Uff Da

For years I've been purchasing shampoos from health food stores in the hope that they have fewer harmful chemical additives than the products that come off grocery- or drug-store shelves. I've perused their ingredients lists and thought, Hm ... this doesn't look much better. What am I actually buying, here? What am I absorbing through my scalp over and over again? Just because the manufacturer claims this stuff is free of poisons,  and I'm paying a premium price for it, doesn't mean I'm getting the natural product that I want.

At the Christmas market in town several weeks ago there was a lady from Norquay, Sask., with a table selling her homemade personal care products. I bought all her shampoo bars the moment I read their ingredients list:

- olive oil
- water
- coconut oil
- sunflower oil
- sweet almond oil
- soybean oil
- castor oils

Excuse me? No disodium sulfosuccinates? No olefin sulfonate? No decyl polyglucose? No sodium lauroyl sarcosinate? No sodium benzoate? No — ?

Well, you get the drift.

Just plain ingredients whose names I actually recognize. Woo hoo!

The shampoo suds up and does a great job. And it's inexpensive, too, compared to the big-batch commercial so-called healthy shampoos I've been using till now.

Check it out for yourself at her website: Uff da.

I will be ordering more when these are gone, and trying her other products, too.

Imperfection

a nice white wine for your evening glass

Not too dry, not too sweet. So perfect, it's hard to stop at one glass.
But yay, me! I have been doing it.

Thank you to the clerk at the Wadena liquor store for recommending this wine to Scott. He has been spoiling me with it.

Speaking of perfection brings to mind the discomfort of imperfection. 

Newspapers have what we call "production day," and on that long busy day I read most every printed page, determined to catch errors of spelling, punctuation, phrasing, design … anything that may have been missed during the first proofreading or inadvertently changed during the transfer of a file's content to the page.

On "publication day," which follows, I scour the issue that has been mailed out to subscribers, almost holding my breath in dread of spotting an error.

And usually I do find at least one imperfection, and shake my head, and grit my teeth. How could I have looked right at this and not seen it? My “eagle eye” is not perfect. Sigh.

Readers "out there" are every bit as critical; no matter how minuscule the oversight, they note it with some measure of glee or annoyance.

They don't know how many imperfections were corrected before the text ever got into print, and how much rewriting was done, and how much factchecking there was, and how much headscratching, and how many small decisions had to be made. They would be surprised and perhaps even impressed, if they knew, at the level of attention to detail in the news office. Instead, some hold any mistake up to the light and almost seem to scoff; they have caught us falling short of perfection!

They have no way of knowing how much sifting, sorting and repair has been done before the newspaper went to press. They see a finished product that has been sweated over behind the scenes, under the pressure of a looming weekly deadline. They never see the work in progress or realize how much fine-tuning was required. 

Maybe that’s because, like successful recording artists, we make it look effortless. “I could do that!” the audience thinks. "That's easy!"

I wonder if I will ever accept errors and oversights with a glad heart, or at least a balanced one. Mistakes are a cost of living, and they are to be expected; we have to continue doing our best in spite of them. That’s what human fortitude is all about: not letting failure, or imperfection, get you down or keep you there. If you learn something every time, your game should only improve.

Besides, if we were perfect our heads would swell and we would become top-heavy and tip over. It never hurts to stay humble.

The Red Dress Project

There are some 600 missing and murdered women in Canada.

Oh wait. Six hundred missing and murdered First Nations and Metis women. Their numbers are by far the highest, when it comes to counting up missing and murdered women in this country.

It's hard to believe, when you don't know any of them or their families personally. It's all too easy to think "These things don't happen to me or the women I know." Consider yourself fortunate, then, that you haven't lost a friend or a sister this way, or your mother or daughter.

The Red Dress Project attempts to make the public aware of the extremely high incidence of violence against Aboriginal women here. The artist collects donated red dresses and hangs them in public places.

Right now the project is at the University of Regina.

Read more: http://www.ammsa.com/publications/windspeaker/red-dresses-there-just-not-there

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ReginawelcomesREDressProject

Only Able to Imagine

Left on the kitchen table with carnations and napkins

Darn! Guess this means there will be no cellphone call late this afternoon, saying "Is there anything you need from town?" to which I might reply "I am craving potato chips. How 'bout it?"

