“No, Caleb,” Dad said, in a sleepy voice. “We’re going to visit Auntie Kimmie today. Maybe we’ll see the rest tonight.”

Caleb considered this while cuddling deeper under the blankets. Then, with his eyes closed, he said, “Okay, well, I’m going to watch a movie behind my eyelids.”

“Really?” Dad asked.

Caleb grinned. “Yeah…and I think the good guys are winning.”

The Professional Writers Association of Canada’s Moncton Chapter invites everyone to its 2^nd annual Reveille, an event where members of the audience and special guests, including local celebrities and Frye Festival authors, share “works” from their youth (e.g. angst-filled poetry, embarrassing diary entries, sappy songs) in an open mic format. The more cringe-worthy, the better! The event will be held Wednesday, at the Moncton Press Club on Wednesday, April 21 at 7 p.m. Come prepared to groan, laugh and cheer. Reveille’s goal is to reawaken that inner child who wanted to be a writer. Anyone can participate and admission is free.

P.S. I’m planning on reading from a torrid novel I wrote as a young teen. (I was a Harlequin Romance lover back then.) See you all there!

Held in the atrium of a lovely office building, this evening networking opportunity is important to the salespeople who are manning tables set up by local businesses. While they sell their services, there are plates of shrimp, vegetables, cheese and hot dip for members-only to enjoy.

And then there’s me. A nervous first-timer thinking perhaps she should take a deep breath and dive in.  “I really need to get out there and network,” I think, “if I want to sell my writing services to businesses.”

(Frankly, the process of walking up to total strangers, offering my business card and saying, “Hi, I’m Rhonda. I’m a great writer…do you need a great writer? I thought so!” terrifies me. But, my mother used to say, “the only way around is through,”  so I went anyway.)

I arrive a few minutes early, and I ease myself into the process by visiting an empty sponsor table on the far end, manned by a bored girl who looks like she has to be here.

She is friendly and chatty and asks about my background…I mention I’m also a writer of children’s fiction and that I’m seeking a publisher for a novel, and she asks me a few more questions. I’m nervous, and the more I explain, the more I use my hands.

That’s when the unthinkable happens. I sweep my hand to the left, and smack a lovely glass bowl filled with red sparkly decorations on her display table against a brick pillar.  As if in horrible slow motion, I watch the bowl spill its contents to the floor, then smash to smithereens.

It was a very enthusiastic point I was making.

“I’m so sorry! Oh, I’m so clumsy!” I cry. My hands jump to cover my beet-red face, and my peripheral vision picks up the curious looks from people who are just beginning to trickle in. I wonder what they’re thinking? Oh, wait, I know: “Thank God that wasn’t me!”

“Don’t worry about it, don’t worry about it all,” she says, attempting to soothe my embarrassment while she hastily cleans up the mess. But of course, it doesn’t. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s looking gauche.

The next time I go play with the grownups, remind me not to talk with my hands.

Isn’t it ironic that the people wearing the end-of-the-world sandwich boards used to be considered the wild-eyed fringe? Now, they’re the reasonable ones  and the crazies are the ones saying, “hold on, it’s not that dire. Everything’s going to be okay.”

This morning, Anna-Maria Tremonti and Linden MacIntyre read some emails on CBC radio’s The Current regarding the “ClimateGate” scandal and interviewed Spencer Weart, recent author of “The Discovery of Global Warming.” He explained away the hacked emails and computer files from Britain’s Climate Research Institute, saying he didn’t find anything particularly damning in them.

And on Tuesdays show, The Current broadcast a sample of debates being held in Toronto that evening between George Monbiot, author of “Heat, How to stop the World from Burning,” and Bjorn Lombourg, author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist.” The focus of the debate was how to best spend money on fighting global warming.

But I can’t help feeling cynical about it all, just like with the reports on the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan. There’s a lot we don’t know, and a lot we’re not allowed to read. All we hear are the accusations and the denials.

If scientists say the world is warming up…fair enough. I trust them, just like I trust my doctor when she says my thyroid’s underactive and I need to take that little yellow pill every morning. (However, she was also the doctor who asked me if I wanted to see a shrink when I was really suffering from an undiagnosed balance disorder. Lesson? Professionals don’t know everything.)

Since I am a citizen who pays her taxes, and since my wallet is about to burst with the trillions of dollars Mr. Monbiot wants countries like ours to spend on energy changes, could someone answer the following questions for me?

1)      How do scientists know for sure that heating and cooling trends do not run in cycles?

2)      Are we in a heating cycle, as climate-change deniers speculate, that has little to do with us?

3)      How do they know that what is happening now hasn’t happened before and will probably happen again in varying degrees (no pun intended)?

