The Haunting of L

There is a TV program called Mystery Ink, where the host interviews mystery writers. From time to time I watch it, although the shows are often quite old reruns. That doesn’t matter; I am still introduced to books and authors new to me.

Lately an interview with Lyn Hamilton made me order a half-dozen of her “archeological” mysteries from the library. It wasn’t till I looked her up on the internet that I learned she has been dead quite a while. I’ve read two of her books now, and have two more waiting on the nightstand. I scan quickly through the historical backstory she includes throughout each novel, the story of the archeological treasures that are the reason people are murdered. Hamilton has done her research, but it is catching the killer that interests me.

Another book whose plot grabbed my attention is The Haunting of L, by Howard Norman. “What a lovely man,” I thought, as he chatted with the host. "His thoughtfulness; his way of seeing." I had ordered one of his books before — a memoir — but in spite of its dramatic content (a friend had killed herself and her child while staying in the home of Norman and his wife), it had not held me. I left it unfinished. Still, on the strength of this interview, I asked at the library for this other one.

The Haunting of L is a fiction revolving around the practice of “spirit photography,” which was apparently popular in the late 1800s. The image of a dead friend or relative or lover was inserted into a photograph of living people, and claimed to be a real presence. Often this was a comfort to the living, and so it became a way for charlatans to make money.

The opening line:

“In the four-poster bed, my employer’s wife, Kala Murie, lying beside me, the world seemed in perfect order.” The employee is a photographer’s assistant, and Kala Murie always wears two pairs of socks to bed because she is cold from the knees down, although the rest of her body is so warm she often sleeps without any covering at all.

The assistant thinks in captions. He frames everything he sees in this way, so much that it is almost an obsessive habit. Part of my work at the newspaper is writing captions for photographs, and I note that the practice hasn’t filtered into my consciousness, like breathing, as it has for this character.

“I looked at Kala. She’d shawled the bed quilt around her shoulders.” I love it when authors describe things in ways I’ve never thought of. Sometimes so simply, yet so effective.

And that’s as far as I’ve gotten, this Saturday morning. I’ve got the next four days off; dishes to do, other than that no plans or obligations. I’ll bake bread on Monday, but otherwise something tells me this girl will be reading. And I mean to get my papers together to take to my favourite accountant. I’ve been meaning to do that for a month already.

Out on the step, the wind smells like spring.

Crack That Whip

Whoa! A week has gone by without my posting here? How on earth — ?
Apparently I've been super busy, or there is nothing to tell, or my life is far too exciting and dramatic to tell tales on myself!
Yeah, that's it. Pick one. Any one will do.

Last weekend, the snow was disappearing.

It's been snowing heavily all day and looks like winter out there, again.
And the day has flown by! I'm still not at the bottom of the stack of dishes.
But I did make two dozen cake doughnuts this afternoon. That's more important.
I have my priorities straight.

We have ordered new kitchen cupboards.
Now, if they don't sit out in a shed in the yard for the next two summers like our house siding has done, I will be a happy camper. We shall see.
I'm the kind of camper who doesn't actually care all that much about kitchen cupboards or house siding ... for a while. Eventually I start wondering if maybe I should do some pushing, some motivating, some something. Then I forget about that, too.
Pffft. I might have a whip, somewhere, but I've no idea how to crack it.

Red wine, Morgan Davis, what's not to love?

Love the evenings.
Glass of red wine in front of me.
Morgan Davis playing in the living room (thanks, Scott).
Supper in a cast-iron frying pan on the stove; will taste damn good when it's ready.

The snow is going fast. 

And here's Morgan Davis for you.



There's a lineup of half-a-dozen songs here. My favourite is the third, Anticipation.

My Mom and Virginia Woolf

It was a March 28 that Virginia Woolf drowned herself.
What a shame. What a shame it was, and what a shame it is, no matter who does it.
Not if they're suffering physically and there's no end in sight; no, when it comes to that, I'm all for suicide, assisted or no.

But when it comes to emotional suffering, mental suffering ... well, I don't know much about those things, I mean when they are severe and long-lasting and leave you unable to cope ... but I do know that emotions are, as my friend Julie pointed out (at a time when I thought powerful emotions meant the thing pondered was of the highest importance), "like the weather; they come and go," and so I believe that emotional experience changes and can improve, so there is always hope.

