Everett gave these cards to us this morning, since we won't be seeing him tomorrow. He and Emil will be with their dad at a hotel in Saskatoon.

The cards crack me up. Indeed, my favourite television show is Coronation Street, a prime-time "soap" from England.

And Scott — well, as Everett sees him, is always going out the door to work.

I'm not sure how readable the messages inside will be, but here they are:

Happy Valentine's Day to you, too.

xoxoetc
Kate

The wall collage has been on hold for a week because I ran out of decoupage glue at the same time as I ran out of pictures. In the picture I am posting, Everett is showing the wall to Scott's nephew Zander, who is quite captivated.

For the past few days Everett has been busy drawing and colouring. He starts his school day at nine o’clock and puts in about four hours at it, but before and after, he is at the table with the cover/book from one of his Playstation games, copying and colouring characters.

He now has a collection of 10 characters. Yesterday I kneeled on the carpet to list songs while recording some favourite music for Vincent, and Everett played beside me with his drawings. He gave them voice and instigated their interactions and was as ‘into it’ as he is when he plays the game itself.

Now, when I work in the kitchen with my back to the hallway, the darkness I catch out of the corner of my eye frequently has me turning to see who is standing there.

There was another blizzard yesterday. I was oblivious to it, looking out to our treed yard from indoors, until the school called to say the bus would be bringing Emil home early. I thought it was just a blustery snowfall.

Students from over 80 countries attend the University of Saskatchewan, and there were over 800 vehicles in the ditch yesterday because of the storm. I can’t verify these stories, but heard them on the tv news.

MUST. GET. OUT. SIDE.

Oh, but there’s a bath to have. Fire to tend. Dishes to do.
Food to consider. Work to do. Words beckoning.

Must get outside.

Emil’s gone to school today; it’s only 25 below so the bus was running and he was anxious to go after missing all of last week. He was ready and watching out the window for the bus’s headlights about 10 minutes early.

Last week when I walked out to the garden, there were tracks I couldn’t make sense of. I took a picture of them and described them to Scott. He said it sounded like a coyote had been pouncing after mice that it heard or smelled underneath the snow. That makes sense, because the tracks appear to be far apart, as if the coyote stomped around in one place and searched under the snow, and then leaped again to the next spot.

Scott pointed out where coyote tracks came right up through the bush from the garden, to the edge of the bush about 20 feet from our kitchen window. There was a blizzard over the weekend so yesterday they had been obliterated by snow, but this morning I looked out and saw the exact same sort of tracks, through the bush, that I took the picture of last week in the garden.

I have been in hibernation for a while, going to town only when I have to and not even getting much fresh air. Yesterday it warmed up to 20 below and I bundled up and went out for a while. I gave Chester some attention — he looks really good since Everett took over feeding him; he is twice as thick/deep in front of his hips as he was in the spring — and hated to leave him because he was so excited about having some company. I have put an ad in a paper and we have had several calls but no one has yet thought he would be a perfect addition to their home or yard. I will hate to see him go, but he needs to get off that chain. It’s no life for a dog.

There are newborn calves in the barn so I ducked in there to have a look at them. Several cow/calf pairs and expectant mothers had been put in for the night, so I peered at them from behind the gate that divides the barn in half. Then I met Scott in the driveway, walking home, and we shovelled ours out so that Emil could get to the bus this morning. It had drifted in pretty good over the last couple days.

It was dusk then, around 6:30, and there was no wind. It seemed almost warm after the weather we have had lately. Scott has been constantly outside tending to frozen waterbowls and newborn calves, and feeling sorry for the cattle enduring these extremely low temperatures. There are well over 100 of the bovine beasts out in the corrals, probably closer to 150 or maybe even more, so there is no way they can all be put into the barn. Only the newborns and their mothers get to go in. Fortunately the others are tough, but there isn’t enough shelter from the wind when it blows from a certain direction. Scott said one day the older calves just stood by the barn, trying to get out of the wind as much as possible, and bawled.

He has begun to go out during the wee hours of the morning to help any cow that has birthing difficulties and make sure no calves are born out in the corrals, where they would probably die because of the cold. He is starting to lack adequate sleep, and it will be this way for the next few months. Already over the weekend he was getting a sore throat from getting cold and run down out there.

 
card: Midsummer Eve by Edward Robert Hughes

The Stolen Patch

A little weeping fairy found
A patch of sunshine on the ground.
She knew it was the very thing,
To mend a hole torn in her wing.
She dried her eyes, picked up the patch,
And saw it would exactly match.

~ Anonymous

photo and excerpt from Joni Mitchell's Travelogue CD

I met a friend of spirit
A drunk with sage’s eyes
As I sat before his sanity
I was holding back from crying
He saw my complications
And he mirrored me back
Simplified
And we laughed how our perfection
Would always be denied
“Heart and humour
And humility,”
He said, “Will lighten up your heavy load”
And he sent me then
To the refuge of the roads

11:30 a.m.

I got a cold sore for my birthday, YEAH!
Gotta grin and bear; what can you do?

