How To Avoid Dying in Canada

So, it’s a tad cold in Canada at the moment.  Nothing we haven’t had to weather before.  It happens from time to time north of the 49th, and mostly we live through it.  It’s a matter of knowing to stay inside, or dressing properly if we have to go out.  On the one hand, we complain amongst ourselves about the ridiculousness of living in such a climate.  On the other hand we love the bragging rights it gives us - especially when it comes to impressing people who can’t imagine that 40 below zero even exists.

The lucky Canadians plan winter holidays in a warmer place.  The truly lucky manage to pick their holiday dates to coincide with when Siberia sends Polar Vortexes over the North Pole.  That way we can sit on a beach, under palm trees, and brag about how cold it is at home.  It’s like winning the same lottery twice - we can speak with real authority on the subject of bitter cold, but we actually managed to miss it this time around.  The locals are either in awe of us or don’t believe us.

This year we really took cold avoidance to the extreme and decided to not just go to a southern clime, but to the Southern Hemisphere.  No Mexican beach for us this time around.  No Belizian bed and breakfast.  No Arizona desert sun.  None of that sissy five hour flight in the same time zone thing for us this time; no sirree!  We upped the ante to a three hour drive to a three hour wait in an airport for a three hour flight to another airport where we waited ten hours for our sixteen hour flight to the Land Down Under.  There were also several time zones involved; I lost track.  We lost a whole day of our lives, but that’s okay, we get it back when we go home.

It’s been a few days now.  There are days and nights here, just like at home, and our bodies will eventually adjust to the new rhythm, but in the meantime we notice being exceedingly tired or hungry when no one else is and wonder what time it is at home.  The adjustment to the +40 temperatures is progressing, as well.  Neither one of us has keeled over from heat stroke, so that’s a win, for sure.

We’re working on re-establishing our ear for the Australian accent.  It’s trickier than you think - they use the same words as we do (mostly) but it’s not always easy to catch the right meaning.  Up the difficulty level with softer children’s voices or the speed of tv announcers and we end up missing the gist of what’s being said.  We’ll get the hang of it in time to go home and have to tune back into the Canuck accent.

But while this trip does keep us safe from freezing to death, Australia does present us with its own set of dangers.  The grandsons have been going about singing a little ditty that goes something like this: “Redbacks, Funnelwebs, Blue-ringed octopus, Taipan Tiger snake, add in a box jellyfish, stonefish, and the poison thing that lives in a shell and spikes you when you pick it up.  Welcome to Australia!  You might accidently get killed”

We’ve seen none of these national treasures so far, staying in a modern urban home as we are.  I think what they’re really trying to do is prepare us for next week when we go camping.  It may turn out that we would rather suffer from frost bite over snake bite.

And All's Well ...

Back in the day of Roman Centurions - or more likely back in the day of Hollywood depicting their interpretation of the days of Roman centurions - these soldiers left on duty through the night would keep everyone up to date on their security status by calling out hourly ... "It's three in the morning, and all's well!" 

Actually, if the Romans were doing this the announcements would be in Latin, but you get what I mean.

Think of how reassuring this would be if you were a citizen of a city under siege.  Every hour, on the hour, to hear that someone was in charge and that he was sure that "all was well".  Or, at the very least, you would be informed of what time it was getting to be.  That's so important - to know what time it is ... in the middle of the night ... when everyone else is peacefully sleeping ... over and over again ... knowing that the nighttime is slipping away.  I wonder how many of those centurions were hurled from the ramparts by frustrated insomniacs? 

Nowadays we have digital clocks with illuminated numbers to keep the insomniacs up to date on how much sleep they are missing out on.  It's quieter, but just as frustrating.

I'm not a permanent insomniac, thank goodness.  I go through long periods where I sleep soundly through the night.  They are called summers, when we rise at the crack of dawn (4:30) because of a work schedule in Manitoba for the man of the house, and the fact that I like to get outside for garden and yard work before the heat of the day.  Throughout those periods I am too tired to not sleep. To be perfectly clear, a summer 4:30 in the morning and a winter 4:30 in the morning are two entirely different things.  One makes the day longer, one makes the night longer.

We are just a few short days from the longest night of the year, and I seem to be determined to experience it to the max.  I've been practicing for weeks - taking forever to fall asleep and then getting a solid three hours in after midnight before turning the rest of the night into a series of ten minute naps between pillow fluffings and blanket straightenings.  And watching the clock tick my night away.

There's always something to think about.  I've solved the world's problems several times (the answer is to make sure Trump is one of the guys who get to go to Mars - and he is most welcome to take his friend Putin with him).  If that was all there was to my midnight ramblings, I could be back to sleep in no time.  It's the five hundred little things that do me in.

Last night's lost sleep can be chalked up to several things: finishing up Christmas wrapping, planning when best to do the remaining baking, going over what needs to be done before company arrives, sorting out what stays and what goes to the family Christmas celebration, planning a big meal here before that happens, squeezing in a few visits over the next week, and then ... just to make things a little more interesting ... packing for a trip, cleaning out the fridge, making sure the house checkers all have keys, and getting the dog to his sitter.  If I wasn't already tired from no sleep, I would be exhausted just thinking about the next week or so.

It seems like everyone has their own best practice policy for dealing with insomnia.  Some say that deep breathing exercises help, some say get up and walk around for a while. Some read, some watch TV, and I've even had super practical people say that if they are awake they may as well work and get up to wash floors.  I have yet to be desperate enough to wash floors at 2:30; let's hope I never get there.

The one good thing about extremely early mornings at this time of year is there is a pretty Christmas tree out in the living room.  There is something peaceful and soul-soothing to wrapping myself in a blanket, curling up on the couch, and sipping fresh-brewed coffee in the glow of Christmas tree lights.  This annual vigil ties all my Christmases together: childhood excitement, coming of age angst, passing on the magic of Santa to my own children, concerts and carols, welcoming the new, missing those gone.  If there is such a thing that is good about not sleeping it would be having this quiet time to ponder these things in peace.

I don't know that tonight's sleep will be better, but as I ate breakfast this morning I smiled over at twinkling lights on the tree and thought to myself "It's 6:45 in the morning, and all's well with my world".

Note To Self:

In the preposterous hope that this will make a difference in my ability to retain semi important facts I will go through the motions of recording them ... making notes is supposed to help with memory problems.

So, here goes ...

Note to self:  NO Jocelyn!  You do not need more Christmas gift tags!  Even if your offspring were to double their output of grandchildren it would take a full decade before you would run out.  Please stop buying more every year.  Likewise with the icing sugar; three and a half bags of the stuff will see us through 2023 at the rate we eat cake around here.

Note to self:  If you're looking for exercise, Jocelyn, then for sure, head on down to the basement without a written reminder of what you are going there for.  Is it a loaf of bread?  A pail of ice cream?  A pound of butter?  Another can of coffee?  Perhaps it's not food related at all.  Did you, all of a sudden, recall it was time to change the furnace filter?  Are you looking for the Christmas laser light projectors?  Or, since it's the far bedroom you are standing in, feeling perplexed and foolish, was your mission to fetch a suitcase to begin packing?  But, back to the original question ... maybe it was the exercise.  There are a full 18 steps involved - make one trip for each item.  Atta girl!

Note self:  As soon as a water jug is empty put it in the car.  When you are up to two empties make plans to go to town for water.  If that's what you care to do, then go ahead and have yourself that 'shake your head' moment about the very idea of buying water.  Lord only knows why you do this self torture but year end calculations show that you have spent $430.00 on stuff that comes out of the taps for free.  Further, as you drive down the road, you can reminisce about the good old pre-flood days when water quality was not an issue.  But the bottom line here is, if you put those jugs in the car as soon as they are empty, you don't have to turn around at the highway to go back to fetch them.

Note to self:  Now Jocelyn, you are just being delusional if you think you're going to remember where you saw that recipe.  I know.  I know.  Your first impulse will be to say Facebook, and that may well be true, but WHERE on Facebook?  Are you paying any attention to whom it was that shared it?  Have you taken note of what the date is?  Are you ever likely to find it again?  You well know that Facebook has at times shown itself to be very judgemental of who your friends are - one day you get to see every one of their kitty-cat pictures and the next day it's like they've been banished from the Earth.  That will be the day you want to try out that great roasted brussels sprouts recipe.  Trust me; go low tech with this one.  Find an actual piece of paper and write that recipe down.  Now.  Where you put it after that is your own business.  Might I suggest that 'safe place' you have?  That's always good for a laugh.

Note to self ... or is this just a point to ponder?  A mere existential question, really, about why you can remember every word from a song from 1972 that you haven't heard in at least two decades, but regularily stall out mid sentence because you forgot what you were talking about.  I have read that it's the music accompanying the words to the song that acts as a trigger for our memories.  Does that mean that if I sang everything I said I could tell a complete story without loosing my way?  I wonder which would happen first?  Would I be arrested on some "abuse of music" charge, or just locked up in a padded room somewhere?  Like I said, this is just a point to ponder; weak as my mind is on daily conversations, you can't stump me on anything Neil Diamond, the Beach Boys, or The Guess Who has ever sung.

