The Perfect Comeback.

I have a very bad habit of going over unfortunate events in my mind after they have happened. And I often find that the perfect response will occur to me long after the time to have made it has passed. As happened yesterday.

I have a car where the hatchback is moved up and down by a push button, rather than having to be lifted or lowered by hand. As I was opening it in the grocery store parking lot yesterday, an elderly and somewhat untidy man was walking by.

 "Wouldn't you like it if your husband had a button like that?" he said, jovially.

I was rendered speechless. There is nothing, NOTHING, about me that ought to render me vulnerable to even mild misogynist jokes. I am an old and somewhat untidy lady. wearing a shapeless coat and with short white hair. What is with the 'all women want sex' message to someone like me? I just stared at the poor idiot and he trotted on, chuckling.

About half way home (half an hour drive), it came to me. What I should have said.

"This  button also shuts it up. If you have a similar button, allow me to use it."

Oh well.

The Trouble with Trees

 The trouble with trees is that they break off, fall over in a high wind or otherwise mess up your home or road or power line. Oh, and they shed huge quantities of leaves and crud in the fall, pollen in the spring and nasty bugs on webs in the summer. Their root systems head unerringly for your drains or lift your walkways. Wayward branches tap on your window in the middle of the night or fall off the tree onto your head. (This actually happened to me.) Tree trunks provide a home for various nasty creepy-crawlies and if there is decay, woodpeckers go after the bugs until your head pounds too. Why, she asked rhetorically, would anyone want a tree?

Why would anyone not want a tree. They provide shade. They adorn landscapes with brilliant colours in the fall. The wind makes music soughing through the branches. Draped with snow, dotted with tiny spring buds or naked against a pewter sky, trees are always beautiful.

When we built our forever house in the woods, we chose a site on slanted ground at the edge of an old orchard.  When it was a working orchard, there was a rail fence surrounding these trees and after the orchard was abandoned in about 1905, young deciduous and evergreen trees grew up around the fence. Bears, raccoons and other hungry wildlife destroyed most of the apple trees over time, but one still remains and, when we built, we left a line of the volunteer trees on the south-west side of the house.

One, especially, an oak sapling, became a favourite as it grew from a single whip into a shapely shade tree. There were also both red and sugar maples, a birch and one majestic pine.

The oak sapling can be seen in front of the back end
of the floor joist I am carrying.

Grown into a shapely oak.

The full line of trees, sugar maple on the left, oak busily growing, red maples.

The pine, the birch and the oak are still with us, but all of the maples are now down. First the sugar maple died, probably from having its roots, clinging to shallow soil above bedrock, pounded during the building process. Two more red maples followed it into firewood, leaving a great growing space for the oak and remaining red maple. But, in a wind storm this summer, a large branch of the red maple broke and fell onto the roof. And it was determined that the tree must be cut down to prevent the rest of it from destroying the living room’s big glass windows.

JG invited a neighbour to help and they put a cable around the tree, tied to the tractor, so that the tree would, they hoped, fall exactly between the oak and the birch, damaging neither. This worked pretty well although we did lose a couple of branches off the oak. The tree was cut up, the log hauled away to become firewood (we heat with a wood furnace) and the debris raked and taken away. And there is now a big gap in our shade line.

The gap is not entirely bad. We had been so surrounded by trees that the sunset and night sky were barely visible and now I can see both coloured cloud at sunset and stars at night. JG put up a rattan blind to give my favourite porch chair afternoon shade. And the oak has room to grow into a mighty tree.

Not a baby any more.

The obigatory spring posts used to start out "I am in the city babysitting the grandkid" but I can't start that way any more. Yep, in the city. Replacing the parents while they fly off to a conference in Europe. Sitting by while the almost 15 yr old does her homework, practices her music, looks after the menagerie and packs her own lunch. Doesn't get much more peaceful than this. She even gets herself up in the morning and prefers to walk to school. Mind you, between music practice, sports and her job (!), I do not see much of her.

I did clean up the kitchen a bit this morning, but her mother has thoughtfully left a whole list of precooked meals and a menu of what gets used on which night, and so I am not cooking much. Not to mention that the YD has stocked her sister's freezer with lasagna. And is booked to drive Miss G to  her track practice. I am left with nothing to do but chat with the cat. And enjoy a glorious spring day, not at our place where the black flies are rampant but on city streets where there are few to none.

