Category Archives: Weather, Seasons, & Celebrations

Obligatory Vacation Roundup

I’m so tired. It’s partially the post-vacation Fibro Strikes Back effect, and partly the horribly oppressive weather. It takes so much energy to think, let alone move.

Right. So we left for Nova Scotia on Saturday August 1, on the highway out of the city around 9:00. I have to say that the drives at either end of the trip were spectacular. Excellent weather, a minimum of traffic, and the very best kind of company in the car itself. There was almost (almost!) enough room for the cello in the trunk. There very well might have been if I already had the 7/8 soft case my luthier has on back order for me (we’re switching the current 4/4 case for it).

I’d have to check my Twitter feed for details about the drives, but really, it’s enough to say that they were remarkably smooth and quick. Well, except for the horrendous traffic around Drummondville. There had been some kind of accident, bad enough that three sets of flares had burned down by the time we passed the location, and we drove at 10 kph for an hour along with countless other people. (I’m not kidding. I wish I was.) We live in a stunningly beautiful country, and I am reminded of this every time we drive through the Saguenay region on the way to the New Brunswick border. The highway travels right along the river, and there are small mountains that look like sleeping dragons (and yes, every time we drive through the area I think there must be a story in that somehow, “The Sleeping Dragons of the Saguenay”).

We tried to stop in Grand Falls for the night but the hotels were full, so we called ahead to Woodstock and stayed there. The boy was enchanted with the motel room we got, which had a small room off the main room. “This is my room?” he said as we walked in, “It’s… aweshome.” This was his first experience with hotels, and we were prepared for it to go badly, but he slept very well indeed. I brought my laptop and we watched some Animaniacs before bed, which he thought very exciting too. All along the trip he told people that he was headed for the ocean, to put his feet in it.

We drove to Mahone Bay the next day and got there around 3:30. My mother had called while we were on the road and said that all the cousins were down and there would be fifteen people for dinner at the cottage that night. I said, “Um, sure.” (My mother was also down on vacation, staying with my aunt.) When we arrived the cottage was empty, thank goodness, and so HRH unloaded while I took the boy right down to the ocean. We took off our shoes and without any hesitation he waded right in and kept going, soaking his clothes. We leaned over and dipped our fingers in and then touched them to our tongues, and he paused for a moment and said critically, “Not bad… I like it!” (We’d already warned him about not drinking it, but tasting was important.) The air was so fresh.

Everyone showed up (and I mean everyone: all my cousins but one, everyone’s progeny, three generations of people) and it was so much fun. I was slightly leery of that many people at once right at the beginning of the stay, but it was fabulous. We all picked up right where we left off the summer we went down for Ceri and Scott’s wedding eight years ago, all at ease with one another and parenting everyone else’s kids in the ocean from the deck, and drinking and nibbling and laughing. The boy threw himself into his generation of cousins with great glee, running around in the ocean and climbing on rocks with them. I always forget how much I love this branch of my family, how at ease I am with them. My cousin currently located in Hamilton came down with his family too, and he took all the kids out in the fishing boat. The boy was a bit traumatized when the boat turned and passed the cottage, as he thought they were coming back, but he heroically held on and didn’t burst into tears till we lifted him out of the boat and he clung to me, sobbing, “I missed you! I wanted you there!”

The next morning it rained, but that was fine; the boy got to explore the cottage. Over the week it rained mostly at night, with lovely clear days; absolutely perfect vacation weather. The boy went into the ocean every single day. When the rain cleared a bit we picked my mother up and drove to Lunenburg to see the ships and the fisheries museum, and we had lunch (a nice mix of seafood appetizers for Mum and I, fish and chips for HRH; the boy had chicken, as he had pretty much everywhere). I think we went to my aunt’s house to have dinner with my aunt and mother that evening, and the boy got to spend time with a ten-year-old cousin visiting from Ottawa to do a two-week sailing course. (Yeah; lots of family in and out and about. There were logistic problems a couple of days before we arrived, we heard.)

