We sure live in the land of milk and honey. There ain't no better place to be. Alberta. Christmas morning, we woke up to clear sky and a pink reflection on the mountains to the west.
I put the turkey in the oven around noon and we took the old girl down to the river for a walk. The pathways were clear and the temperature was warm, nearly 10 +C. She wanted to walk for miles. Not bad for a nearly 14year old shepherd cross.
At home the wonderful smell of roasting turkey filled the house and I set the table and started to prepare the vegetables.
We didn't expect anyone over until late in the afternoon for gift opening. This is the first time in our lives that we have not had a Christmas morning of gift opening. It was just the two of us, well three but she slept through it all.
Erin and Walter had both worked until late in the night on Christmas eve. Erin bartending and Walter dj'ing. Like a full time job at the university wasn't enough!!
It was the Christmas of body parts and appliance attachments. Erin gave Walter a pair of lamps which were featured in her favourite Christmas movie, A Christmas Story. Walter was somewhat flummoxed because he hadn't seen the movie, but non the less impressed with getting a pair of lamps of stylized women's legs in fish net stockings..
He returned the favour to Erin and gave her a dressmakers form. Which quickly became the bodice to the legs.
Ashley surprised me with some laundry art. She knows how I like laundry art and she gave me a plate by Ron Philbeck. He makes marvelous earthenware in his studio in NC. I just love it and can't wait to hang it up. My job for this afternoon.
Wayne and Ellen arrived and things went into full swing with paper and ribbons flying. Every year I swear that we should slow down the gift opening procedure and open one at a time. I know that it took me way more time to choose the gift, the card, find the wrapping paper, cut it to size, round up the tape and carefully wrap the parcel and add a ribbon that it takes for the recipient to rip off the paper and scan the gift. I know that we are better people than this but the monkey of greed just jumps on our backs.
Our dinner was perfection, so tasty and even more wonderful becaue everyone pitched in to help. Ashley had made an amazing sweet potato pie from scratch...really scratch, she worked hard and it was worth it. This is a new food path we are on, imagine our family usually so stiffly directed by tradition casting aside the mincemeat pie, plum pudding and brandy sauce and stepped into the american sweet potato pie world
We should have had many more at our table to share the bounty.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Saturday, December 18, 2010
How I found out that Santa really exists
I heard a bunch of whining phone-ins on the radio yesterday. Each one whinging about how their childhoods were ruined by their misguided and delusional parents who taught them to believe in the Santa fairy tale. Wimpering over their lack of coping skills which they needed to deal with the harsh realities of life, like paying credit cards and making their own beds.
There were some grumblings of litigation.
The callers were mostly in their twenties and thirties and still living in their parent's basements after their second or third divorce. Hungover and sunburned from their Mexican holidays, they were returning to face the reality of having to buy their own Christmas presents and being reminded by their broke and exhausted parents that there really is no big elf to do it for them.
They blamed mater and pater for perpetuating the myth in the first place.
Oh good grief I thought. " Do we need helmets for this too? Must we always be saved from ourselves?
As I drove along listeing to the radio I recalled my own childhood Santa memory.
This is my tale of how I found out the truth about Santa.
I must have been around 6, I know for some pretentious worldly toddlers that might seem old by today's standards, but we were slow then.
It was early December in Calgary and 55 years ago people didn't start decorating and filling the stores with seasonal stuff until the middle of December. But the kids in my neighbourhood had started to talk about the big event. We began to make up a list of the things we wanted for Christmas. Our lists were filled with things that we saw our friends may have had and that we had seen in the Eaton's or Sears' catalogues. We didn't have a TV so there were no ads yet.
Shopping trips downtown had drawn us to the the toy department of the big stores and enormous Christmas window displays of toy trains and sweet dolls with silky vinyl hair.
We were nudged by our parents to add things to our lists that they could afford to let us believe might come our way. I never dreamt of scarves or mittens, but of fancy white leather figure skates.
We cut out the pictures and glued them into our scrap books. Every kid had a scrap book. We used Elmer's clear yellow glue in the glass bottle with the red rubber top and pencil crayons to decorate the pages with our drawings of mistletoe, Christmas trees and cotton wool snow balls. We made miles of paper chains to decorate the tree.
I can't remember wanting anything in particular enough to put it in the scrapbook but I obliged my mother and wiled away many gloomy dark December afternoons creating these pages. We cut out old Christmas cards together and created scenes that I remember to this day.
We had Christmas plays and we could say the word 'Christmas' outloud and not pretend it was something else. We had Jewish friends who also glued cotton balls and sparkles to their scrap book pages and filled it full of things they wanted.
