Half Soled Boots

Luckily it's digital.

2012-02-28T20:38:00.000-08:00

I took a couple of photos yesterday, so today I popped my memory card into the computer to view them. I had taken 8 or 9 pictures, but I saw "229 files found".

What the heck?

Well, there were 9 photos I recognised, and 220 I didn't recognise. Here is a random sampling of the latter:

I love this kid.

Missed the Saturday dance

2012-02-21T00:06:00.000-08:00

Don't really post much anymore.

I was going to do a whole thing where I changed all the lyrics and made it funny and cute, but I couldn't think of a computer-y rhyme for "-ore", so I bailed.

I watched "The Exorcist" the other night. It's an odd choice for me - I don't like horror in general. But it was coming on "Encore Avenue", which is commercial free, and I thought "This movie is a huge part of our culture - maybe I should give it a look."

It was interesting - quite rude actually. Half the horror is just the disgusting things that demon does and says while inhabiting the body of this little girl. I was so worried about it that I Googled Linda Blair to check how old she was when she was asked to say those things. She was 12, but it turns out a grownup said the really bad lines and they just voice-overed it. So that's good.

But any rate, the movie wasn't as scary as I had expected, probably because I turned the volume down to almost nil, and looked away during the worst bits. GREAT ending though.

I kept saying "Aw, poor kid" for the entire two hours.

Knitting a lot but nothing I can show you.

I'm going on a hike tomorrow morning, early...plans are to leave at 7:00 AM. I'll try to remember to bring the camera so I can show you the good bits.

You're wonderful, and marvellous, and special.

2012-02-13T19:35:00.000-08:00

You people are the loveliest! Thanks to you, my daughters both met their fundraising goals in ONE day! Thank you so, so much. They just couldn't believe you'd do that for them. They were so amazed and happy, they were inspired to spend this past Saturday at a local gourmet shop, owned by a friend, with pamphlets and a donation jar. Apparently my youngest daughter, 7 years old, was walking up to people, as bold as brass, and saying "Hi there! Do you know that the Newfoundland Pine Marten needs our help?" I wasn't there but I hear it was a marvel.

And, they raised another $80!

So, thank you all again for your wonderful gifts. The kids are watching the mail for their "Planet Protector" badges, all because of you.

XO

Does anyone save UGLY animals?

2012-02-09T00:46:00.000-08:00

My daughters are really into fundraising. Last week a man came to our door, introduced himself by telling me his name and that he was homeless, and asked if we had any bottles he could have. We loaded him up, and as he left, my daughter, in considerable distress at the thought of him out in the cold all day and all night, said "I'm going to save up and buy him a house." She has $4.97 so far.

At the moment, they are also raising money on behalf of Earth Rangers and their "Bring Back the Wild" campaign to benefit the Nature Conservancy of Canada. They have chosen for their funds raised to go toward habitat preservation for the Newfoundland Pine Marten. They can be very creative in their efforts - in the past they have sold brownies from a stand at the bottom of the driveway (proceeds to the SPCA), they have sold paintings they themselves made (proceeds to themselves), and they have done bottle drives (SPCA, again). This Saturday, we are off to my friend's gourmet food store, where the girls are going to dress up and hawk some homemade cookies in little cello bags: all profits to the Newfoundland Pine Marten via Earth Rangers.

It's a cute little program, where the child can set up a webpage of their own, featuring a little cartoon avatar they can customise, with a fundraising meter to show how close they are to their goal (the oldest has set a goal of $75, and the youngest wanted to go for $500 but upon reflection she set a goal of $75 as well -- she says didn't want to give TOO much to the animals: she'd rather give to humans. Our homeless friend Tom, for example.).

But they aren't doing too well, so far, and since both Tom and the Pine Marten are facing habitat loss, I thought I'd direct you to their fundraising pages in case you wanted to throw $5 their way. They'd be thrilled...so far they each have $10, donated anonymously by their mother. (Keep that on the down-low.)

My oldest daughter's page is here, and my youngest daughter is here.

Thanks in advance!

Lost Post

2012-02-08T00:02:00.000-08:00

Saying that title in my head, I alternate between "Lawst Pawst" and "Loast Poast".

I just found this document in the cobwebbed shelves at the back of my laptop. (Virtual cobwebs, virtual shelves.) I apparently wrote it in March of 2010, which makes it nearly two years old. (I'm so desperate for content these days, I am posting two-year-old opinion pieces.)

***

I’ve always been one of Those mothers: the ones who took Women’s Studies in university, read “The Beauty Myth”, and took back the night, and then have a family of daughters who aren’t allowed to have Barbies.

Those Mothers, in case you haven’t met us personally, have also been known to ban Disney (harmful female role models) and use our bodies to block the magazine racks at the grocery checkouts so our cart-riding children can’t see this month’s Cosmo headline. (10 New Ways to Please a Man in Bed.)

Raising girls this way isn’t easy, but the payoff is that my oldest daughter, 8 years old, still loves her Playmobil and stuffed animals, and plays with her hobby horse every day. Other children her age have moved on to (and, in some cases, past) the eye-rolling, hair-tossing, boy-kissing, lip-gloss sucking world of Hannah Montana......while Charlotte is still a child.

Last week my husband called the kids from the family room to tell them Presto! was on TV – a Pixar short about a stage magician, his magic top hat, and the hungry rabbit inside it. It’s a hilarious film with a lot of visual laughs, and it can be hard to find, so the girls came running to see it. I heard Ian say to them, “They put Presto! on before Snow White.”

“Snow White?!” my daughter exclaimed, “Did you tape it for us?”

Ian said “Uh, yes, I did,” and glanced over to the doorway, where I was standing glaring at him (in an attractive, non-confrontational way, of course).

“Snow White, huh?” I said with my mouth, while my brain was yelling it’s violent! It’s scary! It victimises women, and vilifies them all at the same time! Snow White is a passive and gullible role model who needs to be rescued! All Disney movies encourage women to languish prettily while waiting patiently for a man to save them!

(See? Total abdication of female power.)

I looked over at my children, who were excited and happy, laughing at the Presto! rabbit's antics and settling in to the couch with blankets, getting ready to watch Snow White. My husband was sitting with them, remote in hand, saying “You guys are going to like the seven dwarves, they’re so funny.”

I realised something at that moment, while I was working up the courage to say yet another “No” to a misogynistic, commercialised mega-corporation, and force my family to turn off the TV.

My children have two parents.

Two parents.

I walked down the hall towards the kitchen, thinking. Maybe it’s okay, having laid groundwork – important groundwork, I feel – to let their Dad show them Snow White. Maybe it’ll be all right if he takes this other direction: a direction that I’ve never wanted to go.

As I plugged in the popcorn maker I thought, I can worry about the big issues – the undermining of the female role in our society, the future of my daughters’ self-esteem – tomorrow. Right now, their Dad can show them this classic Disney film, with a story they’ve read in books anyway, and they can all have a laugh at Dopey together.

Because successful parenting, at its most fundamental, is about balance. We’ve all heard “everything in moderation”, and it applies just as much to how we nourish our children’s minds and emotions, as it does to how we nourish their bodies. It’s just as dangerous to keep my children 100% sugar-free, as it would be to only feed them white bread and Nutella: there’s a ditch on both sides of this road.

My husband and I have different roles in this parenting adventure, just as we do in this marriage. And the best way to equip our daughters for the potholes ahead is to show them that there is a left and right, a feminine and masculine, a yin and a yang to everything. To help them to know how to steer around the obstacles of adolescence and adulthood without hugging one side of the track too closely, they need to see the give and take of different people compromising while loving each other.

I walked back to the family room, popcorn in hand, listening to my family laughing together. It’s been a long time since I watched television at all – even longer since I saw a Disney Princess movie. That evening I didn’t watch Snow White: I watched my children see something fun and funny, that they hadn’t seen before. I watched my daughters laugh at the dwarves and frown at the witch. I watched them have a wonderful time with their Mom and Dad.

And I’m pretty sure they’ll be okay.

Brr. And Ooooh!

2012-02-05T08:52:00.001-08:00

I have a dog, but I don't often walk him.

Actually, that was part of the reason we got a Sheltie - because I read a lot of books which said that Shelties are a good choice for an older person or a sedentary person, because they can adapt to the amount of exercise their owners usually get. A Jack Russell, just to name an example, can't.

Hi buddy!

Recently I decided to start walking my dog, though, whether he requires it or not, because....well, it turns out MY species, the rare and dangerous shanissimus naturalis, needs more exercise than canis lupis familiaris.

And, it being January, my hands got cold.

"Mittens!" I cried. "My kingdom for mittens!"

"Stash diving", as people call it, is fun when you have been buying yarn for 8 years and using, relatively speaking, hardly any of it.

The green is Kauni Effektgarn, which changes colour from yellow to green and back again, slowly. The white is Lanett Superwash, left over from a baby sweater from yonks ago.

My thumb is not, in reality, as big as this photo makes it look.

It's just a made-up pattern - ribbing for 4 inches or so, with a few cable twists at the wrist for tightness, and then starting the colourwork, which adds a lot of warmth.

3 mm needles, which in retrospect are a little too big. The fabric should be tighter. Next time I'll do 2.25 mm and add a few extra stitches.

The two mittens are a little different from each other - I knit the dark green one first, and found the wrist too loose, so changed it up a bit for the yellow one.

And this weird, long photo is just to show the colour progression, but you can't see it anyway with that terrible light. (It's January.) Due to the phenomenon of perspective, the green looks huge and the yellow tiny, but that's just an illusion.

Now my hands are a lot warmer. And my dog is tired.

Philosophy 401 - Advanced Childrearing.

2012-02-03T11:20:00.000-08:00

Unschooling from Luke Bessey on Vimeo.

Down With Synthetics!!

2012-01-27T14:41:00.000-08:00

For years I've been lauding the merits of natural fibre. I remember in the early 1990s, trying to find yardage for sewing that had no acrylic, polyester, nylon, and so on.

And NOW look what they've discovered.

Billions of fleece items made from recycled pop bottles don't look quite so good now, huh? It turns out you can run from plastic, but you can't hide. When are they going to just stop making this stuff? The day after Never, I'm thinking. And my poor children, and yours, are going to have to deal with the toxic shit we just keep buying, wearing, and throwing away.

And cancer? I bet cancer is laughing its head off right now.

Earth Day is coming up. It's a good time to make, or renew, a commitment to sustainable, eco-friendly clothing. You should consider it -- for the health of your family, your body, your home and the planet...more or less in that order.

Oh -- sorry 'bout that.

2012-01-20T19:36:00.002-08:00

I sort of forgot about the internet. This was me last night, while washing dishes: "Wha--? Oh my goodness! I have a blog!" Oopsie.

I haven't talked much about Christmas this year - except to laud Amazon.ca gift cards - but here is a little sample of Yule 2011.

My seven year old set up her doll for a nice nap. Looking at this baby's "bottle", and when I remark that my daughter considered Rescue Remedy a matter of course for her baby's nap, it becomes obvious that I had high-needs children.

I was in Kaboodles a week before Christmas, spotted these little crank-driven music boxes, and threw them in with the rest of my purchases, not realizing they were $9 each. I wouldn't have bought them if I had looked closely (I thought "8.99" said "3.99"), so I'm glad I didn't look closely...they sound so beautiful and they were right up at the top of my children's favourite presents this year. The kids have spent hours - literally, hours - lying on the floor holding these things in two hands, staring into space and spinning the cranks to listen to the songs.

Have a listen! (The "Nutcracker Suite" is the property of the younger child, and so has suffered more abuse...spinning backwards, etc...and you can hear it.)

And this was my second-favourite present of the whole year. Haflingers! I've been wanting them for two years, and Mr. HalfSoledBoots stepped up. Now that I have worn them for three weeks, I will never - no, sir, I will never ever - wear any other brand of slippers.

Lastly - because I know you were wondering - here is my favourite, most favouritest present of all...from my sister Gwen.

As to what was inside...

Who cares?

Ever In Your Favour

2012-01-07T18:27:00.000-08:00

I love it when I get Amazon gift cards for Christmas. I always have a huge wish list going, and there's nothing quite so satisfying as clicking "Add to Cart". This year, I ended up with $100 at Amazon. Fun! So I spent Christmas afternoon intermittently basting and browsing.

I managed to come in wondrous close - $99.63 in total, with two knitting books, a DVD, and a hardcover box set of The Hunger Games trilogy.

I haven't watched the DVD yet, the knitting books can wait...but I read the whole Hunger Games back to back in two and a half days.

WOW.

First off, let me admit that I had never heard of this series until I saw the trailer for the upcoming movie. I noticed the little line "Based on the book by Suzanne Collins". Well, I thought, I have to watch it, and before I can watch it I have to read it.

I didn't know anything about the story when I ordered the set, aside from what I'd seen on the movie trailer, but if the reviews were anything to go by, it would be amazing.

This trilogy, being in the young adult genre, does come across as a little juvenile for an adult reader. But, this translates into a fast-paced, fun read, rather than a boring or babyfied story. The plot is wonderfully handled - the central conflict IS definitely a conflict. I had no idea how the emotional storyline of the characters would play out. So often in a young adult book, the characters are too black and white - the author doesn't balance the sympathy and antipathy, heavily directing the reader toward one obvious outcome, which you root for, pretty much from page one.

Another thing I loved was that Collins doesn't go for the Harry Potter effect, wherein the teenage hero defies the rules, flouts boundaries, sneaks around the adults, and in the end is pretty much proved right - the adult mentors of the child end up wiping their brows, sighing with relief, shaking the child's hand and saying "Thank goodness you were here! Imagine what would have happened if WE were in charge!" Which device, being an adult, I detest.

-----SPOILERS------

Katniss Everdeen, the main character in this series, is not a rule-follower at all but, unlike Harry, her defiance of convention (and boundaries, and adult rules) brings about serious consequences and does not result in her saving the day. In fact, most of the time, she is a pawn in the political struggle between adults who allow her to believe that she is important and powerful...when she discovers their manipulation of her, she is chagrined and frightened. It's realistic.

-----END SPOILER------

The Hunger Games is a wonderful version of the post-apocalyptic, dystopic science fiction genre. As I read it, I was reminded of many other great stories...Ender's Game, Fahrenheit 451, The White Mountains, Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four, even Shirley Jackson's short story The Lottery. There are similar elements, and there is a similar feeling, in all of these pieces. Part of what makes The Hunger Games special is the female lead - also that the world Collins creates is very believable. There are 'hoverplanes', but no teleportation. It never crosses the line into the eye-rollingly fantastic.

One negative to note: the entire series is written in the first person "historical present" tense, as in this line (not from the books):

"I go to the door and open it - she stands there, waiting for me. 'Finally,' she says."

It gets annoying. The historical present works well as an occasional device, but the constant precipice feeling made me impatient after a while.

Other than that, I LOVED this series. I wish I hadn't read it so quickly, though, because now I have a long time to wait until March, when the movie comes out.

The Hunger Games Trilogy
by Suzanne Collins

Reread: absolutely
Give to Others: absolutely
Book Plate: ABsolutely!

3/3

In Retrospect

2011-12-31T10:38:00.001-08:00

EDIT: Dave reminded me that my post "Peace be With You" was nominated for Best Blog Post in the Canadian Blog Awards. I squeaked through into Round Two, so if you'd like to vote for me that would be great. (If, of course, you think the other four posts are not as good as mine. You must vote with your conscience, and you only get one shot at each poll.)

-------------

I have been sitting here for forty-five minutes halfheartedly clicking around the web, and I ended up on my own blog to answer the question (asked by myself - the only interested party) of how many New Year's Eve posts I have written.

One!

I'm surprised: I thought it would be more.

I read the post (from 2006, amazingly), then scrolled down to see a photo of my children from Christmas Day five years ago. A five year old and a two year old - how shocking.

As far as recording history goes, this blog isn't much use, is it? I guess the fact that it's public keeps it from having any kind of archival accuracy - I keep my children off the blog, mostly.

But look at this. Christmas week, 2006:

And Christmas week, 2011:

Can we all just sit and marvel for a moment at the lightning-swift passage of time?

A moment is all we have time for, though.

Happy New Year!

You're a Mean One.

2011-12-28T00:08:00.002-08:00

We went to the city yesterday. We had some gift cards to spend, and since Chapters online can be hard to navigate, we took the kids to the brick and mortar store.

Woodgrove Center Mall a week ago was a happy and bustling place, filled with (mostly) pleasant, excited people who smiled at you when you made eye contact. "Merry Christmas!" was a euphonic chorus on my ears.

And now, Baby Jesus is looking around going "Hey! Where'd everybody go?" Fast forward a few days, to December 27. ALMIGHTY. Those people are cranky!! I mean, they are MAD cranky! This one guy went past me in the food court (which was like the eighth circle of hell), and he practically flipped me the bird when I happened to glance at him, made eye contact, and gave a half-smile. He nearly snarled. His brow descended and I swear his lip curled. I looked away, kind of scared, and accidentally made eye contact with someone else. Oops! sorry. I'll keep my eyes on the floor from now on.

You should have seen the sad, pitiful tables at Winners, full of 50% off last-ticketed-price "Christmas Decor" items. Packs of six ornaments, one in smithereens, propping up listless, haphazardly-coiled wreaths of red-painted styrofoam balls, with their paint flaking. Every Santa's hat was crooked, every cheerful elf missing the toe of one resin shoe. Drifts of glitter sifted down to the peeling tile, to be kicked around by wet and muddy boots. The last week of December, they should change their name to "Losers".

By the time I got home, I just wanted to throw everything away. Like, everything I own. Take everything (except my new slippers), shove it into a bag, and bin it. Take that tree, ornaments and all, and throw it on the compost. Take all the tins of baking, full, and chuck them in a dumpster. I bought a "Boxing Day Door Crasher" $4.99 Blu Ray of "The English Patient" today -- screw it. Kick it to the curb.

And it's all because of that unholy mall. It's all because of those stupid people, pushing and shoving and frowning and glowering, because they didn't get the iPhone they were hoping for, or their kid threw up on them after too much eggnog or the turkey was dry or the turkey was raw or they forgot the potatoes. Or because they ate too much or drank too much, or because they didn't drink enough. Because three days ago they spent too much money panicking about little Johnny's stocking not being as full as little Janey's, and now they are out at the mall to find some 'deals' and throw good money after bad.

I solemnly swear, by all that is holy and by all that I hold dear...I raise my hand to the heavens, fall on my bended knees and pledge a vow here and now, that I will NOT LEAVE MY HOUSE next year from Boxing Day right through to New Year's Day.

I will keep my Christmas spirit to the last! Right, straight through to Epiphany.

I could still get it back, I think. If I medicate myself carefully with carols, coffee, and rum balls, I think I can recapture that elusive Spirit.

It can't be gone for good, right?

Time for King's College Cambridge, and Captain Morgan. Stat!

Theme: What I Knit for Christmas

2011-12-26T19:52:00.000-08:00

On October 20, Gwen emailed everybody with her Christmas list. On it was "A great big sweater to swath myself in. Preferably in some shade of green."

I, in turn, emailed everybody (except Gwen) and said "I call the sweater."

The "green" thing didn't happen - Gwen likes cables so I decided on a gansey, which is traditionally blue. So, blue it was.

November was a little busy for me, but I did manage to win NaNoWriMo AND knit my sister's sweater within the month allotted.

