A dream come true, and the salt finally out of the wound

When one of my life loves left me, he set a card on my keyboard. In it, was $400 in $20s to cover the last month of rent he owed me and a note about how he knew he'd see my name published in Cosmo one day when one of my stories made it in there.

I was a newspaper reporter, but my real dream was to see my name in a magazine. I've always loved magazines. I think I got it from my mom buying People, The National Enquirer and Woman's World every time we reached the cash at the grocery store. I loved and still love People. But I also buy and read the crappy In Touchs to Vanity Fair to Men's Health - which is so much better than Women's Health. Women get the stories on lip gloss and shoes and the men get the pieces on abs.

I got that card around seven years ago. Or was it six? Eight? (Funny how one breakup feels like your death at the time and now I can't pinpoint the year).

For some reason, a part of me was always bothered that I hadn't made it into a magazine. It's fair to say that I stayed in my safe "smaller town newspaper place" - I was a big fish in a small pond. I gave up a gig at a big paper for my family. But then I also had a baby and took a year off writing completely and then I got laid off, which was completely soul destroying, humiliating and degrading.

Then, I switched careers and started doing radio.

It looked like I'd never make it into a magazine.

And then I found Canadian Running magazine. I'm a reluctant runner. I've done two half marathons, a couple of 8Ks, a 10 and other little runs. I take running classes and run at the gym, but it's a challenge because I have asthma from years of smoking. Any info I can get on how to make a run easier I want. I turned to the magazine and enjoyed the fact it's all Canadian, with info on Canadian runs, marathons and personalities.

I shot off an email to the editor and said I'd be available to write if he ever needed a running writer or a writing runner...

The January and February 2010 Canadian Running has my first magazine piece, a profile on a Quebec running club. I grabbed it out of my mailbox when it got here and did a little dance in my kitchen.

It was a little dream come true - even if it wasn't Cosmo.

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Can you burn down a house with pancakes, The Bold and The Beautiful and Poppycock?

The sickness is upon us.
It's hard to think of much else these days other than the H1N1 flu,
but every now and then, we need a little laughter, a little brightness
in our lives.
May I introduce my grandmother Lois, who is with my family now just in
spirit and memories.
God love her, she was a hoot.
My grandmother was divorced and had spent a long time alone, living in
her little seniors' building. Whenever we went to visit, she never had
anything in her fridge - maybe a can of ginger ale, maybe some of her
famous almond cake. (I miss that cake so much).
She ate out a lot, often ordering something that wasn't on the menu.
But the restaurants made it for her because she was a regular. And,
when she was hungry for a “quick bite” it was easier for her to drive
to the local Tim Hortons than it was to go do a full grocery shopping
trip.
She always went to get her hair done and loved shopping from the Sears
catalogue. She'd never be seen without her hair curled just so and all
her makeup on. She loved doing her nails. Never went anywhere without
her nails perfectly filed and painted.
(When we went to her funeral years ago, I was horrified to discover
that the funeral home's makeup artist had not just toned her down, but
made her look completely natural. She looked pretty, but not like my
grandma. Where was her coral fingernail polish? Where was the fushia
lipstick? She wasn't drenched in perfume. That's the over-the-top lady
I knew and loved).
When I was 10 years old in Grade 5, I caught a bad case of the chicken
pox. Both my parents worked, so my mom called my 75-year-old grandma
to come and look after me.
I was stationed upstairs in my sick bed, with my grandmother
downstairs watching her soaps. She loved the Bold And The Beautiful
and All My Children.
One day, she decided to make me microwavable pancakes for lunch. They
were a new thing. You just nuked 'em for three minutes.
I laid upstairs for what seemed like forever doing homework and watching TV.
Eventually, I thought I should go check on these pancakes.
I came downstairs to find two torched pancakes in the microwave, which
was blinking 33:33. My grandmother had cooked these things for 30:33
too long. They were sizzled to death, like when a kid fries an ant
under a microscope.
My mom banned my grandma from using the microwave and ordered me to
keep an eye on her. (The pancake smell never came out of our
microwave, even after many vinegar baths).
I spent the next week in the den with my grandma watching soaps. I can
still turn on All My Children and follow the stories of Adam Chandler
and Erica Kane.
And I made the lunches for the remainder of her visit. I remember many
bowls of licorice allsorts and Poppycock.
Even in sickness, you have to smile.
Black pancakes always do it for me.

