Not your average “To Do” list

This one’s for you as much as it is for me…

1. Respect yourself
2. Put your well-being first
3. Make some quiet time
4. Take more bubble baths
5. Knit/spin more (OK, that one might just be for me)
6. Bake something sinful
7. Get out your paints
8. Do something you’ve never done before
9. Sleep more
10. Surround yourself with beauty
11. Put your own pictures on the wall
12. Indulge more in laughter
13. Make wishes
14. Talk to your friends more
15. Eat well
16. Take more photos
17. Think of 5 things you are grateful for
18. Hug your family and friends more
19. Stop asking for permission
20. Breathe in all the way

Did you ever have one of those days?

When I was about 12 or 13, I started to write all sorts of stories. I wrote a ghost story about my school being haunted. I did scary stories about the woods and conservation areas near my home. I tried my hand at a horror story about a field trip. (Just as a little tip, co-students get pretty freaked out by being killed off in stories. Don’t worry, it was just a phase.) I wrote some fantasy fiction. In fact, I’m still writing some fantasy fiction that sprang up at that time. When short stories become novellas and bloom in to novels, they take a lot of percolating to get them done. It’s like knitting an afghan. I digress.

I wrote hilarious little bits too. There’s one story in my accordion folder that details a crazy camping trip during which my dad crawls into his sleeping bag to find a snake had also thought it a good place to sleep. Total fiction. Never happened. Of course, the description of him screaming like a girl…I couldn’t make that up. Ah, good times.

I also delighted in making up “The Worst Day Ever” scenarios. You know the type: woke up late because the alarm wasn’t set—cold shower—burnt toast—spilled coffee—no gas in car—seriously late for work—miss meeting—catch shit, etc.

This morning was a bit like that. For one blistering hour, I could not seem to get us up, dressed fed and out of the house in a reasonable amount of time. Obstacles just kept leaping up, making it impossible to do simple things. One step forward, one giant leap back.

Fiona was slow getting out of bed. She couldn’t fine the pants she wanted to wear. We’ve all been there. It sucks when you can’t find the pants you wanted (usually because they are standing up all by themselves in the laundry hamper). Then we hunted for a suitable shirt. Found one, but had to cut the tag out downstairs.

Meanwhile Calla is getting the table set (bless that child) so that she could change her mind about toast after it was toasting and had to get a hold of herself under the table before she could settle on rice krispies.

I got the milk in the microwave for hot chocolate. Fiona insisted on picking her own cup and whatever you do, don’t touch the lid. She’s taking care of all that. 4 year olds and their push-pull of “I can/can’t do that! “ I pour the milk before anyone says they want to. Turn around to get the chocolate syrup and hear, “Uh-oh” and “Oh no” simultaneously. A whole cup of hot milk has spilled all over the table, the chair, the floor and Fiona (in her chosen pants). Had to strip her down, get some towels strategically placed for the mopping up, more milk in the microwave to replace the cup that spilled. Oh, and find other pants.

It’s like being a finely tuned juggling machine some days.

And then for no reason I can tell, the cat barfed up her breakfast right beside the table.

Now, most of my previous cats were private pukers. You know the type. Off somewhere in the night when you sort of wake up to that sound. No idea where the cat is. No real sense in looking for it until you’re armed with daylight. Or the cat that barfs up bug bits while you’re at school or work, but does it in a place you’re sure to find…with your be-socked foot…while you’re just about to turn on a light. Yep, that memory is never going away no matter how much therapy I get.

This one is not fussy.

Back to breakfast, just the right amount of milk had to be poured into Calla’s Raisin Bran…enough to cover it. You know that stuff floats, right. Discussion ensued. Then it was too mushy because of all the milk. Tough.

Made coffee. Made my lunch. Navigated dishes into the sink for later. Brushed hair. Brushed teeth. Had to negotiate outdoor clothing, because the sun was shining but the wind still has meat hooks in it and will rip the flesh from little children. Caught shit because I was putting on my vest instead of my heavy winter coat. I was putting on my windproof over it. Timing is everything and you just don’t get it until your older. Kids just have no patience.

Then, we had to race upstairs for a sleep toy. They nap at daycare. Fiona likes to have a friend to sleep with. Hey, who am I to argue with that kind of thinking? She brought three. We negotiate down to one which she then leaves inside the house.

I had to go back into the house 3 times before I started the car. Each time I had to bodily block the cat who was throwing herself at the door like some depraved escape artist.

But in the end I finally managed to get away from the house with my coffee, my lunch, both children and a shred of my sanity. And there is the hope that tomorrow will be better. At least I hope we can avoid the barf. Really, isn’t that all we can ask in a day?

