The Call of the Child

I'm bored, she says. One week out of school, Christmas over, beautiful mild winter day outside and she says that she's bored. She got games, books, a ski tube, movies and music for Christmas but still she says, "I'm bored."

We adults hustle and bustle our way through life checking important tasks off of our "to do list" as we complete them. Do the laundry - check. Do the dishes - check. Get groceries - check. Shovel the walk, vacuum, chop kindling, take the garbage out, cook meals, clean up after cooking meals, tidy, mediate kiddie fights, drive everybody to their activities, shop....well, you get the idea.

What I wouldn't do to be bored right now!

Our Family Christmas {and last day of school}

Wordpecker jr. reporting our family Christmas eve {Christmas day}

Christmas Eve,

Usually we put out some snacks and deserts and then have some friends over and when they go home, we get dressed up and go to church, when we come back we get dressed up all cozy have more snacks and deserts then we would call up our friends and then we have fun talking and laughing and I would play with my friends till about 10:30pm or 11:00 pm. Then me and my brother would put out cookies and eggnog, carrots and celery out for "Santa and the reindeer."
Christmas day,

My brother and I will walk each other up then wake let my parents know were up {they are to} run down stairs and grab the stockings bring them up and open them up in mom and dads room then wake them up all the way and dad will ask for 10 more mins. and mom would get up after we keep telling them "get up please please please come on get up hurry up, meet you down stairs" mom would always be down behind use then dad about 5 mins. after {we would have to wait to open presents till dad got down, while we waited we would look at all the cool stuff in our stockings again} when dad got down we would pass out one present to everyone when the tree was bare at the bottom we would open some presents out of the packages and play while 'rents made breakfast. After breakfast we would get changed then go to Christmas with dads side of the family and when we got back we'd play with friends and our new toys.

{one thing is in our house the toys get packed under the bed or in the closet and get forgotten about after a couple months but we might remember them and look for them then play with them and they get packed away again}


On the last day of school before break we watched Mr. Bean's Holiday in french class then had a secret Santa I got lip gloss and chocolates. Then after recess we had English class / history/ drama went around the school and went caroling we sang Rudolph the red nose reindeer, silent night, jingle bells and we wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year. When we got back we had just one activity in drama a invisible sculpting guessing game. In math class we had a math Olympics {we had a 30min's.}and I was with Elizabeth we were in 1 place then we got stumped on this one question then we finished 1min after time. {It was a really fun!!!}

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a good holiday and a happy new year.

a special message from,
Wordpecker jr.

Truffle Travesty

So here is how it happened...

I got home on Wednesday afternoon at about 5 pm. I heated up a can of beans for dinner (not kidding) and collected all of my ingredients. I got a little distracted with gift wrapping and realized at about 8 pm that I was running over schedule. I unwrapped my $13.00 worth of chocolate, poured my 35% cream and measured out 2 tbsp from my bottle of Grand Marnier. I heated the cream, added the chocolate, butter and liqueur. Following the directions, I placed the saucepan into the freezer to cool the mixture enough to work with. What? I have to wait one hour for it to harden? An hour? Are you kidding me? It's almost 9 pm!

At 10 pm, I removed the mixture from the freezer. Brandishing my melon baller, I began to scoop out balls of chocolate yummie-ness. Uh oh, I can't get it out of the melon baller. I have to scoop it out with a tiny little spoon. My vision of terrific truffles morphed into a reality of oblong abominations. Yikes!


"No problem," I think, "I can fix this." I read the instructions again -- place the truffles on a baking sheet and return to the freezer to harden. OK. I remove them after about 15 minutes later and try to shape them into perfectly round little balls only to find that they are melting into the palms of my hands. (I'm thinking that I should have made them with M&Ms.) I gently try to re-shape them with my fingertips while I melt the rest of my chocolate in a dish ready to cover these delightful little delicacies. I dunked one, two then three. I thought this part was going to be easier. It wasn't. The chocolate is much thicker than I thought it would be and it cools fast. I ended up having to throw out about 8 tbsp of chocolate and re-melt another batch to finish up. This task certainly didn't go as planned. The clock is racing past 10:30 pm and my eyes are starting to burn. I'm tired. I finished dunking the last of my truffles and put them into a container to finish setting.


At 11 pm I threw the dishes into the sink, soaked the chocolate stained dishcloths and headed to bed. I squirted some Spray & Wash on my sweater, dug chocolate out from beneath my fingernails and hopped into bed.


As I lay there trying to sleep, I added up my costs and figured that -- time included -- my truffles cost approximately $2.85 each. If the stain doesn't come out of my sweater, that will increase to about $3.43.


Next year I'm going to the drug store to buy Lindt Lindor Chocolate Truffles. In fact, I'll buy the biggest bag they sell and laugh all the way to the checkout! With or without a coupon, on or off sale, I'll laugh knowing that I paid WAY LESS than I did this year.

Here's the picture from the recipe.


Pretty don't you think?


I'm confident that they were made by Stepford Wives in a state of the art kitchen at 10:30 am on a Saturday morning. Damn those Stepford Wives and the Kraft Kitchens marketing machine. Damn them all!


4 more sleeps!

Christmas Baking

I managed to get most of my baking done on the weekend. I made:

Crunchy bars (12 o'clock covered in chocolate and pecans) You would never believe that these are made with saltines. They taste like Skor bars.

Shortbread with cranberries and pistachios (2 o'clock round cookies). I made these with whole wheat flour and the least amount of butter I could to keep the cookie from falling apart. They turned out quite well. Pretty and yummy!

• Candy Cane Bark (4 o'clock squarish things) made with white chocolate and smashed up candy canes. I don't like either of these ingredients, but they look nice in my gift baskets so I feel compelled to make them every year.


• White cranberry biscotti (7 o'clock biscotti-shaped cookies). These are by far my favourite treat. I will take half of the batch, dip one end of each slice in dark chocolate and then package them up in baggies. They look so pretty in a gift basket. I experiment with many different biscotti recipes and try to have a batch on hand. They go great with a cup of coffee or tea.


• Chocolate Candy Cane cookies (9 o'clock candy-cane shaped cookies). These things are chocolate cookies made with a package of cream cheese. It's the first year I've made them and I had quite a time getting the correct consistency for a cookie. My daughter drizzled white chocolate and topped them with candy cane pieces. I have to confess, they look better than they taste.

I also made cookie fudge (way too rich to eat) which is like giving the gift of sugar shock. I'm worried that these things are going to fall apart when I put them in gift baskets so I'll have to warn the recipients. No photo sorry. Just picture chocolate fudge with chunks of Oreo cookie sticking out.

I still have to make truffles and fruit balls. I've never made the truffles before but I'm looking forward to trying. I bought a bottle of Grand Marnier to add to the recipe (and a bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream for the cook :) so I think they will be quite decadent. If they turn out I'll take photos and post them. If they don't, I'll steal a photo and take the credit anyway (tee hee).

I would love to post more photos but it takes somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes to upload over this connection. I absolutely HAVE to show you all the snow we're getting though. Amazing!

6 more sleeps gang!

11 More Sleeps

What a week it's been! Our customers at work are all preparing for the Christmas Holidays so they're beginning to stock up. This week was a record week for the comany's history. We roasted over 3200 lbs of coffee. Our record-breaking day was Tuesday when we roasted nearly half of that. Tuesday was nuts! I arrived a little before 8 am and started entering orders right away. I broke at 2 pm for a half an hour and then went back at it until 7 pm. I finished the shipping manifest at 7:30 and crawled out the door at 8:00 p.m. Whew! The production team stayed until 9:00 pm getting orders ready and were back in early the next morning. They do good work!

I checked on the status of my online Christmas order Monday night. I learned that one of the gifts for the kids will arrive on December 28th. Not good. I also discovered that I had ordered a gift that I already bought. It will arrive on the 18th. Hmmmm. I'll have to send that one back. Most of my items will arrive on December 21st which is, in my opinion, cutting it very close. I mean what if I find out on the 21st that the order is delayed? I felt so good placing that order on December 10th too. Maybe I was too smug in congratulating myself for getting my shopping done early.

I am going to get my ingredients for Christmas baskets today so that I can finish my baking tomorrow. I've decided on double chocolate candy cane cookies, cranberry biscotti, cookie bark, crunchy bars and truffles with orange liqueur. That reminds me, I have to add candy canes to my shopping list. I'll bake them all, wrap them in little baggies and drop them into my Christmas baskets. I like baking a lot. It relaxes me! I prefer to bake for other people, though, because I don't eat stuff like this. I couldn't! I'd weigh a tonne! I'll sample each batch to make sure I'm not sending out something inedible to my friends, but all but a very few pieces will leave the door by the time I'm done.

I'll take pictures of my goodies and my baskets and try to post them but I'm not making any guarantees. This connection has a maximum speed of 45.2 kbps. It might be faster to mail you some!

10 more shopping days 'til Christmas!

