travel

travelling with my emotional support chicken

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When I was buying camping groceries I ran across the chicken. Self-checkout challenges my grocery packing abilities so the chicken ended up being squished in between cans of baked beans, deli potato salad and smokies. The chicken began honking and screaming as I jostled the bag – trying to make a quick exit because it sounded uncannily like a baby screaming in the bottom of my heavy duty re-useable bag. I laughed all the way to the car.

The fall is a hard time for me. It has been since I was ten years old, and the smell of the fall air, the crisp mornings that invite the first toques and gloves and the beauty of the colours are there for me but underneath all that, it’s a tough time. Too much sorrow, too many losses in the fall marking anniversaries; I don’t fixate on the dates, but the calendar pages turn and there I am again and it feels heavy…in the fall.

With the steelhead running and the days shortening I know it’s time to step it up and get busy sweeping aside the “hard time” of the fall like sweeping leaves off the deck and find the good. The good is camping in my little trailer where Lena takes up most of the bed and Mark and I play endless games of cribbage. ( I am ahead in wins…..by the way). The good is baking so many apple pies that I have to share them with friends because my freezer is small. The good is the squirrel feeling of stacking the woodpile for the chill that’s on its way. The good is taking my Grandson to lunch and sharing nachos and mojitos. The good is taking Lena for walks in the park where a little girl thought she was a sheep – about as far from a Borzoi as they come – “she’s so white and soft – she must be a sheep”.

Lena is tucked in travelling to our campsite with her emotional support chicken and I’m tucked into the fall determined to celebrate the good that will support me emotionally as I travel through the next couple months. Kinda the same only Lena’s chicken makes AWESOME squawking sounds.

#fall #emotionalsupportchicken #cribbage #Borzoi #camping

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parchment paper and panty liners

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When parchment paper evolved from it’s previous iterations into the product we buy today in big fat twin roll packs at Costco, it became a kitchen staple. My kitchen staple. My cookbooks (yes some of us have the basic Betty Crocker everyone got for wedding shower gifts almost fifty years ago….) never mentioned parchment paper. It was just grease and flour or use foil.

Now! Well as I lift a cake out of the 8×8 pan in it’s layer of parchment paper I love it! And taking the parchment paper off the pan after oven cooking pork chops – what magic is this? The pan isn’t even dirty – no grease no nothing. Don’t even need to wash it.

Reminds me of a travel blog I read that recommended the use of panty liners to reduce (eliminate?) underwear laundering as you travel. Yeah, I never quite bought into that one…but still….as I put the pork chop pan away unwashed…hmmm…

in search of swans

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“There they are! See, over on the far bank.  You can see a few!”

“Hold on, I’ll pull over and we can get a better look”.

Our spring-time tradition of heading off to find the swans as they touch down and ride the river currents between thinning sheets of ice.  Driving north where the bears are still snoozing under snow blankets and any pull-offs from the highway are blocked with 3,4,5 feet of snow, we search for swans through the trees from the truck windows.

“Wait I see something.  Lots of them.” As she looks through the seriously unfocused binoculars. IMG_7194.JPG

“I think it’s a swan. No, wait….. it tipped over. It must be an ice burg that fell over.”

“Uh… ok, I guess it could be an ice burg, but…….”

“Oh, hahaha it’s a swan butt! He’s upside down feeding….a swan butt! I’ll get a picture of it”.

With photo ops few and far between from the truck with the phone, we drive on in search of swans.

“There’s lots of somethings over there. Let me check with the binocs.  Well, they sure look like penguins”.

“Don’t think so, Sue.  Not likely penguins”.

“You’re no fun.  Wouldn’t it be cool if they WERE penguins?”

“Sure”.

“There’s a weasely thing on the far bank”.

“Whatcha mean, weasely thing? You mean a marten?”

“Hey, I should narrate wildlife creature shows! (Much laughter)

“Sure”.

