FREE AGENCY

It's April 1st, 2020.  The first day of my so-called free agency; or in other words, unemployment.

There's also a global pandemic, but this is not the reason I don't have work.  I allowed my contract to run out over an ethical problem I encountered with my never-to-be-named employer.  Appeals to the powers that be fell upon deaf ears, and that made me as mad as hell.  I certainly wasn't going to take it anymore.

So, here I am, stuck at home with a full tank of gas and nowhere to go with it.  Luckily I live in a great country, where we are doing our level best to slow this juggernaut down.  And you can imagine, in fact you know, just how helpless we all feel in the face of that inexorable power.

So what am I doing with my first full day of freedom, you ask?

I'm making masks.

It started to help my daughter control her anxiety over giving Covid-19 to my mom, with whom she lives.  Until two weeks ago E had not one, but two retail jobs, one in a busy mall, where she was in a high risk of contracting the virus from unwitting vectors.  She has kept to the basement at Gma's house since then.  Her two weeks are up today, but a couple of days ago she got a cold (let's hope that is what it is) which sets her back another two weeks.  She really wants to go outside!  Once her symptoms are gone, she can do that, and on the off-chance she is anywhere near another human, she can feel a little less like Typhoid Mary when she goes for her solitary walks through the neighbourhood.

The experts say that the main benefit of wearing a mask is to remind you not to touch your face.  Even with all that handwashing, you might touch a surface with the virus on it and transfer it to your mucosa.  Eww...hate that word.  A mask, properly used, can stop that from happening.

For E, it will allow her to feel less worried about the simple act of using the kitchen at Gma's house, provided she washes her hands before and after, and wipes down every surface she has touched.

So, on to the masks....

A friend sent me a pattern by Dean Renwick, a Saskatchewan designer.  They're quick and easy to make.

Instructions are here: Mask Patterns and Instructions

Dean Renwick has a video tutorial to help you.

I decided to make my masks with a stash of Liberty prints, with a muslin lining.  I adapted the Renwick pattern by encasing a pipe cleaner along the top edge.

They're nice to look at, and fit well.  They may not make a fashion statement, but they're a bit less scary-looking than a surgical mask, and for all we know, they may become de rigueur for the next few months.  In any case, it's good to have something to do.  You never know, it might help.

TRAVEL and FOMO

Why do the wrong people travel, travel, travel,
When the right people stay back home.....


When I travel I love to feel a part of the passing scene; I like to hunker down for a few days, develop a routine, find a bar, a grocery store, a bakery, one that becomes my own, and where the proprietor smiles when I come in for  bread or my evening drink ..something I wouldn't have at home.

Sometimes, it goes further.  Sometimes, I start to believe that I'd actually enjoy life as a cook in a truck stop kitchen, as long as that kitchen is in the Basque country.  Sometimes, I  actually want to chuck it all in and be like that girl selling homemade flapjack on a windy expanse of carpark in the West of Ireland;  I can see me heading back to my peat fire at night, listening to the wind and rain hard against the windowpanes, being cosy and warm, all wrapped up in some woollen confection, rife with cables and the smell of lanolin.  These lives seem more fully alive than mine.

It's more travel voyeurism than empathy.  I'm pretty sure I'd get tired of sassing gruff, possibly alcoholic, road warriors in about a day and a half, and my lungs aren't cut out for damp and cold climates, no matter how soft and green they might be.  But the romantic in me wants to be part of something picturesque; something a little more connected than my life as it is.  I live in a rural suburb.  I have a nodding acquaintance with many of my neighbours, but I can count only a few that I can have a good conversation with.  And I don't seek that out.  Somehow I'm too busy not quite managing the household and focussing on work to have a life outside of my own four walls.

The trouble is that our life is finite.  There's not enough time to do it all.  As my friend Kerry, who has done quite a bit of it ,says, "you can only travel one road at a time".  Right now, the road I'm on is the road I've chosen, and travel is only a little bit of a detour every now and then,  a little call of the open road, to which  like Toad of Toad Hall, I am powerless to say no.

