October 9th in Ontario

The fall colours are in full glory in Eastern Ontario. And the YD is not here to see them. So, these shots are being posted for her and in return for a word picture of Pike's Peak silhouetted against an evening sky. I hope to have some better lit shots tomorrow. Today, evey time I would go out with the camera the sun would duck behind a cloud and stay there, snickering, until I went back to the laundry.

The link here will take you to What works for Us, a site I found through Painted Maypole's post with the hawk pictures. There's some amazing photography to look at if you follow the links.


Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

Even Among These Rocks

The east side of our house is in the rain shadow of the roof and also gets almost a full day of summer sun. The only thing that grows consistently besides weeds is a hardy dwarf lilac. I am happy to tolerate the weeds, which the relative dryness and the thinness of the soil render dwarfed. Except for this year. This summer, when it rained every day, almost, the weeds flourished, reaching an abnormal height and girth. They came under the notice of my husband who is not a gardener but who loves with equal passion his lawn and tidiness. 'The weeds have to go', he decreed.

And so he formulated a plan, based on the presence in piles around the garage of clean and rounded rocks we winnowed out from the gravel when we built the garage pad. Large, heavy round rocks, glacial inclusions in the pit run gravel. We would lay down chicken wire, he planned, to deter the chipmunks from digging winter dens*. On top of the wire we would lay gardener's blackcloth, thus choking off the weeds. On top of the blackcloth we would place the clean and beautiful rounded rocks in their various colours and then we would scatter screened gravel among the rocks and the result would be neat and tidy. Right.

JG pulled the weeds over several days and between rainstorms, muttering to himself. Luckily I was busy and could not help. He also trimmed back the lilac to a mere wisp of its former self. I was recruited to help with the chicken wire, the laying of which is a two person job unless you wish to drive yourself crazy. It comes in rolls. It needs to be cut to length, straightened and set firmly in place. On a slope. Where the ends stick up and catch the next strip as you try to get it straight. After you lay the blackcloth on top of the chicken wire, the result is a slippery surface where the rocks need to be carfully positioned so that they will not roll.

We have a Kabota utility ATV. We filled the back of it with the rocks from the piles around the garage site. Several times. Lug rocks from pile. Place in Kabota. When the holdall bed is filled, drive the Kabota to the side of the house, unload and place the rocks. Repeat. We soon ran out of rocks. Undaunted, JG ferried us off into the bush and we raided the rock piles that the pioneer ancestors had made when they tried to farm the place. Climb rock pile. Throw down rocks. Pick up and heave rocks into Kabota bed. Drive rocks to the barn apron and unload them onto plastic sheets. Pressure wash rocks. Since you ask, this step removes moss and dirt and makes them as clean and colourful as the ones from the gravel. Reload rocks into Kabota. Drive to the side of the house. Unload rocks and place them artistically. Change some around to increase artistic effect. Repeat.

After several days of this, we had covered the blackcloth with rocks. JG decided that screening the gravel we had (crushed stone) would not look right. So he foraged off to town with the big trailer and got a load of pea gravel. The bulk of this was shovelled onto the rocks and worked in with the hose, a final finish being given to the whole by using a trowel and pail full of pea gravel to fill in any missed cracks. This is the result. I must admit it looks splendid, but Oh, My Aching Back.

*In fact, they have done so in other years and have been live trapped and disposed of. Do not tell Little Stuff this; when she is here on a visit, she and Grandpa drive the dispossesed chipmunks far off into the bush and let them go. Judging by the numbers we have of the little pests, they get back before LS and Grandpa do.

I'm rearranging the furniture

I've just added the Blog Roll function and deleted the old URL list, which was out of date. I'm adding names to the new one as fast as I have time, so if I listed you in the old format and you're not in the new one, you will be!

Career Choices

A few days ago I found myself answering a questionnaire that asked, essentially, 'why did you have children?' And I was brought up short, fingers poised, mouth falling open, because I could not come up with a cogent answer to this question. I am still thinking about it this morning. Why did I?

I had birth control. It was 1965 and, distrusting the then almost untried birth control pill, I was using a diaphram. A diaphram is not a method that is conducive to spontaneity, and one night I got involved and forgot to put it in. Result, the elder daughter. That's the simple answer.

