"Hello?"

"Hi. Is Farmbeau home?"

"No, gone to work. Can I take a message?"

"Is this Kate?"

"Mm hm. What can I do for you?"

"It's Renata, from the welding shop. Farmbeau was saying maybe you guys would take a bunch of kittens we have here, and their mother — a stray."

"How many?"

"Three kittens, and the mom's about to have another batch. We haven't been able to find homes, and we're going to have to do away with them." The clincher.

"We can't have that. Let me check with Farmbeau and make sure, and I'll get back to you."

She laughed. "He said he was going to ask you."

"Oh. Well, I'll give Pa a call and make sure there are no objections, and call you back."

A couple hours later Barney and I were on our way home with a small herd of cats in a cardboard box. They have been transferred to the loft. When I left Barney out there with them, the mother was peeking out, growling at the dog across the yard.

What she saw:

The loft is a winter storage area for all kinds of summer stuff — bikes, lawnmowers, and whatnot — but there is lots of straw so I hope they can make the transition from a heated shop to a cooler environment.

It's that or the drowning barrell. I'm sure they'd rather take their chances. Barney will keep them fed and watered as long as their mother doesn't decide to hide them somewhere.

My grandfather used to kill unwanted kittens, I am told, by throwing them against a barn door. Oog!

I have been asked out on supper date. Methinks it slipped my suitor’s mind that the Grey Cup game is today at 4:00.

The boys and I took a drive over to the farm where he’s been building that shop, and I took a couple pictures.

Okay; not exciting. I know. But at least it isn’t bales, right?

Or I could give you cattle:

Don't ya love 'em? They're so nosy.

Oh all right, here’s something the ladies will appreciate:

MY SWEATER

xoxo
etc
Kate

~Okay, I promise: no more pictures of bales~

But don’t these look like those frosted mini-wheats?

Which I no longer buy, though they are delightfully tasty.

I have a hard time wrapping my lips around commercial cereals. They cover one side of an entire aisle at the grocery store, and they’re all filled with trans fats and various and sundry toxic crapola. A whole aisle! What are people eating? Feeding their children every day? Oy! and I’m not Jewish!

It has turned melty, by the gods I kid you not.

We are off to town to return Finding Nemo. What’s the big deal about this movie? It’s good, but no better than lots of other Disney movies. Monsters Inc was better. So was Toy Story, and A Bug’s Life. In my humble etc etc.

I love Ellen Degeneres. Saw her talk show when I was in at Aunt Ada's. She was interviewing Phyllis Diller. Ellen was letting Diller have the show, and sitting back and laughing along, but she was funny in her own right and very, very sweet. Now that I think of it, I kindof remind myself of Ellen Degeneres. Not the funny, or even the sweet, and not the gay part either. But something.

Hm. Things that make me go hm.

The boys are waiting outside. The floor is drying. The sun is shining. I can get away with my warm wool sweater for this trip. Usually it's too windy.

xoxo
etc
Kate

10:51 a.m.

Miraculous recovery! One day of misery, and I feel normal again. Could it be the six cups of water I’ve faithfully drank for each of the past two days? Could it be the four or five doses of echinacea/goldenseal extract I took throughout yesterday? Could it be the colour lamp I dozed under for one out of every three hours thoughout the night? Could it be all that sleep yesterday? I don’t know; I’m just happy to feel human, to feel like going to town today, to feel like being alive is a good thing.

I cancelled my morning appointment with the doc, and postponed it till next week. It was just to get the results of the mammogram, and if it’s pressing she’d surely call me and say so. I was starting to feel rushed. I’d spent the first hour of the morning answering an email, and the second hour on the phone with my sister, and would have had to hurry through bathing, eating, dressing. Who needs it? This is why I live the life I do: because I don’t want to have to rush around unless it’s absolutely essential. The appointment can wait.

Instead, I’m going to relax in lavender-scented bathwater. Then I’m going to take Barney out for lunch, and deposit a couple thousand dollars into my bank account. Then if I’m up to it I’ll go buy groceries. And if I don’t feel like it, I’ll go tomorrow instead, when Don can come along. He loves a trip to the Co-op store, where he can cruise the aisles for people he knows. Unlike Barney, who is interested in the food on the shelves and likes to push the cart, and couldn’t care less who we see.

