I feel like I'm on the Wife Swap show! No, I haven't got a new husband, but my housework sure has changed. Cleaning this posh penthouse apartment is such a different chore than keeping my little house in the bush tidy. Not only are the standards and expectations different but the methods are too.

The biggest change has to be the dishwashing. It has switched from my least favourite job to the easiest. In the Yukon, where I didn't have running water, I would collect snow from outside (like I'm doing in my profile picture) or get water from a jug that I filled at the community pump house and heat it on the woodstove. Then came the hard part...regulating the heat of the water as I washed up. It always seemed to be too hot or too cold which I'd have to fix by taking it on and off the woodstove. Here, in Vancouver, I just pop them in the dishwasher and turn it on once a day. I can't help noticing how much water and power it wastes (if I put it on before bed it seems to run all night) but it sure saves a lot of MY energy!

Doing laundry is also a breeze. No more laundromats for me. But cleaning the bathroom is harder. The people who's apartment we're staying at have a whole closet full of cleaning supplies to keep their two bathrooms sparkling. In the Yukon all I have to do is knock over the poop tower in the outhouse once a month and kick snow over the yellow spots!

Aussie Bobsled Team

Okay, I admit, this isn't really a picture of the Aussie Bobsled Team. It's just my family and I checking out the free things to do in downtown Vancouver the Sunday before the Olympics. My daughter is taking the picture. She's our family photographer and the one who has taken all the pictures on this blog so far.

We didn't find a lot to do and see that day as none of the Houses were open yet. It all starts today but we'll probably be too busy to check it out. As I said in the previous blog, we're on a working holiday helping out my sister at her catering company. We're all working for the Operations Division, organizing everything that comes and goes from the main kitchen and warehouse.

My husband gets to drive one of the delivery vans. He thought he'd enjoy driving around the big, busy, unfamiliar city as much as peeling onions but has been pleasantly surprised. He says the traffic is better than in our small country Aussie town of Murwillumbah! Looking down from our penthouse apartment, it's obvious Vancouverites are doing as their told and trying not to drive. At 8:30 this morning I only counted 20 cars at a time crossing the Granville Bridge! Amazing.

This is my kid's first job and they are loving the experience. My son just got back from his first midnight shift. He spent most of it with a driver, helping load and unload the van. My daughter and I got to work in a few hours. We'll be gathering all the bits and pieces together for the drivers to take to the different jobs. As it is the first day of the Olympics, I'm sure it will be chaotic, but will calm down once we all get used to the routine.

After two months of travelling without any income, the most exciting day of the Winter Olympics for us will be payday!

Time to go to work!

From the bush to the city

Talk about from one extreme to another...yesterday we were living in our little house in the Yukon woods with plywood floors, pink insulation walls, second hand furniture and an outhouse and this morning we woke up in a Vancouver condo in Kitsilano with ocean views, TWO bathrooms (with heated floors!) and furnishings we are scared to touch for fear we'll break them. Makes me laugh that even my two teenage kids were much more comfortable in our bush home than this city elegance.

My Aussie friend's are going to be amazed to here that we had our goodbye party outside in 20 below zero. Fair dinkim! We lit up a big burn pile of all the off cuts from our firewood trees and stood around it drinking beer as comfortable as could be. We partied until midnight and nobody came inside once. Everyone just slowly rotated to keep all parts of their body warm and tried not to stand between anyone else and the fire as it would cut off their heat source.

It was sad to say goodbye to our new little house. We wrapped it all up in Tyvek - windows, door and all, like a big birthday present, locked the sheds and drove away. We had a great flight to Vancouver where our new adventure begins. We are here for a month to work for my oldest sister's catering company. She has to feed the Russians and do all the catering for the BC Government during the Winter Olympics. It will be Erik and Chelsea's first job and once-in-a-lifetime experience worthy of them missing the first 6 weeks of their new school year.

Time to go have a luxurious shower! During our month in the Yukon we had to go to a neighbours or the town pool to have one. Either that or have a bird bath and wash our hair over wash basins on our woodstove. I'm going to enjoy this one!

Getting Published

I got an email from my publisher yesterday, he wanted an author's blurb for the back page of my book. How exciting! I can't believe it is all finally happening!

This posting is for all you writers who have always dreamed of writing a book. The first, most important, thing to realize is that not everybody has that dream. It's only people that are meant to be author's that think "I should write a book about that" every time they hear about something interesting. Or who think "I could write better than that" when they read a book or article. That is a calling, so recognize and acknowledge it.

Then start writing. Even if you're not really sure what type of book you want to write, start writing and life will take you in the "write" direction. Write letters to the editor, blogs, articles, short stories or books and send them out to the universe and then listen to the feedback.

Motherhood was my catalyst. After 6 wonderful years of staying home and raising my kids, I started to search for what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was living on a Klondike gold mine where my husband was working and my son was reading the Magic Tree House series = an early chapter book about 2 kids who travel back in time. I loved the series too, so I decided to start a similar one set in Canada. Thus "Passing through the Yukon" was born. Shortly, thereafter, we moved to Australia where I continued to pursue my passion. I started my own children's writer' group, took writing courses and kept writing. Then, one weekend, at a cub scout camp where I was volunteering, I wrote "Harry the Hug Monster" = my first picture book. Wow, I had written 2 books...time to get published!

I got on the web and started looking for publishers and writing contests to send them to in Australia and Canada. I was tickled pink when Harry got short listed in a Canadian Writer's Union Children's book contest! After numerous rejection letters, I finally got a nibble. A small Canadian publisher wrote to say they loved Harry the Hug Monster! And they'd love to publish it...IF I lived in Canada so I could help promote it. Talk about good news/bad news. But, I took it all in stride and decided it was a sign that I should focus on Aussie publishers.

So I started a new series of children's chapter books based on Australian history and called it "Jinx Jinx Down Under". I started with a book about Ned Kelly and before I knew it had 3 books written in the series. But no bites from publishers. One day, while sub teaching a kindergarten class, I had another idea...a series of big books for each letter of the alphabet. I wrote 10 of them and sent them out. No bites. The excuse the publishers kept using was that my books didn't fit their plans for the year.

Then I found Blake Education Publishing. On their author's guidelines page they acutally specified exactly what they were looking for! They were looking for books for a new set of home readers they wanted to put out. I immediately went to the library, took out some of their old series, and rewrote Harry the Hug Monster and another short story I had to suit their style. Then I wrote one more for good luck. And I got them submitted a good week before their deadline.

A full year later, I was back in Canada visiting my folks when I got an email from Blake Education. They wanted to publish Harry the Hug Monster! I screamed in delight. It had taken 10 years, but I had never given up and my dream had finaly come true.

But it's just the beginning. I won't get rich from one book. At 7 percent royalties I'll be lucky to make 70 cents a book. But every school in Australia will probably buy at least one copy of the series, so I'm not complaining. The nicest part is knowing what I want to be and that I'm accomplishing it.

My life is a dream come true!