The operators of the possibility theory live here

Sunday, April 11, 2010

I interrupt this regularly scheduled column to make a correction on a reference I made two weeks ago to something my dad often says—and I stand corrected.

“It’s always a possibility.” – Bruce Caldwell.

When I first learned of my faux pas from my relative neighbors, I thought to myself, “Anything is possible” and “It’s always a possibility” mean the same thing, so what’s the big deal?

But then I got to thinking about it, and as is, and has been the case on countless occasions since I was born—my parents were right.

There is a difference.

Firstly, a competent writer should never misquote.

Secondly, and though anything is possible, there is more excitement, hope, and anticipation in believing “it’s always a possibility.”

This whole stewpot of word jostling had me revisiting my childhood, a marvelous, carefree world that I frequently long for these days especially when this grown up life tells us we are on the paying end at tax time.

For us kids (myself and my annoying younger brother) hearing a parent say “It’s always a possibility,” as the answer to your question, always left us hinged on the two scenarios juggling our imagination.

And I don’t think we ever disputed the response.

How cool for the parent was that? No rebuttal from the peanut gallery.

There was always a chance.

Of course in the materialistic scheme of things, my brother and I weren’t asking for much. But we thought we were.

The "DQ" soft ice cream cone, or Sunday drive in the country, dessert after supper, a boat trip down the creek, swimming at Boffin Lake, or a snowshoe trip across the creek in the winter to have a hot dog roast, were sought-after experiences.

And when I look back on the countless times we did those things, I’d say their odds were a craps game dream. But we didn’t know that at the time.

I am convinced that the DNA of my dog “Dot” is overloaded with the possibility gene.

Everything she does appears to be with the understanding that she will win. Why else would a dog of her size believe that if she digs a hole in the ground she just might come up with something?

Because she does.

Five young groundhogs to be exact followed by the matriarch.

Maybe I should send her to Saskatchewan with the “Gopher Getters” at the end of the month. She could be renamed “Scout,” the preliminary reconnaissance ratter.

At any rate, she certainly won the battle with her doghouse. The nemesis she’s been involuntarily attached to when I leave the yard has been reduced to a pile of chewed wood and sawdust in her bid to sever ties with it.

Looks like the basement hairy “dog” chair will not be going the dump after all, as it has become the refuge of a winning dog’s bid to not be at the end of a chain.

The words “It’s always a possibility” spilled off my lips and into unknown territory the other day, when Daughter #1 asked me if I would pick up a piece of exercise equipment from the local department store.

Little did I know that it weighed more than my truck.

After sliding it down the stairs to the basement with pulleys and ropes in a two-woman powerhouse sideshow, I was then asked if I would put it together.

Because I was raised to be an optimist, I replied in the common manner.

Anybody who lives with me knows that in many ways I am very good at putting things together and though I digress, that includes; getting myself into Spanx underwear and recovering from a hissy fit as quickly as my Mac laptop does from an internal error.

However, I must have had a momentary lapse of intelligence when I agreed to tackle the evil exercise equipment thingy.

Like the painful memory of childbirth that magically disappears until the next time you have to do it, so had I forgotten my solemn oath to never ever come within 10 feet of an unassembled piece of anything that requires an Allen key.

Quite frankly, the Allen key is on my list of the stupidest inventions ever created and belongs in a fiery pit along with the cellophane wrap on CDs and DVDs.

And whatever machine is designed to seal the package of star washers and bolts in impenetrable plastic that comes with the stupid exercise equipment thingy, can go into the fiery pit too.

It is a well-documented fact that I can not do math well, and now it would appear that I don’t know left from right, as was noted by the peanut gallery after I put the hand railings of the exercise equipment on opposite sides.

“Just use it backwards,” I quipped of the possibility.

All I got was the flat stare.

I reversed them, but not before Murphy’s Law raised its ugly head. I already had used the Allen key to torque the nuts and bolts on the railings tighter than I was held into my thigh shaper pantyhose at Christmas.

I went down the creek bank and layed in the sun to recoup myself after the battle with the machine and no sooner had I closed my eyes did “Cash” come bounding to where I was and in a screeching halt inadvertently hurled long trails of doggy mouth mucous on my face and in my hair.

I just lay there and said out loud, “In my next life can I just be a tree or something?”

I’m sure I heard something greater than myself reply, “It’s always a possibility.”

There is chocolate for every moment and it's all mine

Sunday, April 4, 2010

It was really early on Sunday morning, at about 6:45 a.m. and I was wondering if the Easter bunny had paid me a visit.

As it happens every morning when the pad of my right foot barely touches the floor as I crawl out from under the blankets, the dogs raised their morning racket of yips and yawns.

Predictably in the middle of the kitchen floor I found Cash stretching and snorting and baring his teeth in that ridiculous grin he can make as he and his sidekick drum up their impatience for the morning piddle.

I am struck by the sheer routine character of the canine capers, whose every move and gesture I can count on each morning—including their beaming positive attitudes.

There’s something wise and wonderful about dogs that wag at the dawn and birds that sing their hearts out as the sun rises, despite not knowing what the day may bring them.

Yesterday morning I dragged my sorry carcass to the coffee pot in hopes that a cup of java would eliminate the sore muscles with which I awoke after fighting off fanged ghouls in my dreams—thanks to a late night episode of “The Vampire Diaries”.

Today I awoke with the sense that I’d been run over by a genealogy convoy in the night due to the countless hours I’ve spent researching my family tree.

On each morning occasion, I wasn’t in the greatest mood and still the furred companions who rent floor space here endorsed my presence.

Perhaps they were trying to tell me how pleased they were with themselves for not licking at the chip bowl that sat open on the kitchen table all night.

Or that they were proud of themselves for having allowed Peter Rabbit to hop to it at 2 a.m. without stripping him of his fur and leaving it strewn about the house for my next angora sweater project.

And I didn’t find any half-eaten dog-slobbered Easter goodies lying around—which on any other morning would lead me to believe that at least some of my dog training skills about unsupervised food, had met with success.

But at this juncture all it meant was that the bunny master had forgotten to hide the Easter egg treats at all. They were still stacked in their packaging next to the mixing bowls in the cupboard.

“Out of sight, out of mind” was my rationale—unlike last week when the “Cadbury” 34gram-weight eggs I’d thought would look nice sitting in my wire chicken egg basket on the counter, had no sooner been laid there than eaten by me—all 10 of them. “Buk-buk” barf.

