A Subtle Blend of Honey and Blue Collar Sweat

Gentle reader, I am comfortable enough with our relationship that I feel I can admit the following:  I like beer.  Does that make me less of a lady?  Would it surprise you to discover that I like to drink beer straight out of the bottle?  That in my opinion the only thing better than an ice cold beer is another ice cold beer, possibly before the first is even finished?

I have tried wines, red and white.  I am always reminded of tomato juice for some reason.  I don't like rye and until I tried scotch I was unaware that I even had a gag reflex.  I am not sad enough for vodka or crazy enough for rum.  One night in the early spring of this year, tequila nearly put me in the hospital and gin just tastes like tree ass.

Let's face it, beer tastes like pop used to taste when we were kids.  Sweet and fizzy and the feeling is the same only instead of sugar making you do silly things, it's alcohol and a total loss of volume control.  Dark or light, honeyed, red or white, it doesn't matter.  Every one is just as tasty as the next and the best thing?  The very best thing?  They come in packs of six, eight, 12, 24 and (here in BC) 30.  You'd get some funny looks if you showed up at a BBQ with a 30-pack of gin but everyone is happy to see beer.

What am I talking about?  Where is this headed? Why am I writing about beers at nearly midnight in the middle of the week?  And where is my bottle opener?  These are questions which have plagued Man for eons, or at least as long as it takes to get to the fridge and back.

Drinking is serious business to some.  To others, a celebration.  We drink to toast, to honour, to remember, to forget.  We drink in crowds with friends.  We drink in crowds alone.  We drink to health or in spite of it.  I am drinking for that very best of reasons: because Husband brought it home and put it in the fridge.

G'night all.

This Old House

Husband came home the other day with plans. Big plans.  Plans so big they are actually 'Plans.'

"We are renovating!" he said in a deep voice with chest out-thrust and hands fisted on hips.

(Side note:  there are three things Husband and I do not do well together, three exceptions to the marital bliss we call life.  1. Move the sectional, 2. Deal with doggie-sick on the carpets and 3. Renovate. This can only end with bloodshed.)

Without hesitation, without a seconds' pause, without a drop cloth, Husband immediately began to coat the walls of every room in the house with Spackle.  The Polka-Dot Door could film a show in my living room.  And in the kitchen, stairwell, front entrance and upstairs hallway. 

And it didn't stop there.

With zest and vigor and still no drop cloths, Husband began prepping the guest room for paint.  Prepping, for the uninitiated, means shoving all the furniture into a pile in the middle of the room and slapping primer on the walls.  It was while in the middle of this Husband casually mentioned he was glad to be getting the room painted as his mother would be coming for the weekend.  In about three (3) days.

For those having trouble keeping up, let's take stock.  Walls: splattered with Spackle from kitchen to coat closet.  Furniture: in a heap.  ONLY guest room: in shambles.  Mother-in-law: arriving in t minus 3 days. Husband: endangered species.

It was while searching through the basement to find a good edging brush to correct the mess made by the bad edging brush that the drop cloths were found.  It was while laying the drop cloths in the guest room that the dessicated dog sick was discovered.  It was while hunting for spot remover under the kitchen sink that the good edging brush was found.  It was while disposing of the bad edging brush in the garage that the spider dropped into my hair.  It was while explaining to Husband how my hair, face, glasses and shirt got coated with paint that I decided he could handle this situation on his own.  It was after my second beer that I calmed down.

Husband can do amazing things.  He can fly a plane and sew a jacket together from scratch.  He can free-fall and fold laundry. He can paint a room all by himself when threatened with a cot in the 'spider cave' if he is not done before Mother-in-law arrives.  The room looks fantastic.  Mother-in-law made the appropriate sort of fuss over our efforts and Husband has promised that his very next task is to find the spider camping out in the garage and firmly usher it out the door.  I was hoping he would perhaps start on the house-wide game of connect the dots he has created with Poly-Filla but I've learned to pick my battles and will gladly accept having a scale diagram of the constellation Leo on my living room wall if it means spider-free access to my garage.

But only for so long.

Good Morning Sunshine

It may come as a surprise to my cadre of rabid followers (2 readers total) that I am not, in fact, a morning person.  I have 'not been a morning person' for my entire life, including my birth, for which I was 2 weeks late.  Even then I didn't bother showing up until 4 in the afternoon.

Don't get me wrong. Lot's of great things happen at morning time: Christmas... dew... sunrise...birdsong... wood.  No, it's mornings in general that I can do without.  The cat jumping onto my face at 5:30 AM to tell me the dog has been sick.   The chill on my skin when I struggle out from under the blankets.  The sight of my cat peacefully sleeping on my pillow the moment my head vacates it.  Tripping over the Rotwieller.  Wincing in the bright lights of the mirror.  Stairs.

I firmly believe that people who commit random acts of violence would never do so if they hadn't first been ripped from slumber by a harsh world and forced to face the dim reality that they completely forgot to buy more cream for coffee the day before.  The only reason I am not currently naked in a tower with a deer rifle is that I found some coffee whitener in the camp box.

Mornings remind us that our bodies are rapidly moving through time.  They show us the forgotten debris from the night before.  Mornings are usually when appliances break and loved ones become expansively ill on the kitchen floor.  Mornings are when you remember the things you have forgotten and wished you hadn't.  Mornings are the Universe saying: Now I bet you wish you'd stayed in the trees.

Humans are not meant for mornings.  We are meant to be clinging peacefully to the branch, 30 feet above the jungle floor, safe from predators, gently snoring through the dawn chorus.  Not sitting here in an
un-ironed shirt, sipping camp coffee and secretly envying the hell out of my cat.

Ode To My Cat

My worries and troubles tangle in your whiskers and are brushed away with the flick of an ear.
Nose to nose, we stare at each other, unblinking.
Your soft paws pat my chest in a sleepy rhythm.
Do you have to wake me up twenty minutes before my alarm every damn day?

The Little Douche Coup

It is a sad day for me today friends.  My trusty car, The Red Wonder ('I wonder if it will start today') is on it's last legs, so to speak. This is not something that has happened overnight.  It has been a very gentle decline, a sort of coast downhill in Mexican overdrive.

It started with a glitchy ignition, which only engages if the moisture content of the air is just right, i.e. whatever is the exact opposite of that normally found in a temperate rain forest.  Then the horn died, which means I occasionally lean on the airbag in silent outrage when I get cut off.  This is far less satisfying than you think.  

After the horn went, the rear driver-side window followed soon after.  It didn't go anywhere, but it just sort of floats around in the door.  I spent 45 minutes locked out of my car one afternoon before it occurred to me that having a window I can slide down while outside of the car is a great feature, one I wished I'd recalled about 44 minutes sooner.

Once the ignition, horn and window all began shirking their duties, I think the rest of the car just got lazy.  The passenger door sticks.  The interior light won't turn off unless I remove the bulb.  Something is squeaky under the hood.  The muffler rattles.   The only thing that seems to be functioning is the little orange light on my dashboard which assures me that, yes, it has checked and there is an engine.  

But Husband, who would rather ride a Pogo stick to work than take a car in to a garage, finally stepped in and offered help when I fired her up this morning and a sound like the sins of angels came screaming from under the hood.  The squeak has suddenly became an ear-piercing shriek which disturbed Husband  from his morning's slumber and seriously put a passing eagle off his breakfast.  

I am not in the market for a new car. I have faith in Husbands' ability to repair everything from a roof to an electric cheese grater.  A mere car is no match for his skills with the Duct Tape and blow torch.  And I have no problems driving his van in the interim. 

I just wish it had a loose window, since I've already locked the keys inside it.

  

Sweet Goodbye

Summer's over.  There can be no doubt about this.  I woke up this morn to discover that at some point during the night husband had stolen all the blankets.  This is a sure sign that Summer is on her way out.  I could also hear the sound of rain pounding on the roof through my cat, who had wrapped herself around my head like a turban.  All cats know this survival trick, employed when they are in grave danger of having to spend a night indoors in a well-furnished home.
Yes, there are signs about which tell me that while Summer may not be completely gone, She is certainly standing on the front porch, nervously jingling her keys. And as I sit here nursing the first cold of the season I have a chance between sneezes to think over the summer's adventures....

I tried climbing again-for-the-first-time with Husband, who learned that if you buy a girl new shoes, she will do just about anything to wear them. Even if that means scale a craggy mountain side.

We went to Wild Play in Naniamo, an adventure park filled with ropes and bridges suspended in the amazing canopy of the local old-growth forest. I learned that Husband will do anything I ask him to do, if it costs less than a pair of climbing shoes.

Tubing! I could write an entire piece on tubing and still not have said enough about soaking the heat of the day out of your bones as you float down the river.  Each time was a little different from the last as the river winds along its' course.  There is nothing more pleasant, more quintessentially BC than tubing. The fact that it is also moderately low cost (tube:$26; Gas:$10; beer afterwards: $6) means I was on the river 3 days out of every 7 since June.

Camping on Quadra Island clearly made an impression and will hopefully be repeated before we are posted away.

Husband surprised me with a trip to the Pacific National Exhibition (PNE) which was fantastic.  It reminded us both of every great fair we've ever gone to as kids.

BBQ's, backyard parties, dinners on patios, helping friends move, cycling, swimming and generally ignoring the phone were enjoyed to the fullest.  Farewell Summer.  Until next year, I shall think fondly of you as I sit, sipping Neocitron (TM), sneezing and wearing a cat hat.
Cheers.

Day Two: Let's take the bikes for a walk

When the owner of the trail bike shop is wearing a neck-brace, you tend to take his totally unsolicited route advice more seriously.  Which is why we did NOT drive into the northern region of Quadra to do Norton Lake Trail.  Instead we drove out to Morte Lake (that means EXACTLY what you think it means) to do a 'fairly easy route for beginners who are just getting into the sport.'

Right.

Two minutes in I had already switched to my trail shoes and ditched the helmet.  Half and hour later we were still carrying our bikes and thinking maybe we should have asked Steve 'this neck-brace is really itchy' Jones* for some clarification on his definition of the words 'fairly easy.'

However, after hike-riding, a new sport we developed right on the spot, for another hour up and down some of the rockiest slag strewn trail ever seen, we made it to as perfect a little beach as you could imagine.  White sand and cool water, surrounded by massive trees and not a single sign of bear poop (I checked).  We had to admit that it was worth the trek in.  To be perfectly honest, once I had stopped mentally picturing Steve in a series of dangerous situations which would add to his need for braces on multiple body parts, I started to take a more active interest in the scenery we were slogging through.  The route, despite the obvious downfall of being 100% horrible while carrying a 25 lb. bike over my shoulder, offered some fantastic views.  Huge trees you could build a house in, panoramic vistas of Morte Lake with Victoria Peak in the distance.  Those white sandy beaches beckoning us forward, and the ever-present eagle flying overhead.

Morte Lake Trail is a 7.2 km route meant to be hiked on foot, sans bicycle, and it really is worth the look.  Next time, I'll ditch the bike and bring the camera instead.

*Names have been changed to protect the incredibly unhelpful.