Wednesday Witterings . . .

 

 

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The other morning, I looked out and there were all of these little footprints in the snow on my front porch. Just marching across the floor-boards.  I am always amazed at the tenacity of these small creatures in the winter time.  Its so cold and yet they somehow manage to live through it.  I don't know how. Its a miracle to me.

I watched a really good documentary film on YouTube the other evening. JFK Jr. and Carolyn's Wedding, the lost tapes. What an incredibly beautiful couple.  What a tragic end to what was a pair of such promising lives.  It was nice to see their wedding and how very much in love they were. 

I always was such an admirer of Jackie O. I can remember watching the funeral of President Kennedy with my mother on the television, and seeing the riderless horse, and watching little John salute the coffin as it passed. 

I would have been 8 years old. Such a memory for an 8-year-old to have. My paternal grandfather died on the same day as President Kennedy, so I am unlikely to forget. It was the first time I saw my father really cry, sobbing . . . those are moments that really stick out in a child's mind.

Anyways, I really enjoyed the documentary.  I am a person who loves documentary films.

 

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My heat pump seems to be working, however noisily. It clunks and sputters when it starts up, but then once it's going, it works well, and shoots heat off out into the room. I am grateful for that.  I still have the temperature set on my electric baseboard heaters to 15, just in case the heat pump should stop. I would not want my pipes to freeze. That can be a real nightmare.

I remember when I worked at the Manor, they had an ice machine in the larder with a spout that went out the side of the kitchen out into the courtyard. In the wintertime it would freeze and the melting water from the ice would back up into the larder and flood the floor. I would have to go outside with boiling water and pour it over the spout. A long cylinder of ice would slowly slide out onto the paving stones. Then would begin the thankless job of mopping up the floor in the larder with an old string mop and a bucket. When you have a bazillion of other things you are supposed to be doing, that is the last thing you want or need to be doing!

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As difficult as it was at times, I will always be grateful for that job.  I learned a lot when I was working there. Not about cooking. I knew all about that, but about food service and setting tables, flower arranging, etc.  I grew up in a house where we only ever used one kind of fork, a dinner fork . . .  and we used that fork for everything. Meat, fish, dessert. It was the same with spoons. We had teaspoons. I don't ever remember there being anything larger unless it was the big spoon my mother spooned stuff out with for us to eat, or the ones she used to stir things in the pots on the stove. She did have steak knives, but they only ever rarely made an appearance, and my mother never ever owned a piece of fine china.

Melmac was the china of my childhood. Not this pattern. My mother's was brown and decorated with sheaves of wheat. It came out three times a year. Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. Mom was so proud of those. 

We did not have water goblets or wine goblets, no fine silver.  These were our fine glassware.  Saved by my mother from buying mustard which came in these glasses. My sister still has them.  We must have eaten a great deal of mustard methinks. 

This is a photo of mom back in 2011 with Pumpkin and my cousin Sheri's son Sawyer. Sawyer is 12 or 13 now. I was thinking about mom this morning and about how very brave and courageous she was.  Mom was the only one in her family to venture much past the borders of the Maritime Provinces and boy did she travel, almost all the way across Canada and back again, over to Newfoundland and even across the Atlantic to live in a foreign land where she did not speak the language.  

In the early 1980's the Civil Servants went out on strike and my mother was not going to let anyone tell her she couldn't go to work. Right or wrong, she went to work anyways, and bravely crossed picket lines to go and do her job. It was very brave of her to do so. She was spat upon, her car was hammered, etc. She lived with the results of that for years afterwards with people she worked with bearing a grudge and doing things to insult and bully her, like putting animal feces into her coat pockets. 

She had views and opinions, and she was brave enough to stand up for them. When I think of her courage in going into hospital to have her leg removed . . .  and so many other ways through the years that she showed her courage and bravery and her strength of character, I am amazed by her example. I miss her every day.

 

I got a small package of things I had ordered from Susan Branch yesterday. Of course, when anything new comes into the house the cats have to investigate. Cinnamon immediately took possession of them all, making herself quite at home on top of them.  It wasn't a lot really, but she made no bones about laying all over them. She is so funny. She obviously loves Susan Branch also.

Nutmeg on the other hand was not the least concerned about the contents of the package, but more with the packaging, which he claimed right away and played with the whole rest of the day.

Yes, I am that woman who has cats on her table. No worries, I do clean the table before anyone eats on it. You have to pick which battles you are willing to fight in this life and keeping the cats off the table was one I lost early on. This is such a small house. It was impossible to keep them off it unless I was willing to constantly be jumping up and chasing them off. It didn't take me very long to tire of doing that.

