January 25 in Fredericton

The ride still felt long in spite of the mild weather though we made good time and got here just after 5pm. We wanted to catch the grand kids at their routine of supper,a little play,bath and the read and sleep. The regimen went delightfully well. The weekday drill starts at about 6.30am. This morning, because grandma is here, Orin planned a deviation. He went upstairs and searched 3 rooms for his favourite book and proposed that he be read to. He did accept, after a gentle but firm insistence from Dad, that breakfast should come first. A 2 year old thrives under good governance. There was time for a good read of his Brown Bear book and he gave grandma an affectionate goodbye as they left for Day Care.

Nineteen years old

Scruffy, the cat, is nineteen years old. At the Vets' clinic there is a chart which allows us to translate a cat's age into a timeline on that of the average human life span. A simple way is to multiply the age by x (where x=7), which makes Scruffy  133years old. That can't be right. x cannot be a constant number and must vary. I have to pop into the clinic. This musing results from my noticing how smart she still is. This afternoon,taking advantage of the break in the weather, we were blocking wood. We took a breather and the cat, which has been housebound for quite a while, chose to come out with us. We went about our tasks out of her sight. In a little while she came to where we were and I walked her to the doors to let her in. Old cats cool fast in Canadian winters.

Hoist and the bringer of Jollity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B49N46I39Y                                                       It is a lovely excerpt.Thanks for locating it, Christina. Looking forward to the Spring Festival: January 23(new moon) to February7(full moon). Meanwhile Jupiter can be seen most evenings.

A Man and his Porch

I opened the 4 doors to get the bill from the oil man who said, "You have a new porch." " He picks at it." I replied. He examined the porch and commented that it was well done and that he could not do it. Nobody would if one does not have to. The process is like a surgeon fitting a donated toe to a foot. To be even more elaborate, one has to build the toe. But as seen above, it is done and acting as it should; keeping the kitchen draft free. But that won't be enough as he will see, with his handy man's eyes, corners to perfect. So for a while he will be the old Man who lives in the Toe.

Today and yesterday

No sunrise today;just the gray getting lighter and brighter in the east. Buggers. Mercifully I have the memory of what dusk was like yesterday. We were going out to see Werner Herzog's "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" at 7pm. So a little before 6pm,I stepped out to a magical setting of snow on the ground, moon in the velvet blue sky with Jupiter attending. Venus, the third brightest, in her own corner. Memory.  Herzog's documentary gave access to the memories of our human ancestors of 30,000 years ago.http://www.wernerherzog.com/index.php?id=64      

Sunrise Red on Jan.5

Gray is not dismal but non crisis red is better. The conifers on the hilly rim,on the other side of the valley, are the dark gray, the bare hardwoods along the river are a light gray,the fields are a brown gray. Even the air is gray. That's it gray is the overlay. But at 7.40am this morning I saw, in the dip of the hilly outline, the glow of the sunrise. A shallow spaghetti bowl of  calm,even and bright sunrise red. No tongues as in forest fires and no smoke as in bomb red.                                              
A minute later the gray seeped into the red and daylight pushed into the East.

Violent Reads

So I have finished Sputnik Sweetheart and as a chaser I am doing Ian McEwan's The Cement Garden. I may enter 2012 warped or agnostic. I am already myopic.
I just realized that I had answered CVL's email question "How's the chilli?"with "a thick dressing gown does the trick" thinking she wanted to know how I was adjusting to the chill on coming home from Malaysia.                           
The handy man is going to increase his repertoire to include making poached eggs for brunch; no resolution here just ad hoc fumbling. I am in charge of chips and peas. Mushy please, he was English. 

Re reading Sputnik Sweetheart

A slight case of withdrawal has driven me to do this. My mother's TV channels are in at least a dozen languages but the contents did not grab me except the ROK's soap opera. The actors are lovely and talented and the English subtitles are very sophisticated. It was very easy to be drawn into  the " Jane Austen" type of drama with Korean architecture and countryside. No nudity and no physical violence. Also very sparse furnishing in the rooms. There is no Korean flavour in Fraser's Mills but I remembered that in Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart there is a character who is Korean, born and raised in Japan, but does not speak Korean. Murakami's style is also rather sparse. So in quiet desperation I am enjoying myself.

Jet to normal

Since December 29, I have been working to get back to routine and so, when I saw the bedside clock showing 6.05 am, I was pleased. Rather eagerly, I got up and was confronted by the kitchen clock showing 5.06am. This is not April 1 but January 1, still I got fooled. Somebody, and that would be me, did not change the time to daylight saving in the bedroom.
However, the 3 cats were delighted to get early service and I seized the opportunity to look for Mercury in the predawn sky. Cloudy and raining but very mild. While in the kitchen, I washed a cup and a half of kidney beans and brought them to boil, switched off for soaking. Later, I shall make chilli sans carne.
So this is 2012.