Ask me questions

Today (and since it's 11:31 pm as I write this, it is still today) I gave the first interview of my life.

There may have been a time when I considered myself a nobody. That time is past. I am certainly somebody. And I am certainly someone to be considered. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me explain.

I was subjected to the kind of abuse that basically debases. The kind that makes a person feel less like a person, the kind that makes someone question their worth, the kind that makes someone (a child) feel as if they are worth nothing, and can never be anything but nothing.

Today, I granted an interview with a gentleman who has a fairly distinguished career in journalism. This interview came about out of my own need for self-promotion. I've written a book, a novel, my first. The world of publication, at least in my specific genre, lesbian fiction, means I am basically responsible for my own marketing, promotion, what have you. The reason for this decided need for self-promotion is that funding is limited, and my publisher cannot foot the bill for all that is involved for promoting my book as perhaps it should (or could) be. 

I was never very good at self-promotion. Certainly not when I was younger. Never then. I knew only when I was younger that the less attention I drew to myself, the better. I was very good at blending in, at not drawing attention to myself. Yet, if memory serves, the more I tried to not draw attention to myself, the more I stood out. I cannot comment on this. I knew nothing about it. I was only trying to get by, because it was safer to stay quiet, to stay within the small world I knew was safe, and not step outside the lines, if you will.

Today, a part of my world collapsed.

Today, I was interviewed for the first time in my life. Today, for the first time in my life, I could have, had I chosen, spoken freely of many things. But today, I was only being interviewed because of my book. I wrote a book. A novel. I sought out the interviewer, and the questions that were asked, I chose to either answer, or not.

There is an astonishing amount of power in having the choice to answer questions as you choose.

I was asked questions today that I could have answered. Instead I chose not to, or deflected them. 

I realized I owned the skill of deflection. That is rather heady.

I was asked questions that I had considered being asked prior to. I'm a thoughtful person, and I thought carefully before answering some of those questions. Some I answered, some I did not.

I was complimented with, "I wouldn't think this is your first interview. You're very thoughtful, and confident." Ah, yes, that.

I don't talk about myself easily. It's taken a long time to get to know myself. Most of what most people know of me is not precisely what I am. I am very good at giving what I think you need to know, without giving you what you think you know. Most people think they know more of me than they do. Frankly, I'm proud of that.

Yet today, I felt I wanted to just...spill the beans. Just let it all out. Things I've kept to myself, that I should tell, and never have.

I didn't. Obviously. You still don't get to know what I refuse to let you know.

And I have no idea how the interview will read. What will be included. This drives me absolutely nuts. I am, admittedly, a bit of a control freak. Much less than I used to be. But still, I am what I am. 

I loved today's interview. I loved answering the questions. I've never refused to answer questions. If you ask me, I will answer. The thing is, most people don't ask. And so, I don't answer. But the not asking drives me nuts. People are such cowards, in their refusal to ask.

My sweetie has advised me, in this new world I find myself in, being a writer, promoting my work, that I must not knock myself down, that there will be enough people wanting to do that, I must not do it first. I get that, I do. But since I know myself, and I was knocked down from the time I was a child, I've got the hang of it, and you know what? Go ahead. Try it. See if you can knock me down any further than I already have been. 

You know what? You can't even come close. 

So what I give you, you're going to have to be happy with. If someone tells you something about me, you can believe them, or you can believe me. But I will give you what I can, and you can believe it, or not. And if I give you something of myself, you can bet I struggled with it, and so it's precious. 

It's up to you how to deal with that. It's certainly not up to me. 

I'm still in the process of giving you something of myself.

And that could take years.

Life is life.

I stumbled across a couple of fine books over the last 72 hours. By a writer I'd never heard of. And really, isn't that how it should be?

The author is Susan Wilson. The books, One Good Dog, which I read first. The second, The Dog Who Danced.

No surprise there are dogs involved. I love dog stories. I've been reading them since I could read, and I've forgotten almost all of the authors of those childhood read stories. 

But I'm not an idiot. I love well-written dog stories. It's rare enough to find them. It's even more rare to find good dog stories with a good people story attached. 

As an adult, I certainly more fully appreciate good people stories, as much as, as a writer, I appreciate well-written stories. 

Here's the thing, though. A good dog story, coupled with a good people story is not easily come by. Susan Wilson accomplishes both. And just in case you think this is going to be a review of those stories, think again.

