Energy

"Snow Guilt (n): the reluctance to admit to one's enjoyment of a beautiful snowfall if one is not the person who usually shovels the driveway."
Today, I'm having a quite serious case of snow guilt. Because the view outside is very beautiful, and there is no way I would be able to get the car out of the driveway later today if the guys hadn't done the shovelling at seven o'clock this morning. It's their energy that allows me to enjoy the wonderful white vista outside my window.

Which makes me think of the issue of energy. This is my first week "not working", and I'm digging into my house, sorting, cleaning, cooking, baking... All stuff that's been on the back burner for, well, about a year. Most of my energy- mental, emotional, and even physical energy- has gone into my job; now that that's gone, I can spend it on other matters.

And doing all this, it's making me realize that everything we do, everything that happens, comes with a price tag. Everything costs. And in a lot of cases, the cost is energy- my energy. There's this lovely ideology around about how much better it is to do homemade-everything; after all, it's FREE- right? "Don't use your dryer- it's better for the clothes, for the environment, and for your pocketbook!" Uh, yeah, but I pay for it with my energy. "Grow your own vegetables- it's organic, local food, great exercise, and soo much cheaper!" Uh, yeah, except for the cost of my energy and time. "Don't take the car; walk or ride a bike- it's healthier, better for the environment, and cheaper!" Uh, yeah... All of those things, they're healthier, cheaper, better for the environment- and it's human energy, my energy, that pays for it.

And my point is not that these things aren't healthier and cheaper and all that, but that we often discount the energy they take- we discount the cost. Human energy is not even factored into the equation; it's like it's value-less, worthless. Earth energy is valuable (which is a fairly new attitude, globally speaking, and needs more work yet); money is valuable; but human energy is not. And that leads to all kinds of issues- burnout being one of them, and perpetual guilt for some of us...

However. I'd better go and excavate the bird feeder from its featherbed of snow, so the juncos and rosy finches can get at the sunflower seeds. Watching them hop around under the balcony table, searching through the seed husks for something edible, just makes me feel guilty again- and that's a guilt that's easily assuaged, with very little energy expense. As for snow guilt, perhaps I can just let go of it- or better yet, I think I'll convert it to Snow Gratitude: the enjoyment of the beauty of a snowfall amplified by the appreciation of the energy spent by others on shovelling the driveway.

Life, the Universe and Snow Days. It's all in how you look at it.

Stinkbugs and Violets

Stinkbugs. There's stink-frickin'-BUGS in my kitchen! In January! When it's MINUS FIVE outside! Well, yeah, that's why they're inside. It's too chilly for them out there. I hate stinkbugs. They sound like helicopters when they're in flight, and if you touch them, they smell like, well, stinkbugs, with overtones of banana and apple (the delicate nose of chiquita and mackintosh, blended to create the indescribable aroma of a slightly deranged chemist's laboratory, reminiscent of autumn, old socks, and the cat's last accident on the couch cushions. Suggested pairings are... No, let's not go there). Needless to say, you can't squash them to get rid of them. Don't crush 'em, flush 'em. Many-a-one has met its watery grave in the whirlpool of my toilet.

Out-of-season wildlife in the kitchen. There are lots of things that occur out of season, or in places where they don't belong or don't fit, aren't there. (This is where I wax philosophical- don't say you haven't been warned.) Someone once said that the definition of a weed is "a plant that grows in the wrong place." I had a neighbour once who, with a passion, ripped up sweet violets, because they were too vigorous about invading her flowerbeds; she thought they were a horrible weed. Unfortunately, I didn't find out in time, or I would have transplanted them to mine; where sweet violets are concerned, the more the better (just ask Eliza Doolittle, she'll tell you the value of voy-lets). On the other hand, I wage an unceasing, albeit losing, battle against the alfalfa which insists on growing all over my property, whereas a friend of mine would love to have it on hers to feed her critters. And I do grow alfalfa in jars on my kitchen counter- but only to a length of a couple of centimeters, so as to then devour it spread between slices of bread slathered with mayonnaise. Everything in its place. Violets in my flowerbeds (but not my neighbour's), alfalfa in my sandwiches (but not my garden). It's all a matter of perspective.

I just ran across an excellent quote which expresses something along those same lines: "Whether you are regarded as disabled or gifted depends largely on when and where you were born." It's from Thomas Armstrong's new book Neurodiversity: Discovering the Extraordinary Gifts of Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia, and Other Brain Differences. Disabled or gifted- quite. Weed or violet? Stinkbug or...?

No, sorry, that's where the analogy breaks down. I don't think there is a desirable side to stinkbugs. I certainly don't think they would be any good in sandwiches. And now we'll have to wait until spring to find out, because I sincerely hope the one that just took a ride in the whirlpool was the last one I'll see until then.

Life, the Universe, Stinkbugs and Violets. It's all a matter of perspective.

