Saturday May 31

We went accordion looking today in preparation for fiddle camp in July where Jeff is going to want a much smaller, more portable one than his current one. We are wanting to trade and considering Tempo Trend has 600 accordions in stock it has a good chance of working out. 

Some of them are really glitzy. 

We are leaning towards one this size. 

It would be usable by kids too, which is cool because they have expressed interest in learning. 

L

Friday May 30

There is a mama on the crosswalk who has her baby in a wrap almost everyday and several different wraps. Today it was this one. 

It looks handwoven. I was thinking my mom could make one like that. 

After school we went Fairfield Market and Tobin chose these grissini (breadsticks) as his after school snack. 

Made by this baker. 

L

Thursday May 29

There is one of those giant pine cone producing trees growing in the park beside Crystal Pool. 

Julias says, "Ponderosa Pine". I am sure he is right. As the daughter of a forester I probably should have known as well. 

Here's the neat thing you can do with those cones besides just collect them and look at them. My friend says roll them in peanut butter and bird seed and hang them out for the birds. Neat.  That was yesterday. 

This morning on the crosswalk. 

I am noticing all the unusual sounds the vehicles are making. The school bus arriving to take the grade fives away on their overnight Camp Pringle trip had a clank clank as it turned the corner. 

A minivan going scrape and then a few moments later, scrape, caused by a loose piece hanging down on the undercarriage at the front. 

The deep rumble of a big pick up truck idling at the light. 

The squeak of the empty utility trailer bouncing over a dip in the road while being towed behind a white car. 

L

Tuesday May 27

Sad and Happy

So, on Friday, I went and picked up Eva from her high school where she had just spent the day doing her Cycle For Change stint since first thing in the morning and we loaded her longtail cargo bike, Sally the Xtracycle, onto the roof  bike rack. She biked 64km, I just figured it out. 

At home, I needed to take the bike and the roof box off in order to go to the paddling dock and load up a racing kayak for the Nanaimo trip the next day. Eva was coming out to help me after her shower and I had a time deadline and I got impatient, which left me trying to take her bike off the roof by myself. Which is actually not possible. So I tried it anyway and the back of the bike slipped down and sideways and broke the back window of the car. Just like that. Bam. 

Yup. I said NO! a lot of times but it didn't make it not happen. Bugger. That is the sad. 

Enter our car insurance. And the wonderful Speedy Glass fellow who came to our driveway today and fixed it. Just like that. Bam. And, besides which, the weather is super lovely today and I have figured tonight's dinner already. Half an hour before I need to start cooking it.  That is the happy. 

This is the new art on the art gallery outside wall.

L

Sunday May 25

Today is cloudy and threatening rain all day with little spitting showers. I am inside working through the laundry mountain. I found my knitting, so I am finshing the second sock in the pair I started a year ago. 

Green can be the colour of the day. I thought the fruit looked nice. 

The pears are a lovely green. 

L

Saturday May 24

The kids and I were up to Nanaimo for the day for the zone 6 time trials for the BC summer games. 

The day before, Eva did a bicycling fundraiser at her school and went 160 laps of the track on her cargo bike. 

Then today she woke up early with us to drive two hours to do the thing that scared her most. 2000 meters in a racing kayak when she is really an outrigger paddler. Those racing kayaks are really tippy and she has always been irrationally terrified (her words) when she has to paddle in one. But she decided to give it a go on Saturday anyway. 

And did really well. 2000 metres without a hitch. I feel so proud of her. 

She did a second race, 500 metres, and made it to within 2 metres of the finish before the wake from the coach boat caught up with her and came at her sideways and then over she went. The worst happened. But overall, it was still ok. She said racing kayaks have moved up in her scale from "loathe it" to between "don't like it" and "tolerable".

Julias and his friend did their races too. No tipping there.  No problems. 

