A lovely warm day – there’s hope! My backyard is a sea of mud – hooray! That means melting snow. Bring it on.

A funny thing happened. Yesterday I took two gold hoop earrings to a local place for a quick repair, which they did on the spot. I put the earrings in a plastic bag and took them home. They’re already strange – they’re quite different, because with both, I’ve lost the other of the pair. No one has ever noticed I’m wearing two differently shaped earrings. Anyway, at home, when I went to take the plastic bag to my room, there was only one earring inside. Impossible! I looked on the floor, dumped out my purse, rode my bike back to the jewellery shop, checked the street where I parked the bike – nothing.

I lose things regularly, but this was just crazy — the earring was there, and then it wasn’t. I thought, I’m losing my mind!

This morning, Sam called. He and Bandit had come for a quick visit yesterday. He asked, Mum, have you lost an earring? I shrieked Yes, and he laughed. Bandit was in pain making his morning deposit, and once he’d done so, Sam saw something glittering. It was an earring. It must have dropped on the floor here, and Bandit thought it was a tasty little snack. Good thing it didn’t perforate his gut.

Sam has washed it. I’ll get it back soon. Ha!

Yesterday, something lovely — was riding away from the grocery store when someone called my name. I stopped. A woman told me she came to the free writing workshop I gave at the local library, bought True to Life, and was immersed in writing her family history. She’d traced it back to enslaved people in South Africa, to the Caribbean, then to Toronto and Regent Park, where her father was born. She told me I’d inspired her to write this saga. I said how pleased I was and to keep in touch. So pleased!

More nice: a note from an older American reader, who started reading the print book. I read the Preface and The Break and I had to give up because the type is too small for me. But I was interested and so, yesterday, I ordered it from Audible. I’m now now up to Are We There Yet? Beth, I love this book. I love your world and your sweet Canadian accent and your openness and your humor. Viva Audible! Viva you!

How nice is that? My sweet Canadian accent indeed! I do wish the print in the book weren’t so small, but that’s life. And I wish more people knew about the audiobook, read in my adorable regional accent.

On Sunday, went with Monique to see my dear friend Nick Rice’s one man show, A Side of Rice. Nick and I acted in a bunch of shows together in the seventies and never lost touch. He’s the only person in my life who still writes, stamps, and mails letters. He sends a freshly composed poem every birthday. A lovely man in a terrific show, very moving, telling stories from his life. He told a tragic story I knew well of his first baby, who was born severely disabled and lived only six weeks; how he and his then wife struggled to have a second child and were ecstatic when their daughter arrived. Now in her late thirties, she was sitting in the audience, listening, it was clear, for the first time. She now has a non-binary name, uses “they/them,” has a shaved head. Loves her dad, who adores her.

And one more thing: a former student who works for CanadaHelps asked me to be in a video they were making, asking people to speak about generosity. I went to a studio, and on camera, said the fact that we look after each other, that we can be kind and thoughtful and generous, is one of the reasons we’ve thrived as a species, although all that is in danger right now. I spoke about my neighbour Jean-Marc, the kindest, most generous man I know, who helps for the joy of helping and beams out light.

Nothing needed more right now than kindness and generosity, in this cold dark time when unfathomably evil men have taken over the world. Netanyahu, Trump, Putin — what did we do to deserve them? Oh yes, over 70 million people voted for Trump! Talk about unfathomable.

How long before those three monsters and their acolytes are cast back into the pits of Hell from whence they came, O lord?