Mental illness ... another thing I don't know much about. Surely it's closely related to the physical and emotional, but ... the next-to-nothing I've seen of mental illness has only left me well aware it's a condition I can neither influence nor comprehend.

In this fine little suicide-prevention video, the maker imagines what Virginia Woolf might have gone on to do if she hadn't ended her life:



Today is my mom's birthday. She was born the same day, the same year Virginia Woolf died, 1941.

Sometimes I wonder what Mom would have done if she had lived another 10 years, instead of dying at a youthful 64.
Would she have gotten wrinkles?
Would she have begun to forget things?
Would she have developed aches and pains?
Would she have gotten grey hair?
Would she have said to hell with perms?
I wonder what advice and insights she might have offered me these past 10 years and whether I'd have had the sense to see their wisdom and heed it, rather than figuring out much later that I should've and wishing I had.

Sharks are Chuck Norris's Bath Toys

Back to work I go for the next three days. Just finishing off my second cup of coffee before getting ready to drive into town. Scott is frying something meat-stinky in the kitchen with eggs. He may cook enough for me, and may not. He didn't offer. I'm not hungry, either way, though must and will eat something before walking out the door. Or not. Sometimes I just make myself some toast when I get to the office, and eat it at my desk.

Alison and her beautiful naturally curly hair hard at work, supervised by Pixie and Viggi.

The days are getting longer, and although we had snow over the weekend and it's cold again, none of that will last. Before long I'll be out in the flower bed in the evenings, or going for walks.

Soon I'll come home Thursday nights rather than staying over at Everett's to visit and watch a TV series with him. I won't want to be stuck indoors, no matter what.

Everett has been introducing me to Torchwood, now. It doesn't have the happily resolved endings that Doctor Who does. And I still am not a fan of science fiction monsters/aliens, danger and adrenalin and killing. But I do like spending time with my boy and afterwards, as I lie on the mattress in the living room, ready to fall asleep, he reads me a long list of Chuck Norris's imaginary, legendary superhuman qualities and we laugh together. My favourite is "Sharks are Chuck Norris's bath toys." I love the silliness, and so does Everett.

Just Sayin'

It's almost 10 years since Mom died and yet late last night when walking past my favourite photo of her I felt sick, remembering what happened, remembering she's gone.

The head shot hangs in the hallway outside my bedroom door. Taken scant weeks after her diagnosis of terminal cancer, it shows her smiling, freshly lipsticked, with her sister's loving hand on her shoulder.

This morning, looking into the bathroom mirror while brushing my teeth, remembering last night, I say to myself, "It's reality, girl; it's not as if every damn one of us doesn't lose our mom sometime. Don't wallow and whine."

So I won't.
Instead I'll winge about the weather.
Last weekend the snow was melting.
This weekend we've had more snow and the wind's biting cold.
It won't last long now, but still . . .  it won't be missed when it finally goes.

Moving Snow

Seemingly overnight, there are crows and Canada geese in the area again. There are numerous bare patches in the fields.

At home, Scott got busy moving snow away from the house in hopes of minimizing/avoiding water in the basement, and pushing snow off the yard so the large parking area will dry up sooner.

He starts under the kitchen window.

A shovelful at a time.

And dumps it southwest of the house.

All the way back to the three oaks. Needing to get the tractor this close to the house is one reason we think we can't have a patio out here. I'm starting to think we can, though; just not a large one. 

Raking Snow

One day after work, Scott tackled the weighty snow piled up on our roof.

And today, besides doing my usual Saturday stuff, I am looking forward to reading Alan Bradley's new book, As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust.
You can listen to the podcast where he is interviewed, HERE.

Flavia de Luce is a child sleuth who lives mostly unsupervised in a rambly country house, gets around on her bike (her best friend), and is the most entertaining amateur detective I've run across in a very long time.

In this, the seventh book in the series The Buckshaw Chronicles, she is sent from her home in England to a boarding school in Canada. If you haven't read any of these stories before, my advice is to start with the first volume, though I'm sure they're just as enjoyable when read without knowledge of Flavia's previous escapades.

Reading

From 30-below to melting, overnight ... wow.
Change. It can happen fast.