The Easter Bunny had left two meaty dog bones for the canines to enjoy. I threw the tasty treats out into the yard and stood there grinning as Dot ran around the house with hers, then went and lied down for about 10 seconds before beginning the circuit again.

Cash just stayed put on the grass, chewing on his bone and rolling over on his back and flailing his legs in the air as he chewed, clearly delighted with himself.

After breakfast, I took to the outdoors to burn off four more Cadbury eggs I’d eaten, and to make room for the fine Easter dinner that was calling me to my parents’ house at 4 p.m.

I decided to make firewood out of the limbs of a 43-year-old rotted out evergreen tree that my husband felled while he was home at Christmas.

He’d left the wood carcass in long scraggly twig-infested chunks and piled it all in an area of the yard that clearly did not meet the approval of the yard committee.

I spent the afternoon stripping dead branches off with my hands, and every once in while used my foot for leverage when I came across a tough part of the tree.

There were foot traps everywhere and as I torqued and tugged in a Herculean fashion, I stepped backwards without looking.

In that microsecond that it took for my carcass to meet with gravity, all I could think about was the pile of gooey spring-soaked dog poop I was likely to land in.

I went down flat on my back, legs and feet flailing in the air. Thankfully the only thing injured was my self-esteem as I imagined the whole world just saw me topple like a sack of flour.

I stayed there for a minute on my back and watched as two big ravens flew overhead cackling at the sideshow. They were the only ones that noticed.

Not even the dogs had looked up from where they were parked within 20 ft. of me each coveting their dog bone.

At the very least I had expected them to interpret my fall as a playtime gesture and bound over to pounce on me.

I sat up, looked at the canine stupors and said out loud, “Thanks for making sure I was alright.”

They both looked at me from their prone positions with long, blank dog stares that smacked of “Huh?” before re-focusing on their sinewy synopsis.

I felt a little snubbed just then and my Alpha ego was slightly bruised.

But it was nothing that a few more Cadbury eggs wouldn’t fix.

Wise words; take it leave it but don't forget it

Sunday, March 28, 2010

“If at first you don’t succeed, if at second you still aren’t getting it, if at third you want to throw your arms up and run away, just give it a week or so and try again.” – Me, myself, and I

“Women hold up half the sky.” – Chinese proverb

“Tell the truth, tell the truth, tell the truth.” – Sheryl Louise Moller

“Your job is you. Unless you fill yourself up first, you have nothing to give anybody.” - Anonymous

“Remember, when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.” - Neil Gaiman

“Don’t handicap your children by making their lives easy.” – Robert A. Heinlein

“The person without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder.” – Thomas Carlyle

“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing—that’s why we recommend it daily.” - Zig Ziglar

“A person is not hurt so much by what happens, as by his opinion of what happens.” - Michel de Montaigne

“Great ideas need landing gear as well as wings.” - C.D. Jackson

“We all learn by experience, but some of us have to go to summer school.” – Peter De Vries

“There’s nothing wrong with today’s teenager that twenty years won’t cure.” - Edith Stirwell

“The mathematical probability of a cat doing exactly what it wants is the one scientific absolute in the world. – Lynn M. Osband

“To think too long about doing a thing, often becomes its undoing.” - Eva Young

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” - Thomas A. Edison

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” –Leslie Poles Hartley.

“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” – William A. Ward

“You are only sure of today; do not let yourself be cheated of it.” –Henry Ward Beecher

“If you are going through hell, keep going.” – Winston Churchill

“If you don’t find opportunity knocking, find another door.” - Anonymous

“In doing anything, the first step is the most difficult.” – Chinese proverb

“Fear is the little dark room where negatives are developed.” – Michael Pritchard

“You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” – E.L. Doctorow

“Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life.” - Sophia Loren

“There is only one day left, always starting over: It is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.” - Jean Paul Sartre

“For fast acting relief, try slowing down.” - Lily Tomlin

“Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she has laid an asteroid.” - Mark Twain

“Good fathers are the ones who make the women in their lives feel like good mothers.” – Unknown

“Obstacles are things a person sees when he takes his eyes off his goal.” - E. Joseph Cossman

“The parents exist to teach the child, but also they must learn what the child has to teach them; and the child has a very great deal to teach them.” – Arnold Bennett

“Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you.” –Alan Alda

“You shouldn’t be so eager to find out a secret. It could change your life forever.” – Unknown

"Do not kiss your children so they will kiss you back but so they will kiss their children, and their children's children." -- Noah benShea

“Find spaces of stillness if you want to get to the spaces where the answers are.” – Eckhart Tolle

“Anything is possible.” - Bruce Caldwell

“Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Watch your words, for they become actions. Watch your actions, for they become habits. Watch your habits, for they become character. Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.” – Unknown

Laughing at life through the looking glass

Sunday, March 21, 2010

If there’s one thing I know for sure it’s that laughing at the stupid things I do and think about, is good medicine for me.

For starters, it would seem that I quite simply have forgotten that two plus two equals four.

Early one morning I went to the local car wash and put a twenty-dollar bill in the change machine in order to get loonies for the automatic car wash bay.

I wanted an eight-dollar wash package and with four loonies in my hand, shoved them into the coin slot.

“Two, four, six, eight,” I said out loud and then spent at least five minutes trying to figure out why the door to the wash bay wouldn’t open.

“What do you #@$%! mean ‘enter more coins!’” I shouted at the coin machine, as dark clouds began to form over my head.

I got back in my truck and called the carwash hotline on my cell phone to inform somebody that the coin operation system wasn’t working. I was cold and I was crabby.

“We’ll have to come over,” said a polite voice on the other end. While I waited for the manager to arrive, I opened my wallet in a huff to count my loonies, muttering that I’d probably put more than eight bucks into that stupid machine already.

16 of the original 20 loonies still remained in my possession.

Uh huh, maybe I shouldn’t have dropped out of math class in Grade 10 after all.

And while I may not have mastered my math tables, I do know that it only takes one stinky diaper in the kitchen garbage to make the house smell like the barn used to, especially when another toddler is found playing with the swinging lid and fanning the aroma of his little sister’s poop into the surrounding atmosphere.

“Granny Daycare” mirrors a game of sports. There is no ending you can write beforehand.

It’s a new adventure every time—including the one that gets you down on the floor playing “Pop-Up Pirate” and gingerly sticking plastic swords into the sides of a toy barrel in anticipation of the pirate jumping straight out the top.

