Pause

Some of you might have noticed that the pauses between my posts are getting longer and longer. (If you didn't notice, please don't tell me; it'll destroy my illusion that people are actually reading this blog.) I could come up with all kinds of excuses: I'm too busy because I have papers to write, it's cloudy outside, my cocker spaniel just died... But, in the case of the cocker spaniel, that would be a flat-out fabrication, because I've never owned a cocker spaniel in my life, and likely never will. (Completely beside the point and entirely parenthetical, the cocker spaniel reminds me of that extremely annoying passage from Midsummer Night's Dream: "I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius, / The more you beat me, I will fawn on you..." If you think Taming of the Shrew is misogynistic, try this on for size. It makes me want to smack Helena- show some self-respect, girl!)

The plain fact is that I haven't been writing because, well, I haven't been writing. Perhaps that is due to my wish of increasing your interest by suspense, according to the usual practise of elegant females. But, actually, like Lizzie Bennet, I don't have any pretensions to that kind of elegance. (Incidentally, Helena, you could stand to take a few lessons from Lizzie!) It's just that I've had other things on my mind than random ramblings in blogs. And sometimes it's a good thing to pause from what you're doing- pause, and take a deep breath (several weeks long, in this case), inhale some oxygen, exhale it again, and let your whole body go limp. Aaaah. (flop, bang! No, I didn't say go so limp as to drop on the floor! Sheesh.) Sometimes we don't notice how tense we are until we pause, and make ourselves purposely sit still and let go.

And sometimes, we just pause for no particular reason. Or because we're done with whatever it was we were doing. Or because we need to reevaluate. Or because the break-time bell just rang (sorry, that's the vestiges of public-school attendance and a five-month stint as a factory worker when I was twenty). And then, when the pause is over, we can start again. Or not. Sometimes pausing makes us realize that the frenzy of the foregone activity was really not all that necessary, and just as much can be accomplished at a calmer pace. Or, the pause gives us the energy to tackle the task with renewed vigour. Which, I'm hoping, is what's happening with my writing. Or not.

Life, the universe, and spaniels. Get a grip, Helena.

Electronic Dog Polisher

I got myself an ebook reader the other day. Now, I need more reading material like I need a hole in the head. No, I do not intend to go to this company's designated website and download "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" for $9.95 (or whatever they're asking- I haven't actually checked). Firstly, I don't intend to read TGWTDT, because it's a fat book and I've got other stuff on the go, and secondly, if I did, I've got ready access to a hardcopy; I'd just have to pluck it off the shelf and bear it home for some gratuitous page-flipping.

No, the reason I got this electronic dog polisher is to polish electronic dogs. Oh, pardon me- you don't know what an electronic dog polisher is? It's an electronic device that does one specific job and nothing else, preferably a job that you wouldn't need or want to do in the first place if you didn't have the item (like polishing dogs). We've used that term in this family for a long time - and then, one day on TV, I actually saw an electronic dog polisher advertised! Well, it was a special vaccum cleaner attachment for vaccuming your dog or cat, but the principle was the same. The hilarity was considerable.

So, back to my electronic dog polisher - um, ebook reader. I got it because there are times when I need to read ebooks, and reading them on a computer screen is a pain in the you-know-what. (Have you ever wondered if You Know Who ever gets a pain in the you-know-what? No, me neither.) Turns out that most of the ebooks I need to read actually won't download onto my reader, because their publishers are holding onto them for dear life and won't let Jane Average download them; you have to look at them on the proprietary e-library website. Ah well. That's okay. I still have stuff to read on my reader, because it came pre-loaded with 100 free ebooks- ooh, aah, wow! Never mind the fact that they've swiped all those books from Project Gutenberg, where the world's classics happily sit in the public domain. I can now read Jane Austen on an electronic screen, instead of picking up the hardbound gold-edged copies I've got on my bookshelf. Oh, the wonders...

But honestly, it is fun. And I do enjoy the fact that I can carry around Austen, Dickens, and Carroll in one lightweight slim package to access whenever I feel like it. I've even got The Communist Manifesto and The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire on there. I'm sure they'll come in handy next time my dentist's appointment is running really late. I'll let you know what they're like.

Teaism

Inquiring minds have inquired - no, wait, the mouths associated with the inquiring minds have inquired - no, actually, it was the fingers attached to the hands associated with the inquiring minds... Aw, heck. Some folks 'as wanted to know what's with this "Teaist" thing down there in my side bar. Let me enlighten you.

Teaism is a religious persuasion not unlike Theism or Deism. The most basic tenet of its beliefs is that "A Good Cuppa Cures All Ills." But actually, because tea-drinking encourages moderation and tolerance, we don't insist on our members subscribing to this doctrine verbatim. If you are more comfortable with stating that "A Good Cuppa Is a Fair Beginning to Making One Feel Somewhat Better About a Considerable Number Of Ills," that's good enough. You're in. As long as you appreciate a cuppa, we welcome you to our ranks.