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How a Kingston woman saved a life. I obviously need to do more with mine

Here is the incredible story of Sherrie Edmunds, Chris Mueller and Sally Milne.
Three of the greatest people you'll ever meet.
And my husband would really like more of Sally's muffins that she baked us.
When you've had enough of Balloon Boy, read this story in Maclean's.

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How Twinkle Twinkle became a part of Thanksgiving dinner

Some ramblings from this week.
I'll fill you in on the Chris Mueller story this weekend.
sarah xo

Tiny tales from the studio of Sarah Crosbie and the K-Rock 105.7 Morning Krew:

We’re not religious people, but every Thanksgiving, we have to all cross our arms against our chests, hold the hands of the people next to us and sing a hymn my mother sang at the dinner table when she was little: “Be present at our table, Lord. Be here and every where adored. (Something, something, something … we often mumble through the middle) “… with thee. Amen.”
This year was the first year my three-year-son has really been at the table with all of us.

As soon as we launched into the song, he started to sob. (You’d probably cry too if you heard the 20 of us singing off key together.)

When grace was over, he wiped away a tear.

“Now Twinkle Twinkle!” he said.

And so, now we have a new tradition.

After we sing grace, we launch into Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

Don’t you love traditions?

*

Always wanted to see The Tragically Hip? What about seeing them in Amsterdam – at a sold-out show? K-Rock 105.7 wants to send you and a friend to Holland to see Gord Downie, Gord Sinclair, Johnny Fay, Rob Baker and Paul Langlois. All you have to do is cut the ballot out of The Whig-Standard each day, fill it out, bring here to the radio station, 863 Princess St., and wait for us to call your name at 8 a.m., noon, 4 and 7 p.m. You’ll have 10 minutes, 57 seconds to call in and qualify. Then, all the qualifiers will gather at the Grizzly Grill on Oct. 28 and draw a grand-prize winner. Send us a postcard.

*

File this one under kids say the darndest things: My son is obsessed with Tranformers, Bakugan and Ben Ten. (Don’t know what Bakugan is all about, don’t want to know. Hopefully this is a short-lived phase.) He’s also developing a bit of thing for dinosaurs. We have a massive book on all the creatures that we read every night. It’s like Fun Times With Phonics And Sarah as I try to phonetically sound out all these huge words: Pachycephalosaurus and Rhamphorhynchus and Micropachycephalosaurus.

My son asked why there aren’t dinosaurs anymore.

“They all died,” I said.

This is like the time when my son asked me how it is the sky made rain. I’m not entirely, 100% sure. I should have paid better attention in Grade 3.

“Sweetie, they just all became extinct. Let’s leave it at that.”

Hours later, my son wanted to talk dinosaurs again.

“Mommy, all the dinosaurs died. You know why?” he asked.

“Why, honey?”

“They all stink,” he said.

“Extinct,” I corrected him.

“Yeah, they stink!”

*

Haven’t thought of a Halloween costume this year? One of the big costumes is supposed to be Kate Gosselin, from the reality TV show Jon and Kate Plus 8. All week, listen for your cue to call and instantly win $50 to Audrey’s Costume Castle. Or, e-mail us your Halloween pictures to havoc@krock1057.ca. Each day we’ll choose one qualifier from e-mail too. Then, we’ll choose one grand prize winner who’ll get $400 to Audrey’s, a dinner for eight at the Grizzly Grill, plus entrance to all the Hub Halloween parties. Ain’t that boo-tiful?

