Home Sweet Home...

I finally arrived home late Monday afternoon.. almost 20 hours later than I was supposed to thanks to Canjet’s lack of planes and communication. While I was thankful for the hotel room Sunday night and the token meal vouchers, I wish that they’d been more up front with all of us on the two flights that ended up being canceled. It wasn’t until we all gathered at the airport lounge the next day that we began to piece together what we think must have happened.

When the first plane was affected, they looked at which flight had the least amount of people booked on it (the Moncton flight) and delayed then canceled that one. When the plane arrived late from New York for the flight that needed to go to Halifax... it was mysteriously canceled after the waiting flight crew was sent off somewhere. Many of the people on that aborted Halifax flight believe that their plane was instead commandeered to head down to Florida and rescue the stranded passengers there to bring them to Toronto. A few of them ended up on our newly created Monday 12:35 pm flight. At least.... it should have been 12:35.

Most of us got to the airport in plenty of time. I even managed to find some “Make it up to the Kids” goodies while waiting. I also did a cartoon sketch of a dragon stranded in a waiting lounge with other passengers as the rain pours down outside with a caption that reads “Really? My flight was grounded due to bad weather too!” As the time to board the plane grew closer, the girl at the check in counter came on the intercom to explain that although the plane was ready to go, they were still waiting for the crew that was being bussed in from Hamilton!!! You should have heard the groans, screams and general cries of outrage when that announcement was made. They did give the crew a standing ovation and round of cheers when they did arrive, and we all clapped ourselves silly when the plane finally took off. I didn’t kiss the ground when I arrived safely in Moncton, but the thought did cross my mind. Instead, I headed home to hug my family!!

Now, I am tackling my last two big deadlines for May 1st... then I can’t wait for life to switch to a calmer pace... I have a dragon to finish stitching!

Grounded Dragon Stuck In Toronto

Well.... I never made it home last night to the utter dismay of my girls. The flight to Moncton was cancelled entirely. In an Amazing Race moment, four of us tried to jump on a flight to Halifax and then rent a car to drive to Moncton... but just as we got our luggage back, raced up escalators and went to the head of the Check-in line, they cancelled that flight as well!So I got on a hotel shuttle and spent another night in a Toronto hotel room. At least I got some stitching done! I just can't wait to hug my family!!!! By 4:00 pm today I should be there.. they created a new flight just for all us strays. I certainly wish this dragon had wings of her own!!

Stuck When I Want To Be Home!

I finished teaching my classes at the CSNF in Toronto this afternoon at 4:20 and raced right to the airport to check in for my 6:30 flight home. I was so excited to get a connection that would have me on the ground by 9:30, which meant that Nick could meet me at the airport!
When I arrived here, I discovered that Canjet was flying one plane short... so my flight had been rescheduled to leave here at MIDNIGHT! Wannnnnhhhhh! I can feel for all the scrambling they've had to do, but compared to our experiences in the US this past March Break, flying on Canadian airlines leaves a LOT to be desired... no meal voucher, nada.
Now I'm going to be flying home through icky weather, heavy rain and only getting home sometime after 2:30 pm. There's only one thing to do... go find a comfy seat and stitch!
I can't wait to hug and hold my family once I make it home!!

Toronto Bound...

I get on the plane tomorrow morning at 6 am to fly up to Toronto for the Spring Creative Sewing and Needlework Festival. I’ve survived the barfies and 2 week queasies that came with that rotten flu, celebrated both my girls’ birthdays, finished another major graphics assignment, nursed everyone else in the family through another round of head colds and tried to keep on top of things with what still feels like only half of my regular energy.

I had to admit to myself after the flu that “Dragon of the Deeps” was NOT going to be ready for Toronto. It was so hard to feel like I had “failed” a deadline of my own making... but the design is turning out so much better than I expected that I refuse to cut corners and rush it. The border just “sings” and I think I might even like it better than the one in Moonlight Guardian! I know that I can release it through Hoffman for the June show in Columbus.... but it still feels strange. A decade ago, I would have gone the week or two on 3 hours sleep a night to get it done. Does that make me wiser now or less single-minded?