Now, back to business.

Note to self: go find that new 2018 calendar you picked up the other day and start transferring important data from this year to next year.  Dentist appointments and grandkids babysitting dates, meetings, seminars, and that tax time date with the accountant.  While you're at it scan through the next week or two in case you have commitments booked that have slipped your mind.  Heck, just for the fun of it, glance back over the past month just to see if you missed anything.  Nothing better than finding out you missed an order deadline for something you really wanted.

But, most important for now is to STOP BUYING CHRISTMAS GIFT TAGS.

On the other hand, Jocelyn, you are almost out of wrapping paper.  Are you going to remember that?

                                             The Little Job That Grew

I don't know if I can say I didn't see this coming.  I wasn't looking.  I have no excuse.

Probably, if I had taken even one moment to think about it, that little sensible voice in the back of my head would have said something like "Do you know what you're getting yourself into?"

But that's all moot.  I did not stop to think about it.  The little voice didn't have a opportunity to ask her question.  I am armpit deep into a job that I anticipated being only ankle high.  And I'm not done yet.

The "little" job I volunteered for was updating the home town information for the South Saskatchewan Vacation Guide, an annual publication that strives to educate and inform travellers of all that our corner of the province has to offer.  I had already had one kick at  the can last year when the publishers had asked our local tourism board for fresh event dates for 2017.  When I reviewed the advertisement that was going into print I promised that we would absolutely be freshening up the information for the 2018 edition.  That was this time last year.  Naturally I didn't given it another moment of thought until autumn.  They don't call me the procrastination Queen for nothing.

So, at the last meeting of the season I told the rest of the board that I would happily do the write up.  After all, I am comfortable in the role of writer and they were quite willing to let me run with it.  That was eight weeks ago, and I'm farther behind now than when I first got started.

Around the same time as I began to gather information and photos for this vacation guide project I received an e-mail about information and photos needed to revamp our online presence.  I'm one of the newest members of this board - I don't know if it was my greenhorn status that kept me from realising that this was now actually two projects:  one for a printed magazine and one for a province wide tourism web page.  I agreed to this second job thinking it was the first job.  That was the bad news.  The good news was that both projects were looking for the same info.  The print project wanted more written info, the electronic media could handle lots more pictures.

Which constituted phase two of my project: try to track down high quality photos that illustrate the things I wanted to write about.  I wrote letter to other community groups formally requesting both info and photos to help me out.  No one got back to me.  I asked people who take a lot of pictures to see what they had.  There are good shots in bad light and great vistas taken at the wrong time of year to show off a campground.  And who can believe that we serve Saskatoon pie and ice cream for four months straight and have never bothered to take a picture of a pretty table setting of this treat?

About this time, in my quest for clearer instructions from Sask Tourism my call was forwarded on to a guy named Bob.  My new friend Bob.  Bob, who assumed I had called him about his new pet project - a day trip guide within our area to augment the more general information in the vacation guide.  I had not called him about this, yet another project that would turn out to be job #3.  He sent me an e-mail describing it in detail ... the info he is looking for is mostly the same as jobs #1 and #2, only a little more detailed.  Oh, what the heck!  Since I'm in this up to my waist anyway, what's one more?

It's early December.  My deadline is the end of this week even though the publishing deadline is a month farther down the road.  I have an assortment of pictures and some copy written.  Today I decided I'm far enough along to send what I have out to other board members for feedback, which may well complicate my life further.  On the one hand it's good to have more ideas and insight for a more well-rounded effort; on the other hand more ideas and insight will take more time.  I'm just crossing my fingers that if there is tweaking necessary, it won't be much.

Meanwhile my desk is cluttered with copious notes about what I need to do, piles of paper scribbled with the information going into each project, and lists of photos that need to be sent.  The whole thing has woven itself into such a tangle in my mind I'm going to have to call good old Bob one more time just to see which e-mail addresses belong to which job.

If I dig deep enough I'm bound to find my "List of Things to do Before Christmas".  That's next week's project.

                           
                            These Are the Days, My Friend

It all started out innocently enough.  There was to be a tea and bake sale in the afternoon so I got up early and spent my morning baking goodies.  While I'm not old old yet, neither am I young young. By the time my counters were laden with buns and cookies and tarts my feet were sore and my coffee didn't seem to be cutting it in the power juice department.  Never the less, I had baking to deliver, staying home was not an option.  Thank goodness.

I rummaged through my closet for something besides blue jeans to wear and headed off to town.  My day wasn't over yet.

Teas and bake sales are pretty standard affairs.  Of course there are tables of baking for sale, and raffle tickets as an extra fund raiser, plus another table offering pretty things perfect for Christmas gifts.  The rest of the space is filled with tables inviting people to sit and visit for a while.  Once my baking had been delivered and my tickets had been bought I checked out if they needed me in the kitchen.  I hadn't been asked to help out but I had come prepared to do so if they needed me.  All was calm.  I wandered back into the tea room.

There has been many a day in my life when things don't go well ... flat tires ... 'flu bugs ... burnt suppers ... broken dishes ... forgotten promises.  You know how those days go.  And I almost always stop and wonder, "What did my horoscope say about this day?"  Would I have been fore-warned about my bad luck?  Could I have avoided these troubles?  I'm not really the kind of person who keeps track of horoscopes, and I am the kind of person who tends to think we are better off not knowing what the future holds, but there's always that curiosity there.  "Could I have seen this bad luck coming?"

There is also the flip side of that coin.  There are also the times when a person could completely miss out on a wonderful experience because her feet were sore and she stayed home.  I wonder what my horoscope said about the day of the tea?  Would it have said "Get out there, girl!  This will be a wonderful day for you!"

I was all by myself so I looked for a table where all the chairs weren't already taken and asked if I could sit with those already there.  The table I chose welcomed me. 

We were hardly strangers - we were either schoolmates, or friends, or friends of siblings, or connected by marriage, or neighbours, or friends of neighbours ... or, as in many small town situations ... an intermingled web of all of these types of relationships.  Making conversation was easy.

We talked of many things ... recipes and planning Christmas dinners, which of the dainties on the plates were our favourites, how nice the weather was, health concerns within our families.  Pretty mundane stuff.

But somehow it escalated to hair dos - the good, the bad, and the ugly - and stories began to pour forth.  We all had a tale to tell, each one funnier than the one before.  There was much laughter.  We progressed to the subject of aging and we all offered examples of memory failure problems and how we tried to cope with such things.  I'm not sure when the husband stories came up but a few of these were shared too.  All women bond over husband stories.

 And then we were on to concerts we had attended; some of the performers were given glowing praise and some were so bad that the applause at the end had not been for the show, but that it was finally over.  More stories and more laughter.

The thing about small town life is that while we do know each other for our entire lifetimes, it's not like our relationships are static.  It's more like a case of life ping pong-ing us in and out of each other's orbit; going to school together unites us, marriage takes us different directions.  Having kids in the same classes brings us back together, having different jobs or hobbies creates another gap.  In the end we have a lot of shared history, but there's also lots we can learn from each other.

Time ticked by.  Other tables were emptying and refilling with fresh faces but ours remained the same.  The conversation bubbled on ... happy themes and more sombre moments.  I began to regret that this happy time would soon come to an end.  Who could have ever guessed that this afternoon would have held such fun?

Once or twice one or another of us would make some mention of it being time to go, but it seemed we were all reluctant to break the spell.  Somehow the topic of conversation moved on to our late '60s school years and the fashions of the day: the tie-dyed shirts, the modified bell-bottomed pants, the bleaching, the embroidery, the platform shoes, the velure fabric.  The words from Mary Hopkin's 1969 hit popped into my mind; it seemed the perfect thing to do - I sang the first line and these wonderful women, my old/new friends joined in ...

Those were the days my friend, we thought they'd never end! 
We'd sing and dance forever and a day. 
We'd live the life we'd choose, we'd fight and never lose. 
Those were the days, oh yes, those were the days!

The people at the other tables probably were wondering what we had in our coffee that they didn't have in theirs.  Maybe they had been all along.

The truth is whatever it was that settled over our table can't be bottled and it can't be forced.  Call it Karma or Fate or Voodoo, it felt like magic to me.  Long after we parted ways the memories continue to bubble to the surface and I find myself laughing again.  

And the idea strikes me to change the words to Mary's song to the present tense:  "These are the days, my friend!"  Days like that are pure gold.  I wonder what my horoscope had to say about it?

An Untraditional Christmas

Christmas is one of the most traditional times of the year.  The music we listen to, the foods we prepare, the way we decorate our houses, the stories we tell, the family customs we observe - almost everything we do at the end of December has some kind of ritual symbolism attached to it.  Whether you're in it for the Santa scene or the Nativity scene, chances are the way we celebrate the season tends to repeat itself year after year - not in a boring way, but in such a fashion that we feel content with the comforting traditions that trigger happy memories.  Humans seem to need to punctuate their lives with holidays and festivals, and Christmas is the biggest one of all.

