Three weeks with Little Stuff -- Reprise

I have just spent three solid weeks 'spoiling' my granddaughter. My reason for looking after her was to allow her mother to get on with her job unimpeded by a four year old twining around her legs and saying 'Mummy?, Mummy, Mummy!' all day. (For reasons, see posts below.) Little Stuff is a bright, vocal little girl, but very shy and prey to a severe case of separation anxiety -- although I have looked after her a lot, I am, in her eyes, a poor substitute for her mother. And so, to keep her happy and occupied, we spent a lot of time doing what she wanted to do and we did not do much of anything that she did not want to do. In other words, her dear little dimpled foot was firmly planted on Grama's neck every day from 9:00 am to 7:00 pm.

My own kids I handled very differently. Born only fifteen months apart, they always had a playmate and by the time they were three and four they could do a lot of things together at a reasonable match of abilities and interests. I was working part time at home and part time out of the home, and so they were often left to play on their own or bundled off to a sitter. When I was at home, I had all the housework tasks to do. I confess to plunking them down in front of the TV to watch Sesame Street or Mr. Roger's Neighbourhood almost daily. Our yard wasn't fenced, but JG built what we called the 'rabbit pen', a movable fenced square that was big enough to take a wading pool or a lot of toys, and they spent a lot of outdoor time in that for several years while I sat beside it marking or worked in the garden. And they were told 'You'll have to wait!' a whole lot.

It has been a challenge for me to change from this pretty stringent parenting style to being the go to grandmother when Little Stuff needs a caregiver. I've been doing backup when she couldn't go to daycare and keeping her while her parents were at conferences and meetings. So I've had a kidlet to manage who didn't feel well or who was missing her parents, and I've always spent a lot of my time with her playing with her. She saw no reason why this pattern should not continue this summer. When I think back, my mother played imaginary people games with me until I outgrew them, probably around nine or ten years old. I was an only child and one that did not fit into the neighbourhood kids' games very well, being both a klutz and very short sighted. I guess I am continuing a two generation pattern.

Her parents don't like her to watch TV and, indeed, there was no TV at the research station. She is allowed the occasional movie but we saved those for times when she was in the lab and needed to be kept amused. And I had no other call on my time. And so, we made cookies. We drew and painted. We made necklaces from shells and beads. We went for exploring walks. We picked wildflowers and raspberries. We went to the beach when the weather permitted. We went to the local playground. We visited the facility's aquaria and displays. And we played endless games. She has a set of miniature farm animals. They went to pasture, got colic and had to go to the vet, acquired a cardboard barn, and (this was not *my* idea, I assure you) made mixed marriages.

Partway through our stay I was trying to keep her amused and away from the cliff edge without any toys available. So I invented 'spider'. My hand became a spider and it ran around the rocks, climbed and was given a rather timid personality. Spider was a great hit (Little Stuff has a terrific imagination) and we played this game a lot. She would draw a happy face or sad face on my hand and we would be off. He was given a grass stem for a fishing rod and he caught everything from seals to crabs. He got a bed made out of leaves and a bottle, ditto. He developed more skills as time went on, trying to learn how to growl like a bear and to dance (with five feet this caused him a lot of problems). He had surgery. He ate clover and needed his diaper changed. In fact, he came home on the plane with us (planes make him very nervous and he needed looking after). Little Stuff's parents snickered a lot.

What was important was that she was happy, occupied and safe. I hope she is old enough to remember some of the exciting things about this trip. She discovered tide pools and was enthralled, especially when her parents set up one of the lab sinks to give her her very own touch tank. She got to go out on boats to lift traps and to see a seal colony. She got brave enough to jump the (very small) waves at the beach. But having an adult at her disposal and getting to choose what she wanted to do every day, all day, is not the best introduction to kindergarten, I am afraid, where she will be part of a bigger group than at her daycare and will have to fit into the school's regimen. She starts tomorrow. Grama is worrying.

More from the Island

We have had a Sad Event. Queenie the Banana Slug, having been displaced from her position under the picnic table by a group of students dissecting starfish, got too hot in the sun and expired. A few salty tears were shed.

