Kicking Back at the Beach

2013 Ontario

The first  thing I need to say is "what the heck is going on with the plane seats?"  Seriously my butt barely got in the seat and while I am not a teenager anymore my ass is NOT THAT BIG!"  The world is filled with middle-aged people who are NOT 120 lbs anymore.  The seats are designed for a 20 year old Chinese person.  Give us a break, the prices are going up, the "extras" are becoming absurdly priced and quite honestly it was all I could do not to say something but why ruin my day?  Having said that I had a reasonably good flight and made like a sardine, snuggling up to the not unattractive 28 year old dude with the ponytail beside me.  He was not comfortable but hey, let him do the complaining.

It's not new that I refused all pay options, no thank you I do not want to pay for stale submarine sandwiches (loath them) and no I will not pay for stupid movies.  Instead I took out my trusty Kindle and finished reading my Dorothy Sayers Omnibus. I can confirm that Agatha Christie was, is and always will be the Queen of Crime.  Sorry, Lord Peter Wimsey and his feeble detecting are no match for Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot.  His ridiculous deductions reminded me more of Sherlock Holmes and I have never been fond of him.  That being said I did enjoy reading the omnibus simply for the nostalgia ofthe1920s.

Once completed I flipped immediately to a new book written by an author who lives in High River, Martine Leavitt's "My Book of Life by Angel".  Marty used to ride on the HR commuter bus with me and she sat right across the aisle from me on many occasions.  She was always busy writing but it was years before any of us realized that she was a published author.  A very sweet, kind, quiet person.  I finished her book as well, it was quite deep for a youth book - about a teenage runaway caught up in the sex trade and based in the time of the Vancouver Eastend murders.  It took a few pages for me to get into it but then I became completely absorbed and finished it well before landing.  Satisfying read and I can now greet her with confidence when she speaks at our Lunch and Learn in October.

 

 

Monday Aug 26,2013  Sauble Beach

We woke up to the gentle pitter patter of rain which very quickly changed to Noah's Deluge with all the trimmings of Thunder & Lightening; this is Day 2 of our Cottage Country vacation. However, we know how to make lemonade out of rainwater so we proceeded with experimenting with our meditation (we both pronounced it a success).  Then we chatted and when the rain stopped we hopped in the car and drove to the next little beach town called South Hampton and just looked around the shops and enjoyed the area.  Driving back we stopped in at a wonderful little art shop in the village of Sauble Beach before the rain started again and we had to run for the car.

Back at the cottage and Nette is making a western omlette for our brunch.  So while I am typing away at this blog I notice the date on my computer which says August 27th; I ask Nette "is this Monday?" and she says yes.  Then I check the computer setting, but sure enough it is on Mountain Time so "what is up with my computer?"  I cannot understand why it is setting at a day ahead because we are both positive we have not lost a day! Weird, weird, weird!

Back to the cottage story, oh my goodness but we are living the Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous!  My sister secured this cottage from a colleague who rents it out and when I thought "cottage" I thought shoebox.  Not!  We have a spacious 4 bedroom bungalow with a newly renovated open living and dining room and a huge kitchen with a breakfast area.  We have lots of yard space, picnic bench and BBQ area, front stone patio and lovely flowerbeds.  It's gorgeous and not at all as though we feel like we are in a bed & breakfast style cottage (like last year at Bonnie Doone).  The colleague (Sandy) stopped by in the afternoon to enjoy wine on the patio and then her sister and brother-in-law stopped to pick her up and stayed for more wine.  Charming afternoon!

 

 

 

Outside the Box

Cavorting outside the box is simple when you let go of self-consciousness, egoism and simply live life with zest.  When you open your eyes and go “holy cow, another great day” and you aren’t even trying to be cheerful, that’s zestiness with a capital Z.  Okay, slow down pardner, and get with the program.  Ah, program?

       Sure we can’t all, or always, be 100% on top of our game.  I get that.  But when you can let your imagination, creativity, gusto, energy, what-have-you run the gamit of fun and wonder, I call that a great day.

       Brake, brake, brake.  Yes, I know.  Life gets in the way.  Life being all the crappy things that can happen along the road of zest. And when that happens sometimes we actually have to slow down and accept that “something just happened” even though it is something relatively minor, that it’s out of your control, and that it kind of sucks.  So we see grey clouds drop a veil over the great day ahead of us.

       Here’s where the miracle of meditation (no, not medication) comes in.  Here’s where you allow the crap to ride over you but you can still pick yourself up, dust yourself off and recover the day.  Carpe diem, my friends, carpe diem.  Or in other words Get Over It.

       Carpe diem.