Susan Wilson introduces human characters who are hugely fallible. I despised many of them. The dogs, of course, were goodness. Because dogs are. But I especially enjoyed how Wilson brought her human characters around to redemption, where, as a reader, I didn't so much as forgive them their failings, but allowed that shit happens, and you were one way but you can change, and you did, so good.

This is how I view people. Don't judge me.

I'm not a fan of happily-ever-after stories. Not because I don't believe in them, but because I do, with fervour, and because I'm an optimist at heart, and I wish only the best, and hope for the same. But life isn't like that, and shit happens, and you live with it and deal.

I'm a writer. 

As a writer, I write what occurs to me.  I write, not necessarily from personal experience, but from possible personal experience. In other words, I put myself where I have never been, but could possibly be, under different circumstances. The old "what if?" This is what a good writer does. Or so I understand ( I don't really know. I just write. It's a thing).

I will not sugar-coat anything. I will not give you characters who lack depth, or meaning, or belief. I will not give you situations of that kind either. I will give you what I know to be true. I will give you a story that is believable and has depth, and characters who also have the same. If you initially come to despise the characters I introduce you to, know that it's entirely likely that I have, as well. I will sugar-coat nothing. It's been one of the most difficult things to come to terms with, this complete refusal to paint happy pictures without struggle, without pain, without ensuring that my characters have suffered, and may suffer. It's what I adhere to, because it is life. 

Life right now is pretty fine. I love my life currently. Well, frankly, I love life, period. But life changes on a dime, and I'm not in the market for white-washing life's experiences. Life speaks for itself.

I believe I'd like to write those stories, the stories about how life...is life.

But I'm not sure I can inject puppies as smoothly and surely as Susan Wilson has. Yet, even if I can't, I'm sure I can write as good a story.

Treasure a toddler's smile

I have spent a lot of my life believing I was worthless. But a lot of what has happened over the course of the years has caused me to feel that that is not so.

I love children. Not all children, because some of them, like some adults, are not very nice. But if you've read the "About Rebecca" on my new website, I shared something that I really, truly love: A toddler's smile. There is a reason for this. I have been subjected to some amazing smiles from toddlers. I'll give you a few recent examples.

Just over a year ago, November or December, I think, I was in Safeway, looking over the various kinds of canned tuna. I was crouched down, and as I rose to my feet, a shopping cart came around the corner of the aisle. I looked, to see a woman pushing the cart, and a little girl, with short, curly, dark hair and dark eyes, bundled in her snowsuit, sitting in the front of the cart. My eyes went right to the little girl. She couldn't have been any more than a year and a half. As soon as she saw me, she smiled at me. An amazing, open, brilliant smile. Like seeing me was the most wonderful thing. It was the kind of smile that just catches you completely unawares, completely unexpected. Immediately I smiled back, in wonder. I felt, I kid you not, as if the sun had just broken out from behind the clouds, as cliched as that sounds. I knew my smile was not even one of those close-mouthed polite kind of smiles. My jaw literally dropped into an open-mouthed smile. I felt almost in awe. The little girl's face was lit with happiness, with pleasure, as she looked at me. Completely uninhibited, completely genuine. 

Her mother (or so I assumed) said, as she saw the little girl smile like this, "Oh, that's so nice, look at that! What a good girl!" As if she was as surprised and pleased as I was. "Hi," I said to the little girl, who seemed to smile even more, if that were possible. And then they moved past me, and I left the aisle without my tuna, filled with such an amazing feeling of goodness.

Several months ago, I was on a plane to North Carolina. In the seat next to me, was a man who looked to be in his thirties. Across the aisle, a woman I guessed was his wife, who had seated next to her a girl of about 4 years, and in the woman's lap she held a little girl, blonde haired and blue-eyed, who looked just over a year. The little girl had a very serious air about her, and was very intent on what was going on as the plane took off. As the plane leveled off, the woman handed the little girl over to the fellow beside me, and as she made the transition, the little girl looked at me, and she smiled. A big smile, that lit up her face and her eyes. She plopped down in her daddy's lap, who positioned her to face forward, but just before he did, she looked over at me again, and smiled very cutely at me. 

Her daddy pulled out his laptop, a MacBook, and he brought up Angry Birds, and taking her tiny index finger in his fingers, he moved it across the screen to play the game, flinging the birds for her, keeping her attention diverted. But every once in awhile, she looked over at me and smiled so sweetly, I felt it. Deep inside. It felt wonderful. Pure and sweet.

