Entry date: June 10, 2007

 

Spent the entire weekend in muck. Others would call it gardening, but I'm no Martha Stewart, with her pristine surroundings, proper implements and vast knowledge of plants.

 

The only plants I know the name of are dandelions and daisies. Everything else is lost in a fog. But I ventured in willingly to Farmer Clem's on Friday and optimistically grabbed a cart. One turn around the perennial aisle and my enthusiasm waned because I get instantly overwhelmed with the variety of plants on the display tables.

 

I pretend to read the little cards about how to take care of my flowers but I don't retain anything. The names of them blur together and I have a horrible habit of trying to think of all the places I have to grow these suckers, all at once. This sort of planning actually makes you stop dead in the middle of the aisle, to the chagrin of other customers. But there was another woman in the shade plant section who was also as still as a statue. I gave her a wane smile and she rolled her eyes back at me. We were kindred spirits.

 

The next awful dilemma is when I look at the forest of plants I've accumulated and start to mentally tally up the cost before I get to the register. Since math was never my long suit, I give up on that too. It just "looks" like I have too much, so I start taking away some of the more costly items and am usually left with a few sick looking impatiens and a geranium or two.

 

Well, that's no good, so I start over and pick up some more stuff. I have to plant flowers in my rock garden, window boxes, front deck box, at two cemeteries, the front door basket, pots and get some hanging plants to boot.

 

I come away with an alarming array of mismatched items. I try not to notice that I have every shade of plant imaginable and not one of them really goes together. But for some reason, every perennial plant I bought was white. That's going to look really stupid, but I paid for the darn things so in the ground they go.

 

The only thing going for me today was that it was freezing cold and foggy, with a heavy drizzle. The black flies were tucked up in bed, so that made my life a lot easier. But by the time I finished, my pants were wet to my knees, my fingers were frozen and my running shoes were ruined.

 

My "casual" method of planting would drive true gardeners up the wall, since I use only one tool for everything. A spoon thingy...I forget the name of it. And yes, it does result in a few casualties and the odd six foot plant stuck in amongst the ground cover specimens, but I don't think my hummingbirds or bees mind.

 

Why stress myself about what things are called and what they need to survive. I throw Miracle Grow on them once in a blue moon and water the really desperate looking specimens and in the end I think we're both happy, but I'll never know, will I? Plants don't talk. Well, maybe they do and they're just not speaking to me.

 

Probably out of spite.
 

Entry date: May 12, 2007

 

Oh my gosh.....a robin is building her nest in our old fir tree in the front yard!! It's so low that you can walk up to it, but I won't of course. I don't want to spook her. There's nothing more irritating then having the in-laws poking their noses into your new digs!

 

But I'll be able to watch the proceedings from the deck, with a pair of binoculars.

This is the second time robins have built so close to the house. A few years ago, a robin made her nest in our cedar tree next to the deck. I just had to look out the kitchen window to see everything. There were three babies that year.....Huey, Dewey and Lewey. They were adorable!! And I was like a mother hen when they finally flew out of the nest and lived on our front lawn for a few days. Their parents worked morning noon and night to keep them fed while I spent my time on the look-out for cars and cats.

 

Well, this was the perfect weekend to discover this nice surprise. I must send Mrs. Robin a Mother's Day card and wish her all the best.

Entry date: May 8, 2007

 

My backyard has become a movie set for the Alfred Hitchcock classic The Birds.

 

I go outside to hang towels on the clothesline and can't hear myself think. Between the yellow finches, the purple finches, the crows, the junco's, the purple martins, the chickadees, the mourning doves, blue jays and sparrows, the racket is overwhelming. Not to mention the four squirrels who chase each other up and down tree trunks all day, chattering to beat the band.

 

Of course that's what happens when you provide the neighbourhood with a free lunch. And don't tell me they're not working together. They have a system and I swear they take turns on the early morning shift, trying to get us out of bed. 