It was raining last night as I lay propped up in bed, finishing a biography of author Somerset Maugham. It was written by a University of Saskatchewan professor. I'd like to recommend it, but I can't; the writer didn't make Maugham come alive. Or is that asking too much? I don't think so. Others have managed to do it. Not regarding Maugham, mind you; yet. But I probably won't look for more about the man and I don't remember what it was that prompted me to order the book from the library.

Next: The Inconvenient Indian, by Thomas King.  Usually anything written about First Nations history with the tidal wave of European greed, arrogance, dishonesty, and inhumanity pisses me off. But I want to know what King has to say.

On my way home after work one evening I stopped to snap a photo of this lovely beast.

Saturday Routine

It's 2:19 p.m.

I was fortunate enough to be raised in a home that had a full-time “happy homemaker,” and so I grew up in a house where there were regular meals, home baking, clean sheets, vacuumed carpets, washed floors and walls, sparkling windows, folded laundry, a fridge and cupboards bulging with groceries that someone else did the weekly shopping for, and so on. I lived a life of luxury, though didn’t realize it. It was just the way things were in the home my parents provided, and I took these things for granted. I wanted for nothing.

Now I live in a house where there is no happy homemaker. There is just me, who likes a neat and tidy place because that’s the environment she grew up in, but doesn’t want to put in all the time necessary, herself, to make and keep it so.  I do the bare minimum required in order to meet my own relatively low standards, which would probably embarrass my mother.

Today, my first day off after three days at work, I have just spent an hour (the first of the weekend) doing the housework required for me to spend the next few days in an environment that is pleasant and comfortable. I have no choice; it’s that or live in a sty. Someone has to change the sheets and throw my clothes and towels into the washer. Someone has to wash, dry and put away the dishes. Someone has to pick things up and set the roomba going and clean its brushes afterward. Someone has to. My domestic servant is me.

So, one hour down and I’m taking a wee breather before tackling the next sinkful of dirty dishes. It’s not terrible drudgery when I’m not rushing through it. When I listen to favourite music or turn on CBC Radio and don’t hurry, hurry, hurry to get the chores over with, it’s actually not too terrible. If I don’t think about things I’d rather be doing, I can cope without impatience. If I try, I can take a lame, relieved pride in a job well done. Okay: done. Okay: half done. Whatever.

Might as well get back at it. Once the kitchen is clean, I can mess it up again. 

From the back step. 

Cat on a Cold Shake Roof

Over the weekend it warmed up from 30-below to 25-below. Even if I don't go out, myself, I can always tell, because I see the cats start running around on the roof of the tractor shed.

This guy, Bob (due to his stumpy tail; he survived a wrestling match with a motor fan one winter), is our resident tom. He catches birds and delivers them to his kittens. He looks after his family. No murderous marauding tomcatting for Bob!

He was busy chasing the "new" momcat around the yard on the weekend; she was dropped off at a farm five miles from here. She is a lovely, friendly calico, but somebody didn't want her. Perhaps she had begun to claw their fine furniture or pee on their bed. So her owners did what any irresponsible asshole would — dumped her in the country, in the freezing cold.

Fortunately for her she was dumped at the yard of someone who, although they didn't want her at their place, cared enough to keep her in their garage, warm and fed, till they could find her a home.

It took her and Bob quite a long time to warm up to each other, but now they are courting and perhaps we will have a litter of kittens in the barn in a month or two.

Between Gods

Alison Pick's memoir Between Gods is about her study of Judaism.

Pick's father's family lost many members during the Holocaust and, in his life in Canada, he didn't practise his parents' religion. Pick herself, though, as an adult, is drawn to it. She signs up for classes given by a Jewish rabbi, begins (with her willing and supportive spouse) to practise Jewish rituals, and looks for a Jewish friend. She tells her readers a bit of the history of her murdered grandparents and cousins, and struggles to acknowledge the effect of these horrors on her own life. She feels it is somehow part of her — or she must make it so. She must honour it and mourn it and try to understand it. She also sees a therapist, Charlotte, to help her cope with a longstanding depression.

An excerpt:

"I ask Charlotte my questions about change. Her answer is a resounding no. People can't change their essential selves. But what they can change is how they relate to themselves. And that makes all the difference.

It's early on a weekday morning, mothers walking their kids to school along the leafy residential street outside Charlotte's office. She looks fresh, her hair still damp from the shower. 'I can't stop thinking about evil,' I say.