Because I can't do it all, I must instead develop my imagination and go abroad within the confines of my own head.  Travel books help create an imaginary world that I can visit without recourse to airline flight and a budget; but as anyone knows who has travelled to a place they've read about previously, it's not like that;  it NEVER is.  Which is why I wish there was more time and money.  I want to experience it for myself.  ALL of it.

Part of me forgets entirely that I am a person of a certain age.  The me who goes a-wandering, is my younger self, and not even that, one of my many imaginary younger selves--braver, smarter, prettier, thinner, better dressed....I am the Indiana Jones of my own imaginings; with a hint of Stevie Nicks and Colette thrown in for good measure.

It's a lot of fun, this wandering through time and place, but from time to time I draw back a little and ask myself, why do you not go deep, rather than wide.  Shouldn't you immerse yourself in your day to day life?  Cannot you get satisfaction from a day's work well done?  A dinner cooked well and appreciated?  Time spent watching the hummingbirds at the feeders on the back deck?

 Well, I do get satisfaction from these things, of course I do.  But......

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days.   

These words of Annie Dillard'  about structure used to inspire me but now they just make my feet itch to be on the road.

I no longer want a schedule.  Intellectually, I know that I ought to be savouring each moment as it comes, since that's all that really exists at any given moment, but I want a little chaos and whim from time to time.

 Last year, I did a photo journal, one a day, to help me focus in on the present.  I have a great life, and I know it, but sometimes I want one of those other lives.  Maybe as a back-up singer--floaty clothes, glittering venues,  a tambourine...sigh....

ADVENTURES IN COOKERY

So, you’re in the kitchen, happily mixing up a cake for the big double birthday.  You realize that you’ve nearly forgotten the vanilla, so you balance the electric mixer on the side of the bowl, (as you do), just for a second, while you reach into the drawer for the bottle.  Without warning, the mixer leaps from the bowl and runs like a juggernaut across the counter.  Too late, you realize that it is the GREEN bowl which allows you to do that little balancing trick, and today you are using the BLACK bowl.  Carnage ensues.

There is batter all over the walls, the stove, the coffeemaker.  By the time you have the wit to stop staring in helpless horror and pull the plug, the blades of the beaters have become inextricably entwined with a bag of green beans, and bright green shards of crunchy goodness are also everywhere.  You pick a few out of the bowl, but before the baking can resume you have to perform some surgery over at the sink.

It takes several minutes to unwind the plastic bag which once housed the beans from the beater shafts, but you notice, on the upside, that many of the beans appear to have topped and tailed themselves without any effort on your part.  A good thing, since once the cake is in the oven, you will be spending some time with a rag and a ladder, mopping up the mess you’ve made.  Isn’t cooking fun?

CHRISTMAS EVERY DAY

Christmas at my house tends to hang around well after the festive season.  Partly through benign neglect, and partly because I hate to see it go, I tend to "forget" that certain elements of decoration are still with us.   Part of me thinks that there should be a little corner of one's life where it is Christmas Every Day!

Yesterday, I was startled to discover a spray of balsam still stuck into the frame of the living room mirror, so I took a look around to see what else might be lurking well past its due date.  I threw out the mummified pomegranates and quinces that had been the mainstay of a tabletop display.  I felt guilty about not eating them.

From the corner of my eye,  I noted, but did nothing about, the shiny red cachepot and glass baubles decorating Alex's thriving potted palm.  Here it is, February 1st, and there is still a wreath hanging on the wall above the television set, mainly because the golden poinsettias and pine cones go so well with the colour of the wall.  I have no excuse for the giant pink mercury glass eggs dangling from the curtain rod, but you know...Easter IS coming.

Of course, ideally, it would be Christmas Every Day, Everywhere.  And maybe it can be.

