No music?

What if there was no music? What would our outlook on life and expectations of our journey through it look like?

Blank. Blankety, blank, blank.  

No circle songs for kindergarten. No campfire songs for Guides and Scouts. No movie soundtracks. No angsty teenage anthems. No orchestral accompaniment for waltzing or tango or polkas. NO Polkas? No ad jingles - where would Barry Manilow be today? No old crooner tunes, no new edgy folk, no rap, no hip hop, no nuthin'.

Unimaginable. Just nothing. That said, what do you fill that singing space in your brain with? Love songs, socially minded songs, or just music, no lyrics? Or does the drone of ads from the tv fill the empty spaces of your attention? Something does, always, for me. I cannot imagine life without music. I sing my responses to questions people ask me. I sing to my dogs. I sang to my daughters. I awake daily with a song in my head.

Music expresses the inexpressible, or so I've heard. Music helps me to navigate my emotional path through everyday living. It fires me up, calms me down, engages me in thoughtful reverie. It has helped me study, occupying the part of my brain that wanders while the other part focuses. It also occupies the emptiness that comes with disappointment and loss.

I have to be careful though. As poetic and thought provoking another persons lyrics may be, I need to be aware of my own path before adopting them as an anthem. Sometimes my expectations are guided by words of woe and longing that sprang from things outside my realm and experiences. I have found myself longing for things I never even considered before I heard a particular song. Sometimes, it's just the way the lyrics fit the music. The vocal expression sometimes matches the feeling of the music, but the message is all wrong. Case in point, I've been working on the railway..... never been there, no desire to be there, I just ride the trains. Great tune for hiking though.

Rats, it's 7:10 and I have to go to work, and have run out of time for this particular rabbit hole. 

I'm takin' what they're givin' 'cause I'm workin' for a livin'. Huey Lewis.

Valentine's Day

I was walking home from the barn and remembered that it is Valentines Day. All hearts, diamonds, chocolate and exercise.

For me, the hearts are found in memories of the Valentine's Days of my daughters' childhood years. Making heart shaped pancakes embedded with chocolate chips, ironing bits of crayon between leaves of wax paper and then cutting out hearts to dangle in the front windows, finding glass heart pendants for them to wear to school. I still carry bits of heart shaped construction paper bearing messages of love in my wallet. Just our hearts, together. 

The diamonds I saw today. Billions, all sparkling in the snow as I waded through the fresh fluff, Alive and  sparkling, they reminded how lucky I am to be able to walk among them.

The chocolate, well, is limited, as too much sugar doth make an unhealthy gal. So, one very good and tasty Lindt for today.

The exercise? Done and dusted, though I may go back for more of a walk with Mr. Draper. The two of us can finish up celebrations with a bottle of real live Barolo. It's red, makes our hearts happy and will warm us from the inside out. Perfect!

Thinking of all you happy hearts out there today, and everyday. <3

Knitting.

For a few years now, I have regressed into knitting. Regressed, you ask? My Great-grandmother Jean McGee thought I might enjoy knitting up some wool when I was about 7. I did not. But for what ever reason, and I really can't remember what the catalyst was for lighting my must-knit spark, I am young again, and now fumble with needles for fun, albeit these are now shorter and connected with a long plastic string. I think knitting in the round was invented for absent knitters like me, who allow stiches to slide of into oblivion and I'm grateful for its continuity. 

Thinking I was an old hand for remembering how to cast on and do some garter stitch, gave me the courage to go and knit a giant sweater with cable stitching etc. What an education - every new project requires hours of learning, knitting, frogging (a nice way of saying I have to rip out my work), more knitting, more frogging, still more knitting and inevitably accepting my mistakes in homage to wabi sabi, the concept of the imperfect but still beautiful. Thank God for ancient concepts.

I have knit baby blankets, baby sweaters, chunky zipper sweaters, socks, socks and more socks, my husband being a man who still wears the red socks his mother knit him. Of course, I started with dish clothes, mug cozies, tea cozies, scarves and cabled headbands and have progressed to my current project, a lacey sweater. If I make a mistake, it stays, as with lace knitting, there is no back tracking the myriad of yarn overs and twisted knit-two-together-from-behind-and-shout-eureka-if-it-works. If I make a big mistake, I drink a fifth of bourbon and frog the whole damn thing. Thank God for bourbon.

Anyhoo, knitting is a colossal consumer of my time that ensures I get absolutely zero exercise, save for my grey matter and fingers, and oh yes, also my vocal chords that get a constant workout forcefully expelling words like, oh-for-fucks-sake.

Excellent hobby. You should try it.

Thankful.

I am a romantic in the centuries old sense. I like to believe that the world runs on politesse and that here is a regulated flow to our actions. For every action, etc. But what does that mean now?

