Fri 4 Nov 2005
5:23pm

Still in my housecoat. Tsk! Haven't lifted a finger all day. Woke with the neck thing, stayed up a half hour, took medication and went back to bed for an hour or two. The rest of the day I have spent in my housecoat, unforgivably self-indulgent — feeling fine, just not ambitious.

The one thing I feel good about is being able to reach a dear friend whose husband has been diagnosed with an incurable cancer. When I received the news on Wednesday I kept picking up the phone to call her and having to put the receiver down because I'd dissolve into tears. Yesterday they were out when I tried. But today I got through and got to talk to them both. They're pulling together, with their devoted daughter, as I knew they would; they are a very close family. But it was hard news to get, and there is nothing I can think of doing, to help. Sometimes that's the most difficult part — how helpless you feel when you can't fix things.

Sigh.

***

The pictures. Let's see. Emil was four, I'd guess, when they were taken. I'd have been 31 or so. The good old days? I guess they were; not that I'd go back, given the choice. The house was built in 1916 by my great-grandparents on my mother's side, and Emil and I spent a summer there when he was three.

I've been reading the journal of Helen Bevington, called Along Came the Witch. It's filled with many snippets of what she, a university professor, read in other books. I could relate to this one:

"It is the tone of voice I want to change. Why sound indignant, why scornful? Whatever the fault (a student hasn't read the assignment), it has happened a thousand times before. I grow tired of caring, bored with my impatience.
Iris Origo in the Atlantic tells of asking George Santayana in his old age whether there were many things he would like to change. No, he said. 'I feel I have much the same things to say — but I wish to say them in a different tone of voice.' "

Thurs 3 Nov 2005
2:24pm

In Winnipeg, friends and admirers of the late Carol Shields, celebrated Canadian author, are raising funds to build a labyrinth in her memory.

Back here at home, I am baking bread and trying to keep moving, albeit slowly, through a threatening migraine without taking medication and stopping completely.

Time to put dough into pans, clean up the sticky mess left afterward, and think about drugging myself with an anti-inflammatory so I can handle the trip to town later this afternoon without feeling miserable. After dropping Everett off for his piano lesson at 5:45 I head for the Co-op store to do the weekly shop. Hope to be in better form by then ....

~ yesterday ~

~ today ~

Wed 2 Nov 2005

When I walked out to the horses yesterday there was a sundog in the western sky, so I knew the weather was about to change.

The pup seemed to be thrilled at the appearance of snow, and was out in the yard chasing after it and making snowballs with her nose before we got out to meet the schoolbus just after 8 o'clock.

She was even more excited when Everett threw snowballs for her to catch.

~ yesterday ~

~ today ~

Wed 2 Nov 2005

The pup seemed to be thrilled at the appearance of snow, and was out in the yard chasing after it and making snowballs with her nose before we got out there to meet the schoolbus just after 8 o'clock.

She was even more excited when Everett threw snowballs for her to catch.

Cathy's daughter Cait and her friend Dean
Ready and rarin' for Halloween

Thursday 27 Oct 2005
3:55 p.m.

Snapdragons are always the last flowers in bloom, aren't they? Except this year, strangely, against the east wall there is one stem of delphiniums that has just blossomed.

***

When I think of Mom
there is a wordless
solemnity
reality
chagrin

Others have felt it
and worse (death of a child)
but common experience of loss
doesn't make it easier

I am not alone in this
but there is only one mom
for me, that's all

It sucks

Yeah I am resigned to it
— she's gone — have to be
But it doesn't seem right

Nothing seems quite right
When I remember her gone.

~ Brewers Blackbirds in migrating flock,
outside my kitchen window ~

Sunday 23 Oct 2005
11 a.m.

