A very specific thing to be moany about.

I have an injury.  Just because I reached out to a frypan yesterday.  I should have been reaching out for the handle, but for some reason---maybe dotage---I grabbed the part between the handle and the pan and now i have a swollen, sore burny place on my index finger.  It causes me to flinch every time I type y,u,j,m,n,h.  It makes crocheting really hard, when I only found it moderately hard before.  It is the reason my right hand looks bigger than my left, and the very excuse I needed not to wear that gorgeous but uncomfortable knuckle-spanning 4 inch long ring I discovered in the Byward Market.

Yay!, I think.
 

Pass the Dessert please

Because of, or in spite of, the fact that yesterday was American Thanksgiving Day, our Thursday  seemed totally focussed on food.  Breakfast was not to be, although coffee and a tea biscuit from Tim's tried valiantly.  Lunch was spent with Sri Lankan friends at their home, where generosity and various uses of exotic spices came together to almost do me in.  Dinner at Milestones with our Victoria/Toronto family featured an amazing artichoke dip and other starters that left us unable to even think about main courses.  I did think about latté though.  I'm almost sure the day included things not involving food, but damned if I can call them to mind.

Back and Forth

Every once in a while, Dave and I come up to Barrie, the town where my parents lived after their retirement.  Our son Chris, our friend Annie, our granddaughter Phoebe and my brother Sean still live here, although not together.

When we're here, we stay with Sean in my mum and dad's house, and it's always disquieting.  So much of the house is as my parents left it; so much is not, and I just can't figure out how I feel about that.

I think we must all want to be able to "go back" to somewhere familiar, although as an Army kid it didn't occur to me that there would ever be such a thing.  We all knew that Army families don't live anywhere for too long, and if you were hardcore, as we were, you could actually never know anyone other than more Army families.

With that background, I certainly never expected that my parents would buy a house with a big yard, that Dave and I would get married there, bring home our children, our friends, our in-laws, our colleagues, acquaintances and people we met at the beach.  It was a lovely warm home, with the doors always on the go, cars and bicycles in the lane, new babies and old neighbours sitting in the shade of the catalpa tree which threw its sticky flowers all over the yard.   Someone was always making tea (never me---I can't tell when water has become tea, so I was excused); someone else was always drinking it.

Now that both my parents are gone, when I'm here I find myself careening crazily from giddiness to silent tears:  smiling at the framed pictures of the grandchildren and their children all willy-nilly on every close-to-flat surface, touching the kitchen table my uncle made from a Canadian Tire door one day, drying my face on a towel that hangs next to my mother's bathrobe.

The house is not in great shape structurally and we all worry about it, but Sean says there's no place he'd rather be, and now sitting in what was my brother Doug's bedroom, under a huge poster of Bob Dylan in curls and a velvet jacket, I'm inclined to understand him.  Catching a glimpse of my dad's medals sitting on the china cabinet I remember my parents buying with such joy and trepidation, I can see how this house can pull me in, even though my feet are freezing.  Brushing against a fairly badly-done trapunto picture I made for mum and dad in the 70s, hitting my toe against the quirky kitchen chair for the 8th time since starting the dishes, and finding that the bathroom door won't quite close, I wonder at the happiness we felt here over the years and suspect that maybe nostalgia has hit me upside the head yet again.

Back and forth, pain and joy, delight and sadness, familiarity and loneliness.  Now that's the kind of house I want to leave for my kids.

An apparent dichotomy

I unexpectedly spent the day in bed yesterday.  Not because I was sick but because I couldn't seem to get out of my nightgown.  It was nice.

 Not that I want to make a big deal out of it, but I slept late, had both brunch and dinner delivered on a tray and watched 6 episodes of In Treatment.  Dave claims I owe him nothing.

The miniscule downside to the day yesterday was that I left the spout open when I poured myself a glass of white wine and inadvertently covered the floor in Pinot Grigio, and I forgot which part of the crochet/ripout cycle I was on and ripped out a section of an entirely  unneeded scarf that actually had shape.  This was a small but humiliating cost for an unexpectedly rewarding yet selfish day.

And of course, there's the bedhead.

Photohunter: Theme JUICY

I thought I might get back into Photohunter antics.  I made a pact with myself to only use photos of myself, taken with my laptop webcam:  This is my JUICY entry.

LET THERE BE LIGHTness

This afternoon I was struck by a need to really, really clean up my kitchen counters.  In a condo like ours, that means moving stuff you don't have room for in your kitchen/office to other parts of your apartment in which you don't have any room either.

In his heart, Dave really likes an ascetic, zen look.  In my heart, I see a piece of counter or wall that has nothing on it and plan a shopping trip.  Yet we continue to be happy together.  In my effort to compromise, and to bring some asceticism to the room where I keep my coffee, wine and chocolate, my laptop ended up in the bedroom, where so far, it seems content.   It may actually be a good thing to separate the laptop from the goodies; it's certainly not a bad thing to be able to sit up in bed and write a post in the dark in the middle of the night.   We'll see how that pans out.

This was my kitchen earlier in the year:

From the living room looking in; from the hallway:

Note the appealing clutter  

 

Note the appealing clutter

I NO LONGER HAVE APPEALING CLUTTER, AND WHAT I HAVE LEARNED FROM THIS EXERCISE:

• Don't try to take photos in the middle of the night with a laptop webcam when your arms are wobbly
• Don't expect to go out into the kitchen in the middle of the night and not want a little something tasty
• As soon as you do something inspiring like get zennish in your kitchen, your husband will be inspired to clean out his bike saddlebags, leaving mysterious and dangerous-looking pieces of equipment and old maps on your ohm-ish counters

I may or may not try to capture the new kitchen look to post tomorrow, but probably, realistically, I'll have moved on to another equally earth-shaking task. 