Finding swans feels a bit different this year. We left the house with our road sammies (BLT on fresh French bread), cinnamon buns and coffee because stopping in the tiny cafe for lunch is not an option right now.  We stop at the only outhouse rest stop open and maintain awkward social distancing with the few other travellers who have stopped. We disinfect our hands with sanitizing wipes immediately when we are back in the truck.

Finding swans this year sent us home with hope, faith and love. The swans show us that while our world might be different for awhile, we have faith that we will meet together again; and hope that we all stay safe in the meanwhile.

and Love.

“Yeah Sue, you really should narrate creature shows.”  Takes some love to say that with a straight face.

Happy Easter my friends and family. Miss you mightily.

 

 

 

 

 

shopping in virus times

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I’ve been away for awhile – life as usual – for awhile.  But now…..now nothing is as usual.

I’m working from home and fortunate to be doing so while so many have no work to go to right now. However; the work from home set up is not without some stressors.

It became evident quickly that my fancy-dandy Mac wouldn’t work with the system I needed and unless I quickly became a computer tech I was out of luck.  So……. I went shopping for a PC laptop.  I had to have it; I had exactly 4.5 days to learn a new job, with some 30 hours of online training (I know, do the math – it didn’t fit) learn a new program and get to work and my employer was not providing equipment. Crisis times call for crisis measures and I want to do my part.

Dashing into the empty city I found the computer places closed and with only a drug store that has a reputable computer department open.  I went in to awkwardly stand across the room from the sales guy and explain what I need.  He came up with the great idea of hey! how about a refurbished Lenovo? It will handle your requirements and not cost you an arm and a leg.  Well, $500 of an arm and a leg.

I took it. Rushed home to get on-line and try to catch up.  I yanked the “refurbished” tape off and “unboxed” my new to me Lenovo.  I opened the laptop and WTF! there were crumbs in the keyboard!  Someone’s sandwich leftovers refurbished….. In order to enter the Windows 10 code I needed to turn the laptop over to read the number.  Two keys fell off in the process and the code wouldn’t enter. I tried to get the keys to fit back on as I hurriedly tried to connect to the training I was missing.  Just trying to make it work for the day.  Just get through it. After charging the battery up fully, I unplugged the laptop and carried it into the other room with the message battery low – plug me in now or lose everything.

So long story shortened; I took it back. Got my money back.  Went to the computer store that was now open and bought a new PC for substantially more $. I won’t tell you I handled the stress ok, because I didn’t.  I cried. The pressure from work was huge.

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On my way home I stopped at Walmart to grab a cable to connect to my extra monitor.  The store has made considerable effort to manage shopping with huge red arrows on the floor directing traffic through the aisles and distances marked off at cash registers.

Are people blind or just plain don’t give a damn “it’s not meant for me mentality”? As I follow the red arrows up the aisle, they come from THE WRONG DIRECTION and walk right up as if social distancing was a concept beyond their grasp.

I found some help in the tech department with a close-talker young lady.  As I kept backing up and moving off to the side, I can excuse her for being too young to remember Seinfeld and the “close-talker” episode, but social distancing? Hmmmmm.

We dance around as I show her a picture of the connection I need and she shows me a cable and says “you need the female connection”.   I show her the picture again and say, “no I’m thinking I need one with the poking out ends to go in” and she says “Oh! I get it the male; the poking out thing!” Ah, yes.  Sadly they had none in stock.

Any shopping in virus times compels us to take a saunter down the toilet paper aisle.  Empty of toilet paper, but a couple boxes of scratchy looking tissues that we all have in the cupboard (just in case) and a lot of paper towels.  Maybe the populace has discovered that paper towels and septic systems are not a good match.

Tired of the whole frustrating shopping experience from laptops to cables to toilet paper,  and major stressed from work requirements, I turned around at the end of the aisle and there in front of me was a whole cooler of Haagen-Dazs!  Talk about strategic end of aisle placement!!

Well played, Walmart.  I bought it.

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apple pies, geese and those subscriptions

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IMG_8780.JPGThe past couple days I drove 800 kilometres (that’s 500 miles for the unconverted) to make pie. From scratch.  From picking the apples to perfecting the pie crust.  A dozen pies.