Who Knew About Hoodoos, Dinosaurs & Drumheller

I was leaving the house this morning with a high sense of expectation about a frolicking good time with 2 good friends to parts unknown (at least by me).  Even before leaving I got a smile out of watching Mother and Bambi roam about the back yard in search of nibblies.  Once they sensed my presence they posed beautifully for me so the pictures here are evidence of my need to hone my photographic skills not their stance.  I also got to laugh again at the gigantic mushrooms discovered in the back 40 yesterday.  I had a great deal of fun taking some creative pictures of them.  Indeed, I am building a wonderful portfolio of mushroom photos which take the place of my greater love, butterflies.  Sadly they simply won’t be still enough to snap!

       Now about the day . . . took my time driving on a Saturday morning which was rather nice since very few cars on the road.  Sat on the curb of the parking lot for a couple of minutes before friends arrived and then it was woot, woot and on our way northeast to Drumheller and the land of dinosaurs, hoodoos and eleven bridges.  I bet you didn’t know there is a one horse town called Wayne that has a population of 28 and eleven bridges.  Such a tourist trap!  But first we wove our way through Calgary’s construction zone, also known as Stoney Trail or 22X.  Then we segued through Langdon and out on Hwy 9.  Zippadeedodahday we skimmed past the ultra speeders who were held up by the RCMP and swung in to Horseshoe Canyon.  What a panaroma of desert like or moon like or space like landscape and very different from the prairie over our shoulders.

       The Royal Tyrell Museum is simply amazing.  To say that I was seriously impressed is an understatement so all I can say is that Alberta really went all out to make a world class museum of this truly historical, amazing area.  First of all, the price to get in is really reasonable (adults $11), and then to be greeted by a gynormous dinosaur on entry was just perfect.  There was nothing lame about the continual displays of dinosaur bones, recreations of skeletons, instructional tableaux, it was really wonderful.  I do recommend anyone who is a real buff to go on a weekday and perhaps best not in the summertime as it was extremely well attended (understatement).  It was so crowded when we were there that we felt pushed along through the museum and barely scratched the surface of the place and yet I was quite satisfied with what we saw.  Then we cruised along to look for a ferry crossing but our stomachs forced us to turn around and head for a restaurant.  We found Athena’s and enjoyed some great Greek food (where Clint Eastwood had eaten back when he filed Unforgiven), a little wine and some good conversation. 

Then it was on to the hoodoos and again I can only wonder why I had never taken this trip before.  It was like being on a Star Wars set and waiting for George Lucas to call “roll it”.  We were very lucky to have a good sunny day but it was still good to scramble back in the car and get cooled down with some air conditioning.  Just because, we had to drive to Wayne and over eleven bridges, which of course we counted along the way.  Wayne used to be one of the big boom time mining towns back around 1920 but progress kind of left it in the dust (in more ways than one, you might say).

A truly memorable day back into history.

Meditating on Life So Far

I have been having a very enjoyable summer despite unpredictable weather toiling away in the garden and contemplating my life so far.  One of the things I have been thinking about is how crossing the threshold of 60 has, in my mind at least, created a feeling of venerable-ness.  I say that with a smile but at the same time I find myself coming into the belief that I am entitled to respect, that I am entitled to deference, that perhaps I know a thing or two.  Sometimes I get those feelings in a spirit of resentfulness (as when I find myself standing up on the bus – how many times did I relinquish a seat for an “old lady” in my day?), or with a sense of impatience when “people” don’t seem to get it, but many times I simply meditate on what I am actually experiencing.

       Some of the observations I have noted while I water the flowers or lift up rocks as we build our waterfall revolve around how one ought to prevent oneself from thinking about “back in the day” or otherwise reminiscing in such a way as to feel that the past was the best.  At this stage of the game I really feel that while many things in my childhood were halcyon the present day is something of a wonder.  Despite my irritation with cellphones I must admit that they are wonderful inventions (when used appropriately).  I love microwaves, I love airplanes, I love all my kitchen appliances, I love television and videos, PVRs and all the “conveniences” of the 21^st century.  Of course I deplore the increasing violence but at the same time I wonder if one hundred years ago things weren’t even more violent than today.  Maybe it’s true that baby boomers had the best of any generation before or since from the perspective of 1960’s suburban life.

       What I know for sure today is that I am truly contented with where I am in my life mentally, physically and spiritually.  I feel as though I have put in a good deal of time and effort in creating the being that I am and now I am ready to fulfill the next phase of a really fantastic life.

       And that makes me feel pretty darn good.

ON THE EQUATOR

Poor Little Rich Guy

The past week I have been irritated by a radio advertisement that cries woe is me, the big, bad American cell company is coming up to swallow up the little guy’s profit.  The little guys being Telus and Rogers.  You know, the guys who currently have a monopoly on robbing Canadians with the cell phone fees.  The ones who currently have the highest fees IN THE WORLD.  Yep, those poor guys are going to get beat up by “the big bad American”.  Gee, I feel so sorry for them.

