soeurs du jour

rendezvous

a. and i were five minutes away from meeting kath when my cell phone rang. "marg, i am waiting outside the rendezvous and there's a problem." we had planned to rendezvous at a restaurant called the rendezvous.  well, the rendezvous was a strip bar that had seen better days. we laughed our heads off, what a great start to our day!! plan b?

I arrived a few minutes early and made my way to the address where we had agreed to meet.   I saw the storefront on the right, nice building, a very classy travel agent.  Then I looked to my left where the Rendezvous should be and thought, only us, this could only happen to us!  We had chosen a perfectly nice restaurant, or so we thought, off the internet.  I had even read the menu and decided what I would eat and THIS is what I find!  I ran to the car to phone Margie.  I was so excited.   I knew she would love it as much as I did.

So we decided to hit the road and find somewhere to eat.  We saw a sign that pretty much decided where we needed to go.

 We were very excited to finally be going to Paris together.  And so unexpectedly!
Oh look!  Everything is so Parisian!

 

Antiques!  We love antiques, but we didn't stop, we had to eat first. 
The Soeurs have their priorities down pat.



Finally, a bistro .... oh.  But it was closed.

 

That was it, our plans to eat in Paris were foiled, nothing was open.  As a. said, "we've run out of town, we better turn around!"  On our way out of town the lovely paris road antiques was a definite pit stop.

The souers had so much fun, we wanted to sit in these chairs and talk all day. Of course, we would have put nice cushions on the chairs, swept the porch and opened wine before we sat down in them.

tomorrow, our shopping.

hijacked again or dead cat walking

it seems that my best laid plans are only laid in stone if i leave my phone at home.  the boy needed to go to a butterfly exhibit and i was wooed by the promise of photos. 

 

my neck is killing me from looking up, down, side to side 

as these little pretties flutttered about.

please don't tell him but i may go back without him.  keeping track of a three year old in a huge greenhouse filled with school teachers, kids, moms, dads, and yes, one other bubbie type, except he was a small asian grandad with the BIGGEST CAMERA i have ever seen and he was wearing a nikon hat.  i wanted to knock him down and take the hat and the camera but there's no way in heck i would ever figure out how to use it, not to mention i look like an idiot in a baseball cap!!

this is stella.  a.'s sister's cat.  not mine!  leanne, our tired mama, for some insane reason, her words, actually considered for a moment getting two MORE kittens.  she has one already as if that's not enough.  i promised her i would tell her my sister's kitten story.  

many years ago, before my sister married the stage manager, she lived alone with the beloved chester, of blessed memory.  chester was a golden retriever.  chester was also the biggest chicken this side of a chicken coop.  he was afraid of his own shadow, if he went for a walk, he cut himself, he was always wearing a bandage on his foot, poor guy, he had issues, many issues. however we loved him, my children even called him cousin chester.  

kath decided that she and chester were traveling down the eccentric road and that another pet would perhaps round out their family.  she got a kitten.  nothing is too good for my sister, she had to get the million and half dollar kitten with accessories and supplies from the pet store, same kitten you could find in the free to good home section of the paper.  this was on a friday night.  monday morning my phone rang at 6:30 a.m. she was crying.  chester was not crying but he was cowering.  the two of them had spent a considerable amount of time locked in the bathroom together while the kitten wreaked havoc in their condo.  the little cat had run up and down the curtains, soared through the air like a flying squirrel and goodness knows nobody but nobody likes a flying squirrel, she had even hung from chester's tail.  once kath realized that she and chester could be on the outside, the cat was locked in the bathroom. "what am i gonna do?" she sobbed.  i calmly told her to get rid of it.  kath went to work with puffy eyes from crying and after work she took the kitten to the humane society and told them it looked sick, although in her eyes it looked dead because she wanted it dead, well not dead, but gone.  if that kitten were to remain in the house someone was going to get hurt, possibly the kitten, although i suspect that chester would have accidentally cut himself at some point.  

and so dear leanne, that is the saga of the kitten and the moral of the story is that you, dear leanne, do not want to have to move to nebraska, and you know, drop a kitten or two off on the steps of the state legislature. here you go, this is the little baby that terrorized kath and chester.

margie xo

Amazing Friends

 Christina at SoulAperture has bestowed a most lovely gift on us.  

 

Thank you Christina.

 I'm sure it is clear to you by now that  Margie and I share an amazing friendship with each other, I think I can safely say that each of us is very lucky to have the other.  We have some amazing friends in our lives, friends that have been around forever it seems.   Margie's best friend has moved away.    I live away from my best friends now.   But, we make it work, I visit them, they visit me, we visit on line, we keep and read blogs to stay informed about the day to day goings on in our lives.