Usually there was a project at school to create something that would forever be a family heirloom and most golden of gifts. This year the girls were making knitting needle and yarn holders out of Quaker Oat cereal containers. The Quaker Oat company sold their oat cereal in a six inch diameter tube in those days. There was a sleeve of poster paper to be fitted around the container and lots of tissue glued on that and thick layers of sparkle and yarn samples upon that. The knitting holders required many days to dry as one can imagine with the amounts of glue we used. Keeping the secret of this magnificent gift was an enormous responsibility
One day I argued with my mother over something and I was so mad that I told her I was NOT going to give her the knitting container that I had made. I heard myself reveal the secret and I was helpless to retrieve the words.
By some miracle my mother had forgotten what I had said and was as surprised at the gift as I had hoped she would be on Christmas morning.
My family's church, Chalmers Presbyterian had begun the ersatz religious hype of Christmas, little paper displays of wise men, donkeys, diamond shaped yellow stars, shepherds with sheep and crooks and the nativity scene decorated the basement where the Sunday school was held.
There was always a White elephant sale about the second week of December and I took my hard earned coins to the sale and bought the gifts I would give my family members. I bought my mother a slightly cracked plastic ivory palm tree brooch and a huge bottle of lovely pink coloured acne cream, for my father, a pair of knee high red golf socks, and for my sister a golden book of the Happy Bunny with only a few wrinkled pages.
The excitment of Christmas glowed in my happy little soul as I wrapped the gifts and hid them under my bed.
Roles were announced for the Christmas concert at school and we practiced our lines and sang the carols every morning after singing God Save the Queen and saluting the flag. I was a tall child so the role of one of the villagers was always mine. I don't think I have ever seen that role reprised anywhere since, but my teacher managed to help me believe that this was a critical character.
On an evening after dinner just before the third week of December we would pile into the 1949 blue Chrysler sedan to go to the tree lots to buy the family Christmas tree. In the trunk would be yards of rope and old sheets to put between the tree and the car roof top.
We always tried to choose the perfect tree, almost always falling short of that goal and bringing home a tree with a huge bald spot. Of course it had to be carefully measured , then shortened as the trunk sawn flat many times then nailed to the 2x4's which would hold it up. The tree was set out to thaw on the back porch waiting for the lower branches to gracefully open out and for the sap to drip onto the mat before it was allowed to come into the house bringing its lovely foresty smell of spruce.
The approach of Christmas was definitely in the air, I know that a day didn't go by when I didn't think of it. There was baking to do with my mum, decorating sugar cookies for the school Christmas tea and bake sale.
Then came the evening that we went shopping for new shoes. New fancy shoes happened twice a year. Just before Christmas and just before Easter. Christmas shoes were always black maryjanes with a strap and some kind of decoration. We had neighbours that owned a shoe store downtown. After Dad came home from work we would drive downtown, awed at all the hanging Christmas lights. The store would be filled with other little kids, all playing in the foot xray machine. Our mother had been a nurse and she was deathly respectful and afraid of xrays so we were not allowed to go anywhere near it. I loved the smell of new shoes and rode home with my nose buried in them.
The final and most important event of our Christmas social season was the Christmas party in the church basement where Santa was the guest of honour.
The smell of wet wool rose from the radiators where people had hung their winter coats to dry. Puddles formed around the winter boots on the floor from the melting snow.
My sister and I were all dressed up in our homemade red velvet dresses with the lace collars and our new shoes. The excitement level was nearing hysteria, a few fights had broken out among the boys and some of the girls looked feverish with red cheeks and glassy eyes.
Finally, to a great fanfare of ringing bells Santa arrived dragging a huge brown potato sack, lumpy with gifts. He was magnificent in his red velvet suit, the exasct same colour as my dress.
I felt like royalty.
A long line up formed and each child climbed onto his knee and shyly told him their secret desire.
Finally my turn was near, I scanned Santa from head to toe, admiring his wonderful elfish self perched way up high on the Christmas throne.
His shoes, black and shiny, looked familiar. They looked very familiar. My dad had shoes like that.
I climbed on Santa's knee. Santa warpped me in his arms and said. "Hello little girl, what would you like for Christmas." Santa had an Austalian accent. My dad had an Australian accent.
I looked up and into Santa's eyes. They looked like my dad's eyes. His cheeks sported an unearthly bright red glow, almost the same as my mother's lipstick.
Santa said,"Well, Deed you have a happy Christmas."