That's not the whole answer, however. I was using birth control because my husband was in grad. school and we had decided to wait to have our family until he was finished. Jumping the gun like that was bad for me because it meant that I wouldn't stay in my teaching job long enough to get my permanent teaching certificate (it was simply assumed by the school board I worked for that if you got pregnant you resigned. Period.) After an initial reaction that could be described as mild annoyance, I felt pleased about oncoming parenthood. It was what I had signed up for, after all. You got married, you had a family, you acquired a house with a yard, your husband got a job that funded all of this. After the kid(s) had grown enough you might resume your job, perhaps part time, but it was a job and not a career. Your career choice was wife/mother. Being pregnant confirmed your status as a full adult.

I was not a baby lover. I had done the usual stint as a teenager of babysitting (and toddler and child sitting) and had been bored silly by the little darlings. I spent a few mornings looking after a breast fed baby about six months old and handled him with much the same nervous respect as I would have done a loaded gun. I had spent a weekend looking after a ten day old cousin and his three year old brother and did not remember that experience with fondness. When my mother and grandmother went gooey and cooey over a new baby, I would stand back and wonder what the fuss was about. Unless they were old enough to have a conversation with, kids were not my thing.

So why would I want to be saddled with my own? Good question. As I try to reconstruct that long ago self, the best answer that I can come up with is that I thought it was inevitable. My husband wanted children. Our parents expected grandchildren. My friends all planned to be parents. Society granted mothers a status that single women or childless married women lacked. For anyone who has grown up with the wider expectations and less homogenous society of the seventies and later, it must be very hard to realise just how rigid a social structure I had been raised in and how little I questioned it, even while I watched my mother and my aunts beating their wings against the bars of their respective cages. But that's another post.

In preparation for the arrival of the baby, we moved from our flat in the heart of a wonderful small town to a suburb where we could afford a house with a yard. I had no car and the bus service was poor. When elder daugher arrived, I did not feel the instant attachment that my reading had described. I was issued a fair skinned, diaper rash prone ectomorph who, born at 7 lb, 8 oz, weighed in at a month old at 8 lb. I had little to no knowledge about breast feeding and not much more about the sleep and wake patterns of newborns. I fretted and worried and wept. Fortunately, the ED was about as fragile as a faceted diamond and we both survived the newborn period. When she started to smile at me, I fell in love.

The one thing I was sure of was that I did not want my precious blossom to be an only child. And so, when she was five months old I weaned her to a bottle and got pregnant again on the first try.

Ten months later I found myself trapped in my suburb with two infants, one precociously mobile, and with access to a car only if I packed them both up early in the morning and drove my husband to his university. In the meantime husband had switched his sights from a Master's degree to a doctorate (with my encouragement, I should add, in fairness) and we were in for several more years of penniless grad student existence. The YD was even more precociously mobile, and my days were a blur of feeding, chasing and cleaning up after both hurtling toddlers and the dog we acquired to make the menage complete. My brain turned to mush and my marriage just about tanked.

And then, one wonderful day, I started to be able to have conversations with the terrible two. They grew fascinating personalities. They slept all night, every night. I have the most precious memories. Walking into the kitchen to find the ED spinning her sister in my big spaghetti kettle. 'What are you doing?' I said, bemusedly. 'I be cookin' Wen'y', the little person answered.

Every sleepless night, every miserable dragging day of post partum depression, every frantic search of my dog eared copy of Doctor Spock, all worth it. All repayed a million times, in the years since. I still regard other people's noisy infants with a somewhat wary eye. I still far prefer to deal with kids old enough to communicate, thank you. I've gone on to have not just one but several careers. If you ask me who I am, though, I would answer a wife/mother. Without regret.

If you were asked why you had children, if you wanted them, what would you answer? Would it be an easy answer, or a struggle like this one?

Monday Mission

Thanks to the wonderful blog citizen Painted Maypole for setting up these missions. She rocks!

Kitchen Exercise Routine

Next in our Harried Housewife series of exercise routines, we come to those that can safely and easily be performed in the kitchen in the course of the daily schedule. Simple and effective, they provide opportunities for toning, stretching and manual dexterity, can be done in sets or alone, and have all been tested by our resident expert, Mary G.



1.) The Salad Bowl Stretch

Standing on your tiptoes, extend the arm and each as high as you can over your head, hook the edge of the bowl with your right forefinger and pull sharply. As the bowl falls toward you, grasp it with your left hand and lower it gently to the counter. If more than one bowl is needed, change to a left, right combination. Do not let the bowl strike you on the forehead or forearm and remember to keep your spine straight. If you cannot reach the bowl with your hand, a set of kitchen tongs may be employed to extend your reach. Try not to scratch the bowl.


