out like a lamb
It rained most of the day. Tiny clusters of colour are beginning to break loose from the soil. I haven’t inspected my back yard yet. Need to sweep away the cushions of dead leaves from around the bushes and trees and from the garden. I should plan for what will go where but I never do. Last year my oregano took over half my back yard, getting in around the roots of my raspberry bushes and it was difficult digging them up. I think I want to try sunflowers again this year and of course tomatoes and mint and a couple of big size clematis vines for my new fence. I need a few new light pink peonies too. I love them, especially at night when they look like ghost flowers. My neighbours who have a beautiful yard are always telling me I need to dig up my daffodils and spread them out but I love when they come up in a big batch all at once – like family. Plus I’m lazy and I am afraid I will harm them. I am not sure what got killed during the fence building. I hope it wasn’t any of the daffodils. And my cedar globes and small spruce have lots of freezer burn (or what ever you call that when parts of them turn brown) but I believe they survived the winter ok. Nothing a little pruning won’t cure. My biggest challenge will be digging up this crazy ground cover that has taking over the very back – its root system goes down a good three feet and it will be a few days digging all that up and starting over back there. My yard has a wild, unruly look to it, which I love but it is hard to manage at times. I won’t use any form of herbicide or pesticide or growth formula and hand till all the weeds – but if a weed looks pretty I leave it. Or if it shows any determination at all to survive and not harm anything else around it I will even water it and give it a name. I love when seeds of flowers blow in from other yards, last year I got trilliums. I wonder what the wind will blow in this year? I am not a great gardener by any means but I love getting down in the dirt, as close as I can get, studying the petals and textures and tiny stalks and thicker stalks and the smells and all the small insects that crawl beneath. I love the warm soil when it wakes. It makes me feel fortunate
spring sun 
a little less wisdom
The trip up north was fun. Huntsville is a pretty town and very quiet this time of year. The sap was running in the maple trees and we did the tour while a very well spoken tour guide explained how this sweet sap was discovered. A native American would stick the blade of his tomahawk high into the trunk of a tree every evening to keep it away from the kids in the camp and one day when he pulled it out, sap ran down the tree and collected into a bowl. A woman from the village thought the sap was water and used it when cooking deer that evening, boiling the sap down into a syrup, giving the meat a sweet taste.
After we visited the trees, we went back to the sugar shack and the guide explained the entire operation to us and we got to sample many things maple. The maple cider was particularly good. The most wonderful part of the day was the sun. It was ten in the morning and this strong, brillant sun was coming through the bare tree branches giving the snow beneath our feet a polish, all these little crystals of white snow slowly turning clear along the edges, running off in little streams here and there. I took some pictures. When I downloaded them onto Greg’s computer and transferred them over to mine they looked fine but then when I tried to put them on my blog they wouldn’t come across well. I will try again tonight. It was a great weekend.
Yesterday I finally did something I had been putting off for twenty years. I had my wisdom teeth removed. OUCH! I had to have it done under a general anaesthetic at the hospital, which was fine with me but it left me more than groggy for the rest of the day. The reason I had it done at the hospital is because I had a splenectomy when I was young so my risk of infection is a little higher than some.
Anyway a stitch in time does save nine. So, if your wisdom teeth are bothering you, it is a good thing to get them looked after. And besides waking up with chipmunk cheeks, I feel fine. Another thing he told me is to take it easy for a couple of days and that is just the way I like to take it.
Two more rejection letters yesterday.
Although spring is my favourite time of year it does feel a little empty knowing my sister isn’t around to enjoy all the new buds, the smell of sun baked mud, the cups of tea with my other sisters on the glider outside my father’s home. I would love to be doing that right now. Sitting with all of them. The glider fits six. There is a washer toss set up right next to it. I can imagine it is still covered with snow but the wood on the glider would be warm today. Everyone’s spirits would be up and we would probably all be having a great laugh over something trivial. My sister Sandy would have been laughing the hardest. That girl laughed at everything. When you come right down to it, it really is the small things we remember most – it has so little to do with making our mark on this world, getting that promotion, getting that bigger house, that long sought after recognition – it is cups of tea and laughing at something trivial and moving the glider back and forth. I miss my family today. I miss my sister.
thursday
It snowed again. Not a lot but enough to get me down a little. Just a little. However, it’s supposed to go to +5 today so hopefully it will all melt. The girl’s March break is going well, I think. Mostly movies, swimming, hanging out with friends, shopping. Actually, they haven’t been asking much from me. This mother gig is getting pretty easy as long as the spare change jar is handy. I remember some March Breaks when I had to plan really well for it or they would be after me every minute – what are we doing today? A trip to the Zoo and the museum were always good fillers for this week but then it could get tricky after that. What are we doing today?
