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Friday, 19. June 2009
Life at Golden Grain Farm
Kate
18:14h
This is where you'll find me on the web as of spring 2009. ... Link Sunday, 28. December 2008
Sun 28 Dec 2008
Kate
20:53h
... Link Friday, 26. December 2008
Boxing Day 2008
Kate
21:34h
"Were you trying to burn the house down last night?" Scott says. "You left the top of the stove wide open when you stoked it up." This was the fourth Christmas since Mom left us. I think of the last Christmas Eve we spent together, when she dolled herself up to "look good for my family." She was weak, pale and tired, but put on some lipstick and was happy we were all in the same place for a change. If not for her condition and our knowledge that it well might be her last Christmas, we probably wouldn't have been. On Christmas Day Scott and I stopped in at Mom and Dad's for supper and she and I chatted for three hours, a real good talk, and the hours flew by. I don't know why his name had come to mind, but lately I had been wondering where this penpal I had as a kid had gotten to. We wrote faithfully back and forth for some years, then lost touch after high school. When Scott and I got home last weekend he immediately started a fire in the woodstove in the basement and I sat upstairs in the kitchen, where it was warm, reading the local paper. When that was done I started flipping through a farming magazine laying on the table. On one page were two vertical rows of photos of people who work for the Wheat Board, and I glanced at them and was turning to the next page when it struck me that one of their names was familiar. Had I read right? I flipped back. Not only was the name correct, but he was situated in a town very close to the village postmark his letters once bore. I dashed off an email the next day and received one in return and sure enough, it was him and we caught each other up on the last 30 years of our lives. I had the most overwhelming urge to phone Mom and tell her about this happy occurrence. Next to myself, she would remember him and all the mail that flew back and forth between our two households, like no one else. Sigh. *** While Scott's turnips were boiling on the stovetop yesterday afternoon, Grandma opened her gifts and then I offered her a shot of Drambuie. She enjoyed that—rather quickly—but as she had had an upset stomach the other day (resulting in a call from home care to let me know she'd thrown up all over the place, was feeling fine, but I might want to check on her the following day) and is so tiny, I was reluctant to offer her a second one right away. I did request that Scott take the above photo of she and I, since I have many of her with others but am usually holding the camera myself. At 5 o'clock we went next door to his parents' house for the family meal, and at 7 Grandma told me she was tired, so I warmed up the van and drove her back to the lodge. There were fewer residents than usual at the card-table outside her room, where there is always a game of whist going on in the evening and Grandma likes to sit and watch, and sometimes plays. After hiding her coat and putting her gifts away she started walking me to the door and we were met by a young lady (only in her eighties) who lives directly across the hall. She greeted Grandma with a big hug, linked her arm through Grandma's, told me what a goodhearted lady Grandma is and how well she is doing, and the two of them carried on together. It's good to see that Grandma is happy there. I have been taking it easy today, my only nod to the Boxing Day holiday being Bailey's in my coffee. Scott thought maybe we should drive to Yorkton and hit a furniture sale but I talked him out of it and he was only too glad to let me have my way. We need a bedroom suite for ourselves and new beds for the boys, but can wait till we are going to the city on other business rather than making the trip just to shop. His son Gunnar arrived yesterday and would have come with us, but I'm sure he's just as glad not to be on the road today too. He'll go back to Calgary in just a couple days. Well, it's time to put the sweater on Ducky (feels ridiculously like dressing a baby) and take him out for a short walk. It's warmed up a bit but he still starts shivering before I even open the door. He's quite the little sweetheart and has become my shadow— I go nowhere alone— and when he's curled up beside me he growls a gentle warning when Scott approaches. It's not that he doesn't like Scott—he seems to— but nevertheless.