 

They hover on the tree branches and glare at us through the bedroom window. These little finches might only weigh a couple of ounces each, but put four hundred of them together with their eight hundred beady little eyes and you can be seriously creeped out. 

 

I have a ledge outside my study window where I sprinkle sunflower seeds every morning. A charming idea once upon a time. A few feathered friends would enhance my writing experience, and bring serenity and contemplation while I scribbled away. 

 

HA!!

 

I now use a shovel to supply the greedy little pigs with their first meal of the day. Watching the antics of these tiny beasts is mesmerizing. I haven't written a thing for weeks! It's like watching a soap opera.

I've learned that females are the same the world over, whether they walk or fly. These little madams spent the entire day shrieking at each other to get off the ledge. The poor males are routinely pushed to one side and most of them give up after awhile and just let the girls duke it out. I've seen less action on Jerry Springer. 

 

Thank goodness for my crows. There are ten of them who show up three or four times a day to chow down. I know they look like the Hell's Angles, all dressed in black, with their menacing size and swagger but these fellas are the world's biggest sooks. They take off at the slightest noise. The riff raff around them don't even break a sweat and stay firmly planted, pecking away at their seeds. I can't understand it. Have you ever seen a crow parading around on the side of a busy highway? Nothing fazes them. Eighteen wheelers go by and they're out there going, "Na, na, na na na" two inches from the pavement. And yet I'll clear my throat and they jump out of their feathers, all of them tearing off, swooping over the roof and out of sight.

 

I must admit I have a soft spot for the chickadees. They're so polite. They take one little seed and away they go to hammer it against a twig until it opens. Meanwhile their cousins are stuffing their faces and spitting out shells left and right. They have no shame.

 

But my all time favorites should be here by the weekend. Hummingbirds were reported in Truro yesterday, so I surmise they'll be in Homeville by Saturday....Sunday at the latest, depending on traffic. I have their feeders ready and waiting. Last year we had eight regulars at the house and just about that many at the cottage. These little guys are Spitfires with wings, who spend their days dive-bombing each other in their frantic attempts to keep the feeders for themselves. Sharing is not in their vocabulary. They remind me of my kids.

 

But like kids, even though you growl and grump about the mess and the expense, there's no way you wouldn't have them in your life. So I'll be out there tomorrow, feeding the multitudes. Just call me Saint Lesley of Assisi.

Entry date: March 29th, 2007

 

From now on, whenever I think of our trip to Vancouver, I'll think of the word "UP".

 

I've never looked UP so often in my life. I spent a week looking UP at gigantic trees in Stanley Park, looking UP at the mountains, looking UP at glass office towers and apartment buildings, looking UP at huge cedar bushes and looking UP at glorious waterfalls.

 

Needless to say I had a kink in my neck the entire time.

 

But of course I'll also think of the word "DOWN". I tried not to look DOWN when I was frozen in the middle of the Lynn Canyon Suspension Bridge. I lost my voice and my will to live when I glimpsed the rocky bottom four thousand feet below. I mouthed "Help" at John who was smugly on the other side waiting for me to thaw and taking pictures of me to amuse the kids.

 

It didn't help when three dogs ran onto the bridge willy nilly with their young gorgeous owners jogging after them. (athletic couple in serious spandex).

 

Now when you jog on a suspension bridge it tends to sway UP and DOWN. As they breezed by they were nice enough to warn me to keep my shoes on the metal slats and not the wood steps. "You won't SLIP that way," the hunk said as he waved goodbye.

SLIP. Now there's a word that you don't want on your mind in the middle of a suspension bridge. A suspension bridge that's wobbling with dogs and beautiful people and me on it.

Quite frankly, I have no idea how I got off the damn thing. I only know I had to get back on it to get to the car, something John had failed to mention earlier.

 

We also went UP and DOWN on the Grouse Mountain cable car. This is a sensible thing to do when you're recovering from suspension bridges. John looked UP and out at the fabulous view. I looked DOWN and in at everyone's ski boots until we got to the top.

