Best Date

He can be a bit hard to catch up to. His work swallows him whole for days at a time. His family is a priority. After everyone has a piece of him, it seems as though there is often little left.

The phone rang on Monday morning, as I lay on my stomach in a really warm bubble bath. A luxury at 10:30 in the morning. I scrambled, wet and bubbly, but missed the last ring. I noticed that it was his number, and checked the message. "Just thought I'd see if you were still home," he said. "I was wondering if you'd like to come for cocoa and croissants. Call me when you get this." It was short and sweet. My favourite; a spontaneous fun offer. Cocoa. Croissants. And some time. Together.

I called back and told him I'd be over shortly.

Remembering Futures

A home. A family. And babies.

Three things I'd rather keep my head in the sand about. Not for any other reason but that it hurts too much to want them as I do.

Tonight I went to a friend's home for dinner. Warm, delicious homemade stew. After dinner we began stitching up some scraps of felted sweaters. Making stuffed animals.

I liked doing it.

I really had fun.

When I got in the car to head home, I realized that I had made the second item for a dowry. It is not a traditional dowry to be used to bribe or lure a spouse. Its one for the baby I dream of. The one whose smile I can imagine when I see my friend's child smiling. The one whose laughter I can feel in my heart and hear in my most sacred of dreams.

Copy Cat

I couldn't handle it. Gilly saw this poem, memorized it or wrote it down some long time ago. "Something I read on the bus - isn't it great", she'd said.
She put it in her blog.
I envied that I was not the one to have seen it.
Not the one to have written it down.
Not the one to have written it at all; at first.
But most of all, not the one for whom it was written.

And here it is again... 'cos sometimes I'm a brazen copy-cat!

Promises Promises

I will ride my red motorcycle
into your heart
crash land my feelings
all over your doorstep
fling scented pink petals
across your lawn
kiss you like pancakes for breakfast

by Heidi Greco

Mmmmmmmm.

Ahhhhh...

For so long now I have been wanting to vent.

I like this blog space here as a place to express my thoughts and ponderings, but theres always that slightly weird thing that people I know (and really like) read it.

And so I hold my tongue, afraid to write as if I am only writing for myself... this has been more a space of creativity and expression - not so much a journal.

Its fixed now. I have a place to vent, and another to express. Its perfect! Finally there is some balance.

Now I just have to come up with something for this space.

...to be continued.

A June Adventure

I was antsy today. No particular reason, just fidgety and antsy. It wasn't that I had a lazy day, lounging around, or sleeping in too late. Nope - I was busy today;

• 9:20am to 10:00 - tea at a friend's house
• 11:00am to 1:30pm bridal shower brunch for a dear friend
• 2:00pm to nearly 3:30pm - Preview of Donna Eichel's show at Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (went with Gilly)
• 3:45 to 4:20ish - post artshowpreview tea at Gilly's place
• 4:45 to about 6:00pm - tea and scones and strawberries and visiting with my parents at their house... and leaving with a HUGE wild and wooly bouquet
• 6:15ish - got home.
• 7:00ish - made some dinner (a croissant, toasted in the oven with feta and artichoke hearts and a scrambled egg on it when it came out of the oven... mmmm)
• 7:30ish - decided to go on an impromptu roadtrip - called a friend in Duncan to see if she wanted to go for a walk or a coffee (to no avail).
• 7:35ish - called a more local friend to see is she wanted to do the same - no answer, but I left a message.
• 7:37 - another friend calls! "What are you doing?" I ask..."nothing" she replies. "We should go for a walk and an icecream" I say. "Not this late" she says, "its somebody's bedtime"... and I hear a cry in the background. Fair enough, shes worked all day, and her toddler has had enough of today.
• 7:56 - I decide I better just go by myself. On a walk. For a drive. To get an icecream. Something!!!

So I leave the house. Get in the car. Note the evening sky and decide that it would be really fun to chase the sunset. Don't get me wrong. I know that you can only chase it so far when you live on Vancouver Island, but I was bored, and it was nearly dark anyways.

As I was driving out towards the west, I was thinking of many things. About which route would take me to a place where I could walk for a bit and still be doing it before it was dark. And then I thought about Fernie Farm, and how far out that had seemed when I was a kid, and how Uncle Noel and I drove and drove and drove one day, and finally ended up at this house at the bend in the road, and we stopped, and got out, and went into a house for tea and scones in what seemed to be someones living room/front porch. And it seemed they knew him, although maybe not very well, but well enough that they brought us scones and tea... and so I decided that was were I'd head for my drive/walk/icecream. I knew they haven't been open for years and years, but it would be fun to see the old wee farm.

