Two months notice

We officially gave notice to the landlady that we will be leaving here in two months time. Wow. By August 1st, we will either be snug in our beds in our newly finished country home. Or, we will be camping out in the backyard of our not-so finished country home. Tick, tock, tick, tock. . .

Ribs, fireworks and other good things

A stunningly beautiful day. It all started with ribs. I posted the best rib recipe in the world on another site, and made a tongue-and-cheek offer of Aidan's services as a barbequer to anyone who wanted to provide the meat. Well, Niki took me up and that, and we found ourselves travelling out to the country this past weekend to cook up some ribs. We have always felt so at home at the Mains' house, and yesterday was no exception. Because I haven't the words to describe the day well enough in all it's colours and textures, I will share it with you in pictures:Food. Heaping piles of jumbo shrimp. Guacamole and brie. The ribs. . . ten pounds of them, rubbed in a spicy mixture, coated in a thick, tangy homemade barbeque sauce and smoked in fresh applewood chips. Amazing. Not one of us managed to look graceful while eating. It is simply not possible. Ice cream cake and a Belgian Chocolate Torte for dessert. Oh so good.Play. The kids were on the go non-stop. Maybe that is what I love most about being in that place. There is always an attentive person on hand, not just willing to play with the kids, but eager to. It is just another place that I feel my family is loved as a whole. First there was crockett. A bit of dog wrestling with Jack. Bocce ball. Caelah became a farm girl, trailing after Rob to the pens, and making herself familiar with all the animals. She fed Violet a bottle. Held a chick. Gathered eleven eggs and fed the pigs their slop. That's my girl. We all took turns on the ATV. The kids hated the noise, but Cory and John patiently won them over until they were rumbling across the field on the big red machine, and loving it.Fireworks. Around 9:00 sparklers were passed around. I don't remember the last time I got to play with a sparkler. The smell hit me powerfully. Memories flooded back from old neighbourhood festivities. When the fireworks were lit it became a giggle session as some of them hissed, sputterd and died. But, being a city girl, I was thrilled with the experience of doing this all at home. A hands-on fireworks display. Very cool. We drove home with good food in our bellies, fresh air in our lungs, and sparkles in our eyes.

Female Companionship

I woke this morning with a sob caught in my throat and my body aching with sorrow. A single dream managed to break my heart. It was not one about pain, or death or fear. It was about rejection. In my dream, someone I hold in high esteem dismissed me. "I think we have heard enough from you. You have nothing of value to say. Leave our family be." For me dreams have always had too much power. They change me. And when they strike my heart, as this one did, I have no choice but to bring it to God and see what He would have me see. One of my greatest insecurities was laid bare last night while I slept, and I woke determined to break myself free of it's power over me.

I have been raised in love. I have always had family and friends who care deeply about me. And yet, a single ailing relationship, or unloving encounter, can make me feel alone and small. Why? Why do I draw upon the love and acceptance of others as a lifesource? Why does rejection feel like a blood wound, draining away my confidence and joy?

I know I am not alone. There are women in my life, even now, who are hurting so deeply because of a suffering female relationship. They have wrapped up so much of themselves in it that when it is unsettled their joy is taken from them. Why is she ignoring me? Am I an unworthy freind? Am I not godly enough for her?

Women have always been the most deadly critics of other women. They know how to wound with precision. They know how to judge. They know how to look another woman over from head to toe, inside and out, and then make a diagnosis of all the ills they have found. Why do we do that? So that we don't have to look at ourselves. Because we are jealous creatures. Because we have not learned how to love. Most importantly, because we have not accepted that God is our judge, and Christ, our saviour is the anchor of our identity.

Hagar. I think of Hagar. Fleeing into the wilderness out of, both her own pride, but also the cruelty of Sarah. She had nowhere to go but away from there. But she was not left alone to wander. She was called back, and sent home again. "You are the God who sees me . . ." God did, seemingly, bring Hagar comfort that day despite the pronouncement of some very harsh truths. But Hagar did not respond with bitterness to any of the unhappy things she had been told. Instead she said; "You see me." Was this her comfort? That, though on earth she was nothing but a servant and pawn without any respect or love for her person, to God she was known truly?