When the game is all over I almost always want someone to take me to the hospital for anti-anxiety medicine and to the chiropractor to get me out of the seized-up cross-legged position I am stuck in.

I’ve also learned that if I’m going to play “Pop-Up Pirate” I must not do so before baking peanut butter cookies. I was so frazzled I forgot to add the peanut butter in the mix and didn’t figure it out until all the kids were stumped by what was missing in the taste test when the cookies came out of the oven.

Hide and Seek—the ultimate outdoor game for all ages.

And where does Granny decide to hide when it’s her turn? Usually it’s my husband who’s in the dog house but . . .

Getting inside the doggie doorway by the count of 20 is not easy when the width of the thing is much less than that of my bum.

In a desperate effort to disappear I’m sure I dislocated my pelvis as a shot of adrenaline pushed me inside the doghouse, where I don’t think a canine has slept in months.

I know this because as I scuffled around in the cramped space to sit down I came face to face with a pile of sunflower seeds and a red squirrel.

Startled by our sudden face off we both screamed—me in my girly voice, and “Red” in a bucktoothed, high-pitched “chee” identical to the squirrel in the “Bridgestone” TV commercial from the 2008 Super Bowl.

And there wasn’t room for both of us.

In the moment of terror that I saw in the beady eyes of my nemesis, I envisioned that if I tried to escape, “Red” would launch himself into my long hair and have to be cut out with scissors.

I didn’t have a chance.

In a swift plan of reaction—and torn right out of a movie clip from “The Matrix,”—as the squirrel leapt toward me I veered to the side, and he shot straight out the doggy door.

“Fiction is a bunch of little lies making up a big truth.” – W.O. Mitchell.

I felt like Alice in the rabbit’s house. I shuffled around and sat on my bum and processed what had just happened in the last 30 seconds.

I could hear “Dot” who undoubtedly now had the little monster treed and under quarantine. Or did the barking and “chee-cheeing” sound like animal laughter? I couldn’t quite tell.

Just then a spider the size of my thumb crawled out of the straw in front of me, rolled over on its back and appeared to hold its stomach with four of its eight legs and giggle before it disappeared down a crack in the floor.

I just sat there half expecting “Ozzie” the cat to appear in the doghouse doorway with a Cheshire grin.

“How’re you enjoying the game?” he would ask.

“They don’t play fair,” I’d retort, of the jokes the dog and the squirrel had conjured up for the Alpha.

“No one does if they think they can get away with it. That’s a lesson you’ll have to learn,” Ozzie would advise.

But instead, a grandchild peeked into the small space where a 49-year-old would-be contortionist sat composing herself.

“Granny! I found you Granny! How did you fit in there?”

There are some things money can’t buy.

The very moment—when I started to laugh—was one of them.

The first rule is to write about what matters most

Sunday, March 14, 2010

This is one of those weeks when I’ve had to apply “Rule 21.”

It’s a directive I invented and one that I have to fall back on now and then when it appears I have nothing to write about.

It is a flexible rule that varies in regulation and content depending on what I’m looking for as a catalyst to my creative block.

“Rule 21” is meant to put me on a slope, where I am at the top looking down upon the thing I must write about.

If I have to deploy “Rule 21” it means the incline to the thing is going to involve a twisty and slow cross-country ski to the finish line and will not be a speedy downhill slalom.

However, it has not been a week in which the Universe has conspired against me in terms of writing. That never happens. There always is something to write about. Sometimes I just have trouble seeing the story between the everyday ordinary pages of my life.

For me, “Rule 21” is sort of like what a dog does when it comes upon an area where it wants to lie down. Around and around in circles the dog kneads the spot in customary fashion to improve the place where it will spend considerable time.

Or what author Sarah Ban Breathnach believes about exercise and spirit. “I walk regularly for my soul and my body tags along.”

I am a better thinker and creator when my body is busy doing something else.

So when the write tank appears empty, I clean house, wash dishes, vacuum, fold laundry, bake, eat and take the long way home.

And today, my house is very tidy, there’s not a dirty spoon in sight, all my clothes are clean, the cookie tin is brimming, I’ve seen the countryside from here to the west end of the district twice in the last 12 hours, and I’ve consumed enough chocolate almonds to sustain me until June.

And I shake my head because it’s not like the door to my imagination ever closes. There’s “applied” Beth who carries around a little brown book of scribbled thoughts, and there’s “radio frequency” Beth, with a storage cloud of ideas in the recesses of her brain.

But sometimes all those notes don’t add up to much of anything I can use to make this column longer than the 407 word count in which I have just blathered.

Maybe it’s a slump thing. Maybe it’s a “missing my husband very much” thing.

On the cusp of the coming spring, I am a bit self-absorbed in the fact that in that last 365 days I have seen Peter for none but 30 of them. Oh, the hard facts of my soul mate having to work away from home.

I am one of the strongest, most independent woman creatures I know. Hands down. But I sure could use a hug and a kiss and some long lost company from the man I love.

I read somewhere—and I believe—that souls attract to those who are on the same frequency, have similar lessons and needs, and who often reflect their own issues to help them understand and cope. They say souls need to be with those of like mind or like frequency and that when you move out of frequency or out of sync, life becomes static and does not flow.

Today this is the headspace I’m in. Tomorrow it will be another story.

Best selling author Neil Gaiman penned good advice. “Write. Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down. Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.”

This is my first rule.

The road to Hollywood starts right here

Sunday, March 7, 2010

I think I was 11 years old when my parents bought their first television. When it came to my childhood neck of the woods, it smacked of possibilities and I was drawn to it like Carol Anne was in ‘Poltergeist.’

Thankfully I didn’t end up inside the tube waiting for my mother to rescue me, but I definitely dreamed big dreams of being in the movies.

From then on I wanted to be actress and live in Hollywood.

So it goes without saying that the annual Oscar Awards always has been a television favorite with me. That Sunday night extravaganza each year is as important to me as the Olympic Games. I pull out all the stops, eat chips and dip, and ignore the telephone if it rings.

This very minute, as I write in this space, I have exactly 1 hour and 22 minutes left before the curtain goes up for ‘The Oscars 2010.’ The chip dip is marinating and the ink is dried on my official ballot where I have marked out my favorite nominees.

And while I have long since come to grips with the reality that I will not make it in Hollywood, I remain a big dreamer in my own starring role with a cast right here in my lovely little life, with many moments worth a golden boy statue in hand.