Gee Santa knew my nickname!
On the way home I heard my parents talking with low voices in the front seat. They were concerned that they had outed Santa to me.
But, I was so happy, I was probably the luckiest kid in the world.
I think I figured it out...Santa was my dad.
There were some grumblings of litigation.
The callers were mostly in their twenties and thirties and still living in their parent's basements after their second or third divorce. Hungover and sunburned from their Mexican holidays, they were returning to face the reality of having to buy their own Christmas presents and being reminded by their broke and exhausted parents that there really is no big elf to do it for them.
They blamed mater and pater for perpetuating the myth in the first place.
Oh good grief I thought. " Do we need helmets for this too? Must we always be saved from ourselves?
As I drove along listeing to the radio I recalled my own childhood Santa memory.
This is my tale of how I found out the truth about Santa.
I must have been around 6, I know for some pretentious worldly toddlers that might seem old by today's standards, but we were slow then.
It was early December in Calgary and 55 years ago people didn't start decorating and filling the stores with seasonal stuff until the middle of December. But the kids in my neighbourhood had started to talk about the big event. We began to make up a list of the things we wanted for Christmas. Our lists were filled with things that we saw our friends may have had and that we had seen in the Eaton's or Sears' catalogues. We didn't have a TV so there were no ads yet.
Shopping trips downtown had drawn us to the the toy department of the big stores and enormous Christmas window displays of toy trains and sweet dolls with silky vinyl hair.
We were nudged by our parents to add things to our lists that they could afford to let us believe might come our way. I never dreamt of scarves or mittens, but of fancy white leather figure skates.
We cut out the pictures and glued them into our scrap books. Every kid had a scrap book. We used Elmer's clear yellow glue in the glass bottle with the red rubber top and pencil crayons to decorate the pages with our drawings of mistletoe, Christmas trees and cotton wool snow balls. We made miles of paper chains to decorate the tree.
I can't remember wanting anything in particular enough to put it in the scrapbook but I obliged my mother and wiled away many gloomy dark December afternoons creating these pages. We cut out old Christmas cards together and created scenes that I remember to this day.
We had Christmas plays and we could say the word 'Christmas' outloud and not pretend it was something else. We had Jewish friends who also glued cotton balls and sparkles to their scrap book pages and filled it full of things they wanted.
Usually there was a project at school to create something that would forever be a family heirloom and most golden of gifts. This year the girls were making knitting needle and yarn holders out of Quaker Oat cereal containers. The Quaker Oat company sold their oat cereal in a six inch diameter tube in those days. There was a sleeve of poster paper to be fitted around the container and lots of tissue glued on that and thick layers of sparkle and yarn samples upon that. The knitting holders required many days to dry as one can imagine with the amounts of glue we used. Keeping the secret of this magnificent gift was an enormous responsibility
One day I argued with my mother over something and I was so mad that I told her I was NOT going to give her the knitting container that I had made. I heard myself reveal the secret and I was helpless to retrieve the words.
By some miracle my mother had forgotten what I had said and was as surprised at the gift as I had hoped she would be on Christmas morning.
My family's church, Chalmers Presbyterian had begun the ersatz religious hype of Christmas, little paper displays of wise men, donkeys, diamond shaped yellow stars, shepherds with sheep and crooks and the nativity scene decorated the basement where the Sunday school was held.
There was always a White elephant sale about the second week of December and I took my hard earned coins to the sale and bought the gifts I would give my family members. I bought my mother a slightly cracked plastic ivory palm tree brooch and a huge bottle of lovely pink coloured acne cream, for my father, a pair of knee high red golf socks, and for my sister a golden book of the Happy Bunny with only a few wrinkled pages.
The excitment of Christmas glowed in my happy little soul as I wrapped the gifts and hid them under my bed.
Roles were announced for the Christmas concert at school and we practiced our lines and sang the carols every morning after singing God Save the Queen and saluting the flag. I was a tall child so the role of one of the villagers was always mine. I don't think I have ever seen that role reprised anywhere since, but my teacher managed to help me believe that this was a critical character.
On an evening after dinner just before the third week of December we would pile into the 1949 blue Chrysler sedan to go to the tree lots to buy the family Christmas tree. In the trunk would be yards of rope and old sheets to put between the tree and the car roof top.
We always tried to choose the perfect tree, almost always falling short of that goal and bringing home a tree with a huge bald spot. Of course it had to be carefully measured , then shortened as the trunk sawn flat many times then nailed to the 2x4's which would hold it up. The tree was set out to thaw on the back porch waiting for the lower branches to gracefully open out and for the sap to drip onto the mat before it was allowed to come into the house bringing its lovely foresty smell of spruce.
