Second Summer and Second Thoughts

 We have been favoured, these last few days, with perfect “second summer” weather. (I called it ‘Indian Summer’ for most of my life, but am aiming for political correctness in old age. And, indeed, the concept of lazy Indians waiting until a dose of cold weather set them to gathering winter stores is a horrid one. Once could almost buy into ‘Colonialism’, if that is what the pejorative is, when you think of how we all carelessly dismissed First Nation skills when we said that.) Hmm. More than usually in the bracket mode today. Apologies. Well, no, darn it. I like my asides. Shakespeare, after all, used them.

Anyway. Second summer weather was where we started. Sheaves of rustling leaves underfoot, but still a grace of gold on a lot of the trees, and the odd leaf drifting down, silhouetted against that incredibly blue sky. Warm wind and warmer sun. (Yeah, lots of nice bugs warmed up on the screens, too. We will not go there.) A huge harvest moon, now on the wane but still lovely. Stars, in quantity, before moon rise. I missed, sadly, the dance of the Northern Lights in our vicinity, but one of my neighbours caught it across her fields and has generously posted the photos. 

I got her mother’s permission to put this one up.

Courtesy Jessica 

I went to our first Snaps and Chats meeting last week. The dynamo of a chairman that runs our Hall applied for and got money to buy a projector and screen and has set up this twice-a-month meeting to take and discuss photos. One meeting on location and one in the hall with the photos projected. Unforseen, the projection was less than perfect when the photos we submitted were enlarged. Definition and contrast were lowered and some of the best features of several of the landscapes did not come through well. However red leaves did. As well as the location day, we get a monthly assignment; this month’s was ‘red’ and ‘old’. Next month ‘orange’ and ‘buildings’. If I stop posting it is because I have driven off the road while casing good barn shots.

Since writing the comments on ‘Indian Summer’ above, the term came up in a discussion with the YD, who was curious as to the provenance. She says she had never heard my take on it and so we googled it, to find that she was correct. Where I got that definition I do not know, but I suspect from somewhere in my extended family when I was a little girl. My mother’s family was ‘lace curtain Irish’ self described and a pejorative description to an extent, not unusual in my grandmother’s kitchen.

O'Neil Homestead

My maternal great grandfather left Ireland in the early 1800s, as a Catholic escapee (I rather think), but arrived in Canada ‘Church of England’ and thus qualified for a grant from the Talbot settlement. I believe he got 800 acres of virgin land and he ran cattle on it and gradually cleared it, building as a family project a home and barn for each of seven of his eight sons as they came of an age to be established. (The youngest got the homestead and the care of ‘Grandma’ after he died). ‘Lace curtain’ Irish were seen to be dead set on bettering themselves and were thus not ‘bog’ Irish labourers with no education or land. Hmm. I seem to be rewriting a family study I did for a course in Social Anthropology, way back when.

JG got out the equipment and sucked up a vast quantity of the leaves this afternoon. But there are still a lot on the trees and Wolf Grove Road, in particular, was a fine place to drive along today. What was not fine was the Queensway from the west end in on a sunny Tuesday morning. Not quite a parking lot, but close. I am so glad we no longer live there.

Whipped

 Just to take the taste of that last pity party out of my mouth, I am reporting a new source of reasons for you to pity me. And that is that my kitchen hates me. 

The backstory. We have, of course, pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving dessert. And with the pie JG requires whipped cream. Whipped with a touch of vanilla and just a sprinkle of sugar. Whipped stiff, almost to the butter stage. Our grandkid does this very well, using a Cuisinart handheld ice cold (from the freezer) whip and with the cream in a precooled container. So, we had dinner, the girl, um, young woman whooshed, JG loaded his pie with glorious white curls. There was enough left that he had the last piece of pie yesterday also loaded. And the carton that contained the cream was still in the frig. With a bit of cream left in it.

Now, JG complained that it was a very small container and I reminded him that the YD had produced two cartons for the festive day, only taking one home with her when it was clearly not needed. But, there were blueberries in the frig just demanding that the rest of the cream be whipped for a topping for them. Blueberries are like that, right?

And so. I got out the Cuisinart handheld, put the whisk end onto it and, inserting it into the container with the last of the cream (with a touch of vanilla poured in first), turned it on. Whirring and whipping followed until, suddenly, there was sort of a clunk and the partially whipped cream whirled out of the container and onto my sweater and face and the counter and the wall and the floor. I turned off the machine and demanded assistance. After some considerable cleanup, it was determined that one strand of the whisk had broken.

I had ice cream and chocolate sauce for dessert. JG at the partially whipped cream with his blueberries.

Goodness only knows what is going to break next. 

Voices

 This is an essay in futility perhaps. My conscience says “No, I can never post this. I can never even show it to anyone. I should probably delete.” That sort of honest person who I am sometimes does deserve a voice. But that person who I am a lot of the time does not listen. She is a stubborn old bitch. Not going to delete today.  Maybe tomorrow. Oh, shut it. Post and be done.

 Here is what I want to say. Here is what I have to say. Every morning it is a fight to make myself face another painful, boring day. Every day I have to make myself have patience with small but so frustrating things. Many days I worry about what the future is going to bring and how bad it is going to get and how I am going to be able to cope. I can’t cope, sometimes, now. Some days it all seems entirely useless. Futile. And exercise in rolling the rock uphill.

 I have been reading and rereading this, correcting minor errors and trying to make things clearer without losing my unique voice. Whatever that is. There are many voices, I guess, many babbling streams of rhetoric and less than deathless prose. I am, at times, the cheerful and eloquent reporter about birds and leaves and lovely weather. I am the proud repeater of the daughters’ and granddaughter’s achievements and amazing journeys. I am a somewhat biased and occasionally informed commenter on political events. Sometimes I read and analyse what I have read. Sometimes I do not even proofread.

 Frequently I am writing to be another person.

 This is not always who I was. I used to be a busy, almost too busy, person with contributions to make, I thought, to my community and my family and my friends. I made things, useful and just pretty. I cleaned things. I edited and weeded, both literally and figuratively my possessions and my home. A load to the dump. A wheelbarrow full of broadleaf to the back of the rocks. A fun or funny post created. A speech written or article collaboratively planned. I guess that woman would still like to be around, but the honest woman knows she cannot be.

 One of me has been working on this for over a month now. It was three pages and growing. Editing woman pared it to this. And will leave it for one more round before deciding whether to make it public or not.

 Later. It is a lovely sunny day in early October. A month since I posted. We have had JG’s 85^th birthday and I fed the remains of his cake to my discussion group. JG seems to be pleased with the cookie cookbooks I gave him as his present. I also fed his cookies to the discussion group women, and two of them took extras home, which flattered the baker. We also had Thanksgiving dinner here, my wonderful daughters presiding. After starting the turkey, I got to sit and listen, as there was no way I would have lasted in the kitchen maelstrom.

JG has a fine thermometer that can be tracked on his phone. He inserted this into the bird. In spite of much discussion about whether the bird was cooked or not, it ended up being just right. Given that I have presided over close to one hundred turkeys as they roasted, most without any aid other than my estimation of cookedness, this should not be surprising, eh? And, yes, there is a substory here that I am not going to tell, cautious person presently presiding.

 Okay. I am posting. Cautious person loses. Editing person is shutting down. Stubborn person is probably who I really am.