Tuesday was our in-town day, where we parked in the middle of the village and walked to all the shops we wanted to visit, then stocked up on groceries for the stay. We went to the candy store to buy fudge (the creamiest fudge I have had from any shop, ever!), sighed over Birdsall-Worthington Pottery, visited Amos Pewter where the boy watched a craftsman make a beautiful spun bowl (we bought a triple maple leaf ornament for the Yule tree, and I bought a lovely pair of earrings), and I went into Have a Yarn, which was an absolutely lovely shop. The salesgirl gave me a card for someone in Lunenburg who spins and sells stuff but we’d already made our trip to Lunenburg; next time, I guess. I finally cracked and bought fibre to spin, even though my wheel hasn’t arrived yet: two 50gm braids of mulberry/heather Blue-Face Leicester sliver and one of green/brown merino. I also picked up a couple of packages of wool fibre seconds from Brigg & Little to mess about with, as they were only three dollars each. It’s clean but it still has a bit of vegetable matter in it and noils here and there. I tried to comb it yesterday, but I need cards because it’s shorter than I thought. (I has a stash! Oh noe!)

Wednesday we went to Ross Farm, a place I’d visited often as a child. The biggest attraction for the boy was the litter of barn kittens who were pouncing around, although he did climb on the fence to talk to the horse, talked to the chickens for a while, ran around the barn with the carriages and wagons with interest, and showed me a spinning wheel in the main house with great enthusiasm. That night we had my mother over for dinner, and we prepped and ate five pounds of mussels and six pounds of local lobster. It was delicious, and dirt cheap. The boy was very interested in the lobsters while they were alive and in the process of boiling them on a fire HRH made on the beach, but wasn’t as enthusiastic about eating them. We roasted marshmallows over the coals once the rest of us had eaten our fill, though, and that was very exciting. It was wonderful to have my mother there while we were in Nova Scotia.

I’d wibbled about buying the pewter pendant that matched my earrings, and so I went back on Thursday evening to buy it on our way to meet my aunt at the pub. I stopped wearing a necklace when the boy was born and lately I’ve wanted to start wearing one again, but none of my symbolic jewelery has felt right, my amber is all too big for everyday wear, and my more expensive stuff isn’t practical. I’ve strung the pendant on my short white gold chain, and it feels lovely.

A coupe of days into the stay I poked through the CDs in the basket by the resident CD player, and wondered if someone had stocked them just for me. Among them were a Joshua Bell album, an early Yo-Yo Ma/Emmanuel Ax recording of the first two Beethoven cello sonatas, and a three-disc set of Jacqueline du Pre material. The third (called ‘Recital’) saw a lot of play. And because it was so damn quiet at the cottage, we could leave all the windows and doors open and hear the music drifting down to the beach. Heaven. I really missed the cello; I spent most of my cottage time reading instead. (HRH has promised to build me a Prakitcello for future trips!)

The drive home was even shorter than the drive there somehow, even accounting for the hour delay due to the accident at Drummondville on the way. We made it all the way to Edmunston the first day by four-thirty, and were home early afternoon on Saturday August 8.

The boy loved it all. He happily spent hours standing in the water, relocating handfuls of seaweed or rocks to different places. He played with sticks, water pistols, and the hammock. We saw little fish, all manner of waterfowl and shore birds, crabs, plenty of winkles and snails. HRH took him out in the canoe a couple of times. He slept hard and well every night, was awesome in the car, and was one of the reasons this trip was such a success. He has already decided that we’re going back next year, and has told us several stories where he packs up his friends and extended family and takes them all to Newfoundland (“You mean Nova Scotia,” we correct him every time) to put their toes in the ocean. And really? It’s not to hard to twist our arms. If we don’t go back next year, then certainly the year after that.

Back!

We returned about an hour ago from our trip to Nova Scotia. We are tired but happy, freckled or lightly tanned, but not burned. The weather was pretty much perfect the entire time. The boy adores the ocean, as is proper. The house is in great shape and the cats don’t appear to hate us, thanks to Blade’s good care.

Twitter kept me sane in the car, even though I couldn’t read what other people were saying in response to my updates.

Laundry has already begun. Now, a belated lunch.

Accomplished

Two chapters edited of the proposal, no time wasted on research about roving or wheels, practically no checking of LJ and RSS feeds.