A different challenge we had that day involved bringing the kayak with on the roof top of my sisters car. When started from home it was making a humming noise. The tie down straps were acting like instrumental strings to the big sound box that was the upside down kayak. We stopped a few times to adjust them first tighter then looser in an effort to get rid of the multi pitched hum, but tighter just made it go up in pitch and get really loud. We only managed to mute the noise slightly in the end and had arrived at the lake all slightly frazzled by the barrage of noise. Eva used the tuner app on her iPod and declared it to be just higher than a B at one point. 

Happily, oh so happily, on the way back down, Julias suggested a twist in the straps on either side of the boat and, oh joy! it worked. There was blessed silence coming from the roof. So we were able to sing to Abba on the return trip instead of using earbuds as earplugs like on the way up. 

L

Friday May 23

I noticed my friend had a key that looked unusual so I asked him what that funny little key was for. So he showed me his bunch of keys. 

And explained that he wanted to minimize the amount of stuff he had to carry around on his key chain so he had trimmed and filed the nonessential parts of his keys. 

I see. Smoothly filed. No sharp edges. And significantly less key bulk. Nice. 

L

Thursday May 22

More of what I saw at the crosswalk. Today a woman biked by with oxygen tubes going to her nose and the tank, I guess, in a pannier.

A girl in a stroller holding an open book with outstretched arms above her head for her mom to read to her as they walked the older sibling to school. 

There was a city worker filling up his water tanker for tree watering. He had the hose imperfectly hooked up to the hydrant at first and a tall jet of water was streaming up behind him. Then he fixed that and had some delay in shutting it off when the tank was full and the water was gushing up and over the sides of his tank. I took a picture of that but it's hard to see. I wasn't close enough to him. 

L

Wednesday May 21

I am the crossing guard for the elementary school and I see a lot of things happening near the intersection. 

This house's very steeply pitched roof was getting done. They were at the stage of shoveling all the old roof off onto the ground. I thought this must be the fun stage on a roof this steep. 

And then there were two brothers running up to the intersection several minutes after the bell had rung. Probably grade 4 or 5 and maybe one year or two younger. They crossed one way, and while waiting for the light to change to cross the next way, the older boy leaned in and kissed the younger boy on the cheek. Before they got onto the school grounds, before anyone would be embarrassed by loving his brother near their friends. I love to see siblings who really care about each other. 

These boys reminded me of another time a few months ago with two really little boys. One in kindergarten and one a toddler going across the intersection with their dad. The little boy tripped and fell over right in the middle of the street and started crying. The big brother got really scared and started crying even harder than his brother. The dad, rushing, was in front and didn't see. Probably the big boy freaked out because his brother was now laying down in the middle of the intersection where it was scary and the cars were going to start driving there again once the light changed. And the dad, as he turned back to pick up his toddler, got mad at his big boy because he was crying. He hadn't seen what happened. But I did and I felt so sad for him. He was crying because he cared about his brother, because he loved him. 

L

Tuesday May 20

I love kids art. This is from kindergarten art board in the school hallway. They are all chicks. 

And they are fantastic!

L

Monday May 19

This is the rhodo right by one of the school's side doors that gets stuff picked off it all year long by the kids. Leaf buds, and flower petals. I have never seen it so beautiful as just today and with the lush hosta beneath it, it seems so out of place as the only plants by that side of the building. Surrounded by walls and asphalt. 

And this is just a gratuitous picture of the laburnum avenue tree beside the school. 

L

Sunday May 18

So we two grown ups went to Gabriola for the weekend, just us. We left the kids behind. We tore out stinky filthy carpeting, added many lightbulbs to empty fixtures, installed new and replaced broken and painty lightswitch/outlet plates, cleaned, vacuumed, patch painted, amassed junk for hauling and went for a lovely sunny Sunday walk down to the marina as a break. 

There was an obvious fixer upper boat in the woods on someone's property beside our road. 

The view at the marina was lovely and soul inspiring. 

And look at these gorgeous patches of flowers beside a driveway. Three types in clumps. 

This is the flooring waiting to get installed back at the house. 

