(Home) office windowsill

office windowsill
Originally uploaded by run lily.

I hesitate to call this an altar, but it is a little corner of the house that holds things that help me to pause and refocus. I like that they're all pretty close to nature, and simple forms. The stone vase was made by a Nova Scotia craftsperson; it's about 5 inches high, and often holds a few flowers in the summer, but only wildish ones, often a leaf or two. We bought it in the cafe/shop at Corn Hill Nursery on a beautiful day that we spent picking out plants for our new-old house. The square box is from Essaouira (Morocco) where I did my first fieldwork in 1998. And the tall vase with the leaf and flower imprint was a gift from one of my first honours students; it's made from local clay.
My office-office is cosy too. I'll have to post about it someday.

Reading: Last Child in the Woods

I've been reading Last Child in the Woods. The author argues that many social and physical problems can be traced to our decreasing regular, intense experience of nature. It makes me wonder if we get outside enough. We walk regularly to work and in the evenings and on free afternoons with Peter, and we do spend time digging in the garden, but we don't have opportunities for the long days of outdoor play that I experienced growing up: days when I'd leave the house after an early breakfast, and come in just for lunch and supper, both times tired and dirty. We are lucky to live near a park, but it pales in comparison to my grandparents' farm and the surrounding countryside that was my range when I was small. The waterfowl park has boardwalks and railings to keep people in, ostensibly to protect nature, but also to keep our feet dry and our faces and legs free from nicks and bruises. It is a zoo of a park. We also live near the shore, several shores, in fact: Silver Lake, which is very close and good for swimming; Cumberland Basin, which is edged by walkable dykes and mussel beds; Shepody Bay, where we lived on Dorchester Cape before Peter was born; and the Northumberland Strait, about half an hour's drive, but eminently beachly and worth the time in the car. I suppose that when Peter is bigger, he'll discover the wild unkept edges of the waterfowl park a minute from our door, and perhaps if he still notices the outside when he's bigger than that, the paths to Silver Lake and the dykes. I hope these will be more than beer-drinking places for his generation.

Mel's

Mel's
Originally uploaded by run lily.

Across the street from Bridge St Cafe (where, I once mentioned here, Ron says that you will see everyone if you stay for about 2 hours) is Mel's Tearoom. I do think they serve tea, but it's actually a diner/corner store. I often pick up milk here on the way in to the university, and we usually get our papers here too. These days, we also get maple cream here ($3.50 for a block the size of half a pound of butter). The menu is good diner food: club sandwiches, roast beef dinner, turkey dinner (apparently this is a maritime thing), and (ahem) canned Heinz spaghetti. For those who aren't skilled with a can opener, I guess. It's all good.

Peter's fourth auction: Babies Days Out

Peter's fourth auction
Originally uploaded by run lily.

One of the Flickr groups I like is Babies' Days Out. (I especially like the apostrophe in the group name, but I won't go on about it.) The group owner, Camster Factor, writes "I want to ensure that in years to come Amelia doesn't just have a (undoubtedly massive) series of close up portraits showing her facial development from first wind induced gripe through to self confident baby bouncer model via first tentative smile. There'll certainly be plenty of that in the albums, but I want to provide her with a set of memories by proxy, documents of the world she grew up in where she plays a key role as actor in those memories but importantly the stage on which those memories are played out is still included in the image, clear to see." This snapshot of Peter at Sunday's auction is notas good-looking as most of the BDO pool, and God-love-him he's right in the middle looking as posed as can be (that or a tantrum these days), but it is a document of our favorite kind of outing these days. This auction wasn't actually a great one: almost all of the furniture was quite new, the auctioneer was slow, there were too many Royal Doulton porcelain ladies. But the crowd was good humored toward the little guy wandering around, and he got to talk to lots of people before falling asleep for an hour and a half. The proceeds of this auction, an estate, went to support the Moncton Hospital.

yesterday's auction find

yesterday's auction find
Originally uploaded by run lily.

The auction season has started up again. We went to one on Sunday (I bought a 1950s-era quilt for the spare room), and then another yesterday. I now have my oak table, and paid $65 for it. The auctioneer described it as "early," which I think means "that looks some old, doesn't it." The legs are turned solid oak, and the top is made of 5 boards, each 6 inches or so wide. We pulled off a sheet of chipboard that had been nailed to the top, and cleaned it with salt. It's missing its drawers, but I think we can get that taken care of.