When Margie was at the cottage with her painfully slow dial-up connection, I was here buzzing around reading blogs, meeting people, the black box brought us some wonderful new friends and took us to amazing new places, I would email her knowing she had her Blackberry in hand about this person or that blog to keep her in the loop.  She wrote to me, "I feel so isolated, it's like all these people are our friends and I'm missing them." 
She was and is right, you are our friends.
Amazing thing this blog for it has brought us some amazing friends.
Kath

l'shana tova!

fall, a favourite time of year for many of us for many different reasons.  school starts, schedules realign, routines resurface, NFL football returns, yeah i know i am canadian but we are an NFL family all the way, but now it is holiday time.  the jewish new year, roshashana is this week, and today, i can't talk to you, i have to cook.  lots.    

and so l'shana tova to all my jewish friends and family.

for a good year.

margie

side tracked

photography excites me and disappoints me at the same time.  i go out each day and visit your blogs, i look at your photos, i look at mine, and i think, mmm??  why them and not me? i want to grow and progress and expand and develop and learn, you get my drift. i also want to finish reading doris lessing's the golden notebook but time interrupts my reading as well as my photography. i am enjoying this book for two reasons, the soul searching it inspires and, truthfully, the challenge of reading it. very smart that doris lessing. 

Mrs. Lessing says: 

'About five years ago I found myself thinking about that novel which most writers now are tempted to write at some time or another - about the problems of a writer, about the artistic sensibility. I saw no point in writing this again: it has been done too often; it has been one of the major themes of the novel in our time. Yet, having decided not to write it, I continued to think about it, and about the reasons why artists now have to combat various kinds of narcissism. I found that, if it were to be written at all, the subject should be, not a practising artist, but an artist with some kind of a block which prevented him or her from creating. In describing the reasons for the block, I would also be making the criticisms I wanted to make about our society. I would be describing a disgust and self-division which afflicts people now, and not only artists." 

so today, just like my friend robin, i was up early, had the two cups of coffee, did my hair, packed up the dog and the camera and set out to take the photo to end all photos.  my cell phone rang, it was charley's good friend.  "hi bubby".  

i didn't miss a beat, i said "get your shoes on, charley and i are coming to pick you up, we'll go for a walk and take pictures".  the photo shoot to end all photo shoots had certainly ended, rather abruptly and all of a sudden the day was side tracked, and i was turning down the grandmother path.  he climbed into the car, water bottle and bag of trail mix in hand, and off we went.

he and charley pretty much ignore me when we walk.  they run ahead, they run back, they fall down.  One friend throws the stick, the other brings it back; the boy laughs, the dog wags her tail.
     

the two of them have been close for a long time.  they love a little out of town time together so they can go fishing.

the two little friends were playing and running and i was just preparing to focus very hard, both mentally and manually with the camera when this face jumped in front of the lens, scared me and i accidentally took the picture.  i laughed, it was in focus and cute and i had no idea how or why it turned out as well as it did!

and the moral of my little story, sometimes the best photos are the ones you least expect.  i will always look at this funny little head shot and remember this day.  it was a photo to end all photos.  i will get there, i will take better and better shots all the time, i expect that in due course i will finish the golden notebook.  maybe this funny little head shot was in focus for a reason, to help me unblock my artistic sensibility and focus.   

xo

margie

Children of the Corn, with an oy vey at the end.

I was going through some old photos.  I couldn't stand the pic of me in a tube top any more and was determined to change it.   I found this one, but really, to appreciate it, you have to see it full size.   It might be my favourite family photo. 

I am the little one, Margie is the big sister.  It seems to me that the day might not have been unfolding as our mother had planned.   I don't recall where we were going,  we had obviously been told, "You Will Go.  And You Will Have A Good Time."  And despite the fact that our brother looks like the spawn of some evil spirit with that hairline and perplexed look, he's really smart and a nice guy too.

!
Kath

sorry, i don't usually jump into one of kath's posts, but who the hell?  i couldn't resist adding my memories of that day.

• the mother's hat was black velvet with white "cigarette" looking decorations on the side, white satin on the inside.  very expensive, i remember when she bought it. oy.
• poor mommy looks like she is recovering from armpit surgery. oy.
• tanks g*d for john, paul, george and ringo, co-inventors of bangs, saving many of us from a life of unfortunate foreheads, especially the poor brother.  oy.
• poor sisters who were coerced and threatened into wearing white gloves and, poor me for standing with hands folded ala the queen mother.   mommy's gloves were white kid leather.  very expensive.  oy
• we were going to the wedding of the next door neighbour who kath was named for.  the marriage didn't last but i remember all the adults talking about the groom who was quite cavalier and risque, older than the bride with a "reputation".  for what i never knew.  oy. 
• what i don't remember is what happened immediately prior to this photo that would have left us all with those faces. oy vey.  those are bad faces!  especially our brother damien. heh heh.