Sadly, I was so stinkin' sick in the first two weeks of December, I didn't manage to take any photos of Gwennie's Gansey before it had to be mailed.

So I had to ask Gwennie to snap some photos for me, which she did with alacrity.

My favourite one is this one below, showing the Gansey nestled among its fellows - garments I have knit for Gwen in the past. Isn't that something! That whole drawer - all handknits. And I don't mean to brag, or anything, but there are lots more that aren't showing.

There are layers in that drawer, baby!

Thanks, Gwen, for the photos. Love you!

----

Yarn: Harrisville New England Highland Aran 10-ply in Cobalt - #31.
Pattern: Based on the Robin's Hood Bay gansey from Gladys Thompson's Patterns for Guernseys Jerseys & Arans, with some modifications based on "Fylingdales" (Lisa Lloyd, A Fine Fleece). I increased the length of the stockinette portion at the bottom of Robin's Hood Bay, cut WAY back on the length of the cabled portion so it begins about 4 inches below the armhole (I think it's more flattering this length), took out the knitted initials, added Lisa Lloyd's welt and used her button band, used a plain 2X2 collar, and added a top-down, knitted-in saddle shoulder of the rope cable, flowing down the sleeve to the cuff. The cuff is about 4.5 inches long and knit quite tightly, to enable folding back of sleeves. (This is a house sweater and as such should be able to be shoved up to the elbows while using flour/water/detergent/towels/hair products.)

Winter Solstice

2011-12-21T09:12:00.001-08:00

Today's ornament, a ceramic angel with a concertina (lucky). I've always wanted one. (A concertina, that is.)

Victoria was interesting. The much-vaunted carol service was a slight disappointment...definitely the most watered-down Christmas service I've ever attended. The last time I was at this particular service was more than ten years ago: when it comes to Christchurch's theology, apparently the intervening decade has been one of dilution. In a church carol service on December 18th, don't you think "baby Jesus" should come up?

Neither have I ever been terribly fond of removing gendered language from carols: such as, in Joy to the World, "Let earth receive its king". Or, in Hark, the Herald Angels Sing, "Pleased as one of us to dwell" (rather than "Pleased as man with man to dwell"). I suppose in the scheme of things it's not going to kill me to sing that, but it does feel faddish.

Tony Parsons proved to be an excellent reader of Scripture, though, and the book of Isaiah was never so sonorous.

(In case you're curious - he seems shorter in real life. Also, he did not sing "Hark, the Herald" with the congregation. Instead, he was bantering amusingly with the woman sitting next to him. I suspect he might have been joshing about the robes and swinging censer of the clergy passing by him for the choir recessional.)

In any event, we are home. I came back with something quite beautiful...I have not impulse-bought such an extreme price tag in years. What do you think?

They were half price, though, so I feel entirely justified. I would normally not buy myself something right before Christmas, but I had saved my lovely mother-in-law's birthday cheque for just such an occasion, and am completely satisfied with these.

I think I'm retiring from the internet now, and will rejoin you around the New Year. My very best wishes to you all for a Merry Christmas. Enjoy the day and don't skimp on the rum balls!

Shannon

In one week

2011-12-17T01:08:00.001-08:00

Thank you for your comments and good wishes on the last post. My friend's surgery went well - she was even able to keep part of her thyroid. Further treatment is still undecided.

* * *

This Sunday, the 18th of December, I am taking my daughters to the Festival of Lessons and Carols at Christchurch Cathedral in Victoria. I'm so looking forward to it. If you are at all interested in traditional carols, liturgical Christmas celebrations, or the ambiance of a church at Christmas, I do recommend checking Anglican or Catholic churches near you to see whether one is offered.*

The crazy Catherine-wheel of Christmas is in full-tilt here. The next week is going to be "hair-straight-back", as my mother amusingly says.

I have no knitting. My needles are all empty. For weeks I have been debating what to cast on, but I just never seem to do it. I have so much yarn, so that's not the problem. Must think about it.

But first I must bake some things. I've made gingerbread (a titanic batch, actually - compassing 3 cups of butter and 13 cups of flour) and we have iced them, and that took three days - but other than that, I have no baking done. Molasses Crackles, Scandinavian Almond Bars, and Ginger Spice Cookies are for tomorrow. I am saving making my sister's Rum Ball recipe for when we get back from Victoria, because if I make them too soon I will eat them all in a welter of stress-induced pre-Christmas gluttony, and will have nothing yummy left for the Day.

The featured ornament for today is this little Victorian girl, in her green coat and buttoned boots. I've only had her for about 8 years, but I like her. I have dozens of ornaments, but I only put a handful on the tree every year, as I like my tree to look unadorned and natural. There are a lot of berries and birds, and very few other decorations, but she always makes the cut.

--------------------------------------
* If you lived in downtown Toronto, for example, you'd have a few choices - one of them being 7 PM at St Thomas' Anglican Church, which is fairly close to where you'd live, hypothetically, if you lived in downtown Toronto. (Hi, Joe and Dave.)

The long night of the soul.

2011-12-13T21:06:00.000-08:00

Life is a strange thing, isn't it? You step onto the path and you can see it winding away among the trees, picturesque and inviting. Then at some point you round a corner and find a tree down over the trail, and it takes some scrambling to get over it. Later, the path takes you pretty close to a steep drop, and you sort of hug the wall on your way past. Later still, you come face to face with a stream, swollen by rain, that has crumbled away most of the path you're following. Getting past is going to take some ingenuity and some perseverance, and not a little courage.

After a while, you start to wonder nervously what else is in store for you. What else will you have overcome by the time you get to journey's end? It's not surprising that we feel a little fearful every time we can't see around the next corner.

My friend has been diagnosed with thyroid cancer. She is a little younger than me, with children around the same age. I have just spoken to her on the phone - I checked in because tomorrow is her surgery. She's going to have her thyroid removed, along with the tumour that has grown in her throat.

If this were happening to me, I think to myself, I wouldn't sleep all night. I would wander the house like a restless spirit. She says "I won't have trouble sleeping...I'm a good sleeper. I'm already tired."

I hope so.

I remember that Sandy emailed me the night before her surgery. She said

I tried to read. Can't. Tried to watch TV. Can't. Long hours of night stretch before me, and I don't know how I'll reach the end. I think I'll start that blog - how do I get going?

It makes me think that we are so frail and lovely, we humans. So fragile and frightened. It's terrifying when things happen to our bodies. When we're facing it, our souls reach out. We start conversations. We start blogs. We write letters which we may never send. We crave communion.

C.S. Lewis famously said: You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.

It's true. And how does this change me? How does this change the way we live, and the way we face our fragility: our mortality?

* * *

Christmas is ten days away. I have gingerbread dough chilling in the fridge.

My tree is up.

I'm happy.

And I'm praying for my friend, whose Christmas has already gotten lost. Next Christmas, may she be up to her elbows in flour, hiding her children's presents, talking on the phone to her sister, and looking back on tonight, thinking 'How long ago it all seems!'

I hope.

Brain Clearly Still Not Working Properly.

2011-12-09T11:19:00.001-08:00

Sitting on my lounge of lurgy this morning (thanks for that one, Ames), I was perusing some Facebook posts about the ethics of Islamic justice. Fell down the rabbit hole for about a half hour and then came upon this headline:

Saudi Arabia: Men ‘Behaving Like Women’ Face Flogging

upon which I flinched and said to myself, "Ouch! Imagine being flogged on your face! Oh......oh, wait......oh "face flogging", not face-flogging. Never mind."

Stricken

2011-12-06T15:37:00.001-08:00

I write to you today from my couch of pain. I have been slain by a head cold. I have been prostrate for two days, propped up with cushions in a vain attempt to reduce the congestion.

I have that weird sensation of absolute clarity in my actual nose, but with sinuses so completely blocked, so completely pressurized, that my ears are aching and my forehead feels swollen. I feel like my head is gone and I am carrying an aquarium around on my neck. Heavy, sloshy, and slow to respond.

I have a feeling this might be just slightly related to NaNoWriMo -- I often find that, once a stressful deadline has passed, I succumb to whatever virus is currently stalking the town. In this case, it's this stupid cold.

NaNo went well, I think. The word count goal was met, but of course I haven't written "The End" yet...I am about two thirds of the way through. I have a bit of writing, and a lot of editing and reworking still to do. The book, like me, is resting for the remainder of 2011 and will be ready for another hard slog in the New Year.

I haven't started Christmas preparations yet...it feels too early. This is silly because it is only 18 days away. Most of my presents are bought, but I haven't done a scrap of cleaning and no decorating. The one exception is the Advent calendar, which of course has to be done on December 1st no matter HOW little one is in the spirit.

I was reminded of this series of posts by one of my favourite bloggers, and went to look it up for you. Lene posted several photos of her beautiful Advent calendar in December of 2007, and I think of this series every year. I was surprised to find, when I searched for it, that it was so long ago...between one thing and another, these past four years have flown by.

So enjoy Lene's lovely Advent calendar, and think of me with pity, here on my davenport of despair...my sofa of sniffles...my chesterfield of chesty coughs.

S

:-)

2011-11-29T10:00:00.000-08:00

thnk u

thnk u 4 yr comnts

werds all used up

more l8r

How'm I Doin'?

2011-11-13T01:08:00.001-08:00

I am in despair.

2011-11-13T00:02:00.001-08:00

Word is interrupting my writing to tell me, of all things, that this phrase:

...maybe it’s better this way

is incorrect, and it suggests that I change it to:

...maybe its better this way.

Sometimes I feel like a voice crying in the wilderness. "Make straight the English language", I'm begging you.

Edit:
Just in case you simply can't believe it, here is a screen shot:

My Inner World in Four Minutes and Nine Seconds

2011-11-06T14:15:00.002-08:00

Gwen, this is our past...this is our future.

Shannon & Gwen, together forever.
XOXO

Luuuv my girl.

2011-11-03T13:49:00.000-07:00

My seven year old, gloomy look on her face, just came in to the bedroom where I was writing, and crawled into bed beside me. "What's up, honey?"
"Charlotte just came and kicked me off the computer where I was playing Angry Birds. She wanted to write her book. She said "I'm gonna lose Nanabooboo all because of you."

Using all my words up

2011-11-02T16:44:00.000-07:00

So I will probably not update for a good while. Wish me luck!

Arresting the Decay of Language, Cont'd

2011-10-27T19:04:00.000-07:00

All right, listen.

There are two ways to say the word "the". You can say "thUH" (short E: phonetically spelled thĕ [the underlining of th indicates it's the "voiced" th, as in "they" - as opposed to the "voiceless" th, as in "throw"]), or you can say "th-EE" (long E: phonetically spelled thē).

Generally speaking, when "the" precedes a word beginning with a consonant (or hard) sound, you would use the short "the", as in this phrase:

The dog ran past the car.

"Thĕ dog ran past thĕ car".

But if "the" precedes a word beginning with a vowel (or soft) sound, you would use the long "the", as in this phrase:

The owl hunted the otter.

"Thē owl hunted thē otter."

What you'll find, in these troublous times, is that people use only one version of "the" - the one with the short vowel sound "thUH". But if you use a short "the" right before a word that begins with a vowel (osprey, end, abstract), the sounds run together and you end up with a phrase like "the udder" sounding more like "thuhuhdder". Well, obviously that doesn't work: there has to be some kind of delineation between the two vowel sounds.

Enter the glottal stop: Ɂ .

Do you know what a glottal stop is? It's a tiny halt you make in your throat, during speaking, to cut off the flow of air for a split second. It sounds weird, but try saying "thEE udder", and then try saying "thUH udder" and you'll see what I mean...you have to do a glottal stop whether you've heard of it or not. You'd write it "thĕ Ɂ ŭdder".

Well, glottal stops are all very well - nice and technical, and all, but why use them if you don't have to? Why not just use the correct pronunciation of "the"?

Good question.

Thē ĕnd.

NaNoWhoNow?

2011-10-21T23:18:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking of doing NaNoWriMo.

Thoughts?

International Day of Shan

2011-10-17T20:51:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was my birthday!! And you all missed it....I'm so sorry for you.

A good time was had by all:

(Empty bottles = a good sign.)

And lots of food. My sister gave me "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" and, 8 hours after I opened it, I gave it its first grease stain and hand-written notation! Super exciting.

(The grease stain is at the top right corner of that photo.)

I am thirty-eight now! And, on that note I must add a small gripe about our society. (Of course I do.) What is this fashion for calling we older women "29" as if it's some kind of compliment? Four different people said that to me yesterday. "So!! Twenty-nine, huh?!" [wink wink] Please, I said. 29 is a beginner...I am "skilled intermediate". Ten more years to "advanced" and then another ten to "master".

Poems for Life

2011-10-10T00:11:00.014-07:00

Erudite Mondays at HalfSoled Boots

Volume 11, Number 2

Penguin's Poems for Life

Selected by Laura Barber

After a long hiatus from reviews, I have a backlog of books to share with you. I found a wonderful second-hand bookstore a week or two ago, which provided me with an enormous stack of volumes, and I've also got a whole collection of other things I've meant to tell you about for - oh, at least two years.

For today, I'm looking at an anthology I bought in a sudden burst of self-directed generosity, purely motivated by the title and the cover, and the knowledge that Penguin never lets me down. It's a collection of poems relating to our personal journeys through life - the ultimate human condition, the sweet and bitter, emulsified joy and suffering.

"The effect of a poem can be real and tangible," editor Laura Barber writes, "...And...it seems there are plenty of times in our lives when only a poem will do." The hundreds of poems in Penguin's Poems for Life, though just a smattering of what's out there, Do marvellously.

Love set you going like a fat gold watch,
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

-Sylvia Plath, from Morning Song

Barber continues, "The structure of the book was inspired by a few lines in Shakespeare's play As You Like It, in which one of the characters, Jacques, describes a human life as having seven distinct stages." The book is divided into chapters accordingly: Birth and Beginnings; Childhood and Childish Things; Growing Up and First Impressions; Making a Living and Making Love; Family Life, for Better, or for Worse; Getting Older, Looking Back; Intimations of Mortality; and (an extra chapter) Mourning and Monuments.

How can the bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing.

-William Blake, from The School Boy

One of the things I like best about the anthology is that the poems are organised within the chapters by theme and expression, not by chronology or author. So, reading along, you might finish off an e.e. cummings, turn the page, and find Geoffrey Chaucer.

All the handsome boys from school
rode up front, and crowded there
at the prow of that long canoe. I
remember how we watched them. At night,
we slow-danced with them too. Their hair
was damp; we pressed ourselves
dreaming against their dark jackets like
butterflies in our thin dresses, caught.

- Kirsty Gunn, Mataatua

The day I received this volume I didn't have time to look at it properly. The next day I sat down with it and opened it up to the first page, the first poem. It was Sylvia Plath's Morning Song. It only took a few lines before I remembered that I need to be careful with poetry - it's too truthful to take in large doses.

I am the ship in which you sail,
little dancing bones...

- Maura Dooley, from Freight

Whammied by Sylvia Plath on the first page, I realised I wasn't going to be able to read the whole thing in order, as planned. I was going to have to administer tiny little doses seemingly at random, like putting a new CD on shuffle until you get to know it. I shut the book and then reopened it to any page, brushing a few lines here and there, never reading more than one entire poem at a time.

She sits in the park. Her clothes are out of date.
Two children whine and bicker, tug her skirt.
A third draws aimless patterns in the dirt.
Someone she loved once passes by - too late

to feign indifference to that casual nod.
'How nice,' et cetera. 'Time holds great surprises.'
From his neat head unquestionably rises
a small balloon...'but for the grace of God...'

They stand awhile in flickering light, rehearsing
the children's names and birthdays. 'It's so sweet
to hear their chatter, watch them grow and thrive,'
she says to his departing smile. Then, nursing
the youngest child, sits staring at her feet.
To the wind she says, 'They have eaten me alive.'

- Gwen Harwood, In the Park

I suppose poetry is one of those things that some people just don't like. I suspect, though, that this comes from its association with school - it's one of those things you were forced to study just at the time of your life when you were least able to understand it. (Like me, with algebra.) Maybe if the prosaic among us could take a look at a carefully-selected poem later in life, they might feel a resonance within themselves.

I always remember your beautiful flowers
And the beautiful kimono you wore
When you sat on the couch
With that tigerish crouch
And told me you loved me no more.

What I cannot remember is how I felt when you were unkind
All I know is, if you were unkind now I should not mind.
Ah me, the power to feel exaggerated, angry and sad
The years have taken from me. Softly I go now, pad pad.

- Stevie Smith, Pad, pad

To speak to outward appearance, this book is one of a series Penguin has published of clothbound editions which are really lovely on the shelf. They're not going to be enormously valuable collectors' items, naturally, but they are several steps above the mass-market paperback, and worth collecting for, say, a teenage daughter who will one day take them when she moves out. I'd like to get them for my children...though I have quite a few years left before they'll be on their own.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child
for the past.

- D.H. Lawrence, from Piano

There are times, says Penguin's Poems for Life, when only a poem will do. This anthology, so carefully chosen and so eclectic, will end up being a perennial favourite of mine. If a person didn't know much poetry and didn't know where to start, I'd wholeheartedly recommend this book to begin their education. With its thematic power, and its beautifully selected material, it has a value far beyond its price.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

- Edna St Vincent Millay, from Dirge Without Music

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

- Raymond Carver, Late Fragment

Inexplicable.

2011-10-07T12:55:00.000-07:00

It's getting colder around here - very damp, too, which is seasonable. We do turn on the heat fairly early because we have old windows therefore a dampish house, but in the main, I try to put it off as long as possible. I just add layers.

Someone knocked on the door this morning and when I opened it, they did a double take. I realised that I've seen a lot of that lately, when people knock, so I took a picture of myself to objectively assess my "look". I have no idea what the problem is:

Am I dressed in clothes rather than pajamas? Check.

Am I wearing seasonably-appropriate colours and fabrics? Check.

Are my clothes clean? Check.

There's a faint whiff of demented, washed-up Highlander about it, but overall I think I'm doing pretty well.

(Maybe it's the hair?)

If nobody tells you, how can you know?

2011-10-03T23:56:00.001-07:00

Dear People of the English-Speaking World:

The word is "normality".

Think about "formal", which is an adjective. Now make it into a noun....did you say to yourself, "formalcy"? No, you did not.

There is no such word as "normalcy". You may have used it yourself, and now you're saying "What? Of course there is!" But don't feel badly; you couldn't have known. It's everywhere - like "impact" used as a verb, as in "Your hydro bill won't really be impacted by that." [im-PAC-ted...yuck] When, really, if you're not talking about a wisdom tooth or a bowel, don't say "impacted".

You could say "These changes won't really have an impact on your hydro bill."

Is "normalcy" in the dictionary? Sure. So is "LOL", and you won't catch etymologists and grammarians using that, either.

So please practice this: "The English language has to regain some semblance of normality."

You are a person with free will - of course you are. And if you decide to say "The English language has to regain some semblance of normalcy," nobody will arrest you. You just won't have my blessing, that's all.

And really, who cares about that?

Carry on.

Shannon

Intentional Joy

2011-09-26T14:26:00.000-07:00

Ten minutes ago - a knock on my door, a flower truck in the driveway.

The note began "Welcome to the year of intentional joy."

I laughed in happy disbelief.

Uncles mine, thank you!