Parent-Teacher Interview

Just a short post tonight. I've been working on a letter for the organization I volunteer with and it went much later than I had planned.

Parent Teacher Interviews Tonight! Yee-haw!

I met with Reid's teachers. Two young guys barely out of school themselves I think. I heard how brilliantly Reid performed during class debates. Heard how he quickly processed information, formed responses (with no jot notes) and influenced opinions. Yup! He's bright. The flip side of that coin is that he doesn't try really hard. Reid would rather get his work done fast than get his work done well. My daughter Ally would rather get her work done perfectly than get it done fast. You won't find two more different children living in the same house.

Reid gets his quizzes done quickly by providing one-word answers that the teacher cannot use to measure his knowledge of the subject matter. Ally doesn't complete all of her quizzes because she takes extra time to formulate her answers and write them neatly into the space provided.

Reid is great at science, but he hasn't done enough work to convince the teacher that he knows his lessons. Similarly, he wastes time in music class looking for his book or cleaning his trombone when he should be practicing. His teacher told him tonight -- Reid, you must not accept mediocrity when you are capable of so much more.

Wise words I will repeat often in the next few months/years.

What about Ally? No interview required at this time. Yesssss!

In Danger of Dorky

I am coming to the slow realization that I may be a dork. I should come with my own little warning (like my car mirror) -- Object may appear dorky when in the company of others.

I don't know if it's a phase. I hope it's a phase. Lately it seems as though my life is overflowing with these painfully long moments where I feel like an awkward kid in a room full of grown ups. It happens at work more often than not, though that's likely because I don't often socialize when I'm off the clock. I describe myself as an introvert though I think I'm in danger of being the neighbourhood's crazy shut-in. Are they still called hermits?

Keep in mind that most of my customers are either driven entrepreneurs of the Type A variety or wide-minded hippies in search of organic health food instead of buying poisoned groceries. I'm way too apathetic to be an entrepreneur or a conspiracy theorist. I am more of a free-spirit; more easy-going; laid back in a way that Laz-Y-Boy only wishes it could be. See the way I flaunt my complete disregard for grammar and punctuation? It's my Blog, I'll do what I want. Maybe I just notice it more when I'm at work because I find it so difficult to identify with my customers.

I was born in a time when Doris Day's anthem Que Sera Sera established a tone of apathy for an entire generation. Whatever will be, will be. We've since shortened that to .... whatever. What do you want for dinner? Whatever. What do you want to do with your life? Whatever. What do you think about spontaneous human combustion? Whatever. OK, well that last one is an exaggeration because I have definite opinions about SHC, but you get the idea. Whatever! Nothing that happens to me today will so damage me that I will not rise again tomorrow (save being hit by a bus). I will outlive my mistakes and survive my embarrasments. Whatever!

Why is it then that I feel so damn out of place? Really. My boss and I talked about having someone visit our customer locations to help boost sales. I conceded that while I have an outgoing phone personality, I am a dork in person. If you don't believe me, put me in a room full of people that I barely know (without a drink in my hand) and see how I fall apart. Onlookers would believe that my first language is not English. People unfortunate enough to find themselves in a conversation with me will never find a longer list of short answers. You could extract my tooth easier than my position on religion in public schools. I think I could even put Dale Carnegie on edge.

I'm going to move forward with the notion that this is a phase. I think that I can overcome "dorky." I think that I can even overcome it with little or no effort. I think "dorky" might be a state of mind fed by niggling self-doubt. I bet that with a little rest, maybe a full-body massage, a haircut and a pedicure, I might be able to leave "dorky" behind.

Hopefully in a month or two I look back at this post and think "What the heck were you thinking?"

Then there was light!

I bought Christmas lights on Saturday. They are the new LED lights that save energy and last up to 200,000 hours. They are lovely and shimmery and they are called "Icy white." They look a little bit blue against the snow. They are perfect, I love them! I'm really getting into the spirit of the season. Maybe it's all the snow.

I read all of the instructions, filed the guarantee and put the boxes away in safe spot so that I can properly repackage the lights when the holidays are over. The Energy Savings Comparison Chart tells me that I have made a wise choice.

To light 600 LED lights for 30 days (at 6 hours per day) I will only spend a measly 45 cents. Compare this to a string of 600 incandescent mini lights which cost $6.00 for the same period. Compared again to 600 C6 incandescent lights for $13.35 or C7 incandescent lights for $31.30. I know for a fact that I own a string of mini incandescent lights but I have no idea what a C6 or C7 is so maybe I do, or maybe I don't have 'em.

I bought the string of mini incandescent lights for $.99 at a Boxing Day Sale. My new LED lights cost $19.99 each. I bought 4 sets. Throw in tax and I'm in to these lights for $90.20 though that includes a gallon of windshield washer fluid. Let's round down to $87.98. Hmmmm. Four dollars and change versus $87.98. Guess I have to capitalize on the good-will feeling I get from buying a "green" product.

The box on my new LED lights says that they are virtually unbreakable and that the bulbs last up to 200,000 hours. Let's hope this is more accurate that the long-lasting CFL bulbs. I saw a segment on the news last week where our Environment Minister held a press meeting at the local Home Depot. He made a big show out of depositing a CFL bulb into a special recycling bin. You can't just send these bulbs out to the landfill. It suddenly struck me that these things are supposed to last 20 years -- way longer than traditional incandescent bulbs. How is it then that we are now already educating the public about recycling 20-year lightbulbs that have only celebrated their...what?...third, fourth, fifth birthday? Hey Environment Minister, while you were at Home Depot, you should have dropped a battery into the recycle bin. People are throwing them out with household waste and have been for years and years!

I think that there is probably a sharp-minded fifth grader out there that can tell me how long I need to use each set of lights my bulbs until the cost to operate them PLUS the cost to purchase them equals out.

Hey kids, whaddya say, feel like earning some extra credit?

Freak Accident

I began this blog when I quit my last job. I had worked for a company that owned several long-term care homes throughout the province. My office was in one of the homes nearby. It's the largest in the chain. It was really a lot like going to work at somebody else's home....well, mansion really with 160 people living in it. TV's would be going, stereos with music playing, people working on puzzles, having visits, talking on the phone. Most of the time it was a really great place to work.

I know the building inside and out. I was part of the team that oversaw the building project and I visited the site frequently. It is five-storey, square building with one elevator and one stairwell each at the north and south ends of the building. The elevator is really slow; unbearably so when the programming team is shuttling residents from floor-to-floor to attend an party, game or event. Those of us that worked there often took the stairs in favour of waiting for the elevator. We would race up and down the stairs so much that the paint is beginning to wear on the stairs.

I just learned that one of the ladies I worked with fell down those stairs and hit her head. She died yesterday at 2 pm. She was a runner and a Nordic walker. I often thought that I would consider myself fortunate to have her body when I hit her age. She was fit, she looked great and she was a career nurse. She took care of herself. I can hardly believe that she is gone.

A freak accident for sure, made more strange by circumstances. After all, she made a career caring for chronic and terminally ill patients. She would be considered a "kid" by many of them. I'm sure the irony won't be lost on many of the seniors that live in that building.

It reminds me how precious life is.

Too precious to complain about snow in winter.

Snow and more snow

It has snowed every day since last Thursday. Thursday morning we woke up to a huge dumping of snow. Most of the school buses in the nearby rural municipalities were cancelled. It was my daughter's birthday and she was hoping for a snow day, but her bus came and she went to school to celebrate with her friends. It snowed all day. It was fun and pretty and helped me get into the spirit of the approaching holidays.

It continued to snow through Friday. Very few people dropped into the coffee shop on Friday. Too cold and too much snow to make the short trip from their car to our door, I guess. Saturday was the Santa Clause parade in a nearby town. I took my daughter and two of her friends to the parade and it started to snow as the parade passed us by. It was after dark and the total experience was lovely. Sunday it snowed some more, then Monday too, and Tuesday night. The plows can't keep up.

This morning the roads were freakin' treacherous. The snow had been packed down by traffic to form a very slick, icy white shell on the road. I could feel my car moving left and right on its own which always makes me uncomfortable. I hate that feeling! I hate feeling as though, at any second, the car can move a foot or two to the side on its own. The sun was kind enough to help melt away some of that ice, but the roads are still pretty slippery. You would never know that by watching most of the drivers on the road...unless of course you're watching me crawl by.

The Number 23

I watched the movie, "The Number 23" yesterday with the kids. Don't worry, we fast -forwarded through the "adult relationship" parts (the kids always say, "Yuck, old people kissing.")

My daughter LOVES horror movies. Well, at least she says she does. I don't let them watch horror movies, so it's not clear to me how she has arrived at this determination. She's a sweet, sweet kid whose capacity for empathy never ceases to amaze me. It's odd to me that she finds scary movies to be so appealing. Maybe it's an outlet for her. Maybe for the hour that she's being scared, she's abandoning an ordered and demanding life. It can be tough being nice.