Welcome to the family

On January 2nd, the girls and I invited a new family member into the home.

Caitlin is an 8 lbs brown tabby who likes to talk, play with her many, many toys, and is quickly perfecting the skill of darting between your feet as you walk anywhere near her food or her bowls.

She enjoys climbing into the linen closet and cabinet and pulling down as much as possible to insert herself into the smallest space available. She also likes running through the house with one of the children's slippers in her mouth, while meowing at the top of her voice.

She enjoys quiet nights, sitting on the couch being petted. She purrs like a machine. Her favorite spot to sleep is on my bed, but if either of the girls gets up in the night and sleeps in my room, she toddles off to sleep with the one who was left behind.

She's been in every nook and cranny in the house (except the attic) and is now actively listening to the mice, scheming about how to capture them.

Now, if I could just get her to stop drinking out of the fish bowl, she could get on with her obvious designs for World Domination.

In the Back in the Saddle

Well it’s been 2 months since I wrote. Most of you already know that Bruce and I have parted ways and it has taken me a while to recover from this ending. Now we are into the new year and I am looking forward and calling upon my closest friends to lend a hand when necessary and getting things done.

This weekend we tackled a huge portion of the on-going kitchen reno. A big thanks to Nicola, Gord, John, Charlie, Dad and Christine for all their labour.

Nicola and I started on Thursday night by clearing out a couple of free standing cupboards, moving them out into their new homes in the pantry and the living room and vacuuming up an astonishing collection of dust bunnies.

Saturday morning dawned crisp (-20 deg C) and clear. I whipped together a chili and started some broccoli soup. I am a firm believer that if you are going to wear out your friends, you’d better be able to feed them too. Dad and Christine arrived in time for coffee and we cleared out the table and chairs, shoved things to the perimiter of the play room (to bring in the cupboards from the barn) and shovelled a clear path for bringing them in. We also had to use the hairdryer to get one of the barn door locks off.

Gord and John arrived and they and Dad started to tackle the remaining demolishion on one cupboard. (When Nicola and I tore out the big pantry cupboard in October or November, it took us 2 solid hours of female angst to tear it out. The guys had their cupboard off the wall in 20 minutes. Lesson learned: men do demolishion better.)

(This was really hard work, and this is how happy I was to have the new cupboard in.)First we had to rip out the cupboard that was where the paint changes to the colour I like to call "Rock of Ages" and then the buttler sink had to go. Anyone want to buy an awesome old sink?Then we took the heat vent that had a remarkable U (see where the paint looks different along the waste stack, that's where it used to live) in it and turned it into the Leaning Tower of Heat.
They ripped out the sink and started putting up cupboards with lots of shims. This portion of the house is newer (circa 1900) and the plaster walls are a bit off plumb (just the way I likes it). But shims a plenty to go around.

There is always a joker in the crowd, isn't there.
Charlie had arrived to do the plumbing by this time. Once the uppers were level in all directions, they started on the lowers while Charlie was banished to the basement for his work with the blow torch.

With a minimum of cuts and some rerouting of a heat vent, the cupboards went in and Gord and John, flagging at this time from 5 hours of hard labour, took leave of us. Charlie stayed until the pluming for the sink was roughed in and the valves were in place (and the water was turned back on).

A bit more work and we had the countertops chopped up and in place. (The kitchen I got the units from was configured differently). It doesn’t look perfect, but it is a temporary measure until the electrical is done and I can contract someone to replace the counters.

Sunday morning, Dad hooked up the sink and faucet. I have a functioning kitchen.
Everything goes in steps. This was a big one and I couldn’t have done it without the help of so many friends. Oh and Duane, sorry you couldn’t make it. We missed you. We’ll catch you next time. Like maybe when we drywall the ceiling…

Now, every time I do a reno in this great old house, I always come across something interesting that hasn't seen the light of day in God knows how long. This is the gem this time.

Is it a top? Is it the top of something? maybe a toy? What I do know is that it is porcelin, hand painted, likely c. 1910 and extremely funny looking. It has a chinaman hat (as my grandmother would have called it) and exquisite lips that I will refrain from describing in print, but I bet his name is Toby. If anyone knows what this thing might be, let me know.

More posts soon. There's been knitting going on and other news with the band and a new addition to the family. How's that for teasing!

I still miss you

June 1, 1919 -- November 25, 2003

This is the ulogy I wrote for my grandmother's funeral, 5 years ago. The sentiments expressed then hold exactly the same currency today.

If ever there were a person I thought of as the embodiment of Love, it was June. She taught us many things about the world in which we live. I would like to share a few of them with you.

