I'm back

Well, it's clear that my readers have keener eyesight than I do, and are pretty quick, to boot.


In my last blog, I responded to a 'tag' challenge to reveal eight things about me that I hadn't done on this blog already, and I thought I was pretty clever by making my eighth item the statement that I was known to lie on occasion, so that one of the previous items was, in fact, an untruth. Quite sassy.


That seemed to have caused a bit of interest among some readers, who emailed me their guesses as to which of the 'facts' was the fabrication, and I enjoyed their theories and suppositions very much, and felt that my little exercise had been a success.


It took one of my favourite readers and sister-in-law, however, to put me quite properly in my place when she pointed out that, although I might be able to make up a convincing story, my arithmetical skills left something to be desired, and I had listed only seven items, in total, and not the required eight. It seems I missed an item #4 in my list, so my joke actually backfired on me.



Now this puts me into a slight conundrum. I could go back and edit that post, slipping an item #4 in artfully, and deny I ever missed it out, causing my poor sister-in-law to doubt her own counting abilities; but I really don't think I could pull it off (although I did consider it for a moment or two, Jane.) I could now relate an item #4 to add to the list, but clearly it would have to be a true one, as I already indicated that there's a lie in the previous list, and that only one item is a lie. That would kind of ruin the joke.



Or, I could just 'fess up and admit that I failed, technically, in playing the tag game and only submitted seven items for the blog, one of which is a lie, and move on, head high, but not quite so smug as I was at the end of the last entry.



And that's what I've decided to do.

Tag, I'm it!

A few days ago I received an email from my blogger buddy /idol Elliott, telling me that I'd been 'tagged'. Apparently this means that I am supposed to link to her blog, tag eight other bloggers, and then tell eight random facts about me that I haven't revealed in my blog so far.

Elliott told me that there was no rush, as she could tell from my recent posts that I was preoccupied lately. Actually, her email came at the right time, because it's time to move on, and this seems like just the way to do it. I sat down last night and tried to think of eight things about myself that I haven't revealed, that I'd be prepared to reveal, and that would be worth reading about. I hope some of them work:

1. My family comes from Liverpool, England where I was born, and where my paternal grandmother lived until her death in the 1970's. When I was about 13, now a Canadian and, along with every female my age on the planet, a rabid Beatlemaniac, my grandmother wrote me to tell me that for many years she lived on Bishopsgate Street in Liverpool, next door to the Harrison family. Yes, THAT Harrison family. Moreover, she used to 'mind' wee Georgie on occasion when his parents went to the local pub. This fact alone got me through puberty.

2. I married my husband just over four years ago, but we met twenty five years ago when we were both in an amateur theatre production of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". I played the evil Nurse Ratched, and my sweetie played the much-victimized Billy Bibbitt. In the play I brought him to his knees, where he claims he's been ever since. We were friends through the years, and neither of us married in the time between that play and our own wedding, which occurred on our local community theatre stage.

3. I have been blessed (or cursed) with perfect pitch. I used to do some musical theatre when I first became interested in acting, but it wasn't my major interest, and I eventually became an actor and director of legitimate theatre. I used to have to 'sub' in music classes on occasion when I was a drama teacher, though, and for someone with perfect pitch, this is Dante's most pernicious circle of hell.

5. I once spent a summer in England doing some stage work, which included a lot of touring children's theatre, and doing plays in gymnasia, but I will always remember that our motley crew got to perform in some beautiful spaces, too, the highlight of which for me was singing "Jerusalem" in Winchester Cathedral.

6. I know all of the words to the "Bonanza" theme song. Lorne Greene sang it on Side B of his single, "Ringo" which I only purchased because of the Beatles, then discovered was a bad ballad about a cowboy. In case you ever need them, the lyrics are,

We chased lady luck, till we finally struck
Bonanza!
With a gun and a rope, and a hat full of hope
We planted our family tree.
We got ahold of a pot full of gold,
Bonanza!
If anyone fights any one of us,
He's gotta fight with me!

Hoss and Joe and Adam know every rock and vine,
No one works, fights or eats,
Like those boys of mine!

Here in the west, we're livin' in the best,
Bonanza!
With a houseful of friends where the rainbow ends,
How rich can a fella be?
Bo--nan--zaaaaah!

(go ahead, sing it. You know you want to.)

