A most skilled and amusing writer, Nance of the
Deptof Nance, has taken up the challenge of a question meme for the month of March.
I love what she is doing it and have decided to play along, sort of, starting a
week late. The bolded lines are the questions from the meme.
What is the view from the window of the room where you are
currently sitting?
Here is the view; I am sitting in my wingback recliner with
my iPad. What you cannot see is that outside, even though it is mildly sunny,
fine snow is falling, glittering, catching the light.
There is nothing more cheering than a big vase of pink and white tulips
poised against the snow beyond the windows.
Is there anything you don't or won't cook?
If I had any choice, I would not cook anything. After over
fifty years of meal planning and preparation for my family I am tired of the
whole thing. We are acquainted with a couple who eat three meals a day in
restaurants: there are three reasons this would not work for me, alas. First,
it is a fifteen minute drive to one restaurant and over half an hour to any
others from where we live. Second, Even if we lived in town, the energy
required to get dressed and go to a restaurant is almost as daunting as the
thought of preparing yet another meal. Third, and definitive. The husband would
not co-operate.
As for what I won’t cook; shellfish. Stinks.
Where is the one place you have lived that you remember most
fondly and why?
My parents’ cottage on Lake Erie, east of Point Pelee. They
bought it when I was eight and we spent whole summers there, with my father
commuting to work, for many years. It was a big old wooden frame building with
a full screened porch across the front and a fine sand beach. I had friends
there to play with and a fair bit of freedom to bike the back roads and wander
the beaches alone or with them.
The cottage sat on a triple lot, with vacant lots to either
side. There were birds and clouds and wildflowers, water and wind, the
undivided attention of my mother when I
wanted it, visits from all of the extended family, fresh perch from the fishery
down the beach, fresh produce from the roadside stands and market at Leamington,
a stray cat that adopted us, and unlimited unsupervised places to explore and
savour.
I regret that my cousin and I went back to see what the old
cottage was like, a few years ago. The cottage was still there, in renovated
state. But the lovely beach and the woodlands were all gone, replaced by a
crowded confusion of cottages and homes. And the water was thick with algae and
offal.
Can you, along with Edith Piaf, say "Je ne regrette rien"?
I don’t regret the big choices. I have written about that in
earlier posts (and if I ever find one or more of them I will add in links, not that you need to follow them but because I am like that). In your seventies, you can look back and see what your choices
have made of you, and be content that you have done the best you could.
Little things are worthy of regret. I regret agreeing to meet
my first love, a man to whom I was engaged for over a year, when we were both
middle aged. It would have been better to keep, as I also did not do with my
parents’ cottage, the unsullied memory. I regret procrastinating about many
things and therefore not doing them well. I regret never bringing my French up
to fluency level: it has never been more that classroom level. (Do you speak
more than one language fluently? If so,
how did you learn it?)
It is no use regretting the loses that a long life brings.
It is only necessary to summon up enough courage to live with them.
Have you heard the song Let It Go from the movie Frozen, and
if so, do you like it. No, thank goodness.I don't need any more earworms.
Do you get regular mani/pedis?
Although I do not regret having spent a lot of my younger
life in swimming pools (swimming is my only skill), it has brought me grief in
the fact that fungus, from wet, contaminated dressing room floors, has infected my
toenails. I spend more time and money that I like with podiatrists and cannot
wear sandals or get a pedicure, ever, lest I infect others.
As for the fingernails, I did once get a manicure. Ouch.
Did you watch the Winter Olympics? Which events did you enjoy seeing the most?
I love the skating. And this year, for the first time, I got
to see it without interruptions or anchors or ads. The CBC streamed the
coverage and from my iPad I could hook in, watch at my convenience, and pause
and bookmark if I had to do something else.
The extreme skiing contests were more than mind boggling,
although I did watch some of it. How those young people get up the courage to
slide down railings and sail high in the air over immense jumps is beyond me.
Nor can I really relate to eye-hand co-ordination that can place a rock less
than an inch from a line to score, especially when it has to bump aside other
rocks to do so. I have a friend who is a curling fanatic, but she has never
been able to explain the fine points of the game in a way I could understand.
What I love about the Olympics is the emotion – the joy, the
sorrow, the determination, the sheer improbability of what they do. What I do
not love is the sheer improbability of some of the judging and refereeing (if
that is a word?) and the way the medal scores for a country are hyped. It makes
the words and tune of ‘Jingo is my name” play over and over in my soggy brain.
I think that I have now done most of the prompts
and I will try to keep up for the rest of the meme. If I don't procrastinate too mcuh.
Speaking of lanes. Ours is glare ice as we had rain last night and a miserly degree or so above freezing. I went out to get JG's truck from the garage to the house so that he would not have to wear spikes on his boots to get to it and after I backed it out took about six tries to back it over in front of the house porch. In 4 wheel drive. Wheels were just going whrrrr on the ice and going nowhere. We are supposed to get some snow later today and after that I guess we will have to cover the ice with grit until we get good melting weather. (Theoretically this will happen, but I am finding it hard to imagine.)