Mum and John are here to help with the girls while I am away, especially important since the teachers are on Work To Rule and the daily schedules are all wonky. Bethany isn’t quite as sad... or wasn’t until I tucked her into bed tonight. How do I explain to her that as much as I love her, I also really enjoy the time being away and “ON” like I get to be at these shows. Meeting stitchers and spending time amid so many different crafts is one of the most wonderful things about the Creative Sewing and Needlework Festival. It is unlike any show I have ever attended. I get SO inspired to try crafts of all kinds... that I hope my inner batteries get a real boost.

Once I get through May 1st, I hope life will return to a more reasonable pace and I can catch up on all my e-mail. I guess the April Fool’s joke is that my website got stuck in a time warp of that weekend for the whole month!

I HATE Being A Barfy Dragon!

Yesterday was horrid. The one thing I hate most in the world is being sick to my stomach. For some reason, when I had all the morning sickness while carrying Bethany inside me and gallbladder attacks during my pregnancy with Erin, the nerve that triggers the gag reflex got out of whack. If I am sick to my stomach at all, it just keeps going and going and going.

I know to get myself right to the hospital, so once we got our girls to the neighbours for breakfast and off to school, Nick drove me right to Emergency before heading off to work. I will say this for our medical system - if you are being violently ill to your stomach, they get you off into a room rather quickly!

Since it has been over a year since my last “barfy adventure”, the standing order for Maxoran was no longer on file. It actually took two separate drugs in two sequential IVs to shut everything down and made for a very long morning in a short hospital bed.

Once I was released, I crawled into bed and pretty much stayed there until this afternoon. I stirred my own bubbles out of the glass of ginger ale... but it’s not quite the same as having your mom do it. Funny how easy it is to feel like a little kid when you are sick. The girls were actually a big help because they knew I just wasn’t up to much.

I hope I can curl up on the couch and stitch a bit tonight.

Of Floods and Stresses, Swim Badges, Pant Hems and Hamsters!

What an odd mix in the title .... I know. Coming back from vacation is always a bit stressful as you have to leave behind the carefree days of very little schedules and structure to jump back full tilt into activities, responsibilities and MOUNTAINS of laundry, but last week was so wild that I didn’t even have my computer on for 48 hours!!

We arrived home half a day later than expected, having volunteered to be bumped on an overbooked flight from Detroit to Bangor, Maine, thus earning our tickets for next year’s Spring Break, only to find a note from our cleaning ladies telling us that our basement had flooded! There had been a rain storm with high winds on ground that was still very frozen, so much of the water around the city had almost nowhere to go. They’d managed to catch the worst of it in my office and the family room with the wet/dry vacuum and set the dehumidifier running, but I still lost a few boxes of product to some water damage for stuff that had been down on the floor. I also wanted to be sure that everything was nice and dry before powering up either computer! I guess we were lucky compared to some of the people in town who actually had INCHES of water in the basement instead of just puddles, but it made coming home to reality a bit more abrupt than we wanted.

As soon as the computers were back on, I jumped right back into a huge assignment for one client with two complex layouts and way too much information to fit in them. Nick also had a week at school with the principal out on preretirement leave, but neither of the 3 Vice-Principals really in charge of more than their own section. Murphy’s Law demands that that’s when everything will go “snakey-bananas” right?? Right!

By Friday, we were all feeling tired from a week back, so we had a fun family evening to relax. Saturday morning, both girls were tested during their last swim lesson of this session and passed their levels with flying colours. Bethany completed Level 3 in the red cross series while Erin passed Level 9!

After lunch on Saturday, we took Nick off for some much needed wardrobe upgrading and found a wonderful outfit for his job interview today. He is applying for a Principalship of an elementary school here in town for next year and is both thrilled and nervous to have the interview fall on this, his birthday. The pants of the outfit needed to be hemmed right away, so we took a walk to the pet store in the same complex to see what they had.

I’ve been missing Nipper incredibly since her passing after Christmas, but we wanted to get through March Break before adding a new hamster to the household. The shop where we’d purchased Nipper had a litter of babies that were almost ready for sale, but they would be one step even more inbred than Nipper since it was two of her siblings that mated. Diabetes being so hereditary in Dwarf Hamsters, I just wasn’t willing to take that chance again. It hurts too much to say goodbye to them when they die so quickly!