Conversation with Everett last night:

“When you turn 13 next month, you can’t skip your baths any more. You have to bath every day, or else your armpits will have a strong odour.” I go on to outline several other places on the body that will need extra attention, and say, “If not in the tub, then at least you take a sponge bath,” and I explain what that is, pointing out that you use a soapy cloth to wash, and you make sure to pay special attention to the hairy parts. I say that he’s going to be growing armpit and pubic hair.

“Pubic hair? What’s that?”

I tell him, and add that he’s going to grow hair in the crack of his ass and on his buttocks, because he’s turning into a man. He laughs hysterically and exclaims, “I’m turning into a monkey!”

Friday 14 Oct 2005
2:42 p.m.

Yesterday afternoon I put on my red and black plaid jacket with its bright orange “hunter’s” lining, and walked with Sara the Hound north across the pasture. On the other side of the fence I spread my jacket on the ground and lay on my back, looking up at the blue, blue sky and its wisps of high white clouds. The wind roared above my head but I was perfectly warm, and nearby a few dry leaves, clinging to twigs reluctant to let them go, rustled in the breeze. A tiny spider, almost transparent, crawled onto my forearm; I brushed him off, worried he might be hurt. He looked like a miniature scorpion. A ladybug landed on my chest, but stayed only long enough to be greeted with delight before flying off again.

When Sara came over to lick my face, I got up and walked the fenceline along the summerfallow field, to the road. Sara ran ahead of me in the ditches, nose to the ground. Before long she had treed a small animal that I think was a weasel*. Its body was long and thin, almost like a snake's, and about a foot long, not counting its tail.

I took these pictures, but didn’t want to go closer, as the little creature must already have been very frightened. I walked away, the dog followed me, and when 10 seconds later I turned to look back, it was gone.

Before I reached the corner, Sara was barking loudly and constantly at something in the tall grass. When I finally got near enough to see a flash of bright white and some black, I knew it was a skunk and turned in the other direction, calling Sara. She came, and hadn’t been sprayed, so that was a lucky break. Otherwise we would not be too happy to have Sara camped out on the deck outside our door, where she sleeps at night.

I got back to the yard just as the schoolbus was dropping off the kids. Emil, coming toward me along the driveway, grinned widely and told me he was going to stay outside for a while and walk around. I remembered him as a baby and as a small child, and thought I could never have imagined him turning out as he has — the way he looks, for instance. So many changes since he was a little guy carried everywhere on my right hip.

He was left alone with a plate of spaghetti and a pot of Scott’s fantastic tomato soup — prizewinning, I say, if there was a contest — while Everett and I went to town for his piano lesson. He is happily into this new venture, and Emil is going to start next week. It will be good for his fine motor skills and since he likes music as he does, maybe it will give him something new to be excited about. And a challenge.

Coming back home, when Everett and I turned off the road and into the dark driveway, there was a flash of white on the road ahead. It was a furry beastie, quickly turning around and scurrying back to the pasture. I swung the headlights to follow it — a badger! I wonder if that could be what has killed two young cats in the yard lately? One was found behind our house, the other, just a kitten, in the loft. They both had a bloody, chewed spot on their necks. But I would expect a badger, coyote, or owl to eat them, not just kill them. My first thought when the cats were found was that a weasel had done them in. I hope it isn’t Sara doing the damage.

No sooner did I call my friend yesterday afternoon and make an appointment for massage, than my shoulder and arm stopped aching. Explain that one. They feel totally normal today. But I'm off for that massage anyway.

*According to the illustration and information in my book Animal Tracks of Western Canada, it was an ermine. I didn't even know we had ermine around here. Still learnin', see?

~ how many of you still have one of these? ~

Thurs 13 Oct 2005
8:24 a.m.

My right arm is in a sling to take some of the weight off, so typing is being kept to a minimum these days, till this knot in my shoulder muscle loosens up. I have managed to get my computer work done, but that's about all.

So I will post a bunch of photos instead of writing much.

Everett got a hold of the camera a couple times, and these are his pictures:

And last but not least, here's how our driveway looked a week ago, next to a painting Mom did in a class she took as a beginner.