On Skis from Santa and Microwave Peas ...

Much more visually appealing than a picture of microwave peas

If one cooks peas on the stovetop, one may avoid finding them in the microwave after the meal is finished. However, this is only a bandaid solution. You see, microwavepeasness can neither be created nor destroyed and if not applied to the peas, it will attach itself to something else. It will not bind with the desserts for which one is generally really too full anyway, nor on the bean salad which is not a festive dinner icon. No, its nature is such that it must bind with something iconic like ... oh, I don't know ... Christmas crackers?
They're in the pantry, Mom.

$11 House in Edmonton ...

Really.
Okay, it's a contest, but it's so cool!

I read about it on Twitter this morning and now I'm all in love with the idea.

An neat old (nearly 100 years) prairie box style house, once owned by Grant Notley that became a rooming house during a housing crunch eventually got so run down it was condemned.

A local man, bitten by the renovation and real estate bugs, and his family bought it to fix up and sell.

Sparked by a funny daughter-comment, an idea was born to run a contest. If enough people buy an $11 entry, someone will have a mortgage-free fully renovated and updated home with appliances and a great story to tell, a family will have done something tremendously cool, and a house that might have been torn down will get a second chance.

So ... if you can think of any reason at all that you might be interested in living in Edmonton (rule stuff), please, oh please, read the article, go to the official website, think about buying in.

Don't need or want a house in Edmonton? Perhaps a friend does. You could get them a chance to dream for Christmas. Maybe you could enter for a favourite charity. You could enter just so this thing will work for someone else.


It's not a draw. The finalist entries will be put up for vote on Facebook.
One may enter only once ... but one knows others who may enter, too!
Please tell people about this.
The deadline is Dec. 31.

Of Siblings' Progeny ...

Rory running around the room, elbows tucked in, flapping her hands by her shoulders, "When will I begin to fly!?"
Molly, trying to round the poppets up and into their going-home-wear, "Haha! That's going to be my new F*cebook status!"
Camilla lying on her back on the couch, elbows and knees tucked in, wiggling her fingers and feet, "I've been turtle-tagged! Someone come flip me over."

Lest we forget ...

Today I light a candle for those who gave their lives, their limbs, their sight, their sanity, their loves, their innocence. Every day I light a candle for peace, that it never happen again. Blessings

Testing Blog This for Mags

Mtn. Ash pinking up II, originally uploaded by Dandelion Vicious.

This is what the back yard looked like when there were leaves other places than on the ground.

Mostly Weather ...

The ice was all gone from the sidewalks, there were great swaths of bare grass between the remaining snow piles, and it had been bright and sunny and melty for days!

I took these with the new phone's camera while at the APs, eating their crackers and taking in their mail:

Funny birds made a path going in and out of Beau's kennel through the gate


Juniper trying to escape from the snowbank


Chimnea waiting patiently to be freed from the snow


And birdprints along the lacy edge of the melting snow


Then winter came back on Friday night. This is just outside <-that cat-nose-print-covered window on Saturday morning

Apparently I Wasn't Done ...

"Cuddle attack!" crowed Ben from behind the couch yesterday, right before he and Annika flang themselves on me. Oh, they were ferocious in their snugglings and ticklings and smoochings.

I've just finished John Varley's Demon, third in his wonderful Gaia trilogy. Thanks, Randy!

She had been out-movied. Twice in one day, Cirocco Jones had used her favorite mythologies against her.
"I've been Ozzed and Star-Warred," she muttered.

... I near laughed myself sideways.

Now I'm reading Yann Martel's Life of Pi. Thanks, Mom!
Martel's main character, Piscine Molitor Patel, on religion:

It was my first clue that athiests are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them -- and then they leap.
...
It's not athiests who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics.
...
To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

Whether or not I agree with him is irrelevant ... I love the way he dances the words.

Now, it is blustery and sunny out. I think the lions and lambs have taken a break from weather prediction and taken up cuddle attacking instead.

Indistinct Amanuensis ...

Of Lions and Lambs, Brent Bambry what it means if it's cold and doing nothing out. Me, I still think of as bright, warm and sunny vs. white, snowy and fluffy instead of the traditional fierce vs. calm. But it's cloudy with the sun peeking out now and then, not snowing (yet, though it's possible), around freezing, and with a mere puff of breeze. What the hell does that mean for the month? Eh? Eh?

The rest of this is pretty much the same post as yesterday's, only with way more words.

