Wilder Life

Last night Grammar’s little family were seated around the kitchen table enjoying a tasty chicken dinner. There was Grammar, SRH, VCCGirl and the Boyfriend (of VCCGirl, not Grammar). Yes, this is the same boyfriend who first met Grammar under extremely inauspicious morning circumstances almost a year ago. He’s still around, bless his heart. Clearly a fellow with staying power. Of course, when the draw is the charming and beautiful VCCGirl, why not indeed?

Once when we were on vacation in Mexico with our children, a local man eyed up my daughter, then looked at me and said in English, “Beautiful daughter, beautiful girl. Good job, Mama” and gave me a thumbs-up, and walked on. Along with feeling outraged that this slimy man would dare to ogle my young teenage daughter, I wanted to laugh at being given any credit for her. I take no credit, because that would be ridiculous, but I certainly do take enormous pride in my girl, who is beautiful both inside and out.

Anyway, we’re seated at dinner and suddenly VCCGirl blurts “Uh oh!” and points out the window. There, taking up about half our wee new back yard, was the biggest black bear I’ve ever seen, and living on the North Shore for 25 years, I’ve seen quite a few. It ambled through the yard and headed up along the side of our house.

We leapt up and ran to the front window, and saw many of our neighbours out on their porches, calling to each other and pointing out the bear’s current location. We all compared notes of where it had been, whose garbage had been raided, whose tender new landscaping trampled (sigh). The bear, oblivious, made its way down to the little park at the end of the street and disappeared from our sight, so we returned to dinner.

It was an interesting way to bond a bit with our new neighbours, I thought.

In all my years here, I have never worried much about bears because until very recently, there had been no reports of a bear attacking a human except in the very rare circumstance that you might come between a mother and cub. But there have been several reports of seemingly unprovoked attacks recently in communities near the bears' mountain homes, and no one is sure why they have suddenly become aggressive towards people, although there are some theories.

So when I went out early this morning to start the sprinkler on our new grass, I took a large, heavy shovel with me and filled my lungs with plenty of air for any ululating that might become necessary.

Wild Life

My mind was on wildlife as I went to put the recycling out at the curb after dinner last night, for today’s pickup day. I was feeling a bit annoyed that we can’t put our trash cans out the night before because of attracting bears to the garbage smorgasbord. My cat, who fancies a wild life but who is not supposed to be out after dark, escaped as I was doing this.

Over the next few hours I called him now and then, to no avail. Finally, I was ready to go to bed at 11 and went to give one last call. I peered out my office window, where he is used to being let in during the day. Sure enough, there he was, sitting on the porch right outside the window. As was a skunk, three feet away from him, snuffling at where the landscapers had eaten their lunch that day. The cat seemed unconcerned by the skunk, and the skunk seemed unconcerned by the cat. I, on the other hand, was highly concerned by the entire situation.

I opened the window just a crack, to test the smell of the air. It was neither pungent nor acrid, so I eased the window open far enough for the cat to jump in and hissed his name. Typical cat: rather than leap in quickly, he just stared at me with slitted eyes, assessing how badly I wanted him to do this. The skunk snuffled. I attempted to look nonchalant, which worked; the cat jumped gracefully in.

I slammed the window shut. The skunk ran off. I collapsed with heart palpitations. It is a wild life we all lead here.

A New Playlist

Grammar does hope that everyone who read my Labour Day diatribe understands it was -- at least mostly -- tongue in cheek! One of the things I really enjoy about this day, the day after Labour Day, is the palpable sense of excitement in the air. I had to go out to an appointment at the unfortunate hour of about 9:00 this morning (unfortunate due to this being the heaviest traffic day of the year!), but it was such fun to see all the kids heading off to school, looking at what they were wearing, knowing how carefully it had all been selected. I remember those days well, both for my childhood self and as a mother.

On the subject of nostalgia, I created a new playlist for my iPod the other day (best thing about iPods -- making playlists for any mood, any occasion!) This one is comprised of songs which all evoke a specific memory for me. I listened to this playlist in the car on my outing this morning and it was like listening to a story, following the pictures in my mind.

I’m not going to share all my selections because of course they don’t mean anything to anyone but me (and some of them might qualify for the category of Too Much Information!) But here are a few examples:

I have I Ain’t Gonna Cry Tonight by Barbra Streisand, because that was the song that helped me turn the corner after a breakup with a longtime boyfriend. It was almost three decades ago, but when I hear that song, I’m immediately back in my apartment, getting up off my tear-stained couch and starting to dance around on my shabby grass-green carpet. I hear that song and remember with total clarity how, from one moment to the next, I went from heartbreak and despair to excitement and hope for the future.

I have Choose Something Like a Star, a song written by the late contemporary American composer Randall Thompson. I sang this at summer music camp in 1973, where I spent four of the happiest weeks of my life. I listen to that song and I can smell the grass where we sat having Ear Training lessons outside. I see my youthful fingers effortlessly banging out a Bach Prelude and Fugue, something I could not play today to save my life.

I have John Denver singing Sunshine on my Shoulders and remember a senior high school music tour to Seattle. We were heading home at the end of the weekend and I was in a car driven by a classmate. In the back seat with me was my secret crush Jim. (At least, I thought it was a secret at the time. Teenagers being considerably less subtle than they think they are, of course he knew. But he was kind.) Anyway, it was late and dark, the drive was long, and I was debating whether I had the courage to lay my head on Jim’s shoulder for a snooze. Sunshine came on the radio and it was during the 5 minutes and 14 seconds of its run (I checked my iTunes!) that my head ever so slowly tilted down, down, down…and…there.