XOXO ∞

Peace Be With You

2011-09-24T00:04:00.001-07:00

If you ever came to church with me, there's a bit of the service where the Pastor says "Peace be with you," and the congregation responds, "And also with you." He continues, "And now let us share this peace of the Lord with one another." So we all rise, turn to our neighbours, smile, shake hands and say "Peace be with you."

It's a bit funny to see someone who isn't used to this prescribed greeting, and visibly feels awkward or embarrassed. They sort of glance away, maybe mumble a half-hearted "You too" in response to your smiling greeting.

Sandy came to church with me a few times - once to become my daughters' godmother - and each time she did the cutest little self-conscious giggle when she shook my hand. "And also with you!! Hee hee!"

I remember feeling this way as a young girl, the first time I went to a church where there was a "shake hands with the person next to you" moment...I hated it. I felt like no one would approach me, or if they did I wouldn't know what to say and they'd think I was weird, or stupid. So instead, I decided THEY were weird and stupid. You know - for saying "Good morning" to each other in church. Fatuous idiots.

When I started going to the church I attend now - Lutheran - it took me a couple of Sundays to figure out that there was a loosely prescribed order to the proceedings: they would say "Peace be with you!" and I was meant to say "and also with you." I wasn't sure of this, so I smiled and said "You too" for the first two or three weeks, then sat down feeling oafish. After a couple of weeks I forced myself to say the expected words. I felt silly at first, offering the greeting or the response, but before long it felt okay.

Then it felt sort of natural.

Then it felt like I meant it.

Now, after that five minutes of the service, when everyone has smiled into my eyes and said "Peace be with you!" and I have replied, fondly, "And also with you", I feel it.

I feel peace.

I have been thinking a lot about the deliberateness of emotion. When I was younger I always thought emotion led to the action - so anger led to aggression, love led to being loving, and so on. I hated that trend I started to notice in my 20s - the "love is a decision" fad. If you don't feel it, I always thought to myself, you don't feel it - and that's that.

The part I didn't understand was the transience of love. The way it comes and goes. Sometimes, as a child, let's face it: you hate your sister. I mean, really hate her. You don't love her. And it's possible, as a parent, to wish your children would go away. Really wish it. Wish they weren't your problem anymore...ever. And sometimes you stop loving your spouse because the relentlessness of marriage has stripped away the sparkle and the humour...the new car smell is gone, you've spent too long in there being tired and crabby and impatient, and now it's just endless fill-ups and washer fluid and the console is stuffed with receipts and fast-food napkins.

Twenty years in, I know a bit more about relationships. I know a bit more about myself. I understand that emotions describe a circular path, not a linear one...and that you can jump on at any point in the circle.

Loving someone doesn't have to begin with the feeling. It can begin with the action: the verb use of the word. "I love you" doesn't always mean "I feel love for you." It can mean "I promise I will stay with you" or "I'll never send you away" or "I give you what you need." It can mean "I do all of this for you, without resentment."

You can train your emotions. You can love someone - the verb - and it can become...no, wait: it IS...Love, the noun.

Mothers intone, "Be nice!" to their toddlers. This is the earliest training we get -- our mothers are telling us "I know you don't want to act this way - you want to act another way. You want to snatch things, to hit and to dominate your playmates. But you must DO niceness even when you don't FEEL niceness."

Life is full of these decisions. It takes discipline to implement them; real self-discipline to continue practicing them. They are the basis for civility.

Do love, and you will feel love.

Be gentle, and you will become gentle.

Practice patience, and your patience will increase.

All actions require practice. The first time you did anything, it was hard. Walking. Speaking. Riding a bike. Climbing a mountain. Painting a wall. Changing a diaper. Doing yoga. It only got easier as you became familiar with the mechanics of it, and your brain and your muscles learned how to do it, and then it became second nature.

On Sunday morning I shake hands with about twenty or thirty people; the ones on my side of the church. Each of them leans towards me, offers their hand, and a genuine smile as they say with friendliness, or gentleness, or humour, or quiet firmness, or with love, "Peace be with you." And I lean towards them, return the pressure of their hands, and say with fondness, eye contact and a smile, "And also with you."

The order of greeting has become my choice, and theirs, and what we are giving is what we receive: just what we are offering each other. Peace.

Sandy has been gone for a year. I've written about the way I have grieved for her, and I've said everything I want to say about that. During the past year I explored the process of grief, and practiced and observed the rituals of sorrow.

Some people "claim" a word for a given year, and meditate or dwell on that word throughout the year. Last year my word would have been Sorrow. This year I think my word will be Joy. I'm going to practice Joy and I'm going to practice Peace. I have held Sandy, I have thanked her for being in my life, and I have let her go.

Sandy, Peace be with you. What I give to you, I also receive....peace.

And to you, my patient readers, I offer my grateful thanks. I don't think it's easy to analyse and explore death and grief as I've been doing this year, so I thank you for reading and for writing. The dialogue with you has been such a gift to me.

What you wish the world to be, you must be. What you wish your world to have, you must give it.

What you wish to feel, you must do.

So. From me, to you.

Peace be with you.

3, 2, 1, blast off.

2011-09-23T01:08:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is the anniversary of Sandy's death. I just want to share a few short sentences from her last three posts...I was revisiting them each on the days they were written, but saved the last three for today.

I don't want to add anything else...I'll be back tomorrow to close this year out, give some final thoughts. In the meantime, I'm going to think about my friend and remember the last few days with her.

...the truth is that I don’t really know how I am. I don’t know if the chemo is working, I don’t know if the cancer is shrinking, I don’t even know most of the time how I am feeling because so much of how I’m feeling is because of chemo, or the drugs – so it’s difficult to say what part of my discomfort is because of chemo, and what part is because of cancer, and what part is because of being tired of it all, and wanting some reprieve.

Sometimes I feel that I am standing at the edge of the abyss, looking down into the river of lava at the centre of Mount Doom. It is the end of all things. My feet are torn and dusty, my lips cracked and parched. I am tired, filthy, crabby and confused.

My heart is going to break.

But. I am not alone.

Helpy Helpish

2011-09-18T21:59:00.000-07:00

I've finished the Garden Jacket, but am completely stymied as to whether or not to add the pockets. Useful? yes. I need a place to keep Kleenex and Atavan. But it's not as pretty as I'd like.

Comment and tell me Yes or No on the pockets. Here are some photos to help you decide.

The sweater front "au naturel". Adorned only with a garden fork.

The sweater front with pocket in position. I had to mess with the colour so you could see the knitting better, so don't mind my freakish alien hand. In real life I am not a pale celadon hue.

I'm thinking if I end up putting them on, I will make some 3-stitch i-cord and sew it around the seam so it's nicer-looking.

And I have cast on another project. While standing in the knitting section of the library one day I turned a page in an interesting looking book, and stopped dead. "That's IT!" I hollered. "That's exactly what I need!" Within 24 hours I had been to the yarn store, bought some alpaca/wool, cast on, and was 14 inches in. I'll show you more later but right now it looks like nothing at all, so.

Here's a wee picture for you. Colour fairly true.

Tuesday is the five-year birthday of my blog. What a lot I have told you about over the years!

Aw crap.

2011-09-02T12:19:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago I reviewed a book called "Knitting and Tea". One of my favourite patterns in the book is the Garden Jacket, a cool reverse-stockinette thing with a trowel and a garden fork knitted right onto the front. I LOVE it.

I started knitting it last week, using my stash sweater-bag of Jo Sharp "Luxury Merino 8-ply DK" wool, which is not really DK at all. Using the ball-band-recommended needle size, I got a comfortably dense fabric of 19 stitches to 4 inches.

The ball band says I should have 22.5 stitches over 4 inches.

With nothing else appropriate in the stash, and having stared at this yarn for a year, wanting to knit it, I decided to just go with it anyway. I did the math and cast on for the smallest size...with the tension difference, I will end up with a size 44, which is perfect.

I was really motivated on this project, and knit the back in about three days. The back has a great little flower motif knitted into it high up between the shoulders...look how cute.

Carrying on to the front, I knit the right side first, and was about two inches from finishing it, when something bad happened. I picked it up and noticed there was a tightly gathered row right at the bottom of the trowel motif (four inches or so from the cast-on edge). There was a yarn end at the side, so I thought it was where I had joined in a new ball of yarn, and that it must have been pulled somehow and gathered the row. I smoothed the gathering out, and to my horror this is what came next.

ARGH!

I think what happened is, I (or someone - because I have no recollection of doing anything like this) must have pulled that piece out of my knitting bag, and it caught on a stitch holder or something, hooking it onto the end of one knitted row. It pulled out a length of yarn and snapped it. I thought it was a yarn tail from joining in a new ball, smoothed the gathers out, and.....

Sigh. I'm reknitting the entire piece. It is fixable - I've done this kind of repair before - but honestly it might be for the best...the piece was looking like it might be a tiny bit too small. I was using a Hiya Hiya needle, which is just like an Addi Turbo. They're slippery and I think I tightened a little to compensate.

So now I reknit with a bamboo needle, and hopefully the size is better. And hopefully I remember to take all sharp, hooklike objects out of my knitting bag so we don't have to go for Right Front 3.0.

My in-laws are visiting from Ontario this week, and my lovely mother-in-law brought me some cool Old Stuff from her house. I love it when she does this. She has lovely old things she has saved from the previous generation, and doesn't know what to do with them all. When I came along and married her son, I turned out to be a good solution...I love Old Stuff. Look at these beautiful tea cups she brought.

I love these colours. I think I'm going to go put the kettle on, so I can rip out my carefully-knitted trowel while sipping soothing Earl Grey out of a pretty new cup. "Frogging and Tea"...great title for a sequel.

Anywhere but here...

2011-08-20T22:51:00.000-07:00

We had a family reunion...did you know? I can't recall whether I posted about it. It was about 3 weeks long altogether, but it felt like, alternately, a couple of days or a couple of years. I am tired.

We did a lot of cooking, plenty of eating, a great deal of talking and laughing, and some crying. We went camping, we went canoeing, we played badminton and jumped on the trampoline. We stayed up late, and got up late for toast and marmalade. We drank tea and home-brewed and mineral water, and a few bottles of wine.

We never got around to the champagne though.

Camped out with the whole bunch of us, at a nearby lake where we spent our happiest times as children. It wasn't so happy for my daughter, as you can see here:

Sorry in advance if the price of calamine goes up. It's a supply and demand thing. And we still don't know what kind of bites these are but only the blonde children were affected, Charlotte worst of all...over 300 bites. She looks cheerful here...that's the homeopathic ledum talking.

Celebratory roast chicken at my house. Sixteen of us were there - only missing one. My sister's husband couldn't make it. Pardon the homely laundry and ugly trampoline...I should have taken this photo from the other end of the table so you could see pretty flowers and so on.

On one of the last days, Gwen and I took four of the kids to the lake (not the one we camped at). This was the view from my blanket...one of the most relaxing afternoons of the whole trip.

Mark, Amy, Gwen, Usko, and of course the Seven Dwarves....I miss you all.
Kiss, hug.

Things You Don't Know About

2011-07-16T12:42:00.000-07:00

Pictures!

It seems, these days, not much makes it to the blog. There are a lot of reasons for this - most not very good ones, but one or two completely valid. Anyway, lots of text-heavy posts have shown up lately, and I feel a need for balance.

What I've been doing without telling you:

1: another doll outfit for a birthday present. It's become a goal of mine, when making these, to only use what I've already got in the house. Added some nifty needle-felting to this little vest.

2: One morning I said to myself, exasperated, "Where are all my knickers? I have, like, NONE." Then I remembered I own a washing machine. Here's what the clothesline looked like an hour later. (I nearly had to wear something from my thong collection, circa 1998. What on earth was I thinking back then?)

3: A pencil crayon roll, in progress.

4: Rheingold, blocking.

5: My daughter and I went to the beach one day.

6: And at the beach, a transient poem in the form of an unread letter, beginning "This is where I got over you." On a piece of driftwood, fittingly. One line says "This is where I found out I needed something new." I wish I could decipher the rest of it.

7: Mudpies with my daughter.

8: A sweater for Ruby. Knitted, sewn, blocked, wrapped, and delivered, with not a word to you about it.

9: Last year, I knitted a Sackboy. Here, he doesn't have a face yet.

10: Went to see Alison Krauss & Union Station at Vancouver Island Music Fest two weeks ago. No photos, as I decided to LIVE the concert rather than DOCUMENT it. Was quite amused by people getting frustrated trying to record favourite numbers on their cell phones, and as a result, missing the music.

And that's all, folks! More later, when I'll bring you up to date on the (soon and very soon oh my gosh I have so much to do) family reunion happening here in ten days. Smooches!

Four.

2011-07-11T23:46:00.002-07:00

In the last post I wrote about being aware of the moment - how important it is not to distract ourselves from what is happening. That if we are open, if we allow ourselves to Be where we are, change comes - we grow. Amy left a comment in which she quoted the phrase "Beauty for ashes."

It's from one of the world's most poetic and beautiful texts: the Bible - Isaiah 61. Expanded (and expurgated), it reads:
...the Lord hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted...to comfort all that mourn...to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness...that He might be glorified.

I feel better about everything, ever, just from reading that.

As a Christian, one of the interesting - and sometimes difficult - parts of my life is that it is always reflecting God. Even when I don't talk about it (maybe especially when I don't talk about it), even when in my frailty I do a pretty damn poor job of it, I am here to represent Jesus.

There are lots of signposts in the Bible. There is the bit about going into all the world to preach, and there is the bit about forsaking your family and everything you have to follow Christ. Well, the Bible also says that we're all given different gifts, different talents.

It naturally follows that different parts will resonate with different people. Here are the bits I like the best:

"Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might." I've been doing this all my life. Living HUGE. Chopping wood? Put your goggles on, baby, because the chips will be a-flyin'. Knitting? Hold onto your hats, people, my needles are smoking and I am churning out cables, colours, socks, lace, you name it. Cannonballs? That pool is going to be EMPTY, I tell you. Better move your towel.

And then there's the quote above, another favourite of mine, from Isaiah. "The Lord hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted...to comfort all that mourn..." Can I claim that part? I mean, I'm not a prophet, and I live thousands of years after the man who wrote this passage, and I have nothing to do with Zion, as such, but....this speaks to me.

"Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." This one is tricky. Ten little one-syllable words, but...wow. When you think that one through, right through to all the possibilities, it's actually a little scary. Thing is, in this life bad things happen. Where does my help come from? Well, I choose to call on the Prime Mover, the Creator, the Maker of heaven and earth, who is more interested and invested in me than I have even the slightest idea. That makes me feel okay about the 'trusting' part.

A few days ago there was another of last year's posts to read - fourth from the end. In this post Sandy wrote about going to the school she taught at, to speak to the students during a chapel (it's a Christian school).

I wanted to go to the students and tell them that God is listening.
I wanted them to know that He is working.
I wanted them to see that I am alive, and to tell them that my heart is being healed, and renewed, and changed, and restored.

And that my body still needs some work.

I wanted them to know that whatever happens to me, God is still GOOD.
I needed to tell them that God is GOOD no matter what. Even if my body dies.

"Even if my body dies."

Do you know what's cool about this? And what's important about this? It occurred to me today that one thing leads from another. The amazing and wonderful and intense things that happened during Sandy's last year - how fantastic it all was, how lifechanging - those things came from the spirit realm. Was her death any more significant than anyone else's? In the big picture....No, probably not. Though, to quote again, "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints." To God - yeah, it was significant. She was precious to Him and He valued her death as He valued her earthly life, and as He values - indeed bought at considerable expense - her afterlife.

The thing about Sandy's death, and the ripple effect it's had on me and on others, is that all the events leading up to it were made possible by spiritual openness. On her part, on my part, on the part of others who were involved.

Her openness to the end of her life, her openness to the will of her God, her trust in His ultimate goodness, created a passage through which incredible power flowed. People saw it, were touched by it.

Even you, reading this blog over the last year, have been touched by it.

I love how, though months have gone by, that power hasn't stopped flowing. The lessons just keep coming my way - little epiphanies keep happening, little bits of my life keep falling into place. The quote from Isaiah, which I've had in my memory for so long that I don't remember not knowing it, has come back to me via my sister-in-law, through a comment on the internet. How weird is that?

And now I'll put those two quotes together.

The Lord has sent me to comfort those who mourn, with all my might, that He might be glorified.

"And I did that!" I marvel to myself. Yes, with all my might. The way I do everything. The way God made me.

You know what else I love about this? The "glorified" bit at the end doesn't have any directive attached to it. Do you notice the passive voice? The passage could read "The Lord has sent me to comfort those who mourn, and to glorify Him while doing it." But it doesn't say that. It just says to bind up the brokenhearted, comfort those who mourn. And He will be glorified.

Because I'm just here to reflect. I'll be open in spirit, I'll do what I can for people with all my might, and He'll make sure that what needs to happen, happens. It's such a relief not to be in charge.

All this time, for the last year and a half, I thought I was mourning. And I was - I am - but I'm also learning. And it turns out that all along, important bits of theology, spirituality, and guidance for my life have been waiting to be revealed.

Looking ahead, I am excited about life for the first time since Sandy died. Not excited about an event, a concrete time or thing that I know to expect, but excited about the big impulsive unknowingness of it all - happy about the way God's plan keeps turning out to be better than my plan.

I like that about Him.

Five.

2011-06-26T00:44:00.000-07:00

I was thinking today about the last six months of Sandy's life. It occurred to me that a lot of people miss out on things - critical truths about life and the nature of being human - because they don't want to look closely at the process of death, the leave-taking from Earth, the last stages of the first stumbling journey.

I'm trying out these sentences on you:

The best thing that has ever happened to me is that my best friend died.

The most important thing that has ever happened to me is that my best friend died.

I am who I am because she died.

I'm so thankful that God handed me this gift - the gift of walking beside her, holding her up a little bit, listening to her, watching her turn away, and then throwing her, with enormous effort, into blinding light. How many people get the chance to be there when the door opens and then closes? How many people catch that glimpse through the veil as it's pulled back for a soul to either arrive, or leave?

Her blog continues to be a gift to me. She wrote down a little bit of what she was going through, and although I suspect she didn't share the half of what was really going on, what she did write was full of import. It came from a person already partly gone.

Last June 15, Sandy wrote this.

I don’t really know where I belong anymore. Most of me is still in this world: doing laundry, making lunches, playing with my children, tidying my house; but at the same time, the rest of me is in this new place, a place where making long term plans seems presumptuous, and where I don’t really know what to do with myself. It’s a place of transition, maybe.

Part of me wants to forget that I’m sick, and go on as before. And maybe that’s what I SHOULD do; maybe I should just continue on as if nothing had happened, and live my life as best I can until I can’t, anymore, or until I’m restored to health.

But that seems so dishonest.

Dishonest. Dishonest to go on as if she had never been sick, as if she were not dying.

A lot of people denied that truth. They didn't want to either believe or admit that she was dying. This denial, this bright, cheerful confidence, this fatuous belief that things will turn out exactly the way we think is best if only we have enough faith...it didn't help her. She talked about it to me often. "It's exhausting," she said, "I feel like I'm a disappointment because I'm not getting better."

And then I need to prepare my children for life without a mother. But, I don’t know how to do that either – does that mean writing lists? Does that mean shopping for Christmas presents? Does that mean writing a journal of my life? Does that mean composing letters for every major event in their future? I don’t know.

People often said, "God wouldn't take a mother away from her children."