My son says he likes horror movies, but I've also heard him up at night after watching a scary movie. He's not allowed to watch horror movies at all. They have only recently been allowed to watch the news. I think there's plenty of horror in the everyday newscast, I don't believe we need the fantasy of Freddie or Jason when we have the reality of suicide bombers. I usually preview movies that I'm not too sure about before I decide whether the kids can watch them.

Anyway, back to the movie. This fellow becomes obsessed with a book that explores the meaning of the number 23. The movie explores the historical importance of the number 23 and how it is linked to many infamous moments in history. Caesar's death, the name of serial killers, the birth dates of assassins. For example, in the movie the main character learns that the Mayans predicted that the world would end in 2012 -- 20 + 1 +2 = 23. The main character realizes that his birthday, his name and his address all add up to 23. Pardon me, some of his details added up to 32 which is, you've got it, 23 backwards. This is where they lost me 32 is not 23 backwards, it's a different number. "Pink is red and white, red and white add up to 92, there are four letters in pink, 92 divided by 4 is - uh huh - 23. As my brother says, 10 + 2 + 5 + zebra equals 23!

Jim Carrey plays the lead character and, while I'm not a huge fan of his comedy stylings, I was curious to see how he would make out in this kind of movie. (Besides, he's Canadian and we have to support our artists. By the way, NO, I did not download this movie. It makes me sad to hear that we are a country of pirates. I have no explanation. Only a humble apology on behalf of my countrymen.)

When it was over, I looked at the kids and they looked at me. We figured that the best way to find out, "what the heck was that about?" was to proceed to the Special Features and find out what the director/writer/producer was thinking. No such luck. Lots of credits (not necessary, in my opinion) but no explanation. We could have watched the movie again while the director prattled on about character development and the importance of the wall colour in the dining room but, quite frankly, I wasn't prepared to give this film 97 more minutes of my life. It was, in my opinion, 74 minutes longer than it had to be.

Message to Jim Carrey. Good job! I was quite convinced that you are a nutjob...though I was halfway there before I turned on the movie. I'd like to see you try this type of role again but in a movie that's not bad.

That's it. There is no secret message in this post. You will NOT find a clue by reading every 23rd word, and if this post makes it to the blog in a number of lines that is a multiple of 23, it is not by my design. For those of you still fascinated by the theories surrounding the number 23, it might interest you to know that my birthday falls on October 13. Boo!

I Brake for Shiny Things

I need new glasses. Well, I've needed new glasses for about three years now. I'm not sure whether my vision has changed or not, but I do know that my glasses are a spectacle (pardon the pun...or not)! The lenses are scratched, I lost a nose-piece and they have been out of style for about four years. The clip-on sunglass lenses are scratched too. I step on them about every two months. To their credit, they have proved to be quite durable.

Why am I bringing this up? Well, with the time change, (by the way, thanks USA for talking Canada into postponing the daylight savings for two extra weeks), I am finding that I am driving more often at dusk or in the dark. Not cool for someone with anything less than 20/20 vision.

Last night when I was driving home at dusk, I sensed rather than saw a shadow cross the road ahead of me. It is SUPER HARD to see at dusk. The headlights can't pierce the grey left behind when the sun slips below the horizon. Why is that do you suppose? When driving a car, why does it seem harder to see at dusk than at dark? Anyhow I am convinced it was a deer, or a dog, or adolescent Siamese twins.... OK so maybe I don't know what it was, but I know it crossed the road and climbed down into the ditch.

It makes me skittish when I see movement in the dark. I grab the steering wheel a little harder and I catch myself holding my breath. I hate not knowing at the best of times. I REALLY hate not knowing at 100kmph.

Tonight I left late. It rained for most of the afternoon so it was grey for most of the day. Dusk lasted about 3 minutes because it got dark fast. Anyhow I had to go to the...what...hmm..slaughterhouse...no...the place where you have your dead meat turned into food meat. Meat processing place. Whatever. Anyhow, I had to go pick up some venison meat for my Dad and it's almost all backroads the entire way. I started out confident as I normally do, and then - wham! - I run over some soft, squishy pink used-to-be-alive thing on the road and it makes a thump-thump as it balls up under my front tires then my rear tires. Yuck! No hard-feelings though. It was so disfigured I couldn't tell if it was a pretty little rabbit or somebody's Hot Turkey Sub. I decide it's someone's take-out because my day has been too good to surrender to thoughts of mangled bunnies.

All of the traffic that I was travelling with seemed to turn off into side-roads and driveways and I found myself alone on dark roads. What was that? I saw a glimmer in the ditch. I braked. It was a tiny reflector on the back of a road sign. I sped up. What was that? I saw a glimmer but it moved this time. Ah, long grass blowing in the wind in front of somebody's reflective lane marker. Super. I grit my teeth. What's that dark thing in the road? I slow down and hobble over a freshly patched pothole at a whopping 50 kmph (that's like 24mph for all my American friends). Gonna be a long drive home I decided.

I wonder if new glasses are going to help me. Maybe I should forget my glasses and find a super-luminescent headlamp for the car. How would bumper-mounted foglights and a roof-rack-light look on my Ford Focus? Maybe I should just drive a lighthouse.

Autumn Leaves

Diana Krall has this great song - Autumn Leaves. It's nice. Today reminds me of that song. I play it over and over in my head. It's cool, there are still leaves on the trees and plenty on the ground. When it is cool like this, the air seems cleaner somehow.

Wednesday was elections here in Ontario. We re-elected a party that lied, broke promises and gave millions of dollars away in "grants" to their cronies. How bad is it when that was our best option?

This election also included a referendum question about the voting process. We voted against electoral reform. It costs less, it means fewer seats and it means that government won't be divided or side-tracked by the voices of the few just because their representative showed up for work. Can you tell I support the decision.

Gotta go. I'm walking today with my girlfriend. Can hardly wait to hit the pavement.

Talk soon!

Factory Grind

I just logged off after doing some work for my old company and thought I had better check in. I'm in a cafe in small town, Ontario, listening to a nice variety of music and sipping a Chai Latte. I'm not really a cafe crowd person. Well, in fact, I'm not really a crowd person at all. If I were here without my computer I would feel completely out of place. What a geek! I think.

The name of the cafe is called Factory Grind. It used to be an old shoe factory that has been renovated and re-opened as a cafe. Brick walls, tall ceilings, poor lighting, but great atmosphere and wonderful music. I know the new owner because she buys her coffee from the place where I work. At this moment she serves only about 4 kinds of our coffee but I'm going to try and talk her into introducing a new flavour each month.

OK - now a kid is slurping his hot chocolate. Sounds like an asthmatic gasping for air. Hmmmm.

The owner is behind the bar shooting us looks. Time to close. She needs some rest. She's been trying to stay open until 9 at night but by the time she cleans up and goes home it's 10 or 10:30 then she's back in at 5:00 Not enough time for life in between. I don't know how she does it!

Anyhow. I'd better go and let her close up and get some rest.

Night friends!

Not Channel Surfing

At the lake, there is very poor reception where radio and TV stations are concerned. Now this is not really a problem since I can count on one hand the amount of hours I spend in front of a TV. Limited radio stations, however, took a lot of adjustment. I love music! If I ran the world, I'd have music pumped into the atmosphere. A little something for everybody -- jazz, classical, rock, alternative, pop, dance -- you name it.

On the TV, there is only one channel that comes in which happens to be a station out of Toronto. Watching news from another city can be a little disorienting. In fact, after the global events have been summed up, I normally tune out. That said, Toronto is the political centre of our provincial government. With an election looming, there has been much coverage of provincial political developments.

With a little more than 2 weeks away from the vote I still don't know what to do. The current Premier backed out of many/most of his campaign provinces. "What's new?" you ask. Truth is, we expect some back-peddling, but this guy has set records. I will be shocked if he is re-elected. His biggest adversary is a jackass who has made campaign promises that threaten to chip away at our civil liberties which makes him dangerous in my opinion. What's more, to support him, I would have to give my vote to his representative in this area who happens to be a lunatic. Third choice is to vote for a party whose principals I wholeheartedly oppose. The New Democratic Party is pro-union. They're also pro-family which is somewhat enticing, but the damage they did to the province during a brief period of leadership took years to recover from and I have a long memory.

Wish: My wish is that I live to see the day I am voting a political party into power instead of voting a political party out of power.



Originally, when I tuned in the radio, I could catch a station that carried John Tesh's program in the evenings. I was amused to learn that John Tesh had a radio program, and surprised to hear that it featured these little facts and philosophies to improve your life. Thanks for caring John Tesh. The music was easy listening; nice for unwinding after a day at work. Within weeks however, I lost the signal and had to find an a new station.

