High speed!

Wow! After only 8 months of having water in our new home we finally have high speed!  This feels like the last convenience - almost as great as a dishwasher!  It sure took long enough.  Dan had to badger several companies for months before some tech guys finally showed up.  Then it seemed to go remarkably easily.  We now have a pretty inconspicuous mast on the top of our barn and Dan is busy digging the wire in a trench to our home so we don't immediately wreck the whole system.  However, this page popped up immediately instead of the usual 5-10 minutes to get dialed up and load. I cannot believe how wonderful this will be.  I can finally consider a website.  I can access Facebook and all the people that have recognized me but I couldn't acknowledge because that process could take up to half an hour.  We can surf and even check the weather without a ten minute commitment!!  Hooray!  Not to mention iTunes!

I am so sick this week which is unfortunate because it is also finally lovely weather.  I planted some of my bedding plants this morning because it rained last night and so the soil was nice and moist, however that was enough to require an hour lying down.  I had to cancel one of my little clients today because I don't want her catching whatever this is.  Also I can't think all that clearly and certainly can't move all that fast.  May has worked out to be almost a holiday for me from Attic Therapy.  Lots of cancellations because of sickness.  I guess it was my turn.  That's good because of my often hinted at need to consider my future and options.  I've had time to think and talk with Dan more than usual.  And get the garden in!  It looks so nice right now - all black and soft and even.  I love the first two months when everything behaves and nothing is too tall and untamed.  Everything green and healthy growing in straight lines.  Very lovely.

Dan thinks that I try to be all things to all people and I should stop. I don't think that's possible.  I just need to decide where to be so the people I am with are the people I should be with at any given moment.  No problem. Most of the time the decision is made for me anyway.  However broad strokes are up to me - volunteer at school or not?  Work more or less?  Spend time with friends or family?  I think too much.  Now I'm going to be online too much.  Hooray!!

puzzle before supper

What a week. I am trying to understand my place in the world.  I am trying to figure out what piece I fit into and I feel all corners.  It's like having a blue piece of a puzzle of the sky that doesn't fit anywhere at all.  It almost does and it is enough to drive one crazy because the urge to snick it into place is almost physical.

I'd talk more about it and vent but of course everything is so darned confidential when it comes to employment and business.  I am turning 40 and feeling needed (and kneaded) in all ways and in all directions.  Suffice it to say that everywhere I look there are things to do, urgently, and all of them go off in contrary lines of sight and many are completely mutually exclusive.  I'd love to spend my life writing, at times like this.  Once you put words on paper they begin to sort themselves out into some sort of order.  But actions just go on rippling in the universe with consequences and counter-consequences and cross-consequences.  Life in theory is so much simpler.

I just heard from my hairdresser today that we are probably entering another 7 year drought, supposedly drier than the '30's.  She heard that by the end of it the entire Nesbit forest (which surrounds where we live for miles in all directions) is most likely going to be completely burnt by more forest fires.  This is unfortunately the only way to clean it up after a succession of smaller fires and drought or flood or tornado-killed trees have fallen over and are carpeting miles of dry forest tinder.  The new trees only start after enough heat bursts the cones, as most people know.  They need a good fire.  That's not a comforting thought.  Especially after last night I dreamt an extremely vivid dream where we lost our home to a forest fire, although we were all safe.  That was before my hair appointment!

Probably this is all on account of the weather, which is extremely unsettled for spring even, swinging wildly from 20 above to windy and cold and 3 below with freezing rain (as in this morning).  Two of my kids are home sick and I'm being pretty cautious with them given there are now two non-Mexico related cases of swine flu in the health region.  None of this makes me feel wildly optimistic and adventurous.  I don't even feel like going to a theatre and escaping.  I just need to sit still and think.  But thinking requires some sequential logic or more preferably intuitive wisdom which for me requires writing.  Thus here I am.  Unable to write about details but venting all the same.  

I know what I love to do and I know what Dan loves to do.  We both know our capabilities and limitations much better than 10 years ago.  We have a clearer idea that our kids will continue to need us in different but no less intensive ways.  It is hard to come up with a plan to make payments that covers all these bases.  Maybe we should just admit defeat and do what makes us tired but which brings in enough money.  However that approach is so dispiriting that everything in me rebels.  I can't believe that God does not want us to be ourselves or to dream, even after 40 when we know so much more.  So I keep sliding the puzzle piece around and around, trying every different way to snick it into place.  And that's all the time I have now, because I need to make supper! 

