Making It Up As I Go Along #330

The above images, one of the family and the second of dad, accompany the below poem.

SUNDAY...
— Drive across the island today in just over 8 hours. And I have the start of a cold.
— We stay in cabins at Rocky Harbour... nice cabins and a great sunset.

MONDAY...
— I’m officially sick. Sore throat, aches, maybe a fever.
— We head to Labrador anyway. See several moose along the road on the way to the ferry... dolphins are on the Newfoundland side of the trip and Orcas (Killer Whales) on the Labrador side.
— We go to and climb up Atlantic Canada’s tallest lighthouse... and I have a caribou dish for supper tonight.

TUESDAY...
— Cold is improving today. We head to Red Bay for some sight seeing and a hike on a trail overlooking the Bay. Supper back in Forteau again (the community we have a bed and breakfast in). Picture viewing and cards in the evening.

WEDNESDAY...
— Feeling worse again today. On the ferry back to Newfoundland, we see what appeared to be a pod of dolphins... but then when the ferry passes by, it seems like some bigger ones... maybe more orcas... show up.
— Lance aux Meadows is disappointing for me. I like the area and the site itself is neat... but it’s like the staff doesn’t really care. Kids are running all over the place and a guy who’s supposed to be in character as a Norse settler is speaking in a heavy Newfoundland accent, wearing sunglasses, and telling the kids that “if I don’t wear these, and I hurt myself (while hammering on an instrument) I won’t get my compensation.” Not really high end Norse talk.
— I crash in St. Anthony while the others go out to eat. I hit the internet and rest in the hotel.

THURSDAY...
— Feeling better again. Not 100% but better. I drive all day and don’t get tired at all. We leave St. Anthony in the morning, stop at the Arches for lunch... then detour to the Tablelands for a look around. From there it’s on to Botwood for supper at Uncle Eric’s. We drive for more than 10 hours today.

FRIDAY...
— Leave Botwood for New World Island. We see Bert and Wince and Shirley and the families. At the Twillingate hotel I realize that both my battery recharger and good zip up fleece are gone. The recharger is located in Botwood and we make arrangements to have it picked up in a few weeks when mom and dad are back that way. I have no idea where the fleece is. We’ll be calling Rocky Harbour and hoping for a miracle when we get back to St. John’s.
— Hike around the Twillingate lighthouse with dad, Wince, Brenda and Christine. See whales playing off the coast... these are humpbacks but they’re too far away for a good picture.
— Cape fire at Bert’s is trouble as it’s warm and no wind out. The flies are insane and we run for the house defeated.

SATURDAY...
— Off to Tizzard’s Harbour in the morning for breakfast. Then to Gander in the early afternoon to visit Aunt Margaret in hospital... and on our way home from there.
— Stop at Clarenville for a late lunch. My burger platter becomes a hot turkey sandwich with hamburger meat replacing the turkey. It’s fine, but I was in the mood for a burger.
— Supper is home made burgers and soup from Sylvia and Wayne... then work on some pictures and watch TV in the night.


The Smell of Blackberries
A cloudless day
Emboldens the land.

Crisp colours under brilliant blue
Shimmering sea with soft sounds.

Insect fluttering is peaceful.
Cold sea rubs warm rocks
Like a gentle hand down a friend’s back.

A family explores this place.
Walking the seaside trail with quiet banter
While the youngest skips about... overstimulated by vividness.

In an age of hustle and bustle
Where the subtle is ignored and boldness is expected.
This big land gives time to pause
Dad points out the mossy tundra, and all stop to take it in.

A chain reaction.
Duff lays down and speaks of the land’s comfort.
All others follow suit,
Curious what kind of bed the vegetation makes.

A photo to capture the family moment.
Mom directs all to lay as one.
And because it’s so clear, and bright and warm,
We all do so willingly, like children being tucked into bed
After a long day playing.

One by one we raise.
Some grunt to prop up from the shrubs.
Some linger a little longer in the comfort
The sun’s warmth and surf’s lullaby,
Together they slow the pace.