A felted wool coat for Peter

A felted wool coat for Peter
Originally uploaded by run lily.

This little coat is just about done -- it still needs a zipper, and the trim. Peter loved it even half done, and wore it around the house for half an hour after I took his picture. He protested when I started to take it off, but eventually agreed to trade the coat for two little cuffs that he wore instead. The sweater was a men's large before felting, and I've resewn it in blanket stitch with 3 strands of embroidery thread. Lots of fun today!

Things that make Peter laugh

Peter started laughing when he was just a few months old. At first, his laugh was a burble -- like a brook. Sandra (who keeps him a few days a week) said that Cohen (who's 4) had asked one day about the sound Peter made, and she explained that he was laughing. He used to laugh like a nut when I played pattycake with him, and then a bit later when we played peek-a-boo. He still enjoys those games sometimes, but they don't make him laugh the way they used to. Now he laughs loudly, big "ha ha ha!" kinds of laughs. These are some of the things that he finds funny these days. I wish I had started this list earlier.

1. Seeing someone he loves -- mama, dada, Lily -- come into the room.
2. Having mama whisper silly sounds against the back of his cheeks and neck.
3. Watching dada pretend to scare him with funny faces.
4. The word blah-blah-blah.
5. Being tickled on his kneecaps and behind his knees.
6. Other people laughing.

Green, green, green

We painted Peter's room right after his first birthday. I like the color: it's calming, and soft, and reminds me of the color of tree leaves with sunlight streaming down through them. We added a soft (made in Canada, artificial fibre) straw-colored rug for playing and reading on. At some point, I'll replace the quilt (this one was made by my grandmother many, many years ago) with one that can take more frequent washings.

The gingham one folded over the rocking chair was made by Grammy too, especially for Peter. It has hand-stitched heart appliques, and is entirely hand-quilted in a circles and stripes pattern. She's 88 now.

Vintage

Even though my students no longer look incredulous when I (only half in jest) say that I was already in university when they were born, I still don't get it. Really, I mean. The 80s are as far off now as the 50s were when I was in elementary school. The 50s were Happy Days and sockhops for us, a theme-park of a decade. And the 40s were a fable, some far-off place where our parents were born but left as children to come to the New World and be modern. Even the 1970s seems like the recent past to me, though more and more the catchphrases are seeming odd. When I felt last week that I just never had fun anymore, and grocery shopping by myself qualified as a "day out," I suddenly realized that this is what women meant in the 1970s by taking time to "find yourself." Except no one says that anymore. Ron brought this "vintage" tricycle home from his mum's a few weeks ago. They bought it new for him.

Tuesday

Peter's at Sandra's playing with the kids, and I have been working at home today, mostly on a book review of Imagined Diasporas, by Pnina Werbner. It's very good, but dense. This afternoon I want to spend some time making a wish list of acquisitions for my new courses. This will be fun, as finally I'm spending someone else's grant money! Woohoo! The university hasn't employed a Middle East specialist before, so the collection is weak and unprogrammed in that area. It's a big task, but I've got a plan: a list of topics (overviews, economy, political systems, kinship, gender, belief systems, popular culture, ethnic minorities, language, social movements, life cycle) with major backlist and current works for each. I'm not even thinking about what this may cost.

Friday's foray to the art sales wasn't as much fun as I'd anticipated. Peter and I went at 4:30, just as Ron's auditions were beginning. The benefit auction works were still being hung, but we poked around anyway and didn't find anything that made my heart leap. The student sale did have lots of fun things (piles of linocuts for $7 each!), but everything was on the floor and I couldn't put Peter down. That made going through things very awkward. I tracked down an illustrator a few years ago by asking the drawing prof to recommend someone, and my lovely linocuts for Peter's room may come about this way. The ones I liked on Etsey have sold, and the creator doesn't do commissions. I was disappointed by that.

Otherwise, things are going well, I guess. Ron's mum is in the hospital (a few hours away) and we are concerned about that. Peter is getting over his cold. I'm sleeping somewhat better, but still stressed and tired. I need to get this review done, then back to my henna practices article. Ron's schedule is getting busier and busier, and there are more and more evening meetings and shows. That is our life, I guess.