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?

100 days

It's been 100 days, more or less, since I abandoned this blog. I know this, because it's been 100 days, more or less, since I officially became a mother of two. The Kidlet wasn't due until late January, which the more perceptive among you will know was significantly less than 100 days ago. So, yes: much like her sister, the Kidlet was early and unexpected. That seems to be a thing that happens, particularly to me.

I won't bore you with the details. Suffice it to say that, in the last 100 days, the following happened: I became a mommy to a premature infant (again), Christmas came and went, ditto my birthday, the Spanish Inquisition started preschool and the aforementioned premature infant was referred to SickKids. It wasn't serious — somewhere between a clogged tear duct and, say, cancer — but it did require surgical intervention, which is just a fancy way of saying brain surgery, which ... there is no easy way to say "my newborn is having brain surgery" without causing a lot of fuss. Try it and see. So everyone was duly panicked and worried, but we're getting better, now. It did mean, too, that the Kidlet has spent more time in the hospital than out of it, in her short life, and that's unfortunate. We're working on fixing that.

So that's the last 100 days. We're not out of the woods yet, Kidlet's health-wise, but the trees are clearing and we can see sunlight. And it means that I can start blogging again, and I plan to, although I'm going to have to cast about for subjects, because — remember that cardigan that I was working on last time we met?

Still working on it.

thankful

I know that I am a little late posting this. I needed to wait for Pd to stop hogging the computer* so I could offload (and then upload) some photographs** so that this isn't completely boring, and it took a little while.

* By "hogging," please read "using the computer for his kick-ass programming skillz that actually helps pay the bills around here." My first-generation Air (which is what I am using right now) is no longer capable of supporting my photo -taking and -editing habit, so we got a shared desktop a few months ago. We have an agreement, actually, that I can use the desktop pretty much whenever I like, but it's a lot easier for him (and better for his back) to program with the big screen and proper chair ... and I feel kind of bad kicking him off to support my emphatically nonprofitable blog, while he works to keep me in knitting and crafting supplies (not to mention food). So I am happy to wait.

** Yes, this means that I actually used the proper camera this weekend! The iPad is convenient but the lens is rather soft, have you noticed? Of course, what happened then was that the Spanish Inquisition stuck her fingers on the camera lens while I was packing, and I forgot to wipe it clean, so for the first hour or so I was completely flummoxed as to why I couldn't focus properly, even on manual. Soft focus or toddler smear? — ultimately, it's all the same, really.

Anyway, it was Thanksgiving, and I am most thankful for my favourite two people in the world:


Sometimes we are sleep-deprived, and sometimes we are cranky, but for the most part we are all happy and silly and content, and when one of these people grins a silly grin at me, my heart explodes with joy.


(And yes, that is the purple sweater, take 2. The penguin buttons/bribery totally worked. Details later.)

Spring(ish)!

Now it feels like spring. I'm probably jinxing it, but honestly, I couldn't take the cold any more. And also I discovered that my non-winter suede boots are not what you would call "waterproof." Or even "water resistant," really. They see water and they run and hide, leaving nothing between the water and my socks. Which are lovely, woolly and warm, but are also not waterproof. (This is more forgiveable, as waterproof socks would be sort of strange.)

This is something that is less than exciting to discover when the forecast is calling for 10mm of rain and the weather is feeling like an overachiever.

In another sign of spring, the sage in my strawberry pot is flowering. I didn't even know that potted herbs flower, but there you go. They're rather pretty:


They're about to die, though. There is way more sage in that pot than I could ever use — I don't use much herbs to begin with, but the sage has killed the renewed tarragon and is holding its own with the invasive oregano for dominance. It is now so large that it has turned into a vine. Pd and I even had the following conversation last night:

Pd: You really have to do something about that sage.
Me: I know. I'm thinking clippers.
Pd: I don't know if clippers will be enough. I think we'll have to be napalm it from the air. It's the only way to be sure.

So, you see. Also, I feel that the primary function of my strawberry pot is to be decorative (see "don't cook with many herbs" comment, above), and it's really moved from that to territorial. Besides, I am going to have to make more room soon so I can put in new basil, which never did grow back and which I actually do use. Maybe the red kind.

