Lo-Ride-RRR

Last weekend we went across the big divide to a cottage on the northern shore of Nova Scotia.  In order to get to Nova Scotia we had to take a ferry across the Northumberland Strait, a ride which is very pleasant, in that it's less than an hour from boarding to disembarking and along the way you have amazing vistas of the island's south-eastern shore and the rugged coast of Nova Scotia.

Saturday morning was very foggy in the Northumberland Strait, so there really wasn't much sightseeing to do as we plied the waters toward Pictou.  So the one whom I adore and I made our way to the passenger deck where we sat with all the other early risers making the first crossing of the day.

Some of our fellow passengers included a very cute young family - a mom, a dad and a little boy about 9 months old.  His parents did quite a job of entertaining him throughout the crossing, but nowhere near as much as they entertained me and he.  

You see, the mom was in an attempt to remain stylish post-baby, decked out in blue-jeans and a sleeveless blouse, both of which had an abundance of spandex which any overweight woman will tell you is her best friend.  For those that are slim and therefore less in tune with the joys of spandex, the crux of it is this:  spandex provides just a little "give" and "pull" in the right places, plus, added bonus, it provides a little more firm support in other areas.  So yeah, spandex, is all good.  Except when spandex is in clothes that are just a tad too small.  Then,  is when spandex shows its evil side.

And that's what was going on with this young mom.  She still had some baby weight to lose, most of it from the waist down.  Her jeans were perhaps just a size and a half too small, but full of spandex which has give! and pull! and support!  So, you could perhaps understand that she was completely unaware of the fact that every time she bent over to address her little boy, or to take his picture, or to give him a kiss, every time she did one of those things, she bared more than half her ass.  To us.  And the rest of the world, if they had been looking.

She wasn't wearing any underwear.  

I wish I had pictures to post along with this entry, but the one whom I adore forbade me from taking any.  The subject would have "crack'd" the lens.

New and Improved, with stain fiGHTING BLEACH!

It's become a bit of a game for me, I guess.  I've become obsessed.  When you're under-employed and you have lots of time on your hands the challenge, really, is to find different and interesting ways to fill up your day until the one whom you adore comes home again to entertain you with tales from the world of business.

For me, filling up my day has become an obsession with clean laundry the likes of which I could never have predicted.  When I was a kid one of my chores around the house was to do laundry.  Not such a big deal when you live in a high-rise apartment with a laundry room with no less than twenty washers and dryers.   Laundry gets done in ninety-minutes (or less if that mean old lady from the 7th floor is pacing behind you to get your dryer).  But now?  Now, when I have only one of each machine, well the act of doing laundry can fill up an entire day!  

Oh, sure, everyone does laundry every once in a while...once or twice a week, I'm sure.  But lately?  Me?  I'm washing, fluffing and folding every single day.   It's gotten to the point that I cannot walk past our changing room without glancing in the laundry basket to see if it is still indeed in a state of glistening white emptiness.  I quest for emptiness daily.  

The one whom I adore has a philosophy on laundry that goes something like this:  cram as much as you can into the machine and turn it on.  Colour, type of fabric, the need (or not) for the gentle-cycle seldom comes in to play when he's doing the laundry.  But when I do the laundry?  Oh, I have countless ways to sort...by colour...by fabric...by the need to bleach or not...delicates...dress shirts...towels...linens...I can take 10 different items in the laundry basket and create 8 different loads - I do not joke.

Even though I did 3 loads on Friday and we were out of town for half the weekend, on Monday, there were 5 new loads of laundry to be washed and dried.   Aha!  Something to do TODAY!   Game ON!   How many different sorts of laundry can I create?  

Part of the game for me is to see if I can wash & dry his no-iron dress shirts and get them on hangers before a wrinkle sets in.  This of course means emptying them out of the dryer the second the timer goes off.  Some days I can beat the clock...most days though, he has to do some some smoothing out before getting dressed, because despite my obsession with all things laundry, it does not include ironing.