 

Fortunately I was able to recover from these traumatic events by pure luck. When we rented a car at the airport, the type we requested (old and cheap) wasn't available. They upgraded us to a Lincoln Zephyr and this baby had HEATED SEATS!

 

John being the rugged type, didn't want his seats heated. Bully for him. I had my front seat turned on full blast the entire time. It was a veritable toaster oven.

 

Some day when I'm rich and famous (don't laugh....I'm doing The Secret) I'm gonna get me a car that has heated seats. Of course by then it will most likely be frowned upon. Everything that gives you pleasure these days is environmentally hazardous to the planet. So I may be stuck with an old hot water bottle under my tush, but I'll always remember the love affair I had with the front seat of that car in beautiful Vancouver.
 

Click here to view pictures from the trip!

Entry date: February 20th, 2007

 

The good news is I've lost ten pounds. The bad news is I'm going on a road trip tomorrow for four days. Now past behavior would indicate that this is just the excuse I need to stop dieting and start a conga line right to the nearest buffet table.

 

But I've been watching Oprah and I now know the Secret! I just have to say I'm grateful to the fat I carry around and then it disappears. At least I think that's what she said. Or maybe I have to start saying "I'm thin" forty thousand times a day, because apparently I am what I think, and then the fat falls right off.

 

But every time I say, "I'm thin" I start to laugh hysterically, and I don't think I'm fooling my unconscious mind one darn bit.

 

In case of emergency (i.e. when hubby opens his pop, chips, chocolate bar, Joe Louis, cashews and chocolate milk in the hotel room) I've brought my own bag of goodies. I have those new Thinsations Oreo cookies, I have Crispy Mini's, raisins, raw almonds, and those thin one hundred calorie chocolate bars....six of them.....but who's counting.

 

I'll be fine. As long as I don't eat all of them at one sitting.

 

So that's the snack situation solved. I also have my little WW book that deals with restaurant menus but this seems to cause anxiety with family members. I can't imagine why. So I take a little longer to make up my mind. So what? And apparently they don't appreciate when I tell them how many points they're ingesting with their fatty, disgusting, really tasty meals. I've actually been given the finger in the middle of Boston PIzza! How's that for grateful??

 

Hopefully I'll have good news to report next week.

 

Oh yes, my winter boots. Stretching helped. When I stand in them with only stockings on and band-aids on my heels, they're very comfortable. It's walking in them that's the problem. I either go nowhere for the rest of my life or throw them in a goodwill bin.

 

We'll see.

Entry Date: February 1, 2007

 

I started Weight Watchers last week. This is the thirty-fifth time I've joined. I once came within two pounds of my goal weight for Lifetime membership. The most expensive two pounds in history.

 

The good news is I lost 7.4 pounds the first week. The bad news is I have 90 more to go. You see, that's the thing with writing. Your fingers get a lot of exercise but your butt doesn't move all day.

 

Perhaps if I share my struggle with the world, I'll be publicly humiliated into sticking to my "flex" plan. But I wouldn't count on it. I seem to thrive on humiliation. You can't be a mother and not.

 So wish me luck. I'll need it, because tonight I ate some unsalted sesame seeds, knowing that they're a healthy snack, but no one thought to tell me that 1/3 cup is equal to 8 points!!! 8 points!!!! 8 flippin' points for a few seeds. So that blows today all to hell.

 

 

I need inspiration, so I open my January 2007 issue of Chatelaine to page 46, so I can gaze at the fabulous picture of Jann Arden. She's managed to lose fifty pounds while on the road, and believe me, that's hard. I'm learning fast how hard it is.

 

So hurray for her and hopefully, hurray for me. Of course if I lose all my weight, I won't have any angst left, and no doubt my writing will suffer, so I better not get too skinny.

 

Snort...like I'm ever going to have that problem!!

Entry Date: January 12, 2007

 

Household accidents can be downright dangerous, if not  fatal, but you never assume it will be you. It's always the guy up the street or someone's cousin who accidentally impaled themselves on a potato peeler.