4)      How do scientists know that their present scientific models predicting the flooding of coastlines around the world are actually accurate?

Question number four is of particular importance, because politicians, special interest groups, the EU and the UN, are pushing countries to make some very drastic (not to mention, expensive) changes based on the accuracy of these models. And the third world can hardly be expected to keep up. As a humble citizen, I feel like a first-time parachuter being forced out at 20,000 feet by an overzealous jump instructor.

The IPCC has the vast majority of our global population convinced (at least, the ones that aren’t starving to death or are in the middle of a civil war and have bigger problems to worry about) that our demise is imminent. As a result, we are willing to hand over our sovereignty because of it.

The fact that so many people no longer brook denial and insist on extreme political and economic changes that have the potential to bankrupt us (like the UN, for example, who would dearly love to charge independent nations a global carbon tax) is bully behaviour. In the end, this movement has the potential to remove power from individual governments and put it in the hands of a much smaller (and richer) group of people.

I became skeptical about panic movements after Y2K—remember that? This time ten years ago, The Current reported about it constantly, along with every other TV news station, radio program, newspaper or magazine. We were faced with doomsayers everywhere we looked. Toasters were going to burn up, planes were going to fall from the sky, and your electric toothbrush was going to explode in your mouth on January 1, 2000 because of some computer glitch.

And then, midnight rolled around. The calendar turned over, the sun rose the next morning. Coffee makers dripped, planes landed safely, no cars broke down on the highway.

And what happened to the story in the media?

It just went away, never to be mentioned again, along with all the creative non-fiction authors who made a bundle on the story and a name for themselves in interviews. How about that?

Caleb got a little annoyed with me when I laughed out loud. It was an honest question.

We priced two short metal hanging rods and a cupboard undergirded with four drawers and a couple of shelves. A mid-quality system  cost roughly $350 per closet!

No, thanks. Christmas is coming.

Guess this means we’ll have to “rig up” something of our own.

As the piles of clothing, books, sports paraphernalia, ties, belts, and wall art grow in the middle of the room, we are both simultaneously amazed and embarrassed at the gigantic mountain of junk that was stuffed in that tiny space.

“Everything that has a sports team logo is off limits,” he said. “Also off limits are all the office decorations that I’m keeping for the day when I have an office again. You know, giving away my books is going to be hard, because I really like my books… And don’t make me sound like a turd.”

I know all of you are anxious to hear the fate of the famous  Fork and Spoon. I’m sure they’re in the pile somewhere.

Today, Sophie woke with a headache and a bit of nausea, so she stayed home.  While my husband was packing our youngest son’s lunch this morning, he thought, “Maybe I could save myself some time and give Sophie’s sandwich to Caleb.”

Until he checked it, that is.

A spinach and Honey-Nut Cheerio sandwich.

And what else did she pack? Three cookies in a baggie, two chocolate bars and a sucker.

I think we’ve been had.

Are these items destined for yard sale? How about listing them on Kijiji? I don’t know. I hate yard sales, going to them or planning them. Yet, I’m conscious of the fact that instead of actually getting rid of clutter, my temptation may be to just move it to some other part of the house. (For example, the big fork and spoon may find its way to the basement, settling in beside my husband’s childhood chocolate cigarette box, his wooden “friendly duck” award, and bantam hockey trophies. If he only had a room of his own, and didn’t have to leave his treasures languishing among the antifreeze and the spare nuts and bolts.)

Hmm. Well, I’m procrastinating on that for another couple of weeks until we actually clean out the closets.

Now on to Step 2: The Plan.

I want a bedroom flexible enough to serve three functions:  it needs to be bright and friendly, conducive for creative work and homework during the day, relaxing and restful for sleep at night, and an alternate television spot for the kids when they jockey for entertainment space in the house.

I want all that without clutter… I want a place to put away desk litter, files, paper, or stacks of DVD’s when I’m not using them. I want super-organized closets which make the very best use of vertical space, and I want to remove everything that doesn’t serve a specific purpose in the room.

Okay, there it is: that’s my dream. Next year, I’ll dream to own the Taj Mahal, but this will do for now.

In anticipation of Step Two: “The Plan,” I experimented today with virtual furniture placement. I mapped out my present bedroom floor plan on the computer using Adobe Illustrator, printed the page and cut out all the furniture pieces. Then, I printed another page featuring the room with no furniture so I could play switcheroo without the muscle aches.

It turns out there are a couple of possibilities, but they require agreement from my roommate, who thus far has been quite docile and accommodating. Of course, when he looked at it this evening, he said in typical analytical fashion, “I think I’d like to draw it to scale myself, first. You know, to make sure you got the measurements right.”

Well, I’m glad it’s only Wednesday.