Spurgeon:

. . . but he is here, close by my side, and not by me only, but in me; within this heart; where these lungs beat; or where my blood gushes through my veins; or where this pulse is beating, like a muffled drum, my march to death; God is there: within this mouth; in this tongue; in these eyes; in each of you God dwells; he is within you, and around you; he is beside you, and behind, and before. Is not much knowledge too wonderful you? Is it not high, and you cannot attain unto it? I say, how can you resist the doctrine, which comes upon you like a flash or lightning, that if God be everywhere he must see everything, and that therefore it is a truth, "Thou God seest me."

We have a God who, being the Knower of Truth--and Truth itself, reduces the judgments of Men to mere whisps of smoke, without form or substance.

"A man skilled in the human heart might interpret my deeds and translate their motives, but he could not read my heart as God can read it. None can tell another as God can tell us all: we do not know ourselves as God knows us: with all your self knowledge, with all you have been told by others, God knows you more fully than you know yourself: no eye can see you as God sees you—"

I have been chosen out of eternity as a daughter. I have been loved from the dawn of everything. How can I let the tide of another woman's affections for me sway my own peace and joy, when the love of my God is unwavering and eternal? A call to you hurting ladies; find your joy in Christ, not other women. We are blessed with female companionship, certainly, but we will fail one another. We will say hurtful things, and be thoughtless. We will make judgments and be neglectful. We will not love and cherish one another as we should. But we will be loved and cherished nevertheless. By another.

Quilts and globes and loads of love

Globes. I wanted a globe. Even now, at the age of 25, I know a frighteningly small amount about the world. A few years ago, on a dare, I memorized the names and whereabouts of the countries and capitals of Europe in about 45 minutes. But, of course, it didn't really stick. In response to my own inadequacies, I am determined to teach my children how God has pieced together the nations across the expanse of the waters. For Mother's Day, Aidan gave me a beautiful metal-toned globe so that I can give my children the world.
Waffles. In was a groggy morning, after enduring a double-overtime hockey game and a cranky baby. But Aidan was determined to have a breakfast and coffee ready for me before I came down the stairs. I don't normally eat much breakfast, despite Aidan's constant urgings, but twice a year I tell him to go wild. He loves making me breakfast, probably because it is the one meal he has time to offer me. So I allow him to indulge me on days like these with crepes and waffles, and though I can rarely fit much in, I savour every bite.

Quilts. On Saturday night Caelah's Aunty Karin told her she had a surprise for her. It was a beautiful quilt, all in oranges and deep pinks. It has taken Karin months and months of work to complete it. And I know it was a gift to me as much as it was to Caelah. A forever gift that will, perhaps, swaddle Caelah's own baby someday. And so I received an extra Mother's Day gift that was made even more precious when, in Sunday's sermon, our pastor expanded our view of motherhood. He urged us to mother all the children in our lives, whether they came from our womb or not. To be attentive to them, and guide them in the way they should go. This quilt is one representation of the love that my children are encircled with. My motherly burden is made light when I am supported and sustained by the co-mothering and co-fathering of so many beloved friends.

Wild Kittens

We took Caelah to her very first soccer practice. I have to say, it was a pure entertainment. You have all heard about kids in the outfield at a t-ball game picking wild flowers and picking their noses. Well, in a tots soccer game, there is no time for picking anything. It's all: RUN! The general effect is that of a buzzing cloud of tiny people trailing the ball around en masse, like a human comet. This is true even if the ball strays far, far, off course. If one kid goes, they all go. At one point, the comet of wee folk made it all the way into the next game across the field before they were reigned in. They also, on a few occasions veered towards the bystanders, weaving between picnic blankets, and terrorizing infants. One poor boy ran into a lawn chair and winded himself.