 

Now this is when it turned into slow motion. I felt myself lurch forward and I tried to stay upright, but I had too much momentum going, thanks to the extra twenty pounds I put on over Christmas.

I saw the hard edge of my mother-in-law's tea table on my right. I saw the dog sleeping peacefully on the rug to my left. There was no option. It was Sarah or death. Her eyes got bigger and bigger as she realized I was about to fall out of the sky right on top of her.

 

I can still see my mothers strawberry bowl fly out of my hand and go sailing over Sarah's head, cherries scattering to the four corners of the room. But I had bigger concerns. Like how I was going to land on top of Sarah without crushing every bone in her body. The laptop had me a little concerned too. It was really going to hurt my face when I careened into it.

 

Luckily for me, Sarah had the sense to close the laptop at the last second, allowing me to fall against her soft bosom. What really saved us was the recliner, because as the rest of me punched into her stomach, the chair went backward as far as it could go, giving us a sort of trampoline effect before we came to a complete stop.  

 

Sarah did ask if I was okay. I'll give her that much. But while I slid to the floor crying about my broken toe, and yelling for someone to get the dog who's now eating my cherries, she's laughing her head off and typing on her computer to report this mishap to three hundred of her closest friends on MSN. And yes! She was on the phone, because the guy she was talking with asked her if my toe was swollen and purple.

 

It was.

 

Whoever said, "Life is just a bowl of cherries" has never been to my house and I bet has never had to clean up cherry juice from a beige rug.
 

Entry Date: Nov.15, 2006

 

I did the unthinkable last week. I buckled under the increasing weight of rampant commercialism and tossed Christmas lights into my Wal-Mart cart. 

 

What is going on?

 

Why am I frantic to find clear outdoor mini-lights with a green cord in early November? Because when I go to try and buy them two weeks before Christmas they only have the yucky blinky muli-colored ones with white cords left.

 

The same thing happened when I tried to buy a new angel for the top of our tree last year. To my horror, the construction paper angel that Sarah made in kindergarten finally fell apart. After I stopped crying and demanded the kids hurry up and give me grandchildren, I went in search of a new one a week before Christmas.

 

HA!

All that was left were $5 crappy ones from The Buck or Two store and $500 angels that resembled something you'd find in the Cistine Chapel. The normal $50 ones had been scooped up by Christmas terrorists Boxing Day 2005!

STOP IT! You're making the rest of us look bad. I've been stuck with the same garbage on my tree year after year because I can't find anything decent to buy in December. And all because I refuse to buy Christmas ornaments on 50% off sale tables in January. By then I'm heartily sick of Christmas, as I've been listening to Christmas carols blaring from mall speakers since the day after Halloween.

 

I know there are bigger problems in the world, but wouldn't it be really nice if there was no mention of Christmas until maybe December 11th?

 

When I was growing up in Montreal, one of my best memories was being taken downtown at night to look at the sparkling and lit up Christmas display windows of The Bay and Eaton's and Ogilvy's. There were crowds of kids, all of us in those heavy woolen hats and mitts that weigh ten pounds when wet. We'd be pointing and ohhing and ahhing and I remember all the adults were smiling, and not one of them had a camera to capture the moment. We lived it. It would be really cold and really snowy and almost December 25th. It was enough to make my sister and I frantic with excitement.

 

I wonder how thrilling it is for little kids to see Christmas decorations for two months before Santa Claus actually arrives.

 

Okay....I'll get off my Scrooge soapbox for now, but I'll still be muttering to myself at the mall.
 

Entry Date: Monday, October 16, 2006

 

What is it with me and rain? First it was getting soaked at the Rolling Stones concert, and then on Thursday I had my radio interview, tv interview and launch during a monsoon! My hair was a nightmare thanks to all that humidity and I was sure no one would show up at the launch. Who wants to get soaked trying to find parking downtown? But 40 people came. I was stunned, which isn't unusual for me.
 