Actress in a Leading Role: My two-year-old granddaughter who by her contortioned gestures, writhing, and sorrowful tears, would like me to believe the world will end if she is not allowed to have that second cookie.

Actor/Actress in a Supporting Role: The canine capers of ‘Dot’ and ‘Cash’ poised wagging as they too make a play for a second cookie, having just eaten the first one dropped on the floor by the one-year old granddaughter in the highchair.

Documentary Short: The one written by Mr. Fantastic that argues men do not see dust. Ever.

Documentary Feature: The long-winded comeback by Mrs. Fantastic who thought that was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard.

Visual Effects: From the 1990 archives—the drop jaw expression on my face in the bathroom mirror as I was busy applying lipstick when my five-year-old, fresh home from the school grounds, proudly said to me, “Mommy I learned a new “F” word at school today,” to which I hurriedly asked, “Oh good, and what was that?”

Best Director: “Mommy, did Beth say you could clean the oven?” (serious yet-oh-so-comical question recently posed by a three-year-old to her mother, at their house where I am the housekeeper.)

Original Score: The real reason Peter married me—because I won the bet that I could beat him at a game of pool. Border Bar. Summer 1997.

Short Film Live Action: When my grandson turned the corner in aisle three at the local grocery store last summer and saw a white-bearded man pondering over his list and shouted, “SANTA!” to which the jolly man turned to face the small believer and replied, “Ho, Ho, Ho!” Priceless.

Animated Feature: Me at the crack of dawn on a recent and very cold Friday morning when I took the ‘Expedition’ to the big city to rescue Daughter #3. I’d pulled over to check that all the truck doors would open easily for the inspecting officers at the U.S. Customs border crossing after intuition told me that the green beast was likely iced up after going through the car wash the previous night.

The passenger’s side back door was frozen shut and refused me entry from the outside. I came back around to the driver’s side passenger door and got in and heaved on the frozen door from the inside. That didn’t work either, and as luck would have it I then found myself trapped in the back seat because the child security devices had locked me in.

There was no option but to climb back into the driver’s seat over the middle console, at which point I lost my footing between the two front seats and fell head over heels into the floor of the front passenger side smashing the bag of peanut butter and banana sandwiches I’d made for the long day ahead.

Foreign Language Film: What I muttered under my breath in 1991, composed while biting my tongue, five months postpartum when a woman looked at me and asked when the baby was due.

Costume Design: Hands down my idea. My brother, age 7, in 1971, in a red velvet dress walking down the road to my grandparents’ house.

Makeup: The ante that Mr. Fantastic can draw from for the next 12 months after saying to me: “I hate to just call you ‘my wife.’ It is such a generic word for someone so splendid.”

Original Screenplay: Wilbur—the wonderful story of the little pot- bellied piglet I envisioned buying and bringing home next week, so cute and cuddly all wrapped up in a little pig blanket.

Adapted Screenplay: $%#@!—the flash forward nightmare when the 150-pound pig pet helps itself to the contents of the refrigerator and then roots into the leather cushions of my new couch.

Best Picture: Status quo—two dogs, one cat, a 19-year old live-in, and no pig.

My house is once again a home

Sunday, February 28, 2010

It’s February 28^th, 9 a.m. and my house is very quiet.

The kitchen is chuck-full of empty boxes and suitcases too large for the attic, but my house is very quiet because thankfully it’s too early for my 19-year-old to be awake.

Oh, how things change.

It’s two days since Daughter #3 returned to the fold to rethink her future steps 18 months after moving to the big city.

Her post secondary path met a road block last fall and in the aftermath of withdrawing from classes, indecision, and despite a valiant stab at the working world in the big city, the factors of reality have made “home” a more logical place to regroup.

I sit here and think back upon the first few days in September 2008, when I’d just returned to this house from moving my final shift in children to the big city—in that moment when I found myself alone and pacing a childless cage.

I was among the lyrics in a Bruce Cockburn song and the one for whom the website flownthenest.com was written and like something from a Van Morrison song, l hoped for 'Enlightenment' in an empty nest.

I had proven myself so many times as a mom since 1985. Parenthood was all I had known, who I'd been, and where almost all of my emotional and intellectual skills had resided for 23 years.

18 months ago, I was like an old debit card. A mother whose magnetic strip had worn thin. Time for a replacement card that included free space, time, and all that.

I had to live with myself.

I’d never had really done that—really had the opportunity in my lifetime to do that.

Even before I was done College I had met the first guy I would marry, so I never really had time to get to know myself. By the time I was separated and divorced from that adventure, I had three very young daughters to parent.

Motherhood took notes and Beth was 82nd on the dictation list.

I never got past 81.

Then I met Peter. Thank God for Peter.

Yet, I was still a mother with young kids and now a wife again. Roles rolled on.

18 months ago, I’d predicted it would take my dogs weeks before they ignored the drone of the school bus coming down the country road to drop off Daughter #3 from high school. Instead it took months.

And today, if I see a school bus, I still can stop them in their dog tracks if I say, “Here she comes."

It’s not only elephants that never forget.

18 months ago, I faced a brand new desert, a new dawn, the high road, the road less travelled, woot! woot! woot!

I ran around buck naked if I wanted to, and was freed from picking up a certain someone from work at 10:30 p.m. six out of seven nights a week. I went vegetarian, played my music loud at 5 a.m. and was done with arguments about whose turn it is to do dishes.

And alone with myself I often didn’t do dishes at all until I’d used up all the eating utensils I could find.

There was no more head-banging teenage rap music to roll my eyes at, and no more silent treatment at the supper table by an aforementioned bad mood bear.

My house saw a new dawning and I learned very quickly to dance to sound of my own drum.

18 months ago, I expected the days would drip slowly on the page, Mr. Cockburn and that I would pace the cage.

The days dripped and I paced for about as long as it took Olympic freestyle skier Alexandre Bilodeau to fly down Cypress Mountain and win his gold medal.

Life without kids in the house did not take some getting used to. It fit me snug as my size seven furry slippers do every morning. I looked forward not backwards at all the possibilities and ran with it.

Ah, but little did I know.

And never in 100 light years did I expect to return to sharing life in this five-room farmhouse with Daughter #3—in an open-ended term.

But here’s the beauty in the smooth and the rough and the unknown if you are raised in the belief that you matter.

Good parents support their children.

My parents believed in me, through my success and stumbling and in all my unsure times. There were no failures. Anything was possible.

In the spirit of parenthood, let me reiterate my words from 18 months ago.