2.) The Freezer Stuff

Bending at the waist and keeping the knees flexed, grasp the item you need with your right hand, using the left to keep the other items on the shelf from falling out. The forearm may also be employed if more than one item starts to fall. For items on the top shelves, exercise caution to prevent being struck in the chest by frozen fish or ice cube trays. Now squat, keeping the back straight and pick up the items you failed to catch. Bend again at the waist and stuff each item back into the shelf. Close door. Repeat as many times as necessary to find what you need to cook.


3.) The Drawer Pull.

Stand bent slightly at the waist and use your right hand to pull out the drawer. As in the exercise above, use the left hand to keep the contents of the drawer from falling to the floor. Again, descend to a squat and pick up the items you failed to catch. Remember to let go of the drawer before you do this, or you may pull entire drawer out onto your head. Be especially careful of the screw driver and pliers as you catch; they are sharp and heavy. An exercise involving filling in cuts in the vinyl flooring is to be found in Appendix A, under Advanced Techniques.

4.) The Floor Swab

Review this exercise from Chapter 2, Bathroom Bending. Be sure to start in front of the freezer door, avoiding ice flakes and pools of melted ice as you move.


Next week we will learn a series of Laundry Room exercises, starting with the Laundry Basket Long Jump (as it will be necessary to employ this to get into the Laundry Room).

Every Time You Say Good-bye

I still, after almost forty years, have a vivid, visceral memory of taking the YD to kindergarten for her very first day. I can see her, stamping along the sidewalk in front of me, each step signalling her annoyance that her mother was going to school with her, when the other kids were going by themselves. My explanation that I had to turn in her birth certificate and health card and sign her in did not cut it. She was ready for school. I wasn't ready for her to go, not really. Torn between tears and laughter I deposited her with her new classmates and slunk off to the office with the despised paperwork. On my way home alone, the tears won out.

I still, after almost twenty five years, have an clear, etched in memory of taking the YD to her University for the first time. Gritting my teeth as she drove, too fast, into the city, and navigated, with my scarcely voiced directions, into the parking lot of her residence. Watching her unload with unholy rapidity and, knowing that she really wanted me gone, insisting on taking one load up to her room so that I could at least see it. On my way home, alone, I drove out of the city torn between tears and laughter, remembering my own much earlier manouvres to get my parents to Just Leave but feeling as if I had left my heart behind me.

Since then I have said goodbye to both my daughters many times, as they left for graduate school, jobs in different cities, jobs overseas. I have been very lucky, really, as her sister, the ED, finally settled in a city only an hour away, has a permanent job there, is raising a family there, giving me good access to her and to Little Stuff and her brothers. The YD has her permanent residence there, also, but her job entails working out of the country for several years at a time.

This morning, after a frantic effort to pack up her life, she launched off again, car stuffed with immediate necessities, including the white water canoe tied to the roof, for her next out of the country stint. And once again I am torn between laughter and tears. Laughter because there are wonderful cast off clothes in my closet, the usual orphaned plants on my porch, strange pots of stuff from her frig and cupboards in my kitchen and bits of unfinished business scattered around for me to clear up. Tears, I am not sure why. She always comes back, after all.

I guess I will never, really, be comfortable with my empty nest, even one festooned with shed feathers and a bit or two of discarded shell. I'm a failure at letting go.

Social Anthropology Field Notes -- Class Reunion

I am twisting Painted Maypole's Monday Mission just a bit.

Here follow field notes taken at my husband's 45th (!) B Eng class reunion.

Location

My husband and I both attended Queen's University at Kingston (Ontario, Canada). This is a university that has Traditions in a big way, one of which is that every fall they have a homecoming weekend, with football game, which anniversary classes attend. Husband was Engineering '63, and he still has his faculty jacket. Alumni wear their faculty jackets as they parada around the football field at half time. Wives sit in the bleachers and admire them. There were literally hundreds of paraders on Saturday. And the extant students seem to get a big kick out of the old geezers marching by.

Ambiance, Part I

It rained. I took a knapsack to the game with my goretex impervious suit in it. I put it on in the first quarter and sat in it through the game. Science '63 had chosen to hand out bright gold umbrellas as the reunion keepsake. Most of the group had theirs and sat under them, thus obscuring the action on the field for those behind them. Plus, the rain rolling off the umbrellas fell onto the knees of those sitting behind them. It was Very Wet. We perservered, watching the Queen's Golden Gaels whump Western, something like 40 to 9. (I couldn't see much of the scoreboard either.) Western has a good passing game but it didn't stand up to rain very well.