Be Safe

An image apropos of nothing.

Our thoughts and prayers are with our American friends.
Especially T & C and their children in New Orleans.

Be Safe

Kath and Margie

Granny

Over on the recipe du jours part of our little world here, I've mentioned our mother a couple of times now.   She is called Granny.   She became Granny over thirty years ago and when the grandchildren and great-grandchildren outnumbered the children we all started to call her Granny.  When I talk to her I call her Mom, but when we talk about her, it's Granny.

She is 90, on the go and in better health than either Margie or I.  She is busy and witty.  This past Christmas when we all collected at my house the laptops, ipods, phones and cameras were in the high numbers. Music and photos were being traded and there were times, when I suppose we should have been interacting as a family, that we all had our noses buried in our screens. At one point Margie looked over and saw  her sitting on the couch with me and my niece.

"Granny?  What are you doing?"

She replied, deadpan, "I'm using my computer too."    She lamented that she was the only one in the house that didn't have an ipod or a computer.

By the end of that day, Margie and I had hopped in the car, driven to Costco and purchased the best Christmas gift Granny ever got.

Presenting, Granny listening to her new Ipod for the very first time.

Between us we loaded 900 songs on it for her.

And her comment when she listened that first time?

"I'm going to be able to knit like a bugger to this music!"

Rock on, Granny.  Rock on.

Kath

siblings

look at this little guy sitting calmly behind the grown ups. he is comfortable that no one will back up and step on him, he is not in a rush to eat, the big kids let him eat first.  the big kids, of course, are his siblings.  over the years we have had kids come and go in our family.  in addition to our own four children, my late husband and i had two children that were not our own but  lived with us long enough to be counted as siblings.  now there are my partner's two children and a daughter in law added to the progeny.   

i have a theory about large families and siblings.  brothers and sisters are many things to each other, enemies, protectors, tormentors, scolds, sources of envy and objects of pride.  i read somewhere that our siblings are truly our only life long partners, that in some ways our relationships never change, we are just brothers and sisters, no more and no less.   

my youngest graduated from high school this week and i nod my head to his siblings for the love and guidance they have given him.  when their father died he was only nine years old, far too young to experience such an upheaval.  i know that families can be blown to bits by such a trauma, or the family can fall into a hole and only climb out by standing on each other's shoulders, youngest first, and then pulling the last one out as a team.  the protective nurturing required to weather a storm leaves a lasting closeness that is ultimately weatherproof.  

do not for one second get me wrong, please, these kids fought, and still do fight.  when all is said and done though, i believe that the fighting is just another part of learning how to have a relationship and you may as well learn some of those lessons from those people that unconditionally love you, your brothers and sisters.  when the dust settles, it's the same old gang.  

there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in this world that gives me more pleasure than seeing how much my children actually like each other.  how proud they are of each other, how supportive, how forgiving, how critical and even how harsh they can be when the need arises.  

i have been weepy all week as i look at my son and see him calmly lying behind a group of grown up siblings, just like the young calf in the photo, full of confidence, never awkward, not easily embarrassed, just resting because soon he will stand up and walk away from the herd.  it makes me happy and sad.

hosta la vista

this beautiful hosta garden is hidden in the park across from our soon to be new condo.  hidden away in a shady area, it has a very magical feel to it.  the light that filters through the trees is very special.   

yesterday a. and i took a road trip up to my brother's long term care facility.   oh no, he doesn't live in a long term care facility, he runs one for their three almost dead dogs.   blind, deaf, stroke victims, g*d knows what's happened to chelsea's fur, i swear this is one motley crew.   my brother and his wife deal with huge health issues, he's a quad in a wheelchair, she suffers from lupus, but honestly they are the picture of health next to the three muts.  along the way we did the obligatory garage sales and junk shops.   we bought a le creuset pot for $15, some vases, rope (his purchase not mine) and yay!! some hostas at a great price.

you see, hostas are my favourite plant.  the broad leaves, the colour, and for someone like me, a non gardener, the best plant ever.   you can take a hosta, stick it in the ground and tell it to cover up that space and it will do just that.   year after year.  fanning itself out over the empty spaces until your garden looks like a magazine cover.   

i love this picture of our little family within our family.  i tweaked this photo with some of the pioneer woman's photoshop actions.  i love how this photo has all my favourite things, the babies and the hostas.  

okay, i had most of the afternoon to think about this and i've decided that the reason i like a hosta is the same reason i like other people's children.   other people, your friends, always espouse about their perfect children.   they do everything they are told, immediately, with smiles, and politeness; give a kick, their children are the children you don't have.   but that's okay, i know when i'm beat, i love a hosta, a hosta does exacty what it's told to do.  a plant only  a mother should love.