On the other hand, Little Stuff now has her very own touch tank, courtesy of by-catch and all sorts of donors who turn up with cute little living critters. She is enjoying it thoroughly, especially when the starfish pigged out on salmon this morning (they evert their stomachs to eat -- too much information?) and is now hiding under a kelp strand, doing the starfish equivalent of burping a lot and dosing on antacids. Little Stuff says that she will return them all to the ocean before we leave, but that she is going to leave them with a supply of salmon to eat until they relearn how to find food for themselves. The kid is four, for pity's sake.

We also went out in a boat to look at seals. And the seals had a good look at us. They were bored; we had fun.

I have several dozen more sunset pics, but I'll spare you for now until I edit them, at any rate. I only get onto the computer when Little Stuff's mother doesn't need it and Little Stuff is otherwise employed. Since I am here to keep her out of her mom's hair, that isn't often. We are doing a lot of baking and flower picking and beachcombing, weather permitting. I have had her up to her neck in the surf and sitting in the waves, so I am quite pleased. The water is not exactly warm. In fact, b rrr.

More about Slugs

Meet Queenie, the Banana Slug. Little Stuff spotted her yesterday afternoon, and we gathered her up on a leaf and stored her in a cardboard box with the top folded shut. Came back half an hour later with food and there was no slug in the box. She was almost all the way down the outside and headed for freedom. LS grabbed her firmly around the middle and we transferred her to a plastic container with a tight top. Then LS tried to wash her hand clean of the slug slime. No go. Soap and water, soaking, rubbing with a wet cloth, no go. LS said sadly, 'Will we ever get it all off?' Grama, in desperation, applied vinegar, while LS said 'Yuck' lots. Hand came clean. We are now handling Queenie on a leaf as pictured above. She likes apples and poops a lot.

Here is Grandma working hard at child minding. Life falls in hard places, no?

Is this a nice place, or what?

On my way to Vancouver Island in a Cessna. Sorry about the reflection from the window. Pretty cool!

I am now doing the nanny act for about seven hours a day. Luckily there are endless amusements -- today we found an amazing beast called a banana slug. I think. It escaped. We were very sad about that, but we have posted a small notice asking for help in finding one.

Truthfully, I am not sure I really want to do so. Erk.

My bags are packed, I'm ready to go...

I'm off tomorrow to join the elder daughter and family, and spend three weeks child minding while they work. In a glorious and remote location with beaches. Whee. I am told I will have access to a computer some of the time and so I will be able to keep up with you all, I hope. That is, I am going if I can explain to the baggage checkers at the airport why I have a suitcase full of marbles, beads, paints, a pint sized plush bear that growls, a nylon tent fly with rope, very few clothes and 12 paperback novels.
You think they'll let me fly?

We're a Lot Alike

There's a meme going around that asks for a list of ten ways that you and your child are alike. It's a fun read. I'm going to twist it a bit, though.

Yesterday JG and I took our younger daughter out for her first ride in our new fishing boat, a 19 footer with a fairly powerful four stroke engine, huge for a family that started out with a canoe, progressed to a skiff with two oars and thence to a 12' aluminum boat with a 12 hp motor. We've moved to the bigger boat so that we can handle the Rideau Canal system, most often the series of the three Rideau lakes which are big enough that a strong breeze puts up quite a chop, enough to have made us very nervous in the smaller craft.

Anyway, yesterday was sunny and hot and the YD had a day off so we launched ourselves off into lower Rideau with the plan of putting up to Westport for lunch, having a swim and getting YD back to the dock in time for her to make the city for a late dinner party. The YD and I were dressed in bathing suits, slathering each other in sunscreen, and her father was in long pants, sleeved shirt and one patch of zinc cream on his nose. It was gorgeous on the water -- one of the hazy summer days that memory insists entire summers were made of, long ago. But there was a good stiff breeze up and enough chop that we couldn't spot any loons.

The YD has only been upstream on the Rideau Lakes once, so she was bowled over by the opulence of the cottages and homes that line the shore pretty well everywhere except the Provincial Park at Murphy's Point. Some of the buildings are manicured mansions, with rock gardens, pots of flowers on the docks and two or three expensive power boats and Seadoos moored at massively hardened shoreline walls. Others are almost hidden in trees and look more like old fashioned summer places; the YD did a running evaluation of the ones she liked. Even the islands have cottages and those are the ones I covet. First point of difference with the YD who believes that the motor noises of passing boats would drive her demented. But there are a lot we would both love to have. Except for the fishermen, we had the lake pretty well to ourselves and could dawdle along looking everything over.

