Rose's Cantina

Embed from Getty Images My husband Scott and I were born in 1956 which is the Year of the Monkey. Like those of our ilk, we were looking forward to celebrating what was also our 60th birthdays. We thought it would be our good luck charm. Then Lainey Lui spoiled it all by announcing that being born in a "Year of" Year meant bad luck for 365 days. The only way to possibly buck the trend was to buy everyone dinner on your birthday. I found this out after we had celebrated Scott's birthday, and son Stef had paid the bill. Shit, I thought. I should have checked the social media on New Year's Day. I paid for dinner on my birthday but it was too late. The damage had been done. By July 1st, I had lost my editing job to a predatory publisher from India, got ear cancer and felt my bones literally melting within. I had moved from a professional job to a retail one, and began to be referred to as "the older lady with the limp". Then I lost that jo...

It's been eight horrendous months since Ashley Simpson disappeared just as spring began to kiss the left coast. There is no news, little evidence, no charges laid. Let's face it, it's hard to keep on believing that she will, one day, show up in her mother's kitchen. Yet, we continue to hold on to hope...hope that she is somehow still alive...hope that there is some sort of closure for John, Cindy, and the extended and loving Simpson family and their friends. When trying to make sense of this kind of tragedy, we always look for something positive. It's not easy, but as humans, we cannot go on thinking that the whole world is this way. We have to hold on to something. I keep remembering the corny last scenes of movies. Like the ending of Titanic where Jack asks Rose to promise not to give up. Or the ending of the Perfect Storm with Mark Walberg drifting in the open sea transmitting this thoughts to Diane Lane. "There are no goodbyes. Only love....

My cousin Ashley Simpson made a New Years list this week, sadly, as part of a story about women who have disappeared from the North Okanagan Shuswap in British Columbia. The popular Castanet website for Vernon gave the details. Here is an abridged version. It's been almost a year since anyone has seen Caitlyn Potts . Potts was last seen on Feb. 22, and made contact with friends on social media Feb. 26, but has not been heard from since. The 27-year-old First Nations woman was reported missing March 1. Two months later, another North Okanagan woman went missing. Ashley Simpson , 31, was last heard from on April 27 and then on July 22, Deanna Mildred Wertz , 46, was also reported missing. Potts and Wertz were from the Enderby area, while Simpson was living in the Salmon Arm area. Police said on the morning of July 19, Wertz went for a walk somewhere in the wooded area near her residence on Yankee Flats Road (the same area where Ashley disappeared) and has not been...

Meme by Maureen Task It's been eight months to the day that Ashley Simpson disappeared. I wanted to share some words from the family as we remember her during this holiday season. Coming up to eight months since you have left us, wondering where you have gone. We still hang on to that string of hope even though is frayed, and ready to tear. But we mend it with love and hope for you, my dear, that one day you will be back with us, one way or another. We missed you much over the holidays and you were in everyone's thoughts. You were there with us in our hearts and souls. We haven't given up hope. WE LOVE YOU GIRL WE'LL NEVER GIVE UP  NEVER John Simpson, Father On this day, the 27th of April, eight months ago, you left to come home. Where did you go? Someone has to have seen you ? Why will no one speak out ? What are they afraid of ?  These questions and more will forever go through our heads, ...

I am most grateful on Christmas Eve when my brood lumbers into our house, clutching presents. food, kids and dogs. The configuration changes every year; sometimes they have spouses, sometimes they don't. It always makes for an interesting family picture, that's for sure. For many years, Christmas Eve was full of friends. Now it's kids and spouses. Having three kids, you can always count on a crowd. Today, Stef arrived, with Belle, his year-old Bassett Hound, in tow. He'd dropped his presents walking over, and murmured that the hot sauce selection he'd bought for Jeff might have broken. Luckily, the Ghost Pepper Sauce was intact, and would revisit Jeff over, again and again. Stef is single this year, and has recently moved back into the neighborhood with Belle. We are happy to see him after a three-year girlfriend experiment that went sideways. He is always the ember to the flame, and I will always be happy to see his bright and shiny face. Next in the...