As the last one to rise, dad lingers
His face close to the ground.
For a little farewell embrace.
As he climbs up, he speaks...

“I love the smell of blackberries”

We wander on, a family along the shores of Labrador.

Making It Up As I Go Along #329

Just a weekly portion right now cause we’ve been busy in Newfoundland and about to depart on a week long trip across province. Likely no internet on this trip so I only have time to send this portion off now and will get a story done later on.

MONDAY...
— In early for work today due to softball this evening.
— Softball is awful. We lose 25-1. I give up 7 runs in the first two innings pitching, then pitch two scoreless innings before coming out... after that the floodgates open (although that’s not the other pitcher’s fault). At least my hamstring works out fine.
— Pub after the game is okay, but after a loss like that, I’m not in a party mood.
— Watch Dan in Real Life after I get home. It’s pretty good.

TUESDAY...
— Physio before work... the shoulder is getting stronger... we are done even dealing with the hamstring.
— Megan is in working overtime tonight. It’s the first time we’ve worked together in a couple of years... a fun change of pace.
— Get home in time to watch the end of the baseball all-star game. Baseball has the best all-star games of all the sports... by far.

WEDNESDAY...
— Long day at work. I go in for 12:45... to go to a meeting. I stay until 10:45 at night. Tomorrow will be an easier day. 10 to 4 and then off to the airport.
— Pack for the trip after work.

THURSDAY...
— Not a real productive day at work. It’s shorter than most days, thanks to my 10 hour day on Wednesday, and I’m getting into vacation mode.
— Melissa gives me a ride to the airport after work and I catch a 6:30 flight without a hitch. I’m in through security and eating a sandwich at Tim Horton’s before my flight probably 15 minutes after saying goodbye to Melissa.
— Flight’s fine. I watch City Slickers... missing the last five minutes due to our arrival.
— The whole crew are at the airport to meet me... and an RCMP drug dog too. Don’t see that in St. John’s too often.

FRIDAY...
— Out to Tor’s Cove in the afternoon. Seven of us out on the beach in the fog. But it’s warm and the fog is a sort of bright, dry fog that makes things fade in and out of focus around us... it’s pretty nice.
— Supper home and a visit from the Riggs’s in the evening.

SATURDAY...
— Cape Spear with Edena and family, and Wayne and Sylvia. See whales out there and have a little lunch. From there it’s straight to Jim’s for the evening. Salmon for supper, time with the boys, and some chat time with Jim. Good to see Stann and Christina while there too.

Making It Up As I Go Along #328

MONDAY...
— Work mostly day (9:30 to 5:30). It goes alright but I’m sick of these fly bites on my legs. They are sort of welts now and when I walk with my pants on, it itches the legs. I decide to remove the pants at work... nobody notices.
— Some lies told above.
— Softball is frustrating. I don’t play (resting the hamstring one more week) and the team loses in a close game.

TUESDAY...
— Physio before work. Hamstring is good to the point that we switch to a look at my shoulder. And part of my rotator cuff is weakened. Been this way for years too. So I have a set of exercises to work that out. Maybe the looseness up there can be tightened up and I can throw pain free again... maybe.

WEDNESDAY...
— A stop at Farm Boy before work gets me much goodness to snack on... and Greek Pasta salad for supper. Not much more exciting than that... what a thrilling day.
— Went for a run/walk tonight. Just under an hour for a route that normally takes an hour and fifteen to straight out walk. So I ran off about twenty minutes of time. Almost coughed up a lung but the hamstring didn’t mind it one bit. I’ll see what the morning brings. If it’s still not crying in pain, it’ll be a major hurtle crossed.

THURSDAY...
— Pretty quiet day. Not much out of the ordinary.

FRIDAY...
— Do a walk around the pond before work... with some sprints involved. That’s good.
— Spill Greek food on me at work today. Open the bag of it and the salad dumps out all over me. Not happy with the take out place for their packaging. And not sure if that stain will come out.
— Work is frustrating. The computers are acting up and we spend about an hour trying to figure why problems are happening.