Every family writes its own storybook on what they consider important: which treats they love most to eat, the kind of gifts they tend to give, where the celebration takes place, whether their trees are decorated with precious family heirloom ornaments or done in ultra-modern colour coordination with the wrapping paper theme of the year.  Some families keep it small and simple, some have the whole fam-damly for a huge gathering.  Some insist on turkey and plum pudding, some go all crazy by never having the same menu twice.  Some count Christmas's success by how many gifts are under the tree while others spend the day serving others at a soup kitchen.

This might sound like I'm going to get up on my soap box and give a morality lecture about the meaning of Christmas, but no, I'm just saying everyone does it differently.

I've been thinking about this tradition thing quite a bit as we approach the Christmas season this year because there are so many things that will be different in 2017 for us.  This is not the result of any momentous decision to purposely alter how we observe the holiday, it's just a myriad of small things that all seem to be happening the same year.

Like, for instance, I already have my outside Christmas tree decked out in lights.  I didn't plug it in until after Remembrance Day but it's been up and ready since October 25th.  That's right, the Procrastinator-in-Chief is way ahead of the game, not because of any grand scheme, but because it was a beautiful day and I was looking for something to do outside.  It looks magnificent in the hoar frost.

The inside tree will be breaking with tradition, as well, and given my plans for it I could probably go ahead and decorate it right away too.  For a normal Christmas we usually buy a natural tree (bent, crooked, or lop-sided if it's me that picks it out - another tradition) and I decorate it mid December because if I do it sooner it will be needle-less by the big day.  A running sub-plot to the tree decorating performance is that the peanut gallery always wonders why I haul a tree-sized house plant out of the living room to fit another tree in.  2017 is the year I take his advice and I will be decorating the umbrella plant - and with the money I save we will travel to Australia!  Well not quite, but they are related.  I'm keeping Christmas super simple this year because we will be in Australia by New Years Eve.

Another tradition being phased out is the family gift exchange.  We've done it forever - drawn names amongst three generations of family - more to keep us connected across the miles as the family grows than anything else.  This year, after much discussion, it was decided to let it go.  On the one hand relief - it means less gift buying to do.  On the other hand regret - sad to see it go.

In another twist of Fate, the hostess of the big feast this year is of the next generation.  Again with the two hands ... on the one hand, yay, this is a good thing to pass the torch.  On the other hand ... this means Christmas dinner is more than an hour away!  Up until now it was the young folks who had that drive to come to our house.  Talk about a double edged sword!  It's not like we can put some kind of distance caveat on who gets to cook the turkey, and the only daughter-in-law who would qualify might get mighty sick of the honour.

And because of where Christmas Eve supper is happening this year we will be doing a Christmas sleepover at the grandkid's house instead of the other way around.  The menu for the 25th also is likely to be not-a-turkey.  After all, why stop the "outside the box" thinking?  We are on a roll here.

Well, okay, some things show no sign of changing: I am only barely started with my gift shopping and can only think of more ideas for the people who I've already bought for - that's very normal.  And so is the desire to get on with the holiday baking ... so that we can eat it all ... so I can make some more ... so I can eat some more.  It's very traditional for me to struggle with this every year.

All this thinking about breaking with tradition has side-stepped into considering if this will have some effect on our future too.  I know, it's kind of superstitious, but what if keeping our rituals has an impact on what happens in our future?  Our usual tradition is to watch the fireworks over the Harbour Bridge in Sydney, Australia on our TV; this time we will be there.  In person. 

It makes me wonder, what does 2018 hold for us?

THAT Kind of Day

You know that the day ahead might be a bit challenging when first thing in the morning you can't figure out what's wrong with your hair until it occurs to you that maybe you forgot to rinse the conditioner out.  On the one hand the problem is easy to fix; on the other hand you can't help but wonder if you should go check what your horoscope says.  Maybe it would be a good idea to just crawl back into bed for the day.

There are two ways to look at it.  My sister and I have discussed the random brain farts we have experienced, and how at our age the possibility of dementia lurks at the edges of our consciousness.  Believe me, finding the milk in the cupboard and the salt shaker in the fridge is something you want to blame on an occasional bad day, not a developing pattern.

That morning it was back to the drawing board - rinse the slimy-ness out of my hair, dry it, and carry on with my day.  Although I wasn't too sure what I wanted to tackle: I had a couple jobs lined up but if my powers of concentration were such that I couldn't organize a shower, maybe I should keep it simple for the next 24 hours.

With my 'that kind of day' experience fresh in my mind I happened to be talking to a young mother later in the week.  If there was such a thing as a Bad Day Contest, she took the gold medal, especially if there was a sub category of 'The Grossest Day Ever'.

Her day had begun with a baby with a head cold.  You know what that means - an over abundance of colourful mucus, an aversion to Kleenex, little baby hands that rub gross yuckiness into their hair and all over their clothes, and great bubbly sneezes that make a person gag a little when they have to wipe up the mess.  That was yuck number one.

Which seemed kind of like a merry stroll in the park when confronted by yuck number two.

The dog barfed.  In the living room.  The only room in the house that has carpet.  Put the snotty baby down, toss the dog outside, and go to clean up the warm, gooey, smelly mess. 

Oh, wait!  Look at this!  Why is the  dog barfing?  Could it be a case of worms?  Gross!  Gross!  Gross!  Do not add to the puke.  Do not add to the puke.  Call husband to get dewormer before he comes home from work.

And not just for the dog.  Need to be proactive about a thing like this.  Yuck.  Yuck.  Yuck

After completing an intensive sterilization ritual on the carpet and putting the baby down for a nap she decided to tidy up in the kitchen.  In sorting through the fruit bowl she found an over ripe banana, not enough for banana bread so she went to throw it away only to discover it was REALLY over ripe and had liquefied in the bottom of the bowl.  If she hadn't just had to deal with the mess in the living room this would have been a minor thing. 

But, she had just dealt with hideous dog vomit; the slimy banana just about did her in.

At this point she probably would have run away from home but her vehicle was in the shop being fixed.

The Fates weren't through with her yet, though.  Toward the end of the afternoon she got an email from the playschool teacher reporting that a case of head lice had been discovered in the student population.  Of course!  This was only natural.  The perfect ending to her perfect day. 

Well, not quite.  Right after the dog got her worm pills she also got a flea bath.  You want proactive?  She'd show you proactive!

It left me wondering what her horoscope had said that morning.

As for myself and my day that started out wonky - I decided to tackle doing books in preparation for income tax.  I know a lot could have gone wrong with that picture but it didn't - I'm all caught up, it's a great feeling.  I also have very soft, shiny hair.

The other job I had on my slate for that day was to reinstall a duvet inside a freshly washed duvet cover.  I didn't push my luck that far.

                                        Angels: The Good, The Bad, and The Furry


He's at it again.  Darned dog!  He's laying there at my feet with his best beyond-pathetic expression on his face, his way of lobbying me for a walk.  It gets harder every day.

Back in the good old days - like from April through September - it wasn't nearly so difficult to motivate his human for a mile or two down the road.  It is no longer the good old days; it's c-c-c-old out there, the refreshing breezes of summer have taken on all the things I don't like in moving air - speed, cold, and the ability to cut through to the marrow of my bones.  It takes a lot of motivating to even get me outside these days.

But he is of Eskimo origins, he has Husky heritage, he has a three layer fur coat ... he rejects all my excuses and procrastinations as flimsy.  We both need the exercise, he says, we both need the fresh air.

He won yesterday.  I completely ran out of reasons why I couldn't go, and I was lulled into some kind of false sense of security because the view out my front window was one of sunshine; it was actually even what I would call warm on our south-facing deck.  I put on my shoes (which is like entering into a rock-solid contract with a dog who knows what that means) and went looking for an end-of-October type of coat.  Before I left the house I hunted down a toque, just in case.  This may well be the reason I didn't freeze solid.

There is a predictable pattern to our adventures.  It begins with me setting foot outdoors; Turbo jumps to attention. 

Does his human have her purse?  Is she headed for the car?  NO! 

Oh wait, is she carrying any of those nasty, boring gardening tools?  NO! 

She's coming down the steps!  She's heading down the driveway!  OMG!  OMG!  OMG!  We're going for a walk! 

By the time I have walked the 100 meters to the road he has covered 400 meters, back and forth, around in circles; such is his joy.  It's not his sadness when I don't go that guilts me into these winter walks, it's this crazy happiness that gets to me.  I wonder if he knows this?

Regardless of his joy yesterday, the minute I stepped out into the open I regretted my decision - my sunny, peaceful yard had deceived me; it was c-c-c-old out there!  I couldn't face disappointing the dog, though; like I said some kind of unspoken commitment had been made by putting on my runners.  The next step was to choose my route.

It's always the best idea to start out against the wind, that way the trip home is with the wind at my back, kind of like a reward.  I turned north and leaned into that nasty wind.