Farmbeau wanted me to stop on the way back from the doc’s office and take pictures, to send to his cousin in Sweden, of the building he has just constructed. I hope he won’t be disappointed if I don’t get there today, but after the doc visit a week from now. He will be expecting me today and may be a little put out if I don’t show up. He asked me twice to stop in there, so it must be important to him. The first time, I said Why would I do that? Stand there in the cold and watch you work? I can do that right here in our own yard. It was this morning he said he’d like me to come and take a picture. So I guess that was the reason.

He came in about 7:00 last night. I was laying on the couch, reading, resting. He takes off his big boots in the porch, then comes down the stairs and takes off insulated overalls, jacket, and lays them along the side of the wide steps or hangs them over a door. I watch him appreciatively as he removes his outer workclothes. His body is so solid and vital, his movements so graceful, purposeful, strong. My eyes feast; my heart warms; I love the man.

I wish I had his energy and ambition, his urge to accomplish, his drive to work. Even a little bit of it. I seem content to just ‘be’ and hesitant to tackle anything requiring staying power and elbow grease.

It’s the way we were raised. He had to work hard as a child and as a teenager; I got to play. It’s what we expect to give to life, and life to give to us.

It’s our natures. He is a Virgo; I am an Aquarius. His spirit is of the earth; mine is of the air. He moves physical things around; I fly on dreams and thoughts.

~ Farmbeau chops wood;
Pa in his truck on the driveway behind, stopping to chat ~

“Another day,” I thought while waking up. I tried to think of five things about yesterday to be glad about. It was easier than I expected:

1. Don and Barney came home from their weekend with their dad.
2. Farmbeau and I, bedroom, afternoon delight.
3. Walk beneath the calm grey sky.
4. Two hours of freelance work.
5. Vegetable broth made.

And what to do today?
More freelance work.
Puree the broth and put it in plastic containers for freezing.
Go for drinking water.
Bake bread — if there is water before too late in the day; the last of it was used to make two cups of coffee this morning.

I could go to the bank and deposit three cheques.

Two of my winter coats need to be picked up from the drycleaner’s, where they were left for repair.

I could have done the repairs, but would the seam have lasted, would the buttons have stayed on? They don’t when I sew, though I triple- and quadruple-knot.

Would I have gotten around to the sewing? More likely the coats would have hung in the closet another winter and been worn with tears and missing buttons, like last year. Makes more sense to pay a seamstress 10 bucks and be done with it.

I am reading a book called Blue Jelly, by Debby Bull. It’s about healing depression and heartache through canning; folk wisdom shared in a humorous deadpan way. It’s a book I gave to Petra some time ago; I doubt she read it. She goes for murder mysteries and little else.

There is a huge stack of books I am in the middle of. None are keeping my attention in the white-heat way I love to read, where I don’t want to put a book down and can’t wait to pick it up again. Books like that are few and far between. Murder mysteries are some of the best for that. Some of them are terrible -- the writing is so bad.

I just read — well, skipped the entire thing but for the beginning and the ending because it was so tiresome — Ann Prospero’s first novel, Almost Night. This author has won awards for her poetry, the bookjacket says. Maybe this was her first time out, writing fiction, and she’s not very good at it yet. I could not have cared less about the characters, and the writing did not flow easily, but was clunky.

I wonder about the discernment of publishers and editors; I really do. Having your writing published is not necessarily a compliment; sometimes it’s an embarrassment that could have been avoided if an editor had done a good job.

* ** * *** * ** *

“Life is a series of neverending changes.”
- Feng Shui Made Easy, William Spear

sat, 4:45 pm

Anne Lamott’s advice (thank you again to my lovely friend Stacia, who sent Bird by Bird) to writer wannabes is to carry a notebook or something to scribble on, wherever you go. Good idea. Often it’s when I’m walking in the fields or down the main street of town that I think of something I want to talk about, and by the time I get home and in front of the computer, it’s disappeared and I can’t trace it.