The approach of Christmas was definitely in the air, I know that a day didn't go by when I didn't think of it. There was baking to do with my mum, decorating sugar cookies for the school Christmas tea and bake sale.
Then came the evening that we went shopping for new shoes. New fancy shoes happened twice a year. Just before Christmas and just before Easter. Christmas shoes were always black maryjanes with a strap and some kind of decoration. We had neighbours that owned a shoe store downtown. After Dad came home from work we would drive downtown, awed at all the hanging Christmas lights. The store would be filled with other little kids, all playing in the foot xray machine. Our mother had been a nurse and she was deathly respectful and afraid of xrays so we were not allowed to go anywhere near it. I loved the smell of new shoes and rode home with my nose buried in them.
The final and most important event of our Christmas social season was the Christmas party in the church basement where Santa was the guest of honour.
The smell of wet wool rose from the radiators where people had hung their winter coats to dry. Puddles formed around the winter boots on the floor from the melting snow.
My sister and I were all dressed up in our homemade red velvet dresses with the lace collars and our new shoes. The excitement level was nearing hysteria, a few fights had broken out among the boys and some of the girls looked feverish with red cheeks and glassy eyes.
Finally, to a great fanfare of ringing bells Santa arrived dragging a huge brown potato sack, lumpy with gifts. He was magnificent in his red velvet suit, the exasct same colour as my dress.
I felt like royalty.
A long line up formed and each child climbed onto his knee and shyly told him their secret desire.
Finally my turn was near, I scanned Santa from head to toe, admiring his wonderful elfish self perched way up high on the Christmas throne.
His shoes, black and shiny, looked familiar. They looked very familiar. My dad had shoes like that.
I climbed on Santa's knee. Santa warpped me in his arms and said. "Hello little girl, what would you like for Christmas." Santa had an Austalian accent. My dad had an Australian accent.
I looked up and into Santa's eyes. They looked like my dad's eyes. His cheeks sported an unearthly bright red glow, almost the same as my mother's lipstick.
Santa said,"Well, Deed you have a happy Christmas."
Gee Santa knew my nickname!
On the way home I heard my parents talking with low voices in the front seat. They were concerned that they had outed Santa to me.
But, I was so happy, I was probably the luckiest kid in the world.
I think I figured it out...Santa was my dad.
The Return
It is so nice to be home, I don't seem to be able to stay away longer than 8-10 days before I need my own bed and a lick from my dog and I need to get my act together for Christmas. Our hostesses Heidi and Donna respectively went out of their way to make our visits so enjoyable. Thank you my friends. We both felt so comfortable in your homes.
We had a wonderful dinner with our real estate ladies. The Terrace Garden put on an amazing dinner and with comfortable company, the evening was a very pleasant experience. And profitable I hope. Well, I am sure it will be.
Thanks everyone for making our sojourn east a pleasant experience.
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| D and D's house in Eden Mills |
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| Just a charming pastoral scene |
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| Another pastoral scene |
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| There is nothing like a wonderful dinner, cooked and eaten with dear old friends |
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| From the sublime to the frantic |
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
the weather
Oh the weather outside is frightful but the fire is so delightful....blah blah.
Okay settle down everyone, especially you in the back row, we are fine, we are not stuck in the snow and our little jeep is getting us around nicely. But with a nod to the weather gods, because they could turn their nasty vindictive eye to us on a whim, we are respectful of the vagaries of the weather in these parts.
The so called 'lake effect' blizzards whirl around and wipe out different towns willy nilly.
I hear the folks in Sarnia, Petrolia and London haven't seen daylight for 48 hours, the storm trapped some hapless unprepared souls and even the military can't get them out.
Today B and I toured the village of Eden Mills, and dropped into the Art Gallery. We were mightily impressed and astonished at the age of the building. Two foot wide planks on the floors and stone construction. Some of the mixed media sculpture is absolutely stunning.
Then off to Rockwood another charming little hamlet just oozing cute and I loaded up on local maple sugar fudge. Yes Ashley I have a box of it coming home for Christmas.
We motored on past the pastoral Mennonite dairy farms and into Guelph and a hot Thai soup for lunch.
D&D were in Hamilton today, Donna at the dentist and David administering exams to the poor students at Hamilton Uni.
Our business party is tomorrow and we will fight the roads to get there and then home to Calgary on Thursday.