Oh really?

People said to her, "Cancer is not part of God's plan."

Oh really?

Last March Sandy posted this: "We have a propensity to make judgements about the things that come into our lives; to declare whether something is good or bad in our life....we make judgements about what happens in our story based on whether things make us happy or sad. If it makes us happy, it must be a good thing. If it makes us sad, or causes pain, it must be a bad thing.

And, we think we can figure out what it all means.

Maybe God will write some really hard things into my life to perfect my faith.
I don’t want to say that cancer is a bad thing in my life; that it’s evil. I don’t want to say that if God’s big plan is to use cancer to perfect my faith.

I was talking about this to a friend the other day. She lost her mum last February - nursed her through the final stages of cancer. She said to me, "I had 'accepted' that my mom was dying and that allowed me to be there for her and look after in a way that others couldn't. I still believe God is Sovereign and can heal anyone he chooses but he doesn't always choose that. And when we can grasp that we can move onto the next stage in a person's life journey...and that, I believe, is a gift to them."

What a relief, to hear someone else say that - and someone who knows what she's talking about.

When Sandy's life was drawing to an end, when she was suffering, when she was floating in pain and her consciousness was no longer of earth, it wasn't easy for me. Two days before she died I spent the day with her while her husband took a bit of time away. On that day, I messaged my sister and my mum midway through the day. I said "I'm screaming on the inside over here. I don't want to be here, don't want to be here."

But if you had showed up at her house, handed me your car keys and said "Okay, GO!" I wouldn't have gone. You couldn't have moved me with a lever. There wasn't a concrete thing I could do for her but I could sit there in her living room and love her like freaking crazy.

My answer for how to be with a dying person is the same as Sandy's answer for how to BE a dying person.

So, what do I do in this season of transition, or how do I live? I received the answer as I read Psalm 27. “One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and seek Him in His temple.”

Simple. Just BE. Find Him where I know He lives, and soak in His beauty.

Just be.

Just be, I think to myself, watching her restless sleep and quelling the panicky, buzzing need to distract myself - do something, clean something, send an email.

But I suspect the deepest mysteries, human and divine, don't often unfold themselves to busy minds.

So be there in love, I tell myself, and let the silence go on. Let the truth be there. The map is laid out between us and we can both see the destination. Why pretend it's House Beautiful when it says Celestial City?

I almost wrote "I wish I could do it all over again," but the truth is that, though I miss her, I wouldn't change a thing. I wouldn't have her back if it meant she would never have been refined by her illness. I wouldn't have her back if it meant she would be fated for another forty-seven years in Vanity Fair. I wouldn't change what happened if it meant she and I must have continued as we had been: unchanged, ignorant, static.

This week, summer solstice marked nine months since her death. In the confusion and sadness, in the gradual lightening, in the altered quality of my emotions, what comes next?

I know this one. I already know. I had this lesson earlier.

Just be.

And be thankful.

What are you saying, girl?

2011-06-19T14:13:00.000-07:00

We drove past an apartment fire today. Smoke poured out of a fourth-floor sliding door and wafted across the road we were on. As we crawled past the ladder trucks and the scuttling firemen my daughter looked up from her book and said, surprised, "Ooh, look! That building's on fire!"

The younger one sniffed the air and said absently, "Hm. Smells like cookies."

Sigh.

2011-06-15T19:58:00.000-07:00

We definitely didn't deserve to win, but I sure wanted us to.

La Coupe Stanley

2011-06-15T16:09:00.000-07:00

I first got interested in hockey (like many people, I suspect) when I was 21 years old and Vancouver took the New York Rangers to seven games in 1994. Tonight we're doing another white-knuckle, seven-game final and everybody in the country is feeling antsy and a little nauseated.

My sister is defragmenting her hard drive today so that she can watch the CBC stream of the game without too many delays.

I'm making dinner right now, at 4 PM, so I don't have to do it later.

I have neither beer nor money, so we'll be drinking iced tea (from a mix - the Canadian way).

We're all a bit nervous. But also we're tired of waiting - Canada hasn't had the Cup in 18 years (though many Canadians have - 53.6% of NHL players are from Canada, with 18.5% from the US, and Europe taking the remaining 27.9%).

Just a few words of encouragement:

Luongo - Chin up buddy. Don't let the whole 15-goals-against-in-three-away-games thing bother you. Try not to choke.

Schneider - Dude, keep your helmet handy.

Henrik - SHOOT. You never know - you could get a rebound.

Daniel - Please don't try to punch anyone. We'll all die laughing and miss the rest of the game.

Tim Thomas - Your mother wears army boots.

See you on the other side..... [gulp] .....

Just like that.

2011-06-02T21:23:00.001-07:00

Yesterday my friend and I were talking about the child left alone in the car incident. From there, we went to abductions and missing children statistics. The problem with being a parent, we agreed, is walking that line between protecting your child and teaching them to be independent. Dangers, known and unknown, are everywhere. There are predators all over the place. And yet, we have to teach our children to live in the world - they should be able to walk to school by a certain age, or walk to the corner store with their friends by a certain age. Exactly what age, obviously, depends on circumstances.

Yesterday, while my friend and I were talking about this, a man came out of the bushes at an elementary school less than three blocks from my house, and directly across the parking lot from the RCMP station. He approached a girl who was on the edges of the field and had wandered from the rest of her class. He grabbed her, tried to take her with him. She fought him off, screaming, and got away.

Police were called, dogs were brought, but it had begun to rain and there was no trace of the man.

Yesterday, while the dogs were trying to pick up a scent, I was having coffee with my friend. We were rolling our eyes, half-laughing, and saying "What a world! I sometimes wish I hadn't even had kids - they've got such a tough job of growing up, that's IF we can get them there alive."

Yesterday we joked nervously about it, while not truly believing it would ever happen.

But yesterday it nearly did.

Today, somewhere in my neighbourhood, a mother still has her daughter.

She nearly didn't.

Tonight, somewhere in this town, a little girl is going to bed in her own room, with the door ajar and the hallway light on. Her parents are staying up in the living room so she can go to sleep to sounds of safety.

How tonight could have been different for her, I don't want to think about.

Today, it's not an abstract anymore. Today, it's a buzz of fearful conversation over fences, new bonds formed between neighbours as we talk about walking each other's children to and from school. Today, it's a pit in my stomach: nauseated horror.

Yesterday we were speculating on what could possibly happen.

Today we know that, among us, someone else has thought of it. Someone decided to do it. Someone nearly succeeded, right here in this small town in broad daylight and within earshot of police.

In one day - in one minute - everything can change. Everything nearly changed for that girl, for her family.

And I know that living in fear is bad for people. It's bad for me, it's bad for my children.

We can tell ourselves it couldn't happen here, that the chances are a million to one against it happening.

I don't care if it hardly ever happens - even once is too many times.

It's not worth the risk.

Repeat as needed.

2011-05-24T01:48:00.003-07:00

In the year following Sandy's death (it has been eight months today) I have been re-reading the blog posts from her last year here, on the dates they were first posted. It's a small and significant ritual that brings me enormous comfort. She didn't write very often - once or twice a month - so there are only a handful of posts left. The ritual has taken on extra urgency as I approach the last of these messages from my friend.

Am I dying?

I feel like I'm climbing a ladder. Or maybe, more properly, I feel like I'm crossing a suspension bridge. You know the kind - wooden planks laid across a pair of ropes. There's nothing significant about what lies beneath it, except that it's not some sort of great chasm; I see it as more like a river.

I'm looking across to the other side, which is a place I haven't really been to before (though I've been looking at it for some time), and counting the boards I'll step on before I reach the grassy bank.

There are only six left.

Last May 18th, Sandy wrote this:

I panicked, a little bit. It wasn’t that I might die, but that I hadn’t finished something. I had spent hours and hours organizing my house, and buying things I thought my family would need, and sorting through trash, and endlessly DOING things, that I hadn’t spent any time writing anything down for my children, or my husband, or my friends. I had things to say, and I hadn’t said them.

I think everyone knows, by now, that they shouldn't leave things unsaid. Haven't we all seen the movies where the tough guy eventually breaks down because his dad died while they weren't speaking to each other, or where the crusty old man, twisted with bitter remorse, regrets that his children never knew he loved them?

How do you know when you’re dying? How do you know it’s time? Do you wait until you DO know, or do you just start saying things, and hope that you get to repeat yourself?

Sandy was a woman profoundly divided - an exuberant and explosive person who directed amazing amounts of energy outward, and an introverted, private person who obsessed about minutiae and worried about how the world saw her. She drew anxieties inward, settling them in place within her and turning them over and over in her mind. Part of her brilliance of spirit was her ability to make something out of nothing - to expand the events of life, inflate them, change them from the mundane to the marvellous. It's what made her an amazing teacher, and a brilliant literary analyst...but sometimes it damaged her.

And so, maybe I need to start saying some things.

She carried a huge stockpile of emotion around. Most of it, she didn't even know was there until she got too weak to bear that burden anymore...an amazing (sickening, wonderful, heartbreaking amazing) part of her last year was this transformation she underwent, shedding layers of old matter, breaking through the carapace she had constructed to keep her vault secure.

We accumulate so much stuff in this life. So much flotsam and jetsam. So many superfluous items, and ideas, and opinions, and feelings. So many resentments and pettinesses. So much stuff. And for so long we think it’s important. We cling to it. We grasp it.

Watching my friend move away, watching as the distance between us grew wider and ever more impassable, was an odd sensation. Partly, it was terrible. Terrible, in the truest linguistic sense: an experience of terror. There was no reclamation possible - as time went on and the space between us, which had started as a crack and was rapidly becoming a gulf, grew wider, the moments of reconnection were fewer and more difficult to achieve.

And partly, it was exhilarating. Exhilarating, again in the linguistic sense: to bring out gladness. I felt like I was watching someone run to victory; like I had seen my friend suffer through a marathon and now she was on the home stretch, the last hundred meters.

...there is really no planning for this journey. No packing. In fact, I said to someone the other day that I feel the need to unpack for this journey.

The someone was me. We were talking about how weird it is to be together - with my mind on my approaching loss and the ways I might be able to help her, and her mind on her approaching gain. How weird it was for me to watch her go on, and for her to see me recede. She had trouble concentrating on the earthly realm, sometimes. As time went on, I stopped telling her about little things that used to distract and amuse her...she just wasn't interested. Not because she didn't care about me, but because she had started to see this world through a veil. The urgency of it was gone, for her: she knew that all things pass away.

I still saw - I still see - through a glass darkly.

Standing on the sixth board from the end, remembering what it was like a year ago, what I feel is a profound gratitude. A thankfulness that we knew she was leaving, that we got to smile lovingly at one another and say goodbye.

That she got to say things, and repeat them.

That she kept writing a blog - a silly word for an amazing thing.

That every two weeks or so, I'll hear her voice again.

Score one for marketing.

2011-05-22T12:05:00.000-07:00

Em, who can't read, just picked up a box of cereal and said hopefully to her sister, "Is this a specially-marked package?"

"No."

"Aw, darn it."

I miss the days when they watched Treehouse, which has no commercials. They've graduated to Teletoon Retro, which is commercials interspersed with the Pink Panther.

Innocence Lost

2011-05-21T16:29:00.001-07:00

Want to know a few ugly facts about your backyard?

Each year in America, an estimated 100,000 children are sexually exploited.*
Human trafficking is currently the second largest criminal industry in the world, netting over $43 billion each year.
The average age of entry into prostitution in the US is 12-13 years.

Are you feeling skeptical? Of course you are, because you'd probably rather not believe it. I feel the same way.

A few days ago I was contacted by Child Rescue, an organisation committed to ending the exploitation of children by predators. I spoke on the phone with Lindsay Hadley, the Executive Director of Child Rescue, and she asked me whether I would be willing to post about an upcoming event that the organisation has coordinated. It's a training event for law enforcement officers, to equip them to recognise child exploitation or human trafficking situations in the field, and to manage victims and prosecute cases effectively.

This workshop is coming up soon - June 1, 2011, 14 days from now. The administration costs and the event fees are all covered by corporate sponsors, but individual officers who wish to attend (some from Canada) will have travel expenses not covered by their policing organisations.

It's strange that such a horrifying activity, which we'd like to think of as a "Them" problem - affecting people in other places, other countries - gets next to no press in North America. It seems there is an overwhelming apathy when it comes to protecting our children - strange in a culture where parents are increasingly hovering and paranoid. It's a weird dichotomy.

I'm asking you to click over to Child Rescue, read about their organisation and their mission and, if you are able, to consider donating, or sponsoring a police officer to attend the training. It's not likely that you or I will ever be in a position to offer first-hand help to the victims of child sexual exploitation, but these officers could potentially encounter these children every week while on the job. I think the least we can do is help prepare them for what they'll need to do....for where they'll have to go, and what they'll have to see.

Child Rescue main page. (Click on "Make a Donation" or "Donate $3 a week", upper right.)

Law Enforcement Sponsoring page.

-------------------------------
If you have a blog, you can get a button from the Child Rescue blog (see my sidebar) to send people their way, and raise awareness.

-------------------------------
* Statistics from childrescue.org

Edgestitching

2011-05-13T10:37:00.001-07:00

WOW, it has been cold. Around here, May is usually a beautiful month, with June being the rainier of the two. This year we've only had one or two partly sunny days interspersed among the otherwise constant rain and cloud.

I've been out in the garden a lot, though. We're planning a family reunion here this summer, so I want to make things look nice for when everybody gets here.

A few years ago my friend introduced me to the idea of the 'mowing path', and I cottoned right on to it. It took me a while to get it done, mainly because of the expense...I prefer the look of a wider paved strip, and that multiplies your cost by a lot.

I put this raised bed in several years ago, and - partly because of the shape - it has always been a pain to keep the lawn tidy around it. I don't mind things growing where they're not supposed to, but I'm not so keen on losing my carefully-stacked rockery in a wild, leggy frontier of grass.

I had some pavers left over from a different project last year, and by miraculous happenstance there were exactly the right number to go round the front of the raised bed.

So, it was time for a little clever spade work (supervised by Piper).

I levelled the soil (difficult - old roots everywhere) and put down a double layer of weed barrier. I laid the pavers, and transplanted a bunch of 2" chunks of creeping thyme from the front yard to fill the larger cracks.

I poured on a bag of jointing sand and swept it into the cracks...this process took the better part of a day and I'm still not sure I'm finished...as long as the sand keeps settling, I'll need to keep adding more.

But for now I'm satisfied, and I must say, I think the effect is pretty sharp.

That green thing on the right side is rosemary. It's doing a little too well...the left side of the bed is decidedly disadvantaged, being planted up with a failing hydrangea and a leggy, wildly self-propagating chrysanthemum.

And now, with that done, my new wellies and I are taking a few days off.

Love Island Kids

2011-05-06T12:31:00.000-07:00

One of the neighbourhood boys, a little messy towheaded, rubber-booted thing with no front teeth, just turned seven, remarked to me the other day, "I have a funny story from when I was little. Y'know how they have those signs that say 'No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service'? Well one time I had ONLY a shirt and shoes! So I was allowed in to get ice cream."

Argh

2011-04-29T06:14:00.000-07:00

When I got up this morning at 5:15, unable to sleep any more for wondering what the dress looked like, I discovered that my PVR didn't record the Royal Wedding. I'm devastated...I will have to watch the highlight show like some sort of yob.

Specialised.

2011-04-27T09:29:00.001-07:00

I have just come inside from breaking up a fight in my front yard. Charlotte was yelling at her sister, "AND YOU'RE SO RUDE! WITH YOUR [sneering] 'TWEEN' AND YOUR 'DUH' AND YOUR 'WHATEVUH'!!"

Emily retorted nastily, "I'm getting older, y'know! I say things I hear older kids say! I can't help it if I'm a tween!"

Apparently she learned she was a "tween" on Thursday night, from a younger friend.

If there's one thing I'm sick of, it's this endless, tiresome stratification of childhood. It used to be, you were a child until about 13, at which time you grew up, became a young woman, and let your skirts down.

Figuratively speaking, of course, since it was the 1970s and not the 1870s. My skirts were always more or less down, if by skirts you mean trousers, and now I am realising I have just said my trousers were always down. Moving on.

Oh, HELL no.

2011-04-23T20:10:00.000-07:00

Leaving the dollar store today, I saw a minivan parked up against the curb, with no one in sight except a toddler in a car seat in the back. This is something you notice a lot more when you're a parent with young children - you hesitate near the car, peer inside, and then usually a harassed-looking mother, standing within about 15 feet, will lean out of the gas station/convenience store/phone booth and call out "I'm right here, don't worry."

This time, nobody was around. I waited for a minute and went inside to the cashier (staying within sight of the vehicle) and asked her if there was any security staff. "No," she said, taken aback, "but there's mall security - why do you need it?" Just as I was explaining the situation, a woman came through the other cash register, left the store, and got into the van. "Oh," the cashier said excusingly, "she only came in here to return something." (That makes it okay, then.)

I left the store and, by coincidence, followed the minivan through the parking lot to the grocery store at the end of the mall. The van pulled into a space, and I parked a couple of rows away, deciding to leave a note on the windshield when they went into the store, telling her that I had seen her leave the child alone, and that she was lucky I didn't call the cops.

As I rummaged for a pen she got out of the car, gestured towards Thrifty Foods and said something to the child, then to my utter shock she left the child in the backseat, and walked into the store.

"OH HELL NO." I said loudly to myself. I went over to the van, and as I approached I could hear the child crying her eyes out.

Before the mother came back out, I had time to stand there dumbfounded, accost a passer-by for her mobile phone, call Mr HSB to get the non-emergency police number (no answer at my house), call 911 and give all the information, then wait for several minutes longer, listening to the little girl sobbing for her mother.

She came out of the store after 7 or 8 minutes...by now I was in a towering rage and I let her have it with both barrels. "I suggest you wait for the police to get here - I've called 911 about the toddler you left in your van."

"What?!"

"You heard me. You might as well wait for the police since they're on their way."

"How dare you! You don't know anything about me!"

"I know one thing about you - you left a toddler alone in a vehicle. How old is that child?"

"She's three! And she's fine!" And then again, "You don't know anything about me! You don't know what kind of person I am!"

"I know exactly what kind of person you are. You are the kind of person who leaves her child alone in a car twice in one afternoon - I followed you here from the dollar store and you did the same thing there."

"How dare you!" she gasps.

"Do you know how long it takes someone to steal a car? Thirty seconds. You were in that store for more than FIVE MINUTES." (I'm nearly shouting now.)

"It was locked!" (She's shouting right back at me.)

"Tell it to the police. You left that child in the car, which is both ILLEGAL and WRONG, and you KNOW it's wrong: that's why you're so mad."

"Do YOU even have any children?" she asks me, as though she thinks that if I had, I wouldn't mind what she has just done.

"Yes I do," I replied coolly, "I have two. And they are supervised at all times."

I thought she was going to punch me for that one.

She gets the child out of the car, so I stop talking. She's holding the little girl now, and we stand there for a few minutes waiting for the cops. The daughter says, "Why are we standing here?"

"Because this lady thinks....thinks I'm mean to you."

I don't say anything - it's not my place to make a mom look bad in front of her child...not that this chick needs my help looking bad.