A normal walk for us is one mile out, and then back.  On nice days I up the distance.  Yesterday my aspirations immediately began to contract in the cold.  The whiny bad angel sitting on my left shoulder demanded we go home, the good one on my right shoulder coaxed me on ... "At least make the half mile before you turn around." she pleaded.  "Think of poor Turbo!"

I risked freezing my eyeballs to look for the dog - sure enough, there he was way out in a field, no doubt sniffing coyote poop - he's got to stay on top of who encroaches on his territory.  "Why does he even need us?" my lazy angel asked.  "He won't even notice if we go home."  We all knew that was a lie.  I kept going.

They say hypothermia causes a person to make poor choices.  Maybe that's why I got all stubborn at the half mile (the compromise distance the good angel and I had come to) and kept on going.  It was like the Little Engine Who Could - I just kept putting one frozen foot in front of the other so that I could do my Rocky victory dance at the corner of SW21-8-31-W1st.  Both angels rejoiced with me - one because we had made it and one because we could go home now. 

The thing about walking as an exercise is that there is no quitting halfway through.  Once you've walked a mile away from home, you have no choice but to walk back.  Even with the wind at my back yesterday that mile was a long one.  I could have used mitts.  I needed a Kleenex for my runny nose.  I wanted to get home so I could sit in my car and turn the butt warmer on. 

The whole adventure only took 48 minutes.  The dog laid off his guilt tripping for the rest of the day.  I proudly logged another two miles.  My good angel gave me a pat on the back, but in a fit of spite my bad angel encouraged me to go stand on my bathroom scales.  She's a mean one, that one.

Turbo doesn't know it but that contraption in the bathroom is his best ally.  At this time of the year I need all the incentive I can find.

Skipping Seasons

All the people in the world not lucky enough to be from Canada look at us from afar and think cold, snow, and perpetual winter.  Those of us who actually live here know the truth - that we have four distinct seasons, and there are many times when we can experience them all on the same day.

"We're made of tough stuff." I said to myself as I hung sheets and towels out on the line on the weekend.  The grass I was standing on was still summer green and there were two valiant dandelions blooming still by the edge of the garden.  The day before I had almost succumbed to the temptation to get the lawnmower out, just one last time, and that morning I had decided it looked nice enough to hand laundry on the line.  I had been a great plan when the sun was shining but by the time I got outside clouds had rolled in.  It was cold.  And I couldn't be entirely sure that I hadn't felt the odd snowflake land on my face.  Two days before had been shirt sleeve weather.  Two days later it was again.  That, my foreign friends, is the real Canada.

It makes us a 'seize-the-day' kind of people.  If the weather app on our phones points to a limited space of fair conditions the smart among us jump right on that window of opportunity to get stuff done.  There's nothing like the threat of an approaching rain storm to force an unwilling body into a day's worth of weeding garden.  I'm one of those people who always does better with a deadline. 

And the older I get, the smarter I seem to become.  I am especially pleased with myself today; I am a full two months ahead of myself.

The Weather Network began the week sounding the alarm about wind, cold and a possible snow storm for Thursday.  It's late October - nothing out of the ordinary there.  Hallowe'en trick or treaters can enjoy wandering the streets in light jackets one year and need full snowsuit gear the next.  But, it wasn't Hallowe'en that was worrying me; the threatening storm might be only a few days away, but I was thinking Christmas.  I was thinking spring. 

I had been to the city on Monday and was the proud new owner of seventy more tulip and daffodil bulbs, and one more string of outdoor lights for the big Christmas tree I decorate in the yard every year.  If winter was arriving on Thursday I had me a deadline. 

It was absolutely necessary to get the bulbs in the ground, this might be my last chance.  And, I know from experience that it's way less dangerous to be climbing ladders with no slippery ice and snow to contend with. 

It's pretty late in the year to be planting anything - even fall bulbs.  As I planted them I wondered how they would do.  That's the thing about planting anything though, a person does it on faith.  Will they grow?  Will they bloom?  A gardener puts these bits of Mother Nature's magic in the ground and then has to wait a half year for the reward.  We do it all on faith, I guess.  Faith that the flowers will bloom; faith that we will be there to see them when they do.

That done, I put my digging tools away, had a bowl of soup for dinner, and tackled the next job.  For this a series of small miracles had to happen.  I had to remember where I put the other three strings of lights - miracle #1.  Also, the good ladder had to be located - miracle #2. 

And, we have a long extend-a-pole thingy that is instrumental in reaching the top of this tree.  I looked for it where I thought it was - no luck.  I looked for it where I thought someone else might have put it - no luck again.  My expectations were very low when I sent this someone a text asking if he knew where this instrumental tool was - 1) he doesn't usually know these kinds of things, and 2) he is notoriously bad at answering texts when he is at work.  But the gods were with me: he knew and he did - miracles #3 and #4!

So, here it is - October 25th, a full two months before Christmas, and I have my lights up!  In true Canadian fashion I have done a fall cleanup of my flower beds, decorated a Christmas tree, and planted spring flowers all within a few days.  The grass is still green, the water is still liquid, and like I said ... those dandelions are still blooming.

Maybe that's the best way to describe Canadians: we're as tough as dandelions. 

Downwind

I've always joked that 'Saskatchewan' was probably the Cree word for 'hang onto your hat!' 

This reputation we have for being nothing but flat is misleading as heck - our Cypress Hills, the Qu'Appelle Valley, the Big Muddy Badlands, the Great Sandhills, the North Saskatchewan River, the Moose Mountains, and the forests, lakes and rivers of the top half of the province provide a frame for the tabletop smooth Regina Plains, but if a person never ventures out of that city or off the #1 Highway they are never going to see our hidden treasures.

We are a good-natured people though, we laugh along with the flat jokes and the gap jokes.  We wear bunny-hugs and serve jellied salads.  We shake our heads at our neighbouring provinces, always tinkering with their clocks to 'save' daylight.  We sport T-shirts with the slogan "Saskatchewan: easy to draw, hard to spell".  Our devotion to our football team, whether we are actually sports fans or not, is legendary.

We are also a sturdy people.  We have to be, or the wind would blow us over.

I have read somewhere the reasons behind this - something about being in the middle of a huge land mass and the way the Jet Stream directs weather systems - but the bottom line is whether it is a light zephyr, a stiff breeze, or a gale force plow wind, our air is almost always on the move.  A day when there isn't any wind is spooky for a Saskatchewanite; we tend to call this anomaly 'the calm before the storm'.  It's a pretty safe bet that the wind will pick up again, and everything will be back to normal.

As used to the wind as we are, though, every once in a while there is a hum-dinger.  Like Tuesday and Wednesday this week: that was a hum-dinger.

There were all the normal warnings from The Weather Network: put the outdoor furniture away, anchor the trampoline - maybe to a tractor or something, batten down the hatches, and make sure the house insurance is all paid up. 

Monday the wind started to pick up, but it wasn't too bad.  The dog still managed to guilt me into a walk.  The main problem that day was that the seed heads on the cat tails had burst open and the air was full of their fluff - it was in my eyes, ears and hair.  I didn't dare open my mouth against the wind on the way home.  After four days of this the west side of our evergreens look like they are coated in wool and there are shallow 'snow' drifts of fluff across the lawn.

Tuesday afternoon I talked to my sister in Calgary, their day had been very windy.  We weren't supposed to get the worst of it until midnight.

Later that evening we came to understand just how bad it was.  Time and time again the Emergency Alert System broke into the TV show I was watching to announce evacuation of one town after another in Alberta and on into the western side of our province.  Power lines were toppling in the gale, sparking fires that took off at 100 kms per hour - farms, yards, towns, cattle - all in grave danger.  My generation grew up hearing stories about the wild prairie fires of the past, but farming and cultivation have relegated these things to history - or so we had thought.  We went to bed that night, safe where we were, but in awe of the danger presented when fire marries wind.

The aftermath isn't on the scale of the fires taking thousands of homes and dozens of lives in California but any loss is felt on an individual level by the people mourning who or what they have lost - numbers don't matter at a time like this.

We are sturdy.  We are resilient.  We are resourceful.

One thing you do see from #1 Highway, off to the south around Gull Lake, is mile after mile of wind turbines along the hill tops (yes, you heard me right - hill tops).  This is the people of Saskatchewan virtually harvesting power from thin air; harnessing a simple fact of life in this province and transforming it into a valuable asset. 

And to quote another long-standing prairie joke, we need never worry about running out of wind ... because Manitoba sucks and Alberta blows - it always going to be windy in Saskatchewan!

It Takes a Village ...

On the global scale of things, with human population measured in billions and cities claiming head counts of multiple millions, our little prairie community with it's population of approximately 1,000 people just barely tips us into the designation of town status.  Any smaller and we would be a village.  Smaller yet is called a hamlet, and believe it or not the Saskatchewan government has come up with 'Designated Service Area' to describe what is all too common in our landscape - places so low in population that in order to continue managing basic services like water treatment and road maintenance are being absorbed into the Rural Municipality in which they are situated. 

