Suzy Krause's Blog

It's the most beautiful foggy day outside; the sky looks like tea with a lot of milk in it. I'm inside, at the kitchen table, drinking coffee with a lot of milk in it (aka a latte). What a milky day.

I'm laying low this afternoon because I'm a little peopled out (in a good way!). This past week I did a reading at Bushwakkers and visited two book clubs, one in Baltimore via Zoom and one here in Regina. I also have an event tomorrow night in Moose Jaw—a friend of mine (Tim!) is screening his film a...

It was early in the morning; I was half-asleep, doing that thing you're not supposed to do where you check your phone before you even get out of bed and slowly fry your brain awake. On Instagram, a DM: someone sent me a link to the Goodreads Choice Awards nominee list with zero context. I didn't click on it. They probably meant to send it to someone else, I thought. Possibly, their account had been hijacked and this was spam.
For context, because not everyone is as terminally plugged into the Int...

If you’ve been around here for long enough, you know the story about how my grandma went to an auction sale to buy a buggy and accidentally bought a whole house for $500 instead. Or, as well, rather. You know that she was 80 at the time and didn’t know what to do with the house, which was a 1000 square foot, 100-year-old Eaton’s catalogue Foursquare farmhouse and a real fixer-upper. You know that she sent my mom a text that said, Oh! I just bought a house! And you know that my mom drove to Grave...

Today marks one year since I Think We've Been Here Before was published in Canada.

And what a year it's been.

I'm a reflective person by nature, the kind of person who talks about a party the whole way home from the party, who possibly enjoys analyzing things after the fact as much as [or more than] I enjoy the initial experience of them. Maybe it's because I'm so anxious? I find that when I'm living through something, I'm very distracted by my anxieties, by the pressure to do it, whatever it is, ...

So I'm one of those "adults" who really, strongly dislikes being alone at night. Leave me alone during the day, fine—great, even! I love you!—night? No. My imagination is too good. The dark is too dark. And what if something like this were to happen again, when I was home alone with the kids? It wouldn't be good for my wussy nerves.But sometimes, inevitably, I do find myself alone at night. It happened again recently, when Barclay went away for a few days for work. Obviously, the kids were here ...

I'm sitting in a quiet kitchen, listening to the sound of the dishwasher and fifty birds yelling at each other outside my window. I've turned all of the lights off and opened only the blinds on the south side of the house. I'm thinking about making a latte, but dreading the sound of the coffee grinder.
I am...overstimulated?
May was a lot—which is funny, because I had been telling people it was going to be a quiet month. Releasing a book comes with a lot of social things, mostly concentrated in th...

 Hey J,

I didn't get to say goodbye to you before you left. You kept coming to mind all week, more than usual. I meant to send a quick text to see how you were doing and tell you how much I was thinking about you, but then I got a text instead, saying you were gone. I missed my chance. I didn't realize how little time there was. I keep saying to people that I was so surprised, and that I feel a little ridiculous for how surprised I was. I probably should've known better. 

Is this weird: I've thoug...

I always walk around really conscious of my past self —is this weird? Do you know what I mean though? Like, Barclay and I went for a walk yesterday, in the east end by the golf course, and we were talking about something and at the same time we both went, hey, we were walking down this EXACT same path the last time we talked about this thing; we were right in this exact spot. And it was like our past selves were ghosts walking along beside us and we were laughing at them, at how little they knew ...

There's this place here in Regina that does an open mic night every Monday. I've been to a few; it's a very nice time. 

I have to be in the right headspace for them, because they can be a little heavy on the second-hand embarrassment, for which I have a very low threshold. Like, that moment when a person is up there doing stand-up and they deliver this joke you can tell they're really proud of, and the room just collectively stares at them, unblinking...? I can't handle it. 

Even worse is when the...

The other day, I went into a coffee shop and ordered, "a caffeinated coffee, please." As though caffeine were an extra ingredient that wouldn't otherwise be included. The barista squinted at me, thinking insults at me probably, but didn't say anything. 

I took my caffeinated coffee to the bar by the window, looking out onto Victoria Ave. It had snowed, and warmed up, and cooled down, and snowed again, and warmed up again. The road was full of slush. The cars swerved and slid down the street and I...