Blog Talkers: Annoyed. What annoys you? What do you do that annoys other people? Are you quick to lose your temper? How often do you get annoyed? Do you have a short fuse? Tell us about the last time you were annoyed - REALLY annoyed.

I have a short fuse when I'm already frustrated or feeling trapped by someone or some thing. I very rarely get really angry. The last time was about 2 years ago.

I don't talk about anger much. I grew up being told I was just being too sensitive or blowing things out of proportion so I just stopped getting angry. I try not to let anything of negative feelings show at all whether it's anger or sadness, etc. In life it seems you are really only allowed to be happy and pleasing to others. Anything less is your fault and you have to deal with it alone.

Sometimes I have my blog as an outlet for my feelings. But, in reality I am either outgoing and social or just very quiet.

Blog Talkers: Joke. What is a joke to you? What do you find funny? Do you appreciate a good practical joke, or do you think practical jokes are cruel? What is the best joke you've ever played on someone. What is the best joke you've ever heard?

To me a joke is something that makes you laugh. Not everyone laughs out loud, even a soft secret laugh is a big deal for some people. Just as big as a belly laugh that floods the room with sound from someone else.

I laugh at something clever, something real like day to day things that happen to everyone. Finding humour in the ordinary is a real skill. Bringing a new slant to the ordinary is always great.

Practical jokes are a little cruel. It all depends on how everyone reacts after the punchline. It's not funny if someone is put on the spot of pretending they're laughing on the outside and not hurt on the inside. It's not really funny to pick on someone else. It's also far too easy.

I don't remember jokes. I guess when it comes to jokes and humour I just live in the moment.

Thursday Thirteen: Places I'd Like to Be

The mega bookstore, Chapters, with a latte and a credit card I don't have to pay off.

A beach on a sunny but not hot day. Walking along the waterline looking at shells, polished stones and enjoying the water washing my bare feet.

In bed, with a really good book, all snuggled up and warm, on a cold winter night.

Waiting for a bus, luggage already loaded, talking to other people waiting to re-board for the trip out to Vancouver, BC.

Outside our old house in Scarborough, all my sisters and my brother, making one of our great forts in the ditch after the snowplough has just gone by.

Again outside our old house, in the Spring, just after a huge, heavy rain storm. That tree with the big leaves has shed most of them again. We are all getting leaves, sticks, and walnut shells from inside the house so we can make them all float down the overflowing waterlogged ditch. Racing along to see which ones make it through the tunnel under the driveway.

At the site of a great old, abandoned farmhouse with all the elaborate trimmings of gingerbread, stone work and iron fence and so on. A stone house with one wall caving in a little and the roof sloping down, sliding off it's foundation as erosion takes hold.

Driving in the car after getting tons of photos of the abandoned farmhouse, my shoes are muddy and I'm trying not to touch my skin with my fingers cause I'm sure I touched some weed that's making me itchy. Ahead a few minutes down the road is the Tim Horton's I will stop at to clean up and get coffee for the rest of the trip home.

Playing euchre with all the family just as we used to for family dinners with the Grandparents, Uncle and Aunts when all the Grandparents were still alive.

Going out to a movie and the second hand bookstore with my nephew. Spending most of a day laughing with him and doing not much of anything.

Listening to the little nieces laughing and not just sitting in front of computers or televisions and babysitting themselves.

Having a romantic week away with someone special. Someone who will still be around for another romantic week away a year from then.

At the Morningside Mall with Angela, a friend I have not seen since high school, having coffee and conversation.

Blog Talkers :

What is your most important goal in life? Why? (Please elaborate) How do you propose to get there? (Or how did you accomplish it). What sort of sacrifices will (or did) you have to make in order to achieve this goal? Once you've accomplished this goal, how will this change your life?

Hard to keep thinking of goals when so much of what I try seems to end up a total wipe out. Most of it my own fault, I guess. Not always sure when other people find it so easily to blame me for just about anything and everything.

Anyway, a goal, maybe not the most important goal, is to finish writing a book and get it published. I've been in denial of this goal a long time. But, reading some of the books out there, I think I really should press on and get on with it. At least I can check my own typos. How will it change my life... well, I'd have a job I would actually like and couldn't be fired from. Unless I fired myself.

I've sacrificed so much of myself for half assed reasons and self doubt. I can't afford too many more sacrifices before I just disappear all together.

Also, Blog Talkers from last week, which I missed:

If you could go back in time and witness one event from your family's history, what would it be? (Be specific). How would this change impact your life? How would this change impact the lives of those close to you?

I would like to see my Grandparents as children. Nothing fancy, just a family dinner together out on the Prairies in the old sod house. I'd like to see them laugh about something little and do all the regular family things including nit pick at each other. I don't know how it would change anything. I'd just like to see who they were before they were old or too long ago dead for me to ever meet my Grandparents and Great Grandparents. Wouldn't you like to see your family when they were still young and at the beginning stage of their life?

Several giants are outside your house, moving the snowbanks out of their way as they walk along. They don't seem that bright cause there is a sidewalk or even a road they could be using. But, no, they only want to walk a direct route to the shopping plaza. Roads are for humans and their little cars.

Unfortunately, they also plan on moving your house, pretty much destroying the house and everything inside it. It's in their way and the really don't want to step on it and get splinters in their feet. You understand, don't you?

How do you talk the giants out of moving your house?