There are most certainly some larger family farms with a higher people count than what appears on a map as a bona fide town.  I doubt that anyone from New York or Hong Kong or Rio de Janeiro could even comprehend the space and isolation we enjoy, but that's okay - I have no desire to experience their lifestyle either.

The thing about humans, though, is that the concept of community is not measured in numbers.  It does not matter how many bodies you have to do the work as long as everyone is focussed on the same goal. Whether we live in a huge metropolis or a little town, we all strive to strengthen what we have and build towards an ever more prosperous future.  We see a need like a hospital and recognise that we have a role to play in its success.  A city has to plan for maybe 800 beds, a town only 12, but neither will come to fruition unless these communities step up to the plate.

Large cities have Philharmonic Orchestras - towns have school bands.  Cities build huge stadiums for their big franchise teams - we support our hometown teams in our little arenas.  They have their large theatre companies - we have the local drama club.  The desire to have things like play parks for our kids, safe streets, and healthy Chambers of Commerce is the same throughout human populations, and we all work toward these goals.  I can't help feeling though, that the per capita involvement in little towns is way higher.  We don't have the luxury of many many hands.  Instead we tend to wear many many hats.

Autumn (once the growing season in our farming community is behind us) is our busiest social season.  Between now and Christmas there will be three big fund raising events: one in support of our Health Foundation, one sponsored by the local branch of the Wildlife Federation - a major contributor to local endeavors, and one put on by the local Arts Board.  Each event will offer food, entertainment and prizes donated by local businesses either raffled or auctioned off throughout the evening; all proceeds going back into community projects to improve life for all of us.

Although it's not within my usual comfort zone I find myself helping out the local drama club for the Health Foundation evening.  Last night was dress rehearsal and as our group worked to pull together our black light theatre production the foundation group were wrapping up what had to have been a full day of setting tables, decorating, and placing and labeling prizes. 

The thing that struck me was how many of these people would also be at the core of the other two fundraisers - so many of us are interchangeable that way.  The hockey players are also in drama, the Lion's Club members running the bar also have kids in 4H, the executive of the Foundation donated one of the trailers that make up the stage.  The guy running the sound system is also in the theatre production and will be helping to serve supper.  If you drew a line connecting everyone contributing to the evening the resulting diagram would look like a spider's web.  Or a better description would be a safety net: we are all our own safety net.

It could just be my plain old civic pride but being a part of this makes me appreciate our just-barely-a-town status all the more, and I'm reminded of something I've been observing for years - the smaller the town, the bigger the heart.

Don't Look Ethel!

Not too long ago, listening to my usual Golden Oldies station in the car, I heard Ray Stevens' silly song, The Streak.  For those of you not old enough (or those of you who are old enough but have blotted it out of your memory) this song's verses were a series of Action News reports at various venues where a streaker had just been seen.  Each time the same man is interviewed and he recounts where the streaker came from and what he did, always ending it off with how he tried to protect his wife, Ethel, from the trauma of seeing the spectacle by yelling "Don't look Ethel!"  She always looked anyway.

At the end of the song she is even drawn into the action and joins the streaker in his crazy game.  It was one of Ray Stevens' best - he was great at telling silly stories.

Life seems to be very busy for us these days.  We are at retirement age but all that means is that we work at what we want to, not what we have to.  I no longer go to town to earn a paycheck but my yard and garden are a fulltime summertime job.  My husband is employed in oilfield construction but work is slow so he is working for a neighbour during seeding and harvest.  His year has been busy with re-roofing and siding his workshop and other improvement projects around the place.  My extra time is tied into volunteer work with our local tourism board and helping out with grandchildren.  Let's just say that, as to yet, there hasn't been any time to sit on the front porch in our rocking chairs. 

This past while it has been even busier with canning and freezing and now this week, cleaning up the flower beds and putting planters away.  There is a hospital fund raiser coming up that has taken extra planning.  I am in the midst of finalizing our plans to visit Australia this winter, and that ties into planning Christmas before we go, and that leads to thinking about Christmas gifts.  And it's not even Hallowe'en yet ... and come to think of it, we need to pick those pumpkins before they freeze ....

At least I don't have to worry about hosting the Thanksgiving feast this year - my daughter is throwing the party instead.  They have just moved into a new house and have knocked themselves out to be ready for company in time for Thanksgiving.  I can hear the excitement in her voice every time I talk to her; it's her first time to host the family.  She is thrilled.

And I am thrilled for her.  There's only one small problem: she lives an eight hour drive away.

And that isn't such a bad drive for us old people, but her sister, brother-in-law and their three small children are also going - the little guys may not like the drive so much.

And plans have had to be modified further - Grandpa is staying home to combine because it will finally be dry enough to go by then, and Daddy has to take his own vehicle because he is scheduled at a seminar right after the weekend and will not be traveling the same direction as us.  On the one hand grandpa's staying home solved the "What are we going to do with the dogs?" problem.  On the other hand we had to get their dog to our place so he could keep them both.  Who knew having someone else cook the turkey would involve so much planning?

As of this moment we have exactly 24 hours until we pick the student up from school and head west.  There is still packing to do.  I have been making re-heatable meals for the farmer but the fridge needs some rearranging to get it all in.  I have hotel reservations made - a pool is being offered as incentive to tolerate long periods of car seat imprisonment.  We are bringing as many activities we can think of to keep the short people happy.  They have never travelled this far before; we don`t know what to expect.

Because of all of this happening, a full night`s sleep has been pretty elusive this past while.  Sometimes I can`t get to sleep, but more often than not I fall asleep at bedtime only to awaken at something like 3:34 and spend the rest of the night planning what we still need to do because my brain won`t shut off again. 

It`s not like I haven`t played the insomnia game before; it`s both frustrating and infuriating to lay there in the dark knowing how exhausted you`re going to be in the morning.  I also know that if I can somehow keep my mind blank of lists, if I can derail the train of worries, if I can keep from scrolling down to that imaginary next screen ... my chances of getting back to sleep are so much higher.  Once my mind picks up that fateful thread of thoughts though, I'm done for.

So, for those of you who know Ray Stevens`song, you will understand how in the middle of the night last night I muttered the words "Don`t look Ethel!" under my breath.

But it was too late.  I'd already been incensed.

Digging Up Bones

I was born at potato digging time.  I'm not a spring baby who celebrates with pretty flowers, or a child of hot summer days at the beach.  Neither did my childhood birthday parties involve snow activities.  My parties were held shortly after school began another year, when the grass was still green, but the trees were changing to their fall colours; the days still warm, but the evenings cool.  I vaguely remember being dissatisfied with these circumstances in the early years, but I got over it.

Autumn is my absolute favourite time of the year.  The sky is a softer, September kind of blue, the garden overflows with good things to eat, the sun kinder to my skin.  While Mother Nature dresses summer in a whole spectrum of greens, her pallet for fall is rich with so many more colours.  Russets and rusts, ochers and oranges, as dark as burgundy in one place, as dazzling as gold somewhere else: all waiting for the wind to send them to their final resting place.  One of my favourite autumn scenes is where yellow poplar leaves lay scattered across a green lawn; it always makes me think of pieces of gold strewn on an expensive carpet.

The days are more welcoming to those of us who don't like to bake in the sun.  I take advantage of breezy days to hang laundry on the line, trying to capture enough of that heavenly outdoors scent to get me through the winter.  We can still sleep with the window open a crack - I do it for the fresh air but as an extra benefit we wake to the sound of Canada Geese discussing their flight plan for the day, great wedges of them flying overhead endlessly as the days get shorter.

There is only a little garden work left to do.  The crunch of everything ripening at once is behind me now.  The cucumbers are still going crazy but I've got past my guilt of what to do with them.  There is still pasta sauce to make as the tomatoes ripen and the root vegetables have to be dug, brought in, and stored, but the timing is my choice now - my only deadline is snow, and that's a way off yet.

So I work at it slowly.  This week - the day before my birthday, actually - I decided I would tackle a row of potatoes.  It was a pleasant afternoon - warm sun and my dog withholding judgement on my language when I would spoil  my harvest by spearing them with my digging fork.  As I dug, another day many many years ago came into my memory.  It was probably my 14th birthday and being past school girl parties I had moved on to inviting a friend for a sleepover.  Although we would become very close friends I think this was the first time she had come to my house and I really wanted her to like me ... and then mom had told me to go dig potatoes for supper!  On my birthday!  How could she!

In my 14 year old mind this was beyond awful.  What would my friend think of this?  Why couldn't I be treated with some kind of respect?  It was my birthday, after all!  For me to remember this after so much time, I must have been traumatised.  All I can say now is "Good grief!  Get over yourself Jocelyn!"  But that was then, and I'm much wiser now.

The complete picture of that day was that mom had given me the day off my usual chores - to do the milking.  We had a small dairy farm and instead of more than an hour of milking I had been given fifteen minutes of digging potatoes.  A 14 year old girl full of friend angst can be a miserable thing to deal with, obviously.

