Italiano

Perche ride? Parlo tante male l'italiano?

Translation: Why are you laughing? Is my Italian that bad?

I just know they are phrases that will come in handy in Italy....thanks for the new phrasebook, Mom...er, grazie, Mama, I mean. :)

Just before I went to Italy in 2003 I took a class in conversational Italian. Since then most of it has flown right out of my head alas.

It didn't help that I've taken French classes since. Ah, the Romance languages...all lying around lanquidly tangled up in my brain waiting to be retrieved in halting sentences delivered in pigeon-turistico speak.

I'm a little embarrassed NOT to be bilingual actually. The European friends I know usually speak at least two languages and sometimes three, as well as a smattering of anything that borders them.

Of course, in Europe one could conceivably get in a car and drive through several countries with different languages before stopping for the night whereas in west coast Canada you have to drive a long, long time before this becomes an issue.

Anyway, that's not a very good excuse so I'm carrying my Italian books with me every day on my coffee break... it's nice to at least try and speak Italian when you're in Italy.

I remember a fellow laughing behind a take-out food stand in Capri after I did my best to order in Italian: "Oh, you speak-a Italian! I'm-a going to give-a you a bigger piece of pizza! "

I miss Italy. :)

Most Amusing Compliment Received in Italy: "You are more beautiful than Barbie!"

38 more days till we go and counting!

Little Black Dress and Cantiamo Night

I have a vision in my head: my beautiful friends and I are sitting at a little table in a sunny piazza in the city of Rome. We are talking and laughing and sipping wine. We are full of the joy of life and being together in Italy. And we are wearing cute little black dresses.

I have my passport. The tickets are reserved. European euros and traveller's cheques are ordered from the bank. I leave in five weeks. There are plenty of likely piazzas in the sunshine waiting in Rome. And all that is missing from this vision was the dress I am planning to wear.

The mission this past weekend: to find a Little Black Dress to wear while in Rome.

You know, so I can look something like Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina , something that Coco Chanel would have approved, something simple and sophisticated and yet kicky and fun....

Do you think there might be such an article of clothing to be found in the town I live in? There isn't.

Well, there is if you count the little black barely-there suede dress from Paris I once borrowed from my friend Nell for a fancy soiree (she has a closetful of gorgeous evening wear) but no, I meant to have something of my own.

So I went shopping down-Island on Saturday and found my sweet Little Black Dress at Le Chateau after a minimum of fuss and angst in the changing rooms. The third dress I tried on was the charm. I knew it was the one just looking at it on the rack.

Sigh, I'm not usually a girl who gets into the spirit of shopping, but this was satisfying. I'll post a picture at some point.

But at least some of you have seen it already as I
also managed to have a visit with my friend Pol (who is travelling with me) before racing up the Island again in time to become a volunteer Serving Wench for the Cantiamo Choir's Italian -themed fundraiser night.

The choir was raising money to sing in Prague and Salzburg this July and tickets were around fifty dollars. But you could avoid the ticket price altogether if you didn't mind rushing around up and down stairs like a fiend carrying trays of bruschetta artichoke and olive tapenades, and hustling out plates of bocconcini salad and ricotta cannelloni and chocolate-drizzled tiramisu for a crowd of two hundred.

Between courses I could listen to gorgeous Italian arias and duets (I was definitely in the mood tonight for eighteenth-century Italian music) and (eventually) be fed besides.

Spring!

Well, rereading my last post it might seem as if I was in a morbid frame of mind, but it's Spring now, so I just can't stay there for long!

Here are some pictures of art projects I've been doing with the preschool kids--it was time to take down the Valentine hearts and the chilly winter-time pictures.

Also picture are my new helleborus plants (one white, one pink) that I acquired at Seedy Saturday and have since planted in my garden.

I've grown to love helleborus as they flower as early as January and look nice all year long.

Also acquired at Seedy Saturday (an enormous local seed-swap): seeds for red poppies, nigella, zinnias, Siberian fritillary, scabiosa (looks much better than it sounds), clarkia, sunflower, calliopsis, and yellow and pink hollyhocks.

I hope I actually get them all in the ground this year. I tend to concentrate on already established perennial plants and I haven't been very talented at nurturing flowers from seed. But I try every year, and by Gum! Sometimes they come up!

The Butterfly Effect in a Nutshell

http://www.perkel.com/nerd/butterflyeffect.htm

I've been thinking lately about how the smallest events/decisions can affect your life.

For instance, recently my friend Pol celebrated her birthday on the first of March, which is indeed the day she was born. However, on her seventeenth birthday she decided (for reasons I've long forgotten) to have her party on the tenth of March of that year. We ended up in the local Teen club and that was where I met Jeff, who I married.

Now, if she'd had her party on her actual birthday would I have married the same person?

What if we'd decided NOT to go to the club? Or what if Jeff hadn't? Or what if I'd had the flu that day? Or what if I'd been grounded and couldn't have gone to her party?

What would my life have been like now? One small thing. For good or for bad.

Even much smaller things can change the course of a life.

I was reading about chaos theory and the Butterfly Effect tonight. (The link above is easy reading compared to some of the more technical stuff on the theory of Sensitive Dependence on Initial Condition .

