Wednesday

When you wake up feeling optimistic that the week can only get better; when you find yourself humming a pleasant tune in the shower; when you catch your own eye in the mirror as you floss and give yourself an encouraging wink...


...that's when Wednesday kicks you in the junk after giving you a swirly and leaves you gasping for breath around your own tiny universe of agony because it doesn't matter what damn day of the week it is, people are still jerks.

The Blackest Thumb in The West

I am really awful at taking care of plants. I so badly want to be good at it.  I know how to be good at it. I come from a long line of people who were effortlessly good at it.  Grandmother A could grow leaves on a broom handle.  Grandmother E (don't question the alphabetization, just roll with it) could force tomatoes to sprout in frozen soil 6 weeks before last frost through sheer outraged will.  My mother, who seems to feed her flower beds a combination of pine needles and neglect, grows hostas big enough to climb. Whatever it is that made and makes these women awesome at growing green things, it clearly skipped my generation.

To my shame, I have killed a series of shrubs and plants since moving to BC.  I blame Neighbour Man, who's gardens are perfectly manicured and well-kempt.  My sad gardens, an attempt to fit in with the glassy-eyed suburbanites Husband has parked me among, are a Bizzaro reflection of his.  His shrubs are lush and glossy because he is a Gardening Robot sent from outer space to shame me publicly on my own street.  My shrubs look full because I have propped hidden twigs inside them in order to keep them from collapsing into sad brown piles of brittle sticks.

It is Fall and you would think that would level the playing field a bit. Not in BC. Here, instead of having the decency to be a season of dry browns and frost-nipped seedpods, the incessant rains turn everything into a verdant Eden filled with lush ferns and rhododendrons. Everything, that is, except for the starving perennials in my garden which go from dry to moldy as the rains soak in. The only saving grace is my lawn, which I take a certain amount of pride in not watering all summer. It turns from yellow to green in a matter of hours and looks every bit as healthy as Neighbour Man's without the watering and mowing and hours spent tweezing weeds.  Weeds grown from the seeds blown there from my only successful crop: dandelions.

A friend of mine 'grows' fake indoor plants and I think I am starting to see the wisdom in that.  I need to find a wholesaler who deals in fake trees, shrubs and perennials.

If even one of you mentions Costco I swear my next dozen posts will be photos of Fritti washing her unmentionables.

Border Lands

I recently joined gym for several reasons, not least of which were the parts of my body I have taken to calling the Border Lands.  We all have them.  Those parts, here and there, the ones we don't like to talk about.  The ones that get places long before you do and seem to keep moving long after you thought you'd stopped.  My Border Lands have reached critical mass, as it were, and I am willing to suffer through any amount of torture just shy of a full jog in order to annex the whole damn territory.  


So when an otherwise perfectly trustworthy friend of mine told me about her gym I signed up.  It's been 6 weeks and things are going well.  I have bought new jeans in a number I can almost live with, I can touch my toes without groaning (too loudly) and I have what I would like to think of as the beginnings of an ab.  Just one.  Don't rush me.


I've just returned from Step class and the wonderful instructor gave us a each motivational mantra which is still ringing in my ears.  I've copied it down for you...


'Walk it out, now keep it wide and vee, two, three, four and change here to cross step  and trip over your feet and two, three four, mambo, cha-cha-cha, land on your ass, for three, two, one and kick for four, three, two now repeat and add an arm movement which will competely f*ck you up if you watch me do it in the mirror, good job!' 


She's a miracle worker.

Cheers to Fall

It's my favourite time of year out there.  The crisp Fall air has arrived and I look fantastic in layers.  I enjoy Fall, it's noisy geese and colour displays and whistling winds have always made me feel more alive but it has taken me a few years to appreciate the subtlety of the season here on the west coast, where the colours change from deep green to dull green and the only reds and yellows are on the fungi.  

   

From my parent's deck in Ontario I could watch Fall happening.  Rich colours would gradually overtake hazy green slopes as though some gentle artist were lovingly yellowing poplars, beeches and birch; turning oaks to a soft brown.  Best of all were the maples.  Oranges so bright they seemed to vibrate.  Reds so fiercely deep they nearly shouted for joy.   

