Lumbricus terrestris.

I will confess to one of my weirder behaviours - I feel so sorry for earthworms that lie floundering and belly-flopping on driveways and parking lots after a rainstorm, that I will resort to picking them up and putting them on soil to save them. Is that not weird?

On the other hand, I also think it weird that in Canada, particularly up in the lake districts (we have 100,000 of them in Ontario alone) where fishing is a major sport, we have a particularly unique vending machine.  Come on up, self-service, stick your money in the slot and take away a cupful of delightful live bait!  What else? 

Then again, this website will not please my Scolicephobic friends - so you will have to quickly move to my next post instead!

Raise your glass to the little critters.

Snowshoes, Firepits and Friends

 What an exhilarating weekend - time with old friends at a cottage in Northern Ontario overlooking the shores of Georgian Bay on Lake Huron.  We arrived in a swirling snowstorm on Friday night and gathered for supper around a big family dining table and celebrated an annual gathering of three couples.  We reminisced and debated, laughed and cheered our way through the evening eventually making our way to bed.  
Saturday morning dawned to clear blue skies and a gorgeous view of the iced over, white expanse of the shoreline.  A few ice fishermen had already settled on the ice awaiting their catch.  A couple of dog walkers braved the icy temperatures for a stroll on the lakefront.  We settled down to a hearty breakfast of eggs and bacon and the inevitable coffee.  Our mission today is a snowshoeing expedition in the forests above the town.  I am excited: I have never donned snowshoes before! 
It was a great experience - crunching over pristine, deep, glittering snow in a single line, playing follow-my-leader.  Through the fir trees and cedar, over banks of snow - occasionally diving into snow up to our knees.  Then back again to sit by a firepit dug out of the snow to warm our hands and noses - eat hotdogs and buns warmed on the fire, together with bottles of beer stored in natural fridges - looking like brown mice all in a row. 
In the evening, we sit down to a gourmet dinner - what else, with two cordon bleu cooks in the party - salmon appetizer, beef wellington, and black forest cake, together with some great wines. 
Altogether a satisfying weekend! Great times with great friends - what more could you want?   

Fresh Beginnings

As for me, I dived back into full-time work from the middle of February.  I am the newest member of the school psychologist team at an Ontario School Board.  I work in to elementary schools doing assessment and diagnosis of learning disabilities, autism, add, giftedness, etc., and for three days a week my main task is mental health counselling in a high needs high school.  I am loving it!  The work is rewarding, challenging, and fun; my colleagues are great to work with; I love the learning and knowledge I am gaining; and the students give me hope for our future!

And as an aside benefit - it's grand to have a paycheque deposited every two weeks.  It's a great feeling to just walk up to a cashier and plonk your own debit card down and not feel guilty that you are raiding someone else's bank account.  Retirement had advantages, but steady income was not one of them.  It's a good feeling to be doing my little bit for our little coffers.  And if we remain diligent and conscientious, maybe retirement is not so far in the distance.

Of course, all this hard work means far less time for the things I really like to do: read, write a blog, write to you, post photos, and generally potter - ahh those were the days!!

Inshallah

The Honeydo List

This is about getting organized, tidying up, re-acquainting ourselves with our house and possessions, staying on top of things, or more generally, just trying to keep our heads above water.   Life is still quite disorganized and messy (as it usually is, I suppose), but I would like to at least 'feel' somewhat in charge of things. 

We essentially returned to our home in Burlington after being on the road 'somewhere out there' for the last 5 years. In the meantime, weeds have grown, cracks have widened, paint has faded, rigor mortis has set in on a number of appliances and fixtures .....and cats have used various opportunities and illnesses to stake their claims on our carpets. The biggest job of all - the mountain of paperwork to catch up on - boxes on boxes in boxes of mail, flyers, documents and information both vital and useless - accumulated stealthily over time.

We have made a looong Santa's list of what's good and what's bad, what is an absolute must and what can wait till funds find their way into our coffers.  It's amazing the way a "to do" list can expand to assume the proportions of a Tolstoy novel.

We have shoved, carried, lifted and grunted our way through all the rooms in the house - moved furniture around; piled up the useless debris on the sidewalk for collection; painted walls and ceilings; cleaned and scrubbed carpets, delved into drawers and shelves to discover forgotten treasures and detritus that collects when you're not paying attention. And the book collections - boxes and stacks everywhere - all waiting for their new niche to materialize. I feel we should be fit and buff after all the weightlifting and repetitive exercise, and at the very least have lost that expanding waistline.

I unpacked all 52 containers and furniture that had been stored from Calgary, but before that had to first tidy and chuck the stuff that was already ensconced in cupboards and closets and drawers. I am thinking in particular of my clothes closet, stuffed to the gills with more clothing than I could wear in a year - there is definitely still a squirrel in me - hoarding away for those scant possibilities - like losing 50 pounds! or waiting for that colour, or neckline to rear its ugly head again. I have to say I am proud of myself though - this squirrel definitely has less nuts stored away!

I despair - as I have now come full circle and need to go round the circuit again - the Doha container will be here soon with another load to unpack and stack... goodness knows where right now....but I will think of something. The worst of this job - it will require another go-round in my clothes closet!

I will cease my perseveration on hoarding, collections, and clean up.

Picking up the Pieces.

Life on this side of the ocean continues at its merry pace.