We saw one little dwarf hamster in a cage all by itself (or so we thought) and asked the clerk if we could see it up close. She smiled and told us that this new batch had just arrived from the breeder and were VERY friendly! She poked the bedding and revealed a few more fast asleep, but the little one we’d been watching walked right over to her and climbed into her hand! She handed him to me and he promptly tried to climb right up my coat sleeve with nary a nip or nibble!! What a change from Nipper who certainly lived up to her name and only achieved marginal tameness at best. He clambered out of my hand to Erin’s and then back into mine, sniffing everything in sight, and we just beamed at the store clerk and yelled “SOLD!” All the way home, he kept sticking the tip of his nose out of the holes in the box to sniff the air and “wuffle” his nose about, so Wuffles he became. He is the friendliest little fur ball I have ever seen and even Nick has held him!

Welcome to our home, Wuffles!!!

Taking Time To Be...

The chaos of post Nashville has finally calmed down just a bit and everyone is on the mend from the colds, asthma attacks and general mayhem. I’ve managed to nurse everyone back to health without getting more than the sniffles.

Now, as everyone else in my family will be enjoying March Break, it is time for me to unplug from the world a bit and just take the time to be...

...time to be with my family and remember that they come first.

...time to just lose myself in the pleasure of trying out a box of new crayons in a colouring book or just drawing in my sketchbook for the sheer pleasure of it instead of to come up with ideas.

...time to catch up on sleep.

...time to laugh more with my kids.

...time to spend evenings with my husband where neither of us are batching leaflets as we chat.

...time to go out to a movie or dinner or maybe both!

...time to recharge my hug batteries.

...time to just watch the world around me go by and not fill every moment with things to do or deadlines to meet.


I think I am going to enjoy this!

Tired...But Happy!

My ears are still ringing a bit from the concert tonight. Even though it was a Monday night and a school night, it was the Kaylan Porter concert here in town! Erin’s best friend stood in line and bought our tickets when they expanded the venue since we were stuck in swimming lessons that day, so tonight was their first concert experience. It was an enjoyable show, but the seating was so tight that I finally moved back two rows to a section of empty seats where I could put my legs sideways a bit. I could see the expressions on Erin’s face as she and her friend giggled and screamed their way through the evening beside her friend’s mom and grandmother, but I wish I could have shared more of the time with her.

We came home late and I got her tucked into bed before coming down to the office to update the website. I am really proud of the sample chart for HOPE, but I am really ready to crawl into bed now that all the files have been transferred over to the site. I wonder if the snowstorm that’s supposed to barrel down on us soon will keep everyone home for a quiet day tomorrow?? I’ll wait and see...

The Struggle To Breathe...

It’s been a rough week since coming back from Nashville. I fought my own cold for a few days, then Bethany’s cold got worse and she spent a few days home with me last week. Erin started to get the sniffles and went for the follow-up visit with our family doctor to see how she was responding to her asthma medicine, then headed off to Winter Guide Camp for the weekend.

Bethany loved being an only child for almost 2 days! She kept grinning and looking around the house saying “I have Mommy and Daddy ALL to myself!” We even took her to a hockey game on Saturday night but had to leave in the middle of the second period when she started to fall asleep against us!

Erin came home from the weekend at winter camp with lots of wonderful memories and stories about tobogganing down “Death Hill”, but her cough was almost nonstop and taking her breath away. We went up to the clinic that night where the doctor on call suggested adding some bronchodilator to help her breathe better and reassured me that when anyone with asthma gets a head cold, it makes the breathing more difficult. We headed home hoping the new medicine would make breathing a bit easier.

Halfway through school on Monday, Erin had to come home. The teacher explained that she was coughing almost nonstop and seemed unable to catch her breath. She was right!! Erin could hardly move without setting off a round of chest-shaking, rattly coughs that left her winded and sore, so as soon as Nick got home to be with Bethany, we headed off to the Emergency Department after the “Tele-care” phone medical service advised us they would probably want to do a chest X-ray to rule out pneumonia or bronchitis.

