Thanks

Thank you to you bloggy-reading folks who commented or emailed or phoned to say KEEP BLOGGING!  Okay ... I get it!  I might be boring now and then, but overall, y'all think my blog is worth reading, or that my cat is entertaining, or that I occasionally share a good recipe, or that I have "unfinished business" with y'all in the knitting department, or that I share the odd bit of humor.

It's like this:  I get unsettled now and then.  When I'm feeling unsettled, I start doubting the validity and benefit of whatever I'm currently doing.  Such as blogging.  And current furniture arrangements.  And hair styles (used to be hair colours). 

Do YOU ever feel that way?

It's like an itch you can't quite reach to scratch.

Fall is the worst time of year for that for me.  I know, it's not quite fall yet ... but summer rolls right into fall before we can say "Jack Spit" in this part of the world.  September is like New Year's for me.  I want to start NEW things in September.  I get really itchy to GO BACK TO SCHOOL in September.  Unfortunately, neither current bank account, job commitments, nor personal energy levels are up to embarking on too many new things in September.

Part of the reason that I'm feeling unsettled right now came from a surprise visit this past week.  My first Douglas College instructor.  It's not everyday that someone from a couple of decades back walks into your office and says "Hi!  Remember me?"  She was here in PG in a totally different capacity from college instructor, but we managed a few minutes for a quick catch-up.  As always, she "nailed the nail right on the head" with her observation that I'm missing academia and "you should be writing, you know!" 

Yes, I know.  I KNOW!!!

Trying to sort out what's going on in my unsettled head is a little like ...

 ... taking a basket full of odds and ends of wool and making something useful out of it.  In a timely and organized manner.  Above are my "fall" mittens ... minus one thumb ... knit up from current odds and ends in my knitting basket.  They look quite "fall-ish" to me.

I prefer mittens over gloves as my fingers always feel cold in gloves.  For "winter" mittens, I knit them double-layered or "thrummed" with bits of wool fleece inside.  Besides, I can tuck things down inside mittens that won't fit in gloves ... such as my bus pass.  Or keys.  Or tissues.

Knitting mittens helped "settle" me a bit.  My balcony garden didn't help.  It usually does.  Usually I'm content to just sit out there and enjoy ...

... all the little green tomatoes.

 My radishes are done.  They were in boxes on the balcony railing.  Here are the last of them, bolting.  Radishes get woody and tasteless when they start to bolt, so they have now been pulled and consigned to the compost bucket.  I haven't replaced them with anything yet.  Can't decide what to put in there.

I have lots of little hot peppers too.

See?  I'm still a little scattered, but coming back together again! Thanks again for your encouragement!  Y'all are GREAT bloggy-readers!

Wild Roses

I was sitting out on my balcony recently and marvelling at the wild rose bushes along the fence behind my apartment building.

Nothing particularly remarkable about wild rose bushes, I suppose, but for some reason this year, I find myself fascinated by them.

I have also found myself thinking about the wild rose bushes around the perimeter of our Okanagan orchard.  Long ago wild rose bushes.  Long gone wild rose bushes. 

You see, the Okanagan Valley is very rocky.  Or China is very rocky and enterprising Chinese citizens industriously pushed their rocks through the core of the earth to the Okanagan whenever we weren't paying attention!  During the 1950s and 1960s, South Okanagan orchardists spent many many many hours picking up rocks and piling them around the perimeters of their property.  Rock picking was a regular part of every summer routine.  So when we moved onto our property in the mid 1970s, there was a 2 to 8 foot tall bank of rocks all around it.  I think we even added to the piles for a couple of years because every time we dug a hole to plant a tree or fix an irrigation pipe, MORE ROCKS surfaced ... did you know those suckers BREED LIKE RABBITS when you aren't looking?!? 

The rock piles were rather nice.  They were great playgrounds for kids.  They were wonderful habitats for cool critters like garter snakes.  As a kid, I climbed on plenty of them!  (rock piles and garter snakes!)  They let you know where you were, whose orchard you were on.  They were natural fences.  As a mom, I could say "don't go past the rock pile" and the youngsters knew where their safe boundaries were.  Wild roses grew on them.  Wild asparagus grew along the base of them.  Yes, they made it 'tight' to turn the tractor and other farm equipment at the end of some rows of fruit trees.  Yes, they meant you had to 'go around the long way' when you wanted to visit the neighbouring orchard, unless you were up for shinnying over the rock pile.  Those rock piles were just a fact of life to me, having grown up in the South Okanagan during the 1950s and 1960s.  Like the freckles on my arms ... just THERE ... just NORMAL.