Sunlight makes everything better. 

L

Friday May 16

We are replacing the kitchen light fixture in the Gabriola house so I got to go to Maclarens to see if they had something similar. 

All the sparkly glittery fancy dancy expensive fixtures hanging from the ceiling bring out the magpie in me.

However, this was more the type of thing I was searching for. 

Much more utliliarian and much less exciting. And still more expensive than we wanted to pay for what it was. 

L

Thursday May 15

Today Julias got braces put on his top teeth. The first thing is this extremely cool X-ray machine. It takes eight seconds and goes all the way around his face and then they have a bunch of X-ray pictures to choose from. The orthodontist says it's very low radiation as well. 

Then a bunch of macro pictures of his teeth. The camera has an interesting flash white box contraption which is the white ring around the lens. No shadows that way. They also use a wide flat metal mirror to get the right angles. 

And then glue and brackets and and the wire held on by elastics. The wire is doing all the work trying to get itself back to its  nice smooth straight curve. Nickel titanium. 

I said to Julias, "We've forgotten the crackers, Grommit!"

Later Eva and I went to Cinecenta with my mom. 

And right outside by the bike parking and metered parking is a set of bike tools and three stands for holding your bike frame up while you work on it and air hose for tire filling. It's brilliant. 

And the other brilliant thing is a good climbing tree. 

 The good branches go way up. 

New blogging app and an elm tree

It has no landscape mode. Or a way to post pictures or videos. I need to check if it will cut and paste. And, indeed, how to publish. Oh wait, I see the publish button.

Testing the cut and paste ability. Here is a quote from Tobin from when he was five. 

March 2012 Tobin

"How does counting never end? I can only get to thirty."

Yesterday on crosswalk duty I was captivated by the elm seeds blowing down off the big tree right next to the corner. 

Gusty breezes were blowing the seeds out of the foliage. Streaming out and downward, fluttering and catching the sunlight and the seeds on the grounding getting whisked around and blown along the sidewalk with a whispery shushing. The sun was bright and the air was fresh. It was lovely. 

Monday May 12

We were away this weekend to Gabriola to finish up with the moved out tenants. We slept on the floor in sleeping bags in the filthy floored house. Now today I have many things calling out to be done. Dishes, laundry, grass cutting, weeding, planting, cooking, violin practise.

I feel tiredness settling down over me like a fog. I want to just have a nap. The beautiful sunny lushness of my backyard feels oppressive. My ears are ringing, my sinuses feel heavy and my neck is stiff. I did get lunches made, kids to school, crossing guard done, groceries bought and put away, chickens let out and their water refilled.

And now I am blogging. So maybe just a quick nap of the twenty minute variety really would be useful.

Saturday May 10

We are awaiting the demise of

this tooth. When oh when will it fall out?

L

Friday May 9

End of year dance show for me. My class is the adult beginners modern class. We sat in the backstage hall waiting our time. 

Some of us putting on our make up. "Who can see? Can you help me?" So it was me who put my friend's mascara and eyeliner on for her. I have so little experience with make up but she had apparently even less and with pure white eyelashes, it was a good idea. 

I danced from grade five through to grade twelve and then when I got to UBC I found a dance club and kept it up for a bit longer. But then I quit going and at least fifteen years passed on by. I quit dancing because it wasn't making me feel happy. There was too much of people coming in to class and moaning about how much pasta they had the night before and how fat their legs looked today. Everyone one them thinner than me. It changed the focus from dancing to looking good enough. And I didn't like the energy in the room anymore. It was just a club. We were all there because we loved to dance. Nobody was getting any school credits or getting paid or getting judged. It really was supposed to be just for fun. And for me, it wasn't fun anymore, and was wasting my small amount of spare money. So it just made sense to stop. 

But I love to dance and when I started back up again sixteen years later I wondered why I kept away so long. I feel joyful and alive when I dance. It's in my bones. 

And I really like my adult beginner class. We had fun in the show!