Fairy Doors

This Christmas I got Mom and J & the kids Fairy Doors.  Because I had a pulled back muscle the week of Christmas I was unable to make or buy some of the presents I had planned on giving, so I had to get a little creative with what I had available.  I recycled some items that seemed to fit the fairy theme and through the complete boredom of being immobile for 3 days, I came up with some (bad) rhymes to go with the gifts.  I share with you these bits of fairy verse.

First there were little vials of Fairy Dust (glitter) to go with the doors:
                   Fairy Dust
Sprinkle a little on your hand or wrist,
Then blow it away as you make your wish.

Then there was a note to explain the Fairy Door:
              The Fairy Door
'Tis written in ancient Irish lore,
Should you hang up this fairy door,
Then sprinkle fairy dust around,
And make a wish that it be found,
As the little folk do roam,
They may decide to call it home.
The fairy folk often come out at night,
But they like to stay just out of sight.
Try to be nice in all you do and say,
'Else the little folk may be frightened away,
But if you are friendly, and you are kind,
You may see little things that they leave behind.

The Fairies left a package "For Mommy's Eyes Only" full of items that could appear at J's Fairy Door from time to time.

Sometimes the fairies need us to help them out,
To find and tidy what they've left strewn about.
In their haste to hide, it would seem to me,
That they left a few things under our tree.
I've gathered them up, as they're surely not mine,
Perhaps they'll appear for your family to find.


I gave my nephew some of my old The Littles books:
N, I must admit, 'tis true,
These tomes are not brand new.
I found them on a dusty shelf.
The Littles are kin to Fae and Elf,
So I thought these just might do,
To share their tiny world with you.


My niece got a toy hammock for her room:

J, this gift I give to you,

Is gently used and not brand new.

With it you'll find,

A brand new kind,

Of way to store your toys.

Just watch out for naughty fairy boys!

You may want to quickly learn their names,

For they play some rough and tumble games,

They have such fun as they climb up high,

They may forget that stuffies can't fly!

J & the kids got a fairy swing:

The fairies will surely love this swing,

The Little folk love to play and sing.

'Tis as natural to them, you shall find,

As the lilt of their laughter, left behind.

Last but not least, Mom got a fairy chair:

Let's hope the fairy folk come 'round,

But just in case they seem unsure,

Near their door, upon the ground,

This seat may prove the perfect lure.

Mom has a room for the kids at her place and the old ironing board cupboard seemed the perfect place for a fairy door to appear.  We set hers up before the kids got there Christmas morning, and within minutes of their arrival, N had found the door, but chose not to mention it to his sister or mom.  Typical 9-year-old boy!  Over the last couple of months the fairies have left a few items for humans to find, a Christmas tree, a thimble, and a rope ladder to climb up to the ledge.  Time will only tell what other goodies they may leave behind.

Hide-And-Seek

When I was a kid, my dad was heavily involved in the local teacher's union. He was on many committees fighting for teachers rights, and even became Vice President of the Teachers Association. One of the committees he was on was called The Agreements Committee. I'm not entirely sure what they were supposed to be “agreeing” on at their many meetings, but their spouses had a different name for it: “The Arguments Committee.” My dad's good friend S was also on many of these committees and his wife and my mom decided to band together in self-preservation. They realized that there were certain times of the year when their husbands were so immersed in meetings that their families barely saw them. They began getting together for supper, sometimes to commiserate, or to just have another adult to talk to instead of toddlers, sometimes to have the men continue their work discussions in another room while us kids ran around playing games like hide-and-seek... more about that in a moment... Their family comprised of four people and became known (at least in our house) by their initials KKTS. It was common to hear the phrase “are KKTS coming over for dinner?”

I can remember several times when we'd be getting ready to make dinner when the phone would ring.

“Have you made dinner yet?”

“No, I was just getting to that...”

“Good! Put on a pot of water for some pasta, we're bringing a pot of spaghetti sauce, we'll be there in 15 minutes.”

