It’s official…I’m in the club.

The cheque was in the mail. That’s what I kept telling everyone until IT arrived last Friday.

What is IT? IT is my first cheque for a writing piece. Numero Uno. La Premiere. Primo. Confirmation I’m not completely insane in following my writing dream.

IT is not large, or flashy. (And really, who wants that anyway? No one likes big egos, right?) And size, in this context, doesn’t matter. Although, I would’ve gladly accepted IT bigger. Just sayin.’

$37.70 is IT.

That’s all, but I’ve had my picture taken with IT as well as my kids' and we tried taking a photo of my dog Zoe, with IT, but when Zoe snapped at IT’s edge, I decided having my dog eat my first cheque was not a memory I wanted in my scrapbook. My husband, Drew, who is a very patient and understanding man decided posing with a cheque, even for me, was far too strange a thing to do, so he was the camera man.

Now, I have the proof. I’m finally one of the gang, the clique, the cool kids, the published writers.

I am published.

Whoa.

It’s a powerful statement to speak out loud. I’ve also screamed it around my living room, sang it in the shower, texted it to distant relations, and wrote it on the back of my home-made business cards. 

I read in The Secret, that you should say thanks to the universe when good things happen, so more good things stream your way. Seems slightly odd, but who wants to piss of something as endless as a universe.

So, “Thanks Big U!”

But, back here on earth, in my bright yellow house in Wildwood Park in the south end of frozen Winnipeg in January, it seems more appropriate to thank the magazine who published my article.

So, “Thank you Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild – I always did think that Saskatchewan was the rightful Belle Province!” 

Go Riders! (It is still football season, right?)