Stormy day, in which I poked my nose out the door only far enough to reach the dog's nose and give it some patting.

Wonder what shape the roads will be in tomorrow. Someone got stuck in the outer driveway this evening; not a good sign.

It's not that I mind if the schoolbus doesn't run and the boys spend the day at home. Actually, I'd like that. It's that my van has an oil change appointment in the afternoon and I need to make an egg run. Ah well, the weather will dictate.

As long as I'm warm and dry, it doesn't bother me one bit to see snowflakes sticking to the windows or to hear the wind yowling around the house tonight.

But I do feel sorry for the dog and the cattle. They don't have the toasty fire to warm their toes at, nor are they about to snuggle up with their sweeties and a cup of Sleepytime tea.

The reason I know we automatically screen out certain awarenesses is because of this experience. I was about 20 and living in a one-room cabin in New Brunswick with my then lover, who was asleep in the double bed behind me as I stood working at the kitchen counter.

When he awoke, he told me he'd dreamed that he was laughing so hard he fell out of bed. At that moment, I remembered swivelling my head around to look behind me, for no apparent reason, and seeing him, or an image of him, just above the floor beside the bed. I'd seen this and then returned to my vegetable chopping without being really conscious of it until his story triggered my memory of the turning and the seeing.

I have never forgotten that. What happened? His astral body left his physical body in a dream, and I saw it, but more or less unconsciously?

Lately I have been seeing shapes in the air, sort of little "disturbances," sometimes. They remind me of the tricks your retina plays on you when you've looked at a window with bright light from outside shining through it, and then you look away and still see the shape of the window. Like that, but not as vivid and not holding any particular shape I can identify. These are more like what I thought I noticed in the days right after Mom passed over.

All properties of light caused by I don't know what. Curious, though.

Dad would tell me to get my eyes checked.

10:55 p.m.

Just about to climb back into bed for a second time. Was laying there, half dozing, half listening to an Ideas program on CBC Radio, about the social and psychological territory of extremist thinking and suicide bombing, terrorism, and so on and so forth, when I remembered I'd left the computer on.

So here I am, housecoat and all.

We watched The Corpse Bride with Everett tonight. I'm too tired to articulate my thoughts about it. Howzabout I just give it a Lazy-K rating of 6 out of 10 for now.

~ Everett's latest snowball ~

I'm just finishing up my working day and am about to go for a stroll. It looks gorgeous out there. Only about 5 below, now. That's Celsius, of course. The sky is blue; that's good enough for me.

Some readers have been asking for book recommendations. I don't at the moment have any great ones on the go; have just started One Thousand Roads to Mecca; Ten Centuries of Travelers Writing about the Muslim Pilgrimage. It contains 23 different accounts of the journey; the first one was written about a thousand years ago. I'll let you know if it gets exciting.

Meanwhile, another excerpt from Two Lives, by Vikram Seth, whose aunt's mother and sister were still back in Hitler's Germany after she had gone to live and work in London:

"Given the character of the Aunty Henny I knew, she would have stifled her dread and just got on with things. Nothing could be changed from a distance and, as she often said to me while teaching me German:
Happy he
Who forgets
What no longer can be changed."

After Henny died, her husband, in his grief, burned every photo of her that he could find so that he would not be upset by the reminders. Can you imagine?

After my own heart ...

“I keep up a conversation of sorts with some of my dead friends. But often there is no response, and the result is an empty sorrow. I keep at it, though, so that they should not be forgotten, and — more importantly — that I should not be left completely without them.” -Two Lives, by Vikram Seth

6:42 p.m.

Grandma had an appointment with the doctor this afternoon, so I picked her and Aunt Reta up and drove them. Afterwards I dropped them off at the seniors' lodge to visit friends while I went to run some errands downtown. When it was time to pick them up again, I looked into the common room and was greeted warmly by another lady from my home town.

It was as I was walking away, down the hall, that I heard her say something about me to another lady who'd stepped up. The second lady said loudly, "Who? That young girl?"

On the way home I told Reta, "I'll have to go there more often."

~ Voluptuous Fairy greeting card
by Wendy Anne Klein ~

Ms Klein's website is here.

*** We are back up to 0 degrees today. The boys are back home. Everett and Scott have gone out for wood. Emil is practising his piano. I am thinking about washing dishes, going for a walk, working on a book project (the memoirs of a trapper), and tidying up the house before we get company.

Methinks the walk is most needed.

*** Reading an excellent memoir/biography by Vikram Seth, called Two Lives. Seth's Shanti Uncle, from India, married a German Jew and this is the story of their lives, their marriage, and their warm relationship with their nephew. Shanti Uncle was a one-armed dental surgeon and Aunt Henny lost her mother and sister in the Nazi extermination camps. Later, she was having trouble coping with the death of another friend, even two years afterward:

"Shanti once mentioned that when Henny first heard about what had happened to Lola and her mother, she developed a condition in which her skin was covered with small red spots - urticaria pigmentosa.
Now, once again, and with more profound effect, it was as if her body was succumbing to her grief and trauma."

I wonder if that was anything like what we called the hives I developed after finding out Mom had terminal cancer. Jeez, you think you're doing all right with such intense emotional turmoil, and then your body decides to put the screws to you too.

Do I have more fear, since Mom's illness and death, of what can happen? More awareness of the ugly possibilities? Less faith that things will turn out all right?

Yes.

~ the road to town last week ~

1:27 pm

Been working at the computer since 9:30 this morning; must soon take a break and get my blood moving.

It's about 20F below outdoors, with a windchill making it feel like 30 below. But it's sunny and the sky is blue!

Everett has gone off with his dad for a few days and Emil is home with me for now, until he decides to go too.

I'm reluctant to go out myself because I've been blessed with another rash of cold sores under my nose. I tell you ... my karma is really biting me in the ass. Wish I knew what I've done to deserve this plague.

I recall having a cold sore on my upper lip when I was in high school in Regina, and walking about six blocks in very frigid winter weather, after which my lip swelled up so much it hung down over my lower lip. That was a pretty picture. I hope to avoid repeating the experience by staying indoors for a day or two, not taking a chance of getting a "cold" in the cold sore. If that makes sense. None of it does. I want a new face. Transplant, anyone?

From Mother of Sorrows, by Richard McCann:

"He says that sadness is arrogance and vanity. The things that sadden us are actually blessings, he says, coming to us from a universe that's concealed."

and

"When it comes to the dead, there are simply more of them than there are of us."

and

"But sometimes, says Rabbi Stollman, an unhappy person can best work his way toward God by being silent, just as a hungry person can work his way toward God by delaying his meal."