No discussion, no argument, just “we're bringing this, put together something to go with it. See you in 15.”  Sometimes they'd even show up unannounced, arms laden with groceries or pizza for an impromptu meal. We've celebrated more holiday meals with them than with our flesh-and-blood relatives. It's rather hard to define our relationship, but basically K&S were like a second set of parents to me, pretty much the only adults other than my parents who had the authority to scold or punish me if I misbehaved. Their kids K&T and I are like a weird combination of friends, cousins and siblings. We grew up together, both in our own homes and at the STA office. When I was a teen I babysat kids during STA meetings, and when I graduated high-school T took over the job. When my dad died suddenly, KKTS were there by our sides, making sure we remembered to eat and reminding us of how to laugh. When S went through Cancer treatment and ultimately lost his battle, Mom and I did our best to return the favour.

I don't know who started it, Dad or S, but when I was very young a box of Festive Christmas Ice Cream (filled with dried fruit and other disgusting-looking items usually reserved for Fruitcake) appeared at the dinner table during one of our get-togethers. My dad was notorious for eating just about anything... as long as it wasn't “healthy.” HP sauce on ice cream? Sure, why not? But when it came to the dreaded Christmas flavour, everyone decided that this was the most disgusting ice cream in the world and refused to eat it, even my dad, so it went into the freezer. Until the next communal dinner, when it miraculously appeared at the other house as “dessert.” This back and forth continued for years. It got to the point that the ice cream couldn't have been eaten if we'd wanted to, it was so old and desiccated, but it kept being passed back and forth between our freezers, mysteriously appearing after visits. Eventually we had a horrible storm and the power was out for several days, leaving what remained of the ice cream to melt and turn the box into an unrecoverable sodden mess. Thus ended the tradition... Until a little over a year ago, when after Christmas dinner at her mom's house, T graciously gave me a ride home, and insisted on helping me bring my leftovers and loot into the house. Somehow a box of Candy-Cane Ice Cream mysteriously appeared in my freezer. At Easter it made it's way to K's house, and since then has found a home in the younger K's freezer, where it may or may not have been consumed... his wife is expecting baby # 2 and T says there is a definite possibility that the ice cream succumbed to someone's midnight cravings. K has been known to eat a lot of things that the rest of us turned our noses up at, and no one can predict the cravings of a pregnant woman.

Now that we're adults, nearly every time T and I get together and one of us introduces the other to her friends, T will inevitably bring up one particular fact. When we were kids, we'd play all sorts of games at our house, hiding in the closet and pretending it was a cave we were hiding in to escape pirates, tag, board games, and of course... hide-and-seek. 

The picture of innocence.

I had a trundle bed. There was a normal mattress on top, and a big drawer below with a foam mattress for sleepovers. At least, that was the intended use. I can remember using that mattress to sled down the stairs with my best friend and her big sister. (That cracked stain glass window had NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS MOM! Really! It must have been the dog, and her hard rubber ball... yeah... that's it!) But ultimately, as T tells it, the main purpose of this bed drawer was to play hide-and-seek, shove T (the youngest of the three of us) into it, close it and wait for the seeker to find her. And wait. And wait. And wait. And occasionally to forget that she was there, only to find her some time later, either fast asleep, or screaming because she couldn't get out. I can only remember doing this a couple of times. My biggest hide-and-seek memories are of hiding behind the dresser in my parents room because it was in the corner on an angle and you could climb over the nightstand to squeeze into the space behind, crouch down and escape detection for what felt like hours. T's biggest hide-and-seek memories are of being trapped on a cheap foam mattress in a drawer under my bed, too little to figure out how to slide herself out without the help of her neglectful brother and I. My apologies to the 3-6 year-old T for all the times we allegedly left her under there. In hindsight it must have been rather scary. I hid under there a few times, but by then I had the upper body strength to grab the slats above me and slide the drawer out. She didn't. And 25+ years later, it seems she'll never let me forget it. I am sincerely sorry T! (But hey, at least you have an interesting story to tell every time my name comes up, right?)

