Blog Jam

It's a fog of snow out there. Flakes so small they blanket the air, gauzing the meadow and the barn. I can't say as I like it. We had to cancel, again, the Book Club monthly meeting and now we're deferring the works till March. First time ever Book Club was cancelled and twice to boot.

As I was dressing this morning I became aware, as if for the first time, how there is no longer a need to rush. It seems like in my old life I was rushing from one thing to another. Like most working mothers, like most cramming every scrap of life into an overflowing day.

I thought:

Thirty minutes to perform all the rituals of the woken up morning.

I thought:

Why am I paying attention to the timing of that?

I had the house record (in a house of males) when still living in my parents' house. Five minutes from start to finish. Including the slap(Irishese for makeup) and clobber (full dress regalia). No showers then, just the bath at night. Now it's thirty minutes of drift, a meditation in there too, a chat with the dog. A leisurely teeth brushing, a selection of which of the two pairs of jeans to wear, or the sweats if going absolutely nowhere.

My old newfound friend phoned me yesterday. I hadn't heard her voice in well over thirty+ years. It hadn't changed. She has led a life as an emergency room nurse, a teacher, a farmer, a saw mill operator and now an artist. It turns out she is an expert in the art of Chinese fine line painting and conducts classes. And yes, she's in her eighties. Below is some of her work on exhibit at a gallery:

We also shared missing children stories. One of her sons estranged himself for twelve years from the entire family. During that time she missed the birth of her grandchildren and their growing up years. Years never regained of course - lost forever and with no foundational love for those grandchildren like she has with her other son's. She is stoic when she tells me this and has made the best of it, even through the apologies of her prodigal son. She said to me: "Apologies are too small, too inadequate. I tell him I do not want to hear them for they are meaningless. Let's make the best of the remaining years."

Wise words. I'd forgotten how very wise she was.

Shared heartbreaks. Shared creative souls.

A long lost friendship retrieved from the mists of time and misunderstandings. Elder bonus.

She's wearin' right thin.

Somewhere along the way, winter, most often embraced, the odd time humorously tolerated, sometimes escaped from, became an abscess on the arse this year.

Normally, the photo above, taken yesterday, would enchant me.

But the grey blurry line beyond the trees? Yeah, that's the snow/ice covered bay. Seriously.

If things would stay that way, like the photo? Well, yeah, it would be lovely, like.

But they don't. And there's the rub.

It all melts into a puddle within a day or two. The puddle ices up. Then yer freezing rain falls on top of that.

And then the snow piles on again.

And then 100k/hour gale force winds howl around tearing the snow and running it into six foot drifts. And the temperature drops to minus double digit Celsius.

And these endless cycles repeated ad nauseum from November on through to now.

Every journey planned has to be plotted out carefully in conjunction with forecasts. One could get dangerously trapped in a blizzard/sleet/wind storm. Or worse yet, black ice.

Worst. Winter. Ever.

/whingey whiny rant.

"Thrift"y Me

.

I don't like shopping, despise malls, fashion houses, fashion shows, salons. But I can't run around naked so I have to compromise.

My reduced financial circumstances combined with a fixed measly pension, shopping-drool adversary, "retail therapy" challenger that I am, environmentalist, reuser, repurposer and recycler (AKA "crazy hippie broad") I go for what needs to cover me to my local thrift shop. There are so many benefits to this. Not least of which are others' castoffs are my treasures. And I get to meet people like myself. And we share our triumphs and disappointments (too big, too small, wrong colour, here's a scarf that goes with the stuff in your cart) and ask each others' advice. No one is pushing me into decisions, or lying to me. Here, honesty prevails.

So last week. I needed another top and pants. A warm top. A cosy top. That looked good. I've been a wee bit in the national news here. (I know, fun eh?) And this has been a very cold winter.

So I ran the outfit shown above by my fleeting and very fair-weather friends at the local thrift and they loved it. I trust their judgement more than friends and sales clerks who would never wish to hurt the old feelings. These caring strangers are always brutally honest.

I'm delighted with the result.

Here's the full cost breakdown:

Pants (deepest grey with a goldy thin french seam stitching on the sides- I like them slender and matchy to my sweaters: $2.99
Sweater (brand new - Jones New York), mohair, silk and wool in shades of deep grey and a light gold: $3.99
Scarf - in goldy-grey mix - $2.99
Bonus: Grey cargo pants for the summer hikes: $3.99

And it was buy 3 clothing items and get 1 free day so for a total of less than $11.00 I get some glammed up. And no tax.

I am only delighted with myself and my new clobber. Hassle free shopping at its best. With very little footprint on the planet.

Recommend.

Contrary

Life is like that. Time is like that - always contrary to expectations, if you have some. I don't anymore. Too many surprises. No expectations on others sees me happy most of the time.

Life has taught me these lessons:

The family you might hope to have holding your hands through elder years are a no-show. Estrangement, distance, disregard, shunning and silence is de rigeur, their new modus operandi. Even though you were there for them in their times of greatest need.

The family you thought would vanish like the first snowfall of the season? They are there through thick and thin, checking on you, asking about Daughter's health and missing daughter - any news?, sending you little gifts, texts.

Lifelong, or just about lifelong, friends seeing you through to the bitter end? Gone. Never to return. It truly begs the question: were they ever really there?

Short-term friends? They call you out of the blue, making sure you're OK, cooking you dinner.

What brought all this deep thinking on top of me?

An acquaintance that truly irritated me. A friend of a friend. And one day she called me out of the blue. When I still had call display. And she shared her surname with another (good) friend. And I thought it was the good friend. And thus I was extraordinarily chatty and friendly with her. Asking her how she and her family were. And I could hear the surprise in her voice that I was so effing kind. Which should be the norm for me. And obviously isn't if you breach whatever standards I am holding you to.

And ever since then? We have a totally different relationship. We let each other into our lives. We're even considering doing a joint art project.

Go figure.

On Acting Like a Grown-up.

Avoidance.

One of my defects.

I'm not good at confrontation, I do not express anger well (running and hiding), I write better than I speak - though lately some would dispute that. I've been on teevee, and on radio in the past week. People come to me, say: you were so articulate. I am pleased, having been advised years ago never to watch or listen to one's self on media. I am wordy, but only in my head, on paper, on my laptop, in my texts where I reign myself in, who wants to read, on a tiny screen, my endless priceless prose?

You see, I was avoiding something inevitable.

My own demise.

And putting measures in place so my daughter, who has MS, is not over-burdened with my managerial ineptitude and, well, pre-mortem avoidance.

So I see a lawyer, and explain things. My last will was written, oh, well over twenty five years ago. Circumstances change. And I mention the unmentionable too:

"What happens if my daughter predeceases me?"

And he was pleased, I could tell, that he didn't have to inject such an unspeakable into our conversation.

And he advised me on the other major concern I had: my missing child, who may, oh lord, show her face upon my death, and cause even more incredible pain and havoc for the child who has already seen far too much of it herself.

"Write a lengthy and utterly clear codicil," he added,"Outline the reasons she has no say in the distribution of your estate or in your living will. Make it uncontestable."

"The thing is," he added, "We need to make this bullet-proof, and I must say, more people should do this. It eases the pain of what is extraordinarily stressful for the survivors, you are very mature in your thinking."

Mature!

The first time in my life I've ever heard this word applied to me.

Now, something else ~ has anyone out there planned a green funeral?

What? You're not going to die, ever?

Alrighty then.

Word

Daughter gave me this one the other day. There's a certain acquaintance of ours who fits the bill and we had individually suffered at his hands mouth. Maybe more than once. Maybe far too many times.

Anyway here it is:

Blatherskite

blath·er·skite [blath-er-skahyt]

noun

1.

a person given to voluble, empty talk.


2.

nonsense; blather.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Origin:
1640–50; blather + skite skate
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
blath·er·skite


/ˈblaT͟Hərˌskīt/


noun

noun: blatherskite; plural noun: blatherskites; noun: bletherskate; plural noun: bletherskates



1.


a person who talks at great length without making much sense.



•foolish talk; nonsense.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------


And yes, we used the word blather a lot in Cork, as in: "Oh she's full of the blather" or "At the bar, he blathered on and on."

But to actually find a noun, a glorious noun to fit the one who's doing the blather?

Brilliant she is.

Coming to Life

In my experience there is nothing more profound than seeing one's creation come to life. Whatever it is, a painting, a poem, a book, a song, knitting, embroidery, sewing. Yesterday, it happened again for me when our theatre board met in St. John's and we had a first read-through of my newest play, a two-hander (two actors on stage). The feedback was terrific, the suggestions for enhancement thoughtful, even the ideas for promotion and public relations superb. I felt so blessed. They, well, loved it.

Some of the idioms I use are very Irish and after feedback I changed it to the Newfoundland patois. A wonderful 3-1/2 hours of seeing my newest infant take her baby-steps and spring to life. I was very close to tears at the end, happy tears, and, so I noticed, these were shared with 3 others. One even went so far as to tell me that his own father, many years ago, had handled an emotional scene in their lives exactly the same as the scene at the end of my play. Different words of course, but the scenario was the same: ordinary, everyday words carrying a wealth of underlying meaning.

There is no greater feeling in the world than this: watching my baby stagger out into the world and lead me where? Who knows.

Bring it on.

Philip Seymour Hoffman and the Monsters.

I was an admirer of Philip Seymour Hoffman's acting, his directorial abilities, his engaging intelligence. I was also aware of his addictions, the monsters that can awaken at any time and stretch their muscles and grab you by the throat. Awareness is a vital key to us addicts. With awareness, we can sedate the monster, bore him into a coma by simply not paying attention when he starts to yawn and whimper for attention.

Many of us addicts share the what-ifs of Philip's death. As in: what-if we succumbed to the monster? What-if we ignored the monster for the last 20+years and then just danced with him the once? Could we then disengage and start all over again without him?

When the poll is taken the answer is always no. When 20+ years of monster beating results in firing up that particular romance again one would then question all those 20+ years that brought you to that renewal of the vows of engagement.

That's where Philip was. I totally get it. So do other addicts.

He said some things a year or so before his death from an overdose:

"You may think you're through with the past, but the past isn't through with you."

"How do we get so deformed, why are we always trying to find that flaw and fix it?"

"We are slaves to the lives we create."

He was unhappy. Sobriety wasn't enough anymore. Unbelievable success was not the answer. He said he never knew what happiness was. He thought it was way outside of his capacity and understanding.

And only for other people.

But not him.

At peace now.

The Last of the O'Sullivan Sisters. Part 2 of 2.

See Part 1 here.

Strange that. How lives that can be so remarkable in hindsight are so very unremarkable when they are actually happening. My Auntie Kit's life was such. She had six children. She took care of her rather nasty mother-in-law (one of those who would drag you by the ear while screeching in weird laughter). When visiting my aunt I remember hiding in a wardrobe to escape the fun and games of Granny M. as they always involved pain of some kind or "teasing" now reclassified under 'abuse'. How her own grandchildren survived her is beyond me.

Auntie Kit joined her husband in his garage business, school bus runs and taxi service. She was one of the first female commercial drivers (I would say) in County Cork. On her Cork City runs she would always drop in for a cuppa and update my mother on life in their village of birth. Driving taxis and buses she would pick up all the news. Her husband, in the meantime, continued at night with his musical life as a band pianist, accordionist and banjo player. There were always sessions taking place in their parlour and as the children grew, they joined him in public appearances.

Her husband died young, reasonably young. Like his mother before him, he didn't believe in doctors so had undiagnosed diabetes. When he died, she reinvented herself as a golfer, bridge player and held Scrabble matches every Sunday night in her house. My father, himself a widower, would never miss a Sunday night at Kit's and when I was home on holidays, myself and my now older children would join the crowd of Scrabblers and munch on her wonderful baking and endless cups of tea. It was always a teetotal house.

She was featured in the paper quite a few years before her death (see above), having turned 90, still playing golf and bridge and driving herself around.

I will remember her as her own remarkable woman - an inspiration and a driving force. As were all the O'Sullivan sisters.

The Last of the O'Sullivan Sisters. Part 1 of 2.

Catherine(Kit)O'Sullivan in her heyday.

Today my mother would have been 100 years old if she had lived. A rare thing, you'd think. But you'd be wrong. Her grandmother, my great-grandmother whom I remember well, lived well into her nineties and had a misstep on her stairs and fell to her death when I was, what, 8 or 9. So 100 would not be far-fetched. It certainly wasn't in the case of my recently deceased aunt who lived to be just shy of her 95th birthday.

I was fortunate enough to have 8 blood aunts. My father had 5 sisters, my mother 3. They wended their way in and out of our household when we were growing up and my father's two surviving sisters, when he had passed, would meet for lunch once a week in a fancy hotel in Cork when well into their nineties.

However, my mother died in her fifties leaving her 3 sisters and her mother bereft along with her own husband (my father) and 6 children, 3 of whom were teenagers.

I have written of some of my aunts before, here's a link.

My maternal aunts along with my mother were four stunning girls and in that old expression would make the heads of the blind turn and weep at their beauty. I have no trouble believing that, having been at several Nollaig Na mBans when I was growing up and listening to their raucous stories. The sisters remained extraordinarily close to the end of their days.

My mother's last surviving sister died last week. I visited her every year I returned home to Ireland. Up to a few years ago she played golf and bridge but then her baby, a son of 49, died a horrible death from lung cancer and she 'turned'. She looked inward then, much like my grandmother did when my mother died, and was never the same. Inner memories pertaining to the deceased loved one were deleted, never to return, while girlhood reminiscences were embraced as if they were yesterday.

We take our ease and comfort where we can and losing a child is unimaginable, no matter what the age.

Part 1 of 2. See Part 2 here.

A Reminder that Spring is on its Way?

The latest in the series of Newfoundland & Labrador tourism ads. And yes, it is a magical place.

After all I chose it.

Or did it choose me?

On life and death and the whole damn thing.....

Pete and the Clancys

I'm not much into the cult of stardom and notoriety and grieving for people I've never met. Maybe seen. But not met. But in the last few days two people dear to me have died. I say "dear". One was an elderly aunt, well into her nineties. A powerful role model for her children and nieces. More on that on a later post.

The other was Pete Seeger, also in his nineties. I saw him in concert a few times and never met him but the heart wrenching grief I've felt astounded me. Until I thought: this is all tied up with your aunt's death and peace and flowers and your own optimistic youth. You've been stoic about that.

I held back the tears when a brother told me of all my aunt's surviving children singing her favourite songs at the service. They were all great musicians in the family. But then Pete. His passing has unleashed something fierce in me. A mourning of the hippie me, the younger me. When aunts and uncles were alive and the protests against the Vietnam atrocities felt like they could change the way we did things. When I did put flowers in my hair and wore long dresses and asked where all those flowers had gone. When I first awoke to the injustice and misogyny and patriarchy and the military industrial complex and never went back to complacent sedation again.

Pete helped me do that. And you should have seen him play with the Clancy Brothers. I cry thinking of it.

Meanwhile, who'll ask about all those flowers now?

Coming Late in Life to Simple Delights

Rhubarb jam made this morning on the woodstove.

I post pictures of foods to FB and to here. Mainly because:

(a) I've lived long enough
(b) I never really had the chance to delight in food preparation for so very many years.

Meals were all need driven. A single mom, two kids, a full-blown career very much in a man's world, long hours. Free time was dedicated to making ends meet: sewing the clothes, making the curtains, knitting the sweaters, freezing the fall vegetables, preserving, rushing through food preparation and lunch making. Catching my breath in between. Juggling mostly. Not really having a good time with it all.

Now?

It's a never ending delight. One of the attractions in my choosing to live here was the distance from restaurants. I ate out a lot in Toronto. It was the lifestyle of many of my friends and I fell into it.

Now I delight in prepping food, creating my own recipe book, feeding friends and feeding myself. Making my own bread, freezing meals for those days. Making jams, preserves from home-grown fruits.

I freeze rhubarb among other fruits in the summer and then take it out in batches and make jam after soaking it overnight with sugar on the woodstove. Like this morning.

And I take an inordinate amount of pleasure in this never having to rush, enjoying the textures, the colours, the scent of something happening in my kitchen.

Bliss. We need more of it in our lives.

The Lonely Engineer - Part 2

See Part 1 Here

Before the feast began, Denis would sit in the front room and talk to us older children. I still, to this day, remain enchanted with the vast range of general knowledge he had, his intimacy with landscapes and buildings everywhere, his unending political knowledge, his encyclopaedic musical abilities, his unerring certainty (he was a diviner) of where precious metals lay, where long dead forests were located, even the depth of the water table under our house and the placement of the skeletons of long dead farm animals - for our house was built over farmland, the original suburbia of the fifties.

Lying in bed, I would often imagine all that lay beneath our house, layers of history, maybe even human skeletons. Denis would often wield pencil and paper and draw things, spell out long words for me, tell me what they meant, what language was the source, and how it compared to other languages.

I said to my father once: "He's a genius, right?" I'd never met a genius, I'd read about them but here was one in the actual flesh in our home, so to speak. "But of course," Daddy responded in a matter of fact way.

We would try to avert our eyes when Denis ate, as Mummy had told us not to be rude and stare. It was very difficult and not from a judgement point of view, but from an absolute fascination with the gargantuan quantities of food he would down: a dozen eggs, ditto bacon, ditto sausages, three or four chops, a bowl of Mum's home cut chips and then half an apple tart with cream followed by an enormous wedge of Mum's delicious fruit cake.

One time, one of my brothers who was about 4 at the time, circled Denis as he sat in our sturdiest chair and with his eyes just about popping out of his head said in amazement: "Oh my-my-my Daddy, what a tummy!"

You see, Denis was about 32 stone in weight - nearly 400 lbs. Daddy told me once his car, a Ford Prefect, had to have special bracing to hold his weight. Lorry suspension, Daddy called it.

He lived by himself in a flat on a main-floor somewhere and his landlady cooked for him. No family, Daddy had said when I asked one time, only a dead sister. He could no longer travel abroad because of his size.

I imagine our family was the only family he would ever feel a part of. I remember clearly the look on his face when my little brother made his awestruck comment on his size. A flash of bleakness, something unbearable. I had to look away.

Denis lost both his legs to diabetes eventually.

Before he died, and he wasn't too old, Daddy would always visit him once a week in the care home where he resided. And bring him Mummy's baking and the really tough crosswords out of the English papers.

Daddy told me once in later years as we travelled around the U.S. together that he still missed "the magnificence of Denis' mind."

Me too.

The Lonely Engineer - Part 1

The Sentimentalist - Johanna Skibsrud
P.87

"...a sadness that would make you, when you saw it, want to pull the edges of your own life up around you, and stay there, very carefully, inside."

I hadn't thought about him in years. Until I read the above quote in the book I'm enjoying at the moment. He was a great friend to my father. I imagine he was about 20 years older. And I believe, today, that there was an unspoken debt (of gratitude?)for something Denis had done for Daddy. They were originally from the same small town and Denis had achieved some prominence as a gifted engineer in the government offices where my father worked. Some strings were pulled, I would imagine.

Denis, a lifelong bachelor, would visit our family about twice a year. And my mother would get into a hive of preparation: baking, cleaning, even painting. I was given to understand that Denis was highly important and a very good friend indeed to Daddy.

A measure of visitor importance in my family back then was when both the 'front' room and the dining room had both fires lit and banked high. Growing up, we were banned from the front room as were many children then. The too many children of the typical suburban semi-detached would spoil the furniture, wear out the carpet, crush the ornaments, destroy the curtains, fingerprint the walls and damage the piano. But when Denis came for his afternoon and evening with us, all those rules were tossed and we could enter the front room at will.

Denis would arrive with many suitcases (yes, heavy leather suitcases)stuffed with food. Boxes of chocolates and sweets, tins of biscuits, acres of sausages and bacon, black puddings, white puddings, assorted luscious 'chops', even eggs. He would never insult my mother by bringing any baked goodies. Our eyes would all light up in the anticipation of it all and we would help him lug in the contents of the packed boot (trunk) of his car, my eldest brother and me jointly handling one of the suitcases at a time they were so heavy.

Part 1 of 2

See Part 2 here

5%

It was +5C yesterday and I treated myself to the full Aran effect for my long afternoon walk with the wonderdog, Ansa. I had to take a pic. I made it all myself over the years. A headless selfie wouldn't have done it justice at all.

My morning meditation had it:

"We only spent 5% of our lives doing what we love to do best."

It stopped me in my tracks.

Imagine! Only 5%!

Some of the 95% is maintenance, I imagine: roof, food, clothing, medical, etc.

Another chunk would be addiction: booze, food, TV, interwebz.

What do I love to do best?

Write. Read. Knit. Have friends and family in. Take photographs, play the piano. Write and direct plays. Visit friends and family.

I'm caught again by the weather today and had to cancel all town appointments including medical, lunch and dinner with friends, groceries and hair chop.

It is -10C with windchill and freezing rain now to be followed later on by 10CM of snow, followed my more rain. My larder is looking light but I have pre-prepped meals in the freezer.

And I'm writing. Even if it's the blog. I'm writing. Increasing that 5% even a wee bit.

Mmmmmmmm

10 really, really, really favourite food likes:

Gorgonzola cheese.
Anchovies.
Field mushrooms, picked by me from actual fields, preferably in Ireland.
Scallops. Large. Wrapped in bacon. Broiled.
Cappuccino.
Crepes.
Bastible bread.
Aloo Gobi.
Beef Wellington.
Steak & Kidney Pie.

And yes, I make/use them all.

You?

Wee Blisses

My sister and I talked on the phone for nearly 2 hours yesterday. I now get a cheap rate to Ireland of 5c a minute on my mobile. Ridiculous really. I love talking with my sister. My only sister who is nearly 14 years younger than me.

I'd given up hoping for one when all those boys started to arrive in our house. So had my mother. So had my father. When she was born somewhere around midnight on March 1st 195*, my taciturn father, a man who showed very little emotion and only cried once in my presence, burst into my bedroom in the small hours of the morning and could not contain himself: "It's a girl, it's a girl!" I didn't believe him. I had to see her.

And she was beautiful. I couldn't get over her. My mother (who was ill for a long time afterwards) and I mothered her. And dressed her in gorgeous clothes. I would knit her little jackets and Mum would make her dresses and we would clap our hands and exclaim to each other how simply lovely she was, how clever, how her blonde curly hair went to her waist in such a way Shirley Temple should be worried. I would take her in to high school with me and show her off. And yes, everyone was envious. They still remember it.

To this day, my sister never has had self-esteem problems and is a fabulous mother to 4 herself. When I think happy homes I think: my sister's place. She and her husband live in a very old house in Cork, one with rambling halls and back kitchens and an old conservatory and a big kitchen where everyone helps to cook and dance to silly music when they're doing it. She never stands on ceremony and I've seen her huge old table in the kitchen have two circles of chairs around it, the more agile eating on their laps and everyone talking at once. She has that way about her.

The sweetest thing among very many sweet things she says to me: "Your room is always here, WWW. Your room here has your name on the door. Always."

And one of the best things? Grandgirl and her friend are staying with my sister for a while this summer as they backpack Europe.

I get such a ridiculous charge out of calling my young sister "Great-Aunt."

Manifesto of Aging

I watch myself like I'm an experiment in a petri-dish sometimes.

The subtlety of behaviour changes.

My personal manifesto to aging.

No more sleeping in. Ever. Regular as clockwork. No late nights. No alarm. Up at 8.00 a.m. Without fail. Bed made. Dressed. Breakfast the same every morning without fail.

Showers and hair washing are not daily anymore. Skin and hair too dry. They need time to recuperate and gather themselves for the next aquatic assault.

When items around me go even slightly wonky, like needing a repair, I panic. Much like my dad did. My mother died too young for me to observe her in her elder years. Why can't it be fixed today! (Implied – I could be dead by the time it works again.)

I basically lived by the seat of my pants it seems like forever. Now I'm that kind of model citizen I would laugh at (don't they ever have any fun for gawd's sake?). Regular hours. And bowel movements. No hangovers. No desserts. No seconds. Eating out rarely because home-cooked is best – you know what goes into it. Watching the pennies – ha-ha, I'm living longer than my savings and my pension just doesn't cut it. Keenly watching the weather for negotiability.

Hearing myself speak my father's words, my granny's (she outlived my mother, her daughter), setting firmer boundaries, having clearer dislikes and likes. But every pain/ache gets magnified a little. And I try not to talk about them. That is hard.

But also, more confident. My dramatic (my gawd, she has balls!) move to Newfoundland celebrated over and over again. My not caring really, anymore, about what you think of me. My opinions more cherished – by me. And my gifts. I never could see them before, I would demean them, tell you anybody could do what I would do, play piano, write, knit, sing, speak at public forums, host large get-togethers. Speaking openly about ageism, sexism and racism. I am more offended than ever at jokes about any of it. No, it's not funny. And don't tell me I have no sense of humour. But I refuse to laugh at the expense of a demonized group, like elders in diapers or prostitution or gays. And no, it's not extreme PC-ness either. You're the one who needs to grow up and become more aware of how offensive it is.

But being more at peace with myself is the best change of all.

And not too, too crotchety. Yet.

I'm waiting in anticipation.

Tell Me A Story

My gosh, old friends. Friends that have long vanished down the tunnel of their own lives, breathing and doing and celebrating and grieving - without you.

I can never sing the praises of FaceBook loudly enough. As I've mentioned before.

I had a friend, 12 years older than me – though I had forgotten exactly how much older she was as she had that younger energy around her until she reminded me. We played bridge in those days. A lot. In the absence of a foursome, her 12 year old son and my 9 year old daughter filled the gap. We were lucky they were so brilliant.

We lived around the corner from each other in a small town in Ontario. In enormous century homes of red brick and atmosphere. History breathed from each others' walls. I've never lost my love for old houses, obviously.

We cottaged (a uniquely Ontario term for going off to a wilderness cabin for a while) with our kids and husbands of the time. And drank together. Boy, did we drink together. The name of the cottage was “While You're Up”. Tells you everything you need to know. And then there was an incident, as there sometimes is. And the friendship survives or it doesn't, And ours went into a coma.

But I never forgot. And neither did she apparently. Because through FaceBook we have reconnected and it's been so very easy after, oh my, 35 years perhaps. So we now email. Lengthily. We pursued our individual artistic souls after we 'broke up'. And she ended one of her recent emails with: “Tell me a story”.

And so I did and ended mine today with: “Tell me one.”

This could go on for a very long time.