I only know this because of the chorus of complaints via Facebook statuses. So, no one's gonna be too happy to hear that it's been the soggiest summer in 70 years.That's alotta years, but that doesn't bother me. I lived in Vancouver for long enough to get used to, and even like, the soothing sound of rain. And to appreciate the lush landscape it creates. Not to mention cleaner air. Apparently we've had five times more rain in June and July than the Wet Coast. Take that! (inside joke for Vancouverites)

The stat that bothered me is the 44 hours of storms.  44  HOURS!!  No wonder my nerves are frayed and I feel exhausted and spent from the energy it takes to cower from storm after storm.

I guess I know now that I'm not the only one (besides my cat) who isn't comfortable in a lightning storm. There's been alot of media ink spilled and airwaves filled with facts and figures about electrical storms and their effect, environmentally, physically and psychologically. You understand that even reading those is anxiety filled! Dunno what I'm more weary from, the storms or my irrational fear of the damn things.

Isn't there anything Mayor Miller can do? Can we bring in the troops to stop this?

Nope, says the Toronto Star article: It's Official: Summer is wettest ever  The summer weather system is stuck over the GTA, when normally it moves north.

(Of course they don't mean wettest summer EVER - they must understand that some of their readers will remember past 70 years, but that is another matter altogether which I have very little energy, due to storm fatigue, to get into right now).

Here is my appeal:

Rain is cleansing and comforting, on it's own. It doesn't need the cataclysmic accompaniment of noise and frightening light!  OK Mr. Weather Maker, or Ms. Mother Nature?

If that's the case, I said, then I better create a masterpiece to make it all worthwhile.

I wasn't even kidding. I've said similar things in relation to my career many times in the past.

It might be a self fulfilling prophecy, or the grand influence of a mother who didn't want me to live the kind of confined life she did, or maybe I just was never in the mood, or right circumstance to do anything other than what I've done.

Who know. I have to figure it out. No, don't figure it out, my friend said, just live it.

Good advice I guess.

In the interest of creating something worthy of my solitary life, I began a project that up until last night was only a rough outline, scratched together in the spring, waiting for inspiration.

Inspiration indeed came - and lest you think I reveal everything in my blog  and that there's nothing left to know about me - I'm actually keeping the trigger to myself. But for the last two nights I've been pounding out words on my keyboard. About 1500 of them, or 4 pretty good pages so far. I don't have a care or expectation of how long it will take me to finish the project or even get it right. Having the freedom, and by freedom I mean TIME and SPACE, to just write is pure joy.

It's fiction - though it may be thinly disguised non fiction, but  my writing has progressed enough that I finally understand that thing many writers have said to me over the years - you're not really writing until you're not afraid to bleed on the page.

I guess it's just the price I have to pay.

I came home empty-handed and heavy hearted. It was like losing it all over again. Big Drag!

Walking among the thousands of bikes, painstakingly alphabetized, I found myself in a kind of awe of this Igor Kenk guy. I mean, you really have to wonder what alternate reality a guy like him lives in. He steals bikes, either gives them back to their rightful owners if they can prove the bike is theirs, or sells them as is, takes them apart for parts, or simply hoards them.

Why?

I don't mean why as in I need a pat answer like, he's involved in drugs or other types of crime. I mean, in the scheme of things, bike stealing is pretty minor.

So, why?

I listened to an audio excerpt of an interview with him saying something like "people might miss their bikes, but noone's thinking about the bike's point of view."  Whaa?

(By the way, this guy also stole the odd stroller - now, that is just beyond the pale, don't you think?)

In any case, they found 700 more bikes today, so back I go to the warehouse in hopes of locating my Canadian Tire special, stolen in it's second season (I wish I could say year, but it's scary enough riding Toronto streets in spring and summer, I can't say I would ever attempt fall, winter) - stolen from right behind my house, where I tied it up every night without incident, until one day last April, on a unseasonably hot night at around 1 am. I actually heard the guy take it - alerted first by my cat who stood up, jumped off my bed and ran to the window.

It's not like I would ever run after the guy. I live alone at the end of a long dark driveway on the periphery of Parkdale! Geesh!

Dear Mr. Bicylce Thief - I work hard for my money and can't afford to replace my bike, my summer has been bereft of the simple joy of riding on the waterfront, nor would I ever think to go to a shady storefront to look for or even try to re-purchase it from you. Did you ever think my bike's point of view is that it liked it's owner just fine?

And I can't really say I know that much about her either, just the usual milestone information and a kind of idyllic remembrance of her that happens when the young die.

This is a photo of us - me about one, and her at 12.

I have always imagined that as adults we would be compatible friends.  It's a thought I like to entertain.

How bizarre.

Thank goodness, then, for the modern technology that means I never have to pick up a phone - with MSN, Google Talk, Gizmo et al, email and Facebook messaging, I can go for days without actually opening my mouth to form a sentence. This is preferable because, as a writer, I can make a much better impression on the page, even over instant messaging. I'm wittier, and likely alot  more succinct. There's no shaking voice to betray nerves, and no gaping holes in sentences because I can't think of the exact right word.

