I'm chasing my mind at the moment. It refuses to just settle down and dust. It keeps distracting me: Look, Pat! Look at the dead flowers! Aren't they neat? After hearing Molly Peacock talk about The Paper Garden and Art Seigleman just talking about the craft of comix and an afternoon at Cosco just looking...who wants to dust?

This picture seemed appropriate...

I have waiting for several months for an insurance check. It came today...but for some reason or other they refused my request for reimbursement for orthodics. I had in fact submitted the prescription for my orthodics and a bill for my car repair...What puzzled me was that they had even considered it, created a statement for misc. and refused it.

I pray someone in that company had the grace to laugh. Now I have to find the bill for the orthodics.

Liam O'Leary was found in an large field behind an industrial area of the city. He is a profoundly sweet animal. He has been with me long enough to alas gain weight and to get to the point where he can cuddle with the other feline resident, Ciboulette. That took at least two years and still is only possible when Ciboulette is sound asleep or cold enough to tolerate another body to keep her warm.

The point of this blog is to catch hold of ideas before I forget them...and that is a challenge in itself. I sometimes forget the ideas just before writing them down...
The other reason for blogging is the vehicle for photographs ...otherwise, I just have...photographs fading on my computer.
I have a friend who is one of the first women ministers ordained in the United Church of Canada. I think she was #68. She is serving at the moment as chair of presbytery and in that position was invited to take part in the installation of two Catholic axillary bishops at Mary Queen of the World cathedral. She robed and joined the line up of robed priests taking part in the ceremony. She was of course the only woman.
Now here's where I would take liberties in the story telling. As she tells it, she slipped and fell and was rescued by the priests around her just as she entered the aisle. I would wait until she was half way up the aisle and describe her rescue as being much more dramatic. She would be pulled to her feet by six robed priests and at least one arch-bishop!
That's the manipulating of a story. One stretches the fact for the sake of the fiction.
The cat in this picture is Liam O'Leary. I feel guilty for not photographing him too often but the problem is that a black cat is not easy to photograph.

I making plans to create an appropriate box for my brain...

Yesterday as a volunteer I addressed envelopes using a mailing list that did not have postal codes and had the name of at least one deceased on it.

I offended the group a while back when I said that volunteering was easy as long as one left one brains at home...

But I had to come home, reinstall my brains, and with the help of Canada 411 find all but six of the postal codes on the mailing list. I very much wonder if said six were deceased also...

I am being glib but I do know how hard it is when someone one loves has died and mail keeps coming in for him or her.

The day after my father died, we received a well-meaning chain letter suggesting that if he prayed three times and turned in a circle four times and sent said letter on ten other people, he would go to heaven. If not, he would go to hell.

Naturally it was anonymous...someone out there buying some time in heaven...but I really wanted to find them and say: Is it too late?

Now with emails such letters are no longer anonymous. I never ever do what they say but I do worry that by not doing what they say I might be jeopardizing my afterlife...

And that's why I want to make a beautifully padded box for my brains for when I am not using them or need to leave them at home.

Two friends whose husbands have both been in hospital recently confessed that the institution got the best of them.

It is customary when one is in emergency for a nurse or orderly to come in regularly and ask: Do you know who you are? Do you know where you are? Do you know what day it is?

Both husbands understood the necessity of the questions; both husbands however just couldn't resist...

In one case, having been asked the question for the fourth time by the same nurse, another nurse came in. Before she could say anything, the husband pointed to the first nurse and said, "I'm a bit worried about her. She seems to be quite forgetful."

In the other case, the husband couldn't resist when asked did he know where he was. He replied hopefully, "Regina?"

So I did not mention to the people at the Biodome that one of their birds was loose.

And the question that I have been avoiding: Where were you on 9/11?

I was in a cabbage patch on the coast of France looking over to Mont Saint Michel.

My guilt is that I was in such an exotic location.

I certainly don't have a problem finding pictures for this blog. I have trouble finding something to say...and it's not even that. I have trouble remembering what I was going to say.

But that problem has now been solved. I have a file of quotes that I have never used. I can blog forever!

Some years are meant for asking questions; some years are meant for answering them.

I think I'm in the answering phase.

Five women, friends for fifty years, sitting at a picnic table at the Atwater market laughing in relief that we were all losing it...losing our keys, losing our laundry, losing our nouns...relieved that we were not losing our verbs!

And vistas and the obligatory flower!

Some more ink-filled pools...

At the end of a number of vistas, there are sculptures. This sculpture stands in the cow field where rumour has it that the highland cattle use it to ease their itches! Between me and the obelisk is a ha ha!

This summer I discovered Charelvoix which in itself was a treat, but I also discovered les Jardins de Quartre which is open four days a year. One walks and listens...Apart from the obvious flowers the gentleman specializes in vistas and reflections and to perfect the reflections, squid ink is used in the pools.
There are no fences; there are only ha ha's - a British term. There are moats around the fields so that the highland cattle cannot escape, but the vista is not interrupted. It is not until one comes to the edge of said moat that one realizes what is happening. I would have called it a Ah Ah but then my connection to Britain is fast fading.

I realize as I write that I used to teach this way...I'd talk assuming

that someone was listening but really I was putting my thoughts in order! I think the class would arrange as to who kept me busy whilst the rest got their work done!

August, 2009












August, 2011


Now, dare I ask the people at the Biodome if their porcupine is stuffed...or just incredibly slow?

I returned to this entry because I've been thinking a lot lately about anti-climax. The one I found in a text was: The rest of all the acts of Asa, and all his might, and the cities he built, are they not written int he chronicles of the kings of Juda? Nevertheless, in the time of his old age, he was afflicted with diseased feet.

So if I wanted to deal in anti-climax I would have to say that either the porcupine was incredibly slow...or stuffed!