Yorick

May I introduce Yorick? Everyone, Yorick; Yorick, Everyone. My youngest son gave him to me for my birthday, and my oldest son, when contemplating the naming of this new addition to my menagerie, said "You should call him Yorick!" Of course, he was absolutely correct. So now that you've been introduced, when someone mentions the name Yorick, you can say: "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio." But that's only if you have a friend named Horatio, and he happens to be around at that moment.

It's the third Day of Christmas as I write this, and I can't remember what my true love is meant to have given me to go with the partridge in the pear tree and whatever-it-is that comes on Day Two, neither of which I received in my stocking. But that's okay. He probably wouldn't like roast partridge, anyway, and while a pear tree would be really neat to have, around here, we'd have to spray it for codling moth, which is inconvenient. (I just found out that where I live, if you have fruit trees and you're not certified as an organic grower, you're legally obligated to spray your trees. If you don't, the fruit tree police can come and chop them down and send you the bill. Ugh. I guess it makes sense, in a way- but it still rather destroys the illusion of the healthy and natural country life.) Oh, and no, I wouldn't keep the partridge as a pet, either; I believe they're about as intelligent as quail. And I have a hard enough time keeping the cats under control in the house as is; one is trying to climb on my keyboard as I type - a partridge added to the mix doesn't bear thinking of.

So now that the Christmas festivities are past, and we're all laying about, groaning from having overeaten turkey, and still overeating chocolate and brownies and cookies and pie, it's time to start thinking of the new year. I have this fantasy that I'm going to do all kinds of fascinating and productive activities in 2011 - more gardening, say. I long ago learned that most of the green-thumb genes that came from my grandmothers went to my sister, with not much left for me (another illusion down the drains). But I still enjoy grubbing around in the dirt, even if the resulting harvest is less than spectacular. And my favourites are my herbs. There is something incredibly satisfying in running out the back door while the spaghetti sauce bubbles on the stove and quickly grabbing a few sprigs of oregano, thyme, parsley and chives to add to the blend; the flavour of fresh herbs is incomparable. The turkey stuffing this year contained fresh-picked sage, and the parsley I had to dig out from under the snow where it was nicely pre-frozen.

Life, the Universe, Yorick and Parsley. Enjoy the twelve days of Christmas!

2:00 AM

It's 2:00 AM, and I just downloaded Eat, Pray, Love for my ebook reader. No, really, I did. I needed that book today. Especially the part where Liz is up at 2:00 AM, making life-changing decisions. No, I'm not going to walk out on my husband- it took me far too long to get used to him, and get him used to me. A good thing shouldn't be given up that easily, especially if it continues being a good thing (and this one is an excellent one).

But there are parts of my life that need to be given up at 2:00 AM. Namely, my library job. It's taken a year-and-a-half of my life. I've loved this job; it was perfect. To start with. Then I learned how to do it, and the perfection wore off. And the last few months have been, well, to put it bluntly, mostly a drag. I loved the parts where I got to deal with the customers. I especially loved it when my job was the venue for meeting my neighbours- the people who've lived on my street for as long as I have, and I'd never talked to before. I've also loved the parts when I got to deal with kids, got to read storybooks to preschoolers, be silly with puppets (I do that well, even if I say so myself), bring my guitar and sing "Puff the Magic Dragon" to them, or booktalk "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" and leave the school kids with a cliff hanger just as the sea serpent is about to crush the ship. I've loved recommending Miss Read to the lady who likes gentle romantic fiction, and Ngaio Marsh to the one who prefers Golden Age mysteries. I've thoroughly enjoyed talking about watercolour painting with the art gallery organizer, and about reading skills with the dad who brings in his young boy to encourage his learning.

But then it got lonely. I'm by myself for most of the time. Handing out internet passes to the fruit pickers who came swarming in in the summer got boring; shelving and re-shelving books got tedious; getting stressed about finding the time to reorganize the Junior Fiction became a pain. Even thinking of themes for displays lost its charm, and became yet another "have-to".

So I think it's time to move on. There are other fish to fry- or sauté, boil, bake, or barbeque. And other fish-fryers who could do a better job than I, I think. My customers can do without me. And, what's more important, my kids cannot. The job was wonderful for the time being, but it took me away from my family. When I enjoyed it, it actually benefitted all of us. I was a happier mother, more capable of doing what I needed to do. But now, it's making me a cranky mother, an unavailable mother. I snap at the kids when I come home from work because I'm so tired. I drink too much in order to relax, so when I go to bed I can actually drop off to sleep. I've put on weight from eating too many empty carbohydrates, because I don't have time to cook and eat a proper dinner every night. It's time for a change.

And, just like Elizabeth Gilbert experienced, there's the voice that speaks, clearly and unequivocally:
Go back to bed.

Batwing Returns

Have you ever noticed that Life has no sense of appropriateness? It mixes the deadly serious with the absurd without even an attempt at apology. Well, I figure if Life can do it, perhaps I could get away with it, as well.

