Lets Try This Again.......

My blog on iblogs is lost. One year of postings, one year of my journal, gone. I'm not devastated, only really disappointed. And pissed off. I wonder if there is a way to retrieve it?

Anyway, Life goes on..... And I'm starting over, here, hoping this will be a new home.

Chicken soup is on the stove, Simmering away with lively gusto and scenting the house with fragrances even my clogged sinuses and runny nose cant compete with. The smells of comfort, whilst a storm rages outside. Winter wonderland. Rare for our little island on the temperate west coast, and a treat. Except for the lack of snow tires.

All hell breaks loose when it snows here. No one on the island knows how to cope with it. Even though my Ontario sensibilities scoff at the panic which people here exhibit when the white stuff starts coming down, I resisted their notion that THIS snow is different somehow than THAT snow. But now that I am into my fourth Winter here, I have become convinced. It is wetter. More dangerous, as a result, and flash freezing makes our pitiful roads an exercise in taking one's life into one's hands every time one settles in behind the steering wheel. NOt to mention the chronic power outages. Which so far, mercifully, we've been spared except for one time when we lost power for only a few hours. B's folks we without power for 5 days last year. Kathleen says it pays to bribe the hydro guys with cases of beer.

I miss the big snows of back east. For about a week or two, and then I no longer have any use for it, but that's okay because snow rarely stays that long, here.

I took the dogs out into it this afternoon. They went crazy with glee in a way that only happy dogs who have been cooped up too long can show. Three of them in fleece coats, although Teddy, being 1/2 Akita, never needs one. Usually I drive them to the ravine for their run, but not today.

This past fall B and I made a dog enclosure, but Willy, escape artist that he is, seems to have found a chink in that armour and kept getting out to visit the neighbour's dog. (She's sexy). So despite my cold, I bundled up and threw the ball for them, and made big rolled up snow balls with what we used to call 'packing snow' which Xena delighted in eviscerating. When she was a puppy, no snow-man was safe from her. She would "kill" them dead every time, and stomp them into the ground, erasing all traces of them. I placed stones and sticks from our little woods all along the area of fencing which was suspect, and I think I've got the problem solved. Threw the ball for Zeus again and again. They Loved it.

I am dreading going back to work on Wednesday. I took on this job thinking that it would be good for me to be around people, having has such an isolated experience overseeing the renovations for so long. HOW long, you ask? Coming up on 3 years now. You wonder why I'm losing my mind........?!

I haven't done any art since the studio was built, and I did my first stained glass window in it last year.

This is me. Artist. Blocked. Crap job. And whining about it.

Suck it up girl, life is what you make of it!

My mother will arrive from overseas for Christmas, bringing her special brand of kraut-factor "THIS is how we do things!" which always makes me feel inadequate. Twice a year she comes, and it takes me months to recover, each time. We dont always get along.

Lets put the fun back into dysfunctional! :)