The battle now is for the TV.  They either insist on laying right in front of the space that the controller needs to be able to see in order to work, or Cinnamon is trying to scratch the screen. I don't know why she does this. I chase her off every time I catch her with some very cross words about what she is doing and a spritz from the spray bottle.  A few minutes later, I will catch her up and doing the same thing all over again. She also likes to scratch the mirror on the bedroom closet door.  It's weird.  The television can be on, or it can be off. She makes no distinctions. She's a little monkey.

 

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I am a person who has always loved Valentines' Day. As a child I loved putting together my valentines to give to my classmates, making my valentine card holder to collect them in, etc. As an adult I always looked forward to the card from my special loved one and perhaps (if I was lucky) a little trinket.

 

These last few years have been hard. There is no special loved one to give me a card and a trinket and no special loved one for me to give one back to. I am not looking for one either. I am still married and not free to look. I am not interested in getting a divorce either. First of all, I am not willing to pay for one, and secondly, I am not willing to give half of what I have built up again for myself to someone who doesn't deserve any of it, community property law being what it is. 

Valentines' day has lost its joy for me in many ways. I am trying to get it back. I think I will start by making myself some unique and different hearts to pop into the bowl on my coffee table, similar to the ones I shared yesterday.  I do have lots of love in my life and I am grateful for that.  It is not that I am not.  I just miss having a special someone. I am a nurturer.  A carer. A person who gets a great deal of joy out of giving joy to others. I will have to find other ways to channel it.

 

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Although it is quite cold at the moment, there is not a lot of snow on the ground, and what there is of it looks quite dirty. I think fresh snow is quite beautiful laying there unmarked and soft, brilliant . . . white.  But it doesn't seem to take very long for us to put our dirty mark upon it and for it to lose its pristine beauty.  That is the harshest part of snow for me.  Seeing it in piles along the sides of the road with dirty streaks of gravel, mud and smut spoiling it. To me the sight of a large field, covered in snow, with perhaps a few sprigs of dry grass peeking through is a thing of great beauty. Untouched and unspoiled. I love how quiet it is immediately after a great snowfall. The air rings with the silence of it all. This is a music in and of its own, and I so enjoy the melody . . .

We were supposed to get a bit of snow today and I was dreading it. Although I am very used to driving back in Canada now, I am not overly confident and used to driving in snow, and I have that Doctor's appointment at midday to attend.  The forecast has switched it to Thursday evening now. That I can happily live and cope with.

 

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I am to give a talk at church on Sunday morning. I have been doggedly working on it.  I pretty much have the barebones of it down and just have to flesh it out now. I wanted to have it pretty much finished before my Doctor's appointment today just in case I get derailed. 

I don't really mind giving talks at church. I wouldn't want to give one every Sunday, but every now and then I don't mind it. I used to hate Public speaking when I was in my teens. I was ever so self-conscious about it and myself. I think most teens are the same. All struggling with discovering who they are and what they want to be in life. 

My mother had been a great orator and was especially proud of having come first in a speech competition given at Acadia University when she was in her last year of High School. She won a silver loving cup that was her pride and joy, and also, I believe, a cash award. My brother has the loving cup I believe. The arms were broken off. I think he was going to try to have them fixed.

When I was in Grade 6 my mother pushed me through a speech competition, first at my local school and then provincially. I hated every moment of it.  Every. Last. Moment. Of it. Even now when I think about it I get a feeling of dread in my stomach.

The last competition was held in an auditorium down in Annapolis Royal. I can still smell the mustiness of the building and hear the chairs scraping across the floorboards as people settled into their seats. I had every word of the speech memorized.  At great pains and having to repeat it again and again to the audience of my mother as I worked and worked at the delivery of it until I got it just perfect.  I think I came third. I ended up messing up the middle of it a bit and mixing up my words, having to pause, excuse myself and then correct myself. 

I was 11 years old.  The memory of that experience still haunts me.

Of course, I have the maturity now to know that messing up is quite common, and that a good orator can let that pass and make it look and sound as if it was all a part of what you had planned. It is not the end of the world.

And with that I best leave you with a thought for the day  . . . 

° * 。 • ˚ ˚ ˛ ˚ ˛ •
•。★★ 。* 。
° 。 ° ˛˚˛ * _Π_____*。*˚
  ˚ ˛ •˛•˚ */______/~＼。˚ ˚ ˛
 ˚ ˛ •˛• ˚ ｜ 田田 ｜門 ★

*.˛Perhaps there is a language

which is not made of words

and everything in the

world understands it.

~Frances Hodgson Burnett

•。★★ 。* 。•。★★ 。* 。 

In The English Kitchen today, Steak and Potato Pie. A dinner pie that is most delicious and very simple to make.

I hope that you have a wonderful day. It is supper night tonight with my father and his lady friends. Looking forward to that.  Be happy, be blessed, and don't forget! 

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And I do too!