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Got It In Spades

Why Rickety Kate?

“No one knows what is on the other side of a playing card.”

— Jose Fernandez

My family were very big on card games, before our family tragedy occurred in 1982.

My Dad taught me to play Patience in 1975, in a tent, while we were sitting out the tail end of a tropical cyclone at Cape Tribulation. In between hands, my parents and I would try to hold the tent up and push out the buckets of water that were accumulating in the roof.

Over the years I learned more and more games. Card games were the major activity at night time on our extremely numerous camping trips. I started with the very simple family-orientated games up through Euchre, 500, Rickety Kate and eventually, Crib. If I won a hand, my Dad’s favourite joke was that it was time for me to go to bed.

My Mother died suddenly in 1982 when I was fourteen. Family life as I knew it was never the same. Gone were the card games and family camping trips. Gone was meaningful communication between my Father and the precocious, grieving teenager that I was.

Card games came into my life occasionally afterwards. In my second job out of school, in the Public Service, we played 4-handed Euchre every lunchtime, and it was very, very competitive. I shared a house with some friends at the end of the 80s and Canasta and Coon Can were an almost nightly pastime. In the 90s my ex-husband and I had occasional card nights with friends.We had an almighty row on our honeymoon in Upstate New York playing cards with my penfriend and her partner when he accused me of reneging. Perhaps we never recovered from that.

Rickety Kate is the card you don’t want to have. I am her.

Introduce Yourself (Example Post)

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

  • Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
  • Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

  • Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
  • What topics do you think you’ll write about?
  • Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
  • If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.