Chance prickly encounter

It's almost the middle of May and it is SNOWING for Pete's sake. Well, I guess it has died down at the moment, but I went running today through Christmas-y scenery.  Although on the edge of our driveway the green spring grass was poking bravely through.  Since I last wrote here we have been to the flooded part of Manitoba, visiting our great friends the dairy farmers (now organic dairy farmers, no less!) the Zacharias' in Reinland, and then our sheep farmer friends the Schatzleins.  Soo good to see both of them.  You guys were so encouraging to us on so many levels.  

The trip ended eventfully when we ran over a beaver in the dark near Yorkton.  Turns out those creatures are solid.  Our radiator was pushed well back and bumped into fans and other fairly crucial structures and we coasted to a stop next to some sleepy cows in the pitch dark.  This adventure required an extra night in Yorkton and then a cozy trip home towing our car with all 5 of us cuddled up together in the front of a rented U-Haul.  So we got home eventually but having spent a little more than intended.  This was followed by another accidental forest fire about half a mile from our yard, on the other end of Crutwell.  Thankfully the wind blew the fire away to the river, but it covered a lot of acres and provided us with a Sunday afternoon airshow complete with two tracker planes and two huge waterbombers.  We enjoyed this once we were pretty sure we weren't going to have to be evacuated.  Again.

After this soccer season started with games on MTWTh as well as me finishing up my proposal to the Health Region for a new OT position (unlikely to be successful but hey, I tried!). We had a wonderful birthday party for Heidi (7) and her entire Grade 1/2 class with a rented hot tub on probably the nicest day we'll have this summer, given the current weather.  Thanks to Carrie for the excellent idea and making sure I actually went forward and rented the thing and planned the party!  Whew!  Now it's Seth's turn and he is turning 12 so we do need to do something special as well!

I have been riding I think about 4 times in the last month on Jetta.  She is getting better at direction changes but still has no idea about speed control so I lurch between very fast and very slow for now.  She's a nice horse but a little childish.  I guess that is understandable.  I am getting impatient to go again and was planning for it today but it is freezing cold and I may wuss out.  Thus I am actually blogging next to the cold gray weather outside.

Last night soccer was cancelled (weather!) and so Dan and I went out and left Seth in charge. We have taken Conrad's suggestion (Zacharias) and put our kids on a monthly salary instead of paying by the job and the hour.  I think this will work out really well on average although when it is really busy at school and sports it is hard to give the younger two enough work.  Hopefully on holidays and weekends they can earn their money.  There certainly is enough to do.  Anyway, Dan and I walked around Little Red park for about an hour because I was restless and couldn't handle the thought of sitting still in a movie theatre or restaurant after a full day at work in front of my computer.  We talked and talked and then were pleasantly surprised to notice a porcupine in a small shrub just next to the path.  It was holding very still and hoping we wouldn't notice it from about 3 feet away.  We backed up a few more feet (I know those things can't throw their needles but you can't be too careful) and just watched it.  They're actually very adorable.  They look just like a stuffed animal or overgrown hamster with bristles.  It finally got disgusted with us and waddled off.  I do mean waddled.  I couldn't believe its gait!  The front legs traveled normally but the back legs looked like they were stepping over a large branch each step, or that one of its prickles had got caught in its underwear and it was trying to work it out.  It was so funny.  No wonder the species is protected so as to be available for "easy meat" if you are lost in the wild.  Anyone could take a large stick and just knock it on the head.  They're very slow and unafraid.

Anyway, we are again as usual contemplating our lives and what we really want to do.  I think it's mandatory as Dan is 40 and I am turning 40.  Life is so short! and at this point you begin to really feel it.  I know I felt it running this morning.  Not quite as springy as I used to be.  It will be interesting what we hear from God on various fronts in the next little while.  Our basic problem is that both of us like to take any reasonably good idea and stretch it into oblivion and total impossibility.  Then we paralyze ourselves thinking of all the possible things that could and probably will go wrong.  If we just took a good idea and actually did it, on the other hand, without first making it much bigger and better, it would probably work out.  Or part of it would.  In any event we would move forward.  Ah well.  It's hard to change.  But at this age, we should be mature enough to change just a little!

This is enough posting I guess.  I should take my own advice and resume my life.  I'll try to actually keep up with this in the next little while.