Ezekiel saw a wheel a'rollin'

Yesterday I drove into the village for a meeting, running just slightly late as is my (blush) frequent habit. The sun was blazing away on the clean, white snow, necessitating both dark glasses and a lowered visor. But through all this dazzle I could see a big sweep of sky to the north east. There was a bit of wispy cloud and contrail after contrail, some older and spreading, some knife blade new. There must have been close to a dozen in total and one tiny wink of a jet drawing yet another on its route west. I had my camera in my purse. And the title popped into my mind - 'way in the middle of the air'. But I was already so late that I had no time to stop and try to capture what I could see. And, of course, by the time I got out of my meeting it was past noon and whatever atmospheric conditions had preserved so many contrails had changed.


My mother used to fix me with a cold gray eye and quote 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions.' This, usually, when she caught me with my homework undone, the yard not raked or some other task waiting and found me with my nose in a book instead. Although far more diligent than I, she could frequently be caught nose in book herself and so she never really did train me into methodical behaviour. And living for coming on fifty years with a chronic procrastinator has not helped. So it is that nine months after we got home, I am finally getting around to editing and ordering the photographs from our west coast US trip last May.

 188/365 Oregon coast at Astoria

Thinking about clouds and horizons, I started in to edit the Oregon coast photos and picked this one for the 365 project's post today. I had no idea that there was so much sand beach in Oregon - I somehow had the idea that the coast there was rocky. But that's California, or at least the part of it that we drove. This photo was taken at Astoria on one of the sand bars that frame the mouth of the Columbia river. And it makes a nice contrast to the thought of the 15 cm of snow forecast for tomorrow.

I love the ocean. Stuck as I am in the middle of the continent, I don't get to the ocean all that often, but when I do I am enchanted. The beat of the breaking sea on rocks, the long hiss of an incoming roller on sand, the indescribable scent of salt water, the wind off the waves streaming over my face, the light on the waves and the sand, all of these are a glory and a wonder to me. Swimming in salt water is dreamlike - the denser salt water is a support and a caress. I learned to scuba dive off the Florida keys and will sometimes dream that I am flying through the water there, dancing with silvery swirls of fish, watching the corals and sea plants sway. I would love to dive in the west coast kelp forests someday.

And here I sit, nose in the computer, with the morning cleanup undone, an agenda to set and various other tasks waiting. Almost I can sense a cold gray eye behind me.

Here's a nice redition of the song.

One of Those Days

How in the dickens did it get to be Thursday. And me with no more accomplished than if it were last Thursday. Crock. I have just been reading an article on procrastination in a magazine called Scientific American Mind. (I should have been doing laundry, but there I was in my reading chair enjoying the sun on my lap and face and reading about not getting on with things.) It tells the reader that one of the best techniques to cure putting off doing something is to break the whole task up into manageable portions. Hmm. I guess I will go out and fill the bird feeders and put out deer food. Then I can come back and put some work in.

We have a flock of ten wild turkeys hanging about the place these days. Little Stuff thought at first that they were moving rocks when she spotted them at sunrise. She was also highly unimpressed with the turkey droppings all around the feeding station and picked her way through the goo with her little face screwed up into a most unladylike expression. They are scratching up the soggy grass newly emerging from the snow in the maintained field and JG is now thinking we should chase them away. It's an all female flock at present and I am hoping that they will stay long enough for a Tom to catch up with them and display. That's quite a sight.

We also have a big, big flock of mixed redpolls and American goldfinch who are eating huge amounts of Niger seed the last while; they are emptying the big feeder every day. When they are full they hang about and twitter among themselves (non electronically), sounding very cheerful. JG is not cheerful; the price of good Niger seed is way up and he thinks they are being piggy.

I don't know whether I am happy or depressed at this stage of spring. The air is warming up and the snow is melting. A winter's worth of crud is appearing and the footing is terrible. The red wing blackbirds and robins are back; huddled around fluffing up their feathers and looking cranky. The days are longer. The house is cold because we've switched from the wood furnace to the wood stoves and if the day is cold and the wind is blowing, as it is today, the only really warm places in it are near the stove and where the sun is shining in. So I am just like the robins, wearing two sweaters and feeling cold.

I'm just grumpy today. I don't want to be here waiting for slow poke Eastern Ontario spring. I want robins and cardinals singing, little green shoots poking inquisitive noses out of the ground, warm winds blowing. Somewhere south of me these things are happening. I want to open the windows and smell fresh grass and lilac and I don't want to vacuum a pile of muddy gravel out of the front entrance again. I want to be somewhere else, someplace where I am handed a menu and find my bed made with fresh sheets and look out the window at a beautiful view.

Bored and cranky and cold and fed up. Oh well. Tomorrow, as someone famously remarked, is another day.

Five Questions, Well, Four.

I volunteered to do the 5 Questions interactive thing at The Gym Isn't Working, and Loth sent me my questions earlier this week. I love this game. And Loth's answers are way cool. I'm not going to do that well, but I had fun trying.