It always puzzles me that there are not more sail boats -- we see a fair number of them moored but on a perfect sailing day we only saw two out taking advantage of it. There were some power boats pulling inflatable rafts with squealing kiddies in them, however. This seems to be the latest fad and to have replaced the water skiers almost entirely. No jet boats, thanks be. When the YD and I both said that we could not see the fun in the wretched things, JG answered that it's a guy thing. Power! Speed! Noise! As for us, we ride in the motor boat because JG loves it and the best thing about this new one is that it has the quietest motor I have ever known.

When we got to the lock at the Narrows, we lucked into perfect timing as the downstream gate was just opening. The YD hopped out and volunteered to help the lockmaster wind the gate shut, then trotted up to help lift the sluices at the upper end. After that she read all the information boards and chatted to the lock staff, returning just in time to cast off and exit the lock. I am a talk-to-people person, but the YD is even more open. I used to call her 'little friend to all the world' as a small child. She meets everyone with the cheerful assumption that they will respond in kind to a friendly approach and they almost always do. Her blue eyes sparkle, she has an infectious smile and obviously really wants to know the answer to all the questions she eagerly asks. She also speaks her mind -- life has worn me into a more tactful approach, but I often will find myself agreeing with her. We exited to grins and waves and expressions of thanks.

JG was tasked to find us a swimming spot after lunch: deep and in a rocky bay was the YD's stipulation. He tried to locate a lee shore, but his pick ended up in pretty choppy water and the depth finder showed 180', too deep for our anchor rope. So I rolled off and the YD dived off and JG circled while we swam. It was wonderful to be in the water but it was a bit of a problem to swim in it. This was my first swim off this boat as I was not sure I could manage the step and platform re-entry and wanted a helper for my first try. We ended up chasing the boat a bit to get back to it, and I was pretty glad to get my hands on the platform. Getting up was a bit dicey, with my sadly unbendable arthritic knee, but I managed and the YD did a second dive (managing to soak her father in the process) and a second climb back in to assess the difficulty and coach me a bit more. Then we sat and dripped happily for a bit until JG decided that it was time for the YD to drive.

This was hilarious. There were a good number of big boats out by this time so there were a lot of wakes and, with the wind, there were cross waves and it was not the easiest steering job. Whenever we hit a higher than usual line of wash, the YD would wail as she tried to maneuver us through, the wail rising in pitch as we thumped down too hard. Each boat that appeared in front of us elicited a harried series of 'What do I do now's from the YD as she tried to judge her course to pass them. The shrieks and queries were accompanied by an increasingly big grin as her mastery of the task increased. I sat back and loved every minute of this, as the wails and worries expressed exactly how I feel when I have to drive, except that I would be thinking them and not saying them out loud quite as much.

'Dad, he's headed right AT us! What do I do now?'
'Just alter a little to the right, and he should do the same,' says Dad very calmly. 'He's still a long way away.'
'Eep', says daughter, knuckles white on the wheel.

Well worth the price of admission.

We got her back to the dock at exactly the time stipulated, but she waited to see JG drive the boat up onto the trailer, which he did in style with her watching, of course.

I think she had fun, but I know I did.

Eight Things Meme

Momnos (Mom - Not Otherwise Specified) just did the eight things meme and left it open for anyone who hadn't done it. I must be one of the few.

So, first the housekeeping. The rules of this meme are:1. Let others know who tagged you.2. Players start with 8 random facts about themselves.3. Those who are tagged should post these rules and their 8 random facts.4. Players should tag 8 other people and notify them they have been tagged.

1.) I'm walking around on ground glass crumbs today. I have a nice home office out of which I run a part time graphics business and on the wall, until today, hung a beautiful picture my daughter gave me that was mounted expensively behind no glare glass. A big picture. This morning it fell off the wall. I crab walked around and picked up the big pieces, causing my back to tie itself into a knot in the process, vacuumed, revacuumed and came back to my computer. After all this, the first time I stepped onto the tiles in the hall, my moccasins made scraping noises. I will have to revacuum again and then wet mop as this is where the four year old Little Stuff hangs out when she stays with us. I am not happy.

