9 a.m.

It’s the 23rd, oh no, I haven’t mailed Mom’s birthday card yet! She turns 63 on the 28th and the card has to make it to Salmon Arm, B.C., by then. This means a trip to town is necessary today.

Everett spent hours, a veritable Scrooge, counting and rolling coins. Now he wants to go to the bank. I’ve convinced him to buy a couple savings bonds with money he’s saved up from gifts, so if they’re still available we’ll do that while we’re running our errands. Man it’s hard to explain to an 11-year-old how interest, and then compound interest, works.

A crow’s raucous call drifted down from the sky yesterday afternoon while we were out walking. What a welcome sound. Soon it will be the discordant cacophony of huge flocks of Canada geese migrating north again. I can hardly wait.

I want to buy fresh cream from the neighbour, who milks a Jersey cow, so Scott and I stopped in there Sunday afternoon to ask if she had any. She didn’t, as the cow is about to calf, but she dug into a deep freeze in their porch and handed me three pounds of homemade butter and two large bags of cottage cheese. It was a generous parting gift, as she refused payment for it.

Fresh cream reminds me of Grandpa, of course. He loved cream. His idea of a treat was to pour the thick liquid over a slice of white bread and then sprinkle sugar on top and eat it with a spoon. Ee-oo, I would think, how can you eat that? But it had been a dessert in their home (my great-grandparents were born in Norway) when he was a boy, and he ate it with gusto.

It’s coming up to seven years that he’s been gone. And still, irrational as it may be, I’m pissed off that he had to go and that the only way to see him now is in the occasional and rare dream.

Well, in spite of my efforts, I can’t convince Everett to make me some scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast. So I’d best get off my lump and funnel some food in my stomach’s direction.

Told ya the snow was wet during that storm. Well it stayed that way all the next day too.

1:26 p.m.

I am reminded of an evening when I was about 16. I probably hadn’t had my driver’s licence very long, but I had my parents’ car — a silver luxury car — to attend a bridal shower in my home town. Following the program, when the ladies were visiting and looking at shower gifts, a friend and I got into the car to leave, and half a dozen little girls hopped onto the car’s hood.

Perhaps they wanted to be given a ride, and were just being little girls, pestering a couple older ones. When they didn’t obey my commands to get off the car, I backed up from the curb and drove ahead a few feet, and when they still wouldn’t get off, I hit the brakes. The car was not going very fast, maybe 10 mph, if that. But the next thing we saw, in what seemed slow motion, was all these dressed-up dollies rolling and bouncing down the pavement ahead of the stopped car. Then they were getting to their feet, rips in their pantyhose, wiping dirty smudges off their “good” outfits, and my friend and I were driving away thinking we’d witnessed something pretty funny.

It was after 11 o’clock that night that the phone in our house rang. I was downstairs in my bedroom, but this was an unusual time for the phone to ring in our house, and I picked up the extension outside my door. Upstairs, my mother said, “Hello?”

“It’s Doris Doright here, Grace. Did you hear what happened tonight?”

“No, what?”

The call wasn’t for me, but for some reason I was in no hurry to put down the phone.

“Well, your daughter is responsible for breaking a little girl’s wrist.” She went on to tell my mother what had happened, but I didn’t need to listen any further. I hung up and crawled into my bed, wishing it was a deep black hole I could disappear into forever. I felt sick. What the hell had I done? How stupid could I be?

My parents were none too pleased with me, but they believed me when I explained that I hadn’t hurt anyone on purpose. Even the momentum of a few miles per hour could be dangerous, but this was a physics I had no idea of.
Apparently it wasn’t too difficult for them to believe I was that dumb.

In retrospect, we were probably lucky things didn’t turn out worse. A head could have been broken. I feel bad about it still — not because I was careless and inexperienced, but because someone was hurt as a result of my actions.

I was laying in candlelit warm water late yesterday afternoon when the wind came up. What the hell is that, I wondered. It sounded like some big machine running; like some ravenous monster raging all around the house, engulfing it. It’s a frightening noise and reminds me of stories of certain unfortunate pioneer women, who occasionally were driven mad by the relentless wind and open sky and would run until their lungs exploded. (Hey, that’s in the history! I know it’s hard to believe.)

When I came out of the bathroom, all moist and steamy, and stepped into the office here, I realized that a storm had hit. Snow was coming down hard and heavy. Wet white flakes were stuck to the windows so one couldn’t see out at all. And the wind continued to roar all night.