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Yup, that's me, grabbing my butt cheeks

A friend asked me a tough question: "What makes someone want to run a half-marathon and have to pay for it, too?"
It's a good question, one that I think about every time I reach the eight-kilometre mark on our route. I'm good for eight kilometers; everything after that hurts.
My husband and I are training for a half-marathon race in Toronto in September. It costs $75 for each of us to enter, plus travelling costs, and we'll need a hotel room the night before the race.
I ran my first half-marathon – 21.1 kilometres - last year in Picton. Nothing can top that experience. The air felt clean and easy on my asthmatic lungs. And everyone in the town comes out and stands along the route to cheer you on, offer you juice and homemade cookies and wave signs that encourage you to keep going.
Training for that run was one of the toughest things I’ve done. By the time we got up to the 15-kilometre mark in our training runs, I was running so slowly I was basically walking and my glutes (my bum cheeks) were so sore, I was running around Kingston, for everyone to see, holding each cheek with my hands.
I vowed this year I'd be better prepared. We started training earlier and I’ve been doing hill and interval work.
Slowly, over the past few weeks, I've noticed the runs becoming easier. When we set off our latest run, I knew it was going to be special. My lungs felt great. My legs felt great. I felt like I could just keep going and going and going.
Our training schedule dictated that we had to do 15 kilometres.
Somewhere just after 10 kilometres, we noticed the skies darkening. And soon I was getting wet. I thought it was my husband's sweat hitting me in the face. If only.
It was droplets of rain, the size of cherries.
By kilometre 11, it was pouring. We had ponds in our shoes. Our clothes were slicked to us. We were going to keep running, but then the thunder and lightning started.
We had to head home.
By the time we pulled into our driveway, we had finished 12 kilometres. We were supposed to do three more - but how? When you're training for these runs, it's the last few kilometres that hurt the most, so the pain was just about to come. I felt like we were throwing away 12 kilometres.
As the thunder boomed, I yelled to my husband that I had a plan.
"We can run on the spot for 18 minutes, that's how long another three kilometres would take us!"
He stared blankly at me, droplets rolling off his nose.
"Like doggie paddling, but running, but in the garage," I explained.
We were like fish out of water. We had nowhere to go. No way to run safely with the lightning show. And my hubby was not having any of my running-on-the-spot shenanigans.
So, now, next weekend, we have to attempt 15 kilometres again.
If we get too far behind in our training, I'll be that girl, jogging through Kingston, barely holding on, holding her bum cheeks.
What makes me want to run a half-marathon and have to pay for it, too?

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Worms + coffee = Delish!

For most of the four-hour ride from the cottage to home, I thought about people who make neon advertising signs.
Do they ever feel like they should suggest that perhaps a customer's sign isn't exactly the most appealing?
One of the things I love about going to my parents' cottage is that they are surrounded by villages and hamlets that seem to be untouched by progress.
Most of these places don't even have a chain coffee shop. These quaint stops are still dominated by the ma-and-pa gas station/restaurant/corner store/coffee stop.
I love my grande decafs but it's liberating going into a roadside shack to grab a coffee from a carafe that could be 24 hours old. Live a little. It's part of the adventure of a vacation.
But this time, on the way home, I noticed something about many of these little stops - something I've never noticed. We pulled up to the first stop. We were just 20 minutes into our four-hour drive: I know they have coffee here. I've come here for our boat gas for decades.
There was a neon sign in the window: COFFEE & WORMS.
Maybe it was the winding cottage road. Maybe it was that I had too much syrup on my french toast that morning. Maybe I was dreading leaving serenity. For whatever reason, my stomach flipped when I saw the combo.
Years ago, when I was only about 10 years old, we were having a family dinner at the cottage. We used to have this glass jug in the fridge that stored our drinking water. The container had a red plastic flip top and was decorated in red strawberries and a swirling green vine. Once, at dinner, my mom asked me to go to the fridge and get the water. I pulled it out and discovered a metre-long worm floating in the jug.
To this day, the only explanation is that a very smart, very conniving worm opened the top of the styrofoam cup we got from Big Jer's Bait Shop, climbed through the dirt and moss and mountains of other creatures we were going to hook to go fishing, inched his way up from the bottom shelf in the fridge door to the top shelf in the main part of the fridge, slithered over the strawberry water jug, opened its little red lid and cannon-balled inside.
It's the only explanation.
So seeing COFFEE & WORMS made my stomach flip. Drinking worms. Ugh.
The next stop also had a neon sign: COFFEE + LIVE BAIT. (Better than dead bait, I suppose.)
The final stop also had a neon sign in its window: COFFEE + WORMS + GAS. (Better than coffee + worms = gas, I suppose.)
But it was here I got my coffee. A medium-bodied coffee with earthy undertones, I'd say.