Well.  By the beginning of the 1980s, my mate got to seriously looking at the rock piles and announced they had to go.  They were unwanted.  Unnecessary.  He calculated that without those rock piles, we could plant I-forget-how-many more fruit trees and I-forget-how-many more fruit trees would clearly mean MORE MONEY.  As well as more room to turn the tractor and other farm equipment at the end of some rows of fruit trees, and the ability to visit neighbouring orchards without having to 'go around the long way' or shinny over the rock pile.  So he hired a local contractor to haul away the rock piles.

I-forget-how-many truckloads of rocks got loaded and hauled away.  I suppose they became rock fill for some highway bed or something.  It took DAYS to haul them all away. 

The next thing we knew, we had unhappy neighbours.  "Your sprinklers are now sprinkling onto our driveway."  "Your chickens are now scratching over here in our orchard."  There is something to the old adage "good fences make good neighbours"!  My mate laughed and replied "what's your problem?  Half of those damned rocks were YOURS and I  paid to have them hauled away!"  (I'm pretty sure he never once thought about asking the neighbours if they wanted their half of the rock piles hauled away, but that's another story for another time.)  And the more money thing?  Nope.  I-forget-how-many more fruit trees really meant I-forget-how-many more fruit trees need to be watered, sprayed, pruned, thinned, picked and cared for, but somehow never really added to the company coffers.

The sad part of the entire thing is that by the time the last truckload of rocks rumbled away, I couldn't remember what the wild roses looked like.  Oh, I missed the asparagus every spring when it didn't come back, and clearly remembered what asparagus looked like in the field and on my plate.  But for the life of me, I couldn't picture what the 'gone' wild roses looked like!  How could something that was such a normal part of my existence just disappear without an indelible recollection of some kind?  I would even have been happy with a faint and fuzzy recollection, but, nope.  Nada.  Zip.  Just ... gone.

All this has been on my mind this spring as I've watched the wild rose bushes bloom.  It's like I've never ever seen them before ... and like I'm seeing old friends again for the first time in decades ... all at the same time.  Does that make any sense? 

On the knitting front, my red socks are done ...

... and feel DELICIOUS on my feet!  I have a pair of pastel pink and dark khaki "Infidel" socks started ...

Wait a minute!  What happened to my sock? 

Well ... I was happy with the colours and design, but not 100% pleased with the fit, so "a-frogging we did go, a-frogging we did go" ... back to the cuff.  It won't take long to re-knit what I ripped out.  It really is amazing, you know.  A half hour of knitting on the bus morning and evening, and I've got a finished pair of socks without any serious time commitment.  Sitting-on-the-bus time isn't REALLY productive time, so ACCOMPLISHING SOMETHING during non-productive time is a pleasant surprise.  Or is that warped thinking?

In the meantime, I treated myself to a new knitting book ...

... "Around the World in Knitted Socks".  It's very inspirational!  Great photography, easy to read directions, and ...

... socks with fancy patterns on the soles as well as the more visible sock parts!  How cool is that?  (I can hardly wait to try this pattern for Dutch socks!)

Occasionally Mizz Bootz climbs into my lap and bites me to tell me "enough with the knitting already, pay attention to ME!"  As soon as she bites me, she "kisses it better" by licking me as she really is gentle at heart.  

Happy last-week-of-June, y'all!

Random Thoughts

Wow! I'm sure glad I had that fabulous Christmas break to nourish my soul with some down time, cuz it's been hit the deck running full tilt since I went back to work on January 4th! Lots of new projects happening for my office (translated: lots of MEETINGS and many REPORTS) and very little time to breathe. I made a pact with myself to take a half hour in the middle of the day this year to get out of the office. I don't make New Year's resolutions, and I seldom start new things in January, but I really need a brain break in the middle of my work day. I haven't succeeded in accomplishing that EVERY day, but am pleased to say I have gone out for a walk or a bowl of soup (or a brief fondle-new-yarns session at our downtown yarn store) MOST work days so far this year.

In addition to a crazy work schedule, we've been experiencing a crazy warming trend in our weather. Hello, weather gods! This is January ... in The North! We're supposed to be well below zero and buried in snow in January!

Hello? Weather gods?


Anyone listening? (tap tap) Is this mike working???