Some of my oldest and fondest memories are of times spent at Gramma’s house. Sleepovers were always a treat. Every supper we shared was by candle light and no matter how much she’d stuffed into me there would always be a last bit of toast and peanut butter just before bed. (She was always afraid that we’d go home and tell our parents that she hadn’t fed us enough—fat chance.)

I learned to shuffle cards before I could properly hold the deck, but that was alright. There was a box of tissues handy to hide the cards behind when there were too many to fan out. She taught me Go Fish, Rummy, Poker, Euchre and in doing so I learned counting, addition, fair play and that it was having fun that mattered, not who won or lost the game.

Even better were the times when all three granddaughters were there to play. So many hands of cards…the box of tissues passed to the smallest of us in turn. Picnics under the willow tree, climbing up the apple trees, and the pear. Exploring in the attic of the garage, where untold the treasures lay hidden. Grandma’s house was a place to imagine, to dream, to draw. There was always a piece of scrap paper and a pencil or a pen to add another piece of art to her gallery proudly displayed at the back door of the house where everyone came in. There was nothing we couldn’t do in her eyes. She taught us to believe in ourselves.

I remember the day that grandpa died. I was seven. I remember that it too was fast; too fast to say goodbye. So fast that we had to hold on tight to the sure knowledge that he loved us. It was very hard on all of us. Especially Gramma. In those first years, while she continued to live alone in their house out at the farm, she taught us about perseverance. She spent 10 years out there. She taught us that even when we are alone, we are never alone. She taught us that the love we carry in our hearts, the memories of those we love, sustain us. She drew deeply from that well-spring and soldiered on. Over 20 years apart never diminished her love of him. Not one bit. She often spoke of Lloyd as if he were still with her and in her heart, he was. Now they are together again. A lifetime of devotion has taught us all how to live as loving couples. To cherish the time we have together on this Earth. And we do.

When we found out she had breast cancer, she continued to teach us hard lessons. I remember seeing her in that hospital room, calm as ever. You see, June had Faith. She had faith in her doctors; better yet, she had faith in God. The prognosis was dire and a radical combination of surgery, kemo and radiation was necessary. To me, it seemed it was all the same to her. It was understood that whatever the doctor wanted of her, she would do. Whatever she had to endure, God would give her the strength to endure. While she practiced faith, we all learned to pray. We prayed as we had never prayed before. Her success got her a mention in the New England Journal of Medicine. The doctors deserved a medal.

10 years after she beat Cancer, she sat in Dr. Holiday’s office as he told her quite plainly, “June, ten years ago, you never should have gotten off that table.” Always one to know just what to say, she leveled that blue gaze at him and replied, “Well I guess that means I still had work to do.”

And work she did. June’s life was built on a firm foundation of service and duty. Joyfully done, I might add, but you all already know that. Whenever there was a need, she was a heartbeat away. She greeted me many a morning when both my parents had to go into work early. She greeted Wannetta and Glenda many days at lunch and after school too. She held the fort at the Christian Science Reading Room for almost 50 years. She also visited the sick in hospital, and the “poor old souls” at the Deerness nursing home. She delivered magazines for the inmates at the detention centre: I know, we went with her, although we waited in the car. And she never called it jail.

She took care of my grandfather’s father, nursing him in their home until he died. Then, she took care of Aunt Hatie until it was time for her to go on too. It was hard work; she never complained. She sat with each of us when we got the chicken pox. She must have been immune; she never got a spot. We always fell asleep with a warm back rub. When we had bad dreams, she told us to roll over so we wouldn’t have another one. We never did. It still works today.

Born at the end of the First World War, June saw the Roaring 20’s complete with Vaudevillian theatre and speak-easies. She saw the first talkie movies, while eating penny candies. She came to a new country and a new family during the Depression. She worked making candies and biscuits for McCormicks. She helped out at Aunt Evelyn’s rooming house during the Second World War. She was a Sunday School Teacher. She could bait a hook and bring in big trout. She and Grandpa had a garden that kept fresh food on their table, as well as the tables of their closest friends too. She was no stranger to the CNE and the Royal Winter Fair after so many years of going to show the goats that Evelyn raised. When they needed extra income to make ends meet, she worked, serving tables at Tilly’s Truck Stop out on Hwy 2. That was before the days of the 401. She attended every school play, every Christmas pageant and every piano recital. She was there for every choir concert. She was our greatest fan. She was everything to everyone. She loved and was loved.

And here she lies, peacefully and restful. After a life of caring for others, she has been rewarded with a death each of us wishes for ourselves. Its quickness cuts us all, but it is the way she wanted to go. And she had time to say good-bye. She wanted us all to know she loved us very much.