... Link Wednesday, 24. December 2008
Christmas Spirit
Kate
18:11h
A family member of one of our soldiers killed in Afghanistan has made a substantial personal investment to create and market a calendar commemorating Canadians who have died over there. The calendars can be seen and ordered by going to this website. I am not personally acquainted with anyone serving in the Canadian Armed Forces right now, but there is a young lad whose dad comes from Margo and whose mom works at the Co-op hardware store in Wadena. I often ask about him when I go in there, and she tells me she doesn't worry about him, or tries not to; that he was looking forward to going to Afghanistan. If she manages not to lie awake nights, I'm glad. I hold my breath, dread hearing his name when that of another dead soldier is announced over the radio, but I don't say that to her. *** The other day our local CBC radio station aired an interview with a woman who is leaving Saskatoon because she can't afford a place to live there. She has an infant and a teenager and has been having such a rough time for so long that she feels she has no choice but to farm her oldest son out to relatives and take her baby with her to Vernon, where her parents and brother live, so that at least when she is desperate for food or shelter someone may help her, because she's been shit out of luck when it came to accessing services in Saskatoon. She said that just behind the swanky new Husky station north of the city, on the Yellowhead highway, there is a tent city and that families are living there. In this cold! With children? That's terrible, and I wanted to do something. But what? I wrote the radio station and asked them to follow up with actions that concerned listeners could take, and apparently they did, though I missed the show the next day. However I received an email detailing several options, one of which is to make a donation to the SOS Overnight Shelter Group. That's what I'm going to do. Its mailing address is 131 Wall St., Saskatoon, SK S7K 2C2. If you're sitting in a warm, cosy house and have presents under your tree, your bills paid, and money in the bank, please consider sending a cheque to help these people out. Even $10 will make a difference; it adds up. ... Link
Tues 23 Dec 2008
Kate
01:10h
It was 30 below and never really got toasty in the van, but Emil and Everett didn't care. They were on their way to their dad's, where "the livin' is easy," and it sounds as if, should they have their druthers, they'd never come back. Hm. What am I doing wrong? Oh yeah. Making them do supper dishes, not driving Emil all over the countryside to visit people at his whim, and not letting Everett play videogames to his heart's content. I am the meanest mother of them all!
We passed this scene of bulldozed trees on our way to North Battleford to meet Gord. It is always sad to see another small forest cleared to make room for more fields. I doubt as a society we really need more space for agriculture, but individual farmers are notorious for thinking of their croppable land gain rather than the effects of decimating the tree population, which the planet is already experiencing. In this day and age surely they all know better, but they are thinking of the dollar, and considering the difficulty making a living by farming these days, it's understandable. Still, it's a pity.
In North Battleford we took the boys to a restaurant and fed them a hot meal before Gord loaded them up in his vehicle and they headed west. We retraced the miles back to Saskatoon and found Cathy out shovelling her driveway. Scott hopped out and took the shovel out of her hands to finish the job, as any self-respecting farm boy will, and Cathy went and grabbed a broom to sweep off the steps instead.
Scott and I looked at each other across the supper table last night and agreed that neither of us, even now, can figure out how we avoided being in a serious smash-up in Saskatoon on Sunday. We're still shaking our heads, trying to understand it.
... Link Monday, 22. December 2008
Monday 22 Dec 2008
Kate
19:51h
I am dogsitting for Karen for about a week. Neither Scott nor I like having pets in our house, both preferring to enjoy them outside or in other people's houses, where we aren't the ones who have to clean up after them. But I have a soft spot for Ducky, who is sticking close; I have always said that if the day comes when he needs a new home, I'll take him. At the moment he is on my lap here and as I type his head is often resting on my arm. This may not go on all week but for now I am making sure he feels loved and wanted, in hopes that it helps him behave to the best of his ability. It's pretty hard for a house dog to have to go outside in this weather to do his business, and tougher yet if he's not feeling confident where he is, right? So the boys are at Gord's, Scott and I finally bought the flooring for Golden Grain Farm, and happily we escaped what was very nearly a bad multi-vehicle collision on the Circle Drive Bridge before leaving the city yesterday afternoon. We had just loaded some 800 pounds of laminate into the van and had come around a curve on the highway when a vehicle in front of us swerved to avoid a stalled vehicle in its lane. Vehicles started braking and skidding everywhere, as the road was icy, and for a moment I could not see how we weren't going to get banged up. There was nowhere to go and with the road conditions, no one had perfect control of their vehicles. Somehow Scott managed to handle ours and get through the only hole in the onslaught of heavy Christmas-shopping traffic that was ahead of us as well as on all sides and coming up swiftly behind. I still don't know how we got safely through that situation, but let me tell you, I am very grateful. I was reminded how quickly everything can change in a person's life and again, how lucky I am.