"I'm calling my husband," she suddenly says. She puts the child back into the vehicle and climbs into the driver's seat. "Hi, it's me.....I was at the store and I left Nora* in the car for thirty seconds and I come out and this lady is screaming at me that she's called the cops.........I don't know!........no, just a lady in the parking lot........now the cops are coming and this is ALL YOUR FAULT IF I HADN'T HAD TO COME DOWN HERE FOR YOUR STUPID TAPE NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED!!!!" (She's in the car sobbing and I am standing at the rear bumper, watching for the cruiser, arms crossed, the picture of "WHEREVER THERE'S INJUSTICE, I'LL BE THERE!", trying not to have inappropriate laughter at this 'tape' remark.)

She hangs up, gets out of the car and comes up to me, tear-stained but defiant. "My husband says I should go home so I'm leaving. If the cops want to talk to me they can come to my house."

"Sure," I say politely.

"I'm sure you have my license plate number," she says scornfully.

"Yep," I reply.

And off she goes.

Here's where it gets interesting. I stood there in that parking lot, waiting, for nearly an hour. Not a sign of a police cruiser anywhere (though an ambulance came to the parking lot - and the attendants went in and came out with bagels and Pom, and a fire truck came by on its way to the salmon barbecue fundraiser in the next block).

Finally I marched into the grocery store, politely requested the phone book, and got the girl to dial the non-emergency police number. By this time all my anger was completely displaced onto the RCMP. Here's what I said when they answered.

"Hi. I can hardly hear you, by the way. Look, I phoned 911 nearly an hour ago about a toddler left alone in a vehicle in the parking lot of Thrifty Foods. The mom came out, I had words with her, and she has left, and I am still standing here waiting for you. Are you coming, or what?"

"Oh, uh, yes, uh, hang on a second...Yes, the car assigned to you got held up with another situation, but he's on his way now."

"So, I should stay here and talk to him? Because I have been here for an hour. If I had called the SPCA about a dog in a car, they'd have been here in fifteen minutes." (You should have seen the faces on the people in the nearby lineups, listening to this conversation.)

"Uh........yes he's on his way now."

"Good. Thank you."

He did show up, eventually, and heard the whole story. I told him, "She might tell you I was screaming at her, but I wasn't. She asked me if I had children and I said yes, I had two, and that they were always supervised....I think that was a little inflammatory. But I wasn't screaming."

"No, that's okay," he said, shaking his head, "I'LL scream at her. I'm going to call the Ministry and we'll go to her house."

"Yeah, put the fear of God into her," I said, "hopefully she'll be scared to do it again."

He did apologise for keeping me waiting - citing "limited resources", if you can believe it - and I think he was taken aback when I said "Yes, I understand you have other situations I'm not aware of, that you have to prioritise. I am concerned, though, because there was a child involved and it did take you an hour to get here."

I was fairly polite and respectful, though - aware, as I am, that cheeking the police can get you into serious trouble.

As loth as I am to be the instrument of someone's family drama, I am even more loth to stand by while this kind of crap goes on. As a parent of young children, you DO see this stuff - you see little two year old dudes wandering around WalMart trying to find their mums, or a little guy burning around the aisles of the grocery store, laughing like a maniac all by himself. But you usually see, or hear, a parent rushing around calling "Austin! AuSTIN!" And, if you're like me, you follow the kid around, at a non-threatening distance, until he gets reunited with his parent.

Leaving a toddler alone in a car, with one window three inches down, for nearly ten minutes, outside two stores......that is not happening.

---------------
* I changed all the names and locations.

Quantificating

2011-04-15T12:15:00.000-07:00

Only ten more days until my mood rises with our Lord. Can't wait.

In the meantime, I made the mistake of watching this new TLC show called "Extreme Couponing". Has anyone seen this? After watching for about forty seconds I wanted to climb in a hot bath and open a vein.

Here's my problem. Well, here are my problems, I should say.

Parsimony
Word for the week: parsimony. The quality or state of being stingy. Adj: parsimonious. There will always be people who will do anything to save a dime, and on the flip side there will be people who would rather spend ALL their dimes than sacrifice a pleasure or preference. Of everything in this very opinionated post, this is the most subjective and potentially offensive part, so I'd like to note that this is my personal feeling in response to this particular show - and to assure you that though I disparage the extreme couponers, it doesn't necessarily follow that I can't appreciate the value of thrift and good management.

But.

The cheapskates on this show are unbelievable. The amount of time they'll expend, the sheer number of hours involved in collecting and sorting hundreds of coupons, memorising store policies, dividing their purchases into two or more carts so that everything is grouped to maximise savings, according to double or triple-couponing, the mental energies directed to this whole exercise....and all so that they don't have to PAY FOR THEIR FOOD. It seems so dreary, so miserly, so small-minded. It's all so narrow and pinching - the complete opposite of words like largesse, generosity, good-naturedness, open-handedness.

I don't have any idea what their other expenses are, naturally, but I don't imagine those people are taking public transit, turning off lights, installing solar panels, or disconnecting their cable TV service. I'm willing to bet that most of their money-saving initiatives are directed at their food - the nourishment of their bodies, the fuel that keeps them alive, the single biggest factor in the health of humans. Which brings me to...

Food Value
90% of what I see bought on this show is packaged food. Aside from the odd trip to Meats or Dairy, these people are spending hours cruising up and down the centre aisles of the grocery store - and doesn't everyone know by now, hasn't everyone heard this truism: that the FOOD is found on the outside four walls? Bread, dairy products, meat, fruit and vegetables. You can live your entire life - longer AND better - on just those, never having seen a Frito Lay or bought a can of Campbell's. How many coupons are published to help you save money on fresh produce? Hardly any. Why? Because those are actually worth your money. They can be difficult and costly to grow, maintain and transport, and their nutritional value is both potent and fragile. So far, I haven't seen a single head of broccoli or bunch of carrots on this show. And people, let me tell you something I'm sure you already know: what prepared packages of food have to offer you, you don't need.

Obsessive Behaviour
Well. This one's kind of obvious. Reality TV thrives on obsessive behaviour, but there's something extra depressing about a person who spends weeks clipping bits of paper, spends five hours pushing a cart around choosing what the coupon marketers want them to choose, burns holes in the checkout screen with their eyes in case the coupon doesn't get entered properly, and then crows triumphantly when their bill is reduced by 90%. Great job! You've taken home a bunch of crap and preservatives to cram into your family's mouth for the next several years. Every time you eat some of it you can congratulate yourself that you didn't pay for it. The only thing better than butylated hydroxytoluene is FREE butylated hydroxytoluene.

What draws these people to extreme couponing is not need (I don't imagine TLC is going to be featuring truly poverty-stricken people on this show - from what I've seen the families are more likely to be covered in bling and loading their free groceries into huge shiny SUVs), it's the gloat-factor - the feeling that they've put one over on the Man, got something for nothing, And THAT'S the obsessive part. "Extreme Couponing" is a shiny, tidied version of two other TLC shows - "My Strange Addiction" and "Hoarding-Buried Alive". For the hoarding bit, read on.

Stockpiling

In order to save the most money, you need to be able to buy in quantity. Nobody really needs to have ten boxes of Frosted Flakes at once, so you have to store what you don't use right away. Do I want to have a garage stacked floor to rafters with non-perishable food, which is mostly processed and packaged trash, preservatives, and chemicals? What does it add to my life - the knowledge that if I have the urge for chips and ranch dip, it's right there for me? Or maybe the thought that if World War III breaks out, I won't have to loot the Piggly Wiggly, but will be able to fend off all my neighbours with a shotgun while cramming one of my 250 free packs of Twinkies? I don't need that. Neither, I would argue, does anyone.

* * *

Probably some readers will think I'm crazy and sit there telling their laptops in a loud voice how wrong I am. Straighten me out in the comments - go ahead and give me a blast! I'm sure I'm overlooking something important - like perspective. And on that note, I'd like to point out, through clenched teeth, that there is no such word as "cuepon". Of the many abominations perpetrated against the English language, that mispronunciation is among the most irritating.

Okay, and now just let me check......hang on, give me a second.....Yep, I think I've probably offended everybody. I can click 'Post' now.

------------------------------------------
By the way, a point of interest - in Canada, we don't have double and triple couponing. Every coupon I've ever seen has, in the fine print, "one coupon per customer per product". So "Extreme Couponing - Canadian Edition" would be an awfully short-lived experiment, wherein we watch Doug Mackenzie save $2.50 on a single package of back bacon and get 50% off select garden hoses when he buys one at regular price. There might be a mail-in rebate, but I wouldn't count on it.

Drear

2011-04-10T17:01:00.004-07:00

I gave up happiness for Lent.

.

Postscript

2011-04-04T13:05:00.000-07:00

Aren't you all helpful! In the end it wasn't as bad as I had feared - after sprinkling baking soda, waiting until it dried, and vacuuming it up, there is no smell whatsoever. I did it twice though, just to make sure. The whole thing didn't even take a full 24 hours. All's well that ends well.

Vomit certainly strikes a chord with people, I'll say that...a surprising number of comments and emails came my way after the last post.

As to the children, they appear to be nearly fully recovered, and are dealing with the uncertainty of life after the stomach flu. My little daughter said yesterday, "Hm. These days I have to be careful with my burps."

Then her older sister added "Yeah, the toots too. Watch out for those."

And I - I can't wait for summer.

YME

2011-03-31T20:27:00.000-07:00

My daughter was in the car waiting for her sister and me, who were putting on our shoes to go to a riding lesson, and suddenly BLEURGH, she puked. I mean she got rid of everything she had eaten all day, soaked the carseat, soaked the floor mat, the carpet under the floor mat, the back of the front seat, you name it. It even ran down the seat and into the gap between the seat and the backrest of the car, and down into the bit where the seatbelt sticks out. Am I ever going to get the smell out, is what I want to know. I have scrubbed and spot treated and scrubbed again, and scrubbed with Basic H and scrubbed with Fresh Laundry and sprayed and dried and washed and scrubbed and sprinkled baking soda, and the miasma in the car is still formidable.

To top it all off, we got to the riding lesson, groomed the horse, tacked him, and then the instructor phoned to say she had an emergency and couldn’t make it.

Argh.

I am bailing out – it is 8:15 and I am leaving the house to have coffee with my friend. Can’t stand it another minute – can’t stand being The Mum – the person who is in charge of cleaning up all the most unpleasant messes. Everybody’s peed pants, everybody’s accidental diarrhea toots, everybody’s vomit, everybody’s bloody noses are MY responsibility. Bad enough during the rest of the year - flu season is too much for me. I just can’t take it anymore. I need an hour away, and coffee, and maybe a stroll through a magazine section somewhere.

Here I am, beyond thrilled because I get to spend an hour and a half in Starbucks - my first coffee break in around 3 weeks. "Mum" is the grittiest job there is, and you've got hardly any sodding break from it.

But hey - at least it teaches you to be grateful for small mercies.

Resurfacing

2011-03-21T09:46:00.000-07:00

Argh! What is with the crazy viruses this year? You're sick, you're better, you're sick, you're fine now, Oh Wait, you're sick again.

I think I'm on a Fine day, so I'm online for the first time in a week to remind you about Earth Hour which is on Friday. It's a sad state of affairs when we congratulate ourselves for turning off our lights for one hour a year, but I'm sure Mother Earth is saying to herself, "Beggars can't be choosers". Imagine how different the planet would look if we all habitually did those Fukushima-style rolling blackouts. (Yes, Dave, even I have heard of Fukushima.)

It's no secret that we're reliant on technology. I rail against it, but you should have seen my look of dismay when, mid-scrub, my Oral B Sonic Care toothbrush batteries died. And once I breezily decided I'd try making macaroons without a power mixer - just good old fashioned whisking. I nearly had an apoplexy, and for days I felt like one arm was normal and one was Popeye.

It was humbling. It makes me think the obesity epidemic could be ameliorated just by making everybody do their housework and cooking appliance-free. The nation's arm-jiggle would be gone, certainly.

1982, Revisited

2011-03-11T12:36:00.000-08:00

Since Christmas I've been enjoying a second childhood with my daughters' new dolls - Brianne and Leonie of the "Maplelea Girls". This line is Canada's version of the ubiquitous "American Girl" doll - equal in quality and price (a nice, round $100), albeit definitely a country cousin as far as the comprehensiveness of the line goes. There are only five Maplelea Girls, whereas the American Girl line, with their 'customize your doll to be exactly like you' option, is basically limitless.

Anyway, down to business: the clothes.

I'd be embarrassed to tell you how many hours I've spent dreaming up outfits for these dolls, so let's skip that part and get to the first one I've actually made - a gift for a friend's daughter, whose birthday party is today and whose Maplelea Girl will be the lucky recipient of this.

It looks better in real life.

A pleated wool skirt and an alpaca cardigan, made with the remnants of a 100 gram ball of Socrates alpaca sock yarn.

The wool is scrap from a skirt I made for myself this week, and was done in about 2 hours, altogether, most of it spent pleating. I just cut a 33" piece, marked it at 1.5" increments, and pressed 1/2" pleats all along the length, then stitched two lines at the top and a 1/8" hem at bottom, and added the braided microsuede trim to give it a firmer edge at the top. Two 1/4" snaps close it at centre back. This was SUPER FUN to make...luckily, because my daughters both want identical ones for their dolls.

Cardi for Brianne
Pattern: Retro Cardi by Caroline Dlugy-Hegwer, for 18" dolls
Yarn: Alpaca With a Twist Socrates in kind of a purpley colour...have lost ball band.
Tension: around 7.5 sts per inch
Needle: 3.00mm bamboo
Notes: Turned out too big. It looked slimmer in the pattern photo, so I'm wondering whether my tension was incorrect, or whether my eyes simply deceived me. So, once it was done I cut it under the arms and removed 3 inches of width, in total. Seamed it with a sewing machine. Shoulders are still too generous though.

This project was so fun, I've already started a Fair Isle vest that measures 12 inches around and 6 inches long...so cute! I'll show you next week. Today's Mr HalfSoledBoots' birthday, so I'm off cake-making right now.

My Friend Clicka

2011-03-08T13:18:00.001-08:00

Watching My Friend Flicka with my daughters, Em saw this scene and remarked "Ma's texting."

Which is so postmodern it kills me. I thought it was bad when they saw a Fisher Price record player and said "It even has some CDs with it".

/conversation

2011-03-01T12:21:00.001-08:00

Get this. I was just on the phone with a friend who, when I said "No one offered me any advice," said this to me:

"Shannon, do you know that you present as a person who has it all together?"

Momentarily speechless, I recovered, resorted to Georgette Heyer and replied blankly, "Good God!"

* * *
Slightly more than five months have passed since Sandy's death. It seems like both a long time and a short time - more long than short. I often find myself feeling as if she belongs to an entirely different lifetime I once had. I wish that one wasn't over.
* * *
I am knitting nearly every day, trying to finish the Rheingold Wrap. It is now about the same height as I am, so I am awfully close to finishing. I've started cutting fringe for it, to make sure I don't run out of yarn in my attempt to get it as long as possible.
* * *
Got a nondescript envelope in the mail last week which proved to be four tickets to Cirque du Soleil this summer - Mr WonderfulHSB knows the path to a girl's heart. (Lithesome humans in catsuits, fantastically made up, hurtling through the air while performing death-defying feats of athleticism and grace.) I cannot WAIT.
* * *
Recovering slowly from a fairly paralysing form of stomach flu that has incapacitated me for the better part of a week. During that time, I watched "Middlemarch", which I don't think was as helpful as it ought to have been.
* * *
And I am reading Henry James' short stories. I'm not sure how I got to the age of 37 without having read "Daisy Miller" but that omission is now repaired. It was well enough, though I prefer "The Aspern Papers", also new to me, and in the same volume. I don't think I care for James' heroes (possibly better described as "narrators") - they are very wishy-washy.

It's Grimm, all right.

2011-02-22T08:45:00.001-08:00

I found a listing on eBay this morning, for a - and I quote - "first edition, first printing" of Grimm's Fairy Tales. From 1980. Which, I'm pretty sure, was well after the first edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales was printed.

I want to go to sleep for a hundred years in the hope that when I wake up, people will have gotten smarter.

Speaking of fairy tales, does anyone want my (mint, only viewed once) Blu Ray of Pan's Labyrinth? Comment, and email with your address, and I'll send it off posthaste.

****
Feb 28: I have not received a single taker on Pan's Labyrinth (how bizarre!) so I have donated it.

Starts

2011-02-08T14:05:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Elizabeth commented on the fact that I had visible grass in my Rheingold photo...and since the sun is out again today, I thought you might like to see what else is going on in my yard.

Front:

and back:

It's February...still winter, technically, but on Vancouver Island it's early spring. Boy I like it here.

What ARE your staff hours?

2011-02-07T16:04:00.000-08:00

After a morning spent cleaning bedrooms, changing the guinea pig's cage and doing laundry, the kids went to play down the hall. Walking into the kitchen, I saw a mess and called down to them, "you forgot to put your plates in the dishwasher!" I got no response. I repeated myself, louder. Finally, amused but exasperated, I shouted "DISHWASHER! DISHWASHER! DISHWASHER! DISHWASHER! DISHWASHER!" over and over. I stopped suddenly and heard a noise - a piece of paper hitting the floor while sneaking footsteps ran back down the hall. I saw a note on the kitchen floor and picked it up:

Dang. I'd speak to the manager, but.....well. That would be me.

In other news, the sun has come out today, but there is a hideous north wind chilling the very marrow in my bones, so I only had time to snap one quick shot of Rheingold:

Nine repeats. I ordered extra yarn for this, so I am going to knit until the yarn runs out...therefore I am not sure how long I've got left. But, encouraging progress nonetheless.

Once Upon a Time.

2011-01-29T02:03:00.001-08:00

Lately it seems the only things I post are reviews. Actually it gives you a fair idea of what I'm spending my time doing - lots of reading, lots of watching, lots of listening. This all - all but the reading - happens while I knit.

Showing the knitting will have to wait - the light is so bad here in January that you'd not be too impressed with what I'm making if I took a picture of it during these dark days. In the meantime, let me tell you about Pan's Labyrinth.

The complications of life in the information age have divorced most of us from our folklore. Early humans resorted to invention in order to understand the mysteries of daily life - go back far enough, you will find stories to explain why the sun rises, why the moon's appearance changes every day. Guillermo del Toro thinks that, as the "external" mysteries are mysterious no longer, storytelling has turned inward - has focussed on the internal mysteries. Pan's Labyrinth explores the internal mysteries carefully - builds them into layers of significance. Only a few of them are apparent to the casual watcher - the most important threads are the invisible little strands, hidden behind the curtain, that hold the whole structure up.

Visually, the movie is gorgeous. Evocative in its use of colour and light, there is a whole story to be found just in the shadows, in the shades. The cinematography perfectly represents the paradox of the parallel universe, the realm of faery that is only a step removed from the daytime world: the two contained in one.

It's a truly excellent piece of work. It's a beautiful, razor-sharp story with all the things that are most important to us humans: longing, fear, loss, cruelty, redemption, hope and dismay.

I loved it.

It was so complicated and yet so simple. The characters are immediately recognisable, though sometimes reinvented. The princess. The servant girl. The spirit guide. The woodsmen. The dictator. There is a wicked stepfather. Other elements: the quest, the trinity, the sacrifice, the terrifying tasks. The violence.

I hated it.