2.) I do a lot of graphics stuff as a volunteer and today I should be doing posters and a press release for a raffle. Since the husband is away, I spent the morning blogging instead. Minus glass shard time, see above. My husband does not know I have a blog, although he knows I am doing something for more time than he wants me to spend at the computer. If I told him, he would be very caustic about it and I am not ready to put up with this, just yet. I'm not sure whether this is a 'discretion is the better part of valour' decision or just plain cowardice. JG being caustic is not a one off item.

3.) I love science fiction and fantasy. JG thinks it is a waste of time and tells me so. Often. Also sods law is often in operation because I do read worthy tomes but the one he asks me about usually has a dragon in it somewhere. I can get through a book a day and haunt my local libraries, buy books on-line and hang out in used bookstores, looking for the good stuff. Next to sci fi I love historical fiction. And next to that, juicy and salacious biography as long as Kitty Kelly didn't write it. And I hate, hate (hate!) to throw out books.

4.) I talk too much. If you were to meet me in person, within a very short time I would be chatting away, making jokes and telling you things about myself and my family. If you share an elevator with me, I will strike up a conversation if you so much as look at me and grunt. But what I talk about is all silly, surface stuff. You would have to know me a long time before you found out what I really think about much of anything serious. Point one about the glass is a pretty good example of the persiflage with which I inundate all and sundry. Strangely enough, if they can break in long enough, people tend to tell me secret things about themselves and talk about things that trouble them.

5.) Country music, yes. Also folk music. And some classical music -- Handel, for instance. I despised the Beatles whose early career took place while I was a young mother, didn't think much of Elvis (yeah, I'm that old!) and don't have any tolerance for singers whose words I can't interpret. The folk music thing was really big while JG and I were undergraduates and I learned the words to a great many obscure songs: the Eddystone Light, for instance. Tom Lehrer. I have the kind of trick memory that retains verse, lyrics and aphorisms. Don't ask me about the car keys, my passport or my daughters' phone numbers. And I can't sing. This is really sad as the rest of my family can, and they suffer while I murder Christmas carols, but they need me to get past the second verse of anything. It's nice to be needed.

6.) I'm on my third wedding ring. Same husband, but three rings. The first one got too small, so I stored it in my jewellery case with my mother's. They both got stolen. I have seldom felt more violated. JG bought me a bigger ring, with carving on it, for our 25th anniversary. I had to have that one cut off when I sprained my finger and so I got the jeweller to put a hinge and click clasp on it. Last year I was digging out shoots and weeding and somewhere in the yard it unclicked and I lost it. I am now wearing JG's, since he doesn't, but I had to have it enlarged to get it on. Arthritis.

7.) The only sport I'm any good at is swimming. I love to swim. I love the feel of the water gliding along my body, the buoyancy, the layers of different temperature. I love swimming in the ocean best, lakes in summer next and pools least. Chlorine, yuck. I love scuba diving where you seem to fly over an alien world, free from gravity and sound, living in an extra dimension. I love watching surf roll onto a rocky shore, smelling the scent of salt water and feeling the pound of the waves as they break. I love body-surfing when the water takes you and hurls you forward in a burst of foam and cold. I love water. Sometimes I wish I had gills.

8.) I'm a procrastinator. Big time. I started doing the weekly laundry at 7:30 this morning and right now there is a huge basket waiting to go out onto the line and if I don't get it out there soon it won't dry. The reason it all has to go out together is hummingbirds. They love to sit on the clothesline, and where they sits, they poops. So the clothes have to be out for as short a time as possible. But they need to go out. Right. Now.

They're out. I'm posting and I'm out of here. Oh, if there is anyone left who hasn't done this thing, Tag!, you're it.

Grama is Rockin'

Early in July, Bon from Crib Chronicles, wrote this:

my online girlfriend, Ms. Redneck Mommy - i know, i know, she’s everybody’s online girlfriend, she’s an incorrigible flirt - flicked her sticky fingers wand and dropped a Rockin’ Girl Blogger award upon me. which, um, rocks, even though any non-hand-drawn picture of me would point out how the word “girl” becomes more of a stretch all the time. but i like my pretty new button, however i have to squeeze to get it over my hips, and have decided to continue stretching its use of the word “girl” by passing it along to a fine blogger who happens to be technically even further from girlhood than myself, but who rocks most indubitably. Mary, come on down. glad you’re out here adding your voice to the chorus.