Here’s to you, #3.

Let me begin with a big round of applause to a certain 19-year old the possibilities for whom have only just begun.

Proud of you? Nothing this talented writer can come up with could convey how my rewarded heart believes in you.

However, I doubt you will empathize with anything I've written about in the last few paragraphs and most likely, if I know anything, you won't even read this column until 15 years from now, when stuff your mother did back then, seems cool to you now.

That's okay. It's a mom-thing.

Living the Olympic dream my way

Sunday, February 21, 2010

“Citius, Altius, Fortius!”

If there is one thing I know for sure it is that I am an Olympic Games geek.

Every two years—and in more ways than there is room for me to describe in this space—something ancient emerges from this spirited soul of mine and leaps into a lifestyle in which all things have an Olympic slant.

I have lived vicariously during the Olympic Games since 1972 when I was 12 years old. Growing up, I willed myself to be every athlete from the discus thrower to the speed skater with each successive year of the Games. While the real competitors were battling it out in the Olympic world stage—I was practicing at home bent over like a comma and slicing up the ice rink on the creek perfecting crossovers with my skates or spinning about and hurling huge rocks as discus, across the green grass of my parents’ front lawn.

And today, even as my 50^th birthday looms in the distance and my aching muscles receive their daily Acetaminophen and Ibuprofen combination—I still am right as rain in Olympic-mode and believe myself a champion in all things.

My current favorite Canadian bard is Shane Koyczan. Ever since hearing him articulate ‘We Are More’ during the Opening Ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver I’ve been puffed up in patriotism, acting as if before February 12^th I didn’t even know I was Canadian.

And while my husband will always be ‘Hercules’ in the starry-eyed vision and heart of his wife no matter what year it is, he has not one Olympic sports bone in his body.

This is perhaps the only time I will admit his temporary absence in our neck of the woods is an okay thing.

Although if he had been here right now, the man cave he is intent on building would have been buttoned up and beautiful as he poured all of his efforts into it to avoid being sucked into the Olympic vortex currently racing through this tiny house for two weeks in February.

When I was talking by telephone with him on Sunday morning and expounding my anticipation for watching the men’s hockey preliminary round between Canada and the United States that evening, there was a long, silent pause through the telephone from Afghanistan.

“That sounds like fun,” he said, as my E.S.P. scored another goal.

My ‘CSIS’ (Critical Selection Information System) kicked in just then as I decided not to tell him that my Olympic-size attitude may result in the purchase (using his credit card) of one of everything from the Vancouver 2010 Olympics online store, as well as a pair of speed skates, a snowboard, a curling rock, downhill skis, and a luge sled, so that I can begin training for the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia.

Okay, so I’m a big dreamer, and admittedly my speed skating and discus days are but pearls of the past. But believe me, that doesn’t mean I haven’t found alternative modes of expression for my Olympic prowess.

Not to mention that today’s technology grants me the ability to download every song from the 2010 Opening Ceremonies and with that kind of music energizing me in my training workouts, nothing can stop me.

If there were a two-mile frozen creek walk competition in the Winter Games, they’d be handing me a gold medal right now.

If there were a snow-shoveling event, I’d have taken the competition by storm with my right-handed power throw.

And because the closest thing to a curling rink surface around here is my kitchen floor, it sparkles thanks to my “hurry hard!” deck mop.

Gold medal please.

In the days to come if I don’t keep a lid on this Olympic sweep, it could slalom through Pete’s budding man cave as a good will gesture in a bid to remove unnecessary tool and gadget paraphernalia.

(Don’t worry honey. I will never be the iceberg to your titanic).

Geek or no geek, my Olympic dreams are always a blast for me and no matter how old I get (and I’m going to get very, very old) I will never stop pretending to be the Olympian.

And during those two weeks in February 2060, when the Games of the 46^th Olympiad are going strong somewhere in this big world, here I’ll be at 99 years young having just won for the fastest competitor in the rocking chair event.

Gold medal please, sonny.

What you focus on expands

Sunday, February 14, 2010

It was 10 a.m. on Valentine’s Day and my chocolate fit already had been addressed. The unopened box of ‘Queen Anne’ chocolate covered-cherries left over from Christmas was but a shell of its former self, as all 10 of the sweet-nothings were currently on route to my digestive system.

I really was not looking forward to February 14th, because no matter how bullish I am about handling my perpetually independent life, Valentine’s Day dawns rather blue and empty with my husband away.

Granted some will say that Valentine’s is just another day and in all honestly, it is.

But this is my space and I’ll cry about it if I want to.

And yes, the chocolates were an attempt to fill a void and, no, they didn’t do anything for me except give me the usual regrets—made worse after I read the nutrition facts printed on the box post consumption.

Accordingly and repentantly, being that the first two main ingredients are sugar and glucose syrup and NOT CHOCOLATE, I have ingested 130g (30 teaspoons) of sugar in two minutes.

Ironically, Jackson Browne’s song ‘Running on Empty’ was playing on iTunes and as my stomach revolted against the junk-staple overload, I wished that I too was doing what the song said, as I plummeted into a hypoglycemic nightmare.

I boiled a cup of water and squeezed into it the juice of half a fresh lemon—my current holistic remedy for the ‘ickies’ and I got back to the business of being bullish, because I know myself very well.

I am pathologically positive and the doldrums don’t have much of a life around here.

Faced with making a brighter day for myself I decided to write about three objects important to me and that have helped shape my world.

First is a photograph of my grandmother, the late Florence (Caul) Drennan—taken when she was about 13 years old. I found it here in this house in 2006 after she had passed away.

I don’t recall seeing it before then and I doubt it would have meant as much to me at any time in the past, as it does today.

Grandma would have been 95 years old this April if the Universe worked the way the rest of us wished it would, but as I have come to realize, “Fate rarely calls on upon us at the moment of our choosing,” to quote ‘Optimus Prime’ from the ‘Transformers’ movie.

The 1927 photograph shows Grandma holding a bible and surrounded by eight other young gals whose names are written on the back. They include Lucille Heward, Adeline Steele, Eva and Annie Caul (grandma’s sisters), Gladys McLeod, Astrid and Alice Herrem, and Vera Hanes.

Although it is apparent that the girls were posing in mature fashion for the photo, I would bet the bursting smiles on their faces were surely followed by unrestrained laughter once the box camera flashed.

I can hardly believe my grandma was once so young and when I am down and out or sweating the small stuff, the photograph shouts to me “carpe diem” and reminds me how fast time flies and how precious time is.