You know the saying that "History Repeats Itself"? It does, oh boy, does it ever. Hence Remembrance Day, because if we remember, perhaps there are certain aspects of history, the ones that really matter, we might not be doomed to live over again. At least that is our hope and prayer.

But then there are other aspects that we seem to be unable to get away from. I was looking at the Sears catalogue this morning, and noticed that the batwing sleeve is making a comeback. (What can I say; that's where I get my fashion info. I'm a geek.) Wow, a style I recognize! And then the realization burst on me that, just for once, I'm already ahead of the game! I hotfooted it to the basement, crawled into the storage space under the stairs (something smells down there. A dead mouse, perhaps?), and pulled out the box labelled "handmade sweaters". And sure enough, it was in there: the batwing sweater that my grandmother knitted for me about twenty-five years ago, the last time batwings were in style. Yes, I know this dates me; but if you haven't figured out yet what the "1967" in my blog address means, anyway, I'm not going to spell it out for you.

And yes, this was the very grandmother I mentioned in my last post. By the time I knew her, her black hair had gone all grey. She was an inveterate knitter, but only ever on weekdays- knitting was work, and so not to be done on Sundays. I don't know how many sweaters she made for me and her seven other grandchildren; I can think of at least five for me during my teen years alone. One of them had a gorgeous fair isle pattern around the neck and shoulders and cuffs. My sister got the same one, the colours in reverse of mine; hers had a white body with the pattern in navy blue and burgundy; mine was the dark navy in the body with the white and burgundy on the pattern. Oma said she'd never knit with a yarn that dark again; trying to see the stitches was really hard on her eyes. I remember feeling vaguely guilty about that, as it was my sweater... It was a beautiful sweater; I wore it a lot. I believe I wore it out or outgrew it, which is why I no longer have it.

But I kept the batwing one. And now I'll be in style again for a little while. Or maybe my daughter might wear it, if she wants; she's the same age now as I was when Oma made it for me. History repeats itself, and sometimes, that's a good thing. But please- please!- let's not bring back the mullet. It was a bad hairstyle in the 80's, and wouldn't be any better today. That's one case where history had best be forgotten.

Oh, and one more thing: I did still get a poppy to wear this year, for the first time. And I was glad to wear it.

Poppy Conflict

Here it is again, the week of Poppy Conflict. Every year, this happens. Most people around me are wearing the red poppy to keep Remembrance Day. And I- I avert my eyes from the young cadets with their poppy trays in front of the drugstore, and sidle by, trying not to be noticed. Why? Because the language that goes with wearing the poppy says that "Let us remember those who fought for our freedom!" Well, according to that statement, my family fought against freedom. My uncle fell on the Russian front (aged 22), my grandfather was killed by an allied bomber (leaving a widow with four children under nine years old, the youngest a newborn), my uncle-in-law was left on the fields of Normandy (he wasn't even 20). Lest we forget. If wearing the poppy means honouring the veterans who "fought for freedom", then would it not also mean dishonouring those who fought against them- whether they wanted to or not?

To be honest, it's the language that gets me. The rhetoric of honouring the sacrifice of the allied soldiers of World War II. Don't get me wrong- PLEASE don't get me wrong. I honour the men and women who fought in the wars, who sacrificed their lives- if not literally by dying, then by spending years of their lives separated from their families, having to endure the horrors of combat and the pain and tedium of Prisoner-of-War camp. That, too, is a sacrifice of one's life.

No, it is not that that which, up to now, has kept me from wearing the poppy. It's that the language of heroism still permeates Remembrance Day. They "fought for our freedom". Yes, they did. But they hardly had a choice. Their country went to war, and so they marched. As did those on the other side. Do you think my grandfather wanted to leave his pregnant wife and three small children to look after the farm alone? He died because he was a farmer who could not swim. In an air raid on his army base, he tried to run for shelter and drowned in a pond he had not seen in the dark. The bomber pilot- American, English, perhaps even Canadian- who flew the raid, was he any more of a hero, any more of a freedom fighter than this man who had no interest in politics, who just wanted to be left alone to live his life- but was on that army base because he had no other choice? The pilot, too, had no choice. Both of them lost their lives, in one way or another, to forces greater than themselves.

Yes, there was much heroic action on both sides of the war. And some of that action was on the part of a woman who, on Christmas Eve 1944, was confronted by two army officers delivering the news of her husband's death, and who kept the news to herself for another day so as not to spoil her young children's Christmas celebration. Countless acts of heroism, by countless humans all over the globe, caught up in forces beyond themselves. Remembrance Day, for me, is about remembering what happened, reminding ourselves of what still is happening, so that we never again allow those forces to build to such a point.

The fight for freedom is not the fight for the political supremacy of any one country, of any one ideological system. It is the fight for freedom from those forces that catch up all of us, and compel us to lay down our lives; the fight for the freedom of the human race.

I might be able to wear the poppy, after all. Lest We Forget.

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.