to be thankful

The problem with Canadian Thanksgiving being so early in the year is that the trees have not had a chance to fully turn colour. Although — as Pd pointed out, as we were driving along the Niagara Escarpment — that might be an illusion because a lot of the trees we were looking at turned out, upon closer inspection, to be conifers. Nonetheless, here is a picture of my in-laws' deck, replete with squash; that is the closest to a Thanksgiving image I could come up with today.

And actually, yesterday the temperature was somewhere in the mid-twenties, and today it's in the high teens, so it doesn't feel much like late fall anyway.


This year has been a bit of a medical annus horribulus for our family. Just over a year ago, my mother-in-law went into the hospital with severe abdominal pains and came out with a diagnosis of cancer (thankfully she is in remission now); my father was hit by a drunk driver (not yet fully recovered, but healing) my father in law was in an ATV accident and lost the tip of two fingers (thereby gifting the rest of us a verbal punchline that will never get old). And, of course, there is the Kidlet: by the time she left the hospital in mid-September, she had spent a cumulative seven of her nine months in a hospital. March and April, essentially.

Every family has weeks, months like this. We are not unique. We are, however, incredibly lucky — that we have all survived, more or less; that everyone is still alive, relatively intact (give or take a finger or two ... you see?), reasonably healthy and hale. So I think that this year, as we gave thanks, it was pretty obvious what we were thankful for.



Health, kids, hope. And turkey duck. What more could anyone want?

the things that change your life are always the things that you never see coming.

The roses have been in bloom for most of the summer now. They all survived the brutish winter, more or less, but it's 'The Fairy' ones that enchanted The Spanish Inquisition. She asked for one, and then two: one for herself, and one for her father. They're tiny, these fairies, tiny and perfect. 

I don't often talk of my private life or my family on this blog, and that's deliberate; I'm a fairly private person in general. But something this big and all-consuming is hard to hide, so here it is.

My life is incredibly complicated and incredibly simple right now. With the exception of four days, the Kidlet has been at SickKids for more than two months. No, she's not well. Yes, she's getting better ... except that she's not. Not in the way you mean; not in the way we usually mean. It's complicated. She has a rare metabolic disease. It is progressive, and it is severe. There is a treatment, but there is no cure.

What do you do when you're blindsided like this? You take a breath, and then another. You try to discover the new world that surrounds you: your new spiritual home. And then you move forward, hoping with each step that you are still on solid ground. Sometimes, you are. Too often, you're not.

I have been going to SickKids every day. It's my new job: I go there after the Spanish Inquisition leaves for preschool; I try to get home before she does. In between I meet with doctors, and I spend time with my darling girl. She likes music, and Madeline. Sometimes, when the day is good and the wind is fair, she smiles. And it lights up the world.

a pause.

I'd fully meant to keep on blogging, but the Kidlet is going in for surgery again tomorrow, and the Spanish Inquisition's preschool is closing, and ... no. Not that the two are equivalent. You see, I can't even apologise properly. In any case, it's hard to find the headspace, so for now — peace.

best laid plans

I like lists, cataologuing. I am secretly a librarian at heart. I make lists for everything: packing lists for weekend vacations, grocery lists, lists of clothes for the kids. To-do lists so that I can understand the full extent of my procrastination, or stupidity. For future reference, of course. Here, for your edification, was my to-do knitting list this winter:


This is all the yarn I had in my mental queue for the winter — which is to say, this is the yarn that I have bought (mostly this winter) with the intention of knitting this winter. Looking at this pile, I can only come to two conclusions:

1) I have obviously vastly overestimated how fast I can knit and the amount of time I would have, and

2) I really like the colour blue.

Clockwise from the top left: Artyarns cashmere sock. Love. I wanted really warm socks this winter, and I would have made excellent use of them ... if I had had them. Next, two skeins of Shalimar Breathless (in Ore), with a ball of A Verb for Keeping Warm Floating. Also dreamy. These were going to be some sort of colour-block sweater, although I might have to revisit that: those two skeins of Ore are not the same colour at all. (Yes, I know about dye lots, and no ... I did not apply that knowledge. The second skein was sort of an emergency buy.) Tanis Fiber Arts laceweight, from one of her one-off sales on Etsy; this was going to be something "relaxing." Ha. I am thinking perhaps a large Orchid Thief ... I am also thinking, perhaps not right now.

And finally, the big pile of robin's egg blue is Quince & Co. sparrow, which is pure linen. The colour is actually "Birch," but I know robin's egg blue when I see it. It's a bit of a cheat; it's the only thing on here that's not really winter knitting and so, consequently, also the only thing that I particularly want to knit. I am most of the way through the body of Kirsten Johnstone's Hane and I am really looking forward to wearing it. It's been a long, cold winter. I need spring.

false start

It really was my intention to start blogging again. I even took pictures (with a real camera, not my iPhone!) of things I wanted to blog about. For instance:

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Two weeks ago, it was astoundingly nice — 21 degrees Celsius and sunny, as though the world felt a little guilty about the horrid winter and late spring, and had decided to give us a little early summer. (And then, as it does, decided that perhaps that would spoil us — spoil everything — and rescinded the offer, which rather explains why the tulips are surrounded by snow.)

And then the weekend ended, a week passed, then another weekend, and oops. All I can say is that this whole blogging while parenting thing is a work in progress.

The gardening while parenting thing, though, is working a little better.


This reminds me of a story that a family friend told me recently: apparently, when they were younger, their family had the most beautiful English wildflower garden. They lived in the country. The kids (there were three) would get home from school and their mother would just set them to work weeding. And it was more than beautiful; it was practically Platonic: the physical manifestation of a page from a gardening magazine, with wildflowers waving in the breeze and masses of butterflies.

Then the kids graduated from high school and now that garden is essentially a meadow. I visited it the other day and the grasses were literally taller than me.

This makes me feel better.

I am hoping that this year I might actually get to garden. It's early days yet, which means that I still have hope. The Spanish Inquisition is starting to show signs of interest. She's a bit young for weeding but apparently I now have free toddler rake labour. We'll see how that bears out.