 Although if I'm being truthful....which is what blogs are all about, supposedly.....3 people were with Frog Hollow who were selling my books, 3 were with Nimbus who publish my book, 3 were with me...hubby, son and mother-in-law...8 were friends who had been invited. So that makes what? I'm not good at math.

 

 

That makes 23 people I didn't know! Wait, make that 22 since I have to count myself I guess. All I know is that it seemed like a sea of heads when I stood at the podium. 

 

To make my life complete, it was POURING RAIN for the entire drive home to Cape Breton. I mean, sheets of rain. Rain so hard you couldn't see! Tidal waves of rain caused by idiot truck drivers going 140 kph, carrying monster loads of lethal things like propane, logs and iron bars. You better believe I kissed my dirty kitchen floor the minute I got home, thankful to be alive!

 

I hope I get over this rain jinx. I should do myself a favour and buy a good pair of rubber boots. Or an ark.

Entry Date: Sept 24, 2006

Okay.

 

So just ask me how my weekend went....go ahead...ask me. Okay I'll tell you. My husband John, daughter Sarah and I went to Halifax for the weekend, where we picked up our son Paul and went to the Rolling Stones concert on Saturday night.

Get this. We stood....STOOD.....with fifty thousand other idiots from 4:30 p.m. until 10:30 p.m in the POURING RAIN.

 

We had a blast!! Once you're wet, you're wet. I mean it was miserable and we all wore garbage bags over our rain clothes and had a huge tarp around us, and our clothes will never be the same again, and our hair will never be the same again, and our feet will never be the same again, but how often do you bond as a family like that? All four of us singing (badly) "I can't get no....satisfaction!!" as Mick Jagger gyrated his bony hips about forty feet away! (The stage came towards us at one point and they got closer and closer...I thought I was hallucinating with all the weed in the air.)

It'll be a great story in fifty years....just about when I recover from the ordeal!

 

The next day I did a reading from my new book Shoot Me at the Word on the Street Festival. Since I was stuffed up from my bonding experience the night before, my voice was a little cracky and weird, but everyone in Halifax sounded the same way, so who cared.

 

And of course my children were supposed to attend the reading, and they sort-of did. Sarah was pacing outside the building on a cell phone trying to give directions to her three girlfriends who'd parked about two miles away by mistake and were running along the Halifax waterfront to try and get there on time, and Paul and his girlfriend had just woken up after John called him to say "where are you?" The answer wasn't supposed to be "in bed."

 

So three quarters of the way through the reading I'm trying not to be aware that my out-of-breath children are running through the venue with friends and significant others in tow. To make up for it, they plunked themselves into the front seats and clapped vigourously as I said, "Thank you for coming" and walked off the stage.

Not that something like that is very special for them. I've been reading to them since they were in the womb and I'm sure they're heartily sick of it. As Sarah's friends apologized to me afterwards, I told them not to be ridiculous and I can read to them any old time they want. Strangely, they all started yammering to Sarah and the subject was dropped.

 

I'm starting to get the hang of these things. After a year in the 'business' and with my second book to flog, I'm not as freaked out about having to show up for these events any more. Once upon a time I assumed I'd run away in a flood of tears if no one showed up for a reading or a signing.

And it has happened.

 I had two people come for a reading in New Glasgow on the most glorious Friday evening in early summer. Believe me, if I didn't have to go I wouldn't have been there either. But I had the nicest time. Just me, the librarian, the book seller (who's children won't be attending university), my husband, the two ladies and the camera guy. (Yes, it was taped. Just me and the empty seats.)

 

And then there was the signing in the dead of summer in Antigonish. It happened during the Lobster Festival weekend that everyone in the surrounding counties wait all year for apparently. 

I became fast friends with the mall's security guard.

 

But it's all part of this wonderful journey. I was thrilled to be asked to read at Word on the Street. What a pleasure to be surrounded by people who love books and who love to read and who work so hard to promote reading. I still have to pinch myself when I realize that I'm now on the other side of the desk actually signing books instead of just buying them. To meet other writers and know that I am one of them now, is just sinking in.

 

I have satisfaction up the ying yang.