Janine Soup

When I was little one of my favorite foods was Janine Soup.  It was green and mushy and yummy and had pieces of ham or bacon in it and it was glorious.  It wasn't until I was eleven or so, that I learned that "Janine Soup" was really "Split Pea Soup."  My mom would make it from scratch after we had ham for special occasions.

My dad and I would drive across the border to Bellingham to buy milk, gas, ham (or turkey) and pop.  Dad really liked Cherry Coke which you couldn't buy North of the border, so he would stock up on our little trips, while I would get Original Trident Gum which you couldn't get in Canada.  It tasted like their bubblegum (pink) and mint (blue) flavours had been smushed together into one gum, and for some reason I really liked it.

It's funny how memory can play tricks with you... I'm not sure how often we made these trips, but it seemed like we went at least once a month if not every couple of weeks.  We'd often stop at Denny's for lunch (The day my dad finally let me order my own meal instead of ordering me a corn dog which I HATED will always stand out in my memory.) We'd get ham for Easter, Mother's Day, Christmas, and a number of other special occasions, and there was always a batch of Janine Soup to look forward to the following week.  Our trips across the border became less frequent after mom found out that she had high cholesterol and had to stop eating red meat.  Sadly, the occurrences of Janine Soup became fewer and farther between as well.

This Easter we went to K's for dinner and had a delightful time watching little D completely ignore her Easter egg hunt in favor of an old ball in the backyard.  After our delicious dinner, K was wrapping up the ham bone to freeze until she returned from her vacation in sunny Hawaii, while we all started commenting on how we were each eager to stop by "to water the plants" while she was away, and should the ham bone mysteriously go missing from her freezer and one of us happened to make split pea soup, these things should be considered merely coincidental and IN NO WAY RELATED!

Apparently K decided that if the ham bone was still there when she returned from her vacation, she would get each of us a ham bone of our own.  It would seem that none of us carried through on our thinly veiled threats, so she bought ham hocks for each of us.  I picked up mine from its temporary home in my mom's freezer the other day and today I made my first ever pot of Janine Soup... erm... I mean, Split Pea Soup.  The whole place smelled yummy all afternoon and the kids upstairs and their Grandma Sim commented on the scents wafting upstairs.  Sim was awesome in giving me pointers about how low to set the temp as it simmered, and approved of the ingredients and method I used.  I haven't tried the soup yet, as it wasn't ready in time for supper, but it looks and smells just right!  While I know it's technically Split Pea Soup with Ham, it will always be Janine Soup to me.

What I found at work today.

Mannequin Boss

Yesterday was my birthday.  I had the day off of work and had a yummy dinner out with my mom.  When I returned to work this morning it was clear that some of my co-workers had been rather mischievous in my absence.

The first thing I noticed as I was getting myself a cup of tea was a mannequin head sitting on top of the drinks fridge with a typed note attached.  I didn't get a picture of the note, but the general gist was that the head (which had been given glasses, a mustache and grayed hair) was meant to represent our boss.  It's purpose? To make sure we didn't miss him too much when he goes away on holidays next month.

While funny, the thing was a little bit creepy, especially with the giant "5" on its forehead.

When my workday started, I opened my drawer to find another mannequin head sitting there with two taped notes attached.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR" was stuck to it's cheek, while it's neck was wrapped in the following:

"I♥U

Hi Jannine I am UR

BOY FRIEND Finely U got me" [sic]

Funny how my new "boy friend" spells like my old apple (remember the notes from my fruit?) and looks like a punk girl with very bad hair...