I mean, I hated it. It freaked me out so deeply, I don't know what to do about it. I am not sure whether I can watch it again...because my BluRay player hasn't got a viewing option labelled "Never Show Me This Scene Again". The fairytale part was not the problem. The problem was the aforementioned wicked stepfather, who is a sadistic abomination straight from the pits of hell.

I can handle implied violence - an axe descending towards a shrinking captive, then the scene cuts away and you don't see the moment of contact - but I can't handle the kind of relentless, inhuman brutality in this movie. It all gets screentime. Less than a half hour in, I had my eyes tightly shut and my hands over my ears because I hadn't got to the scan-forward button fast enough to prevent my seeing and hearing a man being bludgeoned to death with a wine bottle, directly on his face.

I had to stop it and go do something else for an hour, during which time I debated whether I would even finish the thing.

I did finish it, but made damn sure I had both hands on the remote - left thumb on "mute" and right thumb on "skip". Also, during my intermission I had checked online reviews to see exactly what other scenes I had to watch out for - a good thing, as it allowed me to scan past the "man who gets tortured with hammer in face" and the "Pale Man monster with eyeballs in his hands, who eats babies" and the "man whose leg is amputated with a handsaw".

Obviously I'm still sorting out my feelings on Pan's Labyrinth. I really do not know which one I mean more: "I loved it" or "I hated it". As far as its intention goes, it's a smashing success. It's truly a fairytale, with all the archetypes which that genre contains. (And for an excellent discussion on that, see this post.)

Modern childrearing shuns the old tales, deeming them too violent for children - and in fact if we saw the fairytales we knew as a child "in living colour", as it were, we'd be horrified: imagine being a fly on the cottage wall while the wolf is eating Granny. Yerch.

But when Little Red and the Woodcutter arrive to save the day, Granny is exhumed from the wolf's belly not as mince, but in one piece - nightcap firmly in place. It's the bizarre appeal of folk tales - the cheerful lacquer we have painted over the dripping gore, hopefully leaving the moral of the stories intact, for the next generation of children to learn from and thrill over.

So I've decided what to do. I'm going to go brush my teeth (had to have cocoa to comfort myself after finishing El Labyrinto del Fauno) and while I'm doing that, I'm going to lacquer over the evil stepfather, firmly closing the shutters before the bottle comes out. I'm going to paint a rosette of fresh crocus on the princess' nightgown, and pretend it protects her from harm. I'm going to wash all the blood off and tell myself that the girl was not afraid, that the faithful maidservant arrived in time, that the doctor wasn't dead after all.

Because I have to go to bed now, and I've just heard a scary story.

I think I loved it.

Recalled To Life

2011-01-21T19:36:00.005-08:00

Erudite Mondays at HalfSoled Boots

Volume 11, Number 1

A Tale of Two Cities

by Charles Dickens

My quest for self-improvement, and the list of books I hadn't read, led me to this Dickens classic. Written in 1859, it deals with the French Revolution - specifically, with the Terror.

Monseigneur was about to take his chocolate. Monseigneur could swallow a great many things with ease, and was by some few sullen minds supposed to be rather rapidly swallowing France; but, his morning's chocolate could not so much as get into the throat of Monseigneur, without the aid of four strong men besides the cook.
Book I, Chapter 7

Dickens can be a tricky author to read. Some of his works tend towards the grandiose, in language as well as in plot ambition. Two Cities, though, is beautifully stripped down - has an urgent tone that matches its setting, and events in the plot. It seems incongruous to call it "refreshing", but that's how I felt afterwards - as if I had been plunged into something and brought back out again.

It's a pretty scary book. For me, the French Revolution is almost a theory rather than an actual event: so far removed as to be more "a force in European history" than anything else - an event that led to other events, and a thing that I viewed as part of a whole. Two Cities brought this remote past back to life - clamourous and sweeping, crying, gasping, and bleeding. It was awful.

Every day, through the stony streets, the tumbrils now jolted heavily, filled with condemned. Lovely girls; bright women, brown-haired, black-haired, and grey; youths; stalwart men and old; gentle born and peasant born; all red wine for La Guillotine, all daily brought into light from the dark cellars of the loathsome prisons, and carried to her through the street to slake her devouring thirst.
Book III, Chapter 5

I suppose if I had thought much about this book before reading it, I would have given a list of words such as "classic", "literature", and "grand". Maybe "prosy". Definitely "wordy". I knew vaguely that it was about the French Revolution (thanks, I'm ashamed to say, to a game of Trivial Pursuit I played when I was about 19 years old), but was not interested in finding out more about it. I, like everybody in creation, knew the first part of the first line: It was the best of times; it was the worst of times..., and that was more or less enough for me.

But when I finished A Tale of Two Cities I sat there, a 37-year-old stay-at-home mum with a Bachelor's degree in European History on the wall behind me, Googling "causes of the French Revolution" for two hours.

And, really, that's what this whole exercise is for: to push my boundaries outward, and find out what it is that I've been missing all these years.

The National Razor shaves close.

I've been thinking about my reading schedule, and I've decided that I should have a "classic" on the bedside table at all times. There's something different about reading literature - there's a reason these books are still in print one (or two) hundred years later. In a word, they're good. I also have a theory that reading classics broadens my mind and improves my English.

As a side note, I used a different edition than I normally would - the Penguin or Signet style. I am a fan of annotated works, with footnotes that expand on the text, and help place antiquated phrases or vocabulary in their context. This time, I read the "Collector's Library" edition, a small format, which contained gilt pages, the original set of illustrations (by "Phiz"), no modern introduction and no footnotes. I LOVED it - it felt wonderfully current, not in the least as though I was studying something 'old'.

I think next I might try "The Scarlet Pimpernell" - may as well carry on with the French Revolution while I'm thinking of it.

I wholeheartedly recommend that you read A Tale of Two Cities. The first couple of chapters are a bit bewildering - you are introduced to a complete stranger and immediately asked to care a lot about what he's thinking during a long night drive - but if you can get to page 120 you're all set. The rest of the book will go by all too quickly.

Vive le Boz!

Curiouser and Curiouser.

2011-01-13T23:59:00.002-08:00

A few years ago I found out about this 100 pushups thing, and posted about my initial test. You do as many pushups as you can, in a row with proper form, and then you work towards a goal of 100 consecutive pushups...it's quite good for you, apparently. Good for your core strength. And I guess a 'cold' test is supposed to be a reliable indicator of your fitness level. In September 2008, I did twenty.

My fitness level is way down at the moment, due mostly to me not having time to exercise during the past....oh, long time. I can tell this by the way I am puffing and panting just going up a couple of flights of stairs.

But this is weird - I just tried the initial test again, and I did thirty pushups. Thirty. What the hell? Remember that WKRP episode "Fish Story" where Johnny Fever is doing an on-air test involving the effects of alcohol consumption on drivers? And the more shots he does, the faster his reflexes get? Well, apparently I, like him, get better and better as I am getting worse and worse.

And no, I am not going to carry on towards the 100. My wrists are already burning. I will go have some Mayan chili chocolate instead. (Also excellent for your heart.)

There Sure Are A Lot Of Words.

2010-12-29T14:24:00.006-08:00

I had a weird experience a few days ago - I got to the evening of Boxing Day and was conscious of a falling-into-an-armchair feeling, accompanied by an inward sigh of relief. Imagine my amazement when I realised I am "glad It's over". Never before have I been, and hopefully never again will I be, pleased to see the back end of Christmas while the calendar still showed December.

A low-key Christmas, of course, with bits of melancholia mixed in to relieve the near-total apathy. But, all in all, I believe it was no worse than expected, and maybe even a little better.

I was reading an old post the other day - the one about the 106 most unread books. I wanted to assess my progress through my self-imposed program of Improvement. And I've done okay - I have added five to my "Have Read" list, and I have added three to my "Have Started" list. (The library wanted them back.)

Have read:

Vanity Fair
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
The Fountainhead
Watership Down

Have started:

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
Tale of Two Cities
The Once and Future King

Initially I was disappointed to see only five pins down, but two of them are Ayn Rand meisterwerke, so I shouldn't feel badly about that. I nearly went blind reading Atlas Shrugged in particular. It was during our June visit to Ontario, and I read that sucker in eleven days. About 1100 pages, in teeny print.

I had a lot to say about Atlas Shrugged after I read it, but that was six months ago and now I'm not nearly so motivated to talk about it. Plus, it's really long and preachy. But on the up-side, the sexual tension is handled brilliantly. If there's one thing Ayn Rand knows, it's timing. (Except "when to quit" - that part she struggled with.)

The Fountainhead made me tired.

Vanity Fair, it turns out, is a page-turner. It's one of my friend Bethro's favourites, and I can see why. I didn't LOVE it, but it's a good one for discussion. I personally think Thackeray likes Becky better than Amelia, but that's despite himself. Or maybe he's just being ironic - giving Amelia the rewards of virtue in the end although he, himself, values Becky's acerbity over Amelia's insipidity. Hm.

Anyway, a word on style: Vanity Fair is like a really long and rather slower-paced Georgette Heyer novel. If you have managed more than a handful of Heyers and enjoyed them, you will probably like VF. I did find, though, that VF is hard to read when spread over a long period. You have to concentrate on it, and that's easier when you read it in, say, two weeks rather than six.

Watership Down, on the other hand, is one of my desert island books now. I always thought vaguely that it was a gentle, pastoral children's book, on the lines of "Wind in the Willows" for a slightly older reader. I certainly wouldn't have called it "edgy", or anything.

Boy, was I wrong.

It's about animals, sure, but it's totally serious, not in the least tongue-in-cheek, not at all wry about the fact that these bunnies have their own myth tradition and none of them can count past five. The world they live in is masterfully set up. I can't say anymore, except that you should read it. If you find it a slow start (there is some background to get through), just at least finish off the first three chapters. If you're not hooked, you probably never will be and you can go on to something else.

Lastly, the self-effacingly titled A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. And my only comment on that is: neither. It was good enough - certainly had its poignant moments. Lots of gratuitous bad language, which got annoying in a surprisingly short amount of time. So maybe I'd amend the title to "A Slightly Emotive Work of Mediocre Talent".

What am I reading next? I was thinking that maybe you should give me some recommendations. Pick something from the list, and leave a comment saying which book I should tackle next, and I'll read and review it.

If nobody expresses a preference, I'll go on to Anna Karenina, which has just been lent to me by a friend. I've ordered The Once and Future King from Chapters with Christmas money (thanks Mom!), for the #2 spot, and I believe after that will be Catch-22.

Here's the list of what remains unread. I have just counted, and there are 60 titles here, which means I've read 46. I'd like to get half done this list, which is seven more books, by the spring. Just for bragging rights, nothing important.

Tell me what to get from the library, and I'll get started. (Just please, please don't make me read non-fiction. I don't care much about Guns, Germs, OR Steel. And not that true crime one either. I don't like crime.)

---------------------------
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Catch-22
The Silmarillion
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Tale of Two Cities
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies (I do not want to read this.)
War and Peace
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books (I don't really want to read this either.)
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Historian: a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Foucault’s Pendulum
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Poisonwood Bible: a novel
Angels & Demons
The Satanic Verses
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present (No. I don't want to read it.)
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything (It better be.)
Dubliners
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed (Uh uh.)
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
On the Road
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything (Nothing by an economist, please.)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
Gravity’s Rainbow
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences (Yuck. No.)
White Teeth
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers
---------------------------

Solstice

2010-12-21T13:22:00.002-08:00

There is a mile of heavy rain and grey cloud between me and tonight's full moon, but I know it's there. In the fullness of time all things will pass away, but in the meanwhile I am going to light a few candles, brew up a potion (hot buttered YUM!) and enjoy the longest night. Cuddle up, everyone...winter is for sleeping!

XO

Pacific

2010-12-08T19:51:00.007-08:00

That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been.
-Ecclesiastes 3:15

I had a lot of time to think, while we were on the ferry back to the island. We embarked on our 31-hour journey from Prince Rupert in the afternoon, under a cloudless sky. We sailed south past barge terminals, docks, and canneries. Then those dropped back to the stern, and it was tugs and seiners and buoys. Then those dropped astern and we moved on into isolated channels, past narrow coves and innumerable waterfalls. As the sun set, dropping smudgy and red through the clear winter sky behind the western mountains of Grenville Channel, the full moon rose pale and chilly in the east.

It was too cold to be much on the outer decks, but I spent as long as I could tolerate outside, thinking, staring at the steep sides of the channel we were navigating.

Darkness crept up on us while we were still in Grenville Channel. I put the children to bed, and stayed curled on the porthole sill, watching the moon.

I was hundreds of kilometres from the nearest electric light. The ship was barely lit. The passage we traveled was waveless – protected from the open sea. The black ocean slid underneath in a heavy liquid ink that felt bottomless. Above me was the round and silent moon, sailing in her own black unending sea.

For hours I watched it – saw it above, saw it below. I gazed at the coastline, an otherworldly, blurred slash of distant paleness, the only proof that we were divided: sea and sky. If it weren’t for that shoreline, we – the moon and the sleeping children and I – could have been on the continuous inside of a dark liquescent ball.

Bathed in the moon and the remoteness of the night, my communion with the dark Pacific brought a sudden realisation.

Sandy died hours after September’s full moon, in the early morning following the autumnal equinox. The high tide had begun to ebb one hour before - and not long before that, she had sat up in bed and said her last words. I have to go.

Four Fridays later, I had watched October’s full moon rise and thought of how she had left - intentionally, it seemed - on the turning of the tide, the turning of the moon, the turning of a season – her favourite season.

And now eight weeks had passed, and on my journey home from retreat, I saw a third full moon rise.

I know when the next one will come: a rarity – a full moon on winter solstice, the longest night of the year. Solstice marks the time when earth’s life forces are at their lowest ebb. Everything is dead or sleeping. But every day afterwards will be a little longer...our faces are turned towards the sun for a few extra minutes of warmth every day, until finally it will be enough to awaken the plants, and rouse the animals, and break open the seeds lying under the melting snow.

The wheel of the year will turn again.

It has been a hard time. Nearly a full year has passed since Dad came to tell me of his diagnosis, and since Sandy came to me and told me her cancer was back. Now he is cancer-free – healthy – and she is dead.

And we have suffered.

So there is one more moon to come: a full moon to light the longest night – the moon that will close this season of mourning.

The morning after, light will begin to return to the sleeping earth.

Light will begin to return to me.

Last spring, I wrote “I’m lost. I don’t know how to lose a friend. I think the handbook for that might turn out to be short: muddle through as best you can.” Now I’ve lived the end of our story, hers and mine, and I can look back on the last twelve months and say, with peace: I have done well. This job I had to do, this task given me to accomplish, was painful and difficult and it broke my heart...but all I could, I did.

And it was enough, and more than enough.

Now I find, at the end, that one of the most important things is to let go of a thing that is over. To know the job is done, to have experienced it fully, to let it become a part of who I am, and to go in peace towards something new.

There are times in your life that grow you up – push you up a steep and rocky slope, which you have to scramble to stay on top of, and when you reach the summit your hands are bleeding and your fingers ache from holding on, but you’re changed, and stronger, and the view is incredible.

Life is a beautiful thing. Death can be a beautiful thing.

The time for weeping is nearly over. I can feel the season of mourning passing away. I’m ready for the wheel to turn, ready for the next season to begin. It’s an everlasting cycle, and I am a part of it.

A Milestone

2010-12-03T09:58:00.004-08:00

We're not quite finished yet, but my sister has had a major breakthrough in her adoption process.

I feel like putting on a floaty dress and heels.*

And now, for your admiration, I'd like to introduce my beautiful niece and nephew:
Brother and sister, they have been in care at Addis Ababa for about 7 months. Gwen hopes to bring them home in the spring - once the rest of the paperwork is done. (It's agonising.)

My nephew is probably 8 or 9 years old (though his paperwork says 7), and my newest niece is 3.

For now my sister is referring to him (online) as Weundem, which is Amharic for "brother".

And this is "Ehet" (sister).

I'm so happy...so excited...want to charge over to Ethiopia and clasp them to my bosom!

------------------------

*I don't remember it being this racist!

there were never such devoted

2010-11-30T16:38:00.003-08:00

While I was away, too many things happened for me to tell you about. The visit itself was amazing – my sister and I are true sisters. We talked and cried and cooked and sang and laughed so hard we had to run to the bathroom. (Two babies each – our bladder control is not what it once was.) We watched movies together and shopped and did not go on the internet (much). We cleaned and decorated and read books and ate. We tried to get a good photo of us together, and couldn't. (But the process was hilarious.)

I had just commanded "Eyes well open!" and Gwen complied. She doesn't look that demented in real life. And I look more focussed.

I said to Gwen, “Sandy bought me a Christmas ornament on my birthday every year. Tomorrow’s her birthday, so I’m going to buy myself an ornament...I’m thinking of one of those Starbucks ones because she had one on her tree.” The next day, Sandy’s 47th birthday, Gwen went to get a few groceries in the morning, and came back with a little paper bag. In it was a card telling me she loved me, and a little red and white china Starbucks cup with a gold ribbon. I cried and cried, and she cried, and we hugged.

She made Sandy a birthday cake – Black Forest, from scratch. With yummy brandied cherries she canned herself, and real homemade buttercream. We sang “Happy Birthday to Sandy” with huge smiles, huge voices, like she could hear us. (She could.)

The kids played Twister, and laughed and fell on the floor. I finished knitting my legwarmers and wore them around, every day, with the yarn ends still hanging off. Gwen cooked Ethiopian and I ate so much I felt faintly sick.

I vacuumed. (I love vacuuming.)

On the last day, we looked fondly at each other, misty-eyed, and agreed that it was the best visit ever, and nobody wanted us to go home. Not me, not Gwen, not my brother-in-law, not the children (who have never gotten along as well as they did these two weeks), not even the niece who gave up her room for us.

I have a lot to say about the ferry journey, but that’s for a different day. For today, I’ll close by saying this.

There’s nothing like family, and there’s nothing like friends.

There’s nothing like friends IN your family.

You know that saying: “home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in”? Well, “have to”, nothing. We want to.

And that’s a huge blessing, and a precious gift.

Thrice for luck.

2010-11-06T08:48:00.002-07:00

Today I begin a journey. A literal journey, this time, to manifest the metaphorical one I've been on this year.

The Celts believed that a traveller wishing for safety and luck should cross three waters at the start of her sojourn. I will be crossing a river, then an ocean, and then a river again. The ocean crossing will take an entire day...once round the sun to accomplish 272 nautical miles.

Travel is always significant. This time, I hope to be restored for the next fifteen days as I stay, with my children, in my sister's house. I hope to come back - again by ship - with more peace, more optimism, fewer tears. The smaller salt swallowed up in the larger.

See you on the other side.

What the Flaming Heck.

2010-11-02T16:28:00.004-07:00

I once was a knitter. I was confident in both my talents AND abilities - that is, I (thought I) was fairly adept naturally, and I had improved my skills with careful application.

Finally making these.

But this afternoon, while working on my first Mosey, I thought something didn't feel quite right - what should have been centred, wasn't.

I frowned.

I turned the knitting this way and that.

I noticed an odd abundance of purls.

So I counted.

How did I get this far, I ask myself, how on earth did I get 30 rounds in without noticing I had cast on not 76 stitches, but 64?

Thirty rounds is far.