Of, course, this is because I finally got around to watching The Guild today. But it worked. And it felt more active than frequent breaks to check news and stuff.

I’ve really been enjoying this editing job. I realised today that I am a total editing geek, because I like taking someone’s writing and focusing and refining it to be clear and tight. Cut those excess words! Put the important words where they get more attention in the sentence! Sharpen that point!

Yeah. I’m lame.

I did some basic planning for the NS trip this morning too. Bless Ceri, who said, “Why don’t you just hit a visitor’s information bureau when you get to the end of your rope and they can help you find inexpensive accommodation for the night? That’s what we did when we moved.” This takes piles of pressure off me to find three or more potential places to stop and stay throughout New Brunswick, depending on when we absolutely cannot be in the car any longer. Chances are very good they’ll be able to find a motel cheaper than the ones I’ve been able to find (because gack, too expensive, thanks). So instead I collated all the visitors centres along the route. Heh. It occurs to me that this what we did when we honeymooned in Scotland, and if we can do it in a foreign country we can do it in our own. I also checked to see if there was a yarn store where we’re staying, and what do you know, there is. Also heh. Their web page didn’t say they sold roving, but they deal with a bunch of local sheep farms, so they might have a few.

Yesterday I experienced a fibro/migraine teamup that knocked me flat halfway through the day. Urg. Fortunately today I am much better. Tomorrow I need to make a list of local places to visit while on vacation, and start a list of what to pack. I’m having lunch out with MLG and Paze, and then making my grand trek to the Bibliotheque nationale to get my subscriber card and borrow all fifteen (which is my max) books on spinning.

In weather-related news, summer has finally arrived: It’s finally hot enough to make chocolate kind of squishy if not stored in the fridge. Now if the dozens upon dozens of green tomatoes in the garden would just ripen, I would be thrilled.

Dinner!

Another Vague Weekend Roundup

The humidity is melting my brain.

Friday afternoon HRH came home early and announced that he was taking me out to lunch, so we checked to see if our favourite sushi spot was still open for lunch (it was!) and headed out for a light sushi nibble. We shared a salad and had just enough sushi to make us feel fabulous. We hit two bookstores (one had a lineup directly from hell so we went to the other for the gift we wanted), did groceries, picked up what we needed at the pharmacy, and then had a stop at home before collecting the boy, who had spent a fabulous day with friends he hadn’t seen in a while. When the boy went to bed I put the mute on the cello and played for a while. Just as I feared, the cello doesn’t come to mind very often now that lessons are on hold for the summer; I play once or twice a week and that’s all. But I’m working through Mooney’s Position Pieces book one, and on some independent stuff too.

On Saturday HRH was supposed to hit Mousme‘s place to continue painting while she was away for the weekend but there was a key kerfuffle, so while he waited by the phone the boy and I took the bus to the fabric store to buy some velveteen to cover the Styrofoam inserts HRH had carved for the hard cello case. The bus trip was fun, except for the tears that made an appearance when we got off the bus ( “But I don’t want to get off the bus — I want to get back on that bus! I don’t want to take a different bus home!” What the hey? Good grief.) We found some really nice taupe/grey velveteen on the bargain shelves and brought it home. We had a brand new bus on the trip back, and the boy charged right to the back seat and had a blast swinging his legs and jabbering about how excited Dada would be to know we had been on one of the new buses, with the new seats and the new paint!

After his nap he cheerfully suggested, “I know! Let’s play Rock Band!” and so I tried the drums for the first time ever. Holy nasty timing on the bass pedal. Give me the bass guitar back, please. Then we went out for ice cream, which was as hilarious as usual because the boy always gets chocolate and his face is a mess during and after the experience. Then we walked to the fruit stand nearby and picked up a tray of mixed berries, and stuffed ourselves on them during the drive home along the Lakeshore. We put the boy in his bathing suit and turned the sprinkler on in the back, and he soaked himself and screamed quite happily. (Placing the sprinkler so it drenches the slide? Priceless.) I baked two loaves of bread, and we ate one in entirety for dinner. Ice cream, fresh local berries, homemade bread: I count this a winner of a summer weekend dinner, personally.