... Link Friday, 19. December 2008
All She Can Talk About Is Her Kids
Kate
20:19h
The phone rang yesterday afternoon while the boys were at school. It was Emil. When the bus dropped him off he had only one thing to do: get ready. Would he bath? No, he'd do that after he got home. I found a Christmas card for him to give Sheila, and put together some small gift items to accompany it, then slipped a 20-dollar bill into his pocket and told him to go shave. He did a stellar job — his face looks so good when it's cleanshaven, which isn't often because he usually does a crappy job with his electric razor— and was in the porch with his braces and boots/shoes on when she arrived to pick him up at 5:30.
*** Everett: "You know what some kids at school told me? They sneak into their parents' closets and find their own Christmas presents." He has high expectations of kids his own age. *** We meet their dad on the highway halfway between here and Edmonton tomorrow, and they won't be home till school starts in early January. Everett's looking forward to getting to his dad's and "away from you," he keeps telling me. I'm "annoying," apparently. I "sing all the time, if you can call it that." ... Link Thursday, 18. December 2008
Books and So Forth
Kate
17:51h
Thursday 18 Dec 2008 Everett, making notes about the life of that little shit Hitler, said he is sure he will have homework over the school holiday. I said "What kind of teacher would be that rotten?" He says they all would. I don't believe it. He says, "I think I know why Hitler acted the way he did." The local library closes down today, till the new year. Yesterday I stocked up on books, set on the corner of the kitchen table there. Could hardly wait to get into bed and read last night. Am into two right now: one about the underground railroad to Canada in the late 19th century, called I've Got a Home in Glory Land, and the other a fiction that is depressing the hell out of me; I don't care if the author is venerated and has won at least one Governor General's Award ... I am having to force myself to keep on reading this thing, which is supposed to be "an exploration of how humanity faces inhumanity, how lies and disappointments cannot and will never destroy truth and human greatness." I'm pushing ahead but am starting to skim. It's called Mercy Among the Children. I want to get it over with, and may just set it aside. Of those that came home with me yesterday, one is written by Monia Mazigh, the wife of Maher Arar. He's the Syrian-born Canadian man who, while travelling back to Canada through the U.S. shortly after 9/11, was deported by U.S. authorities back to Syria as a suspected terrorist, and there imprisoned for two years and tortured. He was never convicted of anything but went through hell, and he is not the only one. I'm thinking of Mr Arar as a personal hero, because in spite of the nightmare he experienced and the fact that he is now in a position, financially at least, to retire from some of the ugliness of this life and the people in it and the institutions they profess to serve, he is continuing to fight because there are other people this injustice is happening to. Many of us would just be trying to forget it, as if that would be possible. He is using it to make a difference in the world, in spite of the cost to himself.
It appears that Grandma does have a bladder infection after all. While the boys were getting their haircuts in town, I walked to the drug store to do some Christmas shopping. In the lineup for the cashier I stood next to a tall, dark-haired man who was wearing only a heavy sweater over a fleecy. I touched his arm and said, "Are you sure you're warm enough in just this?" Emil called down the stairs this morning before catching the schoolbus: ... Link Wednesday, 17. December 2008
Only 20 Below today: Balmy
Kate
03:33h
A visit to the doctor's office was followed by a walk across the parking lot to the hospital and a wait in a small lounge while Grandma had her lab work done. Someone has taken the trouble to make paper snowflakes and hang them from the ceiling. I wondered who, and why. After an afternoon of running around in town, I came home tired and cranky. I've managed to get us all fed but that's all I have energy for. I'm going to get into my pyjamas, climb into bed, and read for a while. I'll leave you with this. This morning I ran across a blog that is new to me and enjoyed the writer's answers to the questions that had been posed to her. I've never participated in one of these "memes" before but it seemed to me this gal might come up with some questions worth thinking about, so I agreed to do it.
1. What is your biggest fear? 2. Some people think that throughout our lives, we have certain golden moments - times when we are in perfect sync with ourselves and our circumstances. What have yours been and how have they affected you? 3. It's time to throw a dinner party for your favorite historical figures. Who is at the table? What do you feed them? 4. If someone offered you a chance to have total clairvoyance for a 24-hour period, would you want it? Why or why not? 5. What is the worst thing parents can do to their children (outside of obvious things like abuse)? And now I'm toddling off to my cosy bed. - Kathy
... Link Monday, 15. December 2008
Daytime Temperature -25C
Kate
17:09h
Sunday 14 Dec 2008 Monday a.m. ... Link ... Next page
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