I counted several times during cast on, and I was completely confident, 100% sure, that I had 76 stitches. If I had ended up with 66, that would be understandable. Ten less is easy - my brain is an (antiquated, painstaking, but effective) abacus, and occasionally when I mentally click over a blue bead, I get one too many. But twelve? Twelve less? What?

Even the four purl stitches together, on the needle join of a 2X2 rib, did not alert me.

Even now, I did not realise the truth.

So I am unravelling, and putting ice cream on my humble pie.

And my legs are still cold. Not warm at all.

I've got no cigars.

2010-10-26T23:05:00.003-07:00

The Canadian Blog Awards are over, and I can in all good faith display a second-place badge for both categories. The Best Blog Post poll was close-ish - HalfSoled Boots won 18.23% of the votes (winner took 19.97%) but I was a distant second in the family category, with 12.9% as opposed to the winner's 41.89%.

Thanks for the votes, friends!

* * *

Speaking of well-written, do any of you remember me doing a 'meme' blog post listing books I hadn't read but wanted to? Well, I'm using that post as a reading list. It's part of my ongoing self-improvement program. I have finished off five of them, and am midway through three others. I'll do an updated list at some future date, but in the meantime I am reading Vanity Fair.

First of all, it's annoying me that the only edition I could find in my library is one with Reese Witherspoon on the cover. I am not a snob, normally, but I admit I find it a little galling to be seen reading a book that says "Now A Major Motion Picture" on it. It may be a character failing - I'll look into it. (See "self-improvement program", above.)

Except for the cover, I actually quite like the book. It's more interesting than I expected. However, the print is small, and if there's one thing that points out one's age, it's trying to read a book whose lower-case "o"s measure one millimeter in diameter.

I measured one.

William Makepeace Thackeray is also much too fond of moralising in parenthetical asides to the reader. My high-school writing teacher would have hemorrhaged red ink all over his MS - "Show, don't tell!" she'd have written. He "shows" just fine - there is no need to tell. Cynically, I suspect that he, like Dickens, was being paid by the word.

Parallel Lines

2010-10-23T04:39:00.005-07:00

The moon is full again - it has been one month since Sandy died.

This month treated me well. Not happily, but well. Filtered through a screen of death, life took on a sharpness I didn't anticipate. A lot of things clarified for me during the last four weeks.

I will have more to say about it - her death is the central fact in my life: and will be, for some time - but for now, for a little while, I can leave this alone.

The posts I've written since September 24 have generated lot of response. Privately, I've had many emails about them: about their resonance in readers, about the way I've written them. I want to thank everyone for their remarks - interestingly, I've been so comforted from your response to these posts. It's reassuring to know that so many of you understand what I'm trying to say.

My original post, written the day Sandy died, is in the final round of the Canadian Blog Awards' "Best Post 2010" category. The CBAs, unlike the CWAs, are a voting-driven competition, so if you would like to vote (as many times as you like, but only once per 24-hour period), you can do so at the link above, or in the sidebar, above right. Half Soled Boots is also in the final round of the "Family and Parenting" category.

Thank you all, again, for your good wishes, prayers, and support during Sandy's illness and since her death. You've been an amazing comfort to me, and I'm so grateful.

An Adjustment...Step 3.

2010-10-16T23:04:00.002-07:00

My beautiful friend. I miss you so much. I know you're gone far beyond my reach now, and I know this message goes out to be unread and unreturned.

But I am writing to you as if you can hear me.

Today is my birthday. I thought about you all day, about how you used to come here with something yummy and with a Christmas ornament for me, every year. That was wonderful, I loved that so much. I turned 37 today and thought about when you were 37, and had your little son at long last. I sent you a card and "The Runaway Bunny". Then when you were 39 I had my daughter, and you sent me a card and "Where the Wild Things Are".

Your birthday is in just a few weeks. I will make scones in honour of us, and then go out and buy myself an ornament that reminds me of you. Maybe a Starbucks one because I love the little china cup you always have on your tree.

I should tell you that I have become great friends with Elvera. She and I seem to understand each other...she has invited me to your old summer camp to cook with her next year, and (this is making me cry for the first time today...) I think you would be so pleased to know that I am going to go there in your footsteps and do what you did. I'm so happy that I will get to be in that same kitchen and maybe learn from Elvera about those roasted vegetables you used to do.

My mom misses you. My daughters miss you. Ian misses you too. He loved you.

Did you see how many people came to your funeral? 662 - it was crazy. I felt a bit sorry for Bryan because I think every last one of them hugged him and cried a little. Not to blame them.

But Bryan's doing great. I'm so glad you got him to the homeopath before you died...it has made a world of difference. He was standing up to people, the week after you left. You should have seen him during some of those pre-funeral organisation meetings - you would have been proud. He was firm - quiet, respectful, but firm and decisive. He didn't let people walk on him. I was proud of him too.

In a way I think he might come into his own, now. He is stronger and I think he will become a different man, a different father, as a result of having to live without you.

Not that I think it's a good thing you are gone. This is my way of finding a silver lining, that's all.

I will never stop missing you.

I want to type "you'll never know how much I love you", but I think I'm wrong about that. I think I loved you exactly the same amount as you loved me.

I have such comfort, I want you to know - such comfort that you and I had something nearly unspoken. I want you to know that I know you loved me...I know you were close to me. Even though we didn't always get to see each other as often, or spend as much time together these past three years once you went back to work, I know it didn't mean anything. Don't worry about that. I know you worried about it, and you felt bad, but I'm telling you it's okay.

I love you so much. I always felt you were uncomfortable with the term 'best friend', but you need to know that I called you that always, and I will call you that always, and that it's not some sort of competition - it's a statement of fact. Of my friends, you are the best. The best, my darling.

I also need to tell you that, because of that last morning we spent together, when your soul was clinging on with the most fragile of tendrils to your body, I do not fear death any longer. You have helped me with my deepest dread. You showed me that I can go toward that moment with certainty and peace. You showed me that pain is fleeting, but acts of love, generosity, freedom of spirit, uproarious laughter, and determined kindness last for a generation.

I love you so much.

I will miss you so much.

I will come and have coffee with you in your mansion the second I get there. Because now there really IS someone in heaven that I can hardly bear to be without.

The world is without salt, my lovely, best of friends. I can never savour it in the same way again.

Goodbye Sandy.

XO
Shannon

An Adjustment...Step 2.

2010-10-12T21:44:00.001-07:00

The day after the funeral, people started asking me "How you doing...getting better?" Or, "Now things should get easier." "At least that's over...it'll be hard but at least things will return to normal."

I suppose the well-intentioned but misguided remarks come out of not knowing what to say. After all, what does one do with a person who is sad? How do you speak to that person about your plans for Thanksgiving, or remind them that they owe you $27?

At what point does mourning become a bother?

This process is new to me. I'm not sure what to expect from it. I'm not sure how far my inner resources will take me. I don't know at what point my heart will have had enough time...I wonder when I can start everything up again.

Grief is uncomfortable for a lot of people. They'd like to get it tidied out of the way. I cleaned up Sandy's bedroom two hours after she died, so her husband wouldn't have to come back home to hospice supplies, a rubber sheet, the aftermath of paramedics and fear and horror. Is it like that for people? They don't want to examine the frailty and uncertainty, the damage of death?

I don't know. I don't understand it. But I can see the need in their eyes when they ask me how I am - the anxiety that I might take my walls down and talk about my real feelings. Such a sense of relief when I stick to "I'm fine, thanks."

As a rule, I'm not a sharer. None of those people are in particular danger of having to soothe my sorrowing tears. But when I see how eager they are to pretend it never happened, to act like no one died, I think they might be cheating themselves. Remember Rascal? Every precious page of that beautiful book is a drop of flavour and texture, colour and scent and love. Not because he has the raccoon, but because he's going to lose the raccoon.

I've decided. I will feel the hurt as keenly and as deliberately as I felt the joy and the love of her before. As carefully as I will, sometime later, feel the happiness of remembering her.

I will wait it out.

The end will come eventually.

An Adjustment...Step 1.

2010-10-04T11:11:00.003-07:00

It's an odd thing, being without someone. I've been getting ready for this separation for three years...and especially for the last eight months...but now it's happened, I still feel lonely and rudderless.

Sandy and I were close. Imagine something dreadful happens to you - or something amazingly wonderful. Who do you call first? I would call Gwen, Mum, and Sandy.

It was more than help in trouble: more than filling a need. It was a safe place for us both to go. It was a comfortable silence, a cosy blanket, the Food Network on and the remote within reach. Scone day: I know her tea should be milky and hot, she knows my coffee is black and strong. Her favourite Devon cream, in the little glass jar, is $4.49. $3.99 on sale, and I'd buy two and bring them over. I'm closer to the grocery store than she is. I made the lemon curd and she made the strawberry jam.

She likes it when I bring my knitting.

I like the way she says "thinger" when she can't remember the name of something. "Hand me that keychain thinger."

She likes that I recognise all her literary allusions. "I feel like Mrs. Kirk."

We understand each other.

We understood each other.

But my friend is gone.

Absence
I visited the place where we last met.
Nothing was changed, the gardens were well-tended,
The fountains sprayed their usual steady jet;
There was no sign that anything had ended
And nothing to instruct me to forget.

The thoughtless birds that shook out of the trees,
Singing an ecstasy I could not share,
Played cunning in my thoughts. Surely in these
Pleasures there could not be a pain to bear
Or any discord shake the level breeze.

It was because the place was just the same
That made your absence seem a savage force,
For under all the gentleness there came
An earthquake tremor: Fountain, birds and grass
Were shaken by my thinking of your name.

- Elizabeth Jennings

The ending, the beginning.

2010-09-24T22:04:00.003-07:00

I've been watching my post meter creep up for a few months, noting with surprise that I was nearly at 500 posts published. I started to think about what I might put up for my 500th post...maybe a giveaway or something.

As the past week progressed, I began to realise what the 500th post would be. I just had to wait for something to happen, and that would be the day I'd say my half-a-thousandth to you.

Today is the day.

-------------------

Five days is not a long time. Five days is how long it takes a birthday card to arrive from Ontario. Five days is a nice stay at a resort. Five days will get you, in your average four-door sedan, from Vancouver Island to....oh, maybe Winnipeg.

Sunday was okay. It was fine - not great, but not terrible. There was an update sent out, saying that she was feeling a little better - that she was not so bothered by this crushing heat that had oppressed her for days.

Monday was different. I couldn't be there, and couldn't be there Tuesday.

Wednesday I spent the day with her. The second I walked into her house, I could feel the loss of what had begun to ebb away. Time to get ready.

And then this morning. It followed a night spent in wondering and knowing, alternately. An hour or so of sleep, scattered by a 4:45 AM phone.

She's in a coma. The ambulance is on its way (I could hear it) and could I meet them (they are coming).

A fumbling of shaking hands and jeans and shoes. A dropping of keys and writing a frantic note for the sleeping household. I'm walking to the hospital.

A block to go and there's a vehicle approaching from behind - it passes and I see a flash of white, a reassuring red, a lit window through which I can see a uniform bent over the unseen stretcher.

I run.

Triage.

"Are you a family member?" My mouth begins what is the heart's truth: "she's my sister" and I note this with surprise before I say, amazed that it should be so, "no....just a friend."

Paramedics ask "what's your name? Okay Shannon, you're taking her legs. We're lifting on three."

Through the blankets what I am lifting are not legs, not feet: they are two rounded, firm hot water bottles, but they're filled with ice. I decide then that this is one of my jobs...I am going to keep my warm hands on them every second I can.

Her husband is trying to listen to the oncologist. He is pain, cohering into the blurry shape of a man. He is running in silver beads all over the floor, an explosion of harm and agony.

This is one of my jobs. When it is time, I will collect him back together carefully.

He kneels. His hand on the skin of her scalp, her hair just beginning again. "It's just that I love you so. I love you so."

I ask the oncologist. "Today?" She looks at me for a half-second, assessing. "Yes. Are you Shannon?" I'm so surprised that she knows me. Everyone I meet today, for the first time, knows me.

Just a friend.

"We have a private room for you upstairs."

"A private room in a Canadian hospital, is that possible?" her husband tries a laugh, through the scream I can see just under his skin.

"For situations like this. I'll tell them there is a big family coming. We're moving you to 3 south."
I don't ask, I just come along. I've got her feet.

3 South

The room number pleases me. 321. Her husband is dyslexic, so I'm pleased for him too. One two three. On your marks.

I see nothing else about the room, because if I am in it, I am staring at her face. I am noting everything, with the intense study of a scholar. I am trying to find her.

I move to her shoulder, lay my warm and strong arm all along the chill length of hers. One hand on her head, I put my face in her shoulder. I smell the morphine. "It's Shannon, sweetheart. I am here for Bryan. Your babies are fine. We will make sure. Don't worry. Everything is going to be all right. I love you so much. I'm so glad to see you today. I'm not leaving."

An elevator opens. My friend's father. He comes inside. He shouts "No." and turns away and shouts again.

"I can't do this."

He doesn't really know me. But I can do something. Now I will pray for him.

I am staring at her face. No one will remember this like I will. No one notices she has not blinked. Her open eyes, thickly coated with yellow, will not change through these hours.

But I notice.

Her husband talks to her. His sobbing is a flail on my heart. I want to die.

"I have loved you so much for 23 years we had together. Remember when we drove across Canada? We had coffee and talked. You read to me. I loved every minute of that. I loved being with you. And now here I am with you at the end and I love you."

I am staring at her face.

People want phone calls made. There are people who should be here, who don't know yet. This is one of my jobs. I can do this. I walk down the corridor and do it.

"I am so sorry to wake you with such bad news. You don't know me. I'm just a friend."

Someone says to me, "Shannon, I need tea. Please. And Bryan should have something."

Be right back. I think there's a lounge downstairs, I'll find a kettle.

I have just poured the last of the water over a bag, into styrofoam, when there is a slamming of a stairwell door, a voice raised. "Shannon! the kids are here, we need you upstairs, they are hysterical."

I run. I wonder vaguely if I can do three stairs at a time - settle for two.

They are here, in the hallway, one just turned eleven and one about to turn eight. I try not to think about her birthday, fifteen days from this day. I can feel the panic building so I push the birthday away.

Her son is sobbing, shrieking and powerless and helpless with it. Her daughter gets to her feet. "I can't stand anymore. I can't stand it."

"Let's take a walk. There's a lovely window at the end of the hall."

Little one, I will be normal for you. Sandy, I can be normal for your babies. It's my job.

And I have not seen her for a while, but I have memorized her face. I can stay in the corridor, because I can see her here. I am seeing her.

There is a friend, familiar to the children, and she takes them away. They are finished. This is too much for them.

A sudden change for the better. She has turned to her husband's voice. She has raised her hands.

I go back inside. Somehow there is only me, for a minute, and Sandy. She is restless, nerveless fingers motioning to the blanket as if to raise it. She cannot grasp it. Her eyes fixed, still open. She must be so distressed. She needs me. I still her hands and rest my cheek against her head. "Ssh. Don't worry. It's okay. It's nearly finished. I know you're cold sweetheart. It's okay. I love you."

Her hands lift. She is rubbing her scalp. The motion makes her need to cough. There isn't enough breath.

We will raise her bed a little. We will fold her blanket behind her shoulders.

Her fingers, far from her sides, are pulling down as though to make sure she is covered. Under the blankets she is bare, except for her shirt. I can see she is worried.

I cover her. My hand is on her shoulder again and I say quietly, "You are covered. Be easy."

Her mask is too tight. The oncologist steps in, stethoscope to her ears. No one breathes as she listens. She steps back. "You know what? let's take that mask off. There is air going in, but not much. The mask is not helping her."

And there is my friend. Her mouth drawn down in suffocation, her amber eyes open, her pale hands floating.

Someone else's voice. "Shannon."

I do not look away from her. "What do you need?" I say quietly. Where does this composure come from?

"Sandy's favourite Psalm. Psalm 91. Can you read it for us?"

I am standing at the death of my friend. I am standing with one hand on her, and with the other holding her husband's Bible. I can do this for them. She will hear this one more time from me, and if I never did anything well before, I will do this well. How do I put peace into my voice? I will do it.

Because she has set her love upon Me, therefore I will deliver her.
I will set her on high, because she has known my name.
She shall call upon Me, and I will answer her;
I will be with her in trouble
I will deliver her and honor her
With long life I will satisfy her
And show her My salvation.

I am her friend.

I kneel beside her shoulder. I am staring at her face. Her breath is a flutter, a quick reflex, no more than three in a single minute.

I am drawing in what she needs. I am breathing in deeply, the way she used to. I realise that I am not willing her to stay alive. I am willing her to die.

Because I am her friend.

Her husband, across from me, cries. The cancer is breaking him in two.

I am staring at her face.

There is a rush inside me and my head throbs. My throat constricts over words I know I must say, but I wish for an insane moment that everyone would just go away so I don't have to say them in front of anyone else.

I don't want them to hear. It will be hard for them to hear.

My hands are on her arms. Her ear is nearly close enough for me to whisper. She won't hear a whisper.

I don't want to say it.

I love her so much.

I don't want them to hear. They will not like it.

I can do this for her.
It is my job.

I open my mouth. I draw in her breath.

She flutters.

I say it. "Go in peace."

And she goes.

There are no more flutters.

And I have done this for her.

I have been her friend.

The beginning

I laugh. I am so light. She is not in pain anymore. She doesn't have cancer. She is cured.

I say something else people might not like.

"Praise God!"

I get up and I go out to the corridor. I've been asked to phone many people but the first number I dial is my own. My husband answers. "She is gone." My mother is there too. "Mum, she's gone." I get to the end of the hall, right in front of the lovely window. I turn one corner, out of sight of her room, and I grip the handrail. I am on my knees in the hallway, hanging on grimly to the rail.

I'm cracking. My chest is in splinters down the middle and all the pain is going to come shrieking out if I don't watch it.

I get a grip on myself. I stand. I drag my sleeve across my face.

I dial the first number.

A vague amount of time goes by. I have told a lot of people and I am astonished how easy it is. "I am very sorry, but I am calling you with very bad news. I must tell you that your friend Sandy passed away fifteen minutes ago."
I am so sorry to tell you that your sister-in-law Sandy passed away twenty minutes ago.
I am so sorry but I must tell you that Sandy passed away about a half hour ago.

I am back in the room.

I do not look at her face anymore.

I am looking at him, instead.

"I just don't want to leave her here," he is sobbing. "I just need a minute more before I can leave her here."

When he has come out, we go in - one at a time.

I wait. I smile. I am pressing every bit of myself against the edges of that crack. There is a seam of dazzling, disastrous light in the middle of it.

It's my turn.

Even as I put my hand on the doorknob, I don't know what I will do inside. I don't know what will happen.

I step into the room and cross to her. I press my arms against her cold arms. I use every bit of gentleness I have when I cradle her face in my hands. I lay my open palms against the top of her chest, feeling her collarbones and her stillness.

I lift her hand, carefully opening her chilly fingers to slide mine inside.

I kiss her hand.

I cross to the open window and stand for a minute looking out at the sheets of cold rain.

I open it a little more, reaching a hand through.

I don't understand.

My palm is smooth and pale. Drops of water, driven by the wind, splash against it.

I wipe my cold hand against my face.

I cross to the door.

I leave the empty room.

.

We're doin' this again!

2010-09-19T22:51:00.002-07:00

A sure sign of advancing age is when annual milestones seem to arrive ever more quickly. It's as though significant dates are queued up on your front steps, down the walk, and out onto the street, where they impede the progress of passersby.