The sun is shining and the snow is sparkling. I went to bed last night and snuggled into my pillow, aware how fortunate I was to be tucked up all safe and warm in my own bed, with all my family and friends safe, while people in the Philippines are cold, hungry, grief-stricken, fearful and in shock.

It's Remembrance Day here in Canada, and I'm thinking of my great-great uncle, who died when the SS Caribou was torpedoed by a German submarine off the coast of Newfoundland in 1942. I'm thinking of my great-great aunt Alma, who was a nurse overseas during one of the world wars and must have seen some terrible suffering. I'm also imagining what it must have been like to be mothers and sisters and wives in those days when so many men and boys left for the battlefields. How sick at heart they all must have been as they watched their loved ones go, then waited at home, praying for good news, which all too often never came. I can't bear thinking much about it, or the fact that war and killing and rape and violence are still common around the planet.

So I focus on my own little life, reminded how lucky I am to have it where it is, how it is. I can spend the morning in my fluffy green housecoat (first time in 10 years I've had a paid holiday, by the way; that alone is something to do a jig about), worrying about no one dear to me. I can spend an hour getting the Wadena News (follow @wadenanewsed) set up on Twitter; I can plunge my hands into warm sudsy water in the kitchen sink, and look out the window at the birds flitting to and from the feeders in the trees. I can slide a roaster into the oven with a homegrown chicken, for supper. I can pour chilled white wine into a crystal goblet, and make brownies for dessert tonight. My sons haven't had to go to war.

Life is good.
I wish it was this good for everybody.

Inside My Head

Stolen from somewhere online

What's the matter with you? It's Winter

It's another cool and snowy day, but I have ski pants so you'll hear no complaints from me if I get out there before dark.

I'm not one of those who whines about the cold, then goes out dressed like a teenager or a fashion plate. I've learned my lessons: frozen ears, fingers, toes; misery in vehicles that hadn't been warmed up yet; impatient while my son Emil, on crutches or with walker, took longer getting into a building than is necessary for the more able-bodied.

And why?

When I was a teenager, looking unstylish mattered to me. Meh. To hell with that. Now I value comfort more than appearance. It took long enough. Some of us learn everything the hard way.

And when I was a bit older, it was only that I didn't know about the magic of ski pants. For warmth, they beat long underwear, hands down. And they aren't worn indoors, so your jeans don't feel tight (thus convincing you of weight gain or the need to slim down) like they do with long underwear beneath.

Sure ski pants are a pain in the butt to pull on every time you step out the door, and to peel off each time you come in again. That's also the case with the jacket, the lined boots, the scarf, the tuque and/or hood, the mitts. You feel buried alive sometimes. But these essentials are the cost of living in a country where cold weather is the norm for a good part of the year. Quit bitching, and dress for it. It's the only way to enjoy winter instead of suffering it. Because when you're warm, winter is beautiful.

This has been my annual holier-than-thou public health announcement. 

It Was a Rodeo

Darkness was beginning to fill the cool, moist air, and these three young calves couldn't figure out where the boys wanted them to go. It's not that they wouldn't comply. It's that they were confused; their mothers had already been herded to a pasture closer to home, and these three had gotten separated from the rest.

Here Bruce and Scott are trying to get them to step between the fenceposts to cross through the ditch, over the road, and to a stubble field on the other side. Half the battle was that the calves are accustomed to an electric wire between those posts, and they weren't too anxious to take a chance of getting shocked. You could almost hear their brains: "What? What? Why are they trying to get us to touch the fence? I'm not doing it!"

I was enlisted to help, but am not too adept at chasing cattle so the most I could really do was bring the truck up to where the boys had had to gallop on foot after the beasts, which can run pretty darn fast when they decide to throw their heads up and bolt.

In other news, we got snow during the night. About 15 miles north of us, they got six to eight inches of it. I wore my ski pants and Sorels to work today.

No Alice

It  happens to everyone, they say, sooner or later.
I got this book home and, before even cracking the cover, remembered I'd tried reading it before and not gotten very far. I was bored with it.

That's not to say it isn't a good book; it may be. Just that it didn't speak to me then, and it didn't speak to me last night, and it's going back to the library without my giving it another thought.