It was one of those nights when the waiting room at Emergency was a veritable canvas of all that can go wrong in a growing city. We knew that she wouldn’t be as high a priority as breaks or cuts, but there seemed to be an endless supply of accidents, heart attacks and other emergencies coming into the trauma side. At times, over half an hour would go by without anyone new being called down to the non-acute side. I watched the faces of other parents as they waited with sick children, knowing that their expressions of helplessness mirrored my own. It was the most horrible sound hearing her cough so hard behind the mask they’d made her put on as soon as we arrived, knowing that I couldn’t take that pain away or make it any easier to breathe. I watched the resigned look on the faces of the adults, injured or elderly, as they waited for attention that might take hours and hours to receive. It made me angry to think how hard our current Prime Minister campaigned in the last election about improving Health Care and waiting times. How can such a rich country like ours have a health care system that is falling apart at the seams?

We read, we talked, we walked, I knit and wrote in my journal. Finally, almost 5 hours after arriving, we were taken down to one of the non-acute rooms where we waited to see the doctor. Once he examined her and listened to her lungs, he ordered an aerosol mix of medicine and oxygen administered by mask to help stop the coughing spasms and then told us we’d go for the chest X-ray after the medicine. I will never forget watching the panic look in Erin’s eyes as the misty mask closed over her nose and mouth switch to relief as she was suddenly able to take deep lungfulls of air without coughing for the first time in almost 24 hours.

The chest X-ray was clear and the doctor spent a few minutes with me explaining how to modify her medications until she gets through this cold. We arrived home shortly before midnight and I tucked her into bed, glad that she’d be able to sleep better than the night before.

She’s been home with me for 2 days now and slowly getting better as the cold virus works through her system and stops making the asthma worse. It does make me glad that I can rearrange me schedule to work around what she needs... or batch orders beside her as we work on the homework they sent home from school. This will be a learning curve for all of us and I doubt that I will ever take breathing for granted again.

But I have also learned that I would trade my drawing hand, my worldly goods, almost anything short of my soul to keep either of my children from suffering... I hate not being able to “make it better”!!

There’s No Place Like Home....But Getting There Bites Without Ruby Slippers!

I’m home from Nashville and finally coherent after a day of mostly sleeping and fighting some nasty cold/flu symptoms. Quite a few of us at the show were hacking, stuffy and scratchy-eyed by the end of the weekend, so perhaps it was something with the climate system... or just that you get so tired getting ready for a show like this, you are more prone to germs.

The show was a blast! We had a great response to the Fantasy Faire pieces for 2005 and people seemed a little less shocked to see us all in full garb this year. We did make a very impressive bunch as we walked down to breakfast the first morning in everything from leather and swords to velvet and satin. As soon as I get some of the pictures from folks with digital cameras, I will try to add them to the site. The response to the new designs was great as well and I am hoping to put them up on the site by the end of the week.

Traveling back and forth to the show was NOT fun. Going out, I was just ahead of a snowstorm and the plane took off 2 hours late, so I had very little time in Toronto to get through customs and onto my next plane. Luckily it hadn’t been a tight connection or I would not have made it to Nashville!! Coming home, I ran into ice rain through Chicago and Toronto, so the flights were late and the turbulence pretty icky. I got home about an hour later than they’d scheduled. My big plastic tote on wheels was also smashed beyond repair. One handle got sheared off completely and the top lid was cracked in several places. Thank goodness the models weren’t in there since I sent them on to A Stitch In Time where we will be visiting in just over 2 weeks! We had to tape it shut in Toronto with bright Orange tape that read DEFECTIVE on it. I felt like screaming at them “You are the ones who made it that way!” but there wasn’t time to raise a fuss in TO when I had a connection to make. Nick had a good laugh as I dragged my “defective” trunk over to the counter in Moncton and filed my report.... but it WAS Valentine’s Day, so he didn’t try to tape any scraps of that to my butt. Instead, there was a lovely pair of earrings waiting for me in a little velvet box on the seat of the van and the girls took me out to dinner. We settled for something fast because I was SO tired. I was fast asleep before 10 last night and went right back to bed once I got the girls on the bus this morning.