Emil said “But winter is over! I thought it wasn’t supposed to snow any more.”

“Oh,” I told him, “we get snow in the spring, too.”

He could have been disappointed this morning when the driveway was snowblocked so the schoolbus couldn’t drive into the yard. He wouldn’t be able to walk through deep snow to get to it, and would have to stay home. But Scott was out there pushing snow around early enough so that the bus could come in as usual, and he had cleared a path for Emil to meet it.

Yesterday morning I strolled out to the road but didn’t strike out on a walk. Instead I came back in among the sheltering trees. How can the thermometer hover around zero degrees Celsius in the yard, yet beyond the bush the wind slashes at my face with stinging, needle-thin whips?

Having Everett homeschooling has turned out to be more of a pleasure than expected. Maybe it is simply the comfort of having a living body to spend the day alongside, but he is so happy and sweet and delightful. His little-boyness gives me joy.

“Mom,” he squealed, washing dishes after supper last night, “you make a song out of everything!”

I’d been singing about his antics, making him laugh, silliness. He and Scott have likened me to the humming donkey in the Shrek movie.

I could do worse.

Sometimes they complain, they want quiet, when I am yodelling away, unaware of myself until they object. If I was dead and gone tomorrow, this is what they would miss most.

Everett noticed some ‘new’ birds outside the kitchen window this morning — dark-eyed juncos. They didn’t come to the feeder, but were poking around in the bare trees.

The wind is still blowing out there, occasionally banging against the house as if in angry frustration. It’s stopped snowing, so there should be nothing to stop me going to town late this afternoon to watch Karen curl.

I will leave the boys home alone in order to go. They like that taste of independence. As usual I considered taking them along, but today I’ve decided in favour of an alternate vision — of myself, relaxed and quiet on a bench behind glass overlooking the ice.

With Emil present, that’s not how it would be. I would be ‘on’ to guide him through the fuzzy bustle of public appropriateness. He is not shy or self-conscious, and talks to everyone, and especially to me, and repeats himself terribly, and expresses answerless concerns, and I am sometimes uncomfortable almost to the point of being embarrassed.

I don’t like the attention, frankly, that he provokes. Some days I’m just not up to it, and have no choice but to include him in the social activity anyway — which is a good thing, don’t get me wrong, and we probably should get out and around more than we do, and have more company.

Hejira

I’m travelling in some vehicle
I’m sitting in some café
A defector from these petty wars
That shell shock love away
There’s comfort in melancholy
When there’s no need to explain
It’s just as natural as the weather
In this moody sky today
In our possessive coupling
So much could not be expressed
So now I am returning to myself
These things that you and I suppressed
I see something of myself in everyone
Right at this moment of the world
As snow gathers like bolts of lace
Waltzing on a bridal girl

You know it never has been easy
Whether you do or you do not resign
Whether you travel the breadth of extremities
Or you stick to some straighter line
Look here’s a man and a woman sitting on a rock
They’re either going to thaw out or freeze
Listen...
Sounds like Benny Goodman
Floating through the snowy trees
I’m porous with travel fever
But I’m so glad to be on my own
Still the slightest touch of a stranger
Sets up a trembling in my bones
I know — no one’s going to show me everything
We come and go unknown
Each so deep and so superficial
Between the forceps and the stone

Well I looked at the granite markers
Those tributes to finality — to eternity
And then I looked at myself here
Chicken scratching for a piece of immortality
In the church they light the candles
And the wax rolls down like tears
There is the hope and the hopelessness
I’ve witnessed all these years
We’re only particles of change I know
We’re just orbiting around the sun
But how can I have that point of view
When I’m bound and tied to someone
White flags of winter chimneys
Waving — truce against the moon
In the mirrors of a modern bank
From the window of my hotel room

I’m travelling in some vehicle
I’m sitting in some café
A defector from the petty wars
Until love sucks me back that way

~ Joni Mitchell

This is one graphic that has been added to the wall, which is nearly completed. I call it “optimistic woman,” and explained to Everett that although she is walking in a raincloud, she is looking up to the sun with a smile on her face. He said, “Oh. I thought she was a giant.”

Upon closer perusal, I had to agree. An optimistic giant she is, then.

** & *** & *** & *** & *** & *** & *** & *** & **

It’s St. Patrick’s Day, and my boys were sure to wear green this morning.

“Otherwise, you get pinched!” Everett told Emil, waiting for his load of wash to come out of the dryer.

