It’s Wonderful

Today was the first day of getting the library off the ground at the junior high and everyone was so wonderful! And so grateful. People were thanking me for coming and filling in and saying how nice it was for me to be there. And it was really nice. I don’t think I’ve ever had that many people be thankful and wonderful like that. It was just really sweet. It totally made my week!

It was really fun too. It was a challenge getting my mind around the problems of a new library where there were only the odd hints here and there on how things were done as the previous librarian had trained someone before she quit and therefore didn’t leave me lists of how-to. (The new hiree ended up moving over the summer, hence me stepping in to get things going.)

Being in the library, being my own boss (sort of) made me miss steering the ol’ school library ship. I’m not going to give up being a stay at home mom, but it was a lot of fun being in there today. Something I may go back to in a few years. (In fact, I was disappointed a bit to hear that someone had already been hired, so I’ll only be there for a few days to help her get on her feet before going.)

It is just such a great staff full of wonderful, helpful people. It was fun.

Thanks, guys! Here’s to you!

Camping Expedition

Went to Big Knife Provincial Park for a little get-your-feet-wet camping expedition with the little one. Sure was nice to go back to the familiar, quiet place. I’ve got a lot of fond camping memories from camping there with my hubby back ‘in the day’.

I had been a bit concerned that we might get there and find that there were no tent spots left–it being later in the day on a Friday (as well as being the best weather of the week). When we had tented here in the past, it was usually mid-week and I wasn’t sure what to expect on the weekend.

Anyway, we got to choose our own site and walked through them all, (lovely, lovely, quiet treed area) because we were the only ones there for the tenting area. Craziness! The place is like a secret camping nugget of wonderfulness. (There is even a wading pool, river, hiking/walking paths, a park as well as the usual basic camping amenities.)

As we were hauling stuff from our car to our tent site (quite separated from the RV section), some people walked by and I overheard one of the ladies saying that it was a shame that they didn’t take a bunch of the trees out of the under-used tenting area and make it an RV area as it was so nice and peaceful (and treed).

Some people don’t get it, do they? What does she think that the RV area used to look like?

Anyway, by morning there were four tent sites occupied. I say ‘by morning’ as one group came in the dark and although shining their headlights into the bush to see enough to set-up, they were very courteous. As was the other, basically, nonexistent group.

But then there was this guy who road up on his bicycle. I was like, ‘cool’. And of course felt totally unworthy because although tenting (and nobody in Alberta tents anymore) we had driven our car to the campground. (Of course. Like I’m going to haul all our camping gear and our daughter 140km.) But then I heard his cell phone ringing and later saw he was eating a huge bag of Cheesies. Now, I felt like he was in fact human and I might be still worthy after all. Whew!

And then his ‘girlfriend’ arrived. And talked all night. Yes, ALL night. Impressive, really. Occasionally she made forays past our site in the middle of the night on her way to the parking lot wearing her super loud slappy flipflops. Anyway, whatever. Why did she feel the need to run her vehicle at 3:30 a.m. for a few minutes? Dunno. (By then dude over in the RV section has ceased serenading the valley with his generator. So maybe she thought it was too quiet–I mean the coyotes were yet to start howling and the squirrels had stopped scolding us and had gone to bed. So it was pretty peaceful.) I think others arrived at their site too at some point after we went to bed.

Evidently, Flipflop Girl hadn’t seen a blue LED flashlight before as when I stumbled through the dark past her site at 5:30 a.m. en route to the outhouse with my daughter, she thought I was an alien.

Yes, an alien.

“Is that an alien?” she says in a stage whisper sounding entranced. “Hey alien do you have a lighter?” she calls out.
“No,” I say flatly, continuing to carry my daughter past her site.
“Really?”
“No.”
“How about a cigarette?”

By then I was back at my site, certain that my daughter would wake up in another hour ready for her day and while Alien Girlfriend Lady slept (she did sleep, right?), we’d happily make as much noise talking and laughing as possible without being totally transparent in our maliciousness.

But, we slept in.

I was saved from my malicious fantasies.

And I was really tired this morning. I forgot how hard the ground was to sleep on. No nice layer of memory foam to ease the weight off my hips. But whatever. We went camping! And had lots of fun! I forgot how good food is cooked over a fire. Like marshmallows! Mmmm.