"How old is she?" I asked.

"Fifteen months," he said proudly.

A couple of months ago, the beginning of February, I was at Southpoint Mall in Durham, NC. I was just about to go into the Barnes & Noble there, when I saw an older woman coming toward me, holding the hand of a little girl, who was obviously not very steady on her feet yet. She was tiny, a petite little girl, in her jacket and boots, with wispy strawberry blonde hair and big eyes. As they came closer, I paused, because they were intent, it seemed, on reaching the fountain just ahead, and I would have gotten in their way. The little girl looked up at me then, and she tilted her head, and she smiled at me. It was a shy smile, at first, and then she looked away, and looked back, and she paused, and her smile broadened. It was brilliant, uninhibited, sweet, warm. I smiled back, again in wonder, not expecting such a smile.

The woman holding her hand, who must have been her grandmother, noticed the exchange, because the little girl had paused. 

"Say Hello," she said gently, to the little girl. "Go on, say Hello, it's alright."

And the little girl lifted her tiny right hand, held it close to her face, and did that little scrunching thing with her fist, the fingers closing in to her palm as she waved Hello.

I felt my heart lift, and I smiled and returned the Hello wave in the exact same way. I had to. And then, with a final shy smile, she turned toward the fountain she'd been so set on, and I turned away, forgetting about Barnes & Noble.

I love children. For the most part, I really do. I may not be overly fond of most people, and many people may not like me, and perhaps I am not always completely likeable. But I almost always get along with children, with toddlers. I seem to have an affinity for children of that age. I've never understood it, no more than I try to understand why I seem to have an affinity for puppies. I just do. There's a sweetness there that seems to respond to something in me. Or I respond to it.That something that tells me, that affirms, that I am not worthless, that I am not a bad person, that I am a good person, and sometimes, that can be seen right off. The fact that it's usually toddlers doesn't bother me in the least.

This is what I am trying to convey here. I don't always know it. Or believe it. But little children, barely over a year old, smile at me, as if they see that, know it, feel it. And their smiles, those smiles that I rarely get from adults, reassure me that such a smile is not something that just happens. Such a smile, from a little child who is full of trust and goodness, and whose perception perhaps I should not trust, is what I trust most of all.

You may think I'm deluding myself. You may think that. 

But I doubt those little children think that.

Because if you think about it, how could they?

Weaving a not so tangled web(site)

Have you ever designed a website before? 

It turns out that it can be very time consuming. Both in it's development and launching stages, of course, but also in the idea stages. Where you have an idea, a vision, of what you want, how you want your site to look, but you can't get there on your own.

A handful of years ago, around 2004, it was politely suggested that I should think about someday having a website; most authors were heading in that direction, and it was an excellent way to promote oneself and one's work. At the time, it was a fine idea, but I was nowhere near that stage yet, so I put the website idea on a back burner. Fast forward seven years, to June 2011, and I've signed a contract for my first novel, and then things progress, and I have to start thinking about marketing, promoting, reaching an audience, and I realize, Oh, I'll need a website! 

But I had no idea how to build one.

I had an idea of what I wanted it to look like. Mainly, nothing too similar to any other author's. Something professional looking, classy, that stood out, but in an understated way. I knew I could have done it myself, say via WordPress, but as I said, I wanted something professional looking and classy, which meant it couldn't be something that I had cobbled together. Also, having done something rather similar on Blogger, with this blog, I had no intention of doing the same with my website (it can be a pain in the ass). I believe in doing things the right way, the proper way, the way a website should be done. 

I mentioned this all to my sweetie one day, a few weeks before Christmas. She's a graphic artist. She hangs out with other artists, and IT people, techie people, web designers, etc. She knows so many people it's rather mind-blowing. And she says, Oh, I can help you with that. Tell me what you have in mind, and I can find the right person we can work with.

And before I know it, there's me, her, and a friend of hers, a web designer. They're picking my brain on my thoughts and ideas, adding their own, showing me one thing, discarding another. I write text, revise it, consider placement, change my mind. I show them several websites, most of which have their own merits, some of which have none. Eventually, what was in my head makes it onto the computer screen. What they are able to do is nothing short of amazing. And it takes much less time than I expect, but it's not an easy job. Tensions rise, frustrations build, discussions are sometimes abandoned when things cannot be agreed upon. But it's like building a house, your own house. It's not just a house then. If you're building it, why not build it exactly to your tastes and standards? If you're going to be living there, you want it not only to look beautiful, to yourself and others, but you want it to reflect yourself, and the pride you take in it.