Why would I do that? It’s the time of year when we balance the ripening of the apples with the hunger of bears fattening up for winter.  The time of year when we harvest and bake and preserve for our own winter fattening up.  IMG_4715.JPG

Why else would I do that? Because it was a time spent in my son’s kitchen side by side as we peeled, cored, sliced and baked for a day.

My friend said it seems like a lot of work when you can just have pie delivered right to your door every week or month if you want.

Yes, in this age of subscription services we CAN have virtually everything delivered to our doors.  On my drive I listened to the radio ads touting subscription services for clothing, razors, dinners and tampons.  Tampons. It said for those times you are in need of a tampon the subscription service will be there.  Really?  So, you find yourself in need of tampons, you check the delivered boxes on your porch and find the dog toy box of things your dog won’t play with, your fridge filter replacement  that you forgot you ordered, a subscription to the oh so handy kitchen sponge replacement.  Oh so handy…. in this case….. maybe? Oh for the olden days when we could just pop into the store and pick up tampons when needed.

As we enjoyed fresh-baked pie and a glass of wine, we watched the Canadian geese “goose stepping” up from the lake to rest on the neighbour’s lawn.  I was fascinated by watching them up close and followed their schedule for a couple of days.  They headed out to the water in the early evening and at noon the next day started coming toward shore in groups of 15 or 20.  After they all gathered, with much honking and noise, they headed up to the lawn. They will do this for a few days until they head off further south. Year after year, they come back.

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Nature’s subscription service for all of us and we didn’t even have to sign up and give a credit card number. Berries and apples every year; bears to watch and wonder at, geese flying in and out again.

Go outside. Smell the fall air.  Listen to the geese. Pick some apples. Make some pie.

 

 

that time I lost the Vagina Monologues

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As I pulled into the dealership to have my car serviced last week I automatically reached out and turned the volume on my radio off. I suppose so the service guys wouldn’t  have to listen to my Sirius CNN at mega volume to compensate for my deafness.  After all, I drive alone most times so my cable news addiction can remain my secret. But then again, there’s the time I lost the Vagina Monologues.  Continue reading →

shaking it off

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Those things, you know…the things that you have to shake off. Do they bother me? Those things? Of course they do but there’s no one at the edge the lake with a big fluffy towel so I’d better learn to shake it off.

I went in to get a colour correction.  That’s fancy talk for fix the gold streaks in my hair that look like streaks of “oh no…..not a good look”.  I went to a new stylist because I wanted a change; came out with hair so blonde it looks like doll hair. A cross between yellow yarn Raggedy Ann hair and bombshell Barbie synthetic hair.  A friend of mine said “I wouldn’t have done that” when she saw me.  Well, I did it and actually kind of like rocking the blonde again for a change. Doll hair and all.

My friend said to me ” don’t you worry about your brain tumor?” Interesting question which I suppose requires more than a yes or no answer. Well yes, I worry about it just before it’s time for the next MRI to check what it’s doing.  Besides making me deaf, that is.  Yes, I worry about that.  Do I worry about it otherwise? Not so much. The hearing aids work and I get by. For now.

Standing across the counter from the cell phone lady, I explain that I need a new phone and want to review options and all that stuff with the phone plan thing. Because there was background noise and she was talking down at her computer I couldn’t hear her so I moved around the end of the counter and said “I am pretty deaf and need to stand closer to hear you”. Great. She spent the next five minutes explaining my plan to me by YELLING at me very slowly. People in the store were all watching her yell at me as I backed up around the front of the counter.  I wanted to yell back “I’M NOT THAT DEAF”,  but she was trying so hard I didn’t have the heart to.

This is the time of year that no matter how long I’ve lived away from there, I get homesick for Oregon.  On my way to work early in the morning the air might feel like Oregon, or it might smell like Oregon. A tiny pang of homesick. It’s not always practical to pack up and chase homesickness so I buy Rainier cherries. Well, we called them Queen Ann, but whatever you call them, they taste like Oregon. Shaking it off.

These things that bother  – I can usually shake them off and find some joy and even a smile in doing it. Even if sometimes that wet dog smell lingers…..