7. When I retired two years ago, Rob and I went on a celebratory trip to Italy for three weeks. I have many wonderful memories of that trip, but one that is very dear is that Rob and I found, and stayed at The Farm. This is a farm in Tuscany, where we had reserved a cottage online, and to which we drove one afternoon, about ten days into our trip. What we didn't know until we arrived was that it was populated by about fifteen cats and kittens of all stripes, colours, genders and ages, and that every one of them looked like a cat or kitten we had owned, known or lost in our lives. We decided that this indeed was THE farm that our parents told us our pets went to when we came home from school or somewhere to discover they had gone. The farm that parents are vague about when you ask if you can go there to visit the pet that you were told would be 'much happier with other animals and lots of room.'

We saw our cat Spencer there, who had died about a month earlier from FLV. We called him 'Spencerino' since he now lived in Italy, and damned if he didn't answer.

I think about The Farm a lot right now. I'm guessing Katie/Katarina is there with her brother, and our parents were right. They are very happy with other animals and lots of room. I hope your former kitties are there, too.

8. I have been known to lie on occasion. In fact, this occasion. One of these eight facts is not true. You guess which.


p.s. I'm trying to figure out how to link to Elliott's blog. If anyone can help, I'd appreciate it.

that's life

I haven't blogged for over a month.



A reader of this blog noticed that and emailed me recently, asking discreetly if I was ok. I really appreciated that: I expect my friends and family to notice, as they have, if something is amiss, but to have someone who only knows me from my occasional musings recognize that I'm not following my usual routine, and that there might be something wrong, and even more, to care enough to ask about it, touched me very much.



I responded to her that I was ok, it's just that there's too much life going on at the moment. And that's the answer.



Too much life at the moment. Some of it good, and exciting; some more of it, unfortunately, difficult and painful. Illness, financial stress, work problems...all these are affecting my friends and loved ones, and, because they are my friends and loved ones, they are all affecting me, too. My dear cat Katie is succumbing, as we knew she inevitably would, to her FLV and her time is limited. Rob and I are moving house, and the stress that brings is sometimes palpable for us. My dear friend is terminally ill, and dealing with so many issues I cannot fathom how she copes.



Rob and I go to our casa in Mexico in two weeks. I will be taking all this along with my suitcase when I go, as we do. Life follows us, even if vacation ads talk about 'getting away'. And really, would we want it not to? Because for all of the pains that life may bring on occasion, I am really treasuring being alive and well enough to be able to go to our casa, with my dear husband, and being visited by friends and family while we are there, today. Too much life? The only problem is that there isn't nearly enough.

loonie tunes

I am in a funk.

When we probably far-too-spontaneously bought our casa in Riberas, I, as the financial one in the relationship, spent hours calculating and pondering, figuring out whether or not we could afford it. It's not a lavish house by any means, but since we had to pay the whole thing from our savings, I had to determine whether our assets, some tied up in RRSP's (IRA's to any Americans reading) could extend far enough for me to write out a cheque for about $150,000 American dollars.

Now, just about anyone looking at our assets would probably determine that we could, without a lot of difficulty. But just about anyone looking at our assets wouldn't be as conservative with money as I am.

I am a saver. I'm not a scrimper, by any means, but I get huge satisfaction in seeing money grow, dollar by dollar, over time. I feel rather smug, and -well - adult, when I can make a deposit into my savings. I'm particularly happy when I see the balance move up and over any significant number, such as a '999' balance becoming a '001'. Sort of the reverse of seeing a '9' ending number moving up to a '1' ending number on the bathroom scales.

I've saved money over time, in part because I've never owned property. Instead of paying monthly mortgage payments, I've put aside funds to create what the bankers call 'cash equity'. That nestegg has huge real and symbolic significance. Where other people know that their house, as it gets paid for, is their security against any financial crisis, those numbers generated in quarterly statements were my safety net.

That's why, when I agreed that a huge chunk of my money was going to a house in Mexico that I wouldn't even live in for several years, I was panic-stricken. Rob quite rightly pointed out that the money wasn't in any way gone, just put into a different kind of investment, but as a non-home owner all my life, I just didn't see it viscerally, though I understood it intellectually. Sort of. At any rate, the agreement to purchase was signed, and we returned to Canada knowing that, when the deal closed three months later, we'd own our dream home in Mexico.