This reflection of self is important, and it's not something some people might get when working on their own site. I was fortunate to work with two people who allowed me complete personal input, while working within their professional parameters. It's been an amazing and gratifying experience. I think we did well.

Please visit my website at the link below:

www.rebeccaswartz.com 

I hope everyone who visits thinks we did a good job as well.

Puppies vs Stupid people

Today, I learned a lot about some people. Mainly, that some people will make untold excuses for treatment of puppies and dogs, try to pass it off as similar to what some humans go through, but which, if you are really being honest, we all know that the one bears no resemblance to the other.


Case in point: This morning I read a post, that Crufts (the largest annual dog show in the world, held in Birmingham, England) had, by way of a veterinarian exam, disqualified some breeds of dogs due to the fact that they were not "representative of their breed" and "could not perform" as that breed should. In other words, they were found physically "unsound."


Now, this is a huge thing. I don't recall this ever happening. I used to show dogs, Akitas and German Shepherds. I have followed, for years, breeds and breed standards. I've attended numerous shows, and while I never felt a part of the "bonhomie" (have I mentioned I don't play well with others?) I understood the premise for dog shows. Yet I was never comfortable with the people who took credit for their dog's wins. The people who preened and strutted those wins, as if they had won, and not the dog. I detested dog shows for that reason, and for the fact that I spent so much money testing my own dogs with regard to health concerns, and very few others were doing so. Don't even get me started on Canine Good Citizenship or obedience trials.


But I digress.


This morning, the post re: Crufts, caught my interest. I thought, High time. But then, after reading the comments, the discussion veered into physical alteration, ie: docking tails and cropping ears. And how it wasn't inhumane. And so I thought to comment. Because in my opinion, docking tails and cropping ears is the epitome of inhumane, and I said so. Within 4 hours I'd garnered 30 likes. Within 8 hours, my comment had earned 57 likes.


My comment also earned scorn and derision. Some people likened docking puppy tails and cropping puppy ears to circumcising baby boys. They also likened it to piercing ears and inoculating young children. They were disgusted with my viewpoint, and said so in no uncertain terms. They also said that, "Once it's done, it's done, and what's the problem?"


As I type this now, there are "likes" to my comments coming in.


But there are people out there who think that what I stand by, what I stated, is absolute crap. I don't know what to think of those people.


They purport to love dogs. But they make excuses for things you would (hopefully) never do to a child, or themselves. And these things I am referring to are done to puppies regularly. And just because they are puppies, people seem to think it's okay to do what they do, because, well, "Once it's done, it's done, and they are too young to remember, so why discuss it?"


What I ended up stating, unequivocally, is that this is a moral and ethical thing. Not an aesthetic thing. Not something you can argue with regard to circumcision and boys, or ear piercing, or childhood inoculations. This is about surgically altering an animal based on your own pretentions and presumptions.


Over the course of the day, I have been barraged by comments from people who have basically attacked my stance, and tried to undermine it. People who think that puppies are less than people (they have no feelings, or if they do, it's not for long, and so we can do anything to them), and so what is done to them is okay, but oh, what about circumcising boys, what about that?


Some people have actually had the audacity to question "the world I live in." As if I am living in some fairy tale world where no harm comes to any of "God's" creatures.


First of all, I'm an atheist.


Second of all, I'm an atheist.


What offended me the most, the worst, was those supposed individuals who thought that docking tails and cropping was okay, since it was done at a such a young age (48 hours after birth) that the puppies never felt pain (they did, by the way) and therefore didn't suffer.


Suffering is not restricted to the here and now. And Phantom Limb Syndrome I am sure is not limited to human beings.


My point being: If you don't know what you are talking about, shut up. Just shut up. Because all you are saying is nothing at all. You are defending your own viewpoint, and your viewpoint is selfish and self-serving, and has nothing to do with the ones who are going through the experience.


Puppies feel pain. Dogs feels pain. Animals feels pain. And if surgically (I use the term loosely) removing what a dog was born with, for aesthetic reasons, to conform, is your idea of "doing what is right," then I question your morals and ethics.