Well, let me see. Oh today we will have ourselves a little picnic on the frozen shores of Lake Ontario. Poor things, they would be trying to collect rocks but the rocks would be frozen to the beach.
We never, ever did the Walt Disney trip with them. I suppose at some point they will need therapy because of that.
However, this weekend we’re headed up to Huntsville to spend Easter. We’re going to do the maple syrup run – though the woods in a horse drawn wagon. Erin had her heart set on dog sledding but I think it may be the end of season for that. Too warm for the dogs. I need to go find our tennis rackets because the place we’re staying at has indoor tennis courts. I think it will be a lot of fun. Greg and I were married in the first week of April so this is a bit of an anniversary get away also. I hope to take pictures.
poetry
Last Evening I went down to the Art Bar to see Erin Noteboom read from her new book of poetry, Seal Up the Thunder. I wanted to see her, not only because I like her writing so much but because I’ve been visiting her website religiously for over a year now and had such a curiosity to see her. The person behind the words, I guess! It was a fun evening; the Art Bar has a warm, welcoming feel to it with its cast of regulars (I think? they were pretty comfortable people if they weren’t). It was the first poetry reading I have ever been to and a neat experience. Erin speaks and reads well. I picked up a copy of Seal Up the Thunder and her chapbook, Kitchen. It was a tangible moment for me – I can’t explain it. Connecting a little of my computer world to my everyday world. However, I grew shy and couldn’t think of anything to say to her. I kind of just handed her the book to sign and thanked her.
Today is overcast. A good day to house clean. Sigh!
brown envelopes
I got another rejection yesterday. At first I was a little sad to see that brown envelope with my return address on it, lying on my hallway floor, just below the mail slot. As I picked it up and started opening it, the phone rang. It was my husband and so I was half listening to him while I read the letter, then I completely had to interrupt him, “Holy Frig, Greg, this is like the best rejection letter I ever got.” He laughed and said, “I’m glad you see the positive side of things.” I read him the letter and he paused and said “Wow, that is pretty good.”
It said, “Our reviewers found it had merit, but decided it was not quite suitable for publication … The following comments were recorded by one of our readers: “I admire the idea controlling this. It reminds me of Wells’ “The Door in the Wall” or some of A.S. Byatt’s realistic fantasies. The story needs sculpting however. It needs to be lightened, quickened. Don’t feel you must explain so much or reveal by way of exposition, where action and dialogue would achieve the same and even more with fewer strokes.”
I love this letter. I just hope I’m able to learn how to do, what they are suggesting I do.
It's still pretty good though for someone who spelled axe wrong in her blog title.
Which reminds me of a quote that I read a week or so ago in the Writer’s Almanac.
Mickey Spillane was once asked why detective Mike Hammer is always depicted drinking beer. He said, "Mike Hammer drinks beer, not cognac, because I can't spell cognac."
I thought that was a great line.
can't stay away
Happy Spring! This is also the start of the girl’s March break. The snow has receded some although we did have a light dusting last night. The sun this morning is a creamy colour in a hazy sky. The trees all remain bare of limb and there seems to be a small sparrow sitting casually in every third branch. It’s pretty but colour is still amazingly absent. Still mainly grey and brown – No wonder why that intensely red cardinal that has been hanging about the last month feels so important. He has been out there most days singing his sweet song from the highest branches, the only bright thing for miles. The girls came running up stairs the other day shouting it must be spring because the cardinal’s mate is back and they’ re like getting it on out there. The last couple of weeks we have also noticed a grey dove, who is just hanging about, calling out over and over in his low flute voice – we figure he is also a male looking for his spring love. We didn’t see a robin yet but I hope the first one we spot is a big, healthy one who can easily handle all our wishes.
The girls are already calling for me – it will be a fun week but I won’t be able to write much which irks me just a little because I finally started up again and want to do nothing but – instead they’re asking me to take them to a mall today. Not just any mall but one clear across town. I can see this being an all day adventure.
Greg is happy because he landed some great seats at the U2 concert this September. He was manly enough not to hop up and down but you could tell he wanted to.
I know I was going to take more of a break from blogging but I like writing in my blog – hopefully once that spring sun wakes me up a bit more, I will actually have something to say.
And I received my first rejection note back. It was very fair. She said, “We regret, however, that we have decided to pass on your story. While I really enjoyed the descriptions of the land/setting and the background of Casey’s life, ultimately I felt there was too much of it and it really slowed the story down.”
She was right; I spent three pages describing a field. I really got to take more time reading my stuff over before sending it off!
Happy St. Patrick's Day
An Irish saying
May your blessings outnumber
The shamrocks that grow,
And may trouble avoid you
Wherever you go.
