The Odd Joy

As I glance around our home I want to cry...full out wail, really...every surface is covered by something that obviously doesn't belong in that location. 

Computer desk: a seemingly clean washcloth laid directly in front of the screen, a letter "e"-shaped chestnut twig curled around an elastic and a Canadian Tire receipt for something to do with a vehicle, books on mazes and dragons and Thailand, plastic cup half-full of the "hairy butt" (African sea coconut) medicine that our youngest is supposed to ingest three times daily, scrap ripped paper with humans in five-year-old drawing ability, a pair of pink sunglasses and about four dozen odd items that do not ever belong on a computer desk.

And that is just the beginning.

As I bent to sip my long-cold hot chocolate I noticed a fruit fly on the soggy marshmallow and as I attempted to remove the bug the round soppy globe popped out of the mug and skidded halfway across the kitchen floor, slowed down only by the clumps of dirt and breakfast crumbs still decorating its vast surface.

On the kitchen floor: a pumpkin (I WILL get to making it into puree, I really, truly WILL), the compost bucket ready to be dumped, two backpacks in various stages of disarray, one winter boot (of whose partner has still not revealed itself despite deep searches), a black grocery bin that has yet to make it back tot he van, some wildly hued snowpants...the list, again, goes on and on and on...

And yet, the laughter of two children rings from the bathroom tub that nearly overflowed as I forgot that I was making a eucalyptus bath for the sickie child...

And I am, surprisingly, calm.  And, even more surprisingly, filled with an overwhelming sense of joy.

Odd though that may be in our chaotic (and VERY messy) circus-like existence...

Warning: Ongoing Culling

Watch out world, I'm culling...

No need for Hubby or kids to fear I will toss out some of their goodies.  I am not culling physical objects.  Not toss-in-trash items that I haven't used in six months...not piled papers and oodles of "idea articles"...not dust elephants in room corners (though I should be)...

This time it is my schedule.  Imagine that: taking the advice of my Saturday Stuff-It Chronicles and using it on moi-meme...what kind of crazy talk is that?!

Already blubbering responses to the word "no" arise from others with panic...I cringe as I hear, "but you have ALWAYS done that..."And as I observe my calendar open the guilt level rises and I try to self-talk (or self-yell?) it away. 

Why, oh why, am I changing up the status quo?  Several reasons:

• the massive cold sore that has become my top lip - already successful in its threats to have me resembling a manatee..always a sure symptom of my overwhelmed self

• forgetting the names of our children because 1) I stay up so darn late trying to shove in as much as humanly possible and am awakened so often during the night that not my brainpower fails to produce any such power and 2) I am out in the evenings so often I don't see our adorable progeny
• "Homewood" isn't jokingly looking attractive: it is a serious contender on my checklist of possibilities and I truly fear being sent there, with or without strait jacket and drooling, very soon
• I have neglected the only thing that matters: the Lord.  Too tired, stressed, overwhelmed, and anxious I have ignored the One who is calling me...I have pushed aside His beckonings for laundry, the occasional toilet scrub and endless amounts of must-dos...

Well, schedule is bellowing: time to leave this paradise and pick up our children and a few extras (yes, this will be culled after today as well)...

Tuesd'Archives: The Broken Survivors

Every day, as I bounce through life (well, okay, my "bouncing" is less like Tigger and more like an ever-exhausted dragggg), I rarely think of the sacrifices given by so many to make this country the free space it is.

Remembrance Day comes and suddenly we are face-to-face with the IDEA of war...not that we understand it to any degree.  Not that those of us who have never been to battle can commiserate or comprehend.  But the IDEA of it rests before us...

The forever gratitude.

Yesterday as I was accessioning (Fancy Nancy would say "that's a fancy word for putting things into records") two war artifacts I couldn't help but observe the dichotomy...one of a soldier that survived, returned home to marry and have a family.  And a second of one that did not.

A long black wood-framed photo of Squadron No. 3 in Toronto the June of 1940 just before departing for overseas.  Brave and solid (and young, oh so young!) soldiers stood at attention.  Second row ninth from the left: Edwards.  He survived.  Came home.  Likely "broken".

The other artifact was an incredible "set" of war records gained from a teacher in Ottawa whose student is researching the only Mount Forest man to lose his life on the shores of Normandy .   The official government registers document Irwin Archibald "Bing" Lytle's history as a soldier from his enlistment to final information regarding the plot in France to where his body was exhumed.  Even a copy of the telegram informing his mother of his death was included.  He obviously did not survive.  Did not come home.  Broken in a very extreme fashion.

Did it haunt the ones who survived?  Did they forget about their own sacrifices?  Forget that they were just as integral to our freedom?

The forever gratitude.

Munchy Monday: Canadian Grocer...are you an organic jerk???