Once the boy was in bed I cut out, fitted, pinned, and sewed the velveteen covers for the cello case inserts, and they’re essentially done except for the final handstitching of the end flaps. (I also need to trim and reglue the existing velveteen lining where HRH took out the built-in curves that were interfering with the 7/8’s position, but that’s cosmetic.) There was Sewing Machine Dramah where it refused to work, producing loops and snarls and jams instead of the smooth line I needed, and the Internet was useless; I have no idea where my manual is, and I couldn’t find one online. Nothing I did worked, not adjusting bobbin tension, not adjusting spool tension, not rethreading repeatedly, not changing bobbin thread, not changing the spool thread, not cleaning, not waving my hands over it and chanting mystical gibberish. Not until I did it all over again in a different order, that is, and magically the problem vanished. I did a thorough cleaning, and that may have been a factor; evidently the last major thing I sewed on it was HRH’s Van Helsing coat, because holy cats, the amount of black fluff inside it. Oh no, hang on; I sewed and then tore apart and remade a kick-ass black mock suede corset for band after we moved in; that’s what it all is. I hang my head in shame for not cleaning the machine properly afterward. I must admit to essentially leaving it alone for four years, though. I did some sachets on it, hemmed a baby sling, and made curtains for the boy’s room, but that’s pretty much been the extent of my sewing aside from the corset since we moved and the boy was born. Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I missed sewing while I worked on the inset covers. One of the things I did to distract the boy from his tears when we got to the fabric store was take him to the catalogues to look through the costumes, and he found a standard superhero pattern and declared that wanted to be the Flash for Halloween. I told him that it was duly noted and we’d revisit the notion in September (which is five weeks from now, WHERE DID THE SUMMER YEAR GO). We never did get around to making the lovely little pirate coat for which I gathered all the materials and accessories a couple of years ago; he wanted to be a superhero or an engineer instead. Maybe this year he’ll actually let me sew something for him.

Sunday morning we dropped HRH at Mousme’s house so he could strip wallpaper and paint her bedroom. The boy and I had a lovely morning out and about, and everything was spectacular until nap time, when he had a tearful meltdown about no, not needing a rest, really. Then it was about how noisy his room was and it was quieter outside it so he’d sleep out there (no), and then it was about wanting to keep me company while I worked (also no). I finally got him into our bed and snuggled him until he passed out an hour and a half after he usually does, and he slept for an hour before we left to pick up HRH. We had tacos for dinner followed by freshly made chocolate ice cream, then the boy had his bath and went to bed without a problem. There were some impressive thunderstorms that went through last night, which unfortunately necessitated closing the bedroom window, which faces west. If we weren’t going to NS soon I’d have HRH put the air conditioner in, just to take some of the damp out of the air. It’s not that it’s hot; it’s just wet all the time, and everything smells musty.

Okay, I need to go lie down. The day’s work is done, and despite being adequately hydrated and fed I’m dizzy and kind of flopsy. I knew this wouldn’t be a good fibro day after two nights of broken and low-quality sleep, but I just got up to answer the phone and am having more difficulty than I expected. I guess it’s reading or staring into space for the rest of the day.

Weekend Roundup, Birthday Edition

What a lovely weekend!

Saturday HRH went over to his parents’ house and helped his dad build the new back deck until they got rained out. The boy and I lazed around the house all morning: he watched the fifth and final disc of the first season of the Animaniacs, while I read and surfed online. HRH came home halfway through the boy’s nap once it had started to rain, and wow, did it ever rain for the rest of the day! We sat on the back doorstep and watched the wicked storms roll in, and when it began to be too wet back there we opened the front living room wall living room patio doors and sat there watching the rain pound the road and the huge maple tree whip around in the high winds. HRH had to go downstairs and rescue the garage from flooding, as the drain at the base of the driveway had blocked with dirt and maple keys. It was fabulous storm, and watching it was a lot of fun, too. At one point the thunder rolled and Liam clapped, then said, “That’s the big man in the sky with his hammer!” HRH turned to me and said with deep satisfaction, “My place in Valhalla is now assured.” The storm’s damage was impressive, including flooded highways that created miserable traffic problems that we saw but fortunately didn’t have to deal with, as we drove in the opposite direction that night.