That was last October. At that time, the Canadian dollar was worth approximately ninety cents, U.S. So that cheque for $150,000 U.S., carefully calculated in our B and B in Ajijic ran considerably higher in Canadian funds. But was doable without panic. Well, without too much panic, on my part.

Three months is a long time in banking terms. Imagine how the blood drained from my body as I watched, in November and December, as the loonie took a dive. In fact, dropped to its lowest point in five years. When I had to remove the funds to take the final payment to Mexico in early January, the loonie was worth 84 cents U.S. And our house cost us that much more, just like that. Did it help that our financial advisor assured me that the rest of the investments were doing particularly well because a weak Canadian dollar meant more manufacturing, and off-shore investments were bullish, and blah, blah, blah? Not a whit.

And not a whit has it helped that, since we've bought and paid for our casa, the loonie has suddenly come off life-support and is veritably jogging circles around the U.S. buck. Today it's at $1.01 and something, and according to Warren Buffett, whose financial acumen is somewhat better than mine, is expected to remain above U.S. value for at least five years. So now, my lovely little casa is worth even less than it was in January.

I know, when we come down to stay in December, I won't be looking at it, like a mother at her teenager who screwed up. You know, "Casa, I'm not mad at you. I'm just very, very disappointed." I'll see beyond the fact that money, real and theoretical, has perhaps flown out of the kitchen window, and realize that outside that window is a lovely patio where I can hear roosters in the morning, and watch the sun set over the lake.

But I'm not in my casa now. And I'm mad at the house, and the loonie, and Warren Buffett. I know I have to accept, as all good adults do, that the house has cost us more than we bargained for when we first saw it, but that the world didn't cave in. I realize that no house is worth anything until you go to sell it, and the market changes, and who knows what will happen by the time we put it on the market (hopefully never). But I don't feel like an adult today.

Being an adult sucks.

puzzling activities

Because I drive into the university for my Spanish class with Rob to save on the exhorbitant parking fees, I end up sitting in the cafeteria about an hour before my class starts, and at least thirty minutes before just about anyone else is there. I've started using that time to read the morning paper, and to do the daily sudoku and crossword.

I got into the habit of doing the morning crossword the last couple of years I was teaching, when a few of us who arrived to school early would photocopy 'the daily' from the staff newspaper, and sit, silently and semi-competitively, filling in the squares as the staffroom likewise filled up and became noisier and rowdier around us. We took a fair bit of ribbing for our concentration in the midst of our caffeine-fueled colleagues, but I always felt that some of the comments came from people rather jealous that we were able to pursue a somewhat cerebral activity so early in the morning. The math teacher who was part of the group got particular attention for his participation, almost as though it was unfair that he took an interest in words as well as numbers and somehow 'let the side down'.

Since I've retired, I've continued this morning practice: in fact, I can't start my day without filling in the crossword puzzle...an activity that is usually quite easy now that I've mastered those words that only ever appear in crosswords and scrabble games, like 'taw' and 'ogee'. I look forward to the extended puzzle on the weekends, which might take me up to an hour to complete, and I'm often a little disappointed, as well as smug, when the last square is filled in.

I started doing the sudoku, or at least trying to, when I retired. I've always considered myself a logical person, and not numerophobic in any way, so I thought it would be a puzzle I'd enjoy, and in time, master. That hasn't been the case. I enjoy it when it's easy, as most people do most things, but I'm rather too quick to place a number in a spot without sober second thought, with the result that, too often, I end up making a fatal error that causes the rest of the puzzle to fall apart. And then I stop. Not for me the white-out and redo; I simply shrug and move on to the next thing. Like the "Jumble" puzzle. Or the dishes.

Rob is different about puzzles than I. Knowing he's not a number guy, he quickly forsook the sudoku, but is quite addicted to any games or puzzles involving words. Anagrams, scrabble, boggle, and particularly the cryptics are his games. He taught me the basic principles of cryptic crosswords when we started our relationship ('started dating' sounds silly for middle-aged people to me), but, although I can fill in a few of the words, and do better if we work on a puzzle together, I don't have the keen right-brain that allows him to unscramble anagrams and decode complex puns and other wordplay. He quite astounds me with how he can get, "disobeying" from "princess shed tears watching bad behavior" in a matter of seconds. He finds regular crosswords boring; I find his brain a strange and sometimes peculiar place. Cryptics being only one reason.