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Screw you, you damn stairstepper

When I was laid off, I was exercising up to five times a week. I'd head to the gym first thing in the morning and climb on the stairstepper. After 45 minutes, I'd do some lunges and pushups and arm work. Five times a week. That's pretty freakin' good.
Well, basically it was enough to keep the fat from creeping on because now that it's running season, I'm getting my (fat) ass kicked. No, my ass isn't that fat, but damn, I'm hurting.
I started a running class two weeks ago. A couple of years ago, when I was on mat leave, I was in the same running class and I was in the middle of the pack; some days, I was near the front.
Now, I'm last. Dead last. Way last. Completely last. Last last.
Today, I went out for a little five kilometre jog with my husband. Basically, we usually stop once for a one-minute walk. Today, I stopped 17 times. No guff. My lungs are hurting, my ass is jiggling and I'm out of shape - despite three months on the stairstepper.
And I've got just six weeks to get in shape for Beat Beethoven. Last year, just a couple of weeks before the race, I got a wicked virus and was too sick to function, much less run.
This year, I've got to do it.
Runners have to do eight-kilometres in less than 50 minutes - the time it takes the Kingston Symphony to finish playing. Two years ago, I did it in 45 minutes - 5:42 kilometres, which is pretty damn fast. I couldn't do that now.
So, for six weeks, there are no more easy workouts.
I will run three to five times a week. I will drink lots of water. I will ease off the carbs. And throw out the Easter chocolate I've been nibbling on. And I will start to take my asthma medications the way I'm supposed to.
I think I'm also going to get my ducts cleaned. And get that mattress cover the asthma educator told me I should get, whatever it takes to get my former-smoker lungs in top-notch shape.
And one more thing - screw you, stairstepper.
As Janet Jackson used to say: What have you done for me lately?
You suck. (Not you Janet, the stairstepper).

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The Mouse Click Heard Around The World

Look, here's the thing. I want to see Gene Simmons. Hopefully, I'll also bump into Ms. Shannon Tweed. I like the Simmons-Tweed family. They're actually interesting on their reality show, Family Jewels. And think what fun it would be to have KISS play the K-Rock Centre.

KISS is pulling a wicked publicity stunt. They're having fans from around North America vote to see where they'll play as part of their Demand It promotion. (I suspect they've already decided and this is genius marketing, but who cares. I love battles. The only thing I love more than battles is winning battles).

Kingston, Ont. was No. 1 for the first few days.

In fact, my K-Rock 105.7 cohost Darryl Kornicky and I were the first two people in Canada to vote for KISS.

And then came along Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Now we're sitting in second. Second stinks. No one remembers who came second. Unless, of course, you're talking about the 1988 Men's Figure Skating Championships at the Calgary Olympics. That was when Canada's Brian Orser was beat by America's Brian Boitano. (I have some weird figure skating knowledge. Don't ask).

We have been plugging the crapola out of this KISS event. We want them to come to town. It's pretty simple.

So, on Wednesday, April 15, we're holding THE MOUSE CLICK HEARD AROUND THE WORLD.

Just after 8 a.m., Kornicky and I will announce on K-Rock 105.7 when to vote and in one second, we're going to add thousands of votes to our tally.