It was while I was on my walk today (by the photos you can see that I have a thing about bales and stubble, can’t you? they are my favourite colour, especially when the sun hits them) that I recalled last night’s telephone conversation with Petra.

She’d caught part of some program about writing down one’s short- and long-term goals. People claimed that even when they did not consciously pursue those goals, when they later looked at their lists, 99.9% of their goals had been reached. Ring (readers of the old journal, Weird Aunt Kate’s Letter Out, may remember him; we used to work together in the basement of his home, putting out a fur-trade magazine) told me that has been his experience, too.

I have sat down to make a list of goals the odd time in my life, but never seemed to get too far. I wonder why that is. Am I afraid to commit something to paper?

Farmbeau once said I was careless, and I was offended. But there is truth to it. I am careless about the way I live. I plan very little; instead, I rush in where angels fear to tread, and then deal with the fallout. I let the cards fall where they may. I let life come to me, rather than going out of my way to meet it or to make things happen. I don’t think I have ever made a long-term goal and then worked to meet it.

sunday
12:40 p.m.

I am packed and ready to go to Saskatoon. Gotta do a few more dishes — I don’t like coming home to dirty dishes — and wait for Farmbeau to get home. He’s out, as far as I know, driving cattle from a pasture several miles north of here, to another one closer. His dad and brother will be helping, and maybe his son, who has been here since Friday evening and planned to be gone by now. I haven’t seen him this morning so I’m not sure if he got away or not.

Farmbeau has come down with a chest cold and has been feeling crappy. I thought of suggesting he might find it more restful here at home. But when I really think about it, that’s foolish. He’ll get more rest away from here, where there is no farmwork to do. He’ll still want to do some shopping in the city, and he insists on accompanying me when I go for the mammogram tomorrow morning even though I’m fine on my own.

I’m not stressed about it; last time I had one it wasn’t painful, just uncomfortable. I haven’t mentioned the new lump to him. He’ll just worry. And maybe it isn’t anything to worry about. God I hope not. I am so not ready to either be very sick and suffer while fighting cancer, or to die from it. Not that anyone ever is. But I refuse to worry about it until I know there is something to worry about. Farmbeau, on the other hand, will worry anyway.

The treatment for postnasal drip seems to be working. I am not coughing as much. What a relief. All that coughing had me tuckered out. After I saw the doc, Farmbeau and his mom said “That cough doesn’t sound like the result of postnasal drip. It seems to be coming from your chest.” But it appears that sometimes doctors are right.

Well, off to do those dishes. It's been nice talking to ya. It would be nice if you'd talk to me a little more often, but hey, I'm just glad you stopped by to check in on me. We can't all be blabbermouths.

xoxoetc
~ Kate

Blue sky, sunny day, cold but not windy — at least, here in the yard surrounded by bare-branched poplars and maples. Dave has just picked up the boys and headed for my home town, where he’ll pick up a few groceries and carry on out to Jill’s place.

They will probably visit Grandma this weekend. The boys and I went last Sunday. The photo above shows Barney (standing on a stool, thinking he's funny with the bowls on his chest) and Grandma getting ice cream for us in her kitchen.

I hope Dave enjoys this change — having my sister’s house to himself to relax with the boys. He had to drive extra hours to get here, but it will save him several hundred dollars. Maybe he’ll think it’s worth it, and do it again if I can arrange for another place for him to stay. My relatives invite him, of course, but I imagine he’d like some privacy with the kids. And the new owner of the cabin we sold this summer might be willing to rent it out at a reasonable rate. Anything would be better than being a hotel-dad once a month, wouldn’t it? I guess he’ll tell me.

The boys are excited. They can show their dad their schools and various other places of interest.

I am going to put on my mink coat and go to town for groceries.

~ "Happiness is the best face lift." ~

I've loved and listened to the incomparable music of Joni Mitchell since I was 15 years old — virtually every day for the past 30 years — so my son Don was a fan of hers even before he was born. What choice did he have?

When he was about 12, the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon put on a show of Joni's paintings. Don and I drove from Edmonton to Saskatoon to attend the opening, along with hundreds (if not thousands) of Joni's ardent admirers from around the world. Joni was present, surrounded wherever she went by television lights and cameras, microphones, and autograph-seekers.