Teaism is a religion of diversity. Of course it began with the common tea plant, Camellia Sinensis, sipped as good ol' English Breakfast, Orange Pekoe (which, incidentally, has nothing more to do with the citrus fruit than that they're both named for the Dutch Royal house of Oranje- or maybe the house for the fruit, and the tea after the house, or the other way round), or any other number of "plain blacks". But there the diversity begins. There are so many varieties of even just black tea (ever tried Darjeeling, the "champagne of teas"?), never mind the ways to drink it. With sugar or without, with milk, with cream, with lemon (though not all at once- my brother tried that once when we were kids; he got banned to the next room while finishing up the resulting revoltingly curdled mess, rather like slimy, stringy cottage cheese floating in the tea. Not pretty.). Then there's green tea, white tea, oolong- all of those still from the same plant, just different processing techniques. All delicious brewed up in the cup. And then we get into what Hercule Poirot calls "tisane", which roughly translates into any tea that's not made from the camellia sinensis plant. My favourite would be peppermint, homegrown if I can get it- it's got more bite that way than the stuff in the tea bags. Chamomile is a lovely soother. Rosehip has a great tang, almost like fruit juice. And I won't even begin to list the varieties that are purely medicinal; we'd still be here tomorrow.

Incidentally, my daily brew of choice, gunpowder green, does not, in spite of its name, encourage violence. In vino veritas, in camelliam sinensis pacem. May the brew be with you.

Sunrise

Today's sunrise, brought to you by:
GLOBAL ROTATION- It Makes the World Go 'Round!

Eagle

I was feeling seriously frazzle-brained this morning. My mind was obsessing on one of the issues in my life, and just wouldn't let go. After spinning around in circles for a good hour and wringing my hands (metaphorically speaking), I decided this was stupid. So I stuck my feet into my running shoes, headed out the door and marched up the hill. I walked to the end of the road, skirted around the big gate that closes up the end (it's okay, the owner doesn't mind), and walked up the path into the woods. All the way to the lookout that gives such an amazing view over the lake.

And looking down the steep hillside towards the lake, I saw a bald eagle. Sitting on a branch of a tall dead tree towering over the woods, he was just looking around as if he owned the world. And then he took wing, and soared away, southwards.

What a magnificent creature. "They shall rise up on wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint; they shall renew their strength." I was comforted.

Then there's the cartoon I saw in Reader's Digest yesterday, while I was waiting at the doctor's office. It's showing two eagles, sitting in the nest. One of them is wearing a wig, sort of a comb-over job, and the other one says to him: "When are you going to accept that you're a bald eagle?"

On the way back home from the woods I saw some very weird mushrooms by the side of the road. And they had nothing to say to me, whatsoever.

Quailing

"Quail: verb (intr.)- draw back in fear, as at the approach of a vehicle, then heedlessly run back into the road, repeating this action approximately a dozen times."

Okay, fine, I made up the last bit- but that's what the word should mean. Quail have got to be the stupidest birds on the face of the planet. I'm quite sure their internal dialogue goes something like this: "Oh, oh, oh, a car! Oh, let's run to the side of the road! Oh, no, let's run to the other side of the road! Oh, that's not a good idea, is it, is it, is it? Let's run to the side of the road! Oh, the other side! This side! That side! Oh..." Multiply that by three dozen, and that's about the only explanation I can come up with for the behaviour of those fearsomely, perhaps even frivolously, foolish fowl. That I didn't leave a number of quail pancakes in the road by my house yesterday is due to sheer luck, or perhaps my exaggerated sense of not-wanting-to-flatten-something-alive-under-the-wheels-of-my-car, so I step on the break rather than run over them. It's quite likely I frustrated at least one of the flock in a suicide attempt. Chicken-with-its-head-cut-off is nothing to Quail-in-its-perfectly-healthy-state. Maybe we should invent a few new phrases for the English language: "I was so startled I ran around like a quail by the side of the road," or "He's just quailing around in that job."

Rumour has it that those birds are quite tasty, though. Perhaps next time I shouldn't step on the break, and try a new dish for dinner? Oh, that's evil. Especially as the little baby quail (are they called chicks? Probably.) are so darn cute, quailing around after their momma ("Queenie, no, dear, don't go calmly walking to the side of the road and stay there! What if car comes by? Quentin, back into the road, off you go! Shoo! Another three times, that's a good boy!"). I couldn't, I just couldn't. But if someone wants to serve me up some roast quail sometime, I wouldn't be averse to trying a bite or two (or three, or...). There has got to be a good reason why the People of Israel nearly got themselves wiped out in the desert for the sake of those plump little critters in their roasted state. And I'm not thinking Quail McBuckets, and made by no colonel, neither.

Ah well. I probably won't get to taste the flesh pots of Egypt any time soon. I'll have to stick with the leeks and onions, they don't go quailing around by the side of the road when I come driving by.

Fruit Fly Season

Fruit fly season has arrived. It follows hard on the heels of peach season, carries right through plum, pear, apple and grape season, and sometimes lasts right until Christmas (depending on how well we keep our compost pail covered). The fact that it's the season was just borne home to me by a glass of red wine, which I had left sitting on the counter while I was quickly checking a few e-mails. When I returned to my bibulous pleasure, I found about a dozen drosophilidae swimming around in my beverage. ("Waiter, what is that fly doing in my drink?" "I believe, sir, the breast stroke.") They were probably trying to drown their sorrows (I mean, how much fun can it be to be a fruit fly?), and inadvertently drowned themselves. Poor things. Okay, I lie- I didn't feel sorry for them at all, actually. They had a lovely end.

What is fruit fly season, you ask? Well, it's when fruit flies proliferate, and of course we make the most of it, being the frugal sort. Fruit fly jam, canned fruit flies, fruit fly pie... The latter is somewhat like shoo fly pie, but smaller. That's because it's Canadian; it's colder up here than in the places where they make shoo fly pie. Our produce doesn't get quite as lush, but the flavour is more concentrated. There are fruit fly breeders who select for best qualities and processability (really! Check any good science text book on genetics, it'll have a section on fruit fly breeding).

Life, the universe, and drowned drosophilae. Alcohol is believed to have been a factor.