I tell her about little Eva on that cold morning in Auschwitz. Five years old. Pulling up her sleeve, clenching her milk teeth against the pain of the tattoo. Trying not to cry. This is the detail that has locked itself in my mind, the detail I cannot forget. 'Is evil archetypal?' I ask Charlotte. 'That kind of evil?'

I expect she will say yes — Jung's framework is her framework —but instead she is silent. 'It's not useful to try and understand it,' she says.

'So what can I do?'

It is perhaps the most honest question I have ever asked of anyone. I am entirely childlike in my desire to know. How can I make sense of a world where this could happen?

'You could try to imagine what they would want,' Charlotte says.

'What who would want?'

'Your dead relatives. The people who were killed.' She coughs. 'Your great-grandmother Marianne.'

I look at her blankly. 'But what is evil? Is it an impulse in all of us?'

I think of my university courses in social psychology, the famous studies where subjects, many subjects, could be goaded into delivering larger and larger shocks to a victim until the shocks were purportedly big enough to kill.

'The Holocaust must have been imagined by sociopaths and then executed by unthinking followers,' I say. 'And the depressed economy, people hungry and willing ...'

Charlotte is silent.

'It makes my own suffering seem ridiculous,' I say. 'Like, like ...  I am searching for an apt comparison, for something without the cliché of "a grain of sand" or "a speck of dust."

'Your suffering is also valid,' Charlotte says. 'Talking yourself out of it only gives it more power.'

I think that my suffering is a shard of their suffering. Again the clichés.

'There's one thing I know,' Charlotte says. 'They would not want you to suffer.'

'Who?' I ask.

"Well, Marianne, for example. Little Eva.'

But I resist. If I don't suffer, Eva will be forgotten. The small girl with her stuffed mouse in the freezing cold barracks in Auschwitz. My suffering is, I realize, a perverse kind of tribute.

'Think of it in reverse,' Charlotte says. 'Would you want her to suffer for you?'

'Of course not!'

'Well?'

It occurs to me then — comes over me in a wave of feeling — that there is a light that shines on all things. That shines and can never be extinguished."

Make Your Own Diffuser Oil

1/4 cup rubbing alcohol (vodka works too)

1/4 cup hot water

20-25 drops essential oil 

Swirl to mix.

One in the bathroom.

Use an essential oil you love:

• Eucalyptus, peppermint, and lavender reduce tension • Peppermint energizes • Lemon, lemongrass, and thyme purify • Lavender, orange, peppermint, cedarwood, frankincense, and jasmine inspire a positive mental state and combat depression

One in the kitchen. The carved utensils in the ladyhead vase were carved by my great-great-great grandfather for my great-grandmother when she was a child.

Guest blogging, flower arranging

I've known Julie since I was 19; that's 37 years. We've written letters back and forth all this time.
Last week I sent her one that she wanted to repost on her blog, and with my permission she edited out the more personal stuff and did.
You can read it HERE.

I need a lesson in flower arranging. I cannot make a bouquet of flowers look right, no-how.

Before.

I put these in a vase on Friday night after getting home from work. I was tired and it seemed like a huge job by the time I cut the stems and so on, and I never did get them looking as stunning as they could.

I was going to read up online and get some basic tips, and then rearrange this bouquet and post a photo of the "after." But I don't feel like it now.

These flowers are cheery anyway, and remind me how much beauty there is.

No Arithmetic

One thing about the work I do: the time flies by. Eight hours, 10, 12 ... nose to the grindstone and they're gone in a flash.
My friends say "Perfect job for you, Kathy." They're right. I'm all about reading and writing; this is play, for me. There are challenges, but they're right up my alley. They're the kind of problems I like to wrestle with.

I'm tired at the end of the day; I won't lie.
Also, I don't like being stuck inside on a sunny warm day.
I don't like having to hustle to go somewhere in the morning, any morning.
But reading and writing, and getting paid for it?
Seriously. Perfect.

Friends also tell me from time to time, "You've got a book in you."
I'm not so sure.
I tell them I don't have anything to say.
To write a book, you need something to say.

Someone You Love has Dementia

My "mother-in-law from heaven" has written an article that has been published in the WADENA NEWS this week. It's about her experience from the time of my father-in-law's diagnosis of dementia until now, when he is in a nursing home. Here it is: SOMEONE YOU LOVE HAS DEMENTIA.