This was absolutely lovely of Bon. Even though my grandkids would choke laughing. So I said to myself, "Wha??????" and went to look for the origins of this. Here is where it started.

Roberta Ferguson at Blogging Made Devilishly Simple said: Yeah, why not get out there and start a trend of sorts? I was happy to find that I was a SOB (successful outstanding blogger) from Liz Strauss and it’s little pieces of recognition like that, that sometimes keeps us going.
I’m starting something today, right here, right now. You get to be in on it. It’ll be fun and it will build us a community of one sort: girl bloggers. Or, better yet, “Rockin’ Girl Bloggers”. How do you like that? This one-time deal comes with a nifty badge as well: Know anyone that deserves this nifty award? Let’s make a ginormous list of rockin’ girl bloggers. I am going to tag some of the rockin’ girl bloggers that I read regularly. From there, they can tag some more rockin’ girl bloggers, and so forth. So, if you’re a girl or woman and you blog and you have to rock, then you’re in.

At BlogRhet, the topic under discussion is inclusiveness. There have also been some serious debates about tagging. (The one I'm citing here took place on Chani's blog, 'Thailand Gal', on June 3rd. I'm having trouble getting her blog to load so I am giving the site as well as trying to link to it. There are several conversations post June 3rd that are also relevant.)

The Rockin' Girl initiative really intrigues me, because I'm on the pro side of the tagging conversation. I think tagging can be a tool for including people if it is used correctly. I'm not being very correct about it, I confess, because Bon's tag to me was done in the first week of July and I am just now picking it up. I would love to know how far the 'Rockin' Girl' badge has spread and when, but don't have the time to follow all the links to find out.

If you have seen the button or been given it, could you please let me know when and where. In the meantime, I will keep on rockin' and I do not mean in my rocking chair with my knitting.

Thanks, Bon.

And, of course, I am supposed to pass it on. The trouble is, I want to see where it has got to without adding to it myself. So I'm going to hold on that for now. Anyway, everyone I read deserves one!

Good-bye Groundhog

I have a high tolerance for the killing of little furry animals. And I know I need to explain this to many people, some of whom have been writing to our local city paper lately fulminating about the shooting of garbage bears by an octogenarian country lady.

First off, garbage bears. Why shoot garbage bears? Because these are bears that have lost their sensible avoidance of humans and are therefore unpredictable and dangerous. We live in black bear country. In the almost twenty years when we spent weekends here and the twelve years we have been full time residents, we have seen bears perhaps as few as ten times. I used to pick berries from a fairly distant patch with my (then) very young daughters and our dog, and would frequently see the raspberry canes coming upright from having a bear leave them as we arrived. We see bear scat, footprints and claw markings (one on the cabin wall), but we rarely see the animals themselves and if we do, it is a fleeting glimpse as they quickly move elsewhere. We have had one garbage bear which, when we were alerted by the thumping of the garbage pail and went to see what was going on, walked toward us. We yelled, it left briefly and returned to the compost bin. JG took a shot at it (compost bin has bullet hole to substantiate this) and it left for good. We now lock the garbage bin in a metal sided shed and do not compost berry material. Black bears are big enough to kill a person. And the habituated ones may try.

We also target groundhogs and other sweet furry beasties. It's this way. We live way out in the 'bush' (Canadian for second growth forest). Of the 300 acres we tend, 295 are managed forest or beaver flood, and any animal that wishes to is welcome to den in them. Of the five remaining homestead acres, we regard only the immediate vicinity of the house as off limits. We even tolerate chipmunks in the mowed part of the field and lawn. Groundhogs are welcome to dig in the untended areas and live in the rock piles. However, in the last month we have had to eliminate a chipmunk family that persisted in digging up the tile bed of our septic system (after the application of moth balls and ammonia) and a groundhog that insisted in reopening a hole directly under the supports of the stairs leading to the kitchen door. We use live traps when we can, and more than a few chipmunks have been transported for wrongful digging, but find they are not too effective with groundhogs. We had to use a spring trap on the stubborn idiot who was undermining the stairs. This requires waiting for the trap to spring and shooting the perp to put it out of its misery. Imagine if that hit the newspaper!