HRH’s parents arrived at five, and I opened my birthday gifts from both sets of parents because the boy was nearly beside himself with excitement wondering what was in them. My parents had given me a copy of The Cello Suites (the recent book by a Montreal journalist, not a recording, because I have at least three four five of the latter) and a fabulous tiny micro-grater, while HRH’s parents gave me a lovely candle and money to put toward whatever I liked. Then HRH and I headed out to meet Ceri and Scott for a sushi dinner that had been planned for about four months. We ate fabulously delicious sushi, and then discussed the merits of moving on to a place like Rockaberry’s for dessert versus returning to their place to play Rock Band. The discussion didn’t last long: Rock Band it was! We played for a good couple of hours and then drove home in yet another storm in order to release HRH’s parents from babysitting the boy, so they could go home before the storm got any worse.

Sunday morning they tried to let me sleep in but the boy was too excited about the day. “Do you know what your presents are? Will they be surprises?” he kept sneaking in to my room to whisper. We went back to HRH’s parents’ house so HRH could help his dad finish the deck that had been rained out the day before, and the boy, his Grandma and I went out to pick up groceries. Once back home, the boy napped while HRH went out to pick up ice and my not-so-secret-by-that-point birthday present, and I made a Thai noodle salad for the small birthday picnic I’d planned.

One of the intangible birthday gifts I received came during my weekly phone call with my mother. My parents had flown out to Vancouver to visit with my grandmother last week, while they were there they took Gran out to the library. They set her up at a computer, put a set of headphones on her, and my dad cued up the URLs to some of the videos taken at the Canada Day concert. It didn’t quite sink in for her until my dad moved the cursor to point at me in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, at which point she exclaimed quite loudly (she is rather deaf and had headphones on, after all). Fortunately, the people around her in the library were amused rather than upset. Mum says Gran was quite overcome and couldn’t stop talking about it. “I knew she was in an orchestra, but I had no idea it was like that,” she apparently said. I’m just thrilled that she finally got a chance to see and hear a concert, and I’m especially pleased that it was this particular performance. One of the ideas behind the MiniDisc player was to send her some sort of recording, but she doesn’t have a CD player or a computer, and I have no way to record it into cassettes (if she even has a cassette deck any more), and as we saw on Canada Day, the MiniDisc may not be capable of handling the level of music produced by the orchestra. The video was a much more personal way of sharing it with her. So once again, I’m thankful that the HD video was made.

We packed for the picnic, and on the way to the park we stopped to pick up balloons, as the boy says all birthdays require balloons. Unfortunately, the wind was so strong that half an hour after we arrived they were tugged loose from the picnic backpack to which we’d attached them, and they rose to tangle in the branches of the huge poplar tree under which we sat. It was pretty, but not as pretty as having them right there with us, and rather put paid to my plan of sending them home with the kids in attendance. Everyone had made some kind of salad to share, which was terribly amusing, but they were all very different: pasta salad, strawberry/walnut/spinach salad, two-potato and corn salad, my Thai noodle salad, and I think I’m missing one. It was a light and refreshing meal. I didn’t bake a cake this year; instead, we’d bought one that morning that was nice and light and not too sweet. There were nine adults and three kids, which made for a small and relaxed group. Pasley, Jeff and the girls gave me a lovely amber-coloured beaded necklace with a photo pendant of an owl on it (and a moon on the other side!) and a set of earrings to match, and Devon drew me a really excellent card of me playing my cello.

