Dinner at the Surf

 

Above: Four bundles of clothes, some for The Gabe Shop to help raise money for the medical clinic, and the majority to People for a Healthy Community to give to their unhoused clients. I also boxed all the books that I want to get rid of and wrote to the contact person for the annual library fundraiser. The library hosts a huge book sale every year in our community hall. Progress!

I spent a good part of the day trying on all the clothes, sorting them into piles and then bundling and labeling them. It’s work that I’ve wanted to do for ages but I’m a seriously competent procrastinator. I’m full of energy for this work. Thank you, Tezspire! For two years I did nothing. I hired people to do everything because my asthma was so ridiculously bad. But now, I have the energy to do chores and enthusiasm to do them. It’s like the old days!

I quite working at 13:30 and Sheba and I went walking. It was so lovely outside, I had to take advantage of it. Plus, I wanted to do a lot of walking during the day because at 5:45, on the first day of our new and stable Pacific Time, Eoin and François picked me up and we went to The Surf for dinner. It was a delight to be with them and to go out for dinner. I had a blast, and I was home early enough to chill for a while before bedtime.

I accepted the request for two cakes. They don’t want them until July 4^th. I’m not charging them, but I will ask them to pay for out-of-pocket expenses which will be very modest as I always have tons of flour, chocolate, butter and icing sugar in hand. They’re having 70-80 guests, so both cakes will be sheet cakes. They are very hard to make because I make large thin sheets of cake on a cookie sheet, and they are challenging to maneuver. I must flip them on top of each other and it’s brutally hard.

Dinner was a blast. It was wonderful to be eating dinner in daylight. On a beautifully sunny evening. It really feels good to be alive. Winter is over.  Spring officially starts in two weeks. I adore Eoin and François. We never lack for things to talk about, and we are all always ready for a laugh. It is sad that Jay is gone and that we are not three instead of four. Whenever I get together with them, I wear something of Jay’s so that he is still ‘with’ us. 

I spoke to soon. Winter ain’t over. Last night, Winter came to deliver its last cold breath. I awoke in a cold, cold house this morning. I was out in the cold and black fetching wood to light a big fire to get the house warm.

I got an email from Aidan who’s happy with my database work. He’s okay with me taking a break from adding people as I stay busy with a big Spring cleaning at Pinecone Park. Today’s chore is fetching all the crap in the attic space that went up there when I moved in. I’ll go through everything and discard as much as I can in advance of calling the disposal service.

No More Standard Time

 

Yesterday began on a high. I spent the early morning hours of darkness finishing the sorting of all my mementos. A huge, unsorted box of clippings, photographs, documents, receipts, letters, show programs and promotional materials, etcetera, etcetera, have been sorted. I now have three small boxes: one with old photos, one for letters and other paper souvenirs, and one with things for Steve to sort through when he is here in the Summer.

And then, at 6:30, it was evident from the sky that we were going to have a lovely bright sunny morning at least, and maybe an entire sunny day. I was happy to know that Her Highness and I would enjoy a lovely and warm morning walk before we went to the post office. I had several letters to mail to friends, each one with photographs I discovered and that they might enjoy seeing and keeping.

More good news: My cistern is 60% full. It’s filling nice and slowly. I shall be climbing back up on it today to spray the valve with WD40 today, and I’ll also be getting started on my closet. I’ve been wanting to sort through it and discard a lot of things for ages. It feels good to be paring down my accumulated things. It’s positively thrilling to go into my studio now and see total order. I did a thorough cleaning and sorting of things in it last Fall.

And finally, I did not light a fire yesterday morning. There was no need for it, and I like to save money and wood as soon as I can. However, I lit it for my evening on the chaise.

After lunch, I got busy in my closet. I took all my beautiful and terribly expensive dress shirts to The Gabe Shop. It’s a secondhand store that sells goods and gives all the money earned from sales to the medical clinic and other medical assistance groups on the island. They were very happy to receive every shirt. 

This morning, I got started on my pants. I have scores of pairs of pants and scores more of shorts. I don’t need as many as I have, so I am preparing another donation to The Gabe Shop, and I’m also packaging a lot of other clothes to give to People for a Healthy Society, an incredible agency on the island that supports the unhoused, homebound elders with meals on wheels services and many other services, and people with disabilities. 

Last night, the usual, but this morning began with changing my clocks for the very last time. No more Standard Time. We are now on Pacific Time permanently. 

This morning has dawned brilliant and clear, and it’s lovely and mild. We enjoyed out morning walk and then I came home to do more work on my closet and packaging clothes that I want to donate. I’m still on a break from the SPACE database, and I finished my first Kate Atkinson book, so I am focusing today on Spring cleaning.

A Wet Day

Friday was wet. I chose not to walk with our friends. I was not up for wet forest walking, and so Sheba and I went for a short walk close by and I came home to continue working on the huge box of ‘memories.’ Although it is not without some concern, I discarded photos that have meant a great deal to me in the past. Disenchanted with Françoise as well as Don and Connie, I chose to delegate souvenirs of their lives to the bin.

I was greatly affected by the death of a friend a zillion years ago whose estate I was part of settling. All his photos went into the bin, and it seemed so incredibly sad to see them in the garbage. I’m on a slow course of action to ensure that everything non-essential is gone from Pinecone Park. I’m collecting all that I want gone in the studio, and later this year I will call Gabriola Disposal and have it all taken away.

Throwing out all my ‘precious memories’ was an interesting experience. All my reviews of shows, articles about me in the press, over a hundred photographs, tapes, diplomas, and so, so many things about the Tyrell, York and Loranger families that once meant so much to me but that now evoke little emotion. Some things I saved, but the mementos that remain are now in a very small box.