I guess you could argue that the groundhogs et al were here first and we are encroaching on their territory. True. But overall, I think we are kind to our first citizens and we do a lot to improve their habitat. The deer love the trail system we have developed and are equally pleased with the tasty hostas and other imported delicacies I have planted. Robins revel in the big patch of mowed field. Red squirrels and chipmunks get lots of nourishment from the bird feeders and we don't hassle them if they confine themselves to gleaning what the birds have dropped. The odd squirrel that figures out how to get into the bird feeders is shot and provides a tasty snack for the fisher that we see occasionally. I would say that we usually coexist. Maybe the kitchen stair groundhog was making a First Citizen protest. If so, he would have been wiser to file suit in court.

These are animals, after all. Most of us use animal products which involve the death of the animal. We don't see the slaughter and most of us don't think about it very much. Those people who do worry about it (and they had better be vegetarian and wearing synthetics) tend, in my opinion, to go a bit overboard. ( Also take a look at this link -- hunters going overboard!) Especially if the animal in question is a cute baby harp seal or a laboratory dog or monkey. Have you ever heard of anyone mourning the demise of lab rats? Or trying to close down a pig raising barn? If polar bears become extinct it is not going to be due to the controlled hunt that brings the Inuit badly needed cash; it will be because we are all, to some extent, carbon criminals. I eat meat and wear animal products. And I trap groundhogs. Guilty as charged.

While we're talking about encroachment on other people's property, let's take a look at the urban raccoon. Here is an opportunist animal that makes garbage bears look like rank amateurs. These wily beasts have perfectly adapted to living in cities and are happily increasing their urban populations every year. And this is a real problem in Quebec at the moment because raccoons are rabies carriers. The rural population of raccoons along the Quebec/Ontario/New York State border has a lot of raccoon rabies. The Ministry of Natural Resources in Ontario and its equivalent in Quebec have been trying to eradicate this population humanely by dropping bait containing a rabies immunization drug and by trapping and relocating the animals near an infested area. But the infested areas are increasing and soon will be close enough to Montreal that crossover may occur and the urban raccoons become infected. If this happens, it is going to be a big problem for the residents of Montreal. The animals may stop being furry little charmers and become targets for destruction. If you have to choose between killing a raccoon and having your child in danger, I know what I would do.

I hate killing things myself. I ran over a porcupine with my car once, and was really shaky after I made sure it was dead. I love watching little lambs jumping around but I also love lamb chops. I feel sorry for a crowded boxcar of pigs headed for slaughter but I eat lots of sausage. I wonder how defensive I sound to other people about this subject. It's a sort of mental dichotomy, I think, that is due to being far enough away from hunger and subsistence farming to have the luxury of not being 'in at the kill'. Could I kill an animal if my family needed food? Yes, I think so. I hope I never have to find out. In the meantime, I don't have much patience with people who get overly sentimental about animals.

Water Everywhere

It's raining again. Ten minutes ago I was sitting out on the screened porch watching the cloud shadows chase across the back field. Noticing yet another big black mass moving up from the west. Feeling the gust of wind come around from behind me -- the cool, brusque push of wind that precedes the rain. This pattern of sun, rain and sun again has persisted all day. And yesterday. And the day before that. With interludes of electrical storms. The farmers struggling to get the late hay baled must be apoplectic. Anyone who has booked this week off as vacation is probably fed up and growing moss between their toes. Or last week. Our July weather this year has followed this pattern almost every day.

We did get out in the boat for half a day, yesterday, before the cloudless sky began to fill with far from innocent looking clouds and we had to trailer the boat fast and head for home. It was gusty on the lakes and so we anchored in the lee of a small island to eat our lunch. Almost immediately an osprey swooped just over our heads and when we looked up we saw another one. They are beautiful soaring birds, about the size of a raven, and they fish. We watched one of them swoop over to the island and realized that there was a nest on one of the bigger trees -- a live tree and not the tallest one, which ospreys usually prefer.

We were also amused by a swim-by parade of Canada geese, a long one composed of adults and almost adult sized juveniles, that headed out into the main channel and, paddling with amazing speed, crossed the fairway among the passing boats. Earlier this week we saw a pair of loons with two very small chicks bobbing between them and another family with two or three bigger juvenile birds. They are also a big bird, when you see them close by, as we often do. They are usually quite calm about passing boat traffic and will only dive away if something passes really close to them. Last fall we saw big flocks of them congregated in the upper part of the lake where the water is shallower, as many as twenty birds in one group. I was not aware they did this.

