Summer Love

When the weather couldn't be better and everyone is walking around looking like they have just overdosed on Vitamin "D", I can't help but think about everything that I personally love about the summer and then this leads me to make the very sincere pact that "I, Andrea Rathborne, do so solemnly swear, that I will never work, full-time through another summer". There. Written for all (three of you) to see and therefore set in stone.

Now, on to what I love about summer. In no particular order:

1) The smell of my children at the end of a good, sunny, hot day when their hair is warm and their skin is damp and their eyes are half-closed. They smell like the most delicious, baked coconut and sunshine bread.

2) The sound of the fan in the night when I wake up

3) The smell of a summer rain on the hot pavement

4) The crunchy grass under my bare, brown and earthy looking feet

5) The taste of berries right off the vine, plant, bush, tree...in all forms (in salads, sauces, galletes, jams, with cheese. I can't get enough berries.

6) The sounds of the crickets at night

7) The sound of waves outside a rustling tent that my whole family is asleep in

8) The sounds of gatherings. Friends, together, laughing, talking, sharing a story...

9) The warmth of my cat, Shirley, when she lies sleeping in a sunny spot

10) The squeals of my children as they run along the beach, collecting shells and splashing in the water

11) The satisfaction of filling a bowl with all kinds of veggies, grown in my very own garden

12) The anticipation and excitement as another weekend comes closer and our plans for another adventure start to fall into place


I could write endlessly on what I love about summer. Maybe I will just start here and then post again when I need a little reminder about how fortunate I am to live in this beautiful place.

Brass

Quick and to the point.

By this time each summer, my summer hair (which may have to be styled liked my very dear friend...you know who you are!) looks like a polished trombone. That's right. I have Brassy hair. I can admit it. The question is, what can I do about it that won't cost me a fortune. Well, I believe I have the answer and I am going to share.

In a bottle of your favourite shampoo (it should be neutral in colour) add a few drops of both red and blue food-colouring and mix. Add the right amount of each to make the shampoo turn into a brilliant shade of violet.

Wash your hair as you normally would but leave the shampoo on for a little bit longer before rinsing. Voila (no, not violet) brass is gone. really.

now and then

On Saturday night, almost a week ago, 14 thousand people gathered to listen to music, sing, yell and sway together for the Coldplay concert. Although I have always been a music fan I have always been a bit reserved when it comes to live concerts. So often I have gone to a concert with all the hype and fanfare only to feel some amount of disappointment - the band was too small to see because of where our seats were or the sound in the venue was terrible and everything sounded like a karaoke night gone bad or the band, despite their CD's sounding amazing, just really couldn't sing at all in real life.

This was not the case on Saturday. In fact, I am still walking around, humming Coldplay tunes and remembering how it felt to be with so many people who were all completely committed to the event. There was a special, electrical feeling to the evening that I can't quite put my finger on. Was it the warmth of the summer evening? Was it the gathering of old friends? Was it the music? the singing? the intimate setting despite the huge crowd?

Whatever it was, has left me feeling nostalgic. Thinking about my six or seven tapes and records that I played over and over again as a kid (Simon and Garfunkel - Bridge over Trouble Water, Blondie - Heart of Glass, Barbara Streisand and Barry Gibb - Guilty, Bee-Gees, ABBA and some Moody Blues). The black and white stereo system that my parents bought for me with the record player (with the bent arm that started the record up high and dropped it down to the turn-table) along with the eight-track player was the best $75 my parents ever spent. Thanks guys.

I was reading today about how our sense of smell is the sense that creates the strongest memories or connections to the past. I totally agree with this but would also imagine that our hearing and our memories connected to sounds or songs are also incredibly strong.

Ratty and I often play this game where we will rattle off what a song reminds us of. It is amazing the memories that will "pop" up when we hear a song from 25 years ago. We were in a store the other day and all of a sudden Ratty said "grade seven. rollerskating" because he had heard the cords of a song playing in Shoppers Drugmart (Eye of the Tiger). Both of us ALWAYS say, almost in unison "elementary school dance, slow song, shuffling side-to-side" when we hear any classic Air Supply song.

Twenty-five years from now, when I hear "and I will try, to fix you..." coming from some random music source, I am sure I will remember in amazing detail that night, June 19th 2009 when a bunch of old friends headed downtown on a warm and breezy summer night to watch, sing along and dance with Coldplay.

a list

I think I have posted lists before. I am a list girl. love lists. This list is a "quicky". I just got home from a long walk and am in desperate need for a shower.

SUMMER LIST

• get my yard, front and back, weed-free
• eat as much as possible from our garden OR freeze, make jam or pickle the things we can't consume
• take the girls strawberry picking and make homemade jam with them
• create a fairy garden with the girls
• make bridget's room into a "real" bedroom OR move the girls into the same room - upstairs
• take an overnight trip to Seattle
• get through my whole book list
• finish my module 1 course at the Justice Institute ON TIME
• paint the front porch
• have a girls weekend(with my grown-up girl friends)
• visit with friends from out-of-town
• spend lots of time with my Mum
• spend more time with my Sister-in Law and get ready for a new niece or nephew!
  