Back and forth, back and forth, I spun the tuner dial up and down the band but only one station came in crisp and clean. New Country 101. Hmmmm. OK Fine. After all, when in Rome.... So it stayed. I have to say, I have a new appreciation for "New Country." There are some awfully funny songs. There's a few with lines that make me laugh out loud. I don't know any of the titles or artists, but there are songs that have lines like:

• "Me and my old pickup-truck. These days we don't pickup much."
• "I'd like to check you for ticks"
• "I dug my key into the side of his pretty little souped up four-wheel drive."

There's a song about an overweight, mildy asthmatic middle-aged guy who lives at home with his parents who lies about himself on "My Space." Apparently he is quite the stud in computer-land.

Funny stuff.

I like all things funny which puts Country Music, back on my list of good things.

So Anyway....

The phone thing didn't work out for me. No kidding, you say. The down side is that I've been away far longer than I ever dreamed I would be. Can you believe my last post was May 7th? Whoosh! That was time. It flew by.

I didn't realize how important blogging was to me until I stopped. About the middle of May I started to experience the first few symptoms of blogging withdrawl. I started a narrative that continued as I baked, as I bathed, as I drove, as I walked as I shopped, throughout the arrest, and partway through the court proceedings though I stopped during my sentencing. KIDDING!

By June, my talking to myself was such a regular routine that people at work stopped listening to me unless I prefaced my remarks with a proper name; like, "Brian, I told you how much it hurts my feelings when you call me a ranting lunatic."

In July, my emails became longer and longer and far less professional. Like...

"Dear Accounts Payable Person. Thank you for your recent payment on account. The funds have been applied against open invoices and your account is back in balance. Being in balance is important don't you think? It's about sleeping well at night, drawing deep, relaxing breaths that don't get caught in your throat when the phone rings. Don't you think that too many of us live in a state where we are constantly....."

..............you get the idea.

August was a blur and I don't really remember missing blogging during that month. I mean, let's be honest. It was August and, well, there was a deck and a hammock and a stack of great books that needed to be read. The days are long and hot and lazy and my computer was shoved into its case under my bed. August was not a month for blogging.

But now....

school is in, my days are shorter, people at work think I'm a weirdo and I'm now forced to use email templates pre-approved by the boss-man! My ongoing narrative has been muted by the open-mouthed stares of people I encounter during what seems to be every moment of every day, so I need another outlet. A safe and welcoming outlet.

I must blog.

It helps me to digest the world around me. That's right! It's been five months of life-indigestion. I recognize that, to live peacefully in this world, I must take time to mull things over. I recognize that I need to analyze and then over-analyze the things that happen around me. Then, when I've shared my findings, I read the remarks from (mostly) sane visitors that remind me that I am not alone in my awe, in my criticism, in my shock...

in my world.

It's not going to be easy (still no phone line) but I'm going to try and cram blogging into the empty spaces I stumble upon during my week. That might be only one or two but....

for now....

it's a start.

Again.

Off the Grid

OK...well maybe "off the grid" doesn't exactly describe my situation, but I feel awfully isolated without a phone line. I've been borrowing a phone for local calls but it's not the same as owning a phone. There's no cell service at the lake which is kind of a good thing, but also inconvenient when trying to communicate with the rest of the free world.

I'm going to buy a cheap phone, have the line tested and...if all goes well...I should have a phone by the end of this week. What's more, phone line means Internet, means blogging, means returning to my online community.

In the meantime, I fall asleep to the calling of the loons as opposed to the calling of the telemarketers.

Be back soon.

Want Some Advice?

There's a kind of person that I'm not too keen about conversing with -- the know-it-all, advice-giving control freak. You know the type...the person that has an answer for everything. The person that's done everything and, incidentally, done it better than anyone else. The person has "forgotten more than you'll ever know" and has little reason to listen since it only delays his/her giving of advice.

I am usually patient and understanding and tolerant and non-judgemental, but I've had a recent run in with a know-it-all and the situation has been stuck in my craw ever since. Recalling the discussion even causes my stomach to tighten and my jaws to tense. I won't bore you with the details, but I will take a moment to dole out my own advice to the know-it-alls out there.

Listen.

People who have problems don't always want to hear your advice. Sometimes, people with problems just want someone to listen. Now, I don't mean that you have to sit and smile while Joe tells you his 60th problem of the morning, but I do mean that you need to be more discerning in your advice-giving ways. Exercise some restraint. Ask questions instead. Help people arrive at their own answers. Here are some phrases to avoid:

• "You need to..." If you slipped and said it before successfully breaking your nasty habit, follow it up with "slow down so I can hear what you are saying to me."
• "Here's what I would do..." Unless this phrase is likely to be followed by...."turn myself in to the authorities," I suggest you refrain from using it too. I mean maybe you would, maybe you wouldn't do whatever. Fact is, nobody knows for certain how they would respond in any given situation until they're in the thick of it.
• "I don't want to harp/beat a dead horse/beleaguer the point/etc..." If you have begun a sentence with any of these phrases or something similar, the fact is you are harping/beating a dead horse/frustrating us with your continued efforts to control our lives. If you didn't want to, you wouldn't, so do us all a favour and don't.

Here are some GREAT fillers for those awkward silences when someone has unloaded their personal tragedy upon you and you need to same SOMETHING.

• "I'm sorry that you feel this way./I'm sorry that this happened to you." It's a polite little acknowledgment to show how genuinely concerned you are with the predicament and how you wish it could be different for the person. Note the absence of any direction/advice in this sentence.
• "Whatever you decide, I'm behind you; I'm sure it will all work out." Unless this is the part where you should be telling someone to turn him/herself into the authorities, this phrase helps the person know that they have the power and the possibility to change their situation. The supportive tone of the comment means that the two of you can still meet for coffee now and then without the tension that follows a relationship having a history of spurned advice.
• "I can't imagine how you must feel. How can I help?" This is soooo much more appealing than trading tragedies to make one another feel better. What's more, it puts the brakes on that kind of intimate sharing if you're not so inclined. Besides, people don't always want to pick scabs with one another. If you weren't paying attention earlier, I'll say it again...People want to be listened to.

Remember, if you're decide to continue doling out advice you had better be prepared to be held accountable for any unexpected or unwanted results that may come from following your direction. Who wants that kind of responsibility? Give advice sparingly and reluctantly. Trust me, your life will be better and so will the lives of all the other poor souls who hand you the reins to their lives while they play spectator. If you absolutely cannot help yourself, then perhaps you should consider taking a course in Victim's Assistance.

That's it! That's my rant. It's not a big thing, it's just some kind of thing.

Thanks for listening. Feel free to leave comments. No advice thank you.

Schedule? What Schedule?

I have had a really difficult time setting and observing a schedule lately. Seems these days I have more tasks than time. What's more, since the warmer weather arrived I want nothing more than to spend my time outside with the birds, which makes it all the more difficult to focus on completing my work.

I can't believe that it's April already. Easter is coming up and I haven't got one chocolate egg in my possession. Luckily, hubby's enthusiastic shopping trip to the local Canadian Tire means that Easter gift-buying is done. One new bicycle for each kid. Is it any wonder they think their dad is a hero? He's not allowed to buy Easter eggs for hiding though. Few years ago, I asked him to stop in and buy some last-minute items. He arrived home a little while later with liquor-filled chocolates by accident. I took a trip to the 24-hour pharmacy at around 10 pm that night but the morning's hunt was an odd one. Gumballs, boxes of chocolates, M&M's in a plastic egg. I hid everything but a rabbit. Not your run-of-the-mill Easter Egg Hunt by any means.

We're heading up to Pembroke this weekend. I hope we get nice weather. Looks like it's going to rain all week, so hopefully Mother Nature will get it all out of her system and grace us with sensational weekend weather.

Here are some time-savers I have uncovered in the last two weeks:

• Salsa makes a perfectly acceptable spaghetti sauce.
• Saliva is a reasonably effective spot remover.
• If you want it to burn faster, add gas. Long story.
• If you read quickly, you can enjoy a foreign film in fast-forward.
• You can park just about anywhere if you leave your four-ways on.
• Writing goes faster if you abandon all rules of grammar and sentence structure.

I'd write more but frankly I'd rather check in on my blogger buddies to find out what's going on in their neck of the woods.

I'll stop and write when I have more time.

Annual Golf Ball Hunt

Every year, when the snow starts to melt away from the fairways, we don our mucky-boots and head out to find little dimpled treasures left behind from last year’s golfers. This past Saturday, we once again observed this annual tradition.

We started by searching the rough grass between holes one and nine. I found nothing. We headed on towards hole two and I scanned the long grass between the second fairway and the ninth tee. I found nothing. My daughter followed behind, scanning the grass left and right of where I had just been. She found four balls. My shoulders slumped. I wished I had grabbed my glasses out of the car. My little niece grabbed my hand and pulled me forward.