Later…

Got home so hubby could help a friend build a fence. And now, I have a job. Well, one that pays. I’ll be opening up the library for my hubby’s old school–just until a new librarian is found. Kinda cool! I’m looking forward to it, but I’m already worried about how I’m going to balance things–like cooking and grocery shopping and all that second shift stuff. Suddenly I’ll have a lot less free time and freedom to get all these things done as I feel like it. But at the same time, I’m really looking forward to it and am already worrying that a new librarian will be found right away and I’ll have to hand over the reins just as I get comfy with them. Crazy isn’t it. I want it, but at the same time I don’t.

Oh, such conflicting feelings!

Chores

Listening to: If I had a Million Dollars~Barenaked Ladies

I have so many things to do around the house. Lots of little projects. Yet, I have no to very little interest in doing them. What is up with that? At the cottage I did tons. I don’t know. It’s like at some else’s house, doing the dishes is always way more fun. Why is that? Cleaning at the cottage doesn’t seem the same mundane chore. I still don’t enjoy it, but it isn’t the same boring torture as at home. Is it because at home I get distracted by projects and bits of ‘important’ papers that I don’t know what to do with?

I mean, even climbing up on the roof to scrape of over a hundred years worth of paint and then apply two new layers of paint on the windows was entertaining. ???

Speaking of which, yesterday I finished unpacking. There is always the bits of stuff in the bottom of the suitcase when you return that you don’t know what to do with. Like acorns. So now I have a stack of stuff that I don’t know what to do with on my desk and the bag is sitting on the floor downstairs because it feels like ‘too much work’ to open the closet door and stuff it on the shelf with the other bags.

Anyway, at the cottage I did tons of stuff like dig new logs into the path, then rake the path and dig the crud out from around the rocks and pull out trees and whatnot. And it was an adventure. Yet, in my front yard, I have holes that the bobcat left during the tree incident from this spring. Did I fix the holes right then when I had the dirt and shovel and all that? Noooooo…the holes are still there and looking rather sad from the hot summer. Do I really want to tackle it now? No. It feels like a lot of work, when in reality it might take half an hour.

So, what is up with all this? I don’t get it. It must be some weird law to do with doing your own chores. (I mean, I went and put in someone else’s sidewalk blocks instead of doing my own chores the other month. I think I might be cracked.)

Breaking News: Computer Transforms into Fury Beast and Consumes Unsuspecting Owner

Cats, they’ll love you and miss you when nobody else will.

I can barely type my cats are crowding me so much. One is curled up and pressing into my leg, the other one is actually perched on my right arm. He’s purring too. Weird. He’s usually a lot more aloof. I guess they missed me. Unfortunately, they are making my keyboard and screen super fury. Agh! My computer is turning into a signing fury beast! (It sounds a lot like Jennifer Warnes.)

It is raining, raining, raining.

Thinking of joining a writing association, but how do you ever pick one? They are sound good…or conversely, not what I am looking for. Choices, choices, choices.

To only have my foot in the door.

Argh! My fury computer has come alive and is eating me…

Another Ten Months

Hubby is back at work today. Another ten months of the same. And it looks boring to me today. So much stretched out in front of me. And I don’t know what I am going to do. Okay, I do, but it all seems so discouraging. Maybe I am just bored. I feel the pressure to be…something. I have projects to do, but I don’t feel like doing them. I guess it is the crossroads feeling again. (Still.)

Everything is so repetitive. Grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, breathing, sleeping, coming up against walls. Having to repeat myself over and over and over…

Later…

You know what I hate? I hate 50 dollar bills. I don’t hate money, don’t get me wrong. But I hate those big ol’ red bills. I dread spending them. I don’t hate buying things, I hate handing over the fifty. I feel like I am a pretender. A big bucks girl pretender. But what I really dread? When they scan the bill under their counterfeit bill scanner. I feel like such a criminal.

I also hate sorting recycling. I used to pay ten bucks a month for someone to sort it and take it away each week. Now, I no longer have that service. Now, I have an overflowing recycle bin and at least one grumpy mood that lasts up to half an hour at least once a month that consists of a lot of cursing under my breath.