Being a homegrown Saskatchewan girl myself, it wasn't my style to elbow my way up to the front of any of those crowds. But Don matter-of-factly assumed he'd meet his goddess of song, however inaccessible she might be. He did not take seriously my efforts to prepare him for disappointment.

Don is a delightful, happy fellow with developmental delays that put his level of comprehension at about the age of the average six-year-old. He has cerebral palsy, and walks with elbow crutches when there's no nearby wall for security. For this special event, I thought he'd be safer in his wheelchair, less likely to be bumped into and knocked over by a crowd unaware of his precarious balance. So his wheelchair was his mode of travel at the Mendel that day.

Not that Don minded. Being pushed around in the wheelchair is a rare and apparently pleasant pastime. We toured the paintings. We rolled down the hill to the bigtop tent on the banks of the South Saskatchewan River and nibbled on grapes and cheese. Eventually, I hoped, we'd bump into Joni. Meanwhile, we chatted with her other admirers and tried to keep dry under the tent when a loud thunderstorm broke and we were deluged by rain.

Still, we walked (Don rode, princelike); we talked; we hoped. Finally, approaching 10 o'clock in the evening, up to my ankles in water, weary and chilled, I broke the news to Don. He hadn't met Joni, but we had to leave.

As ever, he didn't complain. But when I tried to push him in his wheelchair back up the hill to the street, the ground was too muddy and slippery. I stopped a security guard and asked if there was a back door on the lower level of the gallery. There was, and he could do better than that; he called a co-worker and together (heroically and beyond the call of duty, I thought) they carried Don in his wheelchair up the stairs to the mainfloor level.

I mentioned to another security guard that we were about to leave without having met Joni, and that Don was a bit disappointed. She pointed and said, "She's up in that back room taking a breather from all the action; why don't you go see if she'll come down and meet him?"

The worst that could happen was that she wouldn't answer the door. I got behind the wheelchair and headed toward the stairs I'd been directed to, when who should descend them but an elegant blonde lady, glowing as only great spirits (or people who can afford great makeup) seem to. Almost running over her as she reached the bottom of the stairs, I pushed the wheelchair directly into her path and said brazenly, as any desperate mother might, "Joni, will you please meet this child?"

"Sure," she said, and bent down toward him. He reached for her hand; she took his; and he proceeded to tell her everything he knew.

"Hello, Joni Mitchell!" he crowed, grinning. "We have all your CDs! I like your paintings! It's too bad we don't have time to get to know each other better!"

He had a firm grip on her hand and she listened graciously, patiently, leaning over, as he chattered away to her. When he started repeating himself, I thought it best to release her back to the rest of her adoring public, and said "You'll have to let her go, Don. There are a lot of other people here who are waiting to talk to Joni, too."

"Okay. It was nice meeting you, Joni Mitchell!" he said.

I don't remember a word Joni said — if she got a word in edgewise — and they say that's rare for Our Joan, as she loves to talk. All I remember is how excited my son was that day, and how before she walked away from us she touched my arm and gave me a glance filled with compassion.

I've thought, since then, that she probably thought Don had no choice but to be in that wheelchair, and that because of her own experience with polio as a child, she felt a certain empathy. And I've always wished I could tell her that Don does walk, and that he enjoys his life and many pleasures — chief among them, music. And that, without exaggerating one bit, I say my son Don is the best thing that ever happened to my life.

Now that he's met the great Joni Mitchell, he sees no reason why he should not be able to meet every entertainer he admires. As far as he's concerned, it's a matter of course. And who am I to tell him otherwise?

As for me, I think of the quote "Take a child by the hand, and you take its mother by the heart." Of course, Joni's music had my heart long before she took my child by the hand. But the woman who took those precious moments out of a very hectic evening to give her full attention to a young boy who idolized her ... well, she made his day, and I will always love her for that.

