RFD*

*RainFogDrizzle




It's my birthday today and you'd think Gaia might take a chance on me and drop a bit of sunshine my way? Not a hope.

The best birthday gift I get every year is another year of this precious life. The next is the Grandgirl who never misses it. She arrived late last night and between the RFD and the moose (we counted four on the roads) it took us till nearly 2 in the morning before we got home.

And this year daughter sent me a birthday gift of a GPS for the car. Something I have coveted for a long time as I have a problem I label geographical dyslexia. I can never tell you what direction I'm facing in unless it's a well known landmark like Lake Ontario and I always knew how to get there from just about any point in Ontario. Here in Newfoundland, St. John's is confusing as it's not laid out like a grid and streets and roads keep changing names just to laugh at me. And though I've learned a pile of these name changes there's still the odd one thrown out of the blue which in turn throws me.

Directionally challenged, that's me. I come by it well. My father hadn't a clue and when we would travel together we would pore over maps pretending we had inbuilt navigational skills, hardy-har. I remember one spectacular night in Quebec City where we (I) drove down cul-de-sacs that were an armslength apart in width and then I would have to reverse back again, confounded and baffled. At around three in the morning, after hours of this maze-like meandering seeking our hotel which neither of us could remember whether it was in Lower Town or Upper Town or even the name of it, Gawd help our simple Irish souls, when the Da looked at me and said, "OK. Next time we will tie a long string to the back of the car and the front of the hotel before we go anywhere." I remember us laughing ourselves silly at the thought, just before finding a gendarme who spoke English and drew a map on a page of his notebook for us.

The Da would have dearly loved my GPS.