Coming Home

When I travel, I always dream about finding a place to buy there. Especially if we are on the waterfront. To be able to push our canoe into the water for an early morning paddle. Swimming anytime. <sigh>

In fact, as the small town that we currently resides turns more frantic, more ‘consume, consume, consume’, we find ourselves seriously considering the idea of selling our house and using the equity to buy and live in a truck and camper for a year as we putter across this great big country, searching for a new laid back town that has the Earth in its heart. But, I am getting ahead of myself. This blog entry is about our house. And how much I love our house.

So, I seem to love where I am staying, and then I come home. And I find that I DO love where we live. (I mean, nowhere is perfect, but this is pretty darn close.) I love our house. I love its smell. I love the fact that everything is ours and works the way we want it to. It is our own little sanctuary and it is home. And I never really realized how much I love our new house. Doors open and close. There is lots of light. There is a shower. I find myself at 31, spoiled. I don’t want to go back to doors and windows that don’t open and close properly. It’s strange but that seems to be a big thing in my world. I am already tired of doors and windows and cabinets that don’t work properly. I wonder why? I am generally pretty good at roughing it. I mean, at the cottage, I only had an actual soap down three or so times in ten days. (Swimming everyday helps.) Mouse droppings everywhere and spiders crawling around doesn’t faze me.

So, am I confused about where I want to live? Yes. Have I felt like I am at a cross-roads my whole life? Yes. Right now, I think we need to live here another year, maybe two before we adventure away. The timing isn’t right to move. And that is all I know.

Side thought: Vanilla Oreos dipped in green tea sounds weird, but totally rocks.

What I am a sucker for: Ice cream on sale.

Seat Assignment

We’re on the plane and I’m watching ‘Spiderman 3′. How cool is that? Sometimes you can catch a flight that has the personal TV thing on the seat in front of you. Then everyone can watch whatever they want. Very cool. Sometimes, they really do use technology for the good of everyone. Plus, I won’t have to rent Spidey 3. Or ‘Next’. Saw that one on the way out. Cool twist on the action movie. It has Nicholas Cage and is very cool. I probably wouldn’t have rented it, but it was great. One of the better ones I’ve seen lately. And funny, because I usually don’t really care for movies I see on planes. It is like I can’t quite get into it or something. Or because the sound quality sucks so bad that I usually miss a lot and have to concentrate to get what I do.

Riddle me this: they can manage this technology feat of independent on-demand TV and music on Air Canada, yet they can’t seem to find themselves a program that books seats properly. How is that? It is strange if you think about it, isn’t it? I mean, you just need someone with some logic and programming skills, and voila!–less headaches for the flight attendants. (And the passengers.)

See, the reason I mention this, is this: we booked our flights online and there is a drop down menu for if you are traveling with a child. (Which of course, we checked off.)

Little note: children cannot sit in emergency seat rows.

And despite us giving them the info they needed, they assigned us seats in the emergency exit row. So, naturally, a lot of shuffling then occurred. Why ask if we are traveling with children if they aren’t going to make the necessary accommodations as a result?

And the strange thing is that this sort of thing seems to happen frequently. Once I was seated separately from my three-year-old and so they had to do some shuffling. Another time or two we were placed (and moved) in the emergency exit row. On this flight, the lady across from us paid EXTRA to ensure that she and her family were all seated together. Which they weren’t. They were refunded their money, but I mean, is it because they are trying to accommodate everyone on where they want to sit on the plane? Like what is happening to the info that they gather? Is it like the recycling program that they used to have in Yellowknife? (They collected the sorted recycling then took it to the dump because it was too expensive to transport out to a recycling facility.)

When I am not in the emergency row, I always seem to be at the back (like as in the last two or three rows) which is annoying. (Maybe sometimes they take in the child factor and try and stick us at the back because of it.) I don’t know why it bugs me being way at the back. Someone said it is the safest. Is it? Really if the plane crashes, is there a ‘safest’ spot?

Once I was so far back in the plane, I couldn’t even recline my seat because of the wall behind me. (It was the ‘Air Miles Seat’, I think. And the lady beside me was reading the same Grisham book as me, but she didn’t think that was as weird and cool as I did. Maybe she checked her sense of humour or they confiscated it at security.) And then there was the time last month that by the time they got to the back of the plane where we were seated, they had run out of food. That was just friggin’ great. And it was suppertime. And we were hungry.