Seize the day.

Secondly, is a piece of ocean coral that I have had sitting on my bedroom dresser in every place I have lived since 1978—which to my amazement stands at 14 houses.

That year at Christmas my family traveled with my grandparents to South Padre Island, Texas and located on the gulf coast.

On one of the many sunny days of that vacation I was walking on the beach alone with my grandpa, whom I adored. I was 18 years old.

Grandpa Drennan reached down and picked up a piece of coral and between us we decided it looked a lot like a three-legged dog.

He handed it to me and said, “Here’s your Christmas present.”

Granted it may sound corny and perhaps a tad scant in the gift department but no word of a lie—it remains the most precious gift I have ever received from anyone in all my life.

That little piece of coral reminds me that the simplest of kind gestures might just be our greatest gift to someone else.

The third object? Many choices wandered around in my head and not one of them meant more to me than another. Perhaps the indecisiveness was a hint to give the off-the-wall word soup a rest.

I often wonder why some things happen when they do.

I checked my email and there in my Inbox was a Valentine message from my husband quoting Oscar Hammerstein II and it read,

“Do you love me because I am beautiful, or am I beautiful because you love me?”

Awesome. Thanks honey!

As the saying goes, “What you focus on expands.”

The rest of my day had a smile on it.

The day that begged for another start

Sunday, February 7, 2010

There are the usual foodie smells that have potential to wake me up in the morning, be it the subtle waft of caffeine perking out of the coffeemaker or the warm drift of fresh bread baked by timer in the bread maker.

And the smell of bacon sizzling in the frying pan remains one of the favorite aromas to jostle my nostrils and awaken me from a good night’s sleep.

Of course none of these wonderful mental stimuli avail themselves in my neck of the woods. Nope.

Instead I am yanked before sunrise from my fantasy dream, wherein Brad Pitt is saving me from a hungry pack of wolves.

Into an immediate wide-eyed state I am thrust all ears to the guttural grunting of “uh-ah, uh-ah, uh-ah”—or in layman’s terms—the sound of a dog about to upchuck inside the house.

There is that jujitsu moment pulled from the ‘Matrix’ movie where I leap from the sheets into mid-air, grab my housecoat with one hand while doing a half twist across Pete’s side of the bed and hit the floor with a stuck landing.

I throw open the bedroom door, and in the dark, bolt into the kitchen, dive over the butcher’s stainless steel table—arms outstretched for the door handle in a frantic effort to release said dog into the outdoors to throw up.

Now, if there’s one thing I know about myself, it’s that I can stomach the sight and feel of just about anything as long as it didn’t just come from inside a dog.

And the situation is much worse when I’m not even sure what the wet blob of a thing is that is staring back at me on the rug when I flick on the lights at 6 a.m. after I have stepped in it.

I’m not sure if the temperature of the thing would have felt as gross at that moment if it had been cold, but as the warm, oozing globule squeezed up through the toes of my left foot I was wishing just then, that it had at least had been below body temperature.

I squinted to identify the thing, because my contact lenses were still in their case on my dresser.

Ah yes, the rug. The brand new rug—now embedded with what appeared to be, in my fuzzy vision, a copious mustard-yellow slime splayed outwards in a size seven-foot imprint.

The dogs had backed up under the kitchen table, dreading the inevitable expletives that spilled out of my mouth. Yet as soon as I began hopping on one foot to avoid spreading the thing around the room, the canine stupors took that to mean play time and bounded about.

All things being equal, Murphy’s Law dictated the thing would then be spread around by paw marks. And it was.

Once outside, the dogs disappeared into the cold air, yet again chasing the illusive nothing they are after each and every morning and on this morning giving not a care in the world for the Alpha who fired sparks of fury at them with her eyes.

I stood in the frigid morning air and crabbed my impatience at Mother Nature for her sluggish stroll into spring and the sunrises I longed for at 5 a.m.

And because my foot was still covered in slimy doggy-doo of some sort, I used my common sense and decided to make a quick rush at the snow bank near the back step and—cold or not—clean the muck off.

If this whole affair had happened on the first day of the workweek I could have blamed it all squarely on the Monday.

Of course this is never the case in my neck of the woods. Nope.

And if it was, then I would have to add to the equation the frozen dog poop I stepped on in my bare feet in the dark that morning, that was right there off the back step where I suspect a certain dog left it the night before instead of going off to his or her regular pooping grounds when out on bathroom detail in a deep freeze.

Needless to say I ended up back in bed and started the day over again—on the other foot.

After all, it was February 2nd, Groundhog Day.

Food for thought ends with butter

Monday, February 1, 2010

It was 3:45 on Sunday afternoon, and if there’s one thing I knew for sure at that moment—turning to food as a source of writing inspiration was stupid.

And of course I professed this as I wolfed down two and three more handfuls of chocolate mini-kisses, because by then I needed something sweet to balance out the rest of the fridge I’d just eaten.

Crackers and cream cheese, a slice of bread with tuna and mayo, half a grapefruit, and a small bowl of peanuts, had spawned nothing more than the need to loosen the top button of my jeans due to gas.

And because this writing jag was a good occasion to have two things going on at the same time, I’d gotten up and wet my nose and applied a ‘Biore´’ deep cleansing pore strip.

Not thoroughly reading the instructions on the box meant that 20 minutes into a 10-minute window I needed a crow bar to peel the paper mache´off my nostrils.

I took one look at the underside of the hardened strip and ran for my magnifying glass, and spent 15 minutes in awe of all the stalagmites pulled out of the top of my nose.

The result is still lying on top of my dresser as a potential science project.

My nose pores were spectacularly clean, but I still had no idea what to write about.

90 minutes into the creative process, I peeled my blank slate off this chair and stood at the kitchen window for 20 minutes trying to decide if a walk outdoors in minus 18C would motivate me.

Red plaid lumberjack coat, scarf, dark sunglasses, a big black tundra hat with ear flaps and under-the-chin drawstring, along with my husband’s oversized leather mitts, and his steel-toed, knee-high, safety Kodiaks.

I looked like Elmer Fudd.

It was no fashion show and thank Heaven I wasn’t expecting company.

I opened the door to the brisk outdoors, expecting to find two canine capers bursting at the seams with excitement to see their Alpha.

No such luck, as I heard them off in the distance howling blindly at nothing but the open space of the field behind the barn.

Instead I was greeted by a dead mole lying face up with his arms tucked snuggly under his head like a sun worshipper frozen solid to the bale of straw that Cash uses as a lookout post while I'm away in town.

No sooner had I stepped down off the stairs at the back door in Pete’s 50lb-each winter boots did I feel a sudden kinship with the late (yet-to-be-found) Mr. Jimmy Hoffa, whom I now suspect met his maker wearing the same cement footwear.

My dogs possess only one keen sense and it isn’t brainpower. They heard me squeak across the snow-packed yard, and came bounding around the corner by the outbuilding, stopped solid in their tracks and mistaking me for an unknown intruder, began barking.

I motioned and moved towards them and they ran away, reassuring me the day I really need them to save my life, will not be realized.

However, Dot may remember that she owes me one.

Early last winter before the ice on the creek was thick enough for the annual skating rink, Dot had had a “run-in” with potential for disaster.

I’d come home from work and parked my truck in the garage and coming out noticed a clan of deer standing together unusually close to the edge of the water on the opposite side of creek—and staring in my direction.

I started walking towards the creek and talking to the deer, asking them why were they so curiously intrepid? All the while Cash was barking up a storm running to me and back down the hill to the water and I thought nothing of it until I got closer and saw the frantic pawing of my Dot, who had fallen through the thin ice in the middle of the creek.

She dogpaddled in the icy water hole and couldn't get a grip to pull herself out. It was surreal moment, as she was too far out for me to go after her.

If I learned anything from the ensuing event, it was not to quit my day job to become a rodeo cowgirl.

Despite the race to get some rope with the gallons of adrenaline pumping through me, I couldn't make or throw a lasso around my dog's neck to save her life—literally.

A cell phone call for help brought rescuers, including one with a long pike pole to latch onto the collar that my dog was not wearing.

More than 15 minutes had passed before we broke enough ice with the pole to get her closer to shore. She was cold and wet and the joke of the ruminant mammal community.

After she was safe and sound, I had to laugh as I imagined the deer all standing there snickering at the smarty pants dog paddling in place in the icy hole, as they chastised her with their stares for stepping out to bark incessantly at them.

Back to the task at hand.

I took my cement shoe walk on the snowy creek, forgetting once again to listen to my dad’s advice and delay gratification by heading into the wind as I trekked away to clear my creative block.

It was frozen solid when I got back to the house and required three cups of hot chocolate and buttered toast to thaw it out.

Don't blink or you will miss out

Sunday, January 24, 2010

If I had recorded the track of life inside this old farmhouse over the last month or so and then ran outside to the barn, turned around and looked at the house and hit replay, this is what I would have seen;

The dried up old siding would heave and chuckle trying to hold itself together as it shook with amusement, and the old crooked porch that regularly pulls itself away from the main house body in the cold, would sit straight and proper as it leaned in to listen to all the fun we’d had.

The roof would raise its eyebrows once or twice and blush—and oh yes, the eaves troughs would droop just slightly for that one—maybe two—spats in the face of autonomy when Pete and I sweated too much over the small stuff.

30 days have come and gone and this neck of the woods is back to relying on ‘Skype’ video chats and emails to keep in touch with the One.

And despite what some may think about computer technology, its connectivity is priceless—even when you look like a drowned rat at 6 a.m. as your husband’s face appears on the computer screen from half way around the world and smiles at your disheveled bed head.

20 years ago, I distinctly remember a vow I made never to own or be seen on a “videophone.” Today, I can’t imagine life without the advancements of visual communication accessibility to the world beyond my back door.

It’s taken a few days to clean up the leftover livelihood of this place—wonderfully amuck with the discarded lifestyle that is my husband.

And at the risk of writing about something that blurs the lines of what is too personal to account for; when I walked back in the door after seeing him off at the airport at 8:15 a.m., the scent of his Old Spice body wash still lingered in the humid house air from his morning shower and it smelled wonderful.

Who wants to clean up the chaotic clutter of the last 30 days at that juncture?

Not me.

But now, the little heaps of dirty socks, that if left too long in the corners of the bedroom would surely become condominiums for mice families, are in the laundry basket and the dint in the couch where a man camped out for hours watching countless episodes of ‘Stargate Atlantis’ and ‘Dr. Who’ has all but disappeared.

I put off washing the dirty dishes until I’d used up all the spoons and coffee cups and then, while putting away the drinking glasses from our last dinner together I had to chuckle.

Earlier this month Pete and I had been watching “The Dr. Oz” show wherein the medical guru had pushed the concept of cupping therapy—which uses vacuum pressure on the skin to create better “chi” energy flow and release toxins.

If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that if my husband hears about something he thinks is a rad idea, make sure you aren’t the only guinea pig in the room.

And if you are the only chump, as I was for the first-ever cupping therapy test, chant, “This too shall pass.”

Trust issues came to the forefront of our relationship as I watched him ignite my ‘Bic’ candle lighter to flame the inside of a wine goblet as big around as a small dog, and then convince me to let him place six such apparatuses on my back.

Was not my “chi” already charged? What toxins? “I’m a vegetarian for gosh sakes!” I had argued.

With as much hesitation as I could muster in the face of such a wild and crazy guy, I conceded to the cupping therapy for all of about 25 seconds, and we laughed in stitches for most of it.

The only evidence that the procedure had worked were the six, raised, three inch round, red welts the wine goblets left behind on my back for a couple of hours.

Thankfully that did not happen same day prior to the pantyhose scare. The visual combination would have cost him his sight for sure.

30 days came and went.

Alone or not, I try very hard not to be somebody who spends all her time thinking about tomorrow.

I try very hard to live for right now so that I am not cheated of it, for it truly is all I that I am sure of.

Sometimes it is a most difficult task, but right now is the best and only place there is, despite what we wish for.

May I continue to remind myself of this over the next 14 weeks or so.

Confessions of a pantyhose diva

Sunday, January 17, 2010

There ought to be a law, or at the very least a warning label on packages of ‘Tummy and Thigh Slimmer’ pantyhose.

Cautionary advice in bold red print should flag the wearer against being seen by her spouse while stuffing herself into this nylon contraption—or for that matter—being seen with them on at any time by anyone other than her own reflection staring back at her in the mirror.

In my neck of the woods, that brief encounter with oneself in the mirror—torso buckled into a two-legged form of shrink-wrap that always seems two sizes too small—is probable grounds for an adjustment reaction counseling session.

