Heat! Humidity!

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Attila took a day off work on Friday. The heat wave arrived on the day before, Thursday. We had been planning a trip to Toronto on Friday, to get supplies that are not available in this area, but decided against it. Our vehicles are far from new, and the thought of being stranded, even for a short time, at the side of a highway, in this heat, is unthinkable. With temperatures and humidity as high as it has been since yesterday, I have simply stopped moving about. We have AC, set to a high temperature, and it keeps the humidity under control, and the temperature steady, so if I remain inactive, I do not feel physically stressed. When I go out onto the back porch, it is like walking into a sauna, I can sit for a while and chat with Attila, tend to my cooking projects, but after about fifteen minutes I begin to feel physical distress, so into the house I go. Attila, on the other hand, decided that since he had three consecutive days off, he would tackle digging up the foundation of the garage, to fix a floor leak. He spent most of yesterday digging, and … Continue reading →

Stranger in a Parking Lot

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I was dropping stuff off earlier in the week, at an office building. As I emerged from the front doors of the building, I saw a woman standing directly in front of the door area, out in the parking lot, she was texting. She struck me as strange at the time. She was very well dressed, quite pretty, walking back and forth with her cell phone, long jet-black hair, thicker than I’d ever seen on a human being, makeup, she looked a bit out of place and odd, pacing in the parking lot. I proceeded to my nearby car, unlocked the door, and as I opened the door and was about to get into the car, she came around the back of the vehicle that was parked between my passenger side and the door to the building, and in an agitated way said to me, “did you see that!” “No”, I said. “That guy almost hit me.” she said. I thought, what guy, I didn’t see any moving vehicles? “He didn’t even care,” she said, “and he said to me, “what’s wrong with the sidewalk.” I thought, I heard no voices, and you were less than twenty feet away from … Continue reading →

Kristin Lavransdatter

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Books. I have conducted a life long love affair with books. My Mom and Granny read to us when we were little. When I was very young, I associated the act, of transforming black marks on a page into a story, with magic. Books possessed a mysterious alchemy. It was a revelation and a wonder, when I learned it was a mere and predictable configuration of lines and spaces that unlocked the secrets of the written word. Magic suddenly became an easily understood formula. The mystery of books dissolved. But to my surprise the magic continued. There are worlds in books. Having taught myself to read before I entered the education system, with encouragement and a few basic tips from my Granny, I’ve dedicated a lot of waking hours to the pursuit of reading. My youth was spent reading literature. The first book I ever took out of the school library was Pilgrim’s Progress, and to be honest I wasn’t impressed with the story. Then I discovered The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis, and a new and deeper perspective on religious theory opened up to me. Later, during my teen years, when I toiled at manual … Continue reading →

It seemed like a good idea at the time…

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Most of the time, when I read a recipe, I can tell if I will like the resulting dish. But every once in a long while I misfire and the recipe is an epic fail, at least for my taste buds. I recently found just such a recipe, for an oatmeal breakfast dish cooked in the Instant Pot. I like all of the ingredients, oatmeal, water, carrots, pineapple, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves. Wow, I thought, what a great breakfast that would make, oatmeal and whole servings of vegetable and fruit, perfect. So I made up a batch a week and a half ago. Sometimes the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but not this time. This time the whole was much, much less than the sum of its parts. Blech! It was awful. But, all those paid for ingredients had gone into it, so there was nothing for it but to struggle through eight less-than-stellar breakfasts. The last empty bowl was just rinsed in the sink this morning. It is done. I am healthy. I ate to live, and I am sure my health benefited from it, even if my taste buds did not. I believe … Continue reading →

What If…

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Life is settling again, at last. I have come to appreciate the daily and ever changing “what is”, as the powerful and perfect starting point for life, and have eliminated “what if” from my lexicon. It has been an eventful few years for me. In the winter of 2014/2015 I lived alone at Mist Cottage, unwilling to spend another winter isolated in the bush, while Attila worked long days, six days a week. I missed Attila like crazy, but didn’t have cabin fever once, so I knew that I wasn’t going to spend another winter virtually alone in the bush. Attila, after that living apart, agreed that moving to Mist Cottage was the right thing to do, so our Country House went on the market for the third year in a row, and it finally sold, giving us two weeks notice to move. So in the autumn of 2015 Attila and I packed up our belongings, rented two trucks, and moved our belongings to Mist Cottage. It was was downsizing on steroids. Attila was living in Tank, back at his old job near the Country House, hoping to find work near Mist Cottage. After a number of weeks of living … Continue reading →