Monthly Archives: July 2009

Body Heat

Posted on by Ann

The last few days have been scorching and this practically on the heels of my whining about a dud summer. We don’t have air conditioning, central or window box. Even the heat waves we can get are not long enough to warrant the expense of a central system, but as our bedrooms are the dormer attic type, we caved and purchased one of those room units that vent to the outside via the attic. It only cools the upstairs and that’s with doors open, but it makes a difference in the quality of one’s sleep.

I grew up without air conditioning. When I was about fourteen, Dad purchased a unit for the kitchen window that basically cooled the kitchen and living room. The summer I left for university, for reasons I still don’t know, Dad decided to install central air. So while I was sweltering in a dormer attic room of Currier Hall, my siblings were living the life of Reilly with central a/c and another out of character purchase for my father – cable television.

Air conditioning was erratic in my apartment years. Sometimes I had it. Mostly I didn’t. It wasn’t until I was 33 and a first time home owner that I lived in true comfort during the sweaty Iowa summers.

When I moved to Alberta, Rob assured me that “heat”, “humidity” and “summer” were near mutually exclusive. The summer we got married, we had a heat wave of 30C or better for nearly a month and a half. Although the humidity really isn’t taxing on a non-native used to summers when it sometimes equaled the temperature, sleeping in an attic bedroom that never cooled was exhausting. Throw in the whole newlywed thing and we were both wrung out zombies for the first few months.

Last night reminded me of that summer. I was baked to the point of migraine. I woke once in the middle of the night and fleetingly realized that one could probably fry an egg on my stomach – and this was in a room with the a/c running its little motor out.

Today the winds have shifted a bit and there is a slightly cool caress in the breeze, but we are exhausted with the effort of keeping hydrated and staving on spontaneous combustion by whatever means necessary.

Hunting The Crimbleworm #fridayflash

Posted on by Ann

Hunting the Crimbleworm

Crimbleworms are crunchy like carrots from the crisper and best served chilled with shredded cabbage and cucumber slices over a bed of crisps crackling from the pot.

Being the youngest, Jasper and I were sent to dig the crimbleworms though it meant rising long before the double sun and trekking two hours into the Tweed Forest which ranged the whole back side of the property we farmed at the time.

“Be grateful its not kraken I’ll be sending you for,” Mama would say with a swat of the wooden spoon that was an extension of her own hand when my brothers and I were wee. Pap had whittled it from one of the large branches that overhung near half of the veggie garden. He battled the shade until the day he died.

The Tweed is gone now. Even the charred cremains of the old wood have long since been blown to destinations far off, but when I was a girl, it was grand. Not a bit like The Otherworld that shadowed it and whose door is no longer marked, or gods be hoped, accessible.

Crimbleworms spent their days deep in the loam around the Spiraling Oaks but for a few hours just before the dawn when they would poke their wee blank blind faces above the dirt. For what? I daresay no one knows. But Jasper and I would perch like crows on the bench like roots of the oak with eagle eyes on the ground, a trowel in one hand and basket in the other and wait. It was important not to strike too soon or the ones not yet close to the surface would be frightened back to the root system.

Jasper would count off in a whisper that echoed in the stillness before full light, and when he said,

“Thirty.”

And we would leap like the tigres Old Mam told tales about in the firelight before bed.

Just Updating a Bit

Posted on by Ann

Since tomorrow is #fridayflash, I thought perhaps I should just bring all my dear and gentle readers up to date on the goings on in my life. It fascinates me that it interests you to be honest.

Rob is better, but there is concern that his condition will morph into something chronic that will lead to surgery down the line. There are steps that can be taken to lessen the risk, but it is not something over which he has total control which his Virgo nature is not at all down with.

Edie, number one daughter, is now dealing with a douchebag roommate too. He was at one time a favored candidate for romantic possibilities, but now he is merely a cat-napper who appears to be trying to stick her with the last month’s rent on the house they have been sharing this past year. He moved out several months ago to live with a young lady who, I believe, was married a whooping couple of months when she threw her husband over to chase down and bag Edie’s roommate – who is not quite the prize one would suspect him of being if he caused a married woman to such lustful idiocy.

The cat in question is one of the many descendants of our former cat, Bouncy. You might remember the story. She adopted us and moved her litter behind a stack of lumber by our garage. Bouncy proved too crazy for us to keep and we found a good home for her in the city. The woman who took her remarked that Bouncy reminded her of her own late mother. I think it was the eyes. Anyway, the kittens have gone on to have kittens who have always had kittens. Scuzzy Roommate absconded with one of the grandkittens much to Edie’s horror. She is now in negotiations to get it back.

I don’t like to remember the men I involved myself with when I was Edie’s age, but watching her and Mick remind me of the less than stellar choices. I wonder if that is par for the experiences of women who do not meet and marry in the late teens or early twenties. Perhaps.

On the writing front, Sundogged is proceeding at a slower clip but I like the direction. I also have a new idea for beginning the memoir and a published friend of mine has offered an introduction to her agent when I have something to present – which I am planning to have by summer’s end. I need only a proposal and the first three chapters based on my research and I have way more than that.

I am not going to Williamette. The plan was to drive and with Rob’s recent ailment a long road trip is not wise. Disappointing but there is a conference in Surrey in October I am considering now instead. But I haven’t checked the dates, it may conflict with yoga teacher training.

Yes, I am inches away from committing myself to a nine month course in the instruction of hatha. At the end I would be able to teach and there are more possibilities for that around here than one would think. Trollope advised writers to have a day job, but the thought of teaching teens unappeals on so many levels at this point in my life. My wise former English supervisor, Jerry Wadden, always recommended taking breaks from the classroom and changing grade levels frequently. I followed the latter advice but was never able to do the former. I like the idea of yoga. My yogina is on holiday but one of my other favorite instructors, Ani, filled in for her yesterday. I would so like to be able to do what she does.

Blogher begins tonight in Chicago. I am strangely torn about not being there despite knowing that in the pantheon of weblogs, I matter not at all.

So, between Dee’s swim lessons, sleep-overs and her birthday, the next days are full. Especially when one adds the continuing reno and purging, a trip to the city to unload things we don’t want on Mick in her new apartment (where she should be enjoying the solitude but is dealing with a barely wanted guest) and of course, writing – there is always the writing.

Tomorrow’s flash is fantasy based. I hope you will stop by to read and comment. Next week might be more Eubie Blake. I finally got a hold of a library copy of Pride, Prejudice and Zombies which might inspire me.