Ambiance, Part II

We dripped back to the Conference Centre where we were staying, broke out the scotch and got more or less warm and dry, put on our glad rags and went to a celebratory feast, also in the conference centre. The lads cleaned up quite well. Of note, there were no trophy wives. We were all very long in the tooth. In spite of a note urging gala dress, most of the wives wore pantsuits and sensible shoes, had short white hair and ate lots (which appears to be their habit most days, judging by their figures). I fit right in.

Entertainment, Part I

Food, as noted above. Very good food. Lots of it. Not much excessive drinking, which is a marvel considering what the guys were like 45 years ago. At the game, entertainment consisted of folding the umbrellas, standing up and singing the school song at each touchdown. The student body does this in a sort of kicking line, like the Rockettes. We simply swayed to and fro. I contemplated kicking the umbrella wielders in front of me, but refrained. We were all very civilized.

Entertainment, Part II

The Engineering students have developed a new ritual since my daughter attended (in Arts) in the late '80's. They had just bought their brand new bright gold faculty jackets and at half time they all clambered out of the stands and onto the field where they proceeded to whack their nice $400 jackets on the rainy, muddy turf, over and over and over. Did I mention that most of them had dyed their faces and torsos purple? They whacked in unison, sort of. There were several hundred of them doing this, producing a sort of wet and squishy thudding rhythm. It was A Sight To Behold. I guess that they are 'breaking in' the jackets and making them a sort of gold/grey colour -- I saw some of the class of '03, back for their five year anniversary, wearing jackets that colour. The Science '63 guys, whose faculty jackets are shiny gold fabric, stood out on the march.

Conclusions

Queen's students were and are nuts.

PS I have photos of this, but they are on a film as the only waterproof camera I own is an older film one. I will add photos to this set of notes when I get it developed.

Colorado Rocky Mountain High

Home again, after what the YD assures me is a routine series of airplane flights in which 1.) we were doublecharged for checked luggage, 2.) plane one was over an hour late leaving and so we had to wait interminably for a gate at the other end, 3.) we did the marathon through Denver airport to catch plane 2, and did not have time to buy real food to eat on the plane, 4.) we spent too much time cooling our heels in Toronto airport, no place for real people, 5.) we sat on the apron at the terminal of our last flight because there had been a security alert and 6.) found our luggage had been searched and not resecured or even fully shut again. Today I am tired, jet lagged and bemused. However, my husband did all the laundry while I was away and even did some ironing, I am breathing moist air at a low altitude and the leaves are starting to turn. Life is good.

I have also fished all my photos off the camera (the only work I have done today!) I went up Pike's Peak on the cog railway on Monday and, having lucked out with a seat in the front row of the train, I got some lovely pics. It was snowy up there and heartbreakingly beautiful. And the ride up and down was just as much fun as sliding aroundat the top taking multiple shots of purple mountain fastnessness and the plain from which they can be viewed. (Note to Canadian readers: the lyrics of 'America the Beautiful' were written shortly after the author visited the Peak -- by horsedrawn carriage. This puts the plane journey into perspective, hmm?)

I am also including two Garden of the Gods pics, as promised. There are a lot more, yes, indeed there are. But I cannot resist shots of the YD climbing on things to frame her shots.

Colorado Springs is a lovely place. However, the YD has chosen to live in Manitou Springs, a small town on the western edge of the city. Here there is a small town atmosphere (I walked into town from the Pike's Peak railway station and everyone I passed spoke to me), lovely quirky local restaurants and shops, easy access to the recreational land in the Front Range and beyond and lots of local biking and hiking, not least in Garden of the Gods Municipal park. Suits the YD's lifestyle. The fact that she is taking up residence in a flood plain is something we both missed until she was signing the lease. However, what she plans to keep in the basement garage are boats. So, I guess that covers that.

I am about to stop babbling here and start catching up on my favourite blogging people. But I do plan to be back more regularly, now I have the new rig up and running. Stand by for leaf pics, I guess.