Sort of a mini treasure hunt for one.

So I drove. And I got there near dusk. And really - you can't see anything of the past for all of the brambles and plant growth. The farm was still there, although the "Fernie Farm" sign was gone.

I couldn't find the beach access that I was quite sure was around there, either, so I continued until I found a place that sold icecream. A little known fact about me is that I love icecream that is scooped and sold at convenience stores. They quite often have my favourites which I can never seem to buy in the grocery store: Rum n raisin, blue bubblegum, maple pecan. I got my scoop of blue bubblegum (mmmmm) and got into the car again. And drove.





I took a few "adventure turns" - you know, the kind where you don't actually know where it goes, but it might be fun when you get there? And I stumbled upon the lake with an island in it that a friend had recently told me about. I think it would be fun to swim out to the island and work on getting a bit of colour, as he suggested.


After taking a spin around the parking lot - trying not to disturb the make-out people in the only other car there - I continued along this little known road (ok, so maybe its really well known to lots of people, but I hadn't been out on it) and took another couple "adventure turns".

The road was growing darker and narrower, and I wondered what I might finally find at the end of this one.


A park.

That was the promise that the signs made.

When I finally arrived at the park's parking lot, I got out of the car, and headed out along the path, hopeful that I would find something worthwhile before "sunset" at which time I would not only be unable to see my way back to the car, but I would most certainly be locked behind the park's gate!




I walked quickly along a path which looked like it might lead to the water, stopping only to notice that the wild roses smelled sweeter and stronger than I recalled them ever smelling. Maybe I would be able to get a photo of a most beautiful pink cloud. Or a boat out on the water. This beach would be facing the wrong way to be watching the sunset, anyways.

When I got down the path, and down the stairs to the beach, I realized that I had found the most beautiful local beach I've ever seen!

The sky was lavender blue, and pink.

Fine silver sand, soft on the feet. The sort you'd expect to find lining the beaches on the coast of Mexico.

Sun bleached logs, and trees that hung over the beach.

The smells of seaweed and ocean and maybe a hint of last night's beach fire.

It was delightful. And perfect.
















I was antsy today. And it led me to all sorts of new places.

Beautiful Antiquity

Well, it has been a while since it happened. And of course, I have never met her in person. But she is a woman of mystery and intrigue and art supplies ...and I share her blood.

My Great aunt Olive died before I was born, and although she is not someone I have heard too much about, or read journals from, and she's not in any big famous books about anything important (at least not that I know of), she has become a bit of a celebrity in my imagination.

You see, when my grandfather died several years ago, there was practically an archaeological dig at the cottage he had lived and collected in for about 20 years. It was a time to maybe discover and understand a bit of his history, and in doing so, some interesting objects were found, around which to I seem to have built myself a wonderful, beautiful image of an aunt I never knew I loved so much.

To make a long, long, ...tiring-ly long story significantly shorter, I'll just tell you that this expedition into the past was a rather arduous one, but it yielded several interesting things. Not the least of which was a peek into the artistic life of Aunt Olive. There were a few boxes that had been saved since she died, when my father was about six.

In the boxes there were some cool things:

• bottles - all sorts of small sizes
• Dusty grey metal lids, corks, glass vials.
• Hand written labels... in pen and ink... written in her hand, worn and weathered.
• Bottles of magic
• Crystal ball stoppers
• Paper packets of coloured metallic powders
• Tools of the trade
  

It was then I fell in love with her - as I looked at the inventory of amazing finds, when I realized that my affinity for bottled inks, pen nibs, papers, painting, and collecting art supplies was hereditary. And it was then as well that the imagined thoughts of what she was like started forming. She was a graphic artist, a painter, a calligrapher, a carver, a builder and maker of things.

A "Jacqueline of all trades".

Unlimited.

And I still imagine what it would have been like to know her... would she have shown me how to do things? how to make things? Would she have been kind? Was she as full of interesting stories as I imagine she was?

Haiku time

Ok, I'm not a frequent haiku-er, but I thought I'd give it a quick un-edited try (so don't laugh if you are already really good at this!).

Staircase in amber
Mystery or obvious
Alley to nowhere

Secret

I saw this beautiful egg, hidden and safe in a nest, low in a garden when out on a walk the other day with friends. At first I thought ...a robin's egg. It is certainly the right colour, and maybe even the right time of year. But what would I know, I am no birder. Then upon closer inspection, as I leaned over the fence, my face entering a stranger's garden, I realized this was possibly a trick. Maybe someone thought they could fool me... for this was no living egg.