But, because I was digging potatoes, the whole experience came back to me and I spent some time thinking about my mother, and motherhood, in general.  I am still learning lessons all these years later.  Like a touchstone the act of digging potatoes brought mom and me together for a moment; it was like a birthday gift from her.  To the Fates who arranged that: thank you.

And to whoever was responsible for playing a certain piece of music on the oldies channel the night of my birthday - the kind of music that a daddy would use to teach his silly, awkward daughter how to dance - thanks again.  It's funny how a little age and wisdom can help you recognize a real gift when it comes along.

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, in my quest to become a better writer I came across a tip on how best to put your reader in touch with the scene you were describing.  The advice given was to pretend you had forgotten your camera but you still wanted to save the whole image right down to the finest details. 

It's not enough to say that you walked down a dusty road.  Even though everyone has walked down a dusty road and has an experience they can identify with, if that's all you give them in your description it leaves them with a very limited window to look through, not the panorama you want them to be a part of.  You must awaken their senses and invite them to walk down that road with you.  You need to add sound - like the crickets' scratchy/sizzle sound emanating from the dry grass in the ditches.  There needs to be a physical sensation involved like the heat of the afternoon sun on the back of your neck, and that one fly that just won't leave you alone, repeatedly buzzing in close to your face, trying to land on your nose.

You need to introduce the wider scene - like how only the later season flowers are still blooming - the goldenrod and the tiny purple asters at the road's edge.  And wider still ... the school bus in the distance returning the neighbour's kids home or the cattle, also being tormented by flies, taking to a mini stampede across their pasture, thundering to a halt at the gate, stopping to stare at the human walking past.  Then, to draw the reader's attention back to their place in the story, to describe how puffs of dust lift from the road's surface each time a shoe hits the ground. 

The bottom line is that you're still only talking about walking down a dusty road, but now the reader feels that he or she is there with you.

The example given in this writer's help book was an amazing description of - believe it or not - a ham sandwich.  An item as mundane as a ham sandwich and yet so masterfully described that I could taste it as I read, and I absolutely remember it still - the crusty home made loaf, the butter spread lavishly right to edges of the bread, the thick slices of home cured ham, the swipe of Dijon mustard across the meat before the top slice was put in place, the large glass of cold milk it was served with.  My mouth literally watered for just even one bite of this treat - and I don't even like Dijon mustard! 

I've never forgotten the lesson.  Not that I have the talent to do such an amazing job, but it gives me something to aim for.  Even when I don't have any way of writing it down I will give myself an assignment to do justice to some scene I come across.  These days everyone has a camera with them all the time, but a quick click just isn't capable of the texture and depth of what the human eye can see.

I am reminded of a scene one morning on my drive to work that is still frozen in my memory because I took the time soak it in - it was too exquisite to lose and I really didn't have a camera with me at the time.

It was an early summer morning.  The night had been cool enough to condense the moist evening air into mist.  As happens sometimes this mist had sunk into the hollows of the landscape and formed shallow, filmy layers that hung just above the grass.  This phenomenon only lasts until the sun rises high enough to burn it off; the magic is fleeting.

My route had taken me past several low spots where these magical clouds hung suspended by invisible wires, not connected to the sky, not quite touching the ground.  There was one place where I had actually driven through it - the defining line between visibility and invisibility as flat and straight as if someone had uses a ruler to draw it: my windshield was above it, the hood of my car was obscured.  I felt like I was floating.

As other-worldly as that sensation was, the scene that awaited me at the corner was breath-taking.  With the rising sun as a backdrop, at least twenty colours of pink/orange/yellow flowed like liquid through green branches and spread their light across an expanse of white mist.  This, by itself, would have been a jewel of a scene, but dotted throughout the pool of mist rose the heads and shoulders of several cattle - suspended, ungrounded, magical - beasts with no bodies.  I felt blessed that Mother Nature had given me this special gift for being at the right place at the right time.  Because I committed it to memory, I still do.

This has been a very convoluted lead in to what inspired me to write today, but I do have a direction I'm heading with this.  I've been trying all week to find the words that would describe what our world looks like with the smoke from distant ( like a thousand miles distant) wildfires filling our air. 

It isn't the smell of smoke - although we can smell it.  It isn't so much the irritated throats and sore eyes that the weather advisories warn us of - although we can certainly feel these things too.  It isn't the spectacular sunsets we get as the last of the sun's rays burn through a dense layer of smoke and turn the western sky vibrant shades of ochre and burnt sienna - but man!  are they ever something to behold.

The part that is so different, so strange, so eerie is the colour of the light, and believe it or not, the colour of our shadows.  Did you know that a blood-red sun throws a sepia shadow?  I have been followed all week by a tarnished, yellow/brown shadow.  Trees at the horizon have faded back into a  gunmetal blue haze, the sun has been an angry red disc in the sky, and all our shadows have had jaundice.  The word 'surreal' comes to mind, but not in a pleasant way.

Tonight there is finally rain.  This is nice for us but a godsend for those who have been battling the fires, because of course, while the smoke made our world weird, it made theirs deadly.  I will leave it up to them to describe what that feels like.

Prepared For Anything

I spent this morning making many many trips up and down my basement stairs doing a job that rates right up there with scrubbing down bathrooms on my 'things I hate to do' list.  The time had absolutely come to defrost and wash down the deep freeze - the butcher had just called and asked how I wanted the pork we had ordered cut up.  It is only going to be a matter of days and I will need to put it away ... in a deep freeze ... which until mid morning was more of a self-contained iceberg that a food storage facility.  I may as well confess just how diligent I am at this job - I found packages of freezer burnt rhubarb marked 2013 at the very back.  And some other stuff that I couldn't quite figure out - possibly a solid clump of perogies?  Even the dog took one sniff and decided it was inedible.

It wasn't all garbage though, there was lots of food that I stacked carefully back in once the glacier had been removed.  Besides the meat we buy in bulk, the extra loaves of bread, the packages of homemade pasta sauce and apple pie filler, there were 25 pints of corn and other veggies from this year's garden.  The bottom two shelves have been freed up for the pork, although there will have to be some rearranging of the bigger chest freezer to get it all in.

That's right, we have two freezers.  Sadly for me this other one also harbours an iceberg of its own, but that's another day's project.

And no, we're not over-the-top "preppers" who stockpile for Armagedon or other end-of-days scenarios.  We are pretty much normal, rural, common sense people who like to be self sufficient.  There's a lot of us out here in the country.  In the world we live in it's nothing unusual to have a lot of food at the ready.  In my world I can't just call up for take out at 5:30; I live 100 miles from the closest Pizza Hut.  Being self reliant is just a way of life for us.

I've been watching the news coverage for Hurricane Irma and it's made me wonder about how it would be to live in the path of such potential devastation.  Year after year, hurricane season after hurricane season - but then I wonder about the folks in California waiting for their next big earthquake too.  Somehow blizzards never seem so bad.

What does make me stop and think though, is watching the stores being over run with panicked people looking for supplies at the last minute to be able to survive the coming trauma.  Why do they need last minute lumber to board up their windows?  Why wouldn't they have permanent covers ready to go?  Why are they trying to hunt down the last bottle of water at the eleventh hour - Irma has been making news for a week.  All of a sudden they need bread and peanut butter - whose house doesn't have bread and peanut butter?  And there seems to be a real run on flashlights - again - really?  Who doesn't have these things as a matter of regular household items? 

The mile long line ups for gas just blow my mind.  In the winter here we just go by the standard rule to keep the tank full all the time; it only makes sense to treat their bad weather season with the same precaution.

I guess it just boils down to we live in different worlds.  Theirs is the fast-paced, modern, every-convenience-at-your-fingertips world and we occupy a place in space and time where we know we have to take care of ourselves.  I'm not saying we don't shop at supermarkets because we do.  I buy bread, but I can make it.  I make cakes and pies and cookies from scratch because they just taste better, not because there's no alternative.  We have a generator in case we ever have to deal without power for a while.  It wouldn't be at our usual comfort level, but I am certain we could survive on our own for quite some time without a run to town for peanut butter.

It isn't my intention for these observations to sound like a sermon.  I honestly don't know how I would manage if I were in Florida at the moment because I have no experience of Cat 5 storm or a 12 foot storm surge; watching it on TV is plenty close enough for me. 

I wish all the people dealing with Hurricane Irma ... and Jose ... and who knows what comes next ... all the best.  Let them be safe.  Let them not lose everything.  Let them help each other back on their feet. 

Happy Harvesting

I got a bit of a lecture this morning. 

There we were, breakfast done and we lingered over our morning coffee contemplating what we were going to be doing today.  Being the high-tech wonder that I am I had just checked the weather app on my phone (instead of getting up and walking over to the deck door and stick my nose outside to check the temperature).  It was already too hot for me.  I commenced grumbling.

Instantly I was chastised for complaining about hot, sunny weather during harvest.  I suppose I should have known better, but it's been a few years since we actually had a harvest of our own to worry about so my frame of mind was not in harvest mode.  He, on the other hand, has spent the past week working for a neighbour; he is in full-blown Farmer-itis. 

