long days, aching muscles

I feel a little shy here, having been away from my blog for so long. Time to get re-acquainted.

Packing, moving and unpacking has been very tiring, and I am in no way done yet. I wish I was, settled in and comfortable. However, a lot of living will be done in and out of boxes until I get sorted out here.

I'm in my new office/studio space, looking south over the back deck and garden. In the apple tree to my right, house finches are searching for left over seeds in the scattered ones on the ground. It has started to snow.

Misty is running back and forth, thinking maybe she'll come inside afterall, and join Molly and Tasha. Molly and Tasha decided it has gotten cold. Being inside is nicer.

There is a little 'cubby' or play house out there just to the right of the greenhouse. An attached greenhouse, that I can hardly wait to get into, butts off the end of the new-L addition on my left. I am upstairs in the older part of the house. I know Granddaughter will have a lot of fun in the play house.

A ladybug just crawled across the back of my desk. We used to think ladybugs were good luck, until the invasion of the new ?Japanese strain a few years ago that fell like snow from the trees and crawled into every crack and cranny of houses, getting inside the window frames of older, less tightly-sealed homes. They have a nasty little bite and secrete a bitter smelling fluid when disturbed or killed.

A little red squirrel has now travelled along his skyway over to the apple tree, looking for sunflower seeds too.

The dogs and I went for a little walk earlier this afternoon. The footing is treacherous because of the melt we had for nearly 5 days. Any packed snow has turned into sheets of ice, so I couldn't walk all the way out the nearly 1 km driveway.

This spot is not really that isolated, being right out on Sturgeon Point, a long-settled area that has become a very expensive summer-cottaging spot along the lakeshore. It is also busy, being part of the Trent-Severn waterway. On weekends in good weather, snowmobiles roar past down on the lake, which alarmed my dogs greatly at first. I don't know how loud the summer boaters will be, but perhaps the trees leafing out by then will block some of the noise.

People tell me this is great country for fishing. I wouldn't know.

Years ago, in Finland, I remember getting up very early one summer morning to go out on the lake with my paternal grandmother in her wooden boat. My memory is shaky, but I believe she had put out some nets, or baited lines overnight, to catch what I think might have been some sort of white fish. Needlesss to say, she was not impressed with this strange grandchild who couldn't speak the language, etc. and was afraid of touching the fish. The fish flopped wildly about in the bottom of the boat where I had dropped it, finally flipping out over the side of the boat back into the water. That really pissed grandma off. She spluttered a bit, then just shook her head, "ai, ai, ai..."

But I do remember vividly, so that my mouth waters, a light fish soup she made, with potatoes, peas, carrots and milk...I may be mixing up two traditional soups here, one called "kesakeitto" my mom made (I was raised vegetarian) with the veggies...and "kalakeitto". I'll have to look up some of my Finnish cookbooks to see if "kalakeitto" has veggies in it. Potatoes, sure! Finns eat lots of potatoes.

My grandmother still had and used an old butter churn when I was a kid. I remember the wonder of cream going in and butter coming out! It seems to me it was a horizontal affair that rocked back and forth thanks to a crank at one end.

Funny how unreliable memory is, an image altering perhaps with the subsequent exposures to other similar, and more recent impressions on the memory made by objects in museums and antique shops.

A lovely deep yellow begonia, the petals edged with orange, sitting on the desk to my left, brightens up this grey, wintry day. At the window facing west, an asparagus fern and a shocking coleus brighten up that window. I don't know what this coleus is called, but I got cuttings from my son-in-law's father last summer. The leaves have a central flame of pink and fuschia. A wide rim of olive veined with purple surrounds the flame on each leaf. The finest pencil-outlined edging on outside of the scalloped leaves is a lime green.

Hello! The red squirred just dashed in and out of view along the ground. No doubt Misty at the window makes the squirrel nervous. No, it is back. Browzing around in a more leasurely fashion now...

By blogging right now, I'm trying to put off the unpleasant tasks of more hauling around and unpacking of boxes. I need to find some of the papers I packed. I'm not looking forward to it. I have this nasty fear of anything having to do with money, but I need to think about taxes and RRSP's at this time of year...

Last week, I was surprised one morning to wake up with a new and scary aching in my right arm. Being the proper little hypochondriac that I am, noting a few unexplained bruizes up and down the arm, I was convinced that I now have leukemia. After all my aunt died of leukemia, didn't she? I couldn't even hold a cup of coffee and I'm right handed! Truly truly very alarming indeed!! Now in hindsight, I notice the same muscles aching whenever I pick up another heavy box, so I'm trying to pace myself a little better...It seems like I'll never get to the end of the boxes, however, at this rate.

Fortify myself with more herbal tea and honey...