       So here’s one of the questions that I have.  When the advertisement talks about all the infrastructure that has been built over the last 25 years I want to ask them “but who actually paid for the infrastructure?  Was it Telus and Rogers or was it the taxpayers?”  Another thing I would like to ask, not so sure about the rest of the country, but I do know that originally Telus was owned by the Alberta Government under the name AGT and that was paid for by tax payers.  I never did understand how our sainted Ralph was able to sell that off without first having a referendum.  Before Telus took over the phone company my bill was less than $25 a month, now it costs around $45 (bare bones).  With the $25 I had long distance, call display, and voicemail included.

       As I simply have the $10 pay as you go from Rogers my cellphone bill is minimal but I know that most folks are paying close to $100 for the packaged service.  I also have heard that it is really hard to get out of their contract.  I’ve also heard about roaming charges and other queer fees that can bankrupt the user.  Having friends with experience of European cellphones, I know that they do not have the same difficulties.  Even expensive countries like Norway or Denmark do not have the same exorbitant fees that we have here in Canada.

       So I am very sorry Telus and Rogers, I do not feel sorry for you AT ALL.  I am a loyal Canadian, I buy a lot of Canadian products, pay all of my taxes, pay my bills on time and generally am not thrilled with foreign ownership, outsourcing, insourcing, and a whole lot of other foreign crap.  But honestly, your advertisement only makes me gag.

More Pondering

Well, as I said yesterday, things to ponder.  Life is a rollercoaster and this mind questions how it moves along.  I wonder about what effort a person should put into attempting to change the world.  Are certain people fated to achieve more than others?  Do we make choices that cause us to be effectual in life, or to move in a small circle of influence?  How much of life’s direction is caused by choice or by circumstance?  I’ve spent a good chunk of time pushing to make things happen, to make changes, to create “chance” but I wonder if I had only stayed still would the same set of circumstances have occurred?

       Thinking about one’s life, about life in general, and about world events can be both soul sucking and fascinating.  Sometimes I want to take my head off my neck and let it rest and not think and yet to not question what is happening in my life and around me would be too strange and barren.  Even though I can resign myself to being only a small part of the world I cannot help but be interested in what goes on here on earth and out in the universe.  I life thinking about history and I like thinking about the future.  And yes, I like being in the Now.

       When I listen to my mother and other older people talk I find myself fascinated by their backward looking.  It recalls Scarlett’s mantra “I was right when I said I’d never look back.  It hurts too much, it drags at your heart till you can’t ever do anything else except look back.”  When you compare the apple of your youth to something out of the Garden of Eden with today’s version being nothing but a potato you know you are old.  When every paragraph, if not every sentence, starts with “back in the day” style you know you are not thinking about life today.  There’s a way of looking at history that does not emote the past.  There’s a danger in forgetting analytical thinking.

       Ah the human mind, what a tender, treacherous instrument.

Life Happens by Surprise

As I have often said before “just when plans are made, life happens” which is one of the reasons why I hesitate to make long term plans.  I have been on hiatus for a couple of weeks but during that time I have spent quite a bit of time thinking about life so far and how to go about evaluating living.

       That sounds cryptic but I have had a lot to absorb in the past month.  Southern Alberta has lived through a State of Emergency that saw people rise to the occasion during the recovery but at the same time there has been a lot of underlying things happening which I don’t care to write about now.  That’s part one of my state of mind, trying to figure out the emotional capacity of our human nature.  In one way, we have a generosity of spirit, moved by compassion to aid those in need which is remarkable and heart warming.  But on the turn of a dime people will also balk at giving up tax dollars to help those who they perceive as already having enough.  The helping hand is removed.

       While all of this has been going on I have seen friends go through hardships.  Two very good friends have lost elderly parents, one has lost a job, another has gone through terrible turmoil with a neighbour, several have had to deal with their homes being flooded out and I wonder shakily when I will be hit with a similar disaster.  Yes, on the one hand I count my blessings, pour out compassion to my friends but with the other I trembling pray to the heavens that I will be spared.  For the time, for the time, please for this time.

       We all have a shield of self protection when faced with troubles, or at least we pray for that shield to protect us.  Perhaps it’s not our first reaction but eventually it filters through our minds to hope that the trouble doesn’t hit us.  But as I’ve said before we all go through phases in this life with ups and downs, days in the sun, and days of deep trouble and pain.  Some have it erratically, some in their early years, others seem spared until the end.   But somehow life seems to even out fairly. 

       Or does it?  Something to ponder.