Too many books, too little time, that's what I say. Too many books that do speak to me, to waste my time ploughing through books that don't, just for the sake of saying I gave them every chance to engage me.

One book that did engage me, though it didn't satisfy, was the memoir Joan Didion wrote about coping with the sudden death of her husband. I read it in the year following Mom's passing. The loss of a husband is surely a different thing than bereavement after a mother's dying, but also Didion's husband's death came as a sudden shock, while Mom's — although the diagnosis of terminal illness was earthshaking — was a death that gave us time to say our goodbyes and express our depth of caring for each other. There wasn't unfinished business, unless a sense of being robbed counts as that.

Didion's book was a disappointment only because it didn't help me put anything into perspective or give me ideas for coping, as I'd hoped it might. Her struggle to balance again wasn't similar to mine in any way I could see. Didion wasn't "wrong" by any means; she just wasn't speaking to me at the time.

And that's what it's all about with books, isn't it? One day a book seems so dull you have to force yourself to turn to the next page; a couple years later it moves you like a dance tune. It all depends on where the reader is, in her own story.

Too Many Sweets

We devour the caramel corn byproduct; waste not, want not! 

Caramel corn is still baking in the oven, so I can't go to bed yet, or I would. Not that I'd sleep before 10 or 11, but I'd give it a college try. Have to be up around 5 tomorrow to leave here at 7 for a trip into the city. Alison (our "fearless leader" at the Wadena News) and I are attending a website seminar at the Sheraton Hotel in Saskatoon, and it starts at 10, so we've got to be on the road early.

Did someone say Halloween? It has practically passed me unawares, this year. A few costumed kidlets stopped into the office today for treats, but I heard rather than saw them. The librarian, when I walked over to pick up some books, was sporting bright orange hair. Someone at Canada Post was selling fancy Halloween-themed frosted cupcakes for a fundraiser. We had a bag of miniature chocolate-candy boxes in the office. Oh all right, I knew it was Halloween. I'm sugared right up to the tits.

Happy Birthday, Gord! You monster, you.
Happy Belated Birthday, Luanne! You missed being a monster, by one day.

What am I talking about? Of course I can go to bed. I just can't go to sleep. And who'd want to? I have two new books from the library: Still Alice, and The Teleportation Accident. Best brush the sugarbugs off my teeth and stretch out under the covers.

He Is a Letter - Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

Someone who goes with half a loaf of bread

to a small place that fits like a nest around him,

someone who wants no more,

who is not himself longed for

by anyone else.

He is a letter to everyone. You open it.

It says, Live.

Doc Makes a House Call

This morning Scott made a man-sized breakfast and Doc was digging in.

Tuesday already, wow.
I thought time was flying when I worked 30 hours a week, and even 20.
These few extra hours would seem crazier, except that I've had Wednesdays off, which gives me a day in the middle of the week to catch up and get ahead, both. Then Tuesday feels like Friday (Already???), and when the weekend actually does arrive on Friday, it's as if — Already??? !!! Feels like hardly working at all.
To be honest, the work doesn't seem like work. Right now, it's play.

Before starting at the news office, I committed to filling half a table at the Xmas farmers' market this weekend. So I'm making caramel corn every night this week in order to be ready. But just tonight I realized that I don't want to run myself ragged by always having something I have to do. I'll prepare for and attend the market this weekend, and that's the end of it for me. I need my down time.

And now, off to bed for some reading. You'd think I'd've had enough reading for one day, wouldn't you? after another production day at the newspaper. But no. There is never too much reading. As a matter of fact, I'm looking forward to reading about newspaper-making, tonight: how to edit for smalltown newspapers, write good headlines, come up with catchy leads, that sort of thing. Lots to learn, and all interesting.

At the office itself I've got my head down, getting things done; but I'm also listening to my co-workers as they talk, immersing myself in the existing sensibilities of the place. How do they decide what goes into the paper? How do they approach local events? How do they respond to questions from the public? I'm all ears, all eyes. Conversations in the office aren't a distraction for me, as they sometimes are for others; I thrive on the buzz of activity; it's warm and it helps me focus.

