mail, phone and in my Livejournal comments. Jeff took me to Mildred's Temple Kitchen and I loved it. You can see photos of some of the lovely gifts I received from friends in my Flickrstream. Including a gift from Walter that made me cry.)

If I could go back to my 20-year-old self and asked myself what image came immediately to mind upon hearing the phrase "47-year-old woman," I like would have responded with a heartlessly unflattering description involving polyester pants, wrinkles and hair curlers.

Now that I'm 47, I have to be amused at how wrong I was. Well, at least about the polyester and curlers.





I find that the older I get, the further way the concept of "old age" shifts for me. I suppose I've always associated "old age" with a certain atrophying mindset, when a person convinces themselves that they're no longer capable of taking on challenges and seeking out new experiences. In that context, I never want to reach old age.



In terms of simple numbers, however, I sometimes get tired of the tiptoeing done around the idea of getting older, as if it's something one is supposed to be embarrassed about, like using the wrong fork at the dinner table or accidentally wearing a t-shirt inside out in public (not that I'm, ahem, guilty of either).



I do admit that I usually don't broadcast my age on social networking sites, partly because I'm worried about identity theft but also because part of me is (probably overly) worried that editors might be negatively influenced while considering my manuscripts.



But overall, I don't tend to be overly self-conscious about how old I am. I'm happier now than I was 20 years ago. Physically, I may not be able to do everything I could back then but I was never a super-jock anyway, and I find other ways to push and challenge myself.



Back in school, I thought I had all the time in the world. Now, I know how easy it is to try to do too much and spend time with too many people. One of my favourite quotes, from Esther Bucholz: "Others inspire us, information feeds us, practice improves our performance, but we need quiet time to figure things out, to emerge with new discoveries, to unearth original answers."



These days, I guard my time jealously. I'm more selective about the friends I spend time with. I don't invest time in friendships in which the other person doesn't value the friendship as much as I do.

Jeff and I gave up cable tv about five years ago, and neither of us have regretted it. We still watch some recorded tv shows and rent movies, but it's always a deliberate choice rather than "just because there's nothing better to do." Instead, I do more reading, songwriting, painting and other creative activities.



Photo by Gord Gibson.

I'm happier in my relationship with Jeff than I was 20 years ago. We've been through the hearts and flowers "honeymoon" stage early on and several rough bits since. The rough bits, as horrible as they seemed when we were going through them, have helped strengthen our relationship.

The honeymoon stage was like an appetizer. Yummy while it lasted but for me, it's all about the main course. :-)



I'm more in love with Jeff than I've ever been. We'll have been married 18 years come this August, yet I still find myself swooning a bit inside when he walks into the room or smiles at me.


Photos by our niece last year.

We recently chatted with a couple who has been married nearly twice as long as we have, and I asked them what was the main factor that helped make their marriage a good one. They told me that they had learned NOT to try to change the other person.



In our case, I'd like the add the following advice: Treat your partner like your best friend. Sounds obvious, I know, but I've really had to remind myself of this over the years. "Would I be treating my best friend like this?"

I've also found that spending time pursuing our own interests away from each other is important. Jeff and I spend much of our time together, but we've each found it just as important to also have our own time as well. We've never been one of those "joined at the hip" couples who do absolutely everything together.


Photo by Sibylle Machat.

Today, however, we're spending the whole day together. Jeff's taking me out for brunch. He won't tell me where because he wants it to be a surprise. This afternoon: whatever I'd like to do. I haven't decided if I'd rather see The Watchmen or just hang out at home, reading and snoozing and maybe playing a boardgame. I'm going to my sister's tonight for a family celebration.


Photo by Beckett Gladney.

I already feel pretty spoiled. My friend Luisa took me out for my birthday on Friday night, and my friend Cathy took me out for lunch yesterday. I've been receiving phone messages and e-mails from friends -- one of my favourites is the musical message left by Tom & Sue Jeffers & Dave Clement. :-D

I'm going to spend the rest of my birthday offline, to enjoy the day with Jeff. Hope you're all having a good day, everyone! Especially my friend Katy, who is celebrating her birthday in Germany today.

Jamming with Richard Hatch

Watched the end of the Battlestar Galactica series the other day. For fear of spoilers, I've decided not to talk about this except to say that I thought it was very cool how they wove in a bit of the original musical motif of the original series.

Photo above: Jamming with Richard Hatch (who played a good guy in the original series and a bad guy in the new series) and Davroz at Marcon some years ago. Thanks to Gary Ehrlich for the photo.

One week until FilKONtario!

Above: a quickie photo I took on my iPhone during Urban Tapestry practice last night. Only a week left until FilKONtario. Our concert is currently scheduled for early Saturday afternoon.

Every time I get together with Allison and Jodi, I marvel at how lucky I am to be part of Urban Tapestry. We've been together for about 16 years now, and we still have just as much fun now as we did when we first got together. More fun, actually. :-)


We recently co-wrote a song based on Robert Sawyer's book, Flash Forward, and will be debuting it during our concert. It's the first serious song that all three of us worked on together (Jodi wrote most of the music), and I'm VERY happy with how it came out.

Robert Sawyer is one of the other guests at FilKONtario this year. We were guests with Robert back in 2001 at Ad Astra (see poster below, which we're adding to our Interfilk package). Robert is one of only seven writers in history — and the only Canadian — to win all three of the world's top Science Fiction awards for best novel of the year: the Hugo, the Nebula, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.



And yay to Interfilk for sending Gerry and Sandy Tyra to FilKONtario this year! Also, many thanks to Gerry for his help in putting together our package for Interfilk this year, with a special Urban Tapestry CD not commercially available. More info on this soon.

As for the Guest Of Honour, if you haven't seen Heather Dale perform live, you NEED to come to FilKONtario:



I was recently on Second Life around St. Patrick's Day and was wandering around a Celtic theme area when, much to my delight, I discovered Heather's music playing full-blast during a virtual celebration(!).



You find out more about Heather and her music at Heatherdale.com, and hear samples on CDBaby. If you come to FKO, you also get a bonus: Heather's extremely talented music partner, Ben Deschamps.

Hoping to see some of you at FilKONtario. Allison, Jodi and I don't tend to perform as much in public as we used to; we all have so much going on in our lives. Anyway, it looks like our concert at FKO will be OUR ONLY PUBLIC PERFORMANCE IN 2009 and the only convention that all three of us will be attending this year. Our next mutual convention will be -next- year's FKO.

So please do come. It's going to be SOOOOOO much fun...

Flight of the Conchords: "Frodo, Don't Wear The Ring"

I haven't watched all the Flight Of The Conchords episodes yet, but apparently the video above is from Episode 11. Here are the lyrics. But that's not all...



Heh, and as my friend Shane (who used to work at Weta Digital!) pointed out, Bret McKenzie also gained notoriety as Figwit in the first and third Lord of the Rings movies: