Sunday Whirl. It's was Jeannine and Alicia's fault.

I did what I always do this morning. I read the words to R and C who said, “renovation” and “living in Tuscany” respectively. In the end it turned into an ode to a shoe cupboard … naturally. :)Actually, I have to blame thank Jeannine and Alicia for the inspiration over a little FB joke.(Jeannine, the Manolos pinch!)paint, use, sprees, outsider, away, fearsome,part, reserves, body, intimate, written, windowThere is a shoe cupboard built into the back wall of the bedroom closet of my 100 year old house.I use it to store some of my silliest shoes; the results of overly-emotional PMS shopping sprees. I hide them away from the sensible part of my life.My best friend came to visit a year ago and when he saw it he said, “When you renovate, this will be the first thing to go”.But I think the cupboard will stay right where it is for as long as I live here because, while it’s a bit plain on the outside, the inside wall is covered with shimmering white and gold vintage wallpaper, a brilliant backdrop for my intimate fancies, a domestic geode bearing the glitter and sparkle of darling shoes.The wallpaper is covering layers of paint; the last one is chartreuse, shining from around the edges like little moons.I imagine the ladies who once filled this house, who filled the shoe cupboard with their shoes and their happy and fearsome days. The shoes are gone but nothing has really changed.In this cupboard is all past strife and confusion, mistakes that we are, passed down from one before to the one who comes after.Together we stand in our shoes. Bruised and beautiful in the filtered light from the closet window.I can see you now twirling in your shoes on the wooden closet floor, your body looking perfect in each imperfection.We fray the fabric of our lives; we count down the hours, dressing and breathing in the light of our mornings.You can choose to see, you can choose not to see, but if you choose to see you must look deeper, harder, to sometimes strain, because the shoe cupboard reserves the answers you are looking for.I sit cross-legged on the closet floor, my computer humming quietly beside me, the story waiting to be written, a cup of tea in one hand; I close the shoe cupboard with the other.

Secrets of the Fisherman's Wharf

I’m just in from my day on the river. I drove across the city to the delta and, my oh my, the air was warm and still and the sun was shining down on the happy people out on the river walk, warming every slippery, silver heart.The fishing boats on the wharf sprouted outcroppings of colourful tarps and it was impossible to see the goings from the boardwalk.And I always have to see what’s going on!If I had a mast I’d tie a tetherball to it too!And I’d most certainly dress my anchor with rubber gloves.Sea urchins; 3 for $10. I wanted to buy one and paint it but I settled for a photo.I wonder if you fold up the tarp after you wash the boat deck so it dries in the sun. I wonder if fishermen think in terms of dry/wet or if there's some secret language, a series of words, wetness words like Eskimo have for snow, that only fishermen know and use, and they would laugh if they knew this question.Mmm, hot, garlicky, lemony prawns and a green salad for supper. I think so!I love it here but now I must go back home. The river is still glittering beside me and I can see my mountains blue and violet in the distance.The world doesn’t seem so big.

A lovely sunny Friday and then Friday blues! What?

Wow, the first rays of sunshine in the morning after a week of rain. Oh happy, happy day.Yummy strawberries for breakfast, what could be better?What’s this?A deflated C?What’s up C? Even Morgan’s in a good mood.Oh, Friday afternoon women’s studies class plus midterm results.No you can’t have a sunshine sick day.

Taking some time for black water and silence

It’s so beautiful here today it makes my heart ache.I’ve been somewhat absent in my own life lately. It’s true! A week of setting myself on autopilot because things have to get done has finally taken a toll and today, when I drove C to her classes on her mountain-top university, I just kept driving further and further into the mountain.I came to the little parking lot I was looking for, parked up and practically sprinted into the forest.I chose the trail to the lake but the sound of my footsteps on the crunchy gravely trail was bothering me so as soon as I could I left the pebbly path for the soft, mossy paths that skirts the lake. You’ll laugh but I even walked with my arms spread out somewhat so I wouldn’t hear that rustling noise that my down jacket makes. :)I didn’t expect many people to be on the trails on a drizzly day like today and good thing too because I had it in mind to be completely alone for a few hours. The moss dripped, the ground felt spongy and the whole forest glistened and twinkled with that spring freshness of temperate rain forests. There is an old Czech children’s book in my library. It was smuggled out of Prague along with me. It is a book of poetry and watercolours and the title translates as “slippers of moss”. I felt so small and soft in the forest beside the lake. I was wearing slippers of moss.At one of the shore access points I snuck up on some little thing and scared it half to death. Suddenly there was a frantic splash and a trail of bubbles leading away from me and disappearing among the dripping branches. To tell the truth, I think we scared each other.I sat by the lake for a long time watching a fisherman on the other side. Then a ripple. A small flock of mergansers landed close by and began arrowing their way towards me. There is nothing common about common mergansers. They are so beautiful to me with their rusty, crested heads and ghostly bodies.I didn’t dare breathe. I just sat still and quiet, blending into the forest and watching.They arrowed around dipping and surfacing until we all heard the sound of people talking and walking on the crunchy path. They rippled the blackness as they ran/flew away.I waited for a few minutes and, as soon as I was satisfied that my loud lake walkers were a good way away, I hiked out of the forest and back to the parking lot and got on with the rest of the day.I feel so much better. Taking this time was so important and so necessary for my little wild heart. Sometimes I find myself wishing I could take you with me and feel the peace I feel. I hope you have a chance to take time for yourselves and rest your wild little hearts in your own special way. Then you can tell me about it. :)

Inspiration comes just in time for TALU and Tea Cup Tuesday

Finally!Don’t you love it when everything comes together? What do they call that?The Bermuda triangle!After yesterday’s party I felt exhausted but in a way restored as well, and decided I’d pull out some lovely lovelies and get some photography work done.Lately I’ve been noticing turquoise. Yesterday Chloe pointed it out as her most favorite colour of the moment, today I took my most favorite Morpho butterflies out of winter storage to shine up the house for spring and someone somewhere on some blog said that this spring turquoise is the new black.Ok sold!I looked around for turquoise in the house and set up a photo shoot and I was working and working until C texted that she was coming home from a visit with her father. (Big, BIG rip tide flowing thru my Bermuda triangle) The first visit since last summer. The first time since the court case. The first time since he wrote those things he wrote in his perjurious affidavits. Can you say deprogramming alert? Can you say one emotionally overwrought, clenched stomach child about to step thru my door? (Ok, maybe a tiny divorce daemon alert here, but very tiny.)Any rd. up, figured C could probably use a strong, hot, sweet cup of tea.Another, much warmer, tide flowing in the Bermuda triangle: My wonderful friend Joanne sent me a sweet snowbird ring she made from porcelain and it arrived today! She makes the loveliest tiny silver rings, which I plan to own several of, and she also makes beautiful statement jewellery and, the most wonderful added bonus, she has a Tumbler account and each image is more beautiful than the other. Truly, I could live in every photo and I make sure I stalk visit her most days.Anyway, C home, beautiful ring, lovely sweet Earl Gray, brilliant butterflies, fresh spring garden flowers and happy turquoise.The cup C is holding is Elizabethan Fine Bone China and the second cup, the one with the rose and fruit inside the cup is another of my Paragon cups. The little serving plate is an Old Foley James Kent and the turquoise silver overlay vase is...actually I have no idea, but I love it.Oh, and the macaroons are made in a little Iranian bakery a few blocks away and are super yummy! Good thing I only bought one for each of us; they really are very moreish.I believe that afternoon tea and a little sugary treat is the best thing to relax a clenched stomach and put the rosy back in ashen lips and pale cheeks, don't you?Linking with Artful Affirmations and Martha for tea cup TuesdayAnd also with TALU with this post another lovely tea for two post.

A special girl turns sweet sixteen 4842 miles away from home

My birthday is in the middle of July which meant I was always out of school and most of my friends were away and so was I, which meant that my party usually was a “mom and me” thing, usually somewhere in Europe, or where ever we were that July.Although I don’t have any feelings of being lonely, I did feel a teensy bit sorry for our lovely visiting girl turning sweet sixteen away from her family and, as there were only seven girls in her tour, we decided to have a birthday party and invite the whole bunch for a spaghetti supper, cake and a viewing of Pirates of the Caribbean (Ayaka’s favorite movie).Morgan, being “one of the girls” picked a chair and resolutely refused to leave the party. Each time I shooed her off she circled the table and jumped right back on her chair.I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to have a mass of giggling, laughing teens here and I think the energy was really good for the spirit of the house especially after the disaster and during the full-swing-ahead renovations. I'm sure I would have had the same fun on a baja party bus, but this was quite wonderful as well.Little prezzies were given and received,The cake was lit and brought in to much cheer and applause. A very loud and rousing Happy Birthday was sung and the candles were blown out.And everyone was settled under comfy quilts in the library to watch their movie.A lovely evening and wonderful memories were made today. Memories of a sweet sixteen, a first time alone away from home, a first time in a foreign country, and of good, loving friends.

Silly Sunday whirl, I couldn't help it.

I started off taking the words seriously. Words like “blessed” and “snare” and “deserves” are serious words, aren’t they? But then I had a visit to one of my most favorite places in Vancouver, Southlands Nursery, and found these wonderful seed packets.Now I know deep down, and I know you also know that these seeds will produce the same radishes, peas, etc as the not-so-wonderful seed packets, but don’t you think there could be something “Jack and the beanstalk” in a packet like this?So, as long as the silliness is all around everything’s alright with the world.blue, blessed, deserves, first, gasps, instant,slap, snare, dust, unbalance, ride, wingsHere’s a first!Let’s pretend that we’re an upholstered sofa grown on a sofa farm somewhere in Middle America by two fat-bottomed sofa farmers and their ten blessed children.We’ll be shiny and new and have spring in our step and cushion in our fall and not a speck of dust on our creamy body.Maybe we’ll live in a lovely parlor room with lovely ladies who do tea, crumpets and cakes and they will believe that a lovely sofa like us deserves adoring gasps and dainty things and adorn us with petit point pillows.Then again we might live in a conference room feeling the unbalance of arguments from each side, hearing the slap and snare of verbal fights between husbands and wives who’ve lost the kind perspective in relationships.Or we could live in a dark basement, our fabric flickering blue from the glow of the TV set, our middle sagging from the weight of so many teenagers piled on top like bushels of rosy apples.After one of their drunken parties they may give us wings and carry us on their shoulders to some new and exciting place, like the middle of a park under a shady tree so we can sit and watch people passing by, our creamy fabric slowly turning green in the rain.People will see us in an instant and stare wondering what we are doing and maybe they will come close and inspect us hoping to find a message in our decaying fabric.And maybe the fat-bottomed farmers will ride by with their ten blessed children and they will wonder what their sofa is doing now.But we won’t have to say anything. People rarely expect unexpected sofas to explain their actions.

You know those time when there's not much to say?

It's been one of those weeks.I’m really transparent. It’s always been the case that I need beautiful surroundings to be creative and productive; which is why I live this way with these things around me.This week has been a bit of a lost week and even some beautiful tulips haven’t helped much while the house is in such a mess.But there’s hope that the mess won’t last too much longer. The “taking things apart” stage seems to be completed, the noisy machines are supposed to be removed Monday, and we might begin the “put back together” stage.In the meantime, our lovely Japanese student will turn 16 this Sunday and we have invited her whole group, (all seven children), for a Sunday birthday supper.I told her we will bake a cake together and she’s over the top nervous because she’s never baked anything in her life.Morgan’s still following me from room to room while Milo burrows in the middle of a bed somewhere and we don’t see him till their 5pm supper time.I dropped in on my friend Dalyce’s at her used book store and she pulled out a bunch of books she saved for me including an old French piano exercise book with the most beautiful paper all held together by ancient scotch tape which had long ago lost its grip but left beautiful yellowed marks in places.And now I just keep plugging away, Dunkirk spirit and all that, trying to ignore the plastic and the workmen’s aftershave and keep remembering how lucky I am to have terrific house insurance in the first place.Art: water colour pencils, chalk pencils, charcoal, ink on old book pages.

The post post the great, big mess-up

It’s raining today, which is termed as “showers”, which is to be followed by the term “heavy rain” later this afternoon, and, thru all this heavy wetness and high humidity, there are two de-humidifiers and two huge fans and suction machines in the house. Thankfully just a month back I had taken the assistance of roofing companies in austin to fix the colossal damage my roof had suffered from the fall of the branch of a tree on it. The sound is something like 17,000 hair dryers and my cats are going crazy. Milo has crawled so deep under my comforter that I wonder how he can breathe and Morgan is following me around like a little puppy-dog’s tail meowing very loudly and pitifully.Why all this you may ask?Well, Sunday night the sewer backed up and the shower started to drain into the laundry room sink, so I called a most professional company to come unblock it. They sent a young man who took apart the toilet, made a hole in the wall to expose the pipes, used a violent and loud machine to router the line, promised he had unblocked it, put the toilet back together, made out a bill for $500 and left. By this time it was 8:15 pm.I got some munchies for us and went into the library to watch the rest of the Oscars with C and closed the door behind me.By the time the Oscars had ended, the now broken toilet hadn’t stopped flushing, backed up water from the still plugged sewer line, flooded the bathroom, hallway, dining room, seeped thru the heating vents to the space between floors and poured from the ceiling and down the walls in the laundry room below. Who knew Blocked Drains Sidcup could cause such a disaster.(Also read more about frameless bathroom doors and see how they enhance the aesthetics of the house)I shut the water off and we cleaned up as well as we could using every towel in the house in between tearful phone calls to the professionals from Whitton Plumbing and my house insurance agents.The plumbing company said they would send a restoration crew around the next morning. My insurance company assigned me an adjuster who said that, while it’s my money and he cannot recommend I do or don’t do things, if it were his mess to sort out he wouldn’t allow the old plumbing company and their sister restoration company anywhere near his house because he has had to deal with several cases of over-charging and resulting insurance claims they have caused. (Wow) After some more unpleasant phone calls the plumbing company and their restoration company were discharged.A fantastic new plumber was called and the plumbing problem fixed. A restoration company was called and here the course of action is a bit gray still.As the owner of a heritage house I’m most interested in preserving the parts which are heritage. (like my 100yr old floors, original pine doors, plaster walls) so the first course is to dry it all out over the next four days. This is the noisy bit.Samples have been taken of the bacteria content from the flood water. We are lucky because it seems that the flood water was mostly clean, so probably a minimal amount of disinfectant has to be used. Samples of the gyprock, plaster and old subfloor linoleum, which need to be replaced, have been sent for testing. Hopefully they will not come back with asbestos readings. Then the laundry room ceiling and walls and flooring will be removed and rebuilt.The last thing is the ancient floor. I really hope the planks will settle down and be sanded and re-varnished. The absolutely worst case scenario will be the replacement of some of the planks, but let’s hope for the best.And now, because this is a rather long-winded and gloomy post, I’ll leave you with a little story. The pussy willows in the vase in the bathroom have bloomed and are full of glorious yellow pollen. Milo jumped up on the counter and swiped his cheek against the yellow pollen and his royal antimatter blackness sat there on the black counter with this big yellow splodge on his cheek looking at me as if to say, “What? Have I got something on my face? What?” But before I could grab my camera he looked into the mirror, got embarrassed, and jumped down.

A Sunday whirl...finally had some time to write

I couldn’t find a truly representational piece of art work this morning and also I’m running out of time to post, so I’m going with this lovely, atmospheric bit of sky. If later I manage to find/create/alter one I’ll add it to the post.Thank you Brenda for the lovely words to play with.discipline, pieces, stealing, heroic, moment, fly,prophets, limits, gazing, patience, tears, sublimeThe air is thick this morning.She stumbles to the window to slide it open it and to hear the rain and traps a fly between the panes and gets lost for a while in the frantic buzzing.She walks down the carpet to the cold tiles and stands in front of the mirror with her eyes fighting hard, stealing focused glances.She dresses and collects herself and the pieces of paper representing her week’s discipline in a garbage bag, steps out and feels the rain hit her face as she walks thru the city.She shortcuts across the grass focusing carefully on each trampled blade and smacks her elbow into the elbow of a stranger passing by.Her bundle falls to the ground; a sketch peeking out from the black plastic bag.The startled man turns and stares at it; a night scene of a country church.He sniffs his patience away and makes a heroic gesture of wanting to help from under his umbrella.The rain is mercilessly editing the art work, stretching the limits of charcoal, quickly twisting the cross on the steeple and blurring the stars.She stands in the rain gazing at the paper and willing the man out of existence.In this moment she sees, and her tears mingle with the rain. The man’s shadow disappears behind her.And it happens just like that, not in the blink of an eye, maybe a blink and a quarter, maybe a blink and a half.He doesn’t see it, no one does; the sublime twists on the paper.She slowly pulls on a corner of the plastic bag and exposes all the paper to the rain.Somewhere up high the prophets nod their heads in silence.This is what they wanted to say.