Another game I've created for the game that is the doing of the laundry?  USR.  You know there's UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) and now there's USR, Ultimate Stain Removal.  First, you sort your laundry.  As you sort the clothes review each item to determine if it needs the extra attention of a squirt of SHOUT! or bleach or the very best!  the 20-mule team power of Borax.  It's an old-fashioned stain remover to be sure...not as sexy as SHOUT! or Tide-stick, but it gets the job done...just like it did in Grandma's day.  Of course it does!  It has the power of all those mules pulling the stains off your clothes.  Of course, none of those stain-removers would be necessary if I could ever eat a meal without spilling part of it on the shelf that has become my chest...but that's a blog for another day.

So, yes, this is what I now do.  I do laundry and then I blog about it. Now that OxiClean's Billy Mays is dead, maybe I can GET HIS JOB!

Where Is Eva Gabor Now?

If you’re a child of the 60’s or a fan of Nick at Nite, TV Land or the Deja View channels you may recall the TV show, Green Acres, with Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor.  It’s the story of two New Yorkers who traded “city life” in Manhattan with it’s 5^th Avenue, Broadway, Central Park and penthouse suite for a old farm and a new life in the country.  The series of events that ensues while these two transplants figure out life in the country is pure slapstick and silliness.  Little did I know watching this show 40-odd years ago that it would foreshadow what was to become of my life.

Oh, sure, I never had the penthouse suite, but I had all the other trappings – a high-profile (read high stress) career; a taste for fine cuisine and even finer wines; the desire and ability to travel to places far and wide.  Let’s don’t forget about the shoes…oh, the shoes!  I had countless pairs of cute, sassy, serious, swanky, hip, cool and not to mention stylish shoes!  I was living in one of the best cities in the world, Vancouver, and loving every second of my life there.  I had some of the best friends I would ever know and in a word, my life was perfect.  Okay, not so much perfect as say…perfectly fine.  Of course there were things I would change (who wouldn’t?), but more or less, my version of city life was well, perfectly urban.  Oh, how things have changed.

One might ask how does a high-paid, equally high-stressed, but exceptionally creative and talented career woman come to find herself marooned on an island, living in the country, under-employed and wondering what to do with herself?

Honestly, it's because I fell in love.  That's how I came to live on this little island in the Northumberland Straight.  It's how I came to be "self-employed" (or "under-employed" depending on when you're reading this).  It's how I came to be sitting on my front porch, in my rocking chair, basking in the sun, looking out over our version of Green Acres and wondering to myself where the hell is Eva Gabor now and what will I do with my life next?

You'll have to check back here to learn how the story before the story began.

Frieda's Just Another Word for...

We have a ghost.  Oh, I know the skeptical amongst you are rolling your eyes and wondering if I’ve totally lost it, but let me assure you, I have not.   Our ghost has been corroborated.

When we first purchased our little piece of PEI history – that being the 85-year old farmhouse in Oyster Bed Bridge, we knew we were buying a home with a history, a home that had lots of stories to tell.  As we moved our things in and began talking to neighbors we learned about how our home had only had 3 previous owners…how the potato field out back used to be farmed by the first family that owned it…how there used to be 7 out-buildings on the property, including a cattle barn…how we used to only have a cold cellar not the full on finished basement we now have.  Stuff like that. 

When we first purchased the house, our little dog, Gidget had a hard time making the adjustment from apartment living in the Rockies to full-blown two-story house in the country.  Any strange noise would bring forth an episode of barking the likes of which you’ve never heard.  We used to lie in bed at night, listening to the house settle around us, floor boards groaning under the weight of a dog lying in the hallway, the sound of the wind as it whipped its way in one window and out the other. Gidget would, at the mere hint of a creeky floor board, begin a cacophony that literally took us bringing her into our bed to quiet her down.  We would lie there and joke that she was barking at the ghost.  Little did we know.

The week before our wedding my dear friend came to stay with us and help us get to the chapel on time.  My friend is sensitive to energy fields.  All her life she’s known things before they’ve become public.  She feels things and sees things that you and I are blissfully unaware of.  Like dead people.  Yes, she sees dead people.

After her first night in our 85-year old house she came downstairs for breakfast and casually mentioned that we have a ghost.   Picture the look on my face and that of the one whom I adore… “A ghost you say?”