Tomorrow, I will spend unpacking, sorting, filing and getting the site updated as quickly as possible with the new releases. Boy, it is good to be home!!!

Nashville Bound.....

Well, I am pretty much packed and ready to go. I’ll get the girls on the bus this morning and come home to check through my list one last time before heading to the airport for about 10 am. I am ahead of the snowstorm that is headed our way, but still not sure if that will make going through Toronto any trickier. We are supposed to get most of the snow late this afternoon and into tomorrow, so I am very glad to be leaving this morning.

My hair is now red with highlights to add some fun and punch to the weekend with the sword. I love changing my hair style or colour to suit my moods!!!

Regardless of how this show goes, it is fun to see fellow designers and shop owners who have grown to be friends over the years. Working “in isolation” though connected to the whole world is a bit weird for an extrovert, so it is fun to have weekends like this where I get to totally immerse myself in activity and crowds... then come home to rest and be creative again.

Time to get some girls ready for the school bus!!

Luckily I Love What I Do...

When worlds collide......... I just finished saving all of the illustration files, fonts, etc. to CD for the illustration/design job I have been working on since early December. Almost every deadline I had tried to set with this client (in order for things not to clash with Nashville) was ignored, so here I am less than 48 hours before my major trade show of the season, burning the midnight oil on something other than my own stuff.

Luckily I am pleased with how these illustrations look... but I am too tired to really do any back flips. I still have to pack tomorrow so that it won’t be another late night before I go. Yawn.... off to bed at last!!!

B is for Bethany... B is for BARF!!!

It’s the sound that every parent dreads... the sound of their child being sick in the night. I was still downstairs in the living room, around 1 am Sunday morning, signing and numbering charts for our Limited Edition design being released in Nashville when I heard that horrible sound of someone being violently ill. I raced up the stairs to discover Bethany on her hands and knees in bed wailing because she’d just barfed all over “Monster” her favourite stuffed animal!

Having been so violently ill during both pregnancies, I can totally sympathize with those gut-wrenching heaves that leave you breathless, but I also am totally paranoid about being sick myself because that reflex got so damaged it can no longer shut down on its own. Once I start, I need a drug called Maxoran to turn it off, which is only available in an IV here in Canada... so I usually let Nick do Barf Patrol.

This time, I was the one wide awake and available, so I helped Bethany get to the bathroom and began cleanup duty while she stayed near a toilet. I kept having flashbacks to how wonderful it felt to be taken care of by my mom when I was sick as a child... and they were warring with the voice in my head screaming “Oh my gosh! This is SO gross!! This has to be one of the ickiest things about being a parent now that diaper changing is over!! How did this much stuff come out of such a small tummy... Ewww! What is that??...How will I ever get Monster clean again?? What if I start barfing before Nashville?? Where is the Lysol?? Oh please let me get through this! Make it go away!!”

I finally woke Nick to get his help because we needed to clean right down to the mattress. Then I had to wake Sue in the basement to put everything in to soak. A very good friend of ours (one of my “Twisted Sisters”) stays with us overnight every second month when her kids have custody with his parents here in town. I’m not sure she signed up for that type of wake-up call when she checked in for the weekend, but we’ve seen each other through much worse!

I got our Barfy Bunny info some new jammies and back into a clean bed. There were a few tears about not having her purple teddy to snuggle with but I assured her that Monster would be all clean and fluffy by the following night. I then changed into my own jammies after scrubbing myself with antibacterial soap and tried to get to sleep.

Any Mom or Dad will know that when your child is sick, you sleep with one ear open, listening for them, so I was able to get up with Bethany the next 4 times before the waves finally stopped and my poor barfy princess was able to sleep at last. The skin on my hands was looking a little raw from all the antibacterial soap and scrubbing... so I slathered on the moisturizer and got some sleep.

It’s now Monday morning and Bethany is feeling fine. Like most flu bugs, it swept through her and was gone in less than 24 hours. I got her off to school with Erin and have started to pack for Nashville.... hoping that there won’t be a Barfy Dragon before then!!

Goodbye Nipper!

Nipper did pass away peacefully in her sleep. We woke up to check on her yesterday morning and though the soft, furry little body was still there, the spark was gone along with her life's breath.