Oh, and one more thing: Joni is still thought of as a folksinger, and her songs that are well known are her songs from 30 years ago, and they're great songs. But Joni has come a long way since those days and only her devoted fans seems to know it. So — not because I need to hear it, as I have most of Joan's CDs, but because others may not realize what Joni is offering these days — why not play something from one of her more recent CDs? How about Face Lift, from her Taming the Tiger CD? It's kind of fitting for a 60th birthday celebration anyway, isn't it?

****************************************

*this is a letter I sent to one of my favourite radio programs, which is celebrating Joni's 60th birthday today by reading letters from people who have met her

9:23 a.m.

Strange mood.

There is this hard, metal urge to sweep through the clutter in the house and put it all in shiny-edged order.

It’s as if a ball of determined, this-must-be-done colour has appeared between my belly button and my rib cage.

Maybe my fucked-up feng shui limit has been breached.
I want organization and neatness, dammit!

<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><><><><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>

One of the young cats froze to death on the step over at South Forks. Why? There was a barn, the cat had been there, been fed there, knew it had only to walk across the yard to get there.

Farmbeau says it’s because it was fed on the step, instead of only at the barn.

The other cats have been fed on that step too, and none of them stayed there and froze.

One of the smallest pair of kittens, which lived in the loft, died. We thought their mother was feeding them, so Barney hasn’t fed them consistently for a couple of days. Is that why?

It’s sad, anyway.

The other kitten has been taken into the house over there.

<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><><><><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>

I have wished the boys didn’t have to spend several days a month in a hotel, though I’m glad they are able to be with their dad somehow. I’ve told myself I had no business trying to arrange a better situation; that that’s Dave’s business and I shouldn’t interfere or take the responsibility.

I want my children in a better situation during those two or three days each month, and I have a right to do what I think is best for them. If it is left to Dave, maybe things will change. But why wait? I’ve waited long enough.

Don has a sinus cold, and I don’t want him far from me. I don’t want him in a hotel in Saskatoon this weekend, I don’t want him having to travel, to get in and out of vehicles in the cold. I want him home, warm, and nursed back to health.

Maybe if I get the boys’ room cleaned and organized today, the improved feng shui will impact Don’s health immediately.

I’m half kidding. I do believe that human energy is affected by clutter and ugliness and lack of ease in our surroundings. I don’t believe that straightening it out will impact physical reality and health that fast. But it won’t hurt, and you just never know.

Perhaps my urge to purge is coming out of the desire and intention to heal and cure.

<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><><><><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>

12:44 p.m.
Closet in porch, now purged.
Email working properly, all of a sudden after two days, with no changes to files, controls, programs, or applications.
Any connection?

That's it, I'm getting down to some serious feng shui cleanup, right now. A whirlwind is about to go through this house.

xoxoetc
~ Kate ~

~ A scene from my last walk ~

Tuesday, 12:43 p.m.

It has snowed more since that picture, and been 20 below. On the night of Halloween, I put on a fur hat and the long mink coat Aunt Ava gave me. I’d be ready to accompany Barney should he want to trick or treat longer than his buddies, who hadn’t dressed for the cold. My costume? Rich Bitch.

It’s his 11th birthday tomorrow. We have to go into town to buy a present. I’ll dump the birthday boy off for a while with Farmbeau, who is gyprocking a house. Then I’ll take him to pick out his requested ice cream cake.

He will probably like it if I put myself at his beck and call all day tomorrow, and what do you want to bet I spend the whole time playing Crash Bandicoot or Spryo or another of these inane Playstation games that bore the hell out of me and all sound the same. But it’s once a year. I think I can live through it.

Fortunately, we are taking him and Don out for supper to celebrate the birthday, so I’ll have a reprieve before going nuts.

My incoming email is not getting through, and neither I nor the telephone tech guy can figure out why. So, all ye legions of writing readers, ask not why I don't reply. I have not received!

I am still coughing and hacking -- doc thinks it's postnasal drip and gave me nose spray and some goo to put into my nostrils with a q-tip. I hope she's right and that's what it is -- I am tired of feeling like shit. Kept both Farmbeau and myself awake past one in the morning, until I couldn't stand it and thought of taking some cough syrup.

And I have to go for a fucking mammogram in the city on Monday. Another lump. Damn it to hell.

Tub time.

xoxoetc
~ Kate