She quickly clarified and said – “oh it’s a spirit.  And I think it’s a young girl.  She’s very friendly.  She seems very happy here.”

I thought, well, that’s good, because if you’re going to go to the trouble of sharing your house with a ghost, it better damn well be a happy one!

We laughed and joked about our little girl ghost the whole time my friend was on the island.  What does she wear?  How old did you think she is again?  Does she have the run of the house, or does she just hang out in one area?  When you have a friend who can see things that you can’t, well, curiosity can sometimes get the best of you.  My friend didn’t have a lot of answers other than our spirit was a girl, she was young and she seemed happy.

Fast forward a few months later to a dinner party we were hosting for our neighbors, whose grandmother just so happened to once own our home.  After a lovely stuffed pork tenderloin and enough wine to loosen us up, I ventured forth with the question “has anyone ever died in this house?”

Well, the look on her face told it all.  Her husband responded with “why do you ask?”

Why do you think we asked?  Because we think we have a ghost! is what I wanted to say, but I was polite and responded “well, we have this friend who senses things and she stayed with us recently…and well…she sensed that perhaps we might have a spirit in the house.”

With that our neighbor couldn’t spill the beans fast enough.  Seemed that yes, in the 1940s a young girl, about the age of 12, died of burns she sustained in an oil-lamp fire here at the house.  Our house.   While she didn’t die at home (she passed away in hospital) and our house didn’t burn down, it seems that this was her family home (therefore the aunt of my neighbor) and she had been really happy here.  So happy, I guess she came home to stay…in a sense.

Her name is Frieda.

I damn near choked on my Pinot Grigio.  I know, I know, coincidence, right?  Maybe.   But if one of your best friends is psychic, you don’t just shrug this kind of stuff off and certainly learning about Frieda from our neighbors only confirmed what my friend told us.  I couldn’t wait for them to leave so I could call and tell her that YES!  YES!  We have a ghost and now we know her name!

We think Frieda’s pretty happy here.  I never hear or see her.  I think the dogs do.  Occasionally they’ll  stand straight up for no apparent reason and start barking at nothing that we can see or hear.

We like Frieda.  We think it’s cool that our home not only has a history, but it’s own personal historian. 

We’ve even created a song about her.  It’s to the tune of Kris Kristofferson’s “Me & Bobbie Magee” and it starts like this…

Frieda’s just another word for little spooky ghost…

 

 

Missing: My Mojo

Where'd it go?  My mojo?

I have no less than 10 different posts sitting in my draft folder, none of them are good enough to hit the publish now button.  Want to hear about the time I got in the way of machine-gun toting army officers at a European Airport?  You'll have to wait.  Or how about the time I got drunk on a job interview and still got the job?  That's coming too, but not today.  Or, what about the fact that I've struggled through yet another week of no crap for Kim, but am seriously considering eating that whole pan of home-made cinnamon rolls in the freezer?  Hopefully that one will never get written.

It's been rainy and foggy here for over a week and I do think that most definitely impacts my creativity, or at the very least my ability to string 5 words together to construct a coherent sentence.   So, yeah.  My mojo ain't no mo'.  

So, check back here because I do promise to some day, perhaps when the sun returns to our crimson shores, have something worth saying here.   

But not today.

Sometimes I Feel Like Somebody's Watching Me

I’ve heard mothers of small children complain over the years that they never have time for themselves, never have a moment alone. There is always a nose to be wiped, a scratch to be kissed, a game to be played, a dinner to be negotiated. Mothers of older children are no different what with soccer practice or band rehearsal to get to, shuttling kids here there and everywhere. No time for themselves. No time to just sit and relax and take time for them.

I’m here to tell you, having a dog (or two) is no different. For eleven years I have had two shadows…mine and the one belonging to Snickers. There is not one thing I do in the course of my day that he isn’t there to supervise. Not that I’m complaining, but really, how would you feel if you were being watched? All. The. Time.?

I wake up in the morning and there he is, sitting in my doorway, staring at me, willing me to open my eyes because that’s his signal to jump on the bed for his morning rub. I (read “we”) head downstairs to the bathroom and despite a closed door, there’s his nose poking through just to make sure I don’t need anything. Extra roll of toilet paper? Out of toothpaste? I’m here! I can help! I’m your buddy, you can count on me!