Red Pepper Soup with Lime

Today I made another of my favourite "wishing I were in Mexico" soups. This one is even easier than Tortilla soup, and the ingredients are here most of the year, and in Mexico always. The whole thing takes about 20 minutes to create, and has a citrusy, sweet-with-a-kick taste that exemplifies Mexican flavours to me. We have it cold in the summer, with guacamole and tortilla chips, or hot with corn on the cob. In the winter, it's good hot, with chicken thighs baked with cilantro pesto under the skin. Yum.

Red Pepper Soup with Lime

Ingredients:

1 large onion, chopped
4 red bell peppers (or orange, or yellow)
1 tsp olive oil
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 jalapeno, seeded and minced or 1 small red chili pepper, sliced (if you don't have these on hand, a couple or ten drops of hot sauce does the trick)
3 tbs tomato paste (or carrot or squash puree, see below)
1 litre / quart chicken stock
1 lime, juiced
lime zest
salt, black pepper to taste
cilantro leaves for garnish
yoghurt for garnish.

Instructions:

Soften the onion and peppers in the olive oil in a pan. Allow them to sweat for 5 minutes or more in a covered pot.

Remove the pepper skins. My method is to press the peppers through a sieve, making sure to get all of the pulp, but leaving behind the skins. Another method is to leave the peppers in bigger chunks (and sweat them longer) in the first place, and peel the skin off in biggish strips when they cool slightly.

Add tomato paste, chili pepper (or jalepeno), garlic and 1/2 the stock. Simmer for 10 minutes.

Puree the mixture (I use one of those stick-type blenders, right in the pot), and add the rest of the stock and lime juice.

Season with salt and pepper.

Return the soup to the boil. When hot, serve with garnishes.


Variation:

Use yellow pepper or orange pepper, and substitute mashed carrots or squash (or a can of babyfood) for the tomato paste to get a sunshine yellow coloured soup.

This soup is also great served cold.

a desk of one's own

Well, my Spanish class is well and truly underway.


Three mornings a week I get up with Rob and head out in the dawn's early light in his car to M university, where he heads off to work in the Printing Department, and I head off to B106 and my class.


I can't believe I registered for a course that has me drinking coffee and trudging to a classroom before eight a.m. I thought, once I retired, in the unlikely event I'd see the sun rise, it would be at the end of a particularly good party, just as God intended. And yet, fully voluntarily, I've rejoined the bedheaded and sleepyeyed shuffling around campus at 7:30 in the ay em.

Of course, these are the people who work on campus. No self respecting student would be doing the morning sudoku and sipping Tim Horton's in the cafeteria before classes begin at 8:30. Most of them drop blearily behind their desks just before the professor enters, or half trip over knapsacks as they slide, not-so-discreetly, to their places several minutes after class begins.

Speaking of those desks, I cannot believe how uncomfortable they are. My class has the kind that are a combination of a fold-out bridge chair and the little swing up eating surfaces you sometimes get stuck with on a plane if you are in the front (economy class) seats. They have just enough surface to hold a complimentary cocktail, but certainly not the notebook, textbook and dictionary I need to get me through the lecture. In addition, they all swing open from the right side, which leaves this southpaw twisted around for 50 minutes, trying to record the palabras of wisdom coming from the prof. When I last needed these desks, thirty five years ago, I used to commandeer two: one to sit in, and one to place to my left, to write on. However, the closet to which our class is relegated has thirty desks squeezed--nay, poured--into it, and on most days except Monday, all of the desks are fully (if not energetically) embodied.

Of course, the body I inhabit now is not as flexible, adaptable, or, let's face it, thin as the one I had when I was an undergraduate. None of the others in the class seem unduly put out sitting through the hour, as I hold in my gut for 50 minutes, and wish I'd made a chiropractic appointment during long sprints of writing. I've grown used to 'airplane seat' anxiety: wondering just how small the seats on our economy flights might end up being on a given trip, and how likely it might be that my seatmate would let me raise the armrest between us. (Yet another endorsement for marriage: I'm quite sure implicit in the vows we made was the acknowledgement that the armrest was allowed to be up on all international flights.) It never occurred to me, however, that I, or my derriere, might outgrow those stupid lecture chairs in the many years since I last used them.

Not to worry, though. We had our first test earlier this week, and judging from the face of the ...um... less scholastically-inclined freshman who sits to my left when our results were returned, I may be able to spread out, literally and figuratively, in the near future. I'm told the deadline to drop courses is next week. I noticed him circling his calendar.