It's fall, so that means blog awards. I've been nominated in a few categories of the Canadian Weblog Awards - thank you, phantom nominator! - which are being competed a little differently this year. The winning blogs will be judged by a panel, rather than being awarded based on number of votes. I'm entirely content with this approach, and in fact am enormously pleased just to have been nominated.

Half Soled Boots has been named in three categories - Best Written, Best Family and Parenting, and Best Crafting. Once someone notices that the knitting content has dropped off sharply, I'm sure the last nomination will be moot.

In any event, we'll watch for the shortlist (December 1) and will keep you updated as to whether or not HSB advances. Any good wishes gratefully accepted.

(Now that I have been nominated for a "Best Written" award, I feel like I can use sentence fragments with impunity. I've read "The Shipping News": I know fragments are de rigueur.)

One's sorrow two's mirth

2010-09-15T15:45:00.001-07:00

Three odd things have lately happened to me.

1
I was standing by the open slider door to the back yard, when a finch flew directly at me, hovered in the air right in front of my chest for a moment, then darted past me into the house. It perched on the top cuff of my (unoccupied) boot, pooped inside it, and flew back out again.

2
I was washing dishes. A bird flew in through the open window, alighted on the rim of the dining room chandelier, then flew back out again.

3
I was sitting in the living room five minutes ago, drinking cabernet and thinking about life, when two finches flew toward the back window. One bonked against the glass and fluttered dizzily away, while the other hit the open half, came straight inside, landed on the floor, hopped about for a second, and flew back out again.

So if a bird in the house means a death is coming, and trouble comes in threes, I am in big kaka right now.

2010-09-13T09:22:00.005-07:00

I said to Lizbon last night, "I don't think I'll have time to blog regularly - I'm too busy." She sighed and said she'd miss me. I thought about the tin can phone and about how little it actually takes to write a post, and said to myself, "Cowboy up."

I've been working on my niece's sweater - fields of white stockinette with zero interest until the button band, which is stranded. I've finished all the pieces except the hood. Work in progress:

And here is the swatch for the colours. I started out with a paler green and a paler pink (you can see them down near the cast-on edge) but they were all wrong - too babyish. The new ones are much better.

Lots of things are going on lately - I was joking to my mom the other day that I feel like I'm manning a crisis hotline. My poor friends are having a terrible time - 2010 is a doozy. I'm managing by careful administration of movies, fiction, alcohol, and stimulants.

Tea, Coffee, Sugar

Lovely stimulants.

And speaking of school...

2010-09-01T16:49:00.001-07:00

I want this so, so, so, so, so, so, so badly.

Click it - I can't show you a picture here: wrong format.

Seven days in the laundry room makes one weak

2010-08-31T10:51:00.005-07:00

I think today I will spend knitting. The rains have begun, so it's a lovely dark, wet day with chilly floors and a sleepy dog, and I am working on Elijah for my sister's son. I think I might do some spinning, too, and maybe a little cross-stitch. I'll just stop by for a half hour and visit with all my projects, see where everybody's at.

When it comes to doling out the relaxation, I think I am more owed than owing. See how my laundry room looks?

I put a gallon of paint on the wall. Unfortunately, I need another gallon to deal with the other half of the room, so my photos all resolutely face the one direction.

This room is also my 'school room' and though some people on this earth have lovely school rooms with lots of coordinated colours and tasteful wicker baskets in cubbies, I am stuck in the wretched teal laundry room, with some kind of weird rubber floor and no practical (or beautiful) storage options.

But we work with what we have, so I'm slowly transforming this space to be more hospitable. We need to WANT to be in there.

More updates will come. My next priority (after today's binge of laziness) will be getting a roll-end of carpet for the ~~laundry~~schoolroom. It'll make a big difference.

When I started homeschooling (FOUR years ago, good grief) I resisted all pretense to formality. I didn't like the preoccupation that other HS mothers had with their schoolrooms. It felt like playing, to me - like they were more interested in lining up pretty glass jars with paintbrushes in, than they were in facilitating their children's natural tendency towards discovery.

It was a 'baby' and 'bathwater' thing.

Now, with Charlotte starting Grade Four, I've noticed a few things. Firstly, the higher the grade, the more organisation you need. The simple fact is, there is more to cover. The time commitment is greater, the content is more demanding, the child is more inquisitive and both deserves and can handle more detailed information. A kindergartner can be given an important lesson just by handing them scissors and coloured paper, and reading them "One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish". It doesn't keep a nine year-old nearly as busy.

Secondly, the dark, cold, chaotic laundry room just doesn't have the right vibe. The feng shui of the place practically pushes you out of the door physically. It's like a WalMart - the second you walk in, your hips start to hurt, your feet cramp, the fluorescents make your eyelids twitch and you get an irritable headache. That's not good enough for my kids.

Lastly, we keep thinking of it as the 'laundry room'. That is just plain bad prioritising. It can't be 'the laundry room where school happens', it has to be 'the schoolroom where laundry happens'.

So I'm making a schoolroom. It has a map of the world, it has an art line. It has a dictionary and a thesaurus, and a guinea pig. It will have a globe, soon, and a magnetic calendar. It has a weather chart, a planisphere, several compasses and a protractor.

And it will have math, and spelling tests, and hand cramps from writing, and it will have lying-on-the-carpet (when we get one), and listening-to-audiobooks-while-painting, and playing-with-the-guinea-pig, and lying-around-knitting.

So it won't be a place of constriction, or a monument to the mainstream, and it doesn't make me a martinet, or my children droids.

I think I can handle it.

My Wicked, Wicked Ways

2010-08-24T00:14:00.000-07:00

Quite likely, Errol Flynn had something else in mind when he used that title for his memoirs, but it is apt enough to describe me, and my sad, slatternly habits.

It's been a good while since I had a Messy Tuesday post, but that doesn't mean it's been a good while since I had a Messy Tuesday. This is my laundry room. It's meant to be a "Before" picture, but the "After" hasn't arrived yet.

Mañana, I say.

I was in my old beloved city on the weekend, to bear witness to this:

...the wedding of a young man who was once like a brother to me, to a young woman who seems very promising indeed.

Weddings always make me cry, and not because they're happy occasions. They make me cry because those two are standing at the foot of Everest, squinting optimistically up at the summit. The happy couple is thinking about standing astride the peak, in a heroic pose, with endless sky behind them. When in fact, if they ever DO get there, they will be bruised, bleeding, suffocating and suffering. Marriage is bloody hard work.

This shouldn't be taken in any way as a slight to my husband, by the way.

And anyhow I'm sure the last 13 years have been just as gruelling for him as they have been for me. We love each other like sandwiches, but I think every married person would agree with me that, to make it work, each partner needs a level of perseverance and dedication that few newlyweds are prepared for.

But hey - marriage is the ultimate 'learn as you go' activity...second only to parenting, I'd say. We're all works in progress. Which brings me to my closing photo - a progress shot. It's not really After, it's more During, but improvement is noticeable.

See? anyone can change.

something and nothing

2010-08-15T21:07:00.000-07:00

I went to see Inception last week. It was odd - a cross between Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Matrix, and Vanilla Sky. A pretty good movie, as Hollywood movies go, but sadly the last moment of the film was far, far too obvious and I saw it coming from miles away.

I'm so disappointed when that happens. I want to be totally shocked by the end of a movie, you know? I want to have NO idea. Like Memento, or Shattered. I like books like that, too - books where I can't see It coming: where the writer outsmarts me.

Speaking of books, I have some things to review. I have read a biography of Peter Elliott Trudeau, the entire repertoire of David Eddings, Atlas Shrugged, a bunch of Miss Read books, and a Martha Stewart guide to needlecraft. I feel tempted, here, to give two adjectives for each book and call them reviewed, but instead I'll write proper posts for them. Except the Eddings, because those are old friends, reread for the umpteenth time.

Nearly time for school to start, amazingly.

Eminem is for next year

2010-08-07T22:07:00.006-07:00

My six year old is walking around, snapping her fingers on the backbeat and singing:

"Ra ra ra-ah-ah
Roma, Ro-ma-mah
Gaga, ooh la la
Want your bad ro-mance!"

This reminds me of a dreadful afternoon when we were fifteen and my best friend was babysitting the pastor's three year-old. We were at our wits' end trying to stop her from singing something she had picked up (from us) during the course of the afternoon but, try as we might, the girl insisted on belting this out at the top of her lungs:

"If you're gonna do it
Do it right
Right, do it with me!"*

You would have thought that day would have taught me prudence, would have taught me to be careful what music I played when kids were present, but apparently not. It wasn't even two years later when my little four year old cousin, whose family I was rooming with during university, left my bedroom and wandered down the hall warbling

"Gimme gimme gimme a man after midnight
won't somebody help me chase these shadows away!"

Children will hang you, for sure.

Some people might think it's strange that I don't let my children watch Disney movies, but they sing Lady Gaga songs. I think it a bit odd, myself, but I'm willing to live with it.

I might also be counting on them finding Lady Gaga incomprehensible.

Plus I always clear my throat loudly if they happen to be in the room when she says "And baby when it's love if it's not rough it isn't fun."

I'm up for the 2010 Parent-of-the-Year award, didn't I tell you?

Wow, I'm old. And this photo is
pretty dodgy for a promo shot.
See the optical illusion, there?

-----------------------------
* I'm not sure what's worse: the horrible lip-synching or the weird pre-show-show with the - what is he, Italian? - cinema employee. No, wait: I have it. The worst part of this whole video is when George Michael plays the tambourine on his crotch.

Thank you, cows.

2010-08-01T22:05:00.003-07:00

Here's what's making me happy today.

Butter gets a bad rap sometimes, what with all the finger-pointing about heart disease and so on, but as far as I'm concerned it's food, and margarine isn't.

So now my butter has a beautiful red house to live in, before it meets my toast.

Ruby Slippers

2010-07-23T14:37:00.006-07:00

It wasn't too long ago that I would have considered myself a city girl. Before the kids were born, I was fully immersed in the urban lifestyle. Double income, no kids, car-free apartment-living, lots of traffic noise, washing my blinds four times a year to get the black exhaust residue off...and loving it.

My transition to a small town has been painful at times. It took years for me to get over the loss of my City. There are still things I miss about it - shopping choices, advanced recycling programs - but with every year that goes by, I am introduced to more and more compelling compensations.

It could be that the virtues of small town life, in themselves, are of lesser importance than my emotional need to be happy...maybe I have just adapted to this slower pace, this smaller world, out of my own need for contentment.

I'm not sure it matters.

I've learned a lot in the last 9 years. Even more, I've learned a lot in the last five years. Conservation becomes ever more important to me. Careful consumption. Stewardship. Mindfulness.

The blog has been a big part of this learning process. There have been times I've been tempted to drop it - to stop this (increasingly occasional) conversation we have. Today, though, I was doing some small jobs around the house, and thinking about mending, and the things on my needles, and how I really should get the wheel outside and work on the Shetland, and I realised something.

I want to tell you about it. I like to talk funny nonsense, say sad things, and show you what I'm growing.

I would miss you if you were gone.

And if I'm going to live a humble life in a little place, and learn big things from it....I'd like to keep sharing.

So thank you, for being on the other end of this tin-can phone. I'll try to pick it up more often.

Shannon

The Truth About Flower Girls

2010-07-15T08:20:00.000-07:00

Apparently the dress isn't worth it.

Dear Santa

2010-06-25T12:50:00.002-07:00

Six months from now, you better not bring any more stuffies to this house, you fat bastard.

Gone Gone Gone I Been Gone So Long

2010-06-23T19:34:00.008-07:00

16 days and thousands of miles later, I am back from Ontario. I didn't tell you I was going, because I didn't want one of you to come and burgle my house while I was gone. Maybe take my dog.

I bought the nose stud I was telling you about - and it has been six weeks, so I am finally able to take out the biker-chic BCR and put in the diamond....ta da!

I was startled to see this self-portrait, but my sister (who was on the other end of that headset phone line you see there) tells me that my nose is not that big. So, okay, good. Or maybe she said "Your nose isn't big", which could mean that this is really what my nose looks like and she's just used to looking at it.

Your comments on my roller-coaster post were funny. I have a deep and abiding passion for them, but I absolutely loathe and revile, and cannot stand the thought of, spinny rides. You know the kind of thing - whipping you around in circles while simultaneously turning you upside down/raising you in the air/tilting platforms beneath your helpless body. If I ride anything spinny, I get overwhelming nausea that can take up to 24 hours to subside. That famous Disneyland teacup-thing? sometimes I wake up from nightmares about that. And I haven't even been on it.

This weekend is my 20th high school graduation reunion. What do you know about that! Am I going? You bet. There were only 9 of us in our class, and we're (nearly) all still in touch. It'll be fun, even though it means I am old. "Too soon oldt, too late schmart" as my grandparents' plaque read in quaint germanic letters.

Here I was at my graduation, at the tender age of 16. The aforementioned grandmother stands proudly by my side. (Miss you Gramma.) Note my dress - post-French-Revolution in style, rose-pink in colour (YES momma!) and pouffy in habit. Made by Super-Mom according to my exacting specifications. ("It must look JUST like the cover of 'These Old Shades', only pink!")

It's a little unnerving to see a picture of my young self. I dread the thought of what 20 more years will do to my appearance.

I'll let you know how the reunion goes - too bad I don't still have that dress or I could put it on just for laughs (tears?) and see whether it will zip up.

Carmen Shandiego, Pt II

2010-06-19T11:24:00.000-07:00

Have I ever mentioned I love roller coasters? Behemoth = best day ever.

Not sure what to do with that.

2010-06-04T18:20:00.003-07:00

My daughter just came in from outside and said this:

"For our bird graveyard museum, Keely’s going to ask if her dad has any dead hummingbirds we can have."

I just sat there, watching her run back down the street, while the soundtrack in my head played crickets chirping.

Next, Maybe Old Yeller?

2010-05-21T08:57:00.007-07:00

Last night I finished our current read-aloud - Rascal. Things were going so very, very well up until the last page, when my eight year old sat bolt upright in her bunk. "Wait a second. WHAT IS HE DOING."

The six year old, much like Rascal himself, remained in blissful ignorance until the very last paragraphs. As Sterling paddled quickly away "from the place where they had parted" her eyes grew large and then.....the sobbing began.

Twenty minutes later, as I administered another dose of Rescue Remedy to my distraught baby, I reflected on the need for sadness in childhood. In a happy-ending culture, where Disney's Little Mermaid does not dissolve into sea foam, where the main characters NEVER get killed off, and where children are not expected to attend funerals, the routines of illness, separation, loss and death are unknown to a lot of people.

I've been thinking about this a lot, naturally, and have had some interesting email exchanges with commenters on recent posts. I was surprised by the idea, expressed by several people, that friends of those with cancer often desert them - they don't know how to act around an ill person, they don't know how to be with a dying person.

So they back away.

I wonder whether, in the peculiar type of sheltering that people do with their children - wherein they are routinely exposed to anonymous media violence, but not the human reality of suffering - our society has created a generation of emotionally-paralysed adults who, from lack of practice, don't know how to empathise.

Last night, as I was comforting my little girl, her sister was thinking aloud about Rascal. "Someday I'd like to see the movie," she said. After a minute she added, "Though I bet they changed the ending...they usually take those sad parts out."

But I don't want the sad parts out.

The life I live is incredibly rich. There are shining moments of near-perfect happiness.

There are huge gorgeous feasts with my family.

There are hot and lazy summer days, there are steaming pots of tea in the fall.

There is uproarious laughter.

The feasts are so much better when you're hungry. The lazy days wouldn't be nearly so lovely if my muscles weren't tired from days of work. The laughter is never better than when my face is still wet with tears.

I won't cheat my kids of this: the intensity of relief and joy when it has been tempered by tension and sorrow. Their pets will never 'go away'. Loss will come to them, and sadness, and they need to learn how to cry - cry hard - and grieve and mourn, and dwell in darkness.

And tomorrow, when the sun rises, everything will seem new.

Speaking of noses...

2010-05-17T08:23:00.005-07:00

How much do I want this? Much much. I've been scoping it for the better part of two years, since Lizbon linked me to the one she wanted.

I have gotten two emails from the owner of Body Matters Gold, both with coupon codes for percentages off. The first code was for 10% off: "TXT10". The second was for 15: "TXT15". So what I'm wondering is, if I go through the checkout and put in "TXT50" will I get it for half price?

Embarking on a new sweater today. This one is a knockoff for my niece, who showed it to her Mum on the Gap website, calling it her 'dream sweater'. Sadly the sizing was all wrong for her, so her Mum couldn't buy it, but I've decided to come to her rescue.

I need some simple knitting because things have taken a decided turn for the worse. Sandy is so very, very sick. This week I'll be with her on Wednesday and Friday, just spending the day sitting with her while her husband is at work and the kids are at school. She can't be alone in the house.

Knitting figures largely in our history. I want to knit while I'm there because it comforts her. I can be in her room for hours and she doesn't feel like she has to talk to me, because I have something to do.

So, the yarn will be Loyal superwash wool, with the colourwork done in (probably) Lanett. I'll use Ann Budd's handy book for the basic sweater, and add the colourwork bands when the body is completed. I haven't decided whether to knit the bands first and seam them, or pick up and knit them from the body stitches. I'll do as the spirit moves.

And as much as this distraction will also comfort me, as well as Sandy, I'm afraid it can only help me so much. When push comes to shove...I'm lost. I don't know how to lose a friend. I think the handbook for that might turn out to be short: muddle through as best you can.

Stress Management

2010-05-04T12:13:00.002-07:00

Some people get massages.

Some people overeat.

Some people shop.

I punch holes in my face.

I feel better now.

Yang - just in time.

2010-04-23T12:23:00.000-07:00

Dad had his post-surgery follow-up bloodwork last week, and yesterday he and Mum went to the urologist for his results....100% cancer-free! No further treatments needed.

I could use this news, for sure.

Another Sad Love Song

2010-04-19T11:29:00.003-07:00

My friend Sandy has had more bad news...her cancer is now in her liver. She's in a lot of pain and will be starting palliative chemotherapy this week. This time around she will lose her hair, so I will be knitting more chemo caps.

This morning my uncle wrote this to me: "...we have a thousand words to use when talking about root beer floats or skinny jeans but when bumping up against the big mysteries we are left floundering around trying to find something to say.

So I won't try."

And neither will I.

Thanks for all your prayers and good wishes for her, and for those of us who love her.

Springtime Kitchen

2010-04-14T11:45:00.003-07:00

I spent the weekend making - embellishing? - a pair of tea towels. It's my first time embroidering (cross stitch doesn't count) so I was not at all sure how they'd turn out, but I think they've ended up quite pretty.

An eggcup, and a Bialetti...slightly esoteric items, and two of the things I like having in my kitchen. Their specificity is very cheering.

One must be able to hang one's tea towels.

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Tea towelling fabric from Fabricland. 45/55 cotton/linen
Quilting cotton edging: Red Barn.
Motifs: Alicia Paulson, backstitched with DMC 3771 (Black brown).

Yea and Amen, Sister!

2010-04-08T16:03:00.004-07:00

A brief and wonderful post from Sarah at Handmade Homeschool...I felt like cheering when she said "Luckily, I make things."

Speaking of which, I have started another crib quilt. Sneak peak: