Mae B.

Merry Christmas!

Although it has been awhile since I've posted anything, I just wanted to send out a sincere "Merry Christmas" to anyone who might stop by. Hope that you find peace, hope and joy at this special time and throughout the year! 

The Mecca, The Booth, The Son ...

Its been a busy but good weekend thus far. Grace and I travelled to the shopping mecca for the day. Its a pretty rushed trip this time of year. We leave early in the morning when it is still dark so that we get up there at a decent hour. In this case, we left at 7:00am or so and arrived up there at 10:30am. Of course, it takes just as long to get home except you're wiped from five hours of intense shopping and you still have 3 1/2 hours to drive home! Anyway, it was a fun day and Grace and I had lots of opportunity for conversation and silliness!  

This morning, I went to breakfast with a friend and then he we headed to the mall to set up a booth. We were part of a Ten Thousand Villages  sale promo that our church was doing at the mall. This was just a promo as the actual sale is being held next weekend. We are holding a fabulous sale of their products, handmade products from our congegration along with live music and a fair trade cafe. We have people decorating the hall with lights and such - it is going to very cool. This weekend, we were just letting folks know about it.

And last but not least, Ben - my oldest baby - came home for the weekend. It is actually the first I've seen him since the end of August! We had a nice supper together. Now, he's downstairs having his nightly phone call with his girlfriend. According to my sister, who he lives with in the mecca, he quite regularly talks for three hours! I don't think I could talk for that long if my life despended on it!

So, its now only Saturday evening and I'm not sure what the rest of the weekend will hold but I'll definitely be looking forward to it!

Colour Me Happy

This is a mini-painting I did at the cottage a few weekends ago. I basically just doodled with shape and colour. The more I look at it, the more I see but mostly, it just says "happy"!

Blue Streak

I heard about Andy Blau and how he helped Blueberry the bunny on CBC Radio's "Vinyl Cafe"  this past Sunday. People are out there doing wonderful stuff! Since I can't seem to embed the video, please do click on the LINK and have a look at it won't you?

What colour is it outside today?

Because we are absolutely surrounded by trees here in our part of Northwestern Ontario, it is just assumed that - come autumn - the colour display must be astounding. Unfortunately, because our trees are mainly of the coniferous variety, it just isn't so. The few decidious we do have do the best they can however. Our birch and polar go to a vibrant yellow ... and then they drop. We have a few mountain ash and others that put on a bit of a better show for us. And now and again, you'll see a maple in the crowd although they're not too abundant at all. But mainly there is just a lot of green "evergreens".

I'm not sure what this tree is exactly. The leaf is similar to a maple but not quite. Nevertheless, it's provided some lovely colour along our cottage road.

Assorted Babies

There was a pleasant surprise for me in the mail yesterday. These delightful notecards that I ordered from Mimi. There are a number of new babies having arrived in the lives of folks around me. These cards will be perfect to include with the gift.

I have been a fan of Mimi's work for some time now. I even tried my own swaddled baby of sorts last year. Buying these cards seemed liked an affordable way to get a little closer to her work!

I need to make a list ... or maybe a chart would be good

Paul and I spent one night at our cottage this weekend. The weather was lovely. Really. It was perfect fall weather. It was only going to end up being a twenty-four hour getaway but at that point, it was wide open.

After unpacking the car and putting things away, I did some reading on the sunny front deck while Paul did a bit of handy guy stuff. Later in the afternoon, when Paul went out in the kayak, I sketched and trotted around with the camera a bit. After supper, when Paul went out fishing, I cleaned up the dishes, read a bit more and took the dog out for a walk. In the evening, after lighting a lovely fire, we both read a while and then turned in for the night. In the morning, after pancakes, we both headed out for fishing. That's when Paul remembered that he forgotten to put in an order for the store so once we got back to shore, we more or less gathered everything up and packed the car and headed home.

Sounds just lovely you might say. But, this is quite representative of much of my time at the cottage. Although I have provided a lot of options for myself out there - a good camera that I have hardly learned how to use, sketchbook and charcoal, watercolours and paper, fabric and embroidery book which I keep saying I want to try - I never seem to really get into the stuff. I sort of pull it out and do it a bit, its never to the extent that I could. How can I ever move forward in any of these areas if I don't allow the time to explore them?

And that is the answer right there. I don't allow myself the time. Its a combination of falling into old habits around how I spend my time (I really should give this place a good sweep!) and confidence in my abilities (What if I do this for hours and days and weeks and months and I'm still crappy at it?) That, and my old favourite standby feeling - overwhelmed. With all the ideas around what I'd like to do, I never know where to start and so I ... Yup. Do nothing.

Sigh.

I was thinking about all of this after I got home. I was simply exhausted. I could barely function. I managed to put the contents of the cooler in the fridge and then I just crashed. I really do think that my body is beginning to react to this self-induced inner turmoil.

Today, I am going to get all of this out of my head and down on paper. Today.

Man Cooking

I am presently comfortably relaxing on a semi-circular 1950's couch. My dedicated four-footed admirer faithfully by my side. Checking my emails and so on. Oh, and did I mention that I am in the kitchen and that there is an aproned, man flurrying around cooking our supper?

My husband likes to cook. There was a time that I liked to cook too but now that he does, I literally step back and let him go to it. He is a much more spontaneous cook than me. Only moments ago, some pork cutlets of some sort were defrosting in the sink. I eyed them suspiciously - they didn't look that appetizing and it was starting to get late. I was thinking a simple omelette might be in order. Now, what seems like ten minutes later, the cutlets have been seared and are in the oven baking along with a few other goodies.

Wine is now being poured and ... yup, its all pretty good.

Inside Out

I've been sort of holed up for two days now. Yesterday was a perfect fall day. Dawned cool and sunny and warmed up as the day progressed. I however, chose to stay inside. Weighted down physically and emotionally with monthly stuff.

Yah. THE monthly stuff. It has gone from being a minor inconvenience to a major effort. I am sure I'm on the home stretch of the whole game at this point but that knowledge is NOT making it any easier at all. Between the extreme feeling of being heavily bloated, the cramping and the cravings, I'm feeling more than a little that I'm re-living my pregnancies. Okay, so its a way shorter term but what do you get out of it? That's right. Bloody nothing!

Today, it is gray and raining. Yuck outside, yuck inside. I feel much better about that aspect anyway. Soon, I'll have to venture into the outside world to pick up Grace from school and go to a few appointments we had scheduled for her today. We'll stop by the grocery store to find something to go with the lovely Kraft dinner I've planned for tonight. I'm hoping she'll cook it. I'll avoid contact with people as much as possible. (Its so hard in a small town!) I'll be grateful to return back home, slip into my pj's, veg in front of the TV and call it a day.

Hopefully, tomorrow will dawn brighter ...

A Parent's Promise

I've read a few parenting books in my time. The only problem is, that most of them were crammed in before the kids had reached five or maybe two. I guess I figured I'd read it all at once and then I'd be prepared for whatever came my way in the next twenty years or so.

Needless to say, I am a bit of a smarter parent now. Not in the possession of the level of wisdom as my own Mom of course, but nevertheless, I have earned a bit of respect. Okay, not respect exactly but hey, I can drive and cook and stuff.

Anyway, back to those books. One of the things I do remember reading was, Don't make promises you can't keep. Seems fair enough and in fact, it is something that I have tried in most cases to keep in mind.

That was until we made THE PROMISE to Grace.

It all goes back to us simply asking for good marks. Isn't that what we all want? Kids who are doing the best they can and being the best person they can be? Our specific request to Grace was, to get on the honour roll for both semesters of grade nine. First semester went by and she succeeded. The second would be the hard one however as one of her subjects was the dreaded math. But this was exactly why we made THE PROMISE. We know that Grace is capable of better marks. She just needs to put in more effort. (Oh gawd! I sound like every parent out there including a couple from my own past!) And yes, math is a challenge for her but not an impossible task.

Did I mention what exactly the promise was? Something she's been wanting ever since she could talk. Pup pup. Top pop. Lap lop. That's right. A laptop.

I'm not sure when it was exactly that we started rethinking our decision. I knew right from the start that there would be some control boundaries around its use. For instance, it might come upstairs to sleep while we felt assured that she was doing just that in her basement room. But the more we  started thinking about it, we wished that we held off that particular reward at least another year. Her responsibility level was part of that as well. What if the poor laptop got buried under a pile of smelly, clothing and suffocated? More realistically, how could a laptop survive not being stepped on or otherwise abused? The laptop thing just wasn't going to work.

Then, mid-summer, her marks arrived in the mail. Nineties in three of the four classes. Literally barely passed the math. But, when you averaged them all out, she had made the honour roll. We were aghast. We would not reward a 56% in math with a laptop. It simply would not happen.

Her Dad and I danced around the subject for a few days but in the end, Grace was amazingly accepting of our decision. There was a bit of kicking and screaming to be sure, but it was not of the magnitude for which we had prepared ourselves.

We began discussing an alternate. After days of kicking and screaming (that was her Dad and I in this case), we gave in and gave her a fashion accessory that seems to be the norm with teen these days.

A cell phone. Oh dear.