9:12 AM

Gotta get ready, gotta get ready, gotta get ready
Don’t feel like it, don’t feel like it, don’t feel like it
Oh well, oh well, oh well

Barney stayed home this morning to help pack and prepare for their trip to the city to spend three nights with their dad, so he thinks his holiday has already begun. His help will be welcome, as he’s a good errand boy and as always it takes longer to get everything ready than I expect it to.

So, it’s off the computer and on to breakfast and bathing and all the assorted details of leaving the house in the shape I want it to be in when we walk back in the door on Monday.

We are picking Don up at school at 10 to 12 and meeting Dave around 6, so that means lots of time to amble our way down the highway with frequent stops whenever anything piques our interest.

For you high-maintenance journal readers, I have cleared out my "offline" entries and posted them all, below.

Have a great weekend,
xoxo
~etc
Kate

When my spiritual teacher does a tarot reading for me, as she has done periodically through the years, she takes pastel chalks and draws an "energy picture" like the one you see above. The colours and their placement have meaning, and the guides most active in my life at the time can be seen as well.

Kate

We are recycling fanatics these days.It drives me nuts. Once you start collecting faithfully it is amazing how much stuff there is that otherwise would be sitting at the landfills.

I have to take a trip to the recycling yard every week, otherwise the special bins I bought (three, meant to be a laundry sorter but used for cardboard, paper, tin, glass, plastic, refundable juice and pop containers) overflow all over the porch.

Now that I see the volume of stuff I've been throwing out all these years when I didn't recycle everything, it is kindof scary to think how the majority of people do not recycle... and I understand why, too -- because it's such a pain in the ass... really, it is. If I never had to wash another plastic bag to reuse, ever again, I would feel so blessed.

But no. I will continue to take on the responsibility, though it is an ongoing irritation.

Only guests sleep in Grandpa’s bedroom now. He’s been dead more than five years, but it’s still “Grandpa’s bedroom.” Above his high double bed hangs a portrait of Grandma’s grandmother, my great-great grandmother. Her name was Mary Jane Walker.

She and her husband and family of five children left Ontario by train in the late 1890s and settled in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba.She contracted pneumonia in 1902 and died at the age of 30. The family left Portage two years later and came further west by train. After disembarking, they came the rest of the way on in a covered wagon pulled by oxen. When they got to the White Sand River, it was overflowing its banks after heavy rains. They were forced to camp next to it for three days, along with other settlers, while they built a bridge to cross over.

There, Annie May, my 17-year-old great-grandmother, met my great-grandfather, who I remember as Grandpa Jack. They were married three years later.

6:13 p.m.

Yesterday I did a rain dance out on our driveway after Don and Barney came home from school.They sat on the Adirondack chairs on the deck and watched, Don with a silly grin and Barney with incredulous delight (“God, what’s she doing now?” I can almost hear him thinking). I strung together some vowels and consonants in a singsong chant, raised my arms to the sky invoking water to fall from it, and did the stereotypical Indian-dancing routine.

I didn’t really think it would work, but there was nothing to lose.
And today, we got the rain we so desperately need.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

From the book:

+++
“If on the trees the leaves still hold,
The winter coming will be cold.”

That’s what happened this past winter, when many leaves clung to the branches right through till spring. And indeed, it was a pretty cold winter.

+++

“If rooks are noisy, cawing loudly to each other,
it is a sign of rain, and so is the flying of
swallows near the ground. Bats flying about on a
summer evening are a sign of fine, hot weather
the next day.”

+++

“Sensitive people can distinctly smell frost or rain
upon the wind; though this is less possible in the
polluted air of our cities than it is in the open
country.”

+++

“There was an interesting discussion about weather on the Dimbleboy Talk-In program on BBC televison in April 1963. The participants were a number of orthodox meteorologists, together with farmers and students of weather folklore. One of the latter remarked that he had noticed for some years past, how four days in the year gave an epitome of what the weather was going to be like for the next quarter. These were Lady Day (25th March), Midsummer Day (24th June), Michaelmas Day (29th September), and Christmas Day (25th December). As the weather was on those days, so it would generally be for the next three months.

“It also appeared from the discussion that there were two dates in the year which gave a reverse forecast. That is, the weather from then on would be the opposite of what it had been like on that day, for a while. These two days are Halloween (Oct.31) and Candlemas (Feb. 2) ...

“During the television discussion mentioned above, a remarkable suggestion was made by Mrs Doris Munday, a hypnotherapist who claims to be able to influence the weather. This lady said that she believed the weather was influenced by people’s thoughts. In her opinion, the reason why the BBC’s weather forecasts used to be more reliable than they are now, was that when broadcasting first came out, people tended to believe these forecasts implicitly and therefore they came true!”

Coming soon ... Magic of Dreams:

“In olden days, nightmares were believed to be caused by evil spirits or black magic. A remedy against such terrors was to hang a large stone with a natural hole through it, on the wall over the head of the sufferer’s bed. A large old-fashioned iron or steel key would serve the same purpose.”