Booking coffee dates with friends. Shopping. Sitting out on the patio with a new book. (Not sure yet if I like it or not.) Eh baby, you have come a long way and I have landed in clover.

Looking after her used to be a lot more work. Mr frog had to be towed back to the top of the hill and so did she.

A not so daily diary ...

Some while ago

I am once more a ten-fingered typist! Had carpal tunnel surgery on Thursday and already the feeling has returned to my index finger. The thumb is still numb, so the spacing might be a bit off. Also, the hand is purple and blue and quite awful looking. But it works.

We are having cold gray March weather. The month came in like a lamb, blue sky, mild temperatures, revealing lots of mud and wet leaves and newly freed small burrs for the YD’s madly rolling dog. Even the cat enjoyed the weather on the screen porch until I forgot to let her back in. The sliding door to the screen porch is now covered with paw marks and needs a good cleaning with Windex. Not sure the wrist is up for that.

I do have a lot of time to follow the news, though, until it heals a bit more.

I even had time to watch some videos of the gowns worn to the Oscars, the ones that the punditistas deemed worthy of notice. The skirts slit from the floor to above the waist were a bit much. But Jane Fonda, at age 80, pulled it off. And looked lovely. Although it was quite clear that she had been sewn into both her dress and her face.

Meow. Someone should shut me out onto the screen porch.

At some point I popped some stitches in my incision and it looks like hell. Oh well. I now have sensation back in two fingers and am probably managing 25 wpm on the keyboard. Whoopie.

Solstice

After a few days of continual slow snow, the weather has now cleared and it is sunny and cold. The first day of spring should not be a fine winter day.  I slogged to the back of the field to feed the deer and the walking was quite nasty. It looks good, though. Lots better than mud. We have one robin and I heard geese a few days ago. Plus, I am told the trumpeter swans are here early.  Climate change, it could be argued. My first intimation of changing climate did in fact come from birds. The mourning doves that had been summer residents only started overwintering some years ago now. I would trade them all, though, for even the density of monarch butterflies that my grandkid found searching for caterpillars only a few years ago. We had hardly any this year.

It is probably a truism to everyone else, but I can be a slow thinker. This afternoon I was mourning the latest series of mass shootings and it occurred to me that I could not recall one mass shooting, whether in a school or elsewhere, where the shooter was a girl or woman. And it is not that women are not gun enthusiasts. Around here a lot of daughters and wives shoot with their families, although I do not know many solo women hunters. My own daughter joined first army cadets and then the militia as a girl and young woman and is completely competent with long guns. It is not just boys who know how to shoot. So, what are we doing right with our girl children that we are not doing with the boys. Boys such as the poor sap who shot his sister over a board game. What???

Edited to add. As of today we have a woman shooter. Am I a jinx?

Anyway, someone is raising wonderful kids who are out protesting the lack of gun regulation in the US. Good for them. May they succeed.

Easter Monday

We have just passed through a cold and soggy, but sunny, Easter weekend, and have freezing rain forecast for tomorrow. Our elder daughter was born on April 4^th, and I still, after half a century plus, remember vividly how annoyed I was with the changeable April weather. I wanted to put the little, um, darling into her buggy and wheel her around the streets so that she would sleep. Some days I could do this but other days brought sleet, cold rain and similar inconveniences. And I would be trapped inside with Miss Sleepless wonder. The same thing happened with HER daughter whom I was called to look after when she couldn’t go to daycare. Wheeling her in the stroller brought instant cooperation and a fine nap. Bad weather, thick winter snow and other impediments made Grama into a wet rag by supper time and the return of her doting parents.

I am just back from six days of grandkid supervision in the city, with a whole pile of new books, new clothes (plus limp plastic credit cards) and a great appreciation for houses with bathrooms on every floor. The ED’s house is an infill on a very small lot in the older part of the city and is, essentially, a series of staircases with rooms off them. Lots of bathrooms, but none on the main floor. I huffed up and down a lot of stairs. And I did not see all that much of Miss G who is in two bands, takes several additional lessons a week on her instrument, trains for track three times a week, seems to have piles of homework and is tasked by her parents with all of the pet care while they are away. She likes to keep active, she says. Especially stressing is a huge salt water tank full of expensive tropical fish and even more expensive corals; it requires additions of this and that, pump supervision and feeding the fish exotic treats. Plus, the temperature has to be exact. One night she whipped open some windows to cool off the tank and also cooled off her grandmother quite a bit.