I know that the crowd assembled here today to see her off will be equal to the crowd who are waiting to receive her in Heaven. She is reunited with her friends. It would seem that her work has come to an end. We who are left behind…our work here is not finished. It is we who must go on, living in this world without her.

But…each of us carries with us a piece of June in our hearts. We carry the lessons she taught us by living so well. We are here to care for one another as she cared in her own way for each of us. We are here to carry on, to play our part and always to remember, it matters not who wins or loses, but only that we enjoy the game. Love never ends.

I Will Remember

LOOK down, fair moon, and bathe this scene;
Pour softly down night’s nimbus floods, on faces ghastly, swollen, purple;
On the dead, on their backs, with their arms toss’d wide,
Pour down your unstinted nimbus, sacred moon.

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

For many years now, I have marked this day with the memories of Jung’s Collective Unconscious. I was not alive to wave goodbye to loved ones as they took the train off to war. I have not visited the battlefields of the First and Second World Wars.

I have been offered other people’s interpretations of what happened and when and to whom. History served to high school and university students: the text books full of dates; the literature full of pain; the propaganda full of euphamisms; the paintings that broke the hearts and minds of the Group of Seven Painters who went to the Front Lines in France and Belguim to document the ugly Truth of War; the poems of the men who served; and the photographs in the National Archives Of Canada.

These are the fractured lenses I have used to create in my mind an image of Sacrifice. These are the tools I have to recognize the efforts of more than 100,000,000 men and the untold number of women who left our land, a land that had not seen the face of war since the days of Napoleon and Waterloo, fed on the stories of valour and chvalry and victory.

They left a place of safe haven and entered into a world of hell. Bombs screaming from the heavens. Sirens whining day and night and no where to hide. Mud holes and trenches and frozen toes and fingers. Living on smoke and rum and hope. Praying when they could. Wandering lost when they could not.

Moments of stolen happiness. A weekend off duty in a city unbombed. A hot meal. A card game won. Letters from home. A sense that everyone was doing what they could.

Who am I to sit in this time and place of relative safety and write of things I have not seen? What shall I do to mark this day, this perennial moment of Remembrance?

I am a storyteller and a singer. I do what I can. I keep what I have learned from all the different faces of war I have seen and I pass it along. And I stand in front of my peers in my workplace and take part in the ceremonies of the day. I raise my voice and proudly sing our National Anthem and Amazing Grace. And every time I sing Danny Boy, I remember.

The Theatre of War may change: the country, the people, the agressors, the Fallen. But the face of War never changes. The struggle of man against man is inevitable, as the rising of the sun in the morning. That I wish we did not have to fight matters not. War does not care what I think. And its dehumanizing face will never turn from us.

We must remember.

I chose the verse above, not because of the conflict that spawned it, but because it represents the face of War I know. And having sung its haunting setting by Ned Rorem, I have been altered by the experience and I will always remember.

Will you?

That Time the Falls Ran Dry

You know, I really marvel at what man can do. In an astounding feat of engineering, the Mississippi River Power Corporation has stopped the flow of the Mississippi River over the main falls in Almonte so that they can build a new, more powerful hydro-electric station at the base of the falls reusing the refurbished turbines. My friend Andrew is working for the company that is working on the turbines. Sometimes life just feels so interconnected.

This is the view of the falls from the bridge looking "up river" if there was a river to look up, that is! (The water is being diverted down the other set of falls near the Millfall Condos.)

This is the Power House where the old turbines used to whirl and hum. The movement of the river and a slight drop is what used to power the generators. But this power house is at the top of the falls and the power was only that of the river moving along.

This is the old tailrace where the water came out of the power house.This is the gorge where that leads to the lake. They've blasted it deeply now, adding probably another 20 feet to the depth. Now the water will race over the falls, building up more speed and force so that it creates more than 19 million Kilowatt hours (versus the 11 million it used to produce). Those stats come from the Mississippi River Power Corp's website.

This view is no more either. Since the day I took these photos, they've blasted a lot more out of the groud to make a chute leading to the new site of power generation.


More photos of the continuing progress are available here.

My link to the past

Anyone who's been to Almonte has likely gone past this formidable building, Rosamond's Wollen Mill. I have a link not to this building but to the man, Rosamond.

Before he settled in Almonte and built a thriving textile industry, he lived on the banks of another set of falls, in Carleton Place just up the river. And he had my house built in 1849.

And in the early Spring, when the ice is breaking up, I too can feel the power of the river as rushes over my falls on its way to generating power once again.