As for the more mundane aspects of daily life, after carrying on about the recycling yesterday I cleaned up that cluttered corner of the porch and changed the system at our house. This laundry hamper was brought from the bedroom to the kitchen and will collect all the recycling until it's full. Then the garbage bag inside will be carried to the basement, where I will sort its contents into separate bags that are now lined up against a bare wall. When they are overflowing, then off to the recycling depot they will go.

Why didn't I think of this sooner?
It's because, when it comes to many household details, I don't dwell on them long enough at any one time to take action. I usually have a thought and then carry on to something else. It's why the Christmas tree was only taken down yesterday. For the past month, I just walked on by!

Polite and Gentle Bodies

My body speaks gently to me. First I think I'm hungry. I do nothing about it. After a while I know I'm hungry. Still I do nothing about it. I'm in bed, reading Alison Pick's memoir Between Gods about her reach for Judaism. I've eaten lots of granola lately — it's quick and easy, but I had a bowlful before bed last night and don't want it again just yet.

My body is patient. And then it is not. I start to burp; that's a message I've come to recognize as "Eat." I keep reading.

Then I feel nauseated. Belly is empty. Put something in!

It reminds me of Emil, newborn. How first thing in the morning he would be in his basket by the bed and I'd hear his sweet, patient ch-ch-ch-ch for some time, but I wouldn't hear it as a call. Loving my sleep, I wouldn't get up and feed him till finally he'd let out a wail and I'd realize he'd been asking politely, all along, till my unresponsiveness demanded something more forceful.

I go to the kitchen, not wanting to spend any time making toast, eggs, or oatmeal, preferring to read some more. Scott brought bananas home from Kelvington yesterday. One of those will do.

Recycling would be a whole lot more convenient if the depot would take everything in one large bag, unsorted. When you have to keep it all separate, you have half a dozen separate bags and containers to fill with glass, plastic, tin, cardboard, newspaper and refundables before  you lug them out to your car. I still haven't figured out a system that doesn't look like a frigging pile of clutter all the time, or else requires numerous trips to the basement each day. Not that I've put my mind to a solution; meanwhile this mess in the porch makes me crazy. 

Starting Starter

In recent weeks I've started baking bread again. Funny how you go from doing it week after week to not doing it for months. But that's me. I never stick to a routine forever — except the coffee-in-the-morning one.

Yesterday I mixed up a sourdough starter. It will sit on the kitchen counter for six days, stirred once a day, and then go into the fridge to be used once a week. One cup of the starter goes into each batch of bread; one cup of flour and one cup of water is added back into it. If the starter is not used weekly, you still have to discard one cup of it and add the flour and water. My disinclination toward wastefulness will help me stick to the baking routine. For a while.

Starter gives the bread an extra little flavour kick as well as boosting its superbread abilities; don't ask me what they are. Rising, I suppose.

Gord (if you're reading), you'll be happy. I know you like the sourdough bread best. Cross your fingers I keep up with the plan till next time you're out here. (And if you can lay hands on some soy grits, please do. Sourdough and soy grits in your bread cannot be beat.)

Lately I've found the bread itself bland. Sure it's 100% whole wheat flour so has plenty of heft; sure it's got sesame and sunflower seeds and is always toasted; sure the dough's been sweetened with molasses. And sure, I always eat it with real butter. But I miss the tang of sourdough.

Interested in trying starter yourself? You'll find the recipe here: CLICK.

Sweet-Scented Treasures

From our visit to Cathy and Roger in Oakburn, we returned with many beeswax treasures.

One of the beauties of these items is the sweet scent, even when they are not burning.
Once in a while you get a whiff when you walk by.

Making Granola

Yesterday I made granola.
It's the first time in ages, since I haven't been to visit the "honey man" in some time.
But when Shelly and I went to see Cathy, we did some shopping in their warehouse.
They raise bees, harvest honey, sell it, and also make a wide variety of pure beeswax candles.

What I want to know is, what is the trick to getting the lid tightly onto these pails?
I put a hand on the middle and threw my entire weight onto it, like a Ukrainian dancer, and still the lid was loose.
I had to leave it till Scott came home with his superior strength.

Here's the granola recipe: CLICK HERE.
It came from Cathy (whose wax arts I wax on about in the next entry) about 30 years ago.