The False Ducks Blahg

    Parts of this blahg may be wholly unbelievable but are nonetheless the truth. It’s probably best to get into the current topics without too much preamble.  So here goes. 

   The easiest thing to start off with is this year’s Christmas Tree Launch.   In a blahg last year about the 2023 Christmas Tree Launch, HOW WAS YOUR CHRISTMAS? I recalled how I had written a blahg in 2019 called MEATS AND CHEESES AND BABY JESUS and described my tradition of launching my Christmas Tree in the creek at the bottom of my property:

   I should add that I also have a tradition of disposing of the Christmas tree.  At the bottom of our property is a creek that runs fast and deep in the spring after the snow melts.  Our annual live Christmas tree, after its stint in the house, rests out behind our garage until I can get to the creek in the spring and chuck it in.  It’s swept up in the current and disappears.  I tried following a tree one year and got about half a kilometre before the creek took a bend through a farmer’s field and was carried out of sight.  In my imagination there is a Valhalla for our Christmas trees down where the creek ends or maybe it manages to make its way to the sea.  More likely there’s a dam of trees somewhere along the creek route overflowing and flooding the farmer’s fields or perhaps the basement of his farmhouse.

So now it’s 2024 and time for me to post the video of this year’s Christmas Tree Launch.  To be clear, the tree was from Christmas of 2023 but it’s being launched in 2024.  Here’s a picture of what it looked like last week as it lay on my deck waiting to be rediscovered:

Well, the snow melted and I was able to get at the tree.  Here’s the 2024 Launch: 

   The next launch that I want to discuss is the launch of my book “Pippa’s Passing.”  I have posted before that I finished the book in the summer of 2022.  I had published a blahg, PIPPA’S PASSING when I was part way finished writing it.  It’s a good place to start when trying to find out what the book is about.  I’m currently looking to launch it on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback formats.  My daughter Abbie designed the book cover.  Here is her original version of that cover:

I am quite happy with the cover but a colleague pointed out that the child on the cover has no mouth.  Last night, Abbie and I were toying around with possible book cover designs and I mentioned possibly adding a mouth.  Here’s what she sent me:

You’ll have to click on the image to see a larger version.  The truth is, I don’t think adding a mouth adds anything to the cover.  In fact, when I thought about it, I thought not having a mouth was better.  The novel is a fictional memoir of Jeff Carter who tells the story of the relationship he once had with the title character, Pippa.  At the beginning we learn that Pippa has died and so it’s up to Jeff to tell her story.  The cover represents a mural described later in the book that Jeff wonders if it is a representation of a young Pippa.  The fact that Abbie’s interpretation displays the girl without a mouth could mean that Pippa is no longer able to tell her own story.  Clever, right?  At least that’s my interpretation of Abbie’s interpretation.

   One of the layout versions for the book is a wraparound version and would look something like this:

This is a screen capture from the Kindle/Amazon program.  Abbie likes the wraparound layout but she’s not keen on the text placement on front, spine, and back.  She’s going to play around with it in another program and come up with something a little better.  I’m still wordsmithing the text on the back but this is what I have so far: 

I thought I would never write this down. It wasn’t that I thought I might write this down but had no faith in myself that I would get the task accomplished. No, I believed I would never write this down because I had convinced myself that I shouldn’t write this down even though I had promised someone once that I would write her story.

“If you ever become I writer I want you to write my story. Write our story. Write about everything. Write about how I am now and how you and I got here. It’s important. Promise me you’ll write my story.”

It had been eleven years since that last night together. I never saw her again. There were no phone calls or letters or even cards. The last notice was the one I held in my hand in my mother’s kitchen telling me she was gone.

This was the end of a story I thought I would never tell. Pippa was gone. Her obituary had been very short on details. It was a sad culmination of a life that had once been entwined deeply with mine. Sitting there re-reading the summary of Pippa’s passing, I realized she deserved better. I knew then I had to fulfill my promise and write her story.

So begins “Pippa’s Passing”, the fictional memoir of 44 year old Jeff Carter who learns that an old love, Pippa Bailey, has died. He relates their story together from their first meeting in high-school up to eleven years before her death when he last saw her. The bulk of the story begins with their first meeting in the fall of 1977 and details their relationship up to their last encounter in 1993. In the telling, mysteries are revealed and Jeff‘s memories recall an intense relationship between the two. Although the novel starts with Jeff learning of Pippa’s passing, his subsequent recollections bring her to life. Secrets are revealed in the final chapter and it is almost impossible not to feel sad at the ending but also hopeful.

Actually, it’s much shorter than that.  My wife and daughter both thought I was giving to much away and suggest I shorten it to the following:

Pippa once said to me “If you ever become I writer I want you to write my story. Write our story. Write about everything. Write about how I am now and how you and I got here. It’s important. Promise me you’ll write my story.”

So begins “Pippa’s Passing”, the fictional memoir of 44 year old Jeff Carter who learns that an old love, Pippa Bailey, has died. He relates their story together from their first meeting in high-school up to eleven years before her death when he last saw her. The bulk of the story begins with their first meeting in the fall of 1977 and details their relationship up to their last encounter in 1993. In the telling, mysteries are revealed and Jeff‘s memories recall an intense relationship between the two. Although the novel starts with Jeff learning of Pippa’s passing, his subsequent recollections bring her to life. Secrets are revealed in the final chapter and it is almost impossible not to feel sad at the ending but also hopeful.