No human can answer for any one else. They can only answer for themselves. Today I spent too much time trying to educate some very self-absorbed people about that. I was partially successful. But there are too many people out there who will not take a stand, who will back out when it comes to defending those who need defending...and I have no respect for those people.


Puppies feel pain. You may not be able to relate to that. But it is a fact.


Puppies feel pain.

Early morning wake up calls

We're back to the routine of 6:30 am phone calls before she goes off to work, late morning calls when I ask her how her morning is going, an afternoon call when I ask how her afternoon is, the six pm call when she gets home and is settled in, and the last call of the night when I "tuck her in." In between there could be another couple of calls just because we miss each other.


She fills me on the stresses of her day, or of how the puppies are behaving (or misbehaving), and it's all as it should be. Hank and Sam don't seem to be obviously missing me, and I'm happy with that. It means that the time I spent ensuring she spent enough time with them (Sam, specifically, since she was working basically every day and could not spend the time with Sam that I could and was), has been accomplished satisfactorily. I had to make sure that my method of working with Sam translated over effectively, and it seems it has. This is no small thing, and I am pleased. Yet I miss them, and the puppy, enormously.


This makes me think of something that happened back when Sam was just four months old.


By that age, she had just gotten tall enough and curious enough, to start checking out the table and counter tops. She would jump and place her paws on either surface, and we would tell her No, and Off! It was no big deal, and was to be expected, and we dealt with it as it happened.


One lovely Saturday morning, which is usually when I let my sweetie sleep in, because she worked all week and deserved to sleep in, I was up early as usual (6 am) with the puppies. I let them out for their bathroom duties and brought them back in, made coffee, fed them, played with them, then put Hank out into the run, and left Sam in the kitchen with the baby gate up. All as per usual. It was about 8 am by that time.


I went to check my email and facebook. I was gone maybe 15 minutes. When I returned to the kitchen, I immediately smelled gas (the stove is a natural gas stove). I froze momentarily, and then glanced over, to see that the stove dial had been bumped. Obviously Sam, who was at that moment hopping up and down happily to see me, had jumped to check out the stove top, and had knocked the dial so the stove was now emitting gas. The room was filled with the odour.


My heart immediately began pounding, and I very carefully stepped over the baby gate, tiptoed over to the stove, with Sam bouncing at my side, and turned the dial to off. I then tiptoed to the back door, ever so carefully opened the screen door, and took Sam to the dog pen. I then tiptoed back into the house, leaving the screen door open for ventilation, and went to the bedroom.


All this time I was very conscious of having to be careful to not create any kind of spark. I did not pick Sam up, because there may have been a spark from her fur against my sweater, static electricity. I made sure not to slam the screen door and inadvertantly create a spark. All this time I was shaking with fear.


When I got to the bedroom, I gently placed my hand on my sweetie's shoulder, and leaned down to whisper, "Wake up, honey, but don't move."


She was very good. She opened her eyes, didn't move, and asked, "What's wrong?"


I told her what the situation was, and whispered calmly, oh so calmly, "Just come out the front door with me." (She was sleeping in jammie pants, so don't think she wasn't prepared!)


She came carefully outside with me, and we left the door open for more ventilation, and then we went back around to the backyard...and just looked at each other.


"So...now what?" I asked (my heart was still pounding and I couldn't seem to breathe right).


"I'll be right back," she said. "Stay here."


And I stood there in the backyard frozen as she went back in through the back door, opened windows, started the fan going in the livingroom, and then came back out. I was, to be honest, horrified, that she had gone back in and done these things, but she was perfectly fine with it. Someone has to do it, she told me. And I supposed she was right, but that someone was not going to be me. I have a horrible, disabling fear about things like gas leaks.


We then stood outside for half an hour. Waiting for the gas to dissipate. It was a pleasantly cool morning. We joked about hobbling Sam so she couldn't do a repeat performance. And seriously discussed how she must never be left alone in the kitchen, so a repeat performance did not occur.


And then she went back in, pronounced all to be well, and we got on with our day.


But trust me, after that morning, Samantha was never left unsupervised in the kitchen. I still remember how scared I was, and how I moved so very, very carefully. And how the smell of gas overwhelmed my senses, and I almost felt as though I could see it and feel it. I still question my moves, not going to my sweetie right away, but removing the potential for sparks first. I think I did well, but I now understand how people can second guess themselves after a crisis has passed.