A really fantastic twist developed when the comet of wee folk came across a second ball along the way. The group instantly split in two, creating two buzzing clouds, aimlessly kicking away. I say aimlessly because it is as though the nets do not exist. Even if the kiddos could see past one another to locate the whereabouts of the nets, they have not yet developed the coordination to steer the ball towards them. As for the goals that did miraculously occur, they were scored in whichever net presented itself first. Team Bubblegum frequently scored on team Bubblegum's poor goalie. And team Wild Kittens, less frequently, scored on team Wild Kitten's, often absentee, goalie.

Why, oh why, does there always have to be a Bad Kid? Ours took the form of a ridiculously cute kid in a red ball cap. Tiny and dark, but ruthless. He obviously viewed every child on the field as an obstacle, deserving of a good shove. Boy, girl, smaller than him, bigger than him. All shove-able. Caelah was targeted more than a few times, but though my red hot momma-bear defenses went up, I had to admit the kid had guts!

Hats off to the coaches. Derrick and Tori. I think all our hearts went out to them. First, there was the name game. The kids passed a soccer ball in a circle, saying their name and favourite colour, as the receieved it. More than a few shy girls, Caelah included, broke down and ran crying to their moms. Then there was the "passing" drill. This one was doomed before it began. Derrick spent 15 minutes trying to partner the kids and space them apart. But every time he got one pair organized, the next would have strayed apart and wondered off. Even once he did get them aligned, the balls most certainly did not go back and forth, but side to side, and all over the place. After the ordeal was over I saw Derrick mouth to Tori; "That did NOT work..."

Allow me a moment to bask in parental pride. Caelah was fantastic. First of all, she looked really cute. She happened to have these sneakers at home that look like adidas, but with pink stripes, so she looked the part. Second, despite the name game fiasco, she got completely involved in everything. She listened to Derrick patiently, and completed his instructions perfectly. And she proved to be a super runner. During a running drill around the field, she was right on Derrick's heels while most of the other kids got tired and stopped after one lap. When she did get the ball during the game, she had control. She stopped, and tried to direct it back the right way. She really knows how to kick thanks to her daddy.

I for one am looking forward to the stories that will no doubt emerge from a summer's worth of soccer for wee folk.

Images of Home: My Aunt's House {Souvenir Street}

Memories and perceptions in one's youth are so formative and enduring. The cherry cake the neighbours served at a party, which later made me quite ill, has nurtured in me a dislike of the little red fruit to this day. The rock music my parents played around the house in my earliest years still hits my ear with fond familiarity, despite having long developed my own musical tastes. And the places I visited throughout my childhood are now blanketed in an impression, formed from fragmented memories, images, smells and sounds. My aunt's house, a place visited in sporatic, whirlwind stays, was blanketed in . . . magic.

To my little girl eyes, it was a house surrounded by both wonder and mystery. An old gray stone victorian in Montreal's downtown made it exciting regardless of it's inside. Yet it was the inside, with it's trove of treasures that made me so eager to be a part of mom's journeys there. I anticipated visits with both excitement, and anxiety. Excitement because my aunt's was a study in clustered collections and colourful curiosities. Nothing was off limits. We were permitted to explore, and touch. Shelves lined with little bobbles. Petrushka dolls waiting to be opened. An old gumball machine, that, though brimming with coloured balls when we were kids, became mysteriously empty once we hit teenagehood. Large hanging plants, top lit by beautiful skilights. Skittery cats, creeping out from under beds and behind desk chairs. Mexican morraca's and tambourines. A basketball net by the entry. High, molded ceilings which made me feel so small. Walls covered in precious scraps; old pictures, cherished notes and cards, news articles. And books. Soooooo many books. And not just boring old books with no pictures, but coffee table books made to catch the eye with deliciously vivid photography. This is a place where there is room for everything, and all things are given room.

Any anxiety I felt over impending visits came from an awareness that her's was an adult house. One were little people rarely trespassed, thus making it feel a little alien to me and my siblings. It held things which, though benign to adults with their muted imaginations, became horrifying after a bit of childish meditation under the cover of darkness. I remember a poster of a cherub who's notched arrow was pointed out at the room. When our beds were made up on the floor that night, I didn't want to take my eyes off that arrow lest it be loosed on us. A wrought iron mask that had been implanted in a wicker vase full of pennies was removed after I had nightmares over it, and refused to even pass it by. An adult would see it for what it was; molded metal, but to a child it was a demon, waiting to pounce on penny-thieves. And let me impress upon you the necessity of retrieving said pennies, as they were much needed in the gumball machine upstairs.