A Short (ish) Travellogue

Here I am in Colorado Springs, enjoying a holiday with the YD. And I am writing this on her other laptop, a mini with a touchpad which runs on Vista. Please insert from memory all my usual whines about this rig, with the addition of a new one – something I am doing keeps switching the text into italics. I am not a happy user of her equipment, just let us say.
Colorado Springs is an intriguing smallish city, filled with military types, some of them retired. So far I have managed to pick up two of them, much to the YD’s amusement. I talk to people, which I suppose is a bad habit overall, but one that provides me with endless entertainment when I am waiting for something. I am quite sure that when she was a teenager, the YD was completely mortified by me when I did this, but she is now a laid back and tolerant adult, and puts up with me very patiently on the whole. She tells me that the area is a big hit with retired officers; the one man I talked to had served on the DEW line in the fifties and sixties and was really interesting to listen to.
On Friday, the city got 5”+ of rain, one third of its total rainfall for the year, I have learned. All the drains and streambeds were running with red and ochre mud, and we had to wade into our motel unit. Yesterday was absolutely glorious, sunny and breezy and cool. We went to an attraction called Garden of the Gods. Spectacular red and white rock formations, wonderful walking paths, and photo ops at every step – I have a multitude of shots of the scenery, of the YD taking pictures of the scenery, photos that, alas, are still on my camera whose computer cord is sitting on my desk at home. Do go and look at the link, however, if you do not know about this wonderful place – it is a municipal park, and immaculately preserved. Also free. Wow!
Today we were planning to take the cob railway to the top of Pike’s Peak and when we woke up on Eastern Daylight time, the snowy top of the peak was shining in the sun. But when our appointed departure time arrived, the mountain had disappeared. I am now scheduled to go tomorrow. We went shopping instead and found a Coldwater Creek store, from whence I emerged with a Very Large bag of purchases. I hope I find a tolerant Customs Officer on the way home, oh boy. All the Coldwater Creek stuff fits me, fits in with my lifestyle and is not outrageously expensive. The YD’s judgement is that her father is not going to like one jacket, but too [censored] bad, is what I think.
After taking in the red rocks yesterday, we set off for a short drive up into the Front Range just for a look see. We came to a fork in the road at ? and the YD said “Which way?” “Right,” said I, on an impulse. (We had come away without the Colorado map. Or our cameras, silly us.) We got on to an excellent paved two lane road which took us across plateaus in the forest of the Pike National Forest. We drove on, exclaiming at the scenery.
Some time later it occurred to us that we did not have a clue where we were. So we asked advice from some well lubricated locals at a crossroads and were directed down the South Platte River Road, across a pass (only four miles of gravel, very good) and ended up in Sedona. From there it is a short hour’s drive back to Colorado Springs down the interstate. But it was all beautiful and we found a super restaurant for a (late) supper in Sedona. With a full tank of gas comes confidence. But I must get a map and figure out what we did do.
After I get home, you will be regaled with my pics of Pike’s Peak and the red, red rock formations. But I am now quitting, before I lose it entirely and throw this miserable machine out the window into traffic.

Life Is But A Dream

We're looking after Little Stuff again this weekend. Hence, I am too tired to write anything, but here's a pic of to-day's action.

Up and Running

Well, up and sort of trudging along. I have a nice new computer with a lot of memory and the very latest in processors (I only wish I could get my brain replaced the same way!) What finally triggered this, after several weeks of cursing and not being able to post was a lightning strike in July which fried my elderly Dell and left me bereft. The wonderful guys at our local computer shop made a real effort to get the old lady up and running long enough for me to at least save my data, but it was hopeless. The same lightning storm blew the telephone, the sensor lights on the garage and half of a huge pine tree, which landed across one of the main trails. Then Little Stuff came to stay for eight days. On seven of these days it rained.
In fact, I think it has rained almost every day all through July and the first half of August, and a fair number of these rain days included electrical storms. I now unplug everything, including the power bar and pull the phone line if I am leaving the house for more than a few minutes. Barn door. Horses. Yes, indeed.
However, the new machine is sleek, fast and impressive. And has been loaded with all sorts of new programs, programs which, of course, I now have to master. Mozilla's browser and email. Open Office. Photoshop. Sigh. I have reloaded all the old stuff except for my Corel software. I need to be Strong to deal with those, as dear Corel no longer supports my version of CorelDRAW. And their Help on the website reduces me to tears. I love the program, however, and I will perservere. Tomorrow. Or maybe the day after that.
Meanwhile, I have a lovely bunch of photos from Little Stuff's visit. She has discovered that Grama and camera can record all the good stuff and she can gloat over it later. For instance,and, a little later,
When we have a day with no rain, what does she choose to do?
Greater love hath no grandparent than to put a sprinkler on when the lawn is already sodden. Poor Grandpa is cutting about every three days, and I have watered the pot plants maybe twice this summer.
I also confess to being a total Olympics junkie, or I would have been back up two weeks ago. Why did all the best stuff run at 2:00 am Eastern Daylight? I suspect it may have had something to do with keeping Phelps' races in prime time, but hey, I wanted to see that, too. Wow! However, it was well worth a lost night's sleep to hear the rowing men's eight crew belt out 'Oh Canada'. However badly.