We passed the second green then the third tee. I kicked my way through the long grass to the right of the fairway. “Yeah!” I shouted. One white Dunlop nestled beneath a clump of long grass. I looked to my right. “Ooooh!” A yellow Titleist peeked out from under a small shrub. The fairway filled up with noise as we all stumbled upon tens of balls on the hill between the fairway and the fence. Pink, Dunlop, yellow, Nike, white, Callaway…we dropped them into Mom’s plastic carrying bag one by one.

“I’m going to find a ball,” said my five-year old niece. She headed down the hill nearly stumbling and, within less than a dozen steps she did find a ball; then another; then another. We followed the fence line along the fourth, fifth and seventh fairways as our hunt continued.

The creek was running. I stood and listened to the sound of the water splashing its way down the creek bed. I inhaled deeply the smell of wet grass, mildew and fresh, fresh air…the smells of spring. The others scanned the creek bed for balls and leaned forward to pull them out of the icy water. I followed the creek bed to where it disappeared into the bush. I love the water. I’m drawn to its movement and sound.

An hour and a half later, after collecting over 70 balls, we made our way back to the house. My five-year-old niece insisted on going the back way. We made our way behind the 8th tee and up the hill behind the house. Once we reached the top of the hill, the kids began to sprint down towards the house laughing and squealing.

There will be more hunts before the golfers return to the fairway. After each rainfall it seems that we uncover more and more balls. After that, our efforts will be made only to harvest those that we lose during our own game. Those, it seems, are far harder to locate.

90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper

As I mentioned in a previous post, I began reading 90 Minutes in Heaven last week and finished it earlier this morning. The book chronicles the accident, death and recovery of Baptist Minister Don Piper, and recounts his visit to Heaven on the day he died.

The book begins, "I died on January 18, 1989." Don Piper was in a terrible car accident on his way home from a conference. A prison inmate driving a tractor-trailer, lost control of his semi while crossing a narrow bridge and hit Don's car head-on, slamming it into the bridge railing. In effect, the semi drove OVER Don's car, crushing it. The time of the accident was 11:45am. The force of the collision was measured at 100mph. Don died instantly. Paramedics on scene failed to get a pulse and draped his mangled car with a tarp.

At 12:45, Baptist Minister Dick Onerecker and his wife approached the scene on foot, abandoning their car now in the long line of traffic unable to navigate through or around the scene. Despite receiving information that Don was deceased, Dick insisted on praying for him, saying that he heard the voice of God urging him to do so. At 1:15, paramedics were still unable to find a pulse and pronounced Don dead at the scene. Dick positioned himself inside the wreckage, placed a hand on Don's shoulder and began to pray.

The time between 11:45 and 1:15 is, I think, what Don refers to as his 90 Minutes in Heaven. He describes the gates of Heaven, the lights of Heaven and (most remarkable in his opinion) the sounds of Heaven. He says in the book that he gets frustrated trying to describe Heaven with words because there are none that adequately convey what he experienced.

He was pulled from the wreckage later that afternoon and taken to several different medical facilities. As he was wheeled into hospital emergency units, the trauma teams would just shake their heads, say that they weren't equipped to deal with the severity of his wounds, do what they could to stabilize him, then sent him to another hospital. Don frequently lost consciousness from the pain and would continue to do that through the weeks ahead, even as he began to heal.

I won't go into more detail. If you want to learn more, you can read the book. It is an interesting story. The whole point, however, is Don's experience with death and Heaven and his reluctance to discuss it or share it until several months after his accident. The fact that he was a Baptist Minister, I suppose, is intended to boost his credibility.

I'm not sure myself. I have always held to the notion that you get what you expect. If you think you deserve Hell, then you get fire and brimstone...or whatever your own idea of Hell may be. If you think you deserve heaven and angels, then you get the streets of gold, the company of others...or whatever you had envisioned you would experience on your day of delivery. If you believe in nothing...well...then it's over. You get nothing. The big sleep. No reunion with the departed, no shackles by a boiling lake of lava, no heavenly orchestras giving praise to the Lord in glorious fields of flowers. Just a casket or a crematorium and nothing more.

It's personal, I think. Believe or don't believe. Seems to me though that the happiest, most successful people I know believe in something. I don't think I know very many people that don't believe in anything at all. Everybody's idea is a little different but, whatever that idea may be, it seems that the very light of that idea, shines in even the most darkest moments of our life.

Truth is, it's just easier to make our way through this life believing in something.

Brownie Points

March is the month of birthdays here in Ottawa. My husband celebrated his on the 4th, my niece celebrated on the 16th, my other niece has a birthday on Thursday and Mom turns 60 on Sunday! There have been black forest cakes, a rocking horse cake, and a cake that looked like a turtle made with edible play dough. There will be more cake before the end of the month, but I am curious to see the next one.

You see, my mother, father, brother, sister-in-law and sister have all just reinstated their diets. Everything in my Mom's fridge has been marked with their Weight Watcher Points' value in black, permanent marker. My mom has the little Weight Watcher computer that calculates Points using total fat, calories and fibre. When I open the fridge, I see some of my favourite foods marked with a big 2 or 3 or -- God Forbid -- a 4! The cake on the counter had a little sticker on it that said - 1/8 of the cake - 2 points. Who eats 1/8 of a cake; points or no points?

I'm not on a diet...not now...not anytime soon. My biggest problem is that I don't eat regularly. I get busy and miss meals which means I end up starving and then I binge. For every 1 cup of water I drink, I drink about 3 cups of coffee. (I take one sugar and one cream.) My weight fluctuates slightly with the seasons -- I gain a little weight over the winters -- but I'm pretty much the same size I was when I got married. I don't obsess about my weight. I don't have scales and I don't have a full-length mirror. If my clothes fit well, my weight is fine. If they start to get tight, I cut back a little until they loosen up. It's that simple.

I almost always feel sad for people on diets. As soon as they call it a "diet," there is inevitably a look that falls across their face. It is a shameful, downtrodden look that carries with it a kind of surrender of their very spirit. People are so attached to their food. Everybody is. You don't believe me? Ask someone to name their favourite food. If they don't instantly light-up, ask them to describe it to you. You'll see. I think food's ability to trigger emotions is largely responsible for the warm reception I receive at the camp, the cottage and from the neighbours. You see, I am known for my brownies...I make brownies that taste so good they will make you cry. I figure that one 1" square piece is probably 10 points. I assure you that they are worth 20.

The menu for mom's birthday is vegetarian chili, salads and low-fat dressing. The chili is actually awesome AND good for you which is great. I'll bring my own Mediterranean Dressing (worth 2 Points per TABLESPOON) and maybe a bag of buns to see if I can get a reaction. I will patiently listen as my sister, sister-in-law and mother announce the Point Value of every item on the table. I will patiently listen as they share low-fat, low-calorie recipes. I will join them on their afternoon walk so that they fulfill their requirement for 20-minutes of daily exercise. I will support them (OK...no buns) and love them and hope that they meet their targets so that one day.....

in the not-so-long future,

we may celebrate their success...

over a tray of brownies.

The Funeral

On the day of Grandma Bea's funeral, I woke early. We were expected to be at the church by 12:30 and were met by the hearse when we arrived. I was rather hoping that the funeral home would already have her coffin inside by the pulpit, but it was not to be. As a pall-bearer I helped my siblings, my cousin and two other dear friends carry the coffin inside the church. We tried to keep to the narrow, paved path as we made our way to the front doors of the church. I stepped two or three times in the soft muck of the church garden as we rounded the bend in the path. Up six stairs, my muscles were straining under the weight of this magnificent coffin. Minutes later, we eased our burden down upon the wheeled device waiting at the door.

Once things were ready, I made my way to the front of the church and deposited letters from the children. I tucked the envelope neatly into the folds of the soft, white cloth and bid a hasty retreat to the rear of the church. I could not receive visitors that afternoon. My concern was with maintaining my composure while I coached the children through their first funeral. My sister would read the eulogy and the children would read some of Grandma's poetry during the service.

My Grandma's cousin is a preacher and he led us through the ceremony. He opened with some kind words and, after the children read their parts, he led us through the hymn Jesus Loves the Little Children. We didn't have the words in our hymn books so he started by helping us through the chorus a couple of times so we could "learn our part." He and Clarice, the choir leader, sang the song and we all joined in for the chorus. It was kind of karaoke-ish. I smiled and thought that Grandma would really have enjoyed it. My sister read the eulogy. It was wonderful. I think she'll post it on her blog. I'll drop in a link if she does. (Or maybe she will in a comment post.) We followed the eulogy by another hymn - Amen. Again, no words, but then again...that's the only word there is...Amen. I NEVER sang THAT song in church before. In fact, I'd only ever heard it sung in a movie or on TV in the setting of a Southern Baptist Church. I smiled again. Grandma would have loved that! As we walked the coffin out of the church, a song played in the background. It was a Christian Rock song. It kept things from getting too terribly sad.

After the funeral and the interment, we returned to the church for a luncheon that the ladies of the church had prepared. It was lovely. Sandwiches, squares, coffee, tea and juice...and lots of dear, dear friends.