It was a fake.
A man-made effort at making an egg.
Not even a very good effort, as the egg wasn't narrower at one end, as a real egg would be. No not even slightly narrower. And much too big... bigger than an ostrich egg even. But it was beautiful, and I liked it, and I felt it's happiness at being cradled by its man-made nest. And I thought it looked comfortable. And beautiful. All tucked away like a sneaky secret of beauty in this garden hidden by a fence. And I realized I had found a treasure.

Remembering Babies

Wow.

It was about all we could say to each other at first.

My Mom and I were on a road trip and were on our way back to Victoria from Sointula, when we saw the ad. Mom and Dad had been thinking about getting a dog, and for the longest time, the argument had been that Mom wanted a Pomeranian or some other lap-dog. Dad wanted a "real dog". A dog like we'd had before when my brother and I both lived at home. Another lab. Lucy had been the best dog a family could have ever asked for. We'd have to speak in code - she could spell bowl, leash, walk... what was next... I seem to recall her eyebrows raising when my brother and I had spoken in pig-latin about whose turn it was to take her for a walk. Smart. Cute. And full of love for her "people".


And there it was... an ad in the paper. It read "Pom Lab X puppies for sale". We looked at each other, my Mom and I, and our draws dropped. And we laughed. How could it be possible? We decided that it was at least worth going to see this "miracle of nature" litter... at least see what they'd look like. It turned out when we got there, that the mom was a Pomeranian-Sheltie cross, and the dad was a Lab. Whew. Who would have thought that a Sheltie could have saved the day?

I was going through some photos on my computer in the late late of last night, inspired by some high definition photos I had seen online, when I came to a very favourite photo of a canine baby. My Mom and Dad's canine baby, Ginger. a.k.a Gingie, Ginger-bear, Ginge, or simply "dog" (only my brother calls her that... and only to get a rise out of our Mom)

She was a monster.
A monster in the cutest, fluffiest, creamy-ginger coloured furry suit.
A dark-eyed, black nosed fiend.
A nearly-holy terror.
An "Alpha-girl" to quote the vet.
"This one could be difficult" she said, as Ginger beared her teeny-tiny razor-sharp teeth. A prescription for dog-obedience class, and two years of fairly strict enforcing of the "class" rules, and Ginger has graduated into the hearts of our family.

Now she is definitely a momma's girl... funny for my Mom, to be sure. Our family's dog-while-I-was-growing-up was so much my Dad's dog, I'm pretty certain Mom sometimes felt like they teamed up against her in the battle of "only CLEAN feet in the house" and the war of "What should the dog be allowed to do?"

Anyways... the photos were taken by my friend's friend, Rory, and they're not high-def... but I thought you might enjoy a peek at them. And maybe one of Gingey now as well.... a happy, kind, and sweet two year old.

April Sensations

There are times when things are ordinary. And there are others when the ordinary is sensational. This time of the year seems ultrasensational. The trees are blossoming, filling the air with their palest pink confetti and sweet scents. Birds are twittering louder and with an exciting lilt in their song. Music is sultry and penetrating.

I noticed the other day while I was in the bath just how sensational the ordinary could be. I have a bath pretty much every day, and I enjoy it, but don't usually pay much attention to the sensations of it. This time was different.
The water was really warm, and as I slid under it I had the feeling of being under an enormous hot water bottle, the weight and heat of it. Hotter than I'd normally like - sure to live skin pink and glowing and alive. As I reclined my head into the water it swirled around making my hair dance in the current. It was so amazing that it caught me off guard, and I thought I'd tell you about it. I got out of the tub after I'd had a scrub, and went on with my day. And promptly forgot about it.

About a week later, I went on a last minute impromptu trip to the hairdresser. It was time to get something springy. Looser. Lighter. With more movement. My hairdresser agreed, and we walked over to the washing tub. I sat down. He tucked the towel into the neck of my sweater. Turned on the water. Sorted out the temperature. Touched my forehead right at the hairline. Turned the hose onto my hair. And there it was - I remembered about the bath and the sensational ordinary.

It's just a thought, but you might want to take a moment while you're doing something really ordinary or mundane. Pay attention to what it feels like to do it. Brush your teeth. Comb your hair. Have a slightly warmer than usual bath. Walk in the rain. What ever you do, just try to feel it. You might be as surprised as I was when I rediscovered the ordinary.