"This is the best combining weather we could ask for!"

"Everything is ripening to perfection!"

And, scrolling through the 14 day forecast on his phone "There's not a drop of rain in sight for two weeks.  We couldn't ask for better than that!"

It hadn't been the rain, or lack of it, that had been on my mind.  It was all those days of temperatures over 30.  I really don't do heat well.

I get it though; hot and dry is good.  Let the farmers get their crops off.  A single rain can degrade a crop  tens of thousands of dollars, and a wind can shatter seed pods and throw the seeds on the ground - a waste for this year and a curse for next year.  By this time of the year the days are getting shorter all the time; a farmer doesn't want cool, dewy nights either because it takes half the day to get the crop back to dry again. 

The bottom line is people like me just need to keep our heat disapproval to a minimum until the crop is in the bin.  It can't happen fast enough to suit me.

I have a whole list of things I need to get done.  There is a little bit of grass to mow.  There is garden to clean up, and there is always weeding to do.  There are strawberries to pick, potatoes to dig, corn to bring in for supper, and although I have no idea what to do with them anymore, there are tons of cucumbers out there.  They love the hot weather.

The trouble is none of these jobs can be done in the shade.  I was so desperate for something to do inside yesterday I even cleaned out my bowls/plastics cupboards, and the notion that I should tackle my deepfreeze next keeps crossing my mind.  My subconscious is at war over this - my emotional side screams "But you hate that job!" while my practical side points out that "At least it would a cool place to hang out for an afternoon."  So far my sheer laziness has saved me, but their constant bickering is really starting to get on my nerves.

The dog really really really wants to go for a walk but he's crazy.  He's a Husky/German Shepherd cross and has a hair coat that safely gets him through Canadian winters - 30 degree summer days are worse for him that they are for me.  I can just see me having to carry the lunk back home when he keels over from heat exhaustion.  Well actually, he would probably do fine: I'm just worried that if I keeled over from heat exhaustion he wouldn't bother carrying me home.  So just to be on the safe side, we're not going for a walk until it's much cooler outside.  Like maybe mid September.

This may call for a trip to the library for something to read, or maybe I will checkout what Netflix has to offer.  Or maybe I will Google BBQ recipes - I have no desire to heat up the inside of my house to feed this re-awakened farmer of mine.  I do hope that they have a clear run and the crop comes off in peak condition ... the faster the better.

HOME BASE

Some of the advertisements for Ancestry.com really blow my mind.  The ones about using DNA to discover where on the planet your genetics originated are one thing, and maybe everyone should have a dose of reality in their ethnicity; it might do the world some good.

It's the other ads, the ones of folks saying that they discovered relatives they never knew they had - people only one or two generations away from their own.  I ask you; how is that even possible?  How can families be so loosely associated that they have lost knowledge of each other in such a short period of time? I can't imagine not knowing all my family connections going back for multiple generations - that's what families do.  That's what families are.

But then, maybe I've just had the good fortune to be included in some pretty stellar families and have set my 'family-hood' bar higher than most.

Some families have never organized a family reunion; each branch of the family tree spreading in separate directions through laziness or lack of interest.  They are the ones who need Ancestry.com to track down relatives.

Other families throw everything they have into getting everyone together; a massive undertaking and to be admired for the work and commitment done by the organizing committee.  It's common at these affairs for the different family branches wear colour coded t-shirts so folks can try to keep semi-strangers sorted.

And then there's the people who do it every year with the motto of whoever can make it, come on down!  It's low key, laidback, and lovely.  These people know everyone by first names, are excited to meet new babies, have all the little cousins play together, and sit around a campfire talking of everything from jobs, trips, plans, ailments, recipes, and hobbies, picking up the threads of conversations started around last year's fire as if they happened yesterday. 

There are also two kinds of family building.  To some people 'family' is an exclusive term.  They see the world in terms of 'them' and 'us', drawing a dividing line between who they are, and everyone else who isn't quite so lucky.  I'm not saying that this approach is wrong, but my observation is that it is probably pretty lonely.

The other extreme is a family founded on inclusiveness.  This is my experience, and there is no way any of the DNA search companies would be able to figure us out.

The standard joke about a family reunion not being a good place to look for future spouses hardly holds water when there are kids from second marriages and cousins of step grand children mixed in with the regulars, all of them welcomed as full family with no reservation.  In-laws, out-laws, second marriages, children from previous relationships ... it's all the same to us.  Come in, sit down, and have something to eat!

This year's gathering was special, being held at the family's home base - the original family farm now held by a fourth generation.   Although the landscape of the yard has changed over the years it still holds enough landmarks to anchor memories of our younger selves.  And right around the corner we gathered Sunday morning in the church (because that's the kind of thing this family does) and took part in a lay service (because, again, that is what this family does).  In reflection on the reading about faith and love the brother who spoke gave credit for his family's faith and capacity for love to his parents' example. I've been thinking a lot about that while I worked on what I wanted to write today.

I absolutely agree that these people were good people and that they showed love and faith in their everyday lives, but it seems to me that the focus is too narrow if we single out their generation alone.  The big picture is that obviously these two good people didn't appear out of a vacuum.  They came from good people just as surely as they brought forth more good people.  We are all welcoming and inclusive and kind, partly because of the example set for us, but also because it is just in us to be welcoming and inclusive and kind.  We are all, singly, an example of the whole.  It connects us much more profoundly than DNA.

We also have a tendency to have fun, eat too much, laugh a lot, cuddle babies, problem solve, tell stories, play games, and give each other  a hard time.  Pretty normal family stuff in my world.

What I Did On My Summer Holidays ....

Some things just stay with a person for life. 

I was the nerdy kid who liked school.  I liked learning.  I liked books.  I don't recall having any problem with lunchbox meals.  And, since we only lived two miles from town, the bus ride was never much of a sacrifice of precious time either.

By this time of the year, while other students were dreading the end of August, I was merrily writing my name on all my new school supplies, sniffing the freshness of the unblemished notebooks, and wondering which desk I would be given for the coming year.  On the Nerd-O-Nomiter I think this puts me at about a 9.6 out of 10.

Not that I wasn't also plagued with back-to-school angst; I had plenty of that too.  We were a big family with a smaller income - other kids would have whole new wardrobes to show off whereas I would just have one or two new things.  And fear of the unknown played a role in my anxiety - a new locker code to remember, new teachers to meet, and wishing that I could just stay with arithmetic because the word 'algebra' sounded terrifying.  Above all this, though, was my concern over what I would have to report in one of the first assignments we would be given ... an essay on what we had done during our summer holidays.

I realize now that this was merely the simplest way to gauge the student's writing/expression skills while learning a little bit about them, but from my perspective I felt more like a reporter - more often than not a reporter without a story to tell.  Other kids went places and did things I could only dream of (the year of Canada's Centennial was especially painful for me - how could I compete with a trip to Montreal?)  My poor, pathetic, puny essay would be about hiking out to the birch tree slough, riding my bike to my uncle's house, finding kittens in the loft, putting pennies on the railroad tracks to get squished, picking wild strawberries, sleepovers at both Grandmas' houses and climbing sweet-smelling bale stacks.  It was hardly worth putting down on paper.  All the teacher was going to know about me was that my life was so boring!

This self assessment of how I spend my summers has followed me through life, though.  This time of the year there is a subtle shift in the atmosphere that tells us summer is done.  The grass is till green, the garden is producing like mad, the pool and the ice cream place are still open, but with the crickets chirping in the ditches and the hummingbirds feeding madly before they leave for Mexico summer's wain quietly seeps into our very bones.  In the midst of harvesting crops and making pickles my mind turns to what my essay would say about this summer should someone ask me to write one.

2017's essay would be a doozy.

For starters I'm on the committee that planned and presented our community's Canada 150 celebration this July 1st.  From the pancake breakfast to the pig roast to the fireworks; it takes months of planning to make one day a success.  It still makes me tired (and proud) to think about what we accomplished.

From there I had a couple weeks to catch up on my yard and garden work before my next summer project landed on my doorstep - literally.  Two little grandsons came to stay with us while their parents got settled in their new house.  In the past month we have squeezed in numerous dinosaur hunts, pea picking and shelling lessons, wild flower bouquet quests, getting the quad stuck in the mud with grandpa, water fights with their cousins, and the art of snitching new potatoes without disturbing the plant.  Add to that a family picnic/train ride/museum day, a camping sleepover at their cousins' place, and topping it all off with a family reunion before their parents took them home and it's safe to say at 61 years old I have just had the busiest summer of my life.

2017 isn't over yet - we still have another summer to aim for.  Plans are now in the works for us to be in Australia to visit another set of grandchildren on their summer holidays.  Two essays in six months!  The nerd in me rejoices!

GARDENING 101

You could probably say I've been a gardener all my life.  That's not to say I've been a good gardener all my life, or even a willing gardener all my life, but I that I have gardening memories back as far back as I can remember anything - that much is true.