Since the funeral, I started to read 90 Minutes in Heaven. My sister suggested that I read it because it would help reinforce my belief that Grandma is somewhere better. My sister took the book up to the pulpit when she delivered the eulogy. It helped her stay composed. Once I get done, I'll tell you about it.

On Stories and Visits and Community

My Grandmother's visitation was yesterday at the town funeral parlour from 2-4 and 6-8. From 1-2, the immediate family arrived and took their turn saying farewell to the greatest lady we had ever known. It was sacred but not somber. Grandma lived far too great a life for anyone to be sad about. As my brother said...quality and quantity.

The kids went to the funeral parlour. I spent a lot of time thinking about that decision but, in the end, I felt that if they were old enough to understand death, they were old enough to be involved in the ceremony of dying. The ceremony is for the living; they needed to be a part of it.

Grandma had already chosen her own casket, her pallbearers, and made books that we would lay out during the visitation. My mother found some chalk, a monocle, a teacher's pin, a teachers' apple and a 60th anniversary photo of my grandparents for the casket. A long time ago, she and my grandfather chose their burial plots. They will be buried together, side by side, in a cemetery located just a few short miles from the home they shared for over 55 years.

Seeing Grandma lying in the puffy, white folds of her casket rekindled that sense of loss and we all shed a few tears. I think that, until they saw her, the kids had more of an idea that Grandma had passed. Seeing her lying there solidified that idea in their minds. It's scary. It's sad and it's so foreign an idea for many kids that they needed a few minutes to process it. It is just as much about our their mortality as it is about Grandma's. My son asked how long most people lived. I'm sure he was doing the math to calculate how many precious years he will share with his parents, his grandparents or even how many years he himself will enjoy on this earth.

From 2-4, many of Grandma's students paid their respects. It was wonderful hearing their stories. They talked about how she would inspect their hands each morning and grade them on their cleanliness. They talked about how she always taught in a dress. Sometimes, if the snow was deep, she would wear pants to school, but she would always duck into the schoolhouse and change into a dress. My cousins came to visit and talked about how Grandma shared her books with them when they stayed in a nearby cottage during the summer months. Grandma's house was like a library to them. One of my cousins said that she still owns a copy of Aesop's Fables that Grandma gave her one summer long ago.

I love hearing her stories. I do. Today I will get a few more. The funeral is this afternoon and, afterwards, the ladies at church are putting on a little lunch. I'll listen then and fill up on more stories; the kind only seniors can tell about a time long before people passed their time in front of a television being told what to think. A time when community dances, barn-building bees and quilting parties knit together the fabric of a community like a fine sweater.

When I hear of these stories, I wonder sometimes if we have advanced as a society or if we are slowly devolving. I wonder how Grandma felt about the changing times. Maybe she didn't see it as much. She lived after all, in the same safe, rural community of farmers and quilters and friends that experienced life as she did. The kind of people that bring pies to their neighbours when they lose someone. The kind of people that stand in line and say, "Sorry for your troubles."

It's nice being back up here. I like the safety of this community. I like driving past someone and having them wave at me whether they know me or not. I like going to the store and hearing somebody call me "Tommy's daughter," as though my father is a kid himself. I like hearing the neighbours call me kid, even though they can see the flecks of grey staining the hair at my temple. I like the way it feels to belong in a community.

A Great Lady

I usually try to avoid using first names on the Internet. I don't know why really. It seems, now that I think of it, silly to be afraid of naming the people in my life to protect their privacy. I wanted to pay tribute to my Grandmother today, so I decided to break my own rule. How can I tell the world how great she was, if I didn't share her name? I called her Grandma Bea.

Grandma Bea, can I have a cookie? Grandma Bea, will you tell me a story? Grandma Bea, will you teach me how to play? Grandma Bea, will you teach me to knit and sew and hook and garden and......? Yes. She always said yes. Grandma was a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse for many, many years. Her rural pupils met her during their first day of school in first grade, and she would continue to teach them every year, until they graduated from grade eight. Eight years with the same teacher. She became like a mother to many of them, I suppose. Evidence of this appeared long after the schoolhouse closed. Her 90th birthday party was as much a class reunion as it was a birthday celebration. Several of her students visited her at the nursing home where she lived for the last few years. How many of your teachers do you visit? Surely it was a testament to the enormous impact she had had on these children...now seniors themselves.

I don't remember Grandma teaching. I only remember Grandma at home. She lived in the house beside ours. I remember seeing her kneeling in her garden most summer days. She had the most glorious garden. Dahlia's as big as dinner plates, I often heard people say. She had Hollyhocks growing at the front of the house, an Iris bed, Gladiolas that always turned up at the local fair, and Black Eyed Susans lining the hillside. She tried to grow nearly every kind of rose that the horticulturists could hybrid. Maybe she liked the roses because they lasted longer. Their thorns protected them from the prying hands of three young grandchildren who loved nothing more than to present her with a lovely bouquet of flowers...often from her own garden. I never, ever heard her say a word about it. She would smile and hug us and say "Oh thank you!"

During the long winters, Grandma spent her time hooking rugs and wall hangings, darning socks, painting, writing and reading. She would sit in her green armchair, the table beside it overflowing with projects and books, and quietly work beneath the lamplight. She would be sitting there nearly every time we came over. Any day we were too ill to go to school, we would be whisked across the yard and take up a position on the living room couch. Grandma would pour glasses of Ginger Ale to flatten on the kitchen counter and dig out the saltines from their place in the cupboards. She would pull the chair over to the sink and stand on it to reach the horse liniment in the shelf over the window there. I remember her rubbing my neck with that horrid-smelling stuff and then wrapping an old sock around it to ease my swollen glands and tonsils. I'd sleep on the couch as she worked her fingers with a hook or needle, always creating or re-creating.

I remember climbing into her lap when I was a little girl. She would always drag her fingers through my hair and it would so relax me that I would close my eyes and, I'm sure on occasion I fell asleep. She would tell stories about Dad as a little boy, or about his sister Anne's shenanigans at church. She believed in stories, but she preferred the kind that were told rather than read. She held to the belief of strong family roots tightened by knowledge passed through the telling of stories. Knowing someone, is about knowing their stories. To truly know someone, you must listen not just to what they say, but to what other people say about them. To understand them, you have to hear about their adventures in the third person so that the stories are not slanted by modesty or boastfulness or hurt or humour. There is much truth in perception. Some argue, in fact, that perception is the truth.

Grandma was a great lady. I've heard that a lot in the last few days. My mom says that Grandma was the greatest lady that she ever knew. I have to agree. A couple of the nurses at the home said the same thing, the neighbour who visited yesterday said it, the preacher said it, and one of her students said it yesterday. "She was a great lady!" She was. She was the absolute best. She was my friend, my teacher, my confidante, my cheerleader, my playmate, my compass. She was my "soft place" in a world where so often I learned by bumping and bruising.

My grandma passed away on Thursday morning at 2:30 am. I was with her, holding her hand, reading her one of the stories she had written. The story was about a billy goat that came to the farm when she was a little girl. I like to think that when she passed, she was a young girl trying to coax a billy goat down from the roof of the shed with a handful of oats. I like to think that when she passed, she looked down and saw me there with her and knew how deeply she was loved by me. I had told her a million times during my life, but words sometimes just don't seem to be enough. How do you convey that kind of emotion with mere words? You don't, I suppose. I guess, it is something that can only be expressed through deeds rather than words. I suppose it is something that can only be felt. Like fingers running through your hair, as you sit in the comfort of your grandma's lap.

We Stayed

Well, my niece attended her second public speaking competition yesterday. My brother and sister-in-law were there and so was niece #2. They arrived early to get their little speaker registered. They managed to get seats near the front. My sister and her boyfriend met me there and they saved me a seat in their row near the back of the room.

The competition started at noon. Again, there were competitions in each of the divisions -- primary, junior, intermediate and senior. There were about six or seven children in each category except the senior category which featured only two speakers. The "show" started with the primary division. All but two of the speakers were reciting stories from books they had read. We found out later that the kids in the primary competition could memorize a book OR write and deliver their own speech. Every one of the books memorized by the contestants was written by children's author Robert Munsch.

My niece placed third. Second place went to a little girl who memorized and delivered a French version of Robert Munsch's book, "Up, Up, Down." First place went to a lively speaker who delivered a horror story about school. I think she said it was called the Teacher from the Black Lagoon. I looked it up on the Internet. It's a book written by Mike Thaler. Within just a few seconds, I was hooked. I realize now that I probably wouldn't enjoy the book nearly as much as I enjoyed listening to this little girl tell the story. She was awesome. She deserved first prize. Even my niece said to me, "Yeah, she was good." It's much easier losing to someone so deserving. My niece was quite gracious about it.

After the primary competition was over, my brother and his family left. As he walked past us where we sat in the back he turned and said, "Are you staying?" I said, "Sure. What the heck else are we going to do on a Sunday? This is like the closest thing I get to a night out." My sister and her boyfriend agreed. We stayed.