We are trying to pick up the pieces of our previous life.  On the weekend we went out to a downtown pub and spent a wonderful evening reminiscing with friends and listening to songs from a bygone era.  We had an evening of live entertainment - sort of Gordon Lightfoot style - singing along with Pat Hewitt, a chiropractor by day and a guitar playing wonder at night.  Probably in his late fifties, armed with a mean guitar,computer acoustics and great vocals and repertoire - singing all those old fashioned songs from the seventies - "Cecilia" got me going again... just like it did when I was 17. He played a whole lot of Bob Dylan, Eagles, Who, Mamas & Papas, and moved onto the 80's and 90's as well.   Really good evening.

Had a Doha moment here - a really frustrating experience trying to get my Ontario drivers licence - went first time and hit a line up of 60 people ahead of me, all milling around in hopeful agitation.  I couldn't stand the thought of wading through that level of bureaucracy.  Returned a second time (at an earlier time) and found 86 people clutching their little paper number - couldn't handle it - walked right out. Got up at the crack of dawn - got there 30 min before the doors opened and still found I was number 8 in the line up. Waited 45 minutes to be served - of course, only one person at a bank of counters....just after I went up about 6 more tellers arrived to start serving the poor saps who had gathered in hordes behind me. Found out later that they had just been on strike for 4 months and hence the fat lip - probably didn't get the deal they were looking for, so onto a little bit of sabotaging methinks.

On a positive note - I am trying to rid myself of my magpie tendencies - I have hoarded stuff for years, so in our room by room endeavour to clean up, tidy up and otherwise fix up, I am trying hard to get rid of "stuff". Celebrated the dumping of curtains that I had brought from South Africa to Canada 23 years ago - whoopee!! Now if I can just close my eyes and throw the detritus from the following 23 years, I will have achieved something!!

Couch Potato Talk

Let's talk about tv - we watch it every night - what a terrible habit, but it is so easy - shifts you into escape mode and you can veg your way through the evening.  But I am really frustrated and fidgety with tv in Canada.  We thought Doha had scant programs to view, but coming home has been an eye opener - reruns everywhere, 8 minutes of show then 4 or 5 minutes of adverts of the most inane type - self-important bozos strutting their stuff trying to exhort you to buy their often useless product.  And all those reality shows - not sure I want to watch non-actors perform hum-drum daily activities engaging in prattle of the pathetic or boring sort.  And we can't find any decent movie channel either. 

So to stop the whine refrain, we spent some time last night going online to try to change things on a complicated website that was hard to navigate.  We also wanted to install our PRV box from Calgary (paid $500 for the thing and used it for about 6 months before mothballing it)  Of course, this means an in person visit that we now have to wait for.  But this is the funniest of all - they make it sound like they are really customer friendly - start off by saying: "When would it be convenient for us to call you?" and you get ready to specify a time, but with the next click of the button your choices are: 1. between 8am and 12 and then 2. between 12pm and 5.   Wonderful choices those!  If you are a working individual you just get to use a vacation day, I suppose.  But one has to wonder - at whose convenience is this????

And I guess this is what they call service:  bash your way through the jungle of non-human voices telling you to choose which service, spend 5 minutes tapping phone buttons in a desparate attempt to find a real person who can be of real help.  Finally make it to the real rep, only to discover he is sitting in India and doesn't really understand what you're asking.  Then get to the aha moment when you think your request will be approved and then it's: "we can come next week, but only between 8 and 12 or 12 and 5 - what would be convenient?"       Convenient he says?  Really, convenient?? 

The best part of this tale: even though our PRV box from Calgary is absolutely the same PRV box in Burlington - it cannot be installed ..... because it's from Calgary.  If we want to skip the adverts and only sit and watch the shows we really want - yes, you guessed it: we will have to spend another $500 for the privilege.  What happened to us being Canada - from sea to shining sea?  These are somewhat like my Doha moments.

We should just go cold turkey and give up on this tv watching thing.

Buzz, buzz.

We have taken our first stroll around a couple of very Canadian stores and then into Chapters - the biggest bookstore chain in Canada. How different from Doha, where Virgin may have provided two shelves of English books and Jarir not much more. I loved being amongst the books again, wandering the aisles for at least an hour, drinking in my fill after a long, dry drought. Picking up brand new novels, reading the back cover and moving on to the next - could have spent all day there. So many books, so many to choose from.  And only bought a few - I am cutting back on my addiction.

Not much to do here in Burlington that we haven't done before - nothing exotic, nothing daring - not like the expat wife life at all - I can see I am going to be bored out of my tree before long - work will probably be a bit of an escape.  So in the very near future I will have to start applying for jobs, doing the interview thing, waiting, and worrying about whether I am acceptable or not.  Although, have to say that husband is treading very lightly around me and has not mentioned the dreaded 'when will you go for an interview' sentence yet.  It's all enough to make me want to run right back to my little old peaceful life in Doha. 

There is always so much to do: fix this, clean that, go here, go there...and there is a never ending 'honey do' list to be completed. Never mind all the other buzz going on around us.  Even watching the news now matters - because they are making announcements about your own world - interest rates up, taxes up, politicians barking from left and right.  Demands from the world out there are making themselves known.

I am still revelling in the all the silence around me - no-one at home, everyone working like busy, productive bees out there and here is little old me... hibernating at the bottom of the beehive hoping no-one will notice one less worker bee.

I will have to make an effort to hop back on the world - can't have it turning without me!