I worked on sorting things from the huge box all morning. I put some things in envelopes to send to friends who are featured in the article or photographs, and I’m going through everything again soon to sort things for Steve to see when he comes in the Summer, in case he wants to keep some of them.

I’d been on the go all day, so when lunchtime came, I fed everyone and then settled onto the chaise to read for a while. I loved being still. It rained all day, but it wasn’t super heavy rain, so I went out to the cistern again after lunch and saw clearly that it is slowly filling. I had a regulator put on my pump; it ensures that the pump stays on for only 10 minutes per hour, otherwise, it would empty the well and the pump would burn out. Filling the cistern will take three days or more.

We went into the village to shop, and then we went for a walk in the rain. I got some new shoes, that’s why my bone spurs have been hurting. So, I soaked the back of my left shoe in water and did some bending of it before we went, and it made a huge difference. 

It rained all day, and in the afternoon low, low cloud obscured the treetops and gave a ghostly, bluish hue to the visible part of the forest. But it was warm, and I loved the eeriness in the forest. I am extremely happy here, and a big part of that is living in nature, in the forest. If only I’d known at a younger age.

Last night was the usual.

It’s going to be a dull and damp day today. We shall go into the village to go to the post office and to pick up some groceries, and then I’ll read and do more sorting of things and rearranging my storage of souvenirs and clothes. I enjoy doing the very practical chores I’ve been doing. I love getting rid of unnecessary things. 

Cistern Crisis Averted

I saw a mouse flee Fred’s curiosity and go into my hall cupboard. That led to me removing the stuff on the floor so Fred and Ethel could do what is natural for them, and one of the things I removed was a very large box with “Memories” written on it in felt pen.

The box was the repository of souvenirs from my life. Programs from both visual art shows and performing arts events that I conceived of and produced, and lots and lots of photographs. I found a promissory note from asshole Iqbal Grewal who stole $4,280 of grant money from a project I’d hired him to help me with many, many years ago. He has never paid a cent back.

I also found a postcard that I sent to my beloved Aunt Audrey from here. I wrote it when Don and Connie and I came here to stay when I was a very young whippersnapper. The front is a lovely pencil drawing of Surf Lodge where we were staying and where I go to eat quite often. And I found tons of stuff pertaining to my search for information about my birth parents. 

I threw most everything away as I have no children to give it to. It was sad to discard it all, but everything has been in that box for decades and I never go into it, so why keep it. I’m on a mission to get rid of everything not essential. One thing I could not discard was a photocopy of a note Françoise, my birth mother, had written to the orphanage I was in. 

I went to the orphanage when I was about 25 years old. That’s when I was given the letter and it thrilled me to see the handwriting of my true mother. But they had redacted it. There were a couple of black bars through things in the letter that the orphanage did not want me to know, the fuckers. Within days of receiving the photocopy, all the words had faded away and only the black bars remain. I find it to be a very poignant souvenir of the absurdity and unfairness of adoption practices back in the day.

I abandoned my work on the box to take Her Highness on our morning walk on a very beautiful morning. We were too late to hear the dawn chorus, but we had a long and wonderful walk together, and then we came home. I puttered until lunchtime, fed the brood and got on the chaise to do some reading. But I didn’t last long staying indoors on so beautiful a day.

And what a fucking miracle it was that I found my mojo for garden work. I got off the chaise and went out to work on the Raspberry bed. It felt very good to be outside and working on the gardens. There are weeks of work ahead on the beds, and I will have to order wood for next season soon.

I put up eight heavy rebar rods in the bed and then used twine to create a soft fence that would help to keep the canes upright. And when I was done, I did an hour of work on tidying and cleaning up the shed. The shed was messier than it has ever been, but now it looks much better. I’ve more to do, but I’ll get to it soon. I am now in outdoor mode when it is not raining.

There were a lot of empty cardboard boxes in the shed, so I decided to burn them and to burn some of the deadheaded detritus that was in the yard. So, I uncovered my burn barrel and lit my lighter. And I am eternally grateful that I decided to use the barrel. As I worked on loading it up, I heard water trickling into my cistern, and it didn’t sound right.

I went out to the cistern and was shocked to see that it was practically empty. It sounded like a child was pissing into it. I fetched the ladder and climbed up onto the cistern and discovered that the lever controlling the water flow was stuck. As soon as I freed it up, a thick stream of water started flowing. I was very relieved that the problem was so easily solved because I feared having to bring in the heavy artillery.

I’m going to have to do more work on it. I will spray the lever with WD40, but I left that to do on the next sunny day. For now, I just want to get the cistern filled. I am so glad that I worked outside yesterday and noticed the problem. I am profoundly grateful for my love of being outdoors on fine days. I discovered the problem just in time. Just a couple more showers and I would have been out of water.

Totally chuffed about getting started on my outdoor season, I quit at 15:30 and took Her Highness for a walk. I’d earned my right to a trail walk and then some reading time. Crisis averted.

The evening was like just about every evening of the past five months. But I read more in the evening because I am seriously enjoying my first (of six) Kate Atkinson detective mystery. I’m loving it. The best part of my evening was hearing from Eoin and François. We are going to the Surf for dinner together on Sunday night. Woo hoo.

Today is going to be wet, but man-oh-man is it lovely and warm. When I got up, I was out in the dark checking on the cistern, and it is very slowly filling up. And thank God! We’ll walk this morning with our friends—well, some of them. Friday is a day when several often bail. Later today, I’ll read more of the book that I’m loving, and we’ll have a nice lazy day.