Go to our website, www.krock1057.ca now and register or click on the button on my page so that tomorrow, you'll be ready to click and go.

Listen tomorrow morning. Sometime after 8 a.m., we're going to launch the mouse attack.

Good night, Kingston!

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Yes, I do get up at 4 a.m. and no, my underwear is not always clean

It's the first thing people have asked me in the last three weeks: WHAT TIME DO YOU GET UP? On March 12, I started a new gig as a morning radio host on K-Rock 105.7 with Darryl Kornicky, Tony Orr on news and banter and Coach on fashion. Joking. Sports.
We start broadcasting somewhere around 5:37 a.m. and end at 10. I'm at the station at 5 a.m. prepping for that day's broadcast and working ahead on upcoming shows.

I'm lucky: If I hit just green lights, the station is exactly four and a half minutes from my home. But it doesn't help a lot.

I have to get up at 4 a.m. so that I can shower, get dressed, do my hair and makeup, eat some breakfast, kiss my son goodbye and get to work feeling normal. Everyone asks me why I just don't go in sweats with bedhead. Because I'd feel disgusting, that's why. And starting at around 8:30 real people are coming to the station so I can't really be greeting guests and advertisers and coworkers in sweats, now can I? Plus, my own ego won't let me do it. When the mic comes on, we have to be on. If I felt gross, I wouldn't feel like myself.

Trying to be helpful, my husband pointed out an article in this month's Women's Health magazine. Love the mag, rolled my eyes at the story. It's on Today cohost Natalie Morates, who also gets up at 4 a.m. to do on-air work with Matt Lauer. These are the types of stories that give women complexes. This woman is freakin' gorgeous - I don't look anything like her. She has a baby and a five-year-old. She goes to the gym five days a week. She starts off her day with multigrain toast and natural peanut butter. During the day, she nibbles on veggies. She exfoliates twice a week.

Oh, shut up already.

The pictures in the piece tell a different story: She has a person to do her hair. She has a person to do her makeup. She has a woman to roll the lint off her clothes. And if she's on the Today Show, she's making good money, so she can afford to have a good nanny to take care of her children so she can exfoliate and exercise.

Here in all its disgusting glory, is the real way a real person gets up and ready at 4 a.m. for a morning show:

- I lay all my clothes out like a five year old the night before and put them on the top of the toilet in order that I'm going to put them on: Underwear first. Then socks. Then pants and then shirt.

- The truth of the matter is one night, I forgot to put underwear out. That morning, I tiptoed back into the dark bedroom to try and quietly get some underwear without waking my husband, who also sorta gets up when the alarm goes off at 3:55 a.m. and then has to go back to sleep. I couldn't find anything but my massive pregnancy panties from three years ago. I can't stand those things. They go all the way up to my boobs. So, I had no choice. I had to do something drastic. I wore the same pair two days in a row. Sorry. Don't judge me. It was an emergency.

- I try and eat a little bowl of cereal before I leave, but doing morning radio has totally screwed up my body. I've lost six pounds in less than a month. Here's why: If I eat breakfast at 4 a.m., my body wants lunch at 10 a.m. - that is, after all, six hours later. But at 10 a.m., we're still busy working and I don't have time to make lunch at 4 a.m., so usually I eat a banana. By the time I get home, it's usually around 1 p.m. - eight hours after I've had cereal. (For a normal person, that would be like eating breakfast at 8 a.m. and then not eating lunch until 4.) I have something small and then try and eat some dinner. By night, I'm so tired, I don't snack. Too.... tired ... to .... eat.

- Here's my extensive makeup routine: Eyeliner. Mascara. Check I don't have crap in my teeth. Exfoliate? Sure, yeah, right.