Tis you know, a night for a wee dram. Off I go to meet my hubby and a few friends downtown. Cheers.
a small note
A story of mine has found a home in the Spring Issue of Gryphonwood
march break
Monica has started her own blog called bluepokadots
I gave the girls my old camera and they're having a lot of fun with it. Monica will be posting pictures from time to time. I am predicting alot of cat pictures.
I'm going to take a bit of a break from my blog. Will be back after Easter. Be well.
odd morning
I had taking down the poem I posted yesterday. Sometimes I have a difficult time knowing what to share and what to keep. March is behaving badly. I want to sit her down and explain to her that her task is to prepare us slowly and surely for spring, not to run amok throwing every piece of weather she can find at us. Yesterday she gave us cloud, she gave us rain, she gave us thunder and lightening, and bits of sunshine. Today she decided we needed some more cold – it is freezing out there. March, March, March – now enough of that!
The last few nights I have been having dreams about my sisters, all of them, and other members of my family, old friends – they are such jumbled dreams it is hard to write about them. My late sister, I don’t want to call her that. Sandy is always suppose to be coming to where ever we are gathered but she is late, I never actually see her in the dreams but we mention her a lot. At one point we are at this beach and these gigantic waves are coming in, splashing against the rocks. I had asked if Sandra was coming down and everyone said she was but I remember wondering how she would get there and then remembered she had a little blue car. For great parts of these dreams we are traveling. Gaspe always plays a big part in my traveling dreams also distant planets. At one point we’re lying under this night sky that has several different moons fading and appearing and swirling comets and stars in all different positions and spaceships zipping by and one of my sisters is lying there next to me saying, “Gosh, there really is nothing nicer than getting to see a new sky.”
There is a little kitten in the dreams too that we keep meeting up with and taking care of, I think there were many different kittens? At one point I remember standing near this long, long bridge…that stretched off in to the horizon and this young pretty woman is directing cars onto the bridge. We walk up to her and my sister asks if it is open now and the woman replies yes. I ask my sister what bridge is this and she says it is the one we take home but it is only open in the summer months and that is why we had to take the ship on the way here.
Another part of the dream my sister is driving and coming upon all these huge red signs that warn of lights ahead -and I am telling her that there are lights ahead but she is flying through them, all red and I am getting angry and telling her to slow down when she gets to these giant signs and she is saying, “I don’t know when to stop. The lights are not clearly marked where to stop so I keep going through”…and I am yelling at her and saying “if you just slow down you will be able to stop quicker” and she is telling me not to tell her what to do. It was weird. Now I am awake and can’t remember the rest but when I dream of family, especially when it is vivid – it leaves me restless, like I want to run away – I don’t know if it is that I want to run back to them or run from something inside myself, or the path that I am on? By noon this feeling will fade just like the dreams but sometimes I wonder what these feelings are about?
Slats of white wood
Lines of pale light
Cream on chocolate
Morning through my window
at the wake
my sister’s long dead pony came trotting into the parlour
through the open accordion doors and across the dog-eared carpet.
His Roman nose and golden eyes set his winter coat a fire.
His double mane was still thick as rope. His body a round barrel.
A devil from our childhood who escaped on summer evenings
to raid the neighbour’s gardens and to gallop through their fields
and on those nights we searched for him, looking for that bush thick mane,
shaking a dented coffee can, calling out his boyish name
– laying down clean memories –
but only in his good time appear, this frosty apparition.
Slice of moon in the trees handing him his halo and never would he come to
us so that we could grab his halter.
and here again, more ghost than then. Tossing his head, more foe than friend
with ears laid back against his skull – he pranced behind the mourners
- A campfire blaze -
a wondrous site and I searched my pockets for cert or gum
hoping hard but came up with none and without an offering
he sidestepped me and I wanted so much to touch him
He trotted past the red poinsettias and trotted past the casket
where my sister in her coldness lay, fixed shadows to the satin
and her pony seemed to know her not for she was twelve when he was hers.
So he broke into a broken gallop and loped around the people there and I swore he paused a second longer when his strawberry coat again came near
And in this circle that he kept up. His shaggy coat a blended blur.
Her fiery beast of a younger time. It broke my heart to see him there.
My sister spoke, she said his name, the room went white, her pony flared
for a second she was everywhere.
He halted when my sister called. He turned about on hoofs unshod.