Now, as an adult in an adult house everything has become familiar, rather than enticingly exoctic. I realize now that much of what I see in my aunt's home has been collected in love over many years. I once took it all for granted, but I know now that it was gathered bit by precious bit. Nothing truly valuable in and of itself, but each item holding a memory, and a story. And it is this that has affected me. I have come to see that houses with character are the ones I enter and never want to leave because it feels like they have introduced themselves to me and want me to stay. Houses filled with expensive items, isolated and untouchable leave no impression at all. Or if they do, it is this: come in if you must, but don't touch, and don't stay long. If we have to live in houses on this earth, shouldn't they be welcoming? Welcome . . .

What little people leave behind

As I tucked myself into bed last night something caught my attention. A tiny motorcycle sihouetted against the night sky. An unlikely place for a motorcycle, and yet . . . the right place for a motorcycle because it was placed there by a little boy who has a passion for precariously positioning his treasured possessions.

I turned to Aidan with a lump in my throat. "Look. They leave their mark on this place, don't they?"

Children imprint themselves upon your life. Some of their imprints are loud and obvious. But some are merely tiny, residual traces of themselves they leave behind to be happened upon. In my case, these discoveries often make me want to cry. Sometimes, when you are with a person, the preciousness of their presence is lost on you because you are in the moment with them, seeing and touching in living colour. But when they are not with you, and only their half-empty mug of tea and rumpled pillow are left behind, your heart aches for them.

Here are some of the ways my children have marked our home, leaving behind echoes of their daily activities. Marks which, when discovered in the quiet hours, stir up my heart, if only because when when my little ones are tucked quietly in bed, these small evidences are all that remain of them until they awaken again:


This lamp never manages to look dignified. The shade is always unhooked. It has begun to look more familiar that way.


There is a Psalm that says; "The high standing forest of trees He strips bare..." That is the effect my kids have had on my houseplants. I recently found the livingroom floor littered with leaves. The plant, from which they had been plucked, looked so pathetic, it's naked stems poking out from it as though it were having a very bad hair day. Though healing, it remains scarred.


I only discovered this little gem a few months ago. When I did, I was so delighted by the unexpectedness of it. Caelah must have snuck one of her window markers into the car sometime after her last birthday and sketched out a tiny little stick-man up in the top corner of the car window. I love that it has been there for so long, smiling out at the world as we drive by.


Caelah also left her mark on the car in a more indelible way. I remember her asking me how to spell "car" one day as we drove to the library. What I didn't know was that she was practicing her writing skills in ink on the car upholstery.


And of course, some are temporary marks, left by necessity: piles of coats for every kind of weather, and elastics criss-crossing every drawer that may contain tiny bits for eager hands to snatch and scatter.


My house has been marked by my kids, but so have I. And though plants heal, and chalk washes away, my very being will always be imprinted by these days of impromptu creativity and wide-eyed discovery.

Little sister . . .

. . . is engaged!

Ceiling Fan Blues

I just heard the most devastating news: We need a ceiling fan. No one warned me. No one even hinted at the possibility. But it seems that it had been a foregone conclusion form the beginning, with only me obliviously unawares of the impending blemish on the house. A two-story livingroom, it seems, needs a fan to distribute air into the upper parts of the house. Oh, how badly I took this news...

For years, I have seen designers on those home reno shows shudder at the ceiling fans they find in people's homes. The first thing they all do is tear them from the wall. They do it with such glee that I am left to assume they stomp and spit on it off camera. In any case, such displays have given me the strong message that ceiling fans cannot be redeemed and that their tackiness outweighs their functionality by a long shot.