 

 

 

 

wait a minute – where’s the cellulite?

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Those ads.  The all-inclusive resort, azure blue waters, all the beautiful people. I can almost feel the soft tropical wind gently blowing the sarong slouched oh-so-sexy on my hips.

Wait a minute……. where’s the cellulite?   Continue reading →

he ate my signature

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The phone call totally made my week.  The guy calls and tells me he has a problem.  He says it’s hard to explain.

 He tells me he has a situation with the document he needed to sign and send to me and that he has a new puppy. Ok.  He tells me that he signed the paper and had it on the coffee table and when he left the room the puppy ate his signature; ate the bottom of the paper right off where his signature was. Ok, so of course I asked what kind of puppy it is and he says it’s a black Lab.

Say no more.

Always dangerous, that quiet was, and as if bursting from starting blocks on a track Benjamin gallops around the round oak coffee table waving my new peach satin Victoria’s Secret bra from his mouth with great delight.  Cups flapping on his ears like headphones that can’t get a grip, straps shinning across his nose, he’s clearly thrilled with his dresser surfing prize and is trying with all his might to entice me to join in the chase.  I yelled, I commanded,  and he raced faster and faster around the table reminding me of one of my childhood bedtime story books where the tiger races around in a circle until it turns into butter.  Totally  frustrated, I flopped down in the chair in the living room and decided to wait him out. Let him eat my bra, I was tired of the whole game. Benjamin walked over and with the classic Labrador soft mouth, laid my bra gently on my lap as he looked up at me with “you are my world” eyes. It’s hard to explain.

We take our fancy new RV trailer up in northern BC to remoteness. Rivers, bears and dead salmon.  The spawners that drift up on the bank and feed bears and eagles.  I make a special dinner and set the table in the trailer with placemats, wine glasses and flowers and Mark takes Benjamin out for a pee.  The short leash while walking along the river bank trying to avoid  the dead salmon mine field didn’t quite work as Benjamin found one that Mark missed,  flips over on his back and gloriously rolls  in stinking, slimy rotting fish, legs pumping the air as he shimmies and slides in the goo before Mark can yank him up.  I open the trailer door to a fuming Mark and a putrid Benjamin.  Did I mention that it was raining steady our whole trip? Like raincoat essential rain? Using all our shampoo to wash our stinking dog and all our towels to dry him, we spend the rest of the week convincing ourselves that we’re having a great time as campers do when they’re really miserable in the rain. We camped all summer in beautiful places and weather, but it was awhile before we lost the aroma of wet dog and rotten salmon with notes of Febreeze.  You just don’t pick that up in the fine air freshener aisle.  It’s hard to explain.

As I listened to the guy explain how his new puppy had eaten his signature, the Benjamin stories started popping up in my mind.  I felt a sharp stab of nostalgia.  It’s hard to explain.

 

Photo:  Benjamin – my best friend for many years.

 

 

 

Pedro poops in my yard and other neighbourhood notes this week

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Pedro saunters through my yard on his quarter-mile jaunt up to the neighbour’s house where he snuggles on the soft deck chairs and purrs.  On the way he stops and poops among the dahlias and bachelor buttons in my flower bed. I gotta give that little black cat some creds for his bravery considering all the foxes and lynx around.

A text this week to my next-door neighbour ” Bear on the way up to your place from our yard. Put the snacks away!”  The “snacks” including their Shih Tzu who fearlessly barks at EVERYTHING but might be seen by the bear as a perfectly coiffed fat rodent.

I discovered that I CAN do a sprint worthy of the anchor leg in a relay when I need to.  As Jasmine and I were walking halfway down a long hill the two moose that have been around all winter rounded the bottom of the hill at a “moose lope”.  When they saw us they shifted gears into a “moose canter/gallop” towards us so we turned around and sprinted up the hill and around the corner.  Seems moose lose interest after they make you scurry around the corner.

Angel cookies. These are the big dog cookies that the neighbour always has for Jasmine as we pass them on our walks or to be handed in through the truck window as we drive by. Usually more than one cookie as Jasmine shamelessly flirts and begs.