Throughout the day we dance around each other. Occasionally, we get stuck. Usually by the garbage cans, with him ever hopeful I’ve got something for him and me, just wanting to get to the can. His constant surveillance really isn’t a problem, until we’re in the kitchen. Then, he’s so worried that a scrap or a crumb may fall in his path he is on my heels so closely that if I stop short, his nose is impaled in my fanny. I do not joke.

All day. Every day. Except of course on those days when I bring out the monster, the dreaded vacuum cleaner and then, then this dog who does not leave my side for a moment? Then, he’s a basket case and can’t get away from me fast enough. Heaven forbid the sucking monster might come near him and suck him into its vortex. So, when I vacuum, instead of walking on my heels he firmly tucks his tail between his legs and cowers in the corner, upstairs (if I’m downstairs), downstairs (if I’m upstairs), under the table, on top of the sofa. He’d even try under the bed if only he’d fit. 

Even as I sit here at the kitchen counter typing this entry, here he sits. Staring. I know someday when he’s gone I will miss this constant monitoring, but honestly, it would be nice if when I leave the room to plug in my laptop, it would be nice if he just stayed here in the kitchen secure in the fact that I’ll return. Unfortunately, that’s just not his style.

A Real Broad.

In her house, the Tooth Fairy left $5 under your pillow, instead of the usual 50 cents .

In her house, there was always something fantastic coming out of the oven.

In her house, the "good" china got used on a regular basis.

In her house, there were treasures from decades past that she liked to show off and if you were a really good little girl, she'd let you play with.

In her house, the idea of a great weekend was a day on the lake, in the boat, with a cocktail in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

In her house the idea of a great lunch included trips to nearby Chicago to the top of the Sears Tower, where the girls would gather after a morning of shopping on the Magnificent Mile.

She hadn't lived in her house for quite some time now, having spent the last number of years in a Senior's home.

Now, she doesn't live there either.

Lillian Ashby Scavone Wohler passed away last weekend and with her goes my mom's last sibling.

But what remains are the memories I have of an aunt who loved to bake, loved to entertain, loved to shop for antiques and then loved to party on a hot summer day at Holiday Lake.  

I'll always remember getting that $5 from the tooth fairy on a visit to Chicago when I was 7 or 8.  I'll never forget the summer vacations at Holiday Lake in my teens when I discovered that girls could ride dirt bikes and drive the boat - because she said so.  I'll always remember poking around antique shops throughout Illinois with her, hunting for that one treasure to take home.  I'm the keeper of a couple of those treasures in my home now.   I'll always remember the love of baking she, along with my mom instilled in me.  I'll never forget the gusto, gumption and let's face it...obstinance she lived her life with. She was someone you'd want on your side in an argument - chances are she'd win.   She was only 5'2" or 4'11", (depending when you asked her) but she had all the might of someone twice her height.

In better days she loved to laugh.  She hadn't done a lot of laughing in the last few years.  Her health didn't give her much to laugh about.  But one thing that brought her so much joy were her grandchildren, "Little" David, Catherine & Meredith.   Showing that old Ashby fiesty-ness she was hell bent she would pack up her oxygen tank and travel to Tennessee for David's wedding last year.  I know she was at Catherine & Meredith's recent college graduations, although  only in spirit.  I know she would have loved to have been at my wedding last summer.

Lil lived 80 years and all in all, it was a good run.  She's someone I would define as a real broad, in every sense of the word.

She's in a better place now...no more pain...reunited with her friends and family that predeceased her.  

Her husband passed a number of years ago, but I can just here him now..."what the hell took you so long?"

Lillian's Pecan Chewies:

Ingredients:

1 c Light Brown Sugar

1 c Dark Brown Sugar

2 sticks of butter

2 Eggs, beaten

1 tbsp Vanilla

2 c self-rising flour

2 c pecans

Method:

Pre-heat oven to 350-degrees.

Melt butter and add brown sugar one cup at a time.  Add beaten eggs & vanilla.  Fold in flour & nuts.  Place in glass pan & bake for 30-40 minutes.

Cool completely before cutting and then dig in!