I don't mind waking up early. But I don't ever want that kind of early morning wake up call again.

Get to know me before you judge me.

People say such stupid and asinine things when they don't know you. Like, "I hope you find peace and happiness, Rebecca." This was said to me recently in response to a comment to a blog post (not mine) that really shouldn't have happened. By someone who doesn't know me at all, but thought they had something wise to contribute. 


In 1998 the amazing Akita dog I raised, from the time he was five and a half weeks, died. He was not quite 12 years old. Truthfully, he was euthanized. I made that decision. He was riddled with cancer. He was with me in Vancouver, BC at the time. He collapsed one day, after a lifetime of perfect health. I received a phone call at work from my then girlfriend's roommate. I rushed home, reassured him, took care of him. I called my vet in Winnipeg that evening for a referral. When I took him to the new vet, a very caring and thoughtful man, x-rays revealed numerous tumours. Nothing could be done. Two weeks later, on a sunny Saturday morning, I asked Cutter if he would like to go for a car ride. He said, "Yes, please." He'd always loved car rides.


I fell apart when Cutter died. Completely. I'd never experienced that kind of loss. I cried for days, months, years. I still have his ashes in an urn, and I still do not know what to do with them. It's not that I'm holding onto them, him. It's that I still haven't found the perfect place. The perfect place still seems to be with me.


As an adult, I missed a lot of things with my dad. As he aged, I often wasn't there. I moved around a lot. A LOT. I was rarely in Manitoba, and when I was, I was rarely with him. The latter part of that statement had everything to do with his wife. Who supposedly was my mother, but of course I don't call her that anymore, nor view her as such, having disowned her many years ago (for anyone who is reading this and doesn't know, I was adopted, and that's a whole other story).


The thing was, I came to understand that the choice was not wholly mine, to be apart. When I did choose to visit him, it was understood I was only visiting him. I was cordial to her, but I really was only there for him. That was understood, by all parties. But his choice not to visit me, when he surely could have, I came to understand as well. We all make choices. And if you love someone (and I'm sure he loved her), you choose to be with who you love. He chose her, to be with her, and not with me, and as an adult, I came to accept that. And over the years, I've analyzed this, and come to understand that this did not hurt as much as some might think. But for many years I did not look at it analytically. I just accepted it. 


Just before he died last year, I visited him in the hospital. One of those weird, uncomfortable family gatherings (and we have a big family, and it was a small hospital room), which I'd never thought to be a part of. I detested it. He could barely speak, but he was cognizant. He smiled so very brightly at my appearance, he was so happy to see me. I hadn't seen him in a year. But he was still my dad. Still the man I'd always respected, perhaps not known as well as I'd wished to, but someone I'd gotten to know very well in the relatively short time I'd had with him. The next morning he asked, as well as he was able, to go home. The doctor present referred to my dad as, "Dad." I despised the doctor for this, was hugely offended and told that doctor off. As I recall, that didn't go over so well. 


Less than two weeks later my dad died.


I didn't fall apart at my dad's death. I had decided after the death of my dog, whom I had raised from a wee pup, that since I had a choice, I would choose to distance myself from my father's death. Because I had the choice. And because I didn't want to fall apart. Because I was quite certain that my father's death would undo me. I did not want to become undone. So I worked it out. To not spend as much time with him as I maybe could have (and a lot of that had to do with his wife, whom I could not abide). It was deliberate. It took years.


I made a choice. 


If you ask anyone who (really) knows me, you will know that I chose wisely. 


Do I regret it? Honestly, no. 


I miss him. So very much. He was a very wonderful man, a restless man (which may account for why I was so restless for so very long), not a big man, but you never noticed that because he came across as so large. And the time that I spent with him mattered. We often had the most amazing conversations. I miss those conversations. We had things in common. We both wrote. And thought. And those things matter more, than that I didn't spend as much time with him as I could have (I refuse to say should have).


So to have someone say something superficial and asinine like, "I hope you find peace and happiness, Rebecca," because I actually chose to address their comments, in their blog, makes me realize that some people like to toss off such phrases because they simply like to talk, to get in the last word, to simply hear or see (in this internet age) themselves speak. In my world, if you have something worthy of saying, you say it. Like my dad did. If you have nothing worth saying, don't say anything at all. You're much better off that way.


Everyone is much better off that way.