Soul connections are often formed through the high voltage of adversity. Terri Guillemets Guest Post by Dawn Simpson* Ashley Simpson has been missing since April of this year, and this Christmas is going to be difficult for all who knew and loved her. I know Ashley’s family because I am a Simpson, and the Simpson family is large… so large that we don’t all even know each other. But in spring of 2014, I was happy to be directly connected to John Simpson and his crew. John has four grown daughters and lots of grandchildren. His wife is Cindy, who is mother to Amanda and Ashley Simpson. My immediate family’s connection to this group was celebratory in nature in that a few adopted Simpsons had reconnected with their birth family, bringing John and his gang into my sphere. Everyone was getting to know everyone, and this reunion was a long time in coming. And that’s when I first met Ashley Simpson. It was June, and every day for about a week-and-a-half, John and various m...

I keep thinking about my family. My sons, Stefan and Nick, who are nearly Ashley's age. My daughter, Marissa, the young mother. My granddaughters, Skylar and Kennedy. And I simply cannot imagine the pain that John and Cindy are feeling right now. I spoke to Cindy early in the week, and she said the 30th day of every month is hardest for her. That was the day in April that she learned her daughter Ashley was missing, and she had to make that terrible call to the RCMP to plead for their help. I spoke to John this week as well. He'd just read my blog and remembered the pink suitcase that Ashley reportedly was seen carrying as she headed out of Silver Creek, only to disappear. He'd forgotten about the suitcase, and corrected me. It wasn't a small suitcase; it was a large one that didn't quite latch. He simply couldn't imagine how she could negotiate the road with it. And then he said something else, about a shoe that he and the search party had f...

Embed from Getty Images Something hasn't been sitting well with me in recent days. I've been kept awake thinking about my cousin Ashley Simpson who disappeared without a trace at the end of April from her home in Silver Creek, near Salmon Arm, British Columbia. Those of you who come to this space know that I have written every month about Ashley. Mostly, I write about the anguish felt by her parents, siblings and friends who have been torn apart since her disappearance. People have a tendency to move on, but for the people who love Ashley, time stands still. The officers of the RCMP have told the family that they believe Ashley met with foul play. Back in the spring, they launched a major crimes investigation and have since scoured every inch of her community in hopes of finding some trace of Ashley. They launched a massive ground and air search of the property where she was living with her boyfriend, Derek Favell. Despite the efforts of law enforcement ...

The last time I saw Donna Balkan, she was bustling into my local Starbucks. Bustling, that's right. Donna didn't walk, stroll, or strut, she bustled. She had a few minutes to chat -- just a few -- before a scheduled manicure. Later that day, she was off to a conference, so she wanted to look her pitch perfect best. She told me she was retiring from her job at the Canadian Co-operative Association, a job she loved, and she and her husband Jim McCarthy were moving to the East Coast to engage in an endless number of activities which included square dancing, singing and acting. She and Jim were also in hot pursuit of whatever Scrabble tournaments were afoot. They travelled all over to compete, and they were obsessed with word and mind games, so much so that their new home's basement was being turned into a gamer's paradise. We're not talking video games, here, we're talking games that tested a person's mind and intelligence, games that fed her comp...

Yesterday, I was sitting in my chair with Kenny on my lap, and she was fiddling with her soother, the one with the little froggy attached. She was worrying the legs, as I bounced her up and down. She was having a terrible day, drooling everywhere, really crabby thanks to those dastardly teeth coming in. Scott, meanwhile, was unpacking the fake tree, the one we got free of charge about four years ago when the neighbor put it out in the trash. It is decorated with donated ornaments and lights which have replaced the ones that my son Nick accidentally threw out.. Man, was I mad at him that Christmas. We simply didn't know what to do. We had no money that year. And that's when we spotted the tree, out there in the snow, still in its original box. Free to good home, the neighbor had scrawled. I mentioned on Facebook that all of our ornaments were gone, and a few kind people dropped off boxes of them, or donated their old ones. I was truly touched. You peopl...