In fact, I have been chilled for quite a few days, the cold feet kind of chill, not the Zen one. We heat with wood, using a forced air furnace when it is really cold and wood stoves in transition weather. JG has decided it is now transition weather and is running the downstairs stove. With a fan to move warm air up. This is perfect on sunny days as we have big southwest windows upstairs and the living areas are nice and warm. Not so good on cloudy and windy days although it is cozy on the stair landing between the floors. Tomorrow we are forecast snain and wind. I will don wool socks and long underwear.

Ah, life in the bush.

Writer's coffee block.

I started this last month.

It is dark and cold and damp outside, plus we are expecting a 10 cm snowfall. I am typing with two fingers, because of carpal tunnel syndrome in both hands, and I have let my coffee get cold while playing useless games. Nor do I have anything much to say that is either fun to write or interesting to read. Time to shut down the blog, perhaps. I am thinking about that.

Reheated the coffee.

It is a truism that we don’t appreciate health while we have it, but it is also true that I didn’t really grasp how much of a truism that is until I became unhealthy. For most of a year before my heart went on strike I felt lousy and since the bypass surgery I have been alternately fighting to get some strength back and sitting in an easy chair feeling sorry for myself.

Just glugged down some sort-of hot coffee.

You know what – being unwell is boring. All the time in the world to read books, do crafts (painting and sewing in my case) and keep up with the world, but none of this makes up for being tired and cranky almost all the time. I have joined things like an exercise programme and let them go again because it was just too much trouble. A lot of things, like cooking supper, are just a pain. My [censored] husband got me an ‘Instantpot’ for Christmas, hoping to inspire me, I guess. I would just as soon continue to do things the way I have done them for the last fifty-five years, frankly. That will be fifty-five years next Friday that we have been married. Holy cow!

I am out of coffee again. But if I go and make another one, I may never get back to this.

Last month the YD and I and a couple who are good friends of hers went to southern California for a week and stayed in a most opulent rental with its own pool and hot tub. YD and I drove a lot of the coastline and she and her friends did a lot of hiking, in which pursuit I declined to join them. Iron Mountain? You have got to be joking. We were in a small town called Del Mar, north of San Diego, where there are lovely parks (One we found by accident had a seal colony.), great scenery and a lot (a LOT!) of people and planes. That was fun, all but the traffic jams. No wonder road rage was created in California. One of the YD’s friends took a surfing lesson (big surf). A while ago I would have been right in there with her but not now. I was happy to sit in a beach-side restaurant and drink coffee.

I took a Kindle load of books to California, and am really fascinated by the contrast between David Frum’s Trumpocracy and Charlotte Gray’s The Promise of Canada. Positive and negative poles apart. Not that Canada is a wonderland of positive feelings, for sure, but we seem to be holding on to “Peace, order and good government.” Sort of. So far.

Lunch. More coffee. Have to come back if I am closing this, don’t I?  CONTINUED

Next day. Lukewarm coffee and lots of sun sparkling on the snow piled up everywhere. CONTINUED

Next week, or maybe the week after that.

We have had some beautiful sparkly new snow and blue-sky weather, but it is now heading for the end of February and today there was a grey sky and freezing rain that I did not quite outrun on my way home from grocery shopping. Ice on the windshield. Luckily, I have a great defrost system and I made it into the garage in fine style. CONTINUED

Still thinking. If all I have to talk about is the weather, I SHOULD close. Other people are talking about assault rifles and the Prime Minister’s dress up trunk and climate change much more eloquently and successfully than I probably ever could, although I have strong views about most of these excitements. Small ‘l’ liberal views. Ban assault rifles. Do not arm teachers. Do not arm students. Armed guards only work if they are at the right place at the right time. 

I am the grandmother of a 14-year-old girl who attends a city high school. I can imagine how a lot of the grandmothers in the USA are feeling just now. We have Raging Grannies up here in Canada. Glad to export the concept. Feeling helpless and furious at all of our politicians.

Nope. Not going to quit today.