After laughing and showing my co-workers the head, I put it in the staff room so it could freak other people out too.  That was my mistake!  All day various co-workers would grab the disembodied head and either place it somewhere so that I'd turn around and see it staring at me, or would hold it up, shoving it in my face as I turned around.  It felt like the damn thing was stalking me... so I decided that turnabout was fair play.  I put it in the bathroom and one of my coworkers had the misfortune of finding it there.  After screaming, then laughing, she put it in the stock room with a new note for the night manager to find - this might have had a stronger result had she not been the one to bring the things to work yesterday in the first place, but we managed to get a couple of people by sending them to get various items from that area.

 When I left work, my plastic stalker was still in the stock room waiting for unsuspecting employees to happen upon it while stocking up on lids, and the boss-like one was sitting atop the first aid kit outside the manager's office.  I can only imagine what I'll find tomorrow morning!

Adventures in Un-decorating the Christmas Tree

My tree in all of its pre-Christmas glory.

Today I finally took down my Christmas tree.  Yes, my tree was still up on January 20th...
In my defense:
1. I've been kinda busy since Christmas, especially on my days off.
& 2. The Christmas party for work is tomorrow, so technically my holiday celebrations don't end for another 24 hours or so...

I got home from work today and thought enough is enough, the tree has got to come down.  So, there I was this afternoon, carefully taking the most breakable items off of the tree first... I tend to take ornaments off one type at a time as I find it easier to pack them safely if I do so - if you think this is weird, you should ask my mom what she thinks of my system for decorating the Christmas tree!

I pulled lightly on a lower branch to try to turn the tree a bit in order to reach the back branches, when all of a sudden the tree was falling towards me.  I tried adjusting the angle of the tree in the hopes that I'd just unbalanced the base... to no avail.  No amount of fiddling with the three thumb screws on the base would convince the tree to behave as a good little artificial tree should.  The tree would not stand upright on its own.  I had to hold it up with one hand while I tried to rescue all of the breakable ornaments with the other.  I finally managed to get the most fragile items to safety, then had to wrestle with the rest of the ornaments which I just tossed into an empty box whilst trying to keep the tree from falling over.

The hardest part was getting the lights off, and once I'd managed to de-light the top section of the tree via rather unconventional methods, I was able to remove it, making the rest of the tree a little easier to handle, but making the de-lighting and de-garlanding rather difficult as I was then dealing with a tangled mess, all one-handed.

Somehow I managed to disentangle everything, including myself, and when I finally got to the point of dismantling the base of the tree I found this:

What? Doesn't your tree look like this too?

That's right, my tree broke about four inches from the base.  The metal twisted so that it was clinging to this piece by a tiny sliver.  I'm not quite sure how this happened, but it seems to have collapsed into itself where the screws held it in place.  I've examined the remains and it looks like I'll still be able to use the tree again, it'll just be a few inches shorter next year!  This may be a good thing as my tree fairy was brushing against the ceiling this year.

The poinsettia I rescued from work is
the only remaining sign of the holidays.
Actually, that's not true...

There's also my Gingerbread Tardis.

Scaredy-Dog

This is Trooper.  

He lives upstairs.  Up until about a month ago he was terrified of my stairs and would not come downstairs to visit me unless he came via the inside stairs, which  he thought were evil until a few months ago.

On Tuesday I got home from work to be greeted by a giant overly enthusiastic dog.  He was acting almost too happy to see me, and I was beginning to think he was going to knock me over with one of his enthusiastic leaps.


He followed me down to my front door, then into my suite.  After checking out the place, he did his usual slow climb onto the couch... you know the one... first one paw, maybe his chin on your knee, then two paws, and before you know it, there is an entire German Short Haired Pointer laying next to you on the couch... He was overly affectionate and 20 minutes later when we heard evidence of people moving around upstairs, he started trembling.  The only other time I've seen him act like this was back at the beginning of the summer when he dug up the grass in the back yard and P yelled at him.  I was there for the scolding, there was a raised angry voice, but nothing more.  Trooper however, acted as if P was trying to beat him.  He tried to completely climb onto my lap while I sat at the top of the stairs, and shook like he was terrified.