SATURDAY...
— Work day. Doing some time now to put towards the time off next week. So I hang around the house in the morning and go work from 2:30 to 9:30. Gym for 20 minutes after that and home I go.


Betrayal of Greece
Greek food elicits more emotions from me than any other food I know. Thanks to the last few days, not all those emotions are positive ones.

Normally, Greek food puts me in a good mood. I normally get it delivered at work with several others in on the order. Melissa is my main partner in the ordering and it usually makes for a pleasant time looking through the menu to see what appeals on this given day. We pan through, comment how a particular dish is looking particularly good today, and then eye brows are raised with smiles as we make comment on how the other is leaving their norm this week.

I have actually lost some of the excitement for the local Greek food. When I first moved to Ottawa, we’d order Greek and several of us would carry on like ravenous dogs as we drooled over the menu. We knew the dishes on there but still needed to stare at each picture and read ingredients in each dish. Even the colours of the menu would seem to shine happiness to me. The olive yellowness making us Pavlov dogs as his whistle did so many years ago. I’d see the yellowy tones and have to swallow the spit that went into overdrive within my mouth.

This all changed after, ironically enough, my trip to Greece. Real Greek food made the Canadian take out version seem ordinary.

Food in Greece just tastes better. Yogurt bursts with flavor. Honey so sweet you go blind... temporarily. And oranges that you could pluck right off the tree as you walk down the street. They make Tropicana seem sour as grapefruit.

Today I have come to re-appreciate the Canadian Greek food. I just no longer drool like the dog hearing the whistle. But I eat Greek food here and think back to my time in Greece. Greek salads in Greece came with Feta cheese just as they do here. But in Greece, you’d receive a giant slab of Feta on top of the rest of the food. You could break off as much as you want with each fork full of salad. And what Feta it was. Knees go weak with each bite.

That trip to Greece has made me love Feta. And I’ve gotten quite partial to olives as well. I remember being high up on a mountain in a small Greek town. We sat on the edge of a stone wall and could look down into the valley below us. Some thousand feet down, you could see the olive orchard. Each bite of an olive, from that time on, brings me back to that stone wall, in that small mountain village, looking down into the valley at rows of olive trees.

So over the years since the Greek trip, I’ve usually ordered my take out with a Greek side salad to go with it. And most times, I’d have to jam the last third of that salad down into me as I would just be too full to eat it comfortably.

Then, a few weeks ago, I noticed something on that olive yellow menu. Instead of getting the full Greek salad, with cucumber and peppers and heaps of lettuce included, I could just order a dish known as... feta and olives. Intrigued, I ordered it in place of my side salad. Melissa gleamed with excitement as she had to figure out which menu number corresponded with this new order. We had never called in a number 35 before... it was daring... and filled the pre-supper air with electricity the likes I hadn’t felt since flying across the Atlantic and into the heart of the Mediterranean.

When the order came, lettuce was included with the feta and olives. I suppose one can’t title any dish with lettuce written there. Nobody pays delivery charges for lettuce. It’s the geeky cousin food that’s allowed to tag along with the cool ones. They snicker behind it’s back and we eat it just so it doesn’t feel bad. Poor lettuce.

So even with a helping of lettuce included, my number 35 was heavenly. Olives cleaned from the pit within my mouth with the precession of a baseball player chewing tobacco. The bare pit spit out with a “ping” as it hits the side bowl. And feta. Feta that forces a pause with each bite as the tanginess overwhelms the senses.

Four a month now, the number 35 has become a regular staple of my Greek ordered meal. It will be many a year before I tire of it. But this week, it nearly made me cry.