I have been researching my great grandfather’s history. I enjoy imagining that I know how exciting his moment in time was – living in a post-Civil War Michigan, next to a blurry international border with Canada, reading about the news of the Boer War, and of the exploits of Sam Steele, real-time. How wonderful to be a part of the half pastoral and half industrial age. How hard life would have been on the farm, and then on the battlefields of WWI. How challenging to square a desire for adventure and exploration with the reality of living as a slave of the British Empire, low man on the totem of society, no money, no connections, no support. How romantic.

The truth is that I will never truly know what that was like. The truth is that I barely understand my own historical context, let alone his. The truth is that my world scares me, and I would rather bury myself in a search for the influences that guided his choices in life, the facts of his existence, and trying to make sense of these connections rather than examine my own.

The earth is getting warmer, the rains and droughts take turns lasting longer, the Arctic is getting smaller and pretty soon Florida will be under water, if I believe the folks I follow on Instagram, which I do. I now hate seeing orphaned elephants, landscapes changed forever by global warming, refugees of ethic cleansing living with mental health problems that may never be resolved. What started as a quest for a daily dose of shared photographic art has become a burden of conscience, the hopeless and nagging reminder of what am I not doing to help. But I still check my feed before heading to work, when I’m bored at work, after work, before bed. And the refugees are still tortured, the elephant keepers still need my dollar.  

I see my daughters struggle with normal, things that I imagine that might be the right look, the right weight, the right relationship, the right thing to say, the right type of work. I think they are happy, but I don’t really know if that’s true and I don’t know how to ask them without seeming nosy or appearing to have no confidence in their decision making skills. I love you, I tell them. What that means is, you are not alone in this crazy world, and I am here if you need me.

We collide on occasions like Thanksgiving, aunties and grandparents wanting to have dinner at their house, I’ll cook the turkey, you bring the buns. I drive around all weekend trying to make it happen, smiling and ferrying folks to help them connect, always wishing I could be home in my pyjamas, reading a book and drinking tea in social silence. There’s an oxymoron. But I do it because I have an idea that my job is to make sure those connections happen, and are reinforced, made stronger with practice. Because, as with all exercises, we lose our skills if we don’t practice; our smile muscles weaken if we don’t laugh and our hearts atrophy if we don’t love.

Enough. Day is finally breaking on what looks to be a rainy Saturday and I need to get cracking. I’m to try my hand at pie-caken, so we have something to laugh about over dinner together, practicing our love for each other. And I am very thankful for that.

Good bye and thank you to an old friend

Life is busy for everyone. I have met so many people, made so many friends, all having made time to impart something of themselves to me, and then carrying on with their own busy lives. I do not stay in touch, really, with many of them and I'm not sure I like what that says about me, but there it is.

This week, at only 56 years old, Wayne Penney died of kidney cancer. I didn't know he was sick, though I hear it was a brief period for him of having a normal life to being diagnosed with life's ultimate evil. I feel for his family, his daughters, his wife - this is not something anyone can ever be prepared for.

I grew up with the Penney family in Woodstock, Ontario in the 1970's, went to school with Wayne, his younger sister, Mary, and younger brother, Ken. Mary and I spent hours playing barbies on my front stoop, doing handstands in her backyard, picking elderberries off branches our mothers' picked, eating the pickles they made, riding our bikes all over town, watching movies (yes, Penney family, I still cry when I watch Spartacus), working in various harvest jobs, playing cards. I remember Wayne listening to Pink Floyd with the headphones on, fairly jumping off the sofa when he listened to "Careful with that axe, Eugene". He loved music and I think he liked a good scare.

It was Wayne who taught me to play euchre one summer while working in a corn hybrid station outside Woodstock. He also dropped an f-bomb on an irritating teenage me between the rows of bagged corn tassels. That was a humbling experience - I was a bit of an annoying geezer, being an only child at my house and a know-it-all to boot. Ah, can't young girls be awful? I am a pretty great euchre player though.

It was Wayne who was my chaperone to a party my mother had reservations about allowing me to attend. I don't remember anything of the party except going there and feeling bad for him for having to commit to being my chaperone. He didn't complain, he didn't say anything at all.

And it was Wayne who took me to the Blue on Blue, a formal dance for seniors at the local high school, because we both wanted to go and neither of us had dates. He didn't have to take me and I was grateful that he did.

Though I had the chance, I don't think I ever thanked him for his friendship and caring. I'm quite certain, too, that he carried these qualities of genuine interest and quiet thoughtfulness throughout his life and can only imagine how all who were close to him benefited from his love.