The junior competition was a wash. Too dramatic, too boring, too broad a topic (not enough depth) or too much detail, these kids tanked. Peer pressure, Guinness Book of World Records, Endangered Species (at least 4 of them), Fears & Phobias, Traditions and Camping Trips. All written and delivered by kids aged 9-12. How could they wow us? After all, we had just sat through a series of Robert Munsch stories. They didn't have a chance. My sister's boyfriend thought that the primary speakers blew away the junior division. (He gloated somewhat when the judges admitted to having a difficult time judging the elementary speakers...he insisted it was because they were all below average.) Fears & Phobias took first, Traditions (making maple syrup) took second place, and another little girl took third but I can't for the life of me remember the topic of her speech.

The trophies and cheques were handed out and most of the contestants and their families left the building. We stayed. I realized that we were the only adults in the room who were still there and not related to any of the speakers or members of that branch of the Canadian Legion. Hmmm.

The intermediate division was an interesting competition. Body image, Bullying, Auditioning, The Teenage Brain, My Hero is my Grandfather, Terry Fox and Beauty were the topics. All of the speakers in this category were young ladies. Third place went to Auditioning who ended her speech by singing part of a song from the Sound of Music -- different. Second place went to a girl who compared bullying to rain in a well-sustained, 5-minute metaphor -- also different. First place went to the girl discussing Beauty. She was great. Her speech was colourful, humorous, and endearing. She deserved the win. I'm sure she'll go very far in the next few competitions.

Nobody left the building, because there were only two speakers left. The competition coordinator was afraid to give us a break and risk having the last two speakers "talk to themselves." We would have stayed.

The first speaker talked about the New Madrid fault line and the earthquake it caused in 1811. (My sister and her boyfriend were quite interested, but that's to be expected. They are currently reading Apocalypse 2012 and are quite fascinated by all manner of theories regarding the end of the earth.) The second speaker talked about the human heart. She used clever wordplay to dress up the topic and she delivered the speech with energy and enthusiasm. She won.

All in all, it was worth spending three hours on a cold winter day inside listening to children talk about things they find interesting and important. So maybe somebody wrote down our license plates when we drove away after the competition. So what! We came, we sat, we listened.

We stayed.

Public Speaking

On this past Sunday afternoon, the kids and I went to see a public speaking competition for students in grades 2-8. A local branch of the Canadian Legion sponsors a few competitions each year -- public speaking, essays and poetry. This past Sunday was one of those contests.

The local schools have students in each class prepare and deliver a speech. The speeches must be between 2.5 and 5 minutes in length; if they exceed 5 minutes, the children are automatically disqualified from the competition. Each class selects a "winner" who then attends this local contest as the class representative. My niece was there as the contestant from MGES - Grade 4. Her speech was about global warming and its effects on our planet.

Right before she began her turn, I tapped my son and said - "If you think you're going to laugh, look at the floor." Just the night before, when she was practicing her speech, my son distracted her and made her laugh. My brother sent him out of the room. Now, as she stood at the front of the room, I suddenly worried that I had made a mistake attending with the kids. What if we made her laugh? What if we made her nervous? What if...what if...what if.... The only thing that was really clear was that there was no turning back. Leaving moments before she started her speech would surely be more off-putting than sitting and listening. We stayed.

She was great. She hit her points, she didn't stumble. Her voice was clear and crisp and we could easily hear her at the back of the room. It was hard, I think, for her to wrap her mouth around terms like carbon dioxide and photosynthesis, but she managed. It was clear that her Dad (my brother) helped her write the speech. I mean, in comparison to the other children it was clear. After all, other kids in her category spoke about camping trips, pet ponies, and sleepovers. I'm thinking he helped choose the topic.

She won. She now carries on to "regional" finals. She will speak again on Sunday afternoon. I think we'll go and cheer her on.

Reminds me about a statistic I heard at a work function suggesting that public speaking is our most common fear. Seems most people worry more about public speaking than flying, or insects, or even snakes. It causes people to experience sweating, rapid heartbeat, dizziness, and even fainting.

I wonder if, as kids, we appreciate public speaking because it fulfills our need for attention. Perhaps only after years of socialization do we dread that same attention because of our realization that it also brings the risk of rejection and embarrassment.

I wonder if my niece will ever grow out of public speaking?

Hopefully not before Sunday.

Letting Go

I visited my Grandma on Saturday. Earlier in the week I learned that she wasn't doing well -- she hasn't been eating. I had been warned of her decline. In fact, the last time I visited Grandma, she hadn't spent more than a few minutes awake and had no words for me at all. I had prepared myself for a difficult visit. I was worried because it had been five weeks since I last saw her.

My sister, our nieces, my kids and I went up to her room for a visit before lunch. The kids engaged in lively conversation (as kids often do) but Grandma was difficult to rouse and our attempts to engage her in conversation failed. Her eyes were red and runny so I ran a cloth under warm water and then dabbed at her eyes and face. In exchange, she gave me one word..."Wonderful," she said. Her teeth weren't in. Her recent weight loss has affected the fit of her dentures and she was a little difficult to understand, but I recognized the word as it left her mouth.

After about half an hour, my sister took the kids to the library and I waited with Grandma until the smell of lunch filled the corridor. I wheeled Grandma down to the dining room and pushed the chair in front of her place at the table. "I'd like to stay and help Grandma with lunch," I explained to the staff. "I think that's a wonderful idea," they smiled back. I grabbed a feeding stool from under the counter and placed it between Grandma and another diner while "the girls" served lunch to the expectant diners. "Pastrami on Rye or Cheese Cannelloni?" someone asked. I tried to envision pureed Pastrami on Rye. "I think maybe it'll be easier to feed her the Cannelloni," she suggested after some thought. I agreed.

A plate of pureed food arrived moments later -- pasta, tossed salad, coleslaw and something that looked a lot like green relish. I began by raising a fork full of pasta to Grandma's mouth. It burned her mouth and she winced. "Sorry Grandma. Here, take some milk to cool your mouth down." I lifted the cup of milk to her mouth and she took some sips. I followed it with some coleslaw. Better. I mixed a little of the pasta with some salad to bring the temperature down. It worked. She ate quite a few bites, but the effort was clearly taking its toll. She held her head in her hands to keep it raised up off of her chest.

At one moment, about half an hour into the meal, she looked at me and smiled. Not a small smile but the other kind; the type that fills a face...that fills a room. I began to cry. I lowered my head, both ashamed and confused by my tears. I sat with my forehead on the arm of her wheelchair, a fork full of cold pasta suspended in the air between us, trying to choke back my tears so that I could finish feeding Grandma her meal. Pressing my eyes closed against the tears, I could only play back the image of Grandma holding her head while I fed her the lunch. Not three months ago I had enjoyed lunch with her, and she fed herself most of her meal. We chatted between bites, we joked about her dinner companions and we gushed over dessert. Images of Grandma eating and Grandma feeding flashed in and out of my mind as a critical heart made exaggerated comparisons. I raised my head just high enough to quietly excuse myself from the table and I left the room to gather myself.

I managed to pull it together and made my way back to the dining room. Dessert was ice cream and Grandma ate every bite. She could barely lift her head to take the coffee though I made several attempts. "More," I thought I heard her say. "More or no more Grandma?" I asked. She shook her head oh so slightly. I made a few last attempts to give her coffee, but any sips she did take slid down the side of her mouth. She was done eating. When all was said and done, she had eaten perhaps a total of 3/4 cups of food.

We returned to her room and waited by the window for "the girls" to return and help her get back into her recliner. I patted her hand as I watched the door for someone to come and then...it happened. I felt her hand on top of mine, patting and stroking my hand. I felt the hot prickle of tears rise again in my eyes. This time, instead of fighting it, I just put my head on her shoulder and wept. I wanted her to reach up and run her fingers through my hair like she used to when I was a little girl, but it didn't happen. Instead, I put my arms around her shoulder and ran my fingers through her hair as I felt her head relax against my shoulder. "I love you so much Grandma," I said through my tears. We sat like that until my sister came back a few minutes later.

I wanted to say so many things to her during those minutes, but nothing that hinted of a good-bye; I didn't want her to think I had given up on her though it felt as though I had done just that. I was ashamed of the way I was feeling.

The thing is, I believe we don't mourn the loss of people exactly; what we mourn is the loss of what those people brought into our lives. It may have been support, love, laughter, camaraderie, compassion, solidarity, or friendship. When people we love grow old, we lose those things long before we lose those people. I think that's why I felt the way I did. I recognized in those hours, that my Grandmother was disappearing. I realized that there would be fewer moments of recognition and fewer moments of sharing. Our visits together would be short and shallow and few.