He listened with his ears now up. He nickered loud and nodded low and followed – through the taker’s door
and certainty fell down on me - fell down hard, made me see
while solace filled each mourner’s mouth, yesterday had cut me out.
thursday
snow forts
When I was shoveling the other day I noticed how perfect the snow was for packing and so I asked Monica to join me out in the back yard to create a snow fort. We worked on it for quite awhile and Monica even made this hidden snowball container complete with a perfect hole at the top for easy snowball retrieving. There is nothing like sitting in the cold snow, shaping and patting snow into a fort to send you straight back to childhood. When I was young, I lived on a dead end street and the plows would often use the end of this street as a place to dump mountains of snowfall. By mid February we always had the best hill in the world for playing King of the Castle on and we would also tunnel through this mountain and make hidden alcoves inside of it. Now I realize how dangerous that could have been if one of those tunnels had ever caved in while we were huddled somewhere in the centre of the mountain or if the snow plow came by to dump more snow or push the mountain further back but because we were kids it never crossed our minds. All I remember is that we spent a lot of time on or in that mountain of snow or getting flung down it by one of the stronger boys in the neighbourhood who would usually dominate as the King until we would get smart enough and gather at the bottom to conspire and then rush up at him all together to bring him down off his mighty throne.
Anyway, it was a lot of fun building a fort with Monica. We had stacked plenty of snowballs and had a plan to call Greg out into the yard when he got home that evening to show him the fort and when he would get close enough we would run for our arsenal and started firing them at him. But it just so happened that he worked late that evening so it didn’t happen.
I am afraid that Erin has passed the snow fort building stage. Well, that might not be it. It is more like she has entered the “It is far from cool to do anything with your mother stage.” She is also in the middle of OH MY GOSH everything is a crisis stage – hair, jeans, shirts, homework, younger sister, school, friends – and what more she has fine tuned sarcasm into an art form. I need to bite my lip sometimes and remember it isn’t easy being twelve. Sometimes I wish they would stay young and at other times I get excited seeing a glimpse of the women they will be.
O.K. need to stop writing because I am behind in many things – I need to stain some wood and my ideas for possible short stories are beginning to fill up my little black notebook and I really want to get a few more fixed up and out the door. Which reminds me – no not really, I actually wanted to start my post with this but didn’t know how– one of my stories was accepted by a fantasy magazine. I am very happy.
It's not my fault
More snow – oh brother. Been really busy the last few days. Saturday, Greg and I donned our handymen (person) outfits and went to the Rona Store and picked out paint, bought baseboards and casting and light fixtures and a few other things we needed for the finishing touches in the basement. Saturday evening and Sunday we spent priming and painting. It’s looking really nice down there. Our once cold, cluttery, unfinished basement got a new look! But you really have to be careful once you start a little renovation though because once started you usually want to gut the whole place and do everything over again. With us, we were house poor for the first seven years here and then we decided to quench our desire for a new fence last summer so we did that, and that led to new windows, new basement - when will this madness stop? Hopefully with a new kitchen at some point. This house is a century old semi and it does have a certain charm with its crooked door frames and slanted floors and it has a huge yard that is absolutely lovely - the main reason we bought the place - however the house itself had always needed a lot of interior work that we only now have gotten around too.
Anyway, although I was having a productive weekend it wasn’t without its mishaps. Saturday night I was making spaghetti and when I went to drain it, I grabbed these mother of all oven mitts, purchased straight from hell, that Greg had bought one afternoon after burning himself using one of the older pairs we have. He cursed a blue streak and told me I was always cheaping out on the oven mitts and that he was going to get a decent pair so off he went and brought back the freakiest pair I have ever seen. Not only are they made for someone that is at least 6’6” tall with hands the size of a football, they are made of this material that was probably initially invented by Nasa as a shield for reentering earth’s atmosphere. They almost go to my armpits when I put them on, giving me the look of Gumby. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love Gumby and appreciate the fact that he can skate along on the flats of his feet and enter pages of books but I question his fine motor skills, say like if he had to reach up with those round hands of his to grab the handle of the stainless steel strainer hanging above a stove? I tried to do exactly that with those gloves on – I was just about to drain my spaghetti over the sink but had forgotten the strainer so I put the pot back on the stove and attempted to grab the strainer, still wearing my Gumby gloves. Well, I dropped that heavy strainer and it fell from three feet into my spaghetti sauce. That spaghetti sauce boldly went where no spaghetti sauce had gone before. It even ricocheted off the walls and behind the fridge and into the next room. The ceiling, walls, stove, me, Greg, coffee pot, absolutely everything was splashed with a deep tomato red.
Of course I started to curse and blame the mother - -- - gloves and Greg said “you’re not telling me you are going to blame that on the mitts?”
“No, of course.” I answered as I counted to ten while wiping spaghetti sauce from the side of my shirt. “ I think I rather blame you for buying them.”
But by Sunday I began to realize that it was probably my eye- hand coordination that was off kilter. I was dropping just about everything and when I was in the grocery store yesterday and reached for a box of cereal, nine other boxes lept off the shelf, trying to follow the one I held, like lemmings off a cliff. As I started picking them up, holding up cart traffic for a moment or two, I felt like explaining to the nearest shopper, “honest, this is not my fault, it’s the cereals, they just started leaping from the shelf on their own.”
Secretly though, I just blamed Greg for not being around so that I could blame him.