The only kink in this armour is that it contributes greatly to lonliness and isolation. On any given day I can communicate with many and various people in my life. But without the voice to voice connection, or dare I say, face to face, it feels sort of empty.

This, believe it or not, has just begun to occur to me. Or should I say caught up to me. I'm probably not alone in this and I think it might be a cultural phenomenon even.

My generational cohort and older (40 plus) is concerned, for the most part, about keeping up with technology. We have to be in order to stay active in our careers. But I believe even the younger folk would suffer from lack of tactile communication, except that they don't let technology replace real socializing the way we do. Why? Because we're "busy" building our careers, keeping our jobs, raising our families, and the blah, blah, blah of it all.

Life is too damn short!

All spring and summer I've been working from home, trying to ramp up my freelance writing career. To be successful, not only do you need to pick up the phone once in awhile, and much more than I do, but you also have to have confidence enough to keep at it day after day. Both of those require voice connection with people. A) to get work and B) to get necessary moral support from friends and family.

By the way, I'm usually always online and available for people, no matter what - maybe I think that if I'm not I will become redundant, even invisible. But my visibility makes me invisible anyway because you can't blame people for taking you for granted. So what seems like an easy solution to my shyness actually works to distract me from my own life, and prevents me from moving forward. I'll drop anything for anybody, anytime.

Moving forward is my personal hallmark, so you can see my concern.

Well, here's what I've decided. Starting today, except for vital emails, and my only phone which is a cell, I have cut all electronic communication. No more distracting or replacement-for-the-real-thing conversations over IM. I really want to find out what happens to me, for me and with others when I confine myself to old fashioned phone calling, to reach people, to make plans with them, to hear a voice that soothes or makes me laugh.

Now, I have only told one person in my life I'm doing this, so it might take folks some time to catch on. But it's an experiment designed to getting back to basics and seeing how I feel with it. And to get me over my phone phobia, which isn't the best way to conduct a business, or personal life for that matter. To take me away from my hermit-like tendencies. It's too easy to hide my real life behind words designed especially for quick bursts of humour, wit, or emoticons that don't even begin to tell a story.

I saw one of my best friends the other night and she dropped me off at home afterwards saying, "call me." How can I explain to a person I've known for over 20 years, that even that phone call is sometimes hard for me. So hard that I just won't do it. I'm not sure why. It could just be that I got out of the habit of calling and found what I believed was an easier way.

Turns out it's not. At least not right now.

For the time being I've given myself no choice but to call and answer my phone. I'll check in after a couple weeks and let you know what, if anything, I've learned.

Activist questions zoo safety after lion kills eagle, Canada.com

The thing to know about this incident at The Greater Vancouver Zoo, is that the golden eagle was bred in captivity and the falcon exhibit was being held very close to the lion enclosure when the lion attacked and ate it.

The zoo is saying this is something that happens in nature, but zoos are not natural habitats for the animals that they hold, nor can animals exercise their natural instincts in zoos. So the construct is wrong in the first place and I can only imagine what it does to animals to be so contained. Sure alot of them were rescued, but that really is besides the point to me. I just don't like the idea of zoos, never have, children can learn about animals without visiting a city zoo (even if it has what might be considered an appropriate amount of open space).

As a kid, I visited all the usual animal zoos and exhibits. My dad, a sometime father, thought going to Marine Land or African Lion Safari was a good weekend bonding excursion for us kids. Not so much for me. I hate seeing anything caged or unable to live its own true and natural life. I'm sure my discomfort was mistaken for fear and maybe it was easier to express it that way than to have the guts at a young age to take a stand on such things. Thankfully kids today have more of a voice.

The little girl who's father took the photos of the entire lion/eagle incident was traipsed out in all the media saying how she was sad because the golden eagle was her favourite animal. That's all well and good, and poignant and paper-selling, viewer-friendly stuff. But who's going to explain to her that indeed these things do happen in nature, but that the zoo is hardly nature and that poor bird, born and bred in captivity didn't stand the chance it may have if it had learned, in the wild, how to steer clear of predators.

It's all mixed up in that crazy way of the modern world where things that don't make any sense and that are actually quite cruel, end up being acceptable.

That means it shouldn't be too hard to find a tiered caked with the bride up top wielding a knife and the groom at the  bottom covered in blood.

How cute!

That doesn't bother me that much... the marketplace often rises up to meet the  need for novelty products. What rankles me, and has done for a very long time, is the way the reporting of such things is so entirely bias towards women and against men. As in paragraphs like this from a recent Toronto Star article:

"They didn't want to see his face, but they wanted to see this hideous gold grill he used to wear," the baker says of the former husband. Wielonda set to work, and the result was a two-dimensional cake in the shape of a man, with a paper bag covering his head save for a small cutout showing a gold tooth decoration. All around were the marzipan weapons."

Earlier in the article it was explained that the husband had turned out to be "a jerk."

Look, we all make mistakes in relationships... some of us marry them. But why is there such a common public assumption that when a union turns sour that it is ALWAYS the man's fault. What about just taking responsibility for a poor choice and moving on?