This time, when P whistled for Trooper to come upstairs, I had to shove the dog off of the couch and towards the door.  He went as far as the bottom of the stairs, then when P called out for him, made an about face.  He tried to climb over my computer and onto my lap... not an easy feat for such a large dog.


After a great deal of encouragement, he finally went upstairs.

I called up to P: "did he get into trouble for something earlier today?"

"Yeah, he did."

"Thought so.  He was trying to climb onto my lap."

Ah, it's lovely to have such a scaredy-dog around to protect us from evil-doers!

A Walk In The Park

I walk home from work nearly every day.  I've taken to finding longer and more interesting routes home for days like today when the weather is good.  One of these routes goes past the duck pond just off of 16th Ave.

I picked up some birdseed and some Murchies tea (this is completely my Uncle Brian's fault!) on my way to the pond today. Technically, I think there are two ponds, or one large pond with a covered connector between the two parts, but everyone in the area just refers to the small park as "The Duck Pond."  I fed the ducks at the first pond by scattering some seed, then walked on to my main target - the second pond.  I have a routine here.  I scatter some seed as I approach the pond.  This brings the ducks a-waddling and I keep walking down to the water where my little feathered friend is waiting.  

You see, there is one duck there that has a damaged leg.   I'm not entirely sure what's wrong with it, she seems to be fine in the water, but she has trouble walking, so she usually misses out on the good food when people feed the ducks and geese.  Sensing her weakness, the other birds sometimes pick on her and push by her to get to the food.  I suppose I have a soft spot for the underdog, because every few days for the past two months or so I've been stopping by the pond and feeding her.  I scatter food for the other ducks (and geese if they're there) to draw them away from her, then I feed her by hand.  She seems able to get more food if I hold it up for her than when I put it on the ground in front of her, so I give her handful after handful of seed, scattering a bit whenever the other birds get too close.  Sometimes other ducks, or worse the geese, will try to get in on the hand-feeding or sneak the food that piles up in front of her, but unless she reacts with nonchalance, I tend to shoo them away to make sure she gets a good meal. 

My duck is pictured here in
 the midst of some geese before
we developed our routine.

Have you ever had a goose hiss at you?  I tend to hiss right back, and that seems to confuse them.  They really don't seem to know what to do when the human they were trying to intimidate starts acting like a goose and hissing back. :)

Today I fed my feathered friend and her relatives, then picked a few blackberries by the pond before continuing on past the local high school and into the South Surrey Athletic Park.  While passing the baseball diamond and running track, I braved another patch of blackberries only to find that one of the brambles took offence to my stealing its fruit.  My french braid got caught in the thorns and I had to rely on the kindness of a good Samaritan who managed to disentangle my hair so that I could make my escape. After thanking her profusely, I refused to admit defeat, so I kept picking the berries in that patch for a few more minutes, but was careful not to get ensnared again.  

As I meandered along the Hearts In Motion trail by the park I stopped here and there to pick some huckleberries and little wild blackberries along the way.  During one of my stops an older Asian gentleman was walking the other way along the path.  He is one of the many people I see on my walks home each day, most of whom exchange a polite nod and a smile as we cross paths.  He saw my bag full of berries and my juice-stained hands and asked in heavily accented English: "are they available?"  It was clear that this was not his primary language, and it took me a minute to decipher his gestures and words, but I told him that yes, anyone could pick them.  I then showed him which bushes had huckleberries and blackberries, handed him a couple, assured him with words and gestures that they were good to eat, and told him to stay away from the black round berries which were not.  He was amazed that anyone could pick and eat the berries.  After trying the fruit and beaming with joy, he had me teach him how to say "huckleberry" and a moment after he resumed his walk, he was on his cell phone chattering in his own language. The only word I could decipher from his conversation was "huckleberry."  I could be wrong, but I'd like to think that he was telling his wife of his new discovery and the nice young lady who drew his attention to the delicacies he'd unknowingly been walking past every day.