Never do that to me again!

My response to Emily's blog.

Charming is as charming does...whatever that means

Some things that charmed me today:

• Canadians do Remembrance Day very well, and the CBC knows how to capture it.  There were veterans of every degree of bravery and well-being who could break your heart just looking at them, amazing singing from the Ottawa Children's Choir, our new Governor General and his wife taking the salute after the ceremony and thousands and thousands of people laying their poppies on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier---it's as heart-warming as it is heart-tugging
• Dave made applesauce pancakes this morning.  It takes him an hour, and he uses a huge array of pans and bowls and mysterious kitchen instruments, but their fluffy appleness is supreme
• Robyn and Emily:  they are adorable together in the same way that Chris is with Phoebe and Sarah is with Julia and Emma---I attribute that adorableness to me and Dave, albeit with no real chain of evidence
• I spent the late afternoon and early evening with some new friends who were kinder and more accommodating than I deserve
• pumpkin cheesecake with whipped cream and some tasty liqueur drizzled all over the plate in a restaurant that inexplicably looked like a fine dining location but acted like a sports bar---it didn't really matter to me because I was reading a Japanese ghost story
• my joy at seeing my apartment building, warm with lights and gorgeous furniture in the windows, after I had to pretend I was with a fierce seeing eye dog coming through the back access path which has no lights at all
• some sassy posts on Facebook that made me giggle, which is not very appropriate for a woman of my dignity and gravitas.

Altogether a very satisfying day, unless you count the walk through the Christmas display at the Bay.

Today and yesterday

This afternoon Dave and I took a walk so that we could watch the sunset.  It was not quite five p.m.  Yesterday afternoon, I am positive, I was swimming at my cousins' place, waiting for a delicious bar-b-q while waving a glass of white wine in a blessing of most of my children and their kith and kin.

Today, I had on an orange down jacket, jeans, runners (with socks), scarf and gloves.  Yesterday, I am positive, I was wearing a very unflattering but new bathing suit and I could see Robyn gazing at my flip-flops with an expression of longing because they have ingrown sparkles.

Tonight, David and I are watching THE EVENT, glad to be in cosy vests with collars standing up to our ears.  Last night, I am sure, I was hoping everyone would go into the house so I could have a nude swim.

It kind of makes me worry about tomorrow.

How I got croissants I had to eat in the bus

One year ago, when I was at a meeting of a group I volunteer with, I made a commitment to do some work for another group's 35th anniversary.  Twice since then, I've seen the organizers of the event and reminded them that I want to volunteer.  I was keen.

About a week ago, I contacted the group to see what they needed me for, only to be told that their volunteer roster was full, except for the clean-up on Sunday.  No matter, says I, I'm good at clean-up.  See you there.

I nagged at Dave to rush through his shower because I didn't want to be late; I paced around the apartment looking entirely ready at 1:40; we actually got to the venue at 10 to 2 and I said goodbye to Dave, made sure I had bus tickets and headed off to the door marked "Entrance".

It seemed like a good start.  By 10 after 2, I wasn't too sure, but because it was a volunteer organization who'd had a Saturday night party booked, I decided to wait, got a coffee at Timmy's and sat on church steps till 2:30.  Then I decided to  go home and see if I'd missed an e-mail.

Unfortunately, between there and home, I ran into a Shopper's Drug Mart, a brand new beautiful bead store, and a place selling out-of-the-oven croissants, but that was my problem, and I dealt with it in the way I usually do.  And that doesn't mean frugalism or abstention.

When I got home, I did indeed have an e-mail, during the reading of which I discovered that the event is next week.

After I've done my volunteer hours, I'll have to find a different way home.

Caution to the Winds

Emma and leaves

Julia and leaves

My son-in-law Bruce, who is Emma and Julia's dad takes lovely pictures.  These were taken just a few days ago, but they remind me of photos I wish I had taken when my kids were small, and ones I wish my parents had taken when I was small.  (And yes, that was since the invention of the box-that-steals-souls)

I loved to jump into piles of leaves and Chris and Sarah did too, but at least when she was small, Emily was not fond of this pastime.  Emily is in some ways a cautious person, and she was leary of what might be swept up into a bunch of leaves.  That was probably wise of her.

Her caution did not extend to other life decisions necessarily, and I would guess the best illustration of that would be this photo:

See how it matches her wedding dress?

From Emily and Morgan professional wedding photos

Yummy!

It seems just yesterday that we were watching this infant being born, and now she's chomping oranges.  And kosher pickles.  And sliced tomatoes.  She can't pass up anything made of cardboard or paper and she looks at plastic with the reverence I save for dark chocolate caramels with sea salt.

I can't wait till Em lets me feed her ice cream.

Movember

Dave and woodsy moustache

One of my friends was involved in this campaign last year.  Given the cause, I heartily support him.

I've heard that growing a moustache is harder on the the wives and partners, whose patience with the bristles is to be praised, than it is on the men.  That's what I've heard from wives and partners.

What I suspect is that if moustaches didn't speak so eloquently of the 70s, more men would be doing this year round.

What I personally feel is that a moustache (on a man) is almost always flattering, but that's just me.

woolly Dave