Omigosh. I'm trying to finish up a story that was due a few days ago, but I'm here and thinking up an entry to post in Kate's absence.

Three readers. Hmph. Is she serious?? Methinks Her Kateness is too humble...

More in a while...

- Beth

~~~ Celsius, people, Celsius! ~~~

The snow is going quickly now, but the air remains chilly.

While I’m off gallavanting around Edmonton, being cherished and feted by my friends and acquaintances and yearned for by my Scottie — yes, that’s my grand illusion! but let me have it — a real California girl is going to post journal entries for your edification.

You remember Beth, don’t you? While I was getting scorched in the BC interior last summer, she was diligently writing daily copy here so that you three dedicated readers would not be disappointed when you came to the website for a dose of daily detail.

So I’ll carry on about my day and say a tentative farewell. There are a couple more hours of work and some loose ends to tie up before I leave. We need a trip to town for cold cuts and sliced bread; I am making and donating sandwiches to the arts council for sale at the farmers’ market later this week. Then there is packing to do, and supper to think about. And surely I am forgetting something and will remember it at the last moment, when I am ready to fall exhausted into bed at the end of the evening.

~a mating pair out for their evening stroll on the ice~

Here it is, the beginning of my work week, which will be a short one. The boys and I are heading out for their Easter holiday in a couple days. They’ll stay with their dad and I’ll visit my pals around Edmonton.

I’ll be meeting the other editors for the first time at a staff lunch being organized because I will be in town. I’m looking forward to it but noticed myself feeling apprehensive about it. When I dug into the sensation deeply enough to articulate what it was, I discovered this: I am anxious that my comparatively unimpressive intelligence and lack of editorial experience will be apparent. I’ll be exposed as the sham I am!

The imagination paired with negative thinking clearly highlighted my insecurities. There is no reason to doubt my abilities, imperfect as they are. But I am still a little nervous. It will be a good-sized group of people to meet all at once, much as they all seem friendly and kind from email contact we’ve had.

We picked Grandma up yesterday and drove out to my aunt and uncle’s farm for a cup of tea and a visit. The snow is really melting now even though the air is still chilly. Last year’s stubble is flecked with patches of snow and blue meltwater now, and the Canada Geese are claiming their nesting territories. Crows are gathered in flocks of a dozen or so, and even the robins are sticking together fairly closely.

There is an astounding number of hawks, and so many different varieties of them. The hawk is my spirit guide bird, according to a shaman who led the sweatlodge I attended almost 10 years ago. I feel no affinity to or particular interest in the hawk, however; not then, not now. But I am curious to know the names of all these different species. They are everywhere in high hungry numbers these days.

And if I never do a sweatlodge again, that will be fine with me. Too hot! Too hot, too hot, too hot! The best part of it was when it was over — the sweet relief of cool air.

"These days I feel like giving up as a writer. It suddenly seems shocking to me to expose the feelings one has had, even if those feelings are very distant, even if they are dead. Sacrilege. I long to become a simple woman whose life is secret even to herself...

What is happening is that the work I do, apart from the journal, lacks the journal's genuineness. A page in the journal is more moving than my pages of artistic creation. So from time to time I feel like releasing it — anonymously — just as it is, terribly human, simple and direct, as a superhuman effort to balance the lies in the fairy story that I thought I should give the world."

~ excerpt from Incest, Letter to Father

My office hours are about to begin, though the sunny windows here by my desk are calling me into the fresh air and birdsong. Ah well, they will still be there in four hours when I get up from this chair and go for my walk.

Last night I lit eight or ten votive candles and set them up in the bathroom while running black water into the tub. The other day I was awakened by a loud sort of banging above my head. It was Scott in the bathroom upstairs, using a stainless steel dutch oven and a plastic collander to strain his morning bathwater.

It doesn’t look so bad in cande light.

Zander was here playing with Everett at suppertime and Scott came in and started teasing the boys. Emil, sitting at the kitchen table, he called Mr. Smith. Emil invariably replies “I’m not answering you if you don’t say my name right.” He does not enter into a spirit of banter.

To Zander, Scott said something like “You look like me.”

Zander said, “No I don’t! I don’t have black hair and hairy skin!”

That kid, he surely entertains us all.

Still kicking. It’s just that most of my time at the computer lately has been spent reading articles on architecture, and now on dance, and soon theatre and film.

I am making short lists of keywords for input to a web-based data system, although I won’t be able to enter them until I get access to high-speed internet service. That means renting someone else’s computer in a location that has high speed, or buying a dish and satellite service. We’ve been tossing the idea around for a while and really only need to make a commitment to it.