Fall in BC isn't as boisterous.  You have to want to see it happen, although in my limited experience, the locals don't seem to make the effort.  Or perhaps they do but in a typically understated and laid-back west coast manner.    And who could blame them when Fall slinks in wearing a slightly less green jacket and hangs about for months and months, like a dead-beat friend who won't vacate the sofa, bringing fogs that linger for days and rains that pound and pound and pound into your very soul....

You know, Ontario may have BC beat for colour but I sure do some of my best drinking here in the Fall.

This Old House: Well Hung

It is renovation season and we are still picking away at the polka-dot patches from last fall.  We're down to the finishing touches now and so I asked Husband to help me hang a new cabinet in our recently repainted upstairs bathroom.  This was against the advice of the little Jiminy Cricket in my soul who, despite my efforts to drown him with vodka, still manages a squeak now and then.  

Husband, who loves me more than he loves ice cream, said a rude word and stamped into the garage for his drill.  

You may recall that we have a deliriously happy marriage based on a strong foundation of trust, humour and never renovating together.  Some things just cannot be done on ones' own, however, and so twenty minutes later we found ourselves jammed together in the corner of a bathroom, hot and sweaty, jostling for position on a toilet lid and trying to avoid each other's elbows.  Again.  

Things were not going well and, when it became clear that a drill was no longer the tool required, Husband asked me for the hammer from my tool kit.  The tool kit I used to have.  Now I have what's left of my tool kit after three lousy hiding places and Husband's uncanny ability find my kit every time I move it but lose everything inside the moment he touches it.  


"Sorry, Honey but that hammer got left out in the rain for three weeks and when I finally picked it up the end fell off."


We exchanged a Look and Husband went off to search for a different hammer.  


A little while later I was asked to produce pliers from my tool kit.


"Gee, Sweetie, I think those were the ones I found at the end of the driveway.  When I tried to pick them up they turned out to be fused to the ground with rust."


Another Look was exchanged, some words were swallowed and alternate pliers were sought.  Before the job was finished, Husband would ask me for screwdrivers, a measuring tape and a level, none of which were to be had and it became clear that I am, in fact, terrible at hiding my tool kit.  


After another hour of measuring, drilling, leveling and re-measuring, drilling and leveling, Husband's ingenuity rose to the occasion and the cabinet is now hung safely on the wall and my rather sad tool kit is hidden away again, this time with a note inside which reads:


"This is the decoy.  Keep searching."

There Is No Pithy Title

The first time I met JD he was hanging out in the back of Husband's red Jeep Cherokee.  Ever a gentleman, he greeted me with civility but you could see by his expression that he had his doubts.  After all, as Husband puts it, he had 8 years in by that point and had seen several variations on the theme of Pony Tail come and go. 

I was a huge pain in his tail from the very start.  No wet dogs on the bed.  No wet dogs on the sofa.  No wet dogs on anything. To a Lab, this was a declaration of war, one that I never really won.  The sight of JD standing proudly on the sofa, dripping green ditch water and wearing that big yellow grin is one which I will remember for a very long time.  

It took three years and a lot of milk bones before he stopped whacking me deliberately (I think) on the shins with every log he'd cart with us on hikes. Before he stopped barking at me when I tried to shoo him off the bed to change the damp doggy-smelly sheets.  Before he was just as happy to see me when I got home as he was to see Husband.  Well, almost. 


 Ever stingy with his kisses, I knew I had finally passed muster one day when he snuck a quick lick on the side of my cheek as I hopped up beside him for a car ride. 


JD passed away last week, quietly and at home, after 16 years of being just about he best dog he knew how to be.  He went with mud on his paws.

The first to tell you when it was walk time, the last to get back in the van.  

JD Hood,  1995-2011

Well, At Least It's Not Birdseed

Dear Crazy Person
Today I noticed a suet bird feeder on the ground beside the trail, directly opposite the bench.  I'm willing to bet good money that it belongs to you.  It would seem that while you do have a problem with birdseed, you don't have a problem with rancid hunks of rotting animal fat.  


I've rehung it for you.


Directly over the bench. 

I hope that's okay.