And grandma got to sit in the emergency aisle. And so did grandpa. And we were at the back starving.

Later…

Still watching Spiderman 3…

Sometimes life is just hard. (Or at least if you are Peter Parker and have an alien amplifying your aggression.)

But like Aunt May (Spidey’s aunt) says, sometimes you have to start by forgiving yourself.

Again With the Rain

It rained during today’s rescue mission. It is my own personal outboard curse.

Unrelated, yet sort of related: my brother left in his $500 car, two active young children, and estranged-but-working-on-getting-back-together wife for their eleven hour drive home. Halfway there, they broke down. (Late at night.)

So this time, he got to have the vehicular adventure.

I can share. In fact, sometimes, I like to share.

Anyway, the kids LOVED it, because they got to ride in the tow truck, sleep in a hotel, eat breakfast in bed, watch Sponge Bob and go to Chuck E Cheese which was conveniently located next door to the shop, ride in a rental car and undoubtedly learn a few new, choice, four-letter words.

So after a five hour wait, the shop ‘guessed’ what was wrong with the car as they didn’t have the correct diagnostic equipment. So, they charged my brother $80 for their ‘timely’ guess, which was incorrect. He decided to have it towed to another shop who had the problem diagnosed and fixed within an hour. By then, they were on the road in the rental car as both adults were supposed to be at work (which they so obviously weren’t).

Anyway, he made it home and later took the trek back to get the car and return the rental. All is well. For now.

And we made it safely around in our vehicles–although I just about got lost in the woods (not really) trying to shortcut my way to the cottage along a road that was supposed to be there according to a map from 1902. Yeah, no road. Not even sure if it ever even went in. I was okay, but the bear scat and remnants of hobo camps and the fact that it took me forever to make my way through the tall junipers that hid the uneven ground, had me a bit freaked at times. Basically, I crashed and did controlled falling through the woods. And just about came out in someone’s back yard. But I didn’t and I didn’t get eaten by bears or have to explain my crashing presence in a hobo camp.

Where was I? Oh yes, so vehicle adventures for me–okay. Boat adventures–cursed. Well, ‘cursed’ might be a bit strong. Let’s try…a bit bumpy? Yes, my adventures in boating were a bit bumpy… No, that’s not right either. Whatever…you get what I mean.

So, still tinkering with the outboard–the engine would sputter a bit whenever we put the cover back on. Basically, we just about had it running smoothly in time to winterize it. Okay, we did get it running well in time to winterize it. DOH! But back to the story. Hubby went puddling about in the canoe with our daughter. And the wind and current picked up and he found it hard to make his way across the river in the gusts that would push the canoe back as fast as he could paddle forward.

Once I realized that he was struggling, I went into super-duper-rescue mission mode. Read that as: took motor cover off and crossed the river. Got closeish–didn’t want to run him over with the crazy current and blowing wind. And whoosh threw him the buoyant heaving line. As it arched across the space between us, I realized, this is not going to work. So, I let go of my end. I had thought of tying it to the boat, but with an engine spinning with no cover and rocks and current and shore and traffic, my mind was busy and realized the wussy heaving line wasn’t going to make it through the wind. So, I drove closer and got to be rescue hero.

Then was the fun task of crossing the river as gusts blew the outboard off course, the sky opened up and dumped rain. And I mean, opened up. And then all the morons in their speed boats who are all trying to crowd between the channel markers all at once because of the rain. Oh yeah, and the canoe is not following me nicely. It is cutting across back and forth behind me. That had to have freaked out at least one or two other boaters. Go slow and canoe follows well, but wind blows me off course. Hmmm…such choices.

But we made it and made it look…easy? Not sure…but we did it. It was cool getting to be the rescuer. But again, what it is and the outboard, rescue missions and pouring rain? How often did it actually pour rain during the day when we were there? Pretty much whenever the outboard was involved in rescuing. At least this time the people weren’t out on their boathouse watching and analyzing like a few days earlier. I hope that they got to see the boat working. I’m sure they heard it. It is stinking loud!