Funnily enough, I think it was best put by that quintessential Hollywood Cowgirl, Dale Evans;

“Christmas, my child, is love in action. Every time we love, every time we give, it's Christmas."

Works for me.  Merry Christmas!

LATELY STRANGE

Strange things I have seen of late:

My son's collarbone overlapping, pre-surgery
A skein of silent geese
A giant pileated woodpecker on the suet feeder: it's been very cold and snowy.  I suspect food has been scarce


I shall add to this as the need arises.

What is so strange about this, I can hear you muttering...Surely that's a garden variety geranium.  Yes, indeed, it is.  But this is a geranium which was given to me at the end of last season; it sat in the car and broiled, it was left neglected under a pine tree and exposed to frost. It was tucked on a windowsill in the basement and forgotten.  I have watered it once or twice over the winter, thinking what dwarfed leaves it had, and then bingo!  One day last week I went down to do some long overdue laundry and there it was in full flower!  I have a lot of respect for this flower.

WINTER MIRACLE

So, we were out walking the dog yesterday.  It was a balmy -22, and the wind was frolicking around our ears.  Did I say we were walking?  I meant we were goosestepping through snow up to my knees and Nick's calves.  Sometimes being married to a tall guy is a real drag and this is one of them.  I was wondering why I had left mes anciennes raquettes  looking decorative in the corner of my office instead of strapping them on and negotiating the drifted in path through the field.  We abandoned the field for the road, and had to laugh at ourselves.  What with the wind chill and the exertion, we were a good deal hoarier than when we started out!

Nick's moustache and Casey's whiskers looked like some errant elf had gone postal with a bedazzler.  But I noticed something else too.  Its a thing that happens every year around this time.  No matter what the temperature, no matter what the windchill, no matter whether there is sun or leaden cloud, around January 25th, we notice that there is running water in rivers and ditches.  THAT is the first sign of spring.  You can have your robins (they're here by the way, hiding out in the bush), for me the inexorable flow is the true harbinger.   It defies my limited understanding of physics.  I'm sure there is a geeky explanation having to do with the insulative properties of snow and the angle of the sun, but I choose to think of it as a miracle.

A WALK AROUND THE BLOCK

Coming to terms with living in a Post-Daddy world.

It is a beautiful frosty morning, a moon still hanging in a soft blue sky festooned with cirrus clouds and con trails.  I decided to go for a walk around the block before starting into the day.  It has been nearly three weeks since my father died, but our lives have been different for most of a year.  For him, his cancer brought about, in a horrid sort of inverse pregnancy, nine months of getting smaller, weaker, and more helpless.  At one point, recently, he reflected ruefully that Shakespeare had it right in his speech about the Seven Ages of Man.

For us, there was the knowledge of the inevitability of his death and the sorrow of seeing this private and dignified man whom we loved wholeheartedly subjected to one indignity after another, and struggling to maintain control;  trying to get everything done before there was no longer any time in which to do it.

Now, Daddy has been reborn into whatever new reality awaits, and we must make ourselves a brave new world, without him.

  Everywhere I looked this morning, I saw evidence that life goes on.  Woodpeckers were knocking at the dead trees in the swamp looking for grubs to warm them against the oncoming winter. Recycling was out by the curb, testament to the fact that meals are still being prepared and consumed. People were driving by me, waving "good morning" on their way to work.   My cheeks and fingers were burning with the cold.  My right hip flexor and my left knee reminded me of my physical presence and my own challenges. I was surprised to find that my eyes were wet, and knew it was not just from the cold.

When I came to the  long steady climb out of the quarry, I was further surprised to find that it was just as hard, but no harder, than usual.    Life really is the same as ever except for that one crucial thing.  I began to pay attention to my footfalls, to really savour the placement of each foot on the gravel.  Before long I was storming up the steeper hill that leads to my house.  There will come a time when it won't be possible.  Life is a crap shoot, and you never know when the dice will come up snake eyes.  In the meantime, Carpe Diem.