In related news, I picked these up from our local big box store over the weekend:


I didn't mean to; it just sort of ... happened. I hadn't done any research whatsoever into bulbs (I hadn't actually planned on putting anything in this year, aside from the tulips that were planted last October — and I understand tulips, at least somewhat), but I love these as cut flowers, so I thought — why not? Of course, "why not" turns out to be because they're not really terribly hardy for zone 6, even a warmish zone 6, and if I want them to even pretend to be perennial I'm going to have to dig them up in the fall and overwinter the bulbs inside ... and honestly, I can't even remember where I planted the majority of those 18 tulips any more, so how am I going to remember this?

I'm going to plant them anyway, though, just to see. Because the worst thing that could happen, at this point, is for them not to come up at all, and I can deal with that.

I am trying, very hard, to hold myself back from utter gardening fever this year, and to remind myself of what happened last year. (Answer: a big lot of nothing. And dead grass.) The thing is, though, my family — my entire, extended family — is going to be visiting this summer — my big, successful, persnickety family with the perfectionist streak (hey, I got it from somewhere), who are going to be seeing my house, and my garden, for the first time. They're kind of judge-y (likewise), and I already feel a bit like a black sheep in this family — I'm the only only child, the only introvert, the only artsy. Possibly the only tree-hugger. (Also the only one with a graduate degree, but it's in arts, so it doesn't count.) They love me, and I love them, but I as sure as hell better be impressive come this July.

ensconced

Still at the farm right now — reading my new Christmas books, doing my (not-so-new) Christmas knitting, and playing with my in-laws' new-to-me kitten.


More later, when I return to my normal life.

reeling my soul back across the Atlantic

We're back! Actually, we've been back for almost a full week now. It seems insane to consider that, one week ago, we were in Reykjavík, fighting the wind and lamenting the imminent end to our vacation ... actually, what is slightly appalling is considering how much we did in that one week, compared to the practically nothing that we have accomplished since we got back.

(Then again, if we had kept going as hard as we had been that week, I probably would have dropped dead from exhaustion by now.)

One of the few things we've done is distribute some of our Icelandic booty. My brother-in-law was kind enough to make use of our house while we were away (thereby preventing the cats from going completely feral), so we rewarded him with — what else? — a plastic helmet. With braids.

The pose and cutlery were his idea.
Meanwhile, life continues apace. Both Pd and I went back to work the morning immediately after our return, which seemed like a reasonable idea in theory but turned out to be utterly crackpot in practice. We subsequently spent the weekend recovering from that (and the residual jet lag that we hadn't dealt with).

...
I am going to write up our Iceland trip in detail, with accompanying photographs. However, the Air, which replaced the reliable-but-slowly-failing iBook in March, is itself failing —the hard drive is making unmistakeable chirping and "working" sounds when in shallow thought. I took it to the Genius Bar, and a new hard drive has been ordered and will be put in as soon as it arrives. Until then, however, I am trying not to tax it too hard — or do any work that I would be deeply unhappy to lose. (I am backing it up every night, but it could conceivably fail at any time.) So the photo-managing and subsequent blogging may take more time than initially anticipated.

my boys

Well, technically only one of those boys is mine, but they're both adorable, aren't they?

My sister- and brother-in-law, with their two little boys in tow (that's the younger one above, and the older one at the bottom), came to town for a few days last week, and stayed at our place. It was lovely. And chaotic. And kind of fly-by-seat-of-pants. I've discovered that leaving the house with two children happens in stages — you start at the back of the house and you slowly gather everything with you at each stage. Kitchen, dining room, living room, door. It's kind of like a military campaign, but with diapers and little toy cars. (The older nephew has a thing for cars. And also Cars.)

They were in town for a family wedding (Pd's side, obviously). We went to the playground in between the ceremony and the reception, while the wedding party were taking their pictures; we don't go to the playground in formalwear. Usually.


Things that I have discovered that we don't really have enough of (at least, in terms of a family of four adults and two kids): sleep, space, dishes, and bathrooms.