I have just finished washing her cage pieces and taking it apart to put away until we add another little furry bundle to our lives in a few months. It was hard to do and yet wonderful closure as well. Harder yet is to see her box every time I open the freezer.

I can hear the “ewwws” right now. It will be winter here for quite a few more months and the ground is far too frozen for a proper burial. I had wanted to take Nipper’s body out to the vast woods near our house and find a little hollow beside a tree to place her in and put a nice rock over the body. She’d always tried so hard to escape while she was alive that I thought she’d appreciate being in the wide outdoors as a final escape... but the kids figured out that some of the other things in the woods might eat their beloved Nipper.

I tried to explain about the body just being a shell... I tried the “Circle of Life” kind of thing from Lion King about food chains... but instead, Nipper is now tucked in a little cardboard box, carefully shrouded in tissue, with a label to mark the box like a headstone. Erin even illustrated around my words.

I finally had to make a drawing to go with my website update because it was such good therapy to draw a dragon cradling a little hamster in her claws as she cries.

Now if I could just stop talking to the hamster that is no longer here.....

To Everything There Is A Season....

Our lives are such a tapestry of light and dark threads, weaving in and out of our life’s design. Today contained so many joys and sorrows, frustrations and blessings that it reminded me how unique and precious each collection of 24 hours truly is. It never passes this way again in quite that combination.

To everything there is a season and sometimes those seasons collide in such holy paradoxes.

...Like finding out that a colleague’s daughter had lost her battle with cancer on the same day Bethany discovered buds on some of our bushes (pretty unheard of here in the Maritimes this early)

...Like hearing some exciting news from my brother and sharing all the joys of their impending addition to the family this summer, but having to cut the call short as my daughters realized that our hamster was dying.

...Like cuddling...really cuddling a tiny, furry body in my hands with ease for the first time because she has always been so hyper and great at biting.

...Like taking such joy in working on an illustration project about such gloomy subjects like Stress, Anxiety and Depression.

... Like working on an anthem at choir tonight that had a whole section in a minor key that made the major resolve that much more beautiful at the end.

...Like hearing from another friend that she too has doubts sometimes because the stuff she creates just looks like “her stuff” to her instead of like the artwork she admires that others create.

...Like feeling far away from family today only to have my sister call with the same urge to hear a voice and feel close despite the miles. Would we have such quality talks if we were in the same city or would we each get busy with our own schedules?

Without contrasts, everything would be a dull average grey existence. Without opening our hearts to love, despite the risk of loss, we would never experience the richness or depth of feelings that we can when we are willing to take risks... to dream impossible dreams.... and to never stop reaching for those stars.

Being A Ding-A-Ling...

It was two hours that I could have used to do work tonight... but ever since they switched the hand chime practice to Monday nights, right after the girls have Junior Choir, Erin and I have joined the Belles. We played for the first time on Sunday with the full choir and it turned out so well that everyone broke into applause!!

It is fun to learn a new skill. Frustrating at times, but also incredibly joyful and fun. I did learn that I need to ring my chimes left handed. By the end of the day, my right hand is tired from drawing, mousing or stitching and I don’t want to risk any injuries.

I needed the joy of losing myself for that time tonight before I hunker down to finish this illustration assignment that has landed right amid preparations for Nashville due to the client taking Christmas to relax instead of meeting deadlines.

I almost think that we should have to try something new every season... or every year to keep us fresh and having fun. When you think of the awesome amount of information that children learn all the time, perhaps getting our older grey matter to move a bit more would keep us all younger in mind, body and spirit.

I think I like being a ding-a-ling.... though some of those who love me would say that I always have been one!

The Storms Of Life...

The winds are howling down the street again like white winter wolves. This is our third blizzard in a week with some of the coldest temperatures we’ve ever seen in between the storms. Certainly a week to make lots of soups, stay inside.