- Sleep? Right now I'm sleeping from about 11 or 11:30 p.m. to 4 a.m. and then crashing hard on the weekend, but three times this week, I fell asleep while I was doing something. Once, I was eating lunch - a cucumber sandwich. Forty minutes later, I woke up cuddling the plate. The sandwich was on the floor. I'd apparently just conked out without any warning. I did it again this weekend while watching a movie with my son. One minute we were talking, the next, I was drooling.

- My nanny. I have a different name for her: My husband. I don't know how a single mother could be a morning radio host. My husband has done all of our laundry in the last month and taken care of our son every morning. (Even with all this help, I don't have time to exfoliate.)

- "Get the F**(&^ up!!!": The other morning, I was so exhausted, I couldn't get out of bed. My alarm went off at 3:55, 4:10, 4:20, 4:30. Finally, my husband basically took his legs and kicked me out of the bed. "Get up!!!" he yelled. There was no cereal that morning. Thank god, I'd remembered my underwear.

- Before anyone sees me each morning at work, I run to the studio's kitchen and look at a little mirror on the fridge to make sure I don't have gunk in my eyes, cereal in my teeth, a booger, a clump of mascara. Anything. If I'm looking alive, I head into work. Then my personal assistant takes the lint brush to me. Yes, her name is Darryl Kornicky, my cohost. We don't have lint-brush people.

It's glamorous being a morning cohost, I tell you.

Natalie Morales? Eat your heart out.

Just keeping it real for my real mommies.

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Join morning radio, do hard news?

My first six years at The Whig-Standard, I worked as a writer and reporter. I was a music columnist and a news reporter who covered everything from Ryan Malcolm's meteoric rise on the first season of Canadian Idol, to country pie sales, to the Sept. 11 attacks, to the Juno Awards, to breaking crime stories like bikers in the city and standoffs in suburbia. I did some investigative work and wrote humour columns.

Then, I wanted a break and I became an editor.

At first, I loved my new gig. I came up with story ideas for other reporters and supervised the production of The Whig's entertainment magazine. I took part in editors' story meetings. I got to represent the paper at community events, like high school career days. And then, I began to see how much stuff that wasn't "journalism" that I had to do: I sorted mail. I laid out the paper's three crosswords, paginating each tiny clue into perfect columns.**** I typed into our computer system community listings for charity walks and band shows. (Note: Listings are key to a local paper, though, so I was quite anal about getting them perfect). I answered a lot of voicemail. I answered a lot of e-mails. I spent hours on the phone trying to get publicists to send us hi-res jpegs.

I suspect it's like a teacher working her way up to becoming a principal in a school. Some days, you just want to teach. In my case, some days, I just wanted to write again.

So, it's funny that it took leaving newspapers and joining the K-Rock 105.7 Morning Krew to do news again. The morning show came up with the idea of doing the story of Queen's University professor Chris Mueller, who is a cancer researcher. He has a degenerative liver disease and is looking for a live liver donor. The family has basically exhausted their family and friends' potential and needed to look elsewhere, so we invited Mueller's wife, local artist Sally Milne, to our show to ask our "friends", our listeners, to think about becoming an organ donor. We also talked to Dr. Frank Markel of the Trillium Gift of Life Network about organ donation in Ontario and what it takes to become a donor.

By the end of our show on Wednesday, at 10 a.m., we already had listeners - one in New York state - calling and e-mailling us asking how they could help, or get more information about donating a portion of their liver (which, by the way, grows back).

Yes, we do silly stuff on the morning show. We baked Neil Young concert tickets into pancakes on Shrove Tuesday and we gave out lucky lottery tickets on St. Paddy's Day. But today? We did a story that really matters.

Playing reporter was rejuvenating. Loved it.

Read more on our K-Rock Morning Krew blog, including a statement by Sally Milne about her husband and how you can help Chris Mueller and other people waiting for an organ donation.

**** I mean absolutely no disrespect to hardcore crossword lovers like my mother. I appreciate the skill they take, just not the pain in my wrists from making those teeny tiny clues look so damn perfect each and every week.

It wasn't all serious this morning though. We did talk about panties. Just for a minute though. :)

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