Okay settle down everyone, especially you in the back row, we are fine, we are not stuck in the snow and our little jeep is getting us around nicely. But with a nod to the weather gods, because they could turn their nasty vindictive eye to us on a whim, we are respectful of the vagaries of the weather in these parts.
The so called 'lake effect' blizzards whirl around and wipe out different towns willy nilly.
I hear the folks in Sarnia, Petrolia and London haven't seen daylight for 48 hours, the storm trapped some hapless unprepared souls and even the military can't get them out.
Today B and I toured the village of Eden Mills, and dropped into the Art Gallery. We were mightily impressed and astonished at the age of the building. Two foot wide planks on the floors and stone construction. Some of the mixed media sculpture is absolutely stunning.
Then off to Rockwood another charming little hamlet just oozing cute and I loaded up on local maple sugar fudge. Yes Ashley I have a box of it coming home for Christmas.
We motored on past the pastoral Mennonite dairy farms and into Guelph and a hot Thai soup for lunch.
D&D were in Hamilton today, Donna at the dentist and David administering exams to the poor students at Hamilton Uni.
Our business party is tomorrow and we will fight the roads to get there and then home to Calgary on Thursday.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Rural Ontario today
Years ago David and Donna nearly came to blows while they were trying to put the lights on their Christmas tree. David says they were spinning the alimony wheel. Just at the moment that they were about to sink carving knives into each other, an old friend Bob Hamper knocked on the door. He sat them both down, put a drink in their hands and proceeded to put the the lights and decorations on the tree and that is how Bob saved Christmas. He is their family's hero and has an open ticket to their home/
Donna thought this was such a good idea to have Bob arrive to decorate the tree that they decided to hold an annual party to accomplish the task. Over time people have arrived as strangers and left as friends, some people accompanied others only to bring more inductees the next year.
We enjoyed a wonderful meal and lots of good wine and music in the living room. David played his trombone, Mike Malone played his horn and Don Thompson played the piano. Everyone had so much fun listening and playing the music. We listened to Don's new CD 'Pink'. I am going to get a copy when we get home it was only released yesterday. Diana Panton is the singer. You should google these folks
There were some large and sore heads this morning.
We ate a lovely breakfast cheffed by Chuck and Dave. Chuck is a music prof at U of Michigan Lansing and his lovely new bride Deb is a visual arts prof at same uni. Funny thing, there is more than one common thread connecting all of us. The obvious ones are good music and great reads but growing in importance is the love of food. Good food, Well prepared and thoughtfully presented food. Of course everything ingredient is carefully sourced and reverently chosen for the recipes that are often competetively created.
There is nothing like a bunch of foodies hanging over your plate waiting your critique.
So, rural Ontario on a winter's day in December is snowrain. No snow on the roads, but thick cold slush is building up on the patio. The path through the woods over the bridge to the mill pond is squashy and damp. It is 5:00pm as I type this and the dark descends. The McMurdo's house is a a solid old brick Ontario farm house. Or at least it looks like one, actually I think it was built in the sixties and so it has better insulation than most. Lovely dormers on the front of the house add to the charm.
I do like the old architecture, not so sure about living in it but the charm just oozes, particularly in the comfortable neighbourhood in which the Cassidy/Mohr clan live. Although I think their house is a sixties house as well. Liza and Derrick who are Heidi's bro and wife live in the town of Clarence in an ancient house with exposed beams and lots of character. Liza was kind enough to take our pictures and she is another one you should google as I am so impressed with her photography that I was eager to see what she could do with us.
I will be posting pictures when I find the cord to connect to the lap top but in the mean time you will have to use the ones I have planted in your head.
particularly the ones of Niagara Falls. I know it sounds kooky but we drove up from Williamsville in the late afternoon with a goal in mind of seeing the falls in daylight and then in coloured lights at the night fell. Along the way Dan drove us through the ever popular tourist attraction of Love Canal and then to the American Falls on Goat Island.
There is so much spray from the falls that when it hits the trees and freezes great chunks of ice fall to the ground with groans and slaps. You want to keep your wits about you and your eyes open wary of a falling chunks of ice.
The ubiquitous Keg dinner rounded off our day and we drove home to fall into our beds to sleep perchance to dream.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Giggling Gertie Gwenn
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| Gwenn and Shelley stopped by for tea this afternoon. Little Gwenn had a giggle fit and of course I couldn't remember where my camera was in time. Typical of kids and pets, they stop doing the $1,000,000. thing when the shutter opens. She was glad to flirt over her mother's shoulder though...what a cutie pie. |
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