Please join me every Monday for discussions on food…

Ever heard of the monthly magazine Canadian Grocer?  Mysteriously having two subscriptions, my boss has given me her 2nd latest copy.  Intriguing…

So here’s some juicy food info from the October issue:

• eating organic apparently “makes you a jerk” who is “less likely to help a stranger in need” (p.7)
• grocers in Austria who attempted to market pre-peeled bananas suffered financial loss and online backlash about plastic-covering and Styrofoam trays (p.7)
• “mommy bloggers” are re-shaping “North America’s relationship with food” and are a highly sought-after consumer (p.12)
• limited-edition products drive up sales: the Cadbury Crème Egg for eggs-ample (yeah, yeah, a very poor pun) sells 3.4 eggs for every man, woman, and child in the UK (and that’s just the UK and just for a four-month period) (p.13)

• adventure and groceries are marrying to a new degree: consumers are more willing to try new and different flavours from places such as Asia and India (p.24)
• Pay attention to coffee buyers: while the average shopper spends $41.41 while those who buy single-serve coffees such as K-cup packs hand over an average of $108.11 per purchase (p.39)

 

Saturday Stuff-It Chronicles: Stuffing our Stuff into Stuff

"Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans"  John Lennon

Please join me every Sat for discussions on stuff...

Saturday Stuff-It Chronicles have, since inception, typically been about objects-stuff...items, products...but what other definitions are there for "stuff"?  www.Dictionary.com outlines verb-stuff...

stuff

 ʌf/ Show Spelled

verb (used with object)

•  to fill (a receptacle), especially by packing the contents closely together; cram full.
•  to fill (an aperture, cavity, etc.) by forcing something into it.
•  to fill or line with some kind of material as a padding or packing.
•  to fill or cram (oneself, one's stomach, etc.) with food.
•  to fill (meat, vegetables, etc.) with seasoned bread crumbs or other savory matter.

 

We can stuff our stuff with stuff, stuff our bodies with stuff, and even stuff stuffing into our stuffy stomachs...the latter bringing drool-y responses to images of fat, moist chunks of breadcrumbs browned in turkey orifices...And to think it's only 345 until the next Canadian Thanksgiving!  [Did you know that at www.daysuntil.com you can find out how long it is until just about any holiday occurs???  Though a bit of mathematics was necessary in this instance because apparently only American Thanksgiving counts as the true holiday.]

 

Among the many things we North Americans can really lay claim to red ribbons for being (you know: brazen over consumers, greedy, and obese among the ranks) is calendar-stuffers.  Crammers.    How much can we compress into our lives before we explode, or implode?

 

 

How much stuff can we stuff into our daytimers?  How many things do we think are physically possible to crush into our lives?

 

I find  Debbie Mielewski's article entitled "How to Cram a Life into Your Crazy Schedule" How do you give enough to your job and your kids (without cutting out important stuff like, say, sleep)?

  www.webmd.com and I cringe so deeply I nearly knock myself out of our roll-y desk chair.  Not that I am condoning the stuffing full of our lives but should we not be cramming things into our LIFE rather than vice versa?  Is not our life the framework?  The basis to which we add the bonuses?

 

What bargains and trades are we making?  How do they affect our lives?  Our families?  Our spiritual time with the Lord? 

 

Why?  For what?  For ulcers and tension headaches and high blood pressure and oodles of tums and tylenol and other such "relief" fighting for space in our medicine cabinets?

 

 

Janet Luhrs in her book The Simple Living Guide shares

 

Why are we so afraid of discovering US?  (As in "us" not as in the US!)

 

Try this experiment: quit stuffing stuff into stuff ...cram into your life one hour - one measly hour - with absolutely nothing planned...and see how you feel?  What happened?  Did the world explode?  Implode?  Did YOU?

 

"Be still and know that I am God" Psalm 46:10

Happy November

Post-Hallowe'en sugar high, anyone?

I think I may actually just need some...and now that it's likely all on sale?

Happy November!

TuesdArchives: Canes and Canners

Please join me on Tuesdays for discussions on the Mount Forest Museum & Archives and all things historical...

A local Mount Forest man goes off to war, of course young and ambitious and likely naive, and returns to Canada whereupon he locks everything that has returned with him including the contents of his pockets...anything with the faintest trace of Second World War...into a homemade box.

He never discusses the war.  His appearance completely changed, eyes in photos seeming to hide dark secrets that he surely doesn't discuss, he carries on...marries...labours away...

When he dies the box is opened. 

Treasures unearthed.  Photos...ticket stubs, regulations for soldier behaviour on days off, and a long, slightly scarred brown "stick" with tarnished ends.  The less pointy end carries an insignia similar to the one below (The Royal Canadian Regiment...VRI does not in this instance stand for Vibration Response Imaging or Vacation Resorts International, as fun as those sound, but rather for the reigning Victoria and the Royal Canadian Regiment).


After a little research it was ascertained that "the pointy stick" is a "drill cane".  "The drill cane can ... be used in lieu of a band mace for Light Infantry and Rifle Regiments."   Officer Cadet Jeffrey Ng on www.cadet-world.com  The musical aspect of this makes even greater sense when knowing that the soldier in question's father was a musician and likely so was he?

Oh the pieces of the puzzle...so much harder to simultaneously condense and build when you haven't the picture on the box staring up at you...

Canes...and what of canners? 



Two jars with glass lids kindly donated to the Archives..."Imperial Crown" with dates of 1942 and 1952 embossed into the base.  And yet trying to uncover when the Diamond Flint/Dominion Glass Company stopped making the glass lids seems a piece to the puzzle we can't uncover, can't place into the grand overall image...

We find out that, as a "war effort" of rationing, metal, being so integral to the war movement, is replaced with glass lids.  We uncover photos of the glass company in Montreal with its childhood labour force grim-faced in front of the massive brick chimney.  But we don't find out measurements of the particular odd-heighth jars in question (and so Pauline will physically pour water into them) or glass-lid-making finality.

Canes and canners...