** & *** & *** & *** & *** & *** & *** & *** & **

In other news, Life of Pi author Yann Martel has fallen in love with Saskatchewan. He likes the province just about as much as I do, by the sound of it. He has noticed how Saskatchewan skies make you “look up,” and that dry cold is something you can dress for, and that infinite prairie is not the only beauty here.

** & *** & *** & *** & *** & *** & *** & *** & **

Recycling containers are overflowing. We are almost out of drinking water. I need fiction. I must go to town.

An old picture of my ugly sisters and me, for posting which they will kill me. But it’s a chance I’m willing to take because I have been dawdling all day and have nothing of any value whatsoever to say.

I doubt even these few words are worth posting. What I do know is that if I look at my journal entries with that sort of eye all the time, I’ll edit it right out of existence.

I am a letter writer. I am not a fiction writer, an essayist, a researcher. I write letters. It’s what I do.

The Letter Writer. It should be the name of my book. If I wrote one.

The air was filled with giant white puffs of snow for most of the morning, so I decided not to drive to town for in-a-pinch bakery bread after the last slice was eaten for breakfast. No, this would be a perfect day to toast up the house, which I found cool for the first hours after getting out of bed.

We had only five cups of whole wheat flour in the house, so I had to add five cups of white flour into the mix of whole wheat and rye flours. I have never baked bread with white flour, that I can recall, so I am curious how much difference that little bit will make. Today’s recipe is for Raisin-Rye, which I haven’t made for some time. It’s no one’s favourite but mine, but I had to make it today in order to make use of the flours that were available. It was either that, or go to town, or do without bread.

Recently I threatened Steve (who says he's going to start updating soon, and I hope that's true) with an armwrestling match if he continues to insist that Diana Krall’s version of A Case of You is better than Joni’s. I attempted to instil the fear of god into him by alluding to my massive biceps from all the kneading I do. Alas, Steve, now you know the truth. My muscles have become downright puny since the kneading machine came to live here. And I wouldn’t trade it for the strength my arms used to have, no how no way.

There was a lot of snowfall over the weekend, but since I went nowhere after Thursday’s trip to my home town, I didn’t realize how much there had been until we drove cross-country yesterday. Other vehicles had already cut deep tire-tracks in the snow on the roads and as the van passed through these ruts you could hear the snow scrape loudly against the bottom of the vehicle. It sounded like hitting the waves in a motorboat at high speed.

Well let’s see now. These are the suitable gleanings from the digital camera today. Which one shall I post? What the hell, why not all three?

My cousin named her firstborn Gracie, after my mother. I am pleased by that, of course. When Everett and I went to Grandma’s the other day, my cousin and her clone were visiting from Flin Flon, so I got to hold the baby.

Back here in the farmyard, there are a dozen new piglets. Emil is pleased about that.

And all over the province of Saskatchewan, as well as out in B.C. (I phoned Mom and Dad this morning), people are preparing to watch the Brier tonight at 6. Everyone I’ve talked to mentions it.

We’re going to Scott’s sister’s for supper. “What time do you want us to come?” says I, thinking about baking the apple pies that are in the deep freeze. “Come at five,” she says, “the game’s starting at six.”

Then I called Grandma to tell her we wouldn’t be going to see her today. She was having a little lay-down on her couch after church and lunch and doing her dishes, but she will definitely be watching the curling this evening.

It’s been on the tube all week too, and I snapped the following photo Thursday at Grandma's in case people outside this country are not as nuts about the game as we seem to be here. This scene is probably on every TV across the nation!

Our supper date last night was a flop. We couldn’t relax in the restaurant, which was too brightly lit and has nothing to absorb sound. You feel as if your every word carries loudly to the other end of the room.

The food was barely passable. The garlic toast had no flavour. The soup of the day, cream of mushroom, tasted as if it had come out of a can. The “baby” Greek salad had too little feta cheese, only two olives. The lasagna sauce tasted like canned tomato soup and the meat in it had a “bad” flavour. We probably won’t go there again, though they make a decent pizza and deliciously salty boneless ribs.

My sweetie was not in ‘date’ mode, either. That’s when you appreciate the person you are with and are glad of the opportunity to spend time alone with her. He had forgotten about our plan, so had not been savouring the anticipation as I had. He probably would have preferred to stay home.

You know how couples who’ve been together for a while seem to look everywhere but at each other when they are in a restaurant? We were doing that, and when I attempted conversation, he was snarly. So I shrugged and gave that up.

It didn’t turn out to be the evening I was looking forward to, but in the end I did fall asleep in his loving arms so we must have done something right.