I have Elvis singing Can’t Help Falling in Love with You, because I sang it as I endlessly rocked my infant firstborn. I hear this song and remember feelings of immense fatigue and confusion. The words seemed so apt: this tiny, helpless, squalling creature was the cause of my fatigue and confusion, but also of a new love beyond description.

The thought process of creating a playlist like this is as much fun as listening to it in sequence afterwards. I highly recommend it as a project for one of your quiet, orderly fall days!

Happy New Year!

Ahhh, Labour Day. This is far and away Grammar’s favourite day of the entire year. All summer long, all these random people mill about the streets and shops at any hour of the day. Children play happily outside until all hours of the night. Bah, humbug! Send the big ones back to their offices and the little ones back to their institutions of learning. Let the time of quiet and order and schedules begin again. As the air outside becomes blessedly nippy, Grammar can bundle up and walk the quiet streets, devoid of summertime hedonists running amok. Ahhhhh.

Happy Birthday, VCCGirl!

A wink of an eye ago she looked like this. Now she's all grown up, and she's no longer cute...she's beautiful.

PS: Yes, I know her birthday was actually a few days ago, but Grammar only remembers the blog at random intervals. Grammar only remembers anything at random intervals.

Things I Miss

I miss being able to stay up late. It’s been a busy week of work, but so nice to have the Olys to relax with in the evening. I wish I still had my old night-owl abilities and could stay up to watch more of the live coverage but alas, Grammar needs her bed by 11:00 these days.

I miss my youthful multitasking skills. This busy work week has involved a fair amount of co-ordination between a number of transcribers and the office manager. There is a flurry of messaging and emails and phone calls first thing each morning as we sort out the assignment o’ day.

So yesterday I was attempting to start a work download, messaging with two people about how this particular task would be split between us, and phoning the office manager about a download problem I was encountering. In the midst of this, one of my stable of tradeserfs rang the doorbell. SRH was unhelpfully in the shower and although I bellowed, declined to leap out of it and answer the door in a towel. Well, I thought my head was going to explode.

I miss my Laddie. I keep forgetting that he actually doesn’t live with us anymore. We ordered Chinese food for dinner tonight (Olys! Beijing!) and I automatically warned SRH and VCCGirl, as they loaded their plates, to save enough for the Lad. He’d always go to the fridge when he got home late from work, you see. It really jolted me that I didn’t need to save dinner for my boy, tonight or any other night. Funny how it hit me after he’s already been gone over a month. You think you’re ready and more than ready, some days, for them to head out on their own. But it still feels so very strange.

I also miss weather under 25 degrees Celsius -- but I’ll get that back soon! (I can actually tell exactly when the temperature hits 25. That precise point is the end of my comfort zone.) Sorry, sun-worshippers, but I’ve got autumn in my sights, and it’s a-coming!

Windows and siding and gardens, oh my!

Good morning, Blog World. Are we all enjoying the Olympics? I am, for the most part. Can’t abide water polo and fail to understand why every channel would want to show us that rather than, say, equestrian events, which I’ve seen nothing of in (our) daylight hours. Wouldn’t you think more of us would want to see that than water polo? We’ve had a lot of beach volleyball, which I enjoy except for being distracted by my own annoyance at the outfits the women players feel obliged to wear. The men wear board shorts and T-shirts, but the women, oh, they must wear itsy bitsy bikinis. It irks me.

So I don’t really have anything witty or clever to say today but feel like keeping in touch. We’ve been in our new home for a month now and continue to settle in. There are still more unpacked boxes tucked away here and there than there should be, but we’re whittling away at them. We’re as busy with tradespeople here as we were in the last few weeks at our old house. But these improvements we get to stay and enjoy!

We’re focusing on the outside, initially, given the time of year and also given that it’s difficult to do too much inside until we finally finish unpacking! After chopping down the incredible house-eating pine tree, we have had people clean out our gutters, which were of course overflowing with pine detritus. We have had a landscaper draw up plans to rejuvenate and spiff up our garden. While the wild, untended look does provide for a sort of camping in the woods effect, it needs some taming. So he has planned a lovely garden that will require no more than two or three visits from him a year to keep in shape. At this place and time, we’re all about no effort on our part!

Two windows on the east side of our house are being replaced, and after that’s done, a fellow is coming to replace all the cedar siding on that side, which is rotting disproportionately to the rest of the house (which is not at all rotten). We are told this is common on the east side because most weather hereabouts comes from that side. Winds driving rain and all that. I don’t know, but it’s important to SRH that this be done.

So once we have new windows and siding and a lovely new garden this fall, we will turn our attention to the inside -- where I hope there will be no more boxes left to impede our improvement efforts there! Our friend KCL, wearing her decorator hat, has many ideas for us and we are excited about implementing them.

So that’s what’s up Chez Grammar: the buzzing of tradespeople. Oh, Grammar does love having serfs about.

EDIT TO POST: It was pointed out to me by eagle-eyed fan Missy Moo that in the above pic, it appears my new garden is going to spill way out into the street. It won't, of course. Obviously a problem with the software (or user thereof). The perspective is very inaccurate.