Grieving our losses is self-indulgent and it's necessary and it's a process. Grieving the anticipation of a loss, is greedy and selfish and perhaps that's why I felt ashamed. I should have focused on my grandmother's needs, but instead I let myself wallow. Next time, I'll do it differently. I'll wallow after my visits instead of during them.

Letting go of my Grandmother will be, I know, an incredible challenge for me. Letting go a little at a time might be the only way that I'm going to be able to climb that mountain.

Crazy Hair

I don't just have bad hair days, I have "crazy hair."

During my entire childhood, my hair was short and straight and thin and boring. Most people thought I was a boy (though I'll be the first to admit that I acted like one). I remember my mother wrapping my head in a kerchief in the spring so that the black flies wouldn't tear my scalp apart. My hair was hardly an obstacle for hungry northern black flies. It also helped distinguish me as a little girl which saved everyone a little embarrassment -- at least until it was warm enough for sundresses.

As a young girl, I kept growing my hair until I could no longer be mistaken as a boy. When I entered high school, I had long, straight hair down to the middle of my back. By the end of my first year, I cut myself some bangs to "change it up" a little, but I was growing bored of my hair. I wanted something more contemporary. I wanted a hair style.

I remember going to my mother's hairdresser one Saturday morning. I took in a picture of a model with long, layered hair (think Jennifer Aniston...though she hadn't been discovered yet). The hairdresser started layering my hair and that's when it happened...all hell broke loose. Seems there were curls hiding in there somewhere. Having been weighted down by my long hair, they suddenly sprung to life when the weight was lifted by the sharpened shears of the hairdresser. Oh, she was so happy. "Look at the curls! Look at the curls!" Not curly enough, evidently, because she came at me brandishing a curling iron and didn't finish styling me until my head was covered in tiny tight curls.

I was absolutely devastated. In fact I cried. I remember saying that it looked like an old lady's hairstyle. (In remembering this event, I also recall that both the hairdresser and my mother had similar styles which makes my comment both rude and accurate at once. Sorry mom, but when I was 16, anyone older than 25 was OLD.)

My mother and sister and I were supposed to go to town shopping afterwards, but I flatly refused to leave the car. I stayed slumped down in the backseat because I was afraid of being seen (I was also 16 at the time and my ego was as fragile as puff pastry.) I went home and washed it and tried to blow-dry it flat, but it just looked stupid to me. With classes on Monday, right around the corner, I knew I had to keep trying. I ended up washing it again and then blow drying it while I hung my head upside down and pouted. Minutes later - shazam - I had crazy hair. "I can live with this," I thought. The style was kind of "rocker chick," and it was the era of the big hair band, so the world righted itself on its axis and began to turn again.

Not ten years later, I cut it all off. I found my crazy hair too labour-intensive for a busy schedule that revolved around the needs of two young children. I wanted something to wash, run my fingers through and be done with. A little hair product and I'm out the door. I found it so easy to take care of and a little more professional looking, so I kept the short hair for many years. When I left my job last June, I stopped making trips to the hair stylist. Eight months later, I now find myself back at "crazy hair."

I'm trying to decide whether to cut it all off again, tame it down with a trim, or just allow it to grow its wild self out. I don't feel as attached to my hair as I once did. By that I mean, I don't think I'd cry if I got a bad haircut. I might ask for my money back, but I'd still smile and want to make sure that the hairdresser wasn't upset because I wasn't pleased with his/her work. These days I worry more about the colour than I worry about the style. Style doesn't seem nearly important when I see silver strands amongst my curls. I think hats not haircuts.

Every time I think of my crazy hair, I think of the same thing. People who have curly hair usually say they would like straight hair AND people who have straight hair usually say they would like curly hair. In fact, some people pay big bucks for their own version of crazy hair. I guess I shouldn't complain.

Sorry for rambling. I'm going to log off now. Maybe head over to e-bay to look for some ceramic straighteners, or maybe a barrette. A fedora? No. Make that www.l'oreal... :)

Life at the Coffee House

Things are going pretty well at work. I really enjoy the atmosphere. The storefront is a tiny cafe with four tables, some fresh baked goods and several thermoses of coffee from which to choose. The Barista likes to experiment with flavours and drinks and I have volunteered to be her official taste tester. The cafe is open Monday to Saturday from 6 am - 6 pm. People come and go throughout the day and I'm starting to know the regulars.

There's one fellow who comes in to enjoy a coffee while he sits in the chair in the corner and reads the paper. There's another fellow who comes in two times each day and orders a coffee concoction that costs about $5.00 a pop. (That's $10 a day in coffee! As far as cost is concerned, that rivals a nicotine habit.) There's another guy who comes in once or twice a day and pretends to be crabby, but he's really very nice and he likes to be teased almost as much as he enjoys dishing it out.

Behind the storefront are the offices, a large roaster and a workroom for the coffee wholesale business. From Monday through Thursday, the air is rich with the smell of roasting coffee. There's nothing like it. Everything I wear to work on those days smells like roasted coffee and so does my hair. I really like it. It's one of my favourite smells -- it's the smell of coffee when you first open a can. Apparently there are small roasters that you can buy for home use; it's becoming more popular these days. We sell green coffee beans to people who want to roast their own coffee.

One benefit of working at the coffee house is free coffee. I took some ground decaf for hubby to try. He liked it. I think, in fact, that he now prefers it to any other brand. I used to be a loyal Tim Horton's patron before joining Equator Coffee. I used to get one extra large regular Timmy's every morning on my way to work. Now, I brew a pot before I leave home; two or three cups gets me ready for the drive to work. Once at work, I have one or two cups of coffee. I start with a bold, and end with a smooth or medium roast. Sometimes I add a flavour shot, sometimes I don't. Most days I try to avoid caffeine after 11 a.m.

Last week, for Valentine's day, I thought it would be nice to get up early, drive to Tim Horton's and treat hubby to a hot coffee. I got myself one as well. About a quarter of the way through my extra large regular, I realized that I had lost my taste for Tim Horton's. I found it watery compared to what I consume at work. It was then I realized I had converted. I am officially off the Timmy's. (For those non-Canadians out there, Tim Horton's is the Canadian version of Starbucks -- though we have those too.)

The girl who operates the order desk for the wholesale operations has taken another job. I officially took over the order desk today. If it's too much to handle with my office duties, the owners will look for another person to take the orders. That said, I thought today went pretty well and I expect I'll be able to do both as long as all the customers keep to the order schedule.

My part-time job is slowly growing into an almost full-time job. Funny, but as long as my "regular" hours stay part-time and I am left with the option of working or not working the extra hours, I find I am most happy. It's kind of silly...especially since I stay until the work is done. It's kind of like working full time but committing to part time work. In the end, it's not the hours that put me off, it's the commitment. Like I said in my interview, flexibility is the feature I value most in a job. I guess that's just my way of keeping things flexible.

I'll try to get some pics for a future post. If you like coffee, you may find them interesting.

Winterlude - Ottawa's Winter Festival

This is the last weekend of Winterlude in Ottawa. It's a winter festival that's held every year during the first three week-ends in February. I took the kids to the Rideau Canal for a skate during the first weekend, couldn't coerce them to return last weekend, but managed to convince them to take one last trip to the city before the end of Winterlude. In fact, everybody went -- the whole fam damily, as the locals here would say.

We parked behind city hall and walked through the courtyard to Confederation Park. Confederation Park played host to the ice sculptures again this year. Two weekends ago we watched artists give birth to these creations and here they were, in their finished glory, beautifully backlit by changing colours as people passed by them and marvelled at their elegance.

If you haven't been to a winter festival, you probably haven't seen anything like this.


This is a mermaid swimming with a dolphin in the surf. Awesome!

Below here is the sculpture that won first prize. It's a clown fish in an anenome with coral trailing off behind. The picture just doesn't do it justice. It really is incredible. It's about 6 feet tall and another 6 feet across.

This sculpture was in another part of the park and I believe it was part of a different contest. I believe it won in its category as well. Initially I thought it was a winged figure, but I think it's a hunter running alongside a wolf, with a sword in one hand and a fur cape flying behind him; the cape has a hood. The details are extraordinary.

The ice sculptures were amazing -- a water goddess, the march of the penguins, an RCMP officer on his horse, a woolly mammoth, polar bears dancing and eagles hunting. There were dozens to see. We browsed and "ooooh-ed" and "aaaah-ed" with everyone else. It was neat to see during the day, but it was truly spectacular at night.

We got a little hungry so we crossed the canal, and walked up to the Byward Market to find someplace to eat. We walked up Colonel By Drive towards Rideau Street and passed between the Rideau Centre and this building. I think it's the Government Conference Centre. I thought it was pretty so I took a picture.

I love the city at night. I was so cold I was shaking, which meant lots and lots of bad shots, but I managed to salvage a few in between shivers.

We ended up having a great meal at a little Italian restaurant in the market. Afterwards we returned to the canal and bough some hot coffee, while son skated on the canal. We followed him about a kilometre down the ice before turning back.

It was a beautiful night.