Frankly, I've grown tired of our social culture replicating one long episode of Sex and the City.

C'mon, let's let men off the hook sometimes, give them credit for being human although different than us (which is half the fun isn't it?) and let them have their dignity back instead of continually finding ways to emasculate them.

And does anyone know why there's always a cacaphony of sirens that begin as soon as the storm breaks out? That really isn't helpful!!

Like all irrational phobias, fear of thunder and lightening has a name, or several: Astraphobia, Astrapophobia, Brontophobia, Keraunaphobia, Ceraunophobia or Tonitrophobia.

Whatever.

It's all the same to me.. I see the lightning, hear the thunder and want to hide under the bed with the cat.

But what's behind it, I wonder. And have been wondering all week, while I endured my anxiety and prayed for it, and the storms, to pass quickly. Anyone who's lived with anxiety and panic probably gets what I've been dealing with. It's  annoying and frustrating to have to fight with my anxious mind for control. Intellectualizing doesn't help. I've come up with a million reasons that make me feel more jittery.

What starts with the storm becomes fear of the fear response, conjuring every emotional and physical worry I have - an unfortunate cycle.

Exhausting.

Worse, you feel too silly to tell anyone what you're going through, and if you do you downplay it so as not to make them worry. And anyway, noone can help you wrestle your demons, whatever they are. What can anyone possibly do for you during your wee hour anxiety attack, that has you not sleeping and not breathing very well either.

And all this because of a series of silly storms. What I know about my anxiety is that it is situational and usually has to do with not feeling enough ground under my feet. Try as I might to figure out if that's what's going on here, I really don't think so. Things are ok - transitiional, perhaps a little uncertain - but ok.

So, it has to be the damn storm itself.

I remember only one terrible storm as a kid. It was probably a day alot like this one, sunny to start, not a cloud in the sky - why not go for a picnic? We might have been at Christie Pitts (which seemed alot bigger back then) or Sunnyside Park, I'm not quite sure of the locale because I doubt I was much more than five or six.  When the thunder and lightning broke out, we took shelter under a tree. Bad idea... and although the worst thing to happen was my drenched peanut butter sandwich, there is something about that storm that has stayed with me. I sure do remember screaming and crying and probably making my mother crazy.

Sometime between then and now I forgot a little about my fear of storms. Maybe because living out west, where the rain can sometime be interminable, there is hardly any thunder and lightning. Everything about living there was even and moderate, one of its main recommendations.  I spent so much of my life before that living in extremes that Toronto weather seemed to mimic, and exacerbate.  The reliability of the steady rain, sunshine without humidity, and slowly climbing or descending temperatures helped settle me down.

That would probably sound crazy if it wasn't so true.

I think that's why I get so upset during a storm. It feels like so much pressure building and then releasing and that is a feeling I no longer want in my life.

You can't live somewhere just because you like the weather. Or can you?

Why do I characterize it that way?

Well, when you find it in your heart to forgive the person who caused you the most pain and uncertainty in your life, it's nothing short of a blessing. When he somehow finds it in his heart to meet you halfway, even better. The result is feet a little firmer on the ground, ground a little firmer beneath your feet.

It doesn't change the history of the relationship but you can find out some things that give you the perspective you need to change the way you see him, and then, of course, all men. The father/daughter dynamic paves the way for all her relationships with men, no doubt about that.  Find the guy most difficult to please, the one most emotionally unattainable. That was my legacy... up until very recently.

There has been nothing more important to my self-esteem than finding out that my Dad really did love me after all. Not only that, he respected and admired the person I became. I never would have known this had I not opened up my mind and heart toward and not against the acceptance I  most wanted.

What a relief!

I've been doing alot of reading and writing about fathers and sons because of a literary project I'm working on. It's a vital relationship and the lack of it can be debilitating for boys and young men. Yet father absence is at epidemic proportions in North America. On the other hand, many fathers are now heading up single parent families, a rather unacknowledged fact in our culture. Both states of existence need more attention. The father's banished from their families, replaced by other men, wrongly accused of abuse to secure custody arrangements against them, those who have died leaving sons in unexpressed turmoil - no matter the circumstances, sons pay the price.

The 2006 Census unearthed these stats: 281,406 one-parent families are headed by men, representing about 20 per cent of Canada's 1.4 million one-parent families.  That's a 14.6 % increase since the 2001 census.

News media fall all over themselves these days to decipher and explain trends... why not these?

* * *

For more Father's Day thoughts please look at my other website, Lonely Boy / sons without fathers

Je Regrette: French mother argues that having children ruins romance and relationships

Q: My neighbour says that I should be grateful that she had children because her kids will grow up to pay the taxes to pay for my health care and pension.

A: That is ridiculous. The answer is immigration. If we need people, we should accept people from outside the county to work and to pay the pensions. We don't need to make the children ourselves. It costs a lot to society, in fact, to add to the overpopulation.

Q: I've heard people say it's very selfish not to have children. Would you agree?

A: No, not at all. Very often families are selfish because they are closed to the outside world. And some parents want their children to behave just like them. Isn't that selfish?