Here are the rules if you want to participate in 5 Questions.

1. Send me an email saying: ”Interview Me” to marygother@gmail.com

2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.

3. You can then answer the questions on your blog.

4. You should also post these rules along with an offer to interview anyone else who emails you wanting to be interviewed.

5. Anyone who asks to be interviewed should be sent 5 questions to answer on their blog. It would be nice if the questions were individualized for each blogger.

Here we go.

1.You obviously read a lot. If you could choose, which author would you most like to write like?(Rather inelegantly expressed question, that!)

I read and reread favourite books and none oftener than Jane Austen. Her name leapt immediately to mind. But then I thought better of it. I am not a patient, perfectionist kind of person and painting on that little bit of ivory would probably drive me into babbling idiocy.

No, the author whose skill I crave is someone you may never have encountered. Scott Young, a journalist, sports writer, columnist. He is the father of Neil Young, whom you probably know. And one of his best books is a biography of his son titled 'Neil and Me'. It is well worth reading as a record of a father/son relationship.

More important to me, however, is Scott Young's skill as a columnist. He wrote a personal column in the Globe and Mail for years, and if there had been blogging then, the column would have made a marvellous blog. I used to park the kiddies in front of the TV in the morning, get my coffee and turn to his column. It was as if I had a wonderful, humorous, erudite friend sitting across the table.

His sports books are also excellent of their kind. If you have a hockey loving son (sorry UK mothers), you could do far worse than get him 'Scrubs on Skates' and the sequels, books still in print after, maybe, forty years. But the best, for me, is an adult book he wrote, using the characters from the juvenile hockey series, called 'That Old Gang of Mine'. It is the funniest send up of Olympic sports I have ever encountered, as well as being a compelling read.

If I could only combine humour, elegance and economy of language, and the ability to engage the reader anywhere close to Young's work, I would be a happy woman.

2.If you could go back in time and give your 18 year old self some advice, what would it be?

I would tell myself to suck it up and work harder. As a child and teen I was blessed with a wonderful memory. I could listen to a lesson and remember it, regurgitate it onto an examination and get marvellous marks. I never learned good work habits because up until I was about eighteen, I never had to work to learn. And then I went to university and hit the wall. I crashed and burned in history because I did not know how to analyse and arrange data. I struggled in my second choice of minor, Latin, because I had never really learned it. And by my final year, there was too much material to memorize, plus my ability to memorize became only average. Nor did I do the work I needed to do to understand. I failed the same exam three times and ended up with a pass degree instead of the honours one I wanted. I feel as if I had wasted my university years. And the habit of sliding through things has lasted the rest of my life.

4.If you could change one thing about yourself, be it physically or an aspect of your personality, what would it be and why?

I have to pick just one? Oh, okay.

I procrastinate. I have been working on these questions for several days now, and I'm on number four only because I passed (temporarily) on number three. I should, right this minute, be putting together a draft letter for a committee to approve at 9:30 am tomorrow. Since I sat down at the computer I have 1.) checked my running Scrabble game (I just scored a triple word with a Q in it and I'm feeling smug, especially since I lost the last two games I played by a wide, wide margin), 2.) checked Facebook, 3.) read a half dozen posts or so and commented, 4.) sent off a series of emails, and 5.) reheated my coffee. I am now about to leave the computer and go and get another one. (There are two empty cups sitting beside me.)

Slurp.

Last month (it might have been two months ago) I posted a picture of my horribly messy office and said I was not going to blog again until I had Done Something about it. A while later I posted a picture of my half cleaned office. The desk and worktable are once again covered with books, papers, coffee cups, Christmas cards (the ones I received plus three I have not sent yet) and other bits of strayed stuff, including the 2008 calendar from the kitchen. I swear it breeds when I'm not looking.

I don't really think you want to hear about the laundry room. There are at least socks and probably long underwear breeding away down there.

I think that otherwise I have a fairly integrated personality, but if I could become an organized person, it would make my life a lot easier. You see, I am married to another procrastinator. And so, I cannot complain about anything he does not do, because he would be able to come right back at me, the easier because my office does not have a door on it, nor does the laundry room, and so my sins are right out in front of him at all times.

My much adored Younger Daughter, who has inherited the procrastination gene big time, comes up with many ways in which I could galvanize her father into action, or hire a carpenter, or ....... But I'm just too disorganized to do them.

5.Most embarrassing moment, please.

I only have to do one? Whew.

I don't remember people's names. I might be able to recollect them in tranquillity, but faced with the necessity of introducing people, I blank. My grandmother did not, due to age and illness, attend my wedding. And when I took my husband home a few weeks after the wedding, and presented him to my grandmother, I could not remember his name.

The other question of the five I was given is this:

3.You live in a country bordered by the biggest and most culturally invasive (in the nicest possible way!) nation in the world. What do you like most and least about your neighbour, the USA?