I'm sure for his family his absence is palpable. I haven't seen him since 1986 and feel this loss. My husband shook his head and asked me why, if I haven't seen him for 30 years, would I feel this way. I guess the answer is that Wayne is a part of who I became, part of my foundation, like the brick laid for our home. Always there but never seen, because the foundation has been hidden with life's back-fill.

Thanks for everything Wayner. I feel lucky to have had my adventures of youth with you and I will think of you every time I shuffle a euchre deck.

Scone hell.

I committed to making 48 scones for the Strawberry Social the staff are hosting for our Golden Oldies at work today.

Of course I had a dry run two days ago, but didn't like the results and so decided to use a new recipe from some Irish gal on Youtube called Gemma. With a homey name like that, I figured she knew what she was doing and she did mention she learned the how-to of scones creation from some nuns. Definitely an ordained recipe. No sweat.

Ha. I am sweating now.

Somewhere along the line, Gemma lied about the dry to wet ratio, or I made a mistake. Likely the latter, as I just can't believe Gemma could do such a thing.

Add more flour. OK. Not bad. But I still have two dozen scone pancakes to replace and very little flour. Sooooo, back to the original recipe with butter milk, and we're off.

Meanwhile, I posted a pic of the pancakes on Facebook, because, doesn't the world want to know about my baking angst? You betchya. Whilst posting, I saw a friend's request for all to pray for her very ill auntie, and Michele, if you're reading, I did send my best to the big guy. His answer back was of course he'd do his best, but hadn't I better focus on this mess I've made. Really, I do hope all comes out to the good for auntie.

All sorts of scones in the oven, I decided to clean up. What a stickie flour-ass mess. Again I cursed Miss Gemma, muttering about my lack of nuns to help clean up in the kitchen.

I'd better get back to it.
Ox

Tuesday...

I sit here late on Tuesday, realizing my daily blog is more of a every-other-day blog. Ah well, I guess I'm an every-other day kinda gal. There's just so much to do and see in this old life.  I can't be married to a daily recompte and expect to create something worth writing about too...

I wanted to call my blog My Camino but sadly, the title is enjoying fame elsewhere in the blogsphere. Why camino? I love fiddle, and one of my favourite players is Oliver Shroer. One of his later recordings was made on the  Camino de Santiago de Compostela. This is an ancient pilgrimmage route, or road, across France and Spain, and he walked it, violin and recording equipment in hand, recording in the old churches that line the camino. His music to me is like a flipbook cartoon or stop-motion animation fooling the eye into believing it sees action where only still pictures exist. My ears are constantly fooled into thinking that several players contribute to the end product, where in fact, it is Oliver, just himself, filling my senses with all the notes I need to hear his orchestra.

People are like a flipbook cartoon and it isn't until you watch the pages flip that you see the whole person. I fear I have been a flipbook with a few pages stuck together, because I have enjoyed lingering on some of the stills. Mother, wife, working stiff, sewer, fiddler, writer, painter of walls, raiser of chickens.....all good things to be. But I used to be more. A cross-country runner, swimmer, cheerleader ... and I have missed that. My occupations of the last 30 years all involve sitting and thinking. No moving. Very incomplete and unbalanced. I think it's time to get movement back into the flipbook, look at those pages that have been stuck together. Thus begins my journey on the camino to wholeness.

So after a few stiff-legged days, Sarah and I ventured back to Raw Crossfit for our first On-Ramp lesson with Whitney. Rowing warm-up....lessons in kettleball swings, and then we headed into the 1/2 Helen... three rounds of a 200m run, 12 kettle ball swings and 6 chinups. The run was a killer for me but even though the first two hundred metres seemed the longest, it was surprisingly short and  doable. And we did do it (!) I was tired, but it felt good to be tired. Sarah was energized (!!), and she's a good little runner. We were surrounded by folks who work hard, have a great time and go home feeling as we did; accomplished. Thanks to Whitney, Laurie and Sian, and all of you at the gaim tonite. What a great example for us to follow!

I also think Raw Crossfit has an amazing set of rules for anything, I print them here and hope nobody minds:  The 7 Rules of RAW.

 

1. I promise to do my best. My best will vary from day to day, minute to minute. But in that minute I will do my absolute best.

2. If I can run, I run. If I have to walk, I walk. When I am forced to crawl, I crawl. Then I rest and live to fight another day.

3. I may struggle, curse, and cry but I will never quit.

4. I will never criticize or beat myself up for what I can’t do today. I will just try again tomorrow.

5. I promise to believe in myself, beginning each workout with the thought that "I can do this!"

6. I show up to my workouts because I am committed to my health. My commitment to health is an act of self-love.

7. I acknowledge that my diet is the most important part of my program. The cleaner it is, the better I do.

 

I think I feel the flipbook pages beginning to separate.