I remember helping mom plant the garden - I wonder whose idea that was?  Having been a mom myself I know that there are some jobs that are easier done without the help of a small child and planting tiny seeds would be one of them.  All the same, I recall feeling that I was helping to do an important job - and believe me, with a family of seven kids, growing a big garden is very important. 

I remember her explaining how to make the rows, how to take into consideration the size of the seed when covering them with dirt, how to deal with weightless seeds on a windy day, and how all seeds had to be pressed into the soil so they could be securely in where they could access moisture for germination.  It always seemed mean to me that I should pack them so hard and still expect them to make it back out of the earth, but of course she was right and I was wrong.  She was a fountain of gardening knowledge and thankfully I had enough brains to listen and learn.

I got the basics from mom, and judging from the rest of the family's interest in growing things, I would say that I came by my desire to garden through my very DNA.  That's not to say that I haven't had some painfully embarrassing failures over the years, but every season has taught me something and my gardening knowledge continues to expand.  It's not only that though; gardening ties me to the earth ,and the time I spend working with the plants and in the soil is a time of meditation and memories of the people who have shared both their knowledge and their plants with me.  The veggies might be good for my body, but the experience is good for my soul.

I don't know where the time has gone but I find myself in my sixth decade and have lived in the same place now for 35 years.  That kind of time lapse and permanence has given me what it takes to build a park-like yard with substantial gardens - both vegetable and flower.  I will never be 'done' because as time goes by I am inspired by others' ideas or my own imagination.  Just this past year we have begun to establish an orchard as well, and maybe a bit of a market garden.  Heaven knows we will never be able to eat all the asparagus, strawberries, raspberries, and saskatoons we have growing out there ourselves.  We will decide what to do at a later date - meanwhile it's just fun to watch it all grow.

It's funny how a person is unaware of just how much they know on any given subject until they are asked to pass their knowledge on.  I got a call from my baby sister (she's ten years younger than me - you do the math, but she'll always be the 'baby' sister); she had some gardening questions.

While we do have the same parents, our growing up experience was different: my entire childhood was on the farm with the big garden but hers only started there, she grew up a town kid.  And then she married a guy whose job took them to a city where yard space was more important than garden space.  Until their son bought an acreage the idea of a garden wasn't even a thing ... but with this opportunity those gardening genetics had awakened - ground has been tilled, rows have been planted.

She had a list of things she needed to know ... were gardening gloves a good idea?  (YES!)  And what was 'hilling' potatoes?  Why did one do it, and how was it done?  On the one hand how could anyone not know this?  On the other hand, I guess potato hilling doesn't come up in casual conversation all that much. 

A subsequent phone call thanked me for the tip on garden gloves and while we were talking she marvelled about how the carrot seeds must have blown or washed all over the garden because she had carrots everywhere.  I told her to rub the leaves of one of her wayward carrots together to see if they didn't smell a lot like dill - another mystery solved.  It came in handy as they had wanted to make pickles and had forgotten to plant any themselves.

It was a few nights later that we talked again and I smiled at what she said.  I have written from time to time about my musings while I garden - how my time weeding flower beds or picking peas and beans is often spent in the happy, comfortable company of people important in my life even though I am all alone.  It was obvious from her comments that she had planted vegetable seeds true enough, and wanted to harvest good things to eat, but she had also been hoping for her own private crop of memories too ... and her first garden was already bearing this kind of fruit.

THE HEAT IS ON ...

The month of June has been a busy one around here with everyone working flat out to put together a celebration worthy of Canada's 150th birthday.  I am most proud to say on behalf of the Tourism Board who planned it, the volunteers who stepped up and helped out, and the folks who came out to play slow pitch, those who put an entry in the parade, the gals who provided the sparkle Canadian tattoos for everyone to wear with pride, everyone who supported the Lion's club at the dunk tank - especially the volunteers who were dunked - and the firemen who managed the fireworks display, the day came together as resounding success!  And from the pancake breakfast in the morning, the concession stand all day long, the pig roast for supper, the birthday cake and ice cream and the beer garden to end off the day no one should have gone home hungry either.  It was a good day.

July 2nd I, for one, just laid low.  It was so nice to not have to go anywhere or do anything for the first time in weeks that my biggest effort of the day was spent making the evening meal.  The day ended off with neighbours dropping in for a beer - the perfect start to 'real summer'.

Mother Nature seems to have realized that 'real summer' is here too; the temperature has climbed noticeable in the past two days.  The crops will really start to jump in development with the heat - especially corn.  Pretty sure if a person had the time you could sit and watch it grow hour to hour as long as there is sufficient moisture to fuel it.

Different parts of the prairies have had varied amounts of rainfall so far this year.  Even just an hour's drive away makes a difference.  Our daughter worries that her garden won't survive and yet mine should be okay if we don't get another rain for a while. 

With July here we prairie dwellers get pretty antsy about the weather.  The weather forecasters are always aiming to please urbanites who want hot temperatures and beach weather but farmers look for more moderate temperatures and a regular schedule of rainfall.  Those of us with crops and gardens are leery about really hot days - not only because of the stress it puts on the plants and how much it evaporates what water there is, but because big heat has the potential to brew up big storms with big winds and big hail.  A storm might be an hour long inconvenience for holiday goers at the lake but for a farmer it can be a season ender.  It makes us a bunch of sky watchers.

I'm not the kind of person who loves the heat at the best of times so when the temperature popped up into the 30's I retreated inside.  We don't have air conditioning but if we keep the windows open all night and close them first thing in the morning the house stays pretty cool all day.  Yesterday I picked the strawberries early in the morning and spent the afternoon inside making jam.  I had "water the flowers on the deck" on my list of things to do at some point during the day but as I was doing the dishes I noticed that some of them were starting to keel over in the heat.  How ironic that it was the Forget-me-nots who were in the worst shape!  I must make sure that it doesn't happen again.

Next on my list for the summer is getting ready for visiting grandsons at mid month.  I hope the strawberries are still producing for them - Grandma and Grandpa want to show them all the fun things that happen on the farm that their mommy grew up on.  The other night when we were outside trying to catch a glimpse of the Northern Lights through the clouds we were treated to lightning bugs dancing around in the dark instead.  How many other treasures have I forgotten we have since our own kids are grown and gone?  I have less than two weeks to put a list of "things to do" together!

                                              CANADA'S BIG 1-5-0

We are a people who like to mark milestones.  From the birth of a baby onward we count first the days, the weeks, and then the months until the first year is feted by poking a candle in a cake and singing a song in celebration.  Our years tick by in a succession of such celebrations while we grow and learn and mature.  Time flies by.

As adults we focus less on the individual years and more on measuring by decade. Our friends and family begin to make a big deal out of when we reach "the big 4-0".  And then "the big 5-0".  And then, barely the blink of an eye later, "the big 6-0" and "the big 7-0" too.  By this time the field of competition is starting to thin out; these big days become even more note-worthy.  Before we know it the milestone of 100 years has been achieved and some reporter is sticking a microphone in our face and asking us how we've made it this far.  Who would have thought it was even possible when we uttered our first cry a century ago?

One hundred years is a significant thing when measuring a human lifespan, but in world history it's nothing.  Even in recorded history it barely counts as a blip.  If you compare one measly century with the age of such things as Aztec ruins, Egyptian pyramids, or the mystery that is Stonehenge our time as a country is puny and of no consequence.

And yet, here we are, celebrating our country's birthday: Canada's big 1-5-0.  And puny as that number is, this a big deal and one deserving of celebration.

Countries aren't made - they form.  They coalesce out of the common needs and aspirations of the people who populate the land.  Whether it be the primitive cave-dwellers of the past or the sophisticated 21st centurions we think of ourselves as, our safety, security, and prosperity are still the common focus that bring us together.  The specific threats and currencies have evolved over time but our very nature is wired to understand that there is strength in numbers, power in diversity, and richness in culture when we work and live together in peace.  This is as true now as it always has been - we band together under common goals to make all of our lives richer.

What is different about Canada and a handful of other countries is that we have an actual birth certificate.  We were "born" on July 1st 1867: we know how old we are.  Our formation was not like that of the ancient nations of Europe and Asia, done over millennia.  But,our Fathers of Confederation did take into consideration all the lessons of world history and tried their best to prepare a path into the future with this new experiment of Canada and we formed our wonderful country out of our desire for strength and unity and the wisdom to follow their leadership.

To be sure we are a work in progress; we have made mistakes but we have gotten some things right too.  As nations go we are just barely cutting our baby teeth but we are healthy and strong and other nations look up to us.  As we step into the future we are poised for a leadership role.

Typically when we observe a birthday it tends to be a look back at the journey that has brought us to this point, but as we sing Oh Canada in celebration this year and take in the fireworks at the end of this day it seems like the perfect time in history to turn our attention and look in the other direction - toward the future.  Let this be a celebration of where we are headed as Canadians.

                                 HAPPY CANADA DAY !