I took to the internet with a mission. Find a nice ceiling fan. Find nice ceiling fan. Find a nice ceiling fan. But I made the mistake of typing in, "Trendy Ceiling Fans"--and was assaulted by the most bizaar and unattractive lighting fixtures I have ever seen:

OR

I finally just looked at the Home Depot site, and scrolled through the endless fans they had on display. And I began to have some hope. Ceiling fan engineers (?) have been doing their homework. Maybe they got tired of seeing their hard work mocked and trampled on reno shows. Now, most ceiling fans are more lighting with less fan.
I do hope that I can find one that suits me.

FIXTURE FOLLOW-UP:
We just might be buying those taps from the last post. It turns out that Aidan's brother can get us a HUGE discount. And I am more desirous of them than ever now that a lighting sale at Canadian Tire yielded these for our bathroom:

Matching! Matching! Matching!

They get you every time: Lessons from tub shopping

The inside scoop on plumbing fixtures salesmen: They show you a tub that you fall in love with, for a price that fits well. But then they show you the faucet set that would compliment the tub. And you fall in love with it too. In fact, you fall even more deeply in love with the faucets because they are pretty and shiny, and come in sets that match your tub to your sink to your shower, and your feminine heart flutters at the concept of a "matching" bathroom, so you begin hatching mental plans to match the master bathroom to the main bathroom to the powder room to the kitchen . . .

Once they are certain your heart is invested-- they do this by watching the wife's facial expressions closely-- they chalk up the price list, and hand it across the desk. This is what you see:
Roman tub-----$600
Tub faucets-----$700

WHAT?!!!!!!!!!!!!

Aidan had his poker face on so as to disguise his astonishment, and I, mercifully, didn't look at the list until we left the store. In this way we avoided an embarrassingly conspicuous reaction. But wow! What they really do in the business is sell you a tub to accessorize your faucets. And the frustrating thing is they did get to me. I love the faucets. I want the faucets. I feel I need the faucets. But it is clear that I can not have the faucets. Hear my heart break.

Just a few days ago my brother-in-law asked me my opinion on faucets, and I laughed; "I'm not going to get emotional about sink fixtures. Just give me a $20 collection to look at and I will pick the nicest one." Here I am, three days later, in mourning over the Town Square Collection.
I am nearly a marketer's dream. They snare me emotionally, but sadly for them, I haven't the funds to act on it.

Mud!

A spring day, if ever I saw one. The sky was a crisp blue, and the smell of melt was in the air. (I have recently been finding myself obsessively checking my kids' diapers, only to realize that the offending odour is coming from a winter's worth of burried dog doo-doo lying freshly exposed on the street.) Chalking up the smell as an intrinsic part of the wonder of spring, we decided that a BBQ was in good order.

We carefully packed the car FULL of equipment and food and headed off to the country. Having made a mental note of what a lot full of loose soil and melting snow would look like, I had been proactive in my pursuit of minimal mud mess. Caelah would be wearing brand new wet pants pulled snuggly over her rain boots. And Elijah would be wearing his full snowsuit, despite the mild weather. I figured that if they were covered from head to toe in fabric of some sort, they would remain clean, despite the inevitable superficial damage. Did my plan succeed, you ask? Oh, dear me no. A tale in pictures:Within one minute of pulling up to the house, Caelah, Connor and Elijah had found the mud pit behind the house and gotten to work. They were in up to their knees in seconds. And my darling girl had managed to smear a wad of mud all up one side of her face.Frozen, after an hour of mudplay, the kiddos stripped off their socks, which had managed to be caked in mud despite having been tucked inside rain boots, which had, in turn, been tucked under rain pants, and they toasted their toes by the stove.However, despite the all of the precautions taken to keep out the mud, one thing was left unaccounted for--little accidents. Chilled and excited, Caelah didn't quite make it to the "bathroom" in time. And since no extra clothing had been brought, she was given Uncle Connors pyjama bottoms, Grandpa's work socks, and Grammie's sneakers to wear. She wore them proudly.And just because this is one of the cutest things I have seen in a long while, please have a side view of the motley outfit. Happy, mucky mud days.