Opening the bag of food, I prepare to divide up the packages. But with the tear of the bag, horror. My feta and olives come crashing down, avalanching from their perch on top of the other containers. The plastic lid popping open as it comes and food spills out down my shirt, over my pants, all over the filing cabinet and down to the floor. I stand stunned looking at the mound of lettuce remaining on top of the cabinet with a few peaks of white feta hiding behind the greenery.

Olive oil drips down the cabinet and clings to my shirt. Someone jokes that the floor was recently cleaned and I should salvage what’s down there. I consider the idea for a few seconds, but realize this action, even if leaving me unharmed physically, would ruin my reputation in the office. People would toss all sorts of food onto the floor daring me to eat it.

But with a frantic mind, I decide that the food that stopped at the top of the cabinet, rather than plummeted to the floor, remained edible... and within the bounds of good eating etiquette. Much of the feta and olives were gone, but enough remained to satisfy most of my hunger.

I went through the rest of the shift looking like a streel. Oily stains on my shirt and pants leave me feeling dirty and out of sync. I didn’t even finish the food but still, I carefully reseal the container and put it in the fridge to take home when work ends.

Once work ends, I carefully lay the container in my bag (along with my gym shorts and some other odds and ends) and I venture home holding the bag gingerly, as not to knock things about.

I followed Melissa’s advice, and soaked the clothes as soon as I got home. In the laundry after that and, when going from washer to dryer, it looked as though I got the stain out.

It wasn’t until the drying was over that I saw dried in olive oil mocking me in my good shirt. How could olives betray me this way?

Even that resealed container opened in the bag! I inspect the contents and it seems nothing leaked out.

Twenty-four hours later, I’m at the gym, pulling my shorts out of that very gym bag. On the butt I see a great stain of olive oil! A second betrayal. How much of my clothes will this demon elixir claim? I angrily throw the shorts back in the bag, putting on my day shorts once again for the workout.

On the way home, I stop to buy some Lestoil. It would be my only hope of saving the clothes, and forgiving the olives.

And with the dryer just going off as I write, I can share with you the conclusion of this trauma. If olive oil were a demon elixir, than Lestoil is holy water of cleaners. My shirt and shorts are spotless once again. And my love of Greek food has been saved. We may have had a rough last few days scrapping with each other, but all is forgiven. And I can start dreaming, once again, of those orchards on the valley floor... as I sit on the stone wall in a mountain village... in Greece.

Making It Up As I Go Along #327

MONDAY...
— Quiet day thanks to the rain. Still, we do a baseball game. Rapidz lose 4-3 in 12 innings. It actually stops raining at game time and, after an hour and a half delay, we have a good night for baseball. It ends just before midnight.
— My money in the bank needs a looking at. The website says I have about $1300 more than what printed out at the bank machine.

TUESDAY...
— Canada Day. And I do nothing. Stay home, read on the balcony while getting some sun... do some cleaning up... take a nap... French toast for supper... and watch hockey stuff. Free agency is here and there’s a flurry of activity. Cujo back to Toronto is nice... Montreal losing Streit is too bad.... Vancouver offering $20 million over two years to Sundin is somewhat insane.

WEDNESDAY...
— Back to work. In from 12 to 8 today due to some training. Greek for supper with Melissa and some groceries on the way home.

THURSDAY...
— Physio is looking good. I’d say the hamstring is at about 90% back now. Just got to be careful with the thing. I was at this point ten days ago too, and had a setback.

FRIDAY...
— Up late. I sleep until 10:30. It’s all due to a late night last night. Went for a walk at 1:00. It lasted until 2:00 (I even jogged a few sections to test out the hamstring, and it went well). After that I was wired and up until just after 4:00.
— Supper is Thai food with Megan. Pretty good. I work alone tonight and it’s nice enough. After work I go to the gym in the HQ building and work out my legs (further hamstring work). It’s good... my right leg is a bit stronger than the left still, but hopefully a few more times going next week and I’ll be evened up and the hamstring issues will be over with.