You might think that makes me a successful multi-tasker, but alas no.  Emil phoned while I was stirring sauce for caramel corn on top of the stove, and apparently I can't think and talk at the same time because when normally I'd set the timer for a five-minute boil, tonight I set it for 15 and nearly burnt the stuff before realizing my mistake. Cooking and visiting don't go together for me. You win some, you lose some, I guess.

Livin' for These Lazy Weekends

Little Green has to warm up in the mornings before I head into town for work.

Not today, though. It is past noon and I'm still sitting around in my pyjamas, not moving one iota faster than I absolutely have to. And I don't have to, so won't.

 Emil would like to be picked up and brought out to the farm sometime today so I will have to get dressed eventually. He and his comrades from Mallard Industries went to a Halloween party in Porcupine Plain last night, so he didn't want to come home with me yesterday.

He is excited about receiving a reply to his letter to Dennis Lakusta (a travelling minstrel who has stayed with us a couple times), so insisted on coming out today; he will phone me after he gets up, he said. We offered to take the letter to him as soon as it arrived in the mailbox more than a week ago, but he didn't want that. Is that not strange, when Emil has talked about his hopes for a letter ever since the day he wrote to Dennis? But that is Emil for you. We don't always understand his reasoning, and he can't always explain it; we just try to respect it whenever possible.

Tomorrow and Monday nights our house guest will be another travelling minstrel, Doc MacLean. He is performing in Kelvington on Monday night and we are putting him up in our spare room. It's no fancy hotel, but there are none around here, although Wadena does have a brand new bed and breakfast opening soon (watch your Wadena News) and I'm betting guests there will be spoiled rotten. I might be tempted to go spend a night there myself sometime.

Bedtime for Bonzo

Here's a glimpse of part of this week's front page;  I've planted myself in the editor's chair at our community newspaper. Local readers of course are well acquainted with it, so this picture is for those of you who have never lived around here.

I left the office at 5:30, made a five-minute stop at a residence, went to the Co-op and picked up $45 worth of groceries, drove home to GGFarm, made two trips to the house to carry bags in, took a pail of water for the barn cats out to the heated bowl at the tractor shed, came in and washed dishes (had yesterday off but it came with a migraine, so to hell with dishes; I pulled off a miracle just getting a batch of raisin rye bread made), threw a pot of chili con carne on the stove, and finally sat down to eat supper at 8:15. Since I aim to have my head on my feather pillow at 9, this entry will be short and sweet. I tell you all this just to point out that outside of work, there is no life!

That's how it feels, and I suppose will until I get used to a more demanding routine. This is not a complaint, as I'm enjoying being at the office. It's nice to have other people around.

And now hippity-hop to bed ...

One Week Down

Whole Wheat Pancakes

We didn't have pancakes for supper here at home, but if I don't get groceries soon ...

 The news staff sent this weeks' issue of the paper off to the printer tonight after a good long day's work, and tomorrow is going to be a day of "rest" for me. You know — bake bread, go to town for grub, and so on. Some serious organization is called for if we are going to eat decently instead of last-minute and late all the time.

Also required tomorrow:

• a nice long bath.
• a walk on the country road with my "Little Doggie Friends" (said like Al Pacino might say it, as if they are dangerous).

I have seen enough words for one day.

Furry Co-Workers

Jackson, chairwarmer extraordinaire

Pixie the Brat. Rita and Lee, background, are not particularly furry. 

Viggie, the big fella

Rueben pops in with his man now and then, just to chat.

Animules. Gotta love 'em.

It snowed all day here, but was perfect for walking at noon; reminded me of the west coast.
Then I had to scrape ice off the windshield of Little Green before driving home at suppertime, and the road was a bit slippery in places. Oh well. It's the season. Why mind?

We have lost a neighbour in a horrible accident. He was found in his burned-up truck, on a dirt road a few miles north. We don't know yet what happened. He leaves a wife and two young children. Scott has known him for many years, but I met him only once, and it was a memorable occasion because his goodheartedness was plain. The power steering belt had slipped off and brought my vehicle to a halt on the road in 20- to 30-below weather, and this gentleman stopped to help me out. He stood in the frigid cold with another neighbour who happened by, freezing their fingers under the hood of my van as they struggled to get the fan belt back on, for about an hour.