Note to self: Lady, you live in a cool neighbourhood!

 

 

 

 

 

cardboard box forts and things I’ll never know

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The summer before I started first grade was marked by moving to a new house on Woodlawn Avenue that came with a barn and a field that adjoined the property of a new elementary school being built. My school. King School.

My older brother, me and a loosely formed gaggle gang of neighbourhood kids spent August swimming, riding our bikes around and spying on the construction workers finishing up the school.  Our recon missions weren’t un-noticed and as the workers unpacked desks and furniture  they chatted with us and let us drag the large cardboard boxes across the school yard to the field behind my house.

Each of us got own box and working like a team of ants we wrestled them into place in the field.  From there we each decorated our cardboard box forts as our own drawing in crayon and cutting out windows as we set up our little village. KEEP OUT! signs on the forts of the older kids, and colourful scribbles on the rest.

The big kids, those 8 year olds, got the prime fort placements away from the spiders’ nests and dips in the field and soon social networks were established within the fort village.  I had to share my fort with my 4-year-old sister who most times was more of a pest than a compatriot. When one of the big boys invited us into his fort and asked her to lift up her shirt and he would let us stay, she started to pull up her t-shirt and I said “no” and we ran away not sure of what was wrong but feeling like something was.

Steve, the next door neighbour kid who came with the story that he was in an accident when he was little and had to wear a tight belt around his middle or his “guts and gizzards would fall down and he would die”.  Something I’ll never know.

The kid who lived catty corner to us who was from Pakistan and gave me a little brass camel that I still have.  How did he end up in Oregon City with his family from so far away? Something I’ll never know.

The old  man two houses away who never trimmed his hedge giving the yard the ominous look we needed to spin stories about him being scary.  Every Halloween he dressed up in a floppy green rubber Godzilla suit and became over six feet of stumbling lizard terrifying us all. He also gave out the best candy. What did he do when he wasn’t Godzilla?  Something I’ll never know.

I started first grade without first going to kindergarten.  My brother went to kindergarten.  Why didn’t I? My parents never told me and it’s something I’ll never know now.

The answers and explanations to many childhood memories disintegrate into time like the cardboard box forts becoming soggy, folding in on themselves and tearing apart with the fall rains. Who cleaned up our cardboard box forts after we left our village in the field and stepped into the school year? Something I’ll never know.

 

 

oh those duck lips….

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……an adventure in cosmetic tourism.

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Well, it was only cosmetic tourism due to my accident. A freak accident….(aren’t ALL accidents freaks?) put me in ranks of those travelling far and wide returning with altered appearances.

So here’s the thing; people do fall flat on their faces.  Nope, it’s not just a saying, and I proved it.  It’s the quick pop up, hands groping, feeling the damage that’s the realization of “F*@K, I’ve really done it this time”. Chips of tooth, too much blood were all I had to go by since I was alone,  there were no streetlights, it was dark and I was eight blocks from my hotel.

And here’s the other thing…..what the hell is wrong with people who walked around me like I had the ability to part the seas on the sidewalk; who didn’t miss a step getting to where ever they were going?  The only person who asked if I was ok was a homeless guy who said ” hey lady, are you ok?” and offered to share his grubby little roach which he told me was from really good weed and would help with the pain.  I thanked him, said no, and trundled on to my hotel.

Cosmetic tourism probably has a certain panache with hotels catering to clients and so forth. Picture me trying to get through the lobby up to my room with a bloody kleenex over my face – not even sure what people saw when they looked at me. I was a freak!

Shout out to Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego.  Although three hours in the emergency waiting room was oddly reminiscent of the famous Star Wars bar scene, the care was awesome. A little plastic surgery putting me back together and I was good to go albeit with a sewn-up, swelled-up lip accessorized by a healthy dash of road rash on my chin and nose to complete the look.

Here’s my question to Angelina, Julia, all those gorgeous sexy ladies with duck lips……when will mine turn sexy? The look just isn’t working for me yet…….