I’m still not entirely keen on it and that last paragraph needs some work.  Hopefully in the next week or so the book will be finished to the satisfaction of both Abbie and myself and will be available for purchase.  Keep reading my blahgs and I’ll announce it.

   Okay, now for the really bizarre and unbelievable bit.  This is the ‘relaunch’ part of this blahg.  I am 61 years old and I’ve written a few blahgs about who I am such as WHO I AM, WHAT IS 60?, and WHEN A GOOD MAN GOES MISSING.  I gave details of my life and what I’ve done over the past six decades.  The problem is that this was all based on a lie…or rather a mistake. 

   Let me explain.  I was born on September 23rd, 1962.  At least that’s what my mother has always told me and I’ve always celebrated it on the 23rd.  The problem has been that my Health Card and Birth Certificate have always recorded me as September 22nd.  I’ve just chosen to live with it.  Add to that the fact that my Driver’s License has my birthday as September 23rd and all my Revenue Canada information also has me down as the 23rd.  That’s crazy right?  Recently, on a hospital trip, detailed in the blahg UNPACKING THE 2024 FALSE DUCKS NEW YEAR’S DAY VIDEO RAMBLE., I was encouraged to try and sort out the discrepancy issue with my Health Card.  Here’s where things get strange. 

   I went into our local Service Ontario branch where you go to try and sort these things out.  Unfortunately the person I spoke to said she didn’t know how to handle this and gave me a phone number to call for more advice.  The telephone number was for the Service Ontario call centre.  After my quick explanation, and a considerable silence on the other end, I was told they would mail me a package of information to fill out to make the changes to my birth certificate and health card.  It took almost ten days to get the material and after reading through it, it said I had to provide proof I was actually born on September 23rd!  I guess my word or the word of my mother who was there, or so she tells me but hey it was the 60s and there were probably drugs, wasn’t good enough for the Ontario government.  Acceptable proof could be a baptismal certificate, which I don’t have, publication of the birth in the newspaper stating I was born on the 23rd, which never happened because by then I was the third child of my parents’ union and the excitement and need to proclaim my birth to the world had probably waned, or I could provide a letter from Belleville General Hospital stating I was born on the 23rd.  This last option seemed the best avenue. 

   I reached out to the hospital and, shorter story here, a nice woman went down and pulled the September log of births for 1962 and discovered that my birth was written down as occurring on September 22nd!  They had my mother’s name correct and the address where we were living at the time.  There was no mistake…wait, yes there was, there was the mistake that I had been erroneously celebrating my birthday wrong all this time!  I was flabbergasted to say the least and I even jokingly asked if the log book made any notation of me being adopted.  Nope.

   There is an old phrase, “a day late and a dollar short” which is another way to say too little too late.  Unfortunately, I’m not a day late, I’m a day earlier.  There’s no phrase for that.  Maybe there should be.  “A Day Earlier But Not A Day Wiser…Or Richer…Or What Have You.  This too, is something I’m wordsmithing.  How did this happen?  When I asked my mother about it she said the hospital is wrong and they can go rub salt.  This is my mother’s fallback slur but she’s never clear where or why people should rub salt or if the salt should be kosher, sea, table, or road.  If she did tell me, she’d probably get that wrong…LIKE MY BIRTHDAY!!! 

   So now I’m relaunching.  I’ve known for about a week that I’ve been celebrating the wrong day.  I think that makes me only a week old because I had to relaunch myself again and start the count over.  By the way, I tried to explain to my wife that our marriage is probably invalidated because I signed the marriage certificate using my 23rd birth date but she just said, “no, we’re married.”  I also tried to hit my children up for birthday gifts backdated to the year they were born.  Emily was born in 1990 so I thought she should give me 29 or 30 gifts back to that year because her gifts to me had been given on the wrong day.  My son weighed in, first saying no then highlighting that his birthday is next month and he’ll be 30 and all my focus should be on him.  Nice.  Can’t I get a moment of pity? 

   I’m going to sidetrack for a moment and give some positive news.  I finally finished all 30 Cool and Lam books. In my previous blahg, UNPACKING THE 2024 FALSE DUCKS NEW YEAR’S DAY VIDEO RAMBLE., I detailed how I had about four to read.  This is a detective series by Erle Stanley Gardner (creator of “Perry Mason”) using the pen name of A. A. Fair.  There were 30 books and I finally finished “All Grass Isn’t Green” this past weekend.  So that’s something off my to do list for 2024. 

   Getting back to my birthday.  I’ve decided after some soul-searching to continue to celebrate my birthday on September 23rd.  I’m used to it now.  It’s the same birthday as Bruce Springsteen and I’d prefer to say I share it with “The Boss” rather than the second-raters who were born on September 22nd…no offence to those born on September 22nd but Springsteen is pretty cool and who wouldn’t want to be somehow associated with him. 

   I wanted to close with something inspirational about having an incorrect birthday all these years but nothing sprang to mine.  I did, however find a short song called “It’s Not My Birthday” by the band “They Might Be Giants” that’s fun.  Here are the lyrics:

Here’s the video:

   You know, I used to say to people I didn’t want any more friends because I had no vacancies but if anyone wanted to leave their name and number, I’d get back to them if something opened up.  Well, all my friendships were based on the 23rd and I have no friends for the 22nd.  I guess I’m taking applications!