This past week has also been a stormy one in our lives. Friday morning, Nick’s stepfather had to be airlifted to Saint John to the hospital that specializes in cardiac care. Nick left work as soon as he could make arrangements and then drove his Mom down there. By the time they arrived, the hospital has performed some tests and discovered that the blockages they could see didn’t match the level of pain Jerome was experiencing, so they decided to schedule further tests rather than perform surgery. They got him fairly stable, so Nick and his Mom spent Friday night in a local hotel but then woke up to all the storm warnings about today. Since most of the tests needed to wait until Monday, Nick and his mother decided to be snowed in here with us instead of a hotel room there, so they came home late last night and were with us when the blizzard began after church. As soon as the snow stops and the roads are clear, they will head back down to Saint John.

The girls have been great, especially Erin. She is on that brink between child and young woman.... incredibly helpful and wise beyond her years one moment and then a giggly little girl then next... but she has been great to have around.

All of the snow and all of the upheaval have made me do a lot of thinking about the storms that happen in our lives. Unlike the weather radar or forecast, we can’t always know what lies around the corner in our lives. Sometimes they are things which can be prevented or foreseen, but many times they catch us unawares, like a sudden snow squall, mud slide or giant wave.

I have comforted my girls as they wrestled with the mortality of those they love for the first time in a tangible and personal way. I have learned that I can pray in my sleep because I have drifted off in the middle of one prayer only to wake up midway through another. I have rejoiced in the everyday moments of silliness that still happen in the midst of stormy times and I have continued to get ready for the show in Nashville or help with Sparks bowling tournaments and Sunday School or prod Erin to work on her big book report because Life must go on, even in the midst of what feels like total chaos.

Today in the middle of the storm, a flock of tiny birds came to perch on our Mountain Ash and eat some berries. Every time a strong gust of wind would blow one off mid much, they would flap to a different branch and peck at a few more berries. Finally they flew off as a group to seek shelter in a thicker tree, but the storm did not deter them from getting their food. They didn’t wait until it had passed, but just braved it instead to get what they wanted.

One of my favourite posters when I was younger showed a grove of birch trees in the snow and carried the words “A tree which learns to bend with the winds of a storm will not be broken or uprooted.”

I think I shall try to be a flexible tree instead of a solid one... maybe I will lose less branches that way!

Once In A While Days.... TWICE!

Monday the winter winds howled down the street and made it almost impossible to see the houses on the other side. The snow whipped sideways in a mad ballet that scoured some spots of the lawn bare and piled huge drifts elsewhere. Since school was canceled and most of the city was at a standstill, we stayed warm and cozy inside as a family. Nick and the girls treated it like the unexpected holiday it was and I puttered around getting stitching and some computer work done. I was a bit leery of the power with the high winds, so I didn’t try to do anything too essential or crucial on the computer.

Tuesday, the sun came out and the mercury plunged! The girls were heartbroken that there was all this new powdery snow but almost -30 Celsius with the wind-chill!!

Today, we woke up to hear that school was canceled because of another storm about to sweep down upon us, but though the skies looked heavy, there wasn’t a flake of snow to be seen. Our school district is the largest one in New Brunswick with over 12,000 of the 16,500 students being bused, so I am glad if they err on the side of caution. There would never be enough buses to get everyone home in a single run if the storm got bad enough to cancel midway through the school day.

Nick’s mother stayed with us overnight because her husband, Nick’s stepfather, had taken a turn for the worse at the hospital and she didn’t want to be 45 minutes from town if the storm hit or he needed her by his side. We all left the house by 9 this morning to sneak in a few errands or hospital visits and by 11:30 am the snow had begun to fall. It is now fast and furiously white again outside our windows, but the girls did get a good play with the neighbourhood friends for half an hour in the fluffy flakes and returned home totally snow covered and soggy as only kids playing in snowdrifts can get.

They are watching some of the DVDs we picked up with their hands curled around mugs of hot chocolate. Nick and his mom are upstairs too, which has given me the time to run downstairs and do a bit more on the computer. Just one chart left to get camera-ready for Nashville, then it is time to print and assemble the stock to take with me in a few weeks.

I sure hope these storms sweeping up the East Coast take a break that weekend!!!

What’s In A Name....

Sometimes filing systems (or retrieval systems) utterly fail because of a name. I’ve spent the better part of today looking through hard drives and zip disks to try and find the final version of a chart and symbol key I need to get to the printer tomorrow. I finally decided to rechart the darn thing since it was only 60 x 60 stitches... but I’m still frustrated.