We wrapped everything up around six, and came home. I played with the iPod Touch that HRH and Meallanmouse had given me and thanks to the free wifi network nearby downloaded a couple of free apps (Twitterrific and Stanza being the ones I am the most excited about) and then several free e-books. (A Room With a View! Howards End! Persuasion! Sense & Sensibility! Pride & Prejudice! Jane Eyre! The Prisoner of Zenda! And just to blow the curve, His Majesty’s Dragon!) Now I have lots of my favourite books with me all the time, and I will never be caught without something to read again. This makes me disgustingly gleeful, and also smug. I can’t get over how crisp and clear the screen is, how easy it is to read on it, and how accurate the on-screen keyboard is. Liam wandered into my office after his nap yesterday and said, “What’s that?” “It’s, um, like a little computer that plays music and I can read books on it, too,” I said. He climbed on my lap and watched me tap my way through some things, then asked if he could try it. I pulled up Notes for him and said, “Why don’t you try typing your name?” He hunted and pecked, and again I was amazed at how accurate the keyboard was, even for preschool fingers. He slipped off my lap and left my office with the Touch, saying, “I’ll bring this back to you when I’m finished with it.” I found him in the living room typing things. He’d figured out that if he turned it so that the screen was landscape instead of portrait, the keyboard enlarged. He’d also found something that made a terrible buzzing sound, so I rescued it before he could do something irreparable to it. The Touch is currently decked out in the cartoon skulls and bones skin that Meallanmouse had on it, which amuses me because it is so cute and so punk at the same time. “Does the Touch have a name yet?” Ceri asked me this morning. “At the moment it is called the YAY NEW TOY, all in caps,” I replied.

The boy developed a cold last Thursday evening, which means he got it at school at the beginning of last week. It’s not bad, but I have it now too, of course. Which, apart from the sad loss of the lovely balloons, was the only down side to the weekend. Well, I would have liked to have seen HRH some more, but we did get out on Saturday night, and that was absolutely wonderful. And tonight’s meeting has been cancelled, so perhaps we will be able to play some more Rock Band together. (It will come as a surprise to absolutely no one to know that I hold the bass like a cello because it’s easier on my hands and arms. This is fine in the Wii version because the upright position triggers overdrive as soon as the option is available, but the Xbox wants me to move the bass to trigger it and won’t recognise the left/down motion I make or the return to upright, so all that lovely energy was wasted. Scott told me to use the Select button, which works very well instead, except I need to time it properly so I don’t start missing notes.)

So all in all, the birthday weekend was very pleasant indeed. It was relatively low-key, and I have a new toy whose code name is YAY NEW TOY, and there is a piece of cake left in the fridge for me. I have a pile of new music by The Donnas, courtesy of Ceri, to speed me along my day of work. And my birthday celebration continues throughout the week, what with the Mac Mini appointment Tuesday night, and my local family birthday dinner this coming Saturday night!

The Mac Transition Begins; Or, SQUEE!!!

HRH just handed me a gift bag. While the boy napped and I made Thai noodle salad, he’d gone out to buy ice for the cooler and what he called “a thick card.”

Inside the bag was a joint gift from Meallanmouse and himself: an iPod Touch! It’s Meallanmouse’s original Touch, which was replaced by her new iPhone. And as I’d been looking for a secondhand iTouch to use as an e-book reader, and she was going to sell hers, well, the stars aligned and I have a new toy!

(“Don’t you want me to open it at the picnic this afternoon?” I said when he handed it to me. “No, I want you to open it now to have enough time to play with it before we head out,” he said.)

Scott showed me his Touch at dinner last night, and it further cemented my resolution to get one. Hurrah for things going excitingly well and friends conspiring! And further to the stars-aligning thing, I found a classified listing for someone selling a few-months-old top-model Mac Mini with eighteen months of warranty left on it, for less than the base model I was saving up to buy new. We talked, we clicked, and he took his ad down. HRH and I are heading out Tuesday night to look it over and pick it up if all is as it should be. And so my transition to Mac will be complete! (Once we ascertain that my ergo keyboard and my compact mouse are recognized by the Mac, that is. If they’re not HRH will bring me an Apple set home from work, as they have boxes of used ones taking up space.) I am resisting my desire to connect the Touch to my computer and start loading it with exciting things, because I don’t want to brick it. I’m waiting for the Mac Mini, under the admittedly naive belief that two Apple products will play together better than an Apple and a PC.

Now I am looking out the window disapprovingly at the gathering clouds. We’re meeting a small number of friends at the park for a picnic, and if it rains I will be very displeased indeed. Especially since I have enough Thai noodle salad here to feed a small army. Also, if I cannot show off my shiny new toy I will pout.