It's the kind of thing the men out here will do, at their own extreme inconvenience, and not just for stranded women; for other men, too. It's not surprising; it's more surprising when a passerby doesn't go out of his way to help. Still, it's what I'll remember this young man for.

End of the Work Week

Scott's cousin Bev came out for supper last night with her husband Paul (on the left).

Scott got his laptop out so she could show us some family pictures online. Well, sort of. She was actually showing us this huge wild boar shot by her nephew, who was very proud of his hunting success, but we figured it looks more like a domestic pig that escaped its confines, and were chuckling about that. To be fair, her nephew was in at least one of the photos.

After the bottle of wine was empty, we polished off the last of my delicious chokecherry liqueur before they headed back to Kuroki, where they are living in her late parents' house. Bev is teaching at the elementary school in Wadena and Paul is looking for work in the area. They've just moved here from Ontario.

There were a few funny stories about their experience coming to live in a small rural community from a more densely populated urban one. Things are definitely different out here. I thought (of course my brain is smokin' now that I'm working at the local newspaper) stories like that would make a hilarious newspaper column, but Bev pointed out that she was raised in a mining town not much bigger but definitely more isolated than our little agricultural villages here in Saskatchewan. She and her sister grew up at Snow Lake, Manitoba. "I am definitely not a city girl!" she said.

Bev's parents are Lily and Maurice Evans; Maurice's parents Lucy and Charlie lived in Margo when I was a wee girl. They ran the café before Bill and Gerda Eskowich turned it into Bill's Diner, the inspiration for the fictional Stubblejumpers Café.

Reta and I watched the Margo Centennial DVD when she was here, and on it there is  footage from a number of weddings in the 1950s. Bits of my parents' wedding is on it, and so is that of Bev's parents. Reta said she thought Bev's mom was the prettiest girl she ever saw.

I lent my DVD to Bev to see it for herself, but it has been stalling so she hasn't had the satisfaction yet.

Kim McLelland and I also appear for a few seconds. We are three years old, pulling the gift wagon at Joanne Otterdahl's (Bohl) wedding shower.

First Friday

View from desk, after toast and tea

And that, my friends, is all I have to offer after a couple full days at work. Girlysue here hasn't yet gotten on top of the time-management situation. But she will. She will!

My friend Linde (my last job, at the Canadian Encyclopedia, gave me wonderful new friends as well as a somewhat swanky-looking resumé) was a newspaper editor once upon a time, and tells me the machine in the photo in the last entry is a linotype machine.

This week Aunt Reta has my car, so I'm catching rides to and from work with Scott. This means getting out the door somewhat earlier than I would otherwise. Thus I must go begin the beautification process. For me, that means brushing my teeth, passing a soapy washcloth over my skin, and soaking my head so my hair doesn't look like a lopsided helmet for the rest of the day. Oh, and dressing. Being dressed definitely improves my appearance, notwithstanding my fondness for a certain fluffy green housecoat.

Old Workhorse Out to Pasture

This dusty old machine is one of my neighbours at the new work station. One day I'll find out what it is. 

There are several hunks of hefty old printing machinery in the news building, unused. Just curiosities now.

I spent most of the day at the computer, and enjoyed it thoroughly.
Even better, I had company for a noontime walk. My companion walks as fast I do, and even so, we damn near froze. It's gotta snow any day if this cold keeps up. Frigid.

No More Lady of Leisure

Everett carries home groceries in  preparation for his dad's visit on the Thanksgiving long weekend.

Joanne Bohl is back to blogging: see here. I hope she keeps it up, as she should have a few stories to tell. She's been in and out of hospital for many months and is now back in the nursing home in Canora. Aunt Reta and I drove over there for a visit that lasted less than two hours, flew by, and was too short. We planned to get back again before Reta leaves for Phoenix, but now it's not looking like it will happen, for me anyway.

I've been perusing another friend's delightful webpage too.  A cancerous lump was found on her tongue and she has been handling the situation in her own unique way. Have a look. She is one inspiring and strong woman.

And now, it's off to bed for this kid. I start my new job tomorrow morning at the Wadena News. It would be nice to be wide awake and sharp on my first day "learning the ropes."