Of course I get to blame it all on a very good friend of mine, Letha from Fantasy Crafts, because she is the one who helped cause the title confusion in the first place. I suppose that I should explain a bit...

In a few weeks, those of us taking part in the Fantasy Faire ‘05 at the show in Nashville are each going to launch a limited edition fantasy design. We are each going to print only 1000 of our design for this project and make it available to shops that attend the show. They may reorder from us later until the 1000 are all gone. Each one will be hand numbered (and in my case also signed) so that the stitchers know they have something unique.

So as we sat down this summer to bounce ideas around while sharing a room in Columbus, I explained to my roomies, Letha and Teresa, that I was planning to create my own mythical character that incorporated elements of my favourite fantasy creatures.... but that I was stuck for a title. Letha came up with one that had us all in stitches (though I can’t for the life of me figure out how to share it here without offending someone) and the darn title stuck. While I came up with my own title of “Imagination Knows No Bounds”, the other one kept getting stuck in my brain.... so I have NO idea what I called the file when I put it into the computer before stitching it. I checked under all of the possible variables and titles or combinations I could have come up with and found.... NOTHING!

So now at last, it is recharted and can be imported into the layout program. I have matched colours to the stitched model under my Ott light, double-checked braid colours against the model and my early pencil notes etc.

Sigh! A mind is a terrible thing to misplace. I shall be much more careful naming things from now on!!

I did promise more giggles in these blogs... Here’s a joke from one of Erin’s back issues of Chickadee magazine that had us all groaning at supper a few nights ago...

What is chewy, growls and wears bandages??

A Gummy Mummy!!

More Than Just A Symbol...

My finger feels naked. I keep touching my wedding band and missing the special band of 5 diamonds just above it.

Friday night was an awesome workout of Deep Water Running. For anyone who has never tried it, you wear a floatation belt and do all kinds of running, skiing and cycling motions in the water for an hour... and boy can you ever work up a sweat!! Nick and I are absolutely hooked and Erin loves the chance to earn some baby sitting money by staying right in the fitness center's TV room with Bethany while we are in the pool a few meters away.

Saturday morning when I woke up however, my engagement ring snagged on the comforter and I looked down to realize that one of the claws on the outside most diamond had sheared off and that the stone was gone!

Seventeen years ago when Nick and I first began to look at engagement rings, both of us were on a very tight budget. He was working for one of the group homes in the city and trying to supply teach because there just weren’t very many teaching positions available unless you could speak French to teach Immersion. I’d just moved down and found a job at a local radio station writing commercials in the copy department for $13,500 (ONLY because I had a University degree. They’d been hoping to pay someone about $10,000) Most of the engagement rings we’d been looking at seemed way beyond our means when we had a wedding to save for and IKEA or yard sale furniture.

When the local Birks Jewelers has a ring setting sale, where you could look at lots of setting and which stones to put in them, I took along a very special pin that my grandmother, Jet, had left to me. We incorporated five small diamonds from that pin into a ring that I could wear all the time. As an artist, I use my hands all the time and didn’t want something I would have to take off a lot, so we chose a setting that would hopefully stand the wear and tear without snagging on things all the time.

We took it to another jeweler's on Saturday and sent it off for an estimate of how much it would cost to replace that diamond and transfer the other stones to a similar setting. When they looked at the ring with a magnifier, they could see that at least 2 of the other settings were also close to being worn away. I certainly have no intention of losing any more of my “Jet sparklies”.

I suppose I should be impressed that I’ve been married to Nick long enough to wear the ring out before the man... I had the pleasure of knowing I’d been married to him longer than my own parents stayed together last summer... but it is amazing how much I miss wearing my ring! It is one of those perception shifts. I looked at all the new, sparkling rings while we waited at the jewelry store and remembered when MINE looked that new. I don’t really feel as if that much time has passed... and yet I know that Nick and I have also been worn and weathered by over a decade and a half together. Neither of us is quite as shiny and new as we were the night we chose that ring and also purchased a sofa bed - our first piece of furniture we bought TOGETHER.

I’m still not sure which purchase that night terrified us the most!