• write a story for Bridget and for Sophie
• take each of the girls on a "date" day
• make a decision about what my life is going to look like as of January 1st (when my current job ends)
• get accepted as a pager-person for the New West Police

Phew. Writing that made me sweat.

simplicity

On a stinking hot, packed and slightly funky smelling skytrain ride home yesterday, I read this article (http://www.straight.com/node/223383) about this 30-something couple living the urban lifestyle who decided to move themselves from the hustle and bustle of the city to a half acre plot north of Pemberton to grow vegetables and live off the land. Nice. That was all I could think. I was completely mesmerized by the story.

The quote from the article " Urbanization is over, she told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview from Pemberton. At 32 and 35, the couple represent Canada’s ruralization pioneers: an economically and environmentally driven movement away from big urban centres" sent me into a fuzzy daydream about life beyond the city.

Not only have I always been secretly obsessed with people who leave everything behind to live with little, I have always had an idea that part of me really is a country mamma who would love to live a much simpler life. Growing up, I watched and read anything I could find about families who left their city life behind to build their own home, grow their own food and enjoy the company of their loved ones with gusto. My favourite books and movies (as a youngster) included Wilderness Family, Swiss Family Robinson, Born Free, Grizzly Adams all the Little House on the Praire books and a number of others that I cannot recall titles for (Disney did a lot of films in the late 70's early 80's around family units changing their lives by coming together and moving to rural settings). The theme that was consistent with all of these books and films was enjoying and being fuelled by ones surroundings, nature and simple pleasures.

Although I am not about to pick up my family and move them into a hand built homestead without electricity, running water or plumbing (don't worry Mum and whomever else may read this!), I do know that it feels important to me to have experiences that remind us of what it is like to live simply. Growing our vegetable garden has been a huge pleasure for me and since the girls are getting a bit older it is becoming more important to me to show them what we are cabable of growing and how good things taste when they come from the ground in our back yard. I get such pleasure in the summer months when I can gather everything we need for a gourmet dinner from our yard and garden including both fruits and vegetables. I get gidddy over my thriving and lush herb garden!

Being invited (how thankful are we!) to our friends island cabin to enjoy the rustic setting and the work that goes into daily activities like meal preparation, bathtime (in the kitchen sink for the children) or bedtime with light thrown from the gas lanterns in the sleeping cabins is always a treat. There is something so empowering about "hunting and gathering" even if it is not quite as rudimentary as it would have been years ago. When the boys row out in their little boat with their crab traps, those of us on shore, watch and feel a sense of anticipation for what we may be eating later that evening. Nothing tastes better than fresh caught crab. OR maybe it is just because we caught it. We did the work. We prepared it. Maybe.

In the end, I just know that reading about a return to a simple, rural lifestyle gives me a little wave of yearning, and a little space in my "bucket" that I will continue to try to fill in my own simple ways.

Worlds Colliding

Two sisters with many similarities and many, many differences saw their worlds collide last night with a resulting lost front tooth. Granted, the said tooth WAS starting to get a bit wiggly, but as Sophie cried, holding her little tooth in the palm of her bloody hand she said "I feel like I have lost a friend". She clearly wasn't ready for the loss.

At a lovely family gathering and birthday celebration with a BBQ on the deck, Sophie and Bridget decided that the long, yellow slide in the back yard should be used in two completely different ways (of course). Bridget had decided that one should use a slide in the conventional manner (from top to bottom) and Sophie had decided that convention is overrated and she would crawl up the slide. The collision happened mid-slide. Bridget's head and Sophie's front teeth had a rude introduction and the result was two crying children, snot, blood, and a missing tooth.

The drama continued with Sophie not wanting anyone to see her and not wanting anyone to talk to her and the demand that she be taken home "Right now!" meant that we made a very hasty departure. Once we got home and got Sophies face cleaned up, Bridget in bed and the tooth in a small zip-lock baggie, we began the long process of convincing Sophie that her world was not SO different (even though I too felt that our world had changed and crying might feel pretty good).

In the span of 4 months my little girl had changed. A lot. Gone were her baby blond locks, replaced with a little, brown, Beatles-Do. Gone were her soft, round baby cheeks, replaced with a little narrow pixie face and finally, gone were her two, little, pearly white, front teeth, replaced with one wiggly solitary tooth and a gaping hole.

Lying next to Sophie in her bed last night, stroking her head and talking to her quietly as she poked her finger over and over again into the hole that had been the home of her tooth, I remembered very clearly when I had lost my front tooth and what it had felt like. I remembered being a bit scared and a bit excited all at the same time. I asked Sophie, very quietly "Soph, are you scared?". She knew what I meant and replied "I look like and idiot with only one tooth and I can't talk right. I sound funny".

"I know" I said "but it won't last forever and I think you are beautiful no matter what".

She closed her eyes, sighed and went to sleep. I sighed and watched her, thinking about my "little Soph" and how much I love her.

Courtesy

This week I watched:

2 20-somethings give up their seats on the skytrain for older people
1 man hold an older womans arm so that she wouldn't tumble while standing on the moving (jarring) skytrain
1 man pry open the skytrain doors so that a young Mum and her toddler could get onto the train
1 couple move out of their seats for an older pair of people (who were clearly tourists)
1 lady pick up a pair of sunglasses that another lady had dropped (and hadn't noticed that she had dropped them).


All in all I witnessed 6 courteous acts during my commute this week. Nice.

Very nice.