For me, this is the joy of boating. We putt along quite slowly, field glasses at the ready, on weekdays or before the cottage season is in full swing and after most people have left. In spite of the lake shores being almost entirely built up with cottages, there is a lot of bird life and more than occasional glimpses of the local wildlife. Mind you some of the local wildlife of another sort can be out roaring around in circles towing screaming kids on inflatables, or jumping wakes with their Seadoos. Not enough to spoil things, though. And we pass placid fishermen (I refuse to use the politically correct 'fisher' - yuck!) rocking quietly in the shallows or trolling gently. The fishing is quite good, and my family loves to fish.

In fact, here are three generations of my family fishing -- there's none of me, or it would be four.

My mother

Elder Daughter

Little Stuff

I'm not really into fishing. I have served my time taking sunfish off hooks and returning them to the water, threading worms onto hooks, cooking fish brought home by the successful, cleaning up. I even have several videos of me, swimming with and feeding fish. But if I get to sit down beside water, what I want in my hand is a camera or a paintbrush or binoculars. If I have a camera, I take bird pictures. And more bird pictures. I am about to put the white heron back onto the top picture. If I have a paintbrush I make yet another attempt to capture what the water looks like: the result is never to my satisfaction, but I can't resist another try. The binoculars are often a prelude to activities one and two.

I love water. Only, a large dollop of it has just fallen on my sheets, which I optimistically hung on the line a couple of hours ago. I'm not so sure I love that.

Two Score Years Ago

July 11th, 1967

My baby is having a mid life crisis. On Wednesday she will have her fortieth birthday, and in spite of the fact that she is having three cakes, she is not one bit happy about hitting the milestone. Neither was her father when he hit it, although he now says that fifty was even worse. Given that his sister and brother put fifty pink flamingos on the lawn, maybe he was right.

I have never been quite that hung up about my age, although I did take note of my sixty-fifth alright. (Not enough note; I forgot to sign up at the pharmacy for my paid-for drugs. Big oops.) Or I thought I wasn't. The other day JG referred to himself and me as 'a pair of old fogeys' and I found myself taking offence. As a matter of fact, I snarled. JG put both his hands behind him and backed away slowly. Well, no. He did apologize, though.

I surprised myself a little, because, as I said, I am not usually sensitive about my age. I wear my hair in its natural white with brown bits here and there. (I stopped dying it when I was in Africa for some months and the sun turned the hair colour I used to a sort of dirty ochre. Yick!) I am glad to be reminded that I qualify for the seniors' discount when I forget to ask for it. I cheerfully buy and wear 'grandma' clothes. But somehow 'fogey' hit me hard.

I suspect each of us has a limit. A limit of age when we have to recognize that we are no longer young. A limit on labels, epithets, pejoratives. A limit on our tolerance for undeserved criticism, on how much condescension to allow before it turns to abuse, a line beyond which we will not be pushed. I've never been particularly body conscious or self conscious (with the exception of part of high school, perhaps, like most of us). But my husband can push my buttons, oh boy!

A 'fogey' (fogy) is defined, generally as an excessively old fashioned and conservative person, usually combined with 'old' and synonymous with 'dull'. I just looked it up in the OED, Webster and Wictionary. And I have no idea why that got to me. Except that in general, being told I am dull is something that gets to me, except from teenaged offspring (who are obviously going through a phase, hmm?). I recall being told once to keep my mouth shut when the daughters were home from university on a visit and let them talk because they wouldn't want to hear what I had to say. That's over twenty years ago but I still remember it and it still hurts.

I find it sort of funny that the YD is hitting a milestone I hit a quarter century ago and she thinks she is getting old. Nope. Forty is not old. I took up sailboarding and scuba diving when I was in my forties. I went back to school and competed with kids the age of my kids and did rather well. I started a new career. The fact is that I did all of those things because I had got fired from a job that I really wanted to keep. It took me a year to dig myself out of the hole that dismissal dropped me into, but I did crawl out and I have probably had more fun and grown a lot more than I would have if it had not happened.

I adore the YD, I really do. And I expect the second half of her life to be just as adventurous as the first. Happy Birthday tomorrow, love.