And I can’t fathom the mathematical rationale of the pantyhose scientists of the world, whom I highly suspect are male, when sizing guidelines on these diva devices are established.

No matter how much weight is lost beforehand I never choose the correct size and never once have I managed to get them on without emulating the comedic contortionist routine of Jim Carrey.

I’ve known for years that I should be in an isolation booth when putting on pantyhose, and yet I can’t seem to take my own recommendations to fruition.

On Christmas Day I thought I did.

I waited until Pete was in the shower. I opened my dresser drawer and rummaged for the unopened package of pantyhose purchased a month earlier, ripped them open to reveal a scant what looked like “ten-inch in length pair of nothing.”

I sat on the edge of the bed with the toes of my right foot drawn in and pointed like a veteran ballerina as I slid them into the end of the nylon legging.

Pete was still in the shower belting out the only line he knows from a Bryan Adams tune. “I wear my sunglasses at night, so I can, so I can, keep track of visions in my mind,” he cried out.

I rolled my eyes and repeated the process for my left foot. No sooner did I have both feet in the pantyhose, did the waistband slam shut around my calves toppling me over as if my feet were bound with duct tape.

I crashed onto the bed to avoid falling on the bedroom floor and writhed like a dying snake as I pulled and jostled with the pantyhose, cursing the scientist for his mis-measurement of ‘Size D.’

10 minutes later I was in. I lay there gasping for breath, holding it once to listen for the sound of running water.

Thank Heaven, Pete was still in the shower.

I jumped up and exited the bedroom and was just in front of the bathroom door on my way to the spare room when my worst fears were realized.

“BETH!” the one bellowed from the shower, in the typical loud and annoying fashion of someone who obviously forgot we live in a 950 sq. ft. house pervious to even the slightest whisper.

“Yes honey?” I answered in my mouse voice, as I opened the bathroom door a sliver letting out a burst of hot bath steam that flattened the curls in my hair.

“Could you put some toothpaste on my toothbrush and hand it to me?” he asked.

What the heck. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to calculate that I could slip him the pasty toothbrush passed the edge of the shower curtain without revealing my not-so-nifty thigh huggers.

But I didn’t factor in that Pete would whip open the shower curtain and look out at me standing there vacuum-sealed in my pantyhose while loading the Colgate.

It was a “deer in the headlights” moment for both of us as I turned round to face him eyes wide open and dropped his toothbrush in the toilet as he shrieked out in high octaves.

I’d like to believe he was crying out over the toothbrush floating in the toilet water, but I tend to think it was a painful reaction to the retina scarring that came from seeing me in my hosiery.

If he wishes to remain healthy he will not however—in one million light years—ever admit to this theory.

It matters, it matters not

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

All I want for Christmas just came home.

On December 21^st, I had stood outside looking up at the night sky watching for the plane to appear in the night sky; first a star-sized light and on into a bigger and brighter drone that signaled a long wait over, as love landed safely in this neck of the woods.

I thought of poet James Wright and his description of anticipation.

“Suddenly I realize that if I stepped out of my body I would break into blossom.”

Seeing Pete get off the plane was as glorious as I had dreamed and being consumed in his arms out there on the airport tarmac was like a scene from a movie.

I thought of American writer Dave Barry who said “Magnetism is one of the six fundamental forces of the Universe, with the other five being gravity, duct tape, whining, remote control, and the force that pulls dogs toward the groins of strangers.”

Magnetism is that man I hadn’t seen in 291 days.

It was all I could do to share him with my surroundings and even for a wordsmith like me, I can not describe how right all things were with the world in that moment.

And then the adjustment reaction period set in and I was reminded of what I had been like for the last nine months and 12 days.

I plan, I read the instructions, I play it safe, I like to spend time alone, and I almost always know where everything is around here.

I think first (sometimes for days) then act, focus on one thing at a time, trust my gut, and think about future implications.

I am convinced by rational arguments, prefer to finish projects, and find comfort in schedules.

And as I have said before, I suppose that's why the Universe teamed me up with Pete, who has the fearless, adventure-driven, all-over-the-place essence of 'Yukon Cornelius' from the movie classic "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."

So, when all work and no play makes Beth a dull girl, life sends her husband home to muss up her hair, make absurd spontaneous decisions that involve money, stir the pot by using my tools and then not return them to their original location, and make our neck of the woods an unpredictable land mine series of events.

Sure, we have oodles in common--the least of which include the fact that we share the same inseam measurement, enjoy tea and chocolate, and dig 'Alien' movies. We love pigging out on chips and doughnuts, though not at the same time and we are technology hounds.

However, we continue to make a remarkable and magnificent case for the law of attraction between persistent opposites.

As I write this, some three weeks into into a month-long honeymoon I look out into the hallway from my writing place at the entrails of three days’ worth of “man clothing” strewn about just inside the doorway to the bedroom. Enough pocket change to buy coffee for six of my closest friends has spilled out of Peter’s jeans by his side of the bed and is ripe for pick up by the laundry woman who recently surfaced after a hiatus of more than half a year.

The kitchen table, which until a short time ago looked like a “photo op” for ‘House and Home’ magazine, is one-quarter covered with all the small stuff that was at the bottom of Peter’s suitcase—dumped there in an effort to find

one thing when he arrived home.

Once again the cheese has a dark dry edge on it from being left uncovered in the fridge which has been repeatedly raided at three o’clock a.m. by the guy still recovering from jet lag and leaving the grocery clerk with another 10 items to add to her list.

Dirty dishes in the kitchen sink have tripled in size and nearly all my shaving cream has been used up on man whiskers that once again can be found sprinkled in the small space behind the bathroom sink taps after his razor session.

And lately when I wake up in the morning, all the blankets I have so generously enjoyed all to myself are missing off my wintery cold skeleton and have gravitated to the other side of the bed where Pete lies rolled up in them, snoring like an old snow blower from 1971.

Speaking of which, I haven’t been able to get near our new John Deere snow blower since Pete got home, as he is always outside creating labyrinths around the farmyard with it.

All manner of guitar instruction booklets, picks, microphones, cords, stands, and gargantuan amplifier systems have appeared in the middle of our tiny living room, amassed there for his late night, early morning and afternoon jamming sessions.

Plans abound in this spontaneous construction technician that I am married to, who would love to build a house addition, raise the roof and the house all at the same time and all before the end of January.

This house, my life, my heart--all are very full.

And today, even if just for this moment, everything—even the mess on his side of the bed--is right in the world.