Apparently not. Thanks to recent rain and warming, there is green grass appearing ...
... yet it's still close enough to zero degrees that SIDEWALK conditions are rather perilous. In pretty much any given location around the city, you can have one foot in a puddle ...... and the other foot in snow ...... then one step farther, both feet in a patch of ice ...... and hopefully you can navigate that without landing on your keester! While out on my travels today, I was pleased to see Terry wasn't having a problem navigating our sidewalks ...... and that he currently loves our University! I love our University too. I MISS our University! I was a guest speaker this past week for the BC Rural & Remote Health Research Network's "The Many Faces of Health Research: Promoting Seniors' Wellbeing Using the Seniors Mental Health Policy Lens Toolkit" presentation. Sound complicated? This project is just one of the multitude of things that's keeping me really busy this year! It was rather fun to be back up at the University ... made me realize how much I miss being there (sniffle) and how very much I want to be a student again!


With all this craziness, I haven't had much time during my weekends or evenings to continue with the quilting. Sadly, I've only managed to complete Heart #2 ...... and partially finish Heart #3 ...... of my wall hanging. Getting all three hearts joined and quilted before Valentine's Day 2010 is looking rather uncertain at this point! However, I have made a point to relax for a few minutes at the end of each day, even if that brief bit of relaxation didn't accomodate sewing. My routine usually includes a fast shower, but this stuff ...... a gift (thank you, S.!) this past Christmas ... is certainly helping me to slow down and smell the Moroccan Roses! (If you like roses and have a Body Shop near you, I highly recommend this stuff. It stinks purty!)


So I deliberately took some time out today and took myself out for brunch.Do you have a White Spot near you? I have a special place in my heart for this restaurant chain, and was reminiscing about why that is over bacon and eggs this morning.


My oldest boy, Robert, had surgery for lung cancer when he was a toddler. There I was, about 20 years old (too young to be married and a mum, never mind mum to a little lad facing lung cancer!) and in the big city of Vancouver BC all alone. I was afraid to walk too far from the hospital for fear I wouldn't be able to find my way back again, but found I really needed to get out of the hospital for a little while each day. I found a White Spot restaurant a couple of short blocks away ... still within sight of Vancouver General Hospital ... and, bless them!, they had chicken pot pie on their menu! Respite and comfort food! I noticed today that they still have chicken pot pie on their menu.


That's only one reason that I have a special place in my heart for White Spot. After my boy started recuperating from his surgery, he was seriously craving two things: real potatoes ... particularly home-made potato soup ... and peanut butter. Both items were forbidden on his ward as too many of the children there had difficulties swallowing.


Okay, that was the excuse given by the hospital staff at the time. I might buy it for the lack of peanut butter, but not for the lack of real potatoes!


Robert begged and begged for potato soup, and finally someone brought him a bowl of instant mashed potato flakes mixed with hot water. He was NOT impressed! I can still hear his squeaky little voice letting the entire ward know "You're not fooling me! That's NOT potato soup!"


Nearing the end of his hospital stay, I was allowed to take him out on day passes for short periods of time. On one of those day passes, I took him to the White Spot near the hospital. On Cambie Street, if I remember correctly. Robert was a bit of an extravert and exhibitionist, and quickly regaled all the waitresses with every gruesome detail about his lung surgery along with a close-up display of incision and sutures. He explained that all he really wanted was real potatoes and peanut butter ... and, bless them!, the White Spot staff brought him a beautifully arranged platter with a little bowl of peanut butter surrounded by pieces of real boiled potatoes! Even dressed up with a bit of parsley! Robert was so thrilled! Any busy restaurant that takes the time and makes the effort to cater to a sick little 2 1/2 year old like that is pretty darned special in my books!

While I'm on the topic of pretty darned special in my books, this fella ...
... Canadian wrestling legend Gene Kiniski, is right up there with the White Spot (photo from http://www.wrestlingmuseum.com/homeie.html) One another day pass, I took Robert down to a Dino's restaurant on Broadway ... about the same distance from Vancouver General as the White Spot but in a different direction. We had just ordered pizza when Robert spotted Gene Kiniski. He knew who Gene was because Grandad F. had been an avid "wrastlin'" fan and Robert had watched many hours of "wrastlin'" on TV with his Grandad. Before I could catch him, Robert was down out of his chair, across the restaurant, and regaling Gene Kiniski with tales about his surgery and the accompanying display of incision and sutures. And Gene, bless him!, picked Robert up, sat him on his knee and treated him with the utmost graciousness and patience. He gave Robert a very special memory to take home and brag about to his Grandad F.!
Hmm. This isn't where I was planning on going with this post. I suppose Robert is on my mind because we are almost at the time of year when he left us. Robert lived with lung cancer for another 6 years after the White Spot / Gene Kiniski experiences. Sometimes he's as close today as he was 30 years ago.