It was time ... they've both been gone for years. How long does one keep a hat noone else may wear in the front hall? Twenty-some years is long enough to keep a dead lover's hat hanging on the back of my bedroom door, I think. Birgit and Christine knew Phil, but not PJ. I told them the stories that go with each of the holes and stains on PJ's hat. I burned Phil and PJ's hats yesterday, with friends, with kids playing close by, out in the sunshine. Meant for the solstice, but fitting for a hat burning as well:

She who loved you is no more
but the part of me who was once she
is loathe to give you up again to the mists
farewell my loves, blessed be

Thinking Margot might get a chance to stop by to hang out on her birthday, Thursday, I make some cauliflower soup (which is currently back on the stove 'cuz I didn't test the barley and lentils before I added them and they're a little more firm than I like) and a curry. When I was bent in half, whisking up the cauliflower crumbs from the floor, a great song same on the radio and I leapt up ... or would have, had I not been under the cutting board. I caught the corner of it with my shoulder hard enough to rattle dishes on the counter and make a nasty mark through several shirts. After nearly passing out, stumbling around, cursing like a sailor and missing the song I was so enthused about, I realized that the shoulder ... which has been bothering me for months and months ... didn't hurt, aside from the bruisediness. I guess what I've been thinking was a soft-tissue issue is at least partially chiropractic. Cool!

I use lip balm. If my hands and/or feet are more sand papery than usual, or cracked and bleeding, I'll use lotion ... but I don't like it. In fact, I detest lotion. And I won't smear it all over. Yuck. It feels like my skin can't breathe through the stuff and every dust particle in the air sticks to the lotion on my skin. And the stuff gives me rashes. Detest it. Detest. I would rather (and have for years) put up with the dry, sandpapery, sometimes cracked and bleeding, always ashy skin (honest an' for true ... turns out pasty redheads can, in fact, have ashy skin ... colour me deeply surprised). I nod and say thank you when people recommend this lotion or that, or tell me that all my problems would be solved, if only I would moisturize. I am grateful that they care. SometimesI try this lotion ... put that in the bath ... then decide that it's worse than the alternative Sometimes it's so itchy I can't stand myself ... it almost always hurts ... but it's better than lotion. Get over it, they say ... you'll get used to it, they say. That's how much I hate having stuff on my skin. Rant, rant, rant.

So one day I pick up a bottle of avocado oil at Planet Organic Market, 'cuz it sounds like it might feel more wonderful than ew-ick-get-that-off-me and 'cuz something Randy had said about sesame oil and our kind of skin (wait! what? it's not just me being crazy?) had been rattling around in the back of my mind for a while. I've been putting it on after showering since October. My skin doesn't hurt. My tattoos don't look horribly faded. My feet aren't powder-white. My skin isn't cracking and bleeding, even though it's winter. Okie, it's still itchy out now and then, but it is still winter in Alberta, after all. It doesn't give me rashes. It doesn't make me itchy or break out. The little bottle of avocado oil lasted me three months. They didn't have more. Oh my, said the Planet O girls ... eyes wide, avocado is the heaviest oil we carry ... regular use? after every shower? Oh my! Try sweet almond. Try grapeseed. So I did ... they're okay, but not as good ... the yummy skin-ness from avocado lasts two or three days, from the others, only one or one and a half, and they make my towels smell funny. I'll look for raw sesame oil the next time I'm at the chinese market or Planet O, but in the meantime, I've asked them to please, please, please order in some more avocado oil.

And while I'm on about dry skin ...
I've been brushing the living daylights out of my hair before washing it with just water, and then rinsing with a couple teaspoons of cider vinegar and a couple tablestpoons of rosewater in a couple cups of warm water. My hair is soft and shiny (though no less crazy) and my scalp says halleluja.

Lovely Leap Day ...

Yummy tofu and mango and apple in creamy red curry sauce lunch with Nina.
Afternoon in the sun at the Mosquito Ranch with Chelsea and Barbara and l'il uns.
I burned the dead guys' hats.
I fixed my shoulder yesterday with the cutting board
My skin hasn't hurt for a while, now.
More later.

Happy Family Day ...

It is a glorious day out! Bright, sunny and warm. The windows are open, the garbage is out, and the compost (which has been full to the top since I chucked the frozen jack o'lanterns in after hallowe'en) has settled, finally.
It's one in a series of bright, sunny, warm days.
Saturday was bright, sunny, warm and windy. Mary brought Ernie in for his birthday sleep-over. We ordered Indian and went to see Jumper.
We failed to run errands yesterday and went to get him a water bottle at Earth's General Store. How cool is it that my two teenaged nephews wanted keeper water bottles for their birthdays? Then I drove Ernie home on nice dry highways.
We saw Harleys on the road ... usually a Sign of Spring, it was a sign of our annual dead-of-winter thaw. I think it's (the thaw, not the Harleys) what keeps us from going completely nuts in the winter. Last week at this time, I was taking Epona in to the dealership to find out why it was overheating. They couldn't find anything wrong with her. I think she'd just been so very frozen for so long that she couldn't thaw out enough to run properly until we'd had a couple of days of really nice weather. Poor thing.

Today's Poppet Quotes ...

"You smell like broccoli. Or chocolate. I'm not sure."

"You're such a good auntie." ... patting the top of my head

"I am going to take you to school on Special A day. I will carry you all the way to school. I will put you in my cubby. At the end of the day, I will show you for my special thing that starts with A 'cuz you start with A for Auntie Lynn."

"Why did you pour the tea on the floor?"

"Auntie Lynn, you look skinny"

Ooohlala of the North ...

Mmm, silk underthings!
The only silk underthings I own are long johns.