SATURDAY...
— Woke early to the crows. Bloody crows screaming like teenage trouble makers. They were at it before 5:00 AM. I spend a half hour snoozing on the sofa and then head back to bed for a couple of hours when the screaming ends.
— Lazy day after that until going for supper with Karl at 8:00 tonight. Good food and a nice evening at the pub.


Screams From Hell
I’ve only noticed it a few times. Three times in five years. And it’s enough to drive one insane. The screams of a crow reverberate from the pits of hell.

Crows “caw”. We have all heard it and even though it’s not an overly pleasant sound, it’s one that you just pass off without much thought. But there are times when the “caw” is replaced by a literal scream.

The first time I heard it, I was less than a year in the place I currently live in. The neighbourhood was new and I woke at 5:00 in the morning to these horrid screams. My first reaction was to curse the teenagers who had a late night of beer and taken the festivities outside. I wondered if that noise was possibly a bird, but thought it couldn’t be. It sounded too forced to be from anything other than a drunken guy in need of a bat to the back of the head.

Four years have gone by since that early morning wake up. And this week, it happened again. Again I wake to the screams of the crow. This time I knew it to be a crow. I had recently talked with Melissa about the hell screams and she agreed... she’s also heard it. In fact, on our walk around the work complex, while discussing the screaming crows, it happened. And we could see the crow doing the screaming. It chills you to the bone. It’s not natural.

I’ve since thought of this phenomenon and can see how people in small communities could take such events and chalk them up to the supernatural. My father has told me of walking along the dark roads of Joe Batt’s Arm, returning home late at night with only the light of the moon to guide you. And of encounters with horses that are standing in the night, head down for some grass. In the darkness, this figure can seem to be a headless apparition... the vision of which stays with you for the rest of your life.

In cases like this, even though you understand that it was indeed a hungry horse, there’s a little part of you that can’t let go of the headless traveler. It haunts you.

These crow screams could easily be mistaken as unworldly. I could imagine being awakened by them in an outport town some sixty years ago. You would assume that it was a cousin who lives down the street a ways... being foolish with drink. The next day, you’d meet up with them and confront them on their childish ways. And with a confused look on their face, they’d stammer that they thought it was you doing it. Everyone would swear on their mother’s good name that they honestly didn’t go out early screaming into the predawn sky. And the thoughts of ghosts would slowly creep into each person’s consciousness.

Suggestions that the scream sort of sounded like a long past great uncle would come out. A great uncle who often stumbled home around 5:00 in the morning with too much alcohol in the system and a tendency for high pitched yelps in his drunkenness. People would agree that it did indeed sound like him... and the mind would race with the idea that a dead relative is walking the streets yet again, as he did in life.

Or stories of the boy who fell from a cliff two generations ago would resurface. Tales told by grandparents to children around the kitchen would take on unearthly life once again. One would claim that “if I remember right, the anniversary of that boy’s death was this very day, and my grandfather said that when he fell from the cliff, you could hear his scream all the way into town, even though it was a mile away.”

All the while, fear and excitement would fly through the community with reckless abandon while a simple crow sits on the eave of a nearby house, wondering what all the commotion is about.

So I’m left with thoughts today of the crows that have been tormenting me these five years. Could they be a sign of spirits? Perhaps that first one I heard, some five years earlier, wasn’t a crow at all but a disgruntled neighbour leaping from their fourth story balcony to end it all in the early morning hours. And all I could do was mutter obscenities and roll over in bed while they lay broken and dying on the cold morning ground. And the crow of this week is the return of that spirit... because now that I think about it, that first screaming I heard happened about this time of year... and at about the same time in the early morning.

The suburban haunting of Orleans! Where the spirit of the dead comes back to scream again every five years. Some say, if you go to your window to try to see, the spirit will take you and throw you down the four stories to your own death. So if you hear the screams in five years time, cross yourself and pull the covers over your head... you may just possibly make it through the early morning hours and live to see another day.

And all the while, the crows will be sitting on the eaves above us, looking down and wondering what all the commotion is about as we huddle together and discuss the screams that woke us in the cold morning air.