This question deserves a post all of its own, don't you think. And besides, if I leave it till later, I can, maybe, get the draft letter done. After I check the Scrabble board and Facebook, that is.

Edited to add, check out Kaye over at the Road Goes Ever Ever On. She's done five questions off this post. I'll add others as they are done.

Destroyed by the Detail

Yesterday I had an early medical appointment in the city and so I decided to make a day of it and do a whole lot of Christmas shopping. I put on my city boots (dress boots with a modest heel) and took two huge plastic bags to carry the shopping, my pile of Angel Tree cards, my very long grocery list, ............some honey and plenty of money wrapped up in a five pound note. (Stike that last and substitute credit and debit card.) I left the house at what was for me a very early hour, driving my husband's truck.
Some of this was a great mistake.
I had to park at the mall at a distance from the door because I am not good at parking the truck. I trotted around the mall (three stories and about a mile long in each storey, or so it felt) gathering up gifts and filling up my bags. After a while I began to hurt. My back spasmed and my game knee was giving me fits. Hauling a couple of increasingly heavy bags while wearing heels was not a smart move. Not at all. I limped slowly out to the truck and dumped the bags and that gave me some relief, but the back and the feet and the knee were not letting up much. I decided to abandon the mall and go to Walmart, figuring that there would be less walking and that the stuff I had left on the list would be available there in one spot and I could lean on a cart.
I forgot how big Walmart is. I finally got the list done, comforted my afflicted body with a truly horrible hamburger and some coffee and limped back to the truck and off to the grocery store, also a big box, and got a huge load of groceries. Then I drove home, with my legs at the awkward angle they have to be in to drive the truck, humped all this Stuff into the house, staggered around getting supper, ate and collapsed with two extra strength pain pills and the first decent cup of coffee I had had all day.
This morning I am still hurting. I will never, never wear those boots shopping again. However, I have a lovely pile of loot. Pity I can't post the way it smells; there is cinnamon and cranberry soap in there.

Now. I am getting off the computer and I am going to Clean My Office. And I am not getting back on until I have done it. In the interests of self discipling, I am now posting the 'Before' shots. No more internet until I have 'After' shots. I may be gone for a while, she said, shuddering. The computer age was supposed to be paperless, wasn't it?

Hereditiy is Hell

10:30 am

I've just got off the phone from a long chat with the YD, she lolling about in bed and me wrapped in my new Valentine red velour robe, unwashed, household tasks not even started. Tsk. What a pair of slackers. I ended the conversation by apologizing to my daughter for the procrastination genes she has clearly inherited from me. Funny thing, inherited character traits. Her sister and father are two of the most organized people you would ever not want to meet, should you be an ordinary, get it done sometime, kind of person. They have task lists that they actually read, schedules they meet, places they put things on a regular basis -- they draw lines through the things on the lists that they have finished. What a concept!

I am very good at getting a single task accomplished in limited time. If visitors are expected, I can clean the house with the speed of greased lightning. If you need something written at the last minute, I'm your go to person. That's the upside of being what I think of as an 'adrenaline junkie'. Pull an all nighter? No problem. Get it done way in advance? Not me. I can find any number of non essential things to do that will fill in the time until emergency mode is needed. And boy, do I resent being told that time is ticking on and I had better get to it. I still clearly remember being furious as a teenager when my mother would mention some job or homework assignment I had not started. I would have to choke down rage, knowing even then that it was an inappropriate emotion. And I have never grown up enough to stop feeling that way. Even when the miserable sod telling me this is myself.

I've read all the advice. Pored over the self help books. Given myself so many lectures that I've stopped listening to myself. You know the expression about the road to hell being paved with good intentions? I can look back up the road and see very fine paving indeed. But here I sit, writing a post that is the very opposite of essential when I have a full day alone to accomplish something useful. To get some exercise. To get the muddle cleaned out of my bathroom cupboard. To get my volunteer job papers sorted and into their binders. To get the laundry done.

(It'll be lunch time soon; I won't get anything much done between now and then and so I think I'll just enjoy blogging until then and start after lunch.)

Okay, now I'm just staring at the computer screen, thinking about nothing much. And not coming up with a way to put a punch into the ending of this post. Maybe if I wait long enough, a bolt of lightning will strike me and I will turn into a different person altogether and leap up and start sorting laundry. No? You're sure? Backbone transplants not available? How very sad for me.

Besides, it's very cold outside. Blowy and snowy and not a good day for exercise on the ice patch that Sunday's thaw made out of our laneway and roads. Does anyone care about the bathroom cupboard but me? No, indeed. Is there any underwear left in the drawer? Yep, several days' worth. Can I wing the meeting without organizing the paperwork? Of course! Plenty of time to see what the blogging world is up to today.

And I'm sure I will come up with some equally compelling rationalization after lunch.

(If you're reading this, YD, at least you're out of bed and downstairs at the computer. Love, Mom.)