When I came upstairs it was to find two birthday cards on the kitchen table; one made by Everett and one bought by Scott and signed "Love from Your Boys."

I poured a cup of coffee and made my way into the office here, where I am comfortably settled into the new computer chair and have already received two birthday calls. The first came from Joanne, who is one of my mother’s and our family’s dearest friends. We had a nice talk and, right after we hung up, Jack called and sang the first line of the birthday song. 

Emil and Everett have been hugging and kissing me in a serial manner, and Everett has just served me toasted cheese-buns for breakfast. He baked and iced chocolate cupcakes yesterday, which we plan to take to Grandma’s after lunch. It’s 30 below, though. I’m thinking it would be much smarter to stay close to home.

The phone just rang again: my bifocals are in. “Welcome to Old Age!” Joanne crowed scant minutes ago when I mentioned them.

I keep a pair of glasses on the coffee table in the living room, and am constantly pushing them up onto the top of my head when I want to read during commercials or non-engaging television. That wouldn’t be such a trial if the frames didn’t get wound up in my hair all the time. Bifocals mean, I hope, that adjusting the angle of my eyes is all that will be necessary in future, and the glasses can stay put.

Everett brings me a mug of fruit juice.
“Mmm, GOSH I’m lucky!”
“Yeah, you are,” he says matter of factly.

He has insisted I shall do no dishes today, even if he has to do them ALL himself.

There is a book in at the library for me, and the boys and I want to rent a movie for the evening. My sister Karen (previously known as Jill) is curling at five and I’d like to watch her play at least one game before she’s done for the year. I guess there will be more curling before the ice is gone, mind you, so it doesn’t have to be today.

But first — whatever happens with the rest of the day — a bath and some clothes are called for.

~~~ chickadeedeedee ~~~

Everett and I, being the only two people who are around the house most of the day, take great delight from the birds that visit our little window feeder.

It took them a month to discover it, but the chickadees now take turns helping themselves to sunflower seeds. The three-toed woodpeckers were the next to get up the nerve, and these two species have provided almost all the action outside the kitchen window. Until this week.

~~ three-toed woodpecker ~~

Birds resembling colourful small pigeons sit in the trees and look for seeds on the ground beneath the feeder, but only once has one landed on the feeder itself, and that didn’t last long. It flew away when it saw me move, several feet away from the window. Saskatchewan Birds identifies these as pine grosbeaks. I have been unable to get a decent photo so far, but not for lack of trying. They don’t come too close, and my camera doesn’t do the zoom-in thing well enough.

~~~ common redpoll ~~~

Yesterday the feeder was discovered by a tiny flock of common redpolls. They were not cowed by the territorial chickadees and brazenly insisted on snacking from the feeder too. They even perch on the outer windowsill and peek in at us, as if they find us curious beasties. Cheeky little monkeys. The pictures I managed to get do not display the bright red on their heads and breasts very well, unfortunately.

~~~ cheeky monkey ~~~

We have lots of sparrows around and I was sure they’d be using the feeder by now, but no, not a one has been to it.

When he came in with an armful of wood yesterday, Everett reported a spruce grouse (or maybe it was a ruffed grouse; there appeared to be a little feather crest on its head) sitting in a tree just off the deck, so I hurriedly tramped out in Scott’s boots and no coat. I got four pictures before it flew off, but they weren’t any good.

What is next? What is next? I say.

I must get food into me. But while the iron is striking hot, I want to write. I haven’t updated for a few days because I am thinking “Who cares what I did today, anyway?” and wondering if people think “What a waste of time, writing about what she baked today and how many dishes she has to wash.”

Maybe it’s time I weighed the merits, if any.

But first, I shall stick a couple slices of bread into the toaster-oven.

Everett and I went to the Co-op yesterday and he was pissed off because I wouldn’t let him buy me a birthday cake similar to what I bought for his birthday.

“They’re 20 dollars, Everett,” I said. “I don’t want you to spend that much money on a cake for me. We can make a cake at home, or cupcakes.”

He was miffed. “I have the money in the bank, you know.”

We’d been to The Inn, where I attended my first arts council meeting. We pass The Inn on our way to and from town. Its front office is an A-frame building. Near it are every conceivable “mom and pop” lawn and house decoration known to humankind, and then some. There are lots of things to look at, and I always do when we drive by. If it were made of cookie dough, The Inn would be the gingerbread house.

Indoors, it is the same thing: lots to look at. Everett and I walked in to a casual welcome by two women busily preparing lunch, and were instructed to lay our coats on a couch. In a tiny porch off the living room, we met Babe, a bristly and solid little sweetie who sat right down and put her whole heart into having her head scratched.

Someone has painted her toenails.

What kind of beast made this track, I wonder. It was out in the garden late this afternoon, with no other tracks anywhere around it.

A quote from Life of Pi -Yann Martel:

“At moments of wonder, it is easy to avoid small thinking.”

And one from Adrienne Ho’s “Nights Like This” in the paperback Grain Magazine collection:

“How two people in a room can refuse to put each other out of loneliness, can deny each other love.”

xoxo
etc