I am also looking for dates in Canadian history that can go onto the company calendar for 2005. Exact dates in my subject areas are not easy to find, as the information to be found in them is more by year than by exact date. But I’m making the attempt. So far, through many many hours of reading, I have found only one that is suitable.

Scott was vacuuming and fiddling with the computer this morning when I’d normally read my email, so I emptied and defrosted the deep freeze instead of following my usual routine. It was a job long overdue.

As a result of the frenzy I’m thawing some frozen corn on the cob for supper. They were left in the husks when I threw them in there in the fall and Scott tells me that wasn’t the thing to do. We’ll find out tonight, when we try it with some filleted fish I found at the bottom of the deep freeze.

My eyes are dry and tight today after a crying jag late last night after everyone else in the house was asleep. I sat up and watched the national news before I went to bed. A young Albanian woman’s story about the murder of many of her family members — she took 16 bullets herself — was featured. And the body of a nine-year-old Toronto girl has been found; she was kidnapped from her home five months ago.

I went to bed after that and could not put the senseless human suffering out of my mind. It was when I felt the unbearable longing of a mother for a child she will never see or hold again in this lifetime, that I had to leave the room so as not to wake Scott.

Bedroom door closed behind me, I sat out in the dark living room, and had a good cry, quietly, so as not to have to explain my anguish to a man who would, if I woke him, be chagrined to find me in such a state. It would be difficult to explain why I was sitting there suffering because of the suffering of others. But sometimes I do. Sometimes I can’t just focus on the moment I’m in, on my fortunate life and the present safety of my children and loved ones. Sometimes I can’t help but feel the pain of other people.

~pine grosbeaks~

Sometimes I'm all talked out by the time I get here. I've written morning pages and answered an email or two and need to go walking in the spring thaw to get filled up again.

xoxo
etc
kate

Everett and I made peroghies with Karen and her sister-in-law yesterday. My sister, rolling dough on the countertop, looked over at us busily pinching dough at the kitchen table and said “It’s not hard to tell who the real Ukrainian is.” Sharon was leaving us in the dust, pathetic pedeha pinchers we.

We layered the peroghies between wax paper on cookie sheets to freeze, cleaned up our mess, and went to Grandma's. She was laying on the couch with game shows on TV, so we watched a couple with her, then switched the channel so we could catch Coronation Street before bolting for home to meet Emil's bus.

This morning I bagged the peroghies up and stuck them back in the deep freeze, except for one bag. I sent it and a loaf of raisin-rye bread along with Manful. He was headed for the city to drop off beef for my friend and have lunch with his baby boy, who has flown in from Calgary for the weekend.

Everett insisted on boiling some up for his lunch, but was immediately in tears when he tasted them because he does not like the cottage cheese in them. Oops. Looks like we'll be back at it again next week, but with a filling he can stomach.

Meanwhile, the 22 dozen little dumplings will not be wasted.

Manful left before 8 o'clock this morning and every time I walk past the bathroom downstairs I smell his aftershave, and smile.

A couple in town waited four years for him to do their basement. The wife said “We don’t mind waiting, for the best.”

I have found a long-lost friend!

Last May I dreamed of a friend I'd lost track of. We'd been pals when we were in our teens.

I considered writing his name on a piece of paper, tucking it into the corner of the bathroom mirror so that I’d see it each day, and seeing if he or his whereabouts might manifest. This would have been a simple enough bit of magic to attempt, but I never did, not even to test and disprove it in my semi-sceptical way.

Last week a high school acquaintance invited me to the city, where a mutual friend from Edmonton is coming on business this weekend. My presence was to be a surprise.

I was reminded of my old buddy who used to live in the same city, and wondered if I'd ever see him again.

When I phoned yesterday and told our little party planner that I wouldn’t make it, she spilled the beans.

“Do you remember G.P.?” she asked me.

“Sure,” I said. “I didn’t know you knew him.”

“I didn’t,” she said, “back then. But he’s my next-door neighbour, and when I mentioned what school I went to, he asked if I knew you.”

Her heinous plan was to have him saunter over and surprise me.

I’d have been surprised, all right, and in a good way.

In the midst of happiness, disappointment. Thrilling surprises are few and far between.

My 11-year-old son and I are standing with our grocery cart in the checkout aisle, and he says to me, "I'm going to buy some stuff now."

"You mean junk?" I ask.

"Yeah. Chocolate bars. For you."

That's sweet, I think, and say, "Why?"

"For your period!"

This morning we walked two miles together and seven vehicles passed us on the road, four of them grain-hauling trucks.

As we approached the driveway on our way back, four Canada Geese flew low over the trees. A crow is perched in a tree near the kitchen window. The migratory birds are returning, and I welcome them as signs that life is rolling along as it always has and, I want to believe, always will.