According to this theory even something very, very tiny ( like the flap of a insect's wing) can cause ripples of effect in the universe space-time continuum thingy. Tiny little things making all sorts of far-reaching changes that nobody can know or fathom (unless you're heavily into chaos equations and fractal whatchamacallits).

Makes my head whirl to think that something I did today, perhaps some 1/4 second of my life today crossing the street walking faster or slower, or perhaps something as banal as my breakfast cereal choice has changed the course of my life or perhaps someone else's in a way that I will never realize.

Something of this nature that spooked me once: I was working at a video store circa the year 1989 and I rented out a games system and a couple of games to two teenaged boys. We chatted for a few minutes before they left.

Maybe an hour later a police officer brings the things the boys rented back to the store. There had been an awful car accident about a mile away. The boys' vehicle had been T-boned by another car and both of them died.

Morbid thoughts: Was I one of the last people they spoke to? If they hadn't rented the games or spoken to me, would they still be alive? Or did they stop for slurpies at the 7-11 across the street and did that put them at the fatal intersection at the moment of impact? If they'd paused to tie their shoelace before they caught back in their car, was that enough to change their fate? Yeah, it was spooky to think about alright.

According to Butterfly theory, even the fact that you are reading this blog post instead of doing something else has probably changed the course of your life in some infinitisemal way. Or possibly just a weather pattern in Brazil.

The Other Job

Have you ever been hired sight unseen, resume unseen? That's how I fell into my newly acquired job. I've never met the person who hired me three months ago--so far they are only a shadowy figure on the other end of an email address where I post my hours worked.

Somebody asked me the other day, "So how do you like your other job?"

As it's been one of the things cutting into my blogging time, and jobs have been on my mind lately, I thought I'd talk a bit about it.

My new job, as once mentioned before, is at a dentist office in the evening. Two or three times a week. I clean all the sharp little instruments a dentist is likely to wiggle around in your mouth. I scrape out disgusting strawberry-flavoured mouth moulds--its like bubble-gum in appearance and consistency. I polish the great HUGE stainless steel needles and rinse blood out of the syringes. As I've long suspected about myself, I'm not grossed out by much. Lucky for that, huh?

Some of the thingies I clean I can't even imagine how they are used in the context of sticking it in someone's mouth...although I can envision their usefulness as a weapon in a self-defense situation.

Things I LIKE About This Job

* It's quiet.
*I work by myself.
* I can actually see that work is getting accomplished.
*I like fiddling around with all the funky medical equipment. The models of actual mouths and teeth are really interesting to look at too.

Things I DISLIKE

* Thanks for ruining my appreciation of strawberry flavoured bubble-gum, like, forever , Dentist Job!

But, all in all, I actually rather like this job.....it's gotten me thinking about doing other work in general.

Things at my day job, at the preschool I've worked at ten years, are a little up in the air right now.

Government cuts. Possible wage roll-backs. Low staff morale. "Reconfiguration": a vague word I'm growing to swiftly dislike. It's doubtful I'll actually lose my job, but some brutally un-fun staff meetings have made me wonder about other lines of work. Seriously.

They say that the average person changes careers eight times in their lifetime. I think I may be overdue for one.

Any ideas for me, people?

Er, something lucrative, entertaining, and with travel perks preferably.

Healing Dances

There were dances for healing, dances for hope, and dances for the joy of it in honour of a fellow dancer.

Sunday night's bellydance show was a fundraiser to cover some of the medical costs for a talented local bellydancer who was in a tragic car accident seven weeks ago, leaving her with a broken back and unable to move from the waist down.

Imagine the awfulness of suddenly being unable to move when your love is for dance and your whole livelihood depends on your ability to move...

We have a very beautiful dance community where I live. I haven't danced myself since the show in June, but seeing many of the dancers I've performed with in the past made me suddenly miss the comraderie. I felt very moved to see a packed standing-room-only building for the performances : such an outpouring of support for her.

There is hope too--at the beginning of the show a friend reported that that very day, Dee had wiggled her toes for the first time! A cheer went up!

Oblivious

Although he's probably just doing it to be annoying....I would.

Why I Need to Check My Brother's Blog More Often

These are pictures from three morning's ago, taken from my brother's blog under a blog post titled. "How to Get a Day Off Work".

Yep, wiping out in the company truck will do it.

Actually Adam was a passenger and Mike was driving. Both of them are okay fortunately. (I talked to Adam this morning.)

I'm glad they only ended up in a ditch instead of one of those nasty ravines along that stretch of road.

But this will teach me to miss reading someone's blog for a couple days!

I'm talking to my mom on the phone and she's suddenly talking about my brother's accident and how his back was still sore, and Jeff is nodding as he overhears my side of the conversation. He apparently knows about it too.

See, apparently they all knew about it because they read his blog.

Sigh. I was temporarily out of the loop.

Big Drums

Uzume Taiko derives from the Japanese word for "big drum", and from the goddess of laughter, Ame No Uzume No Mikoto .

This goddess is known as the Heavenly Alarming Female who , according to legend, first began taiko drumming.

Heavenly Alarming Female...I like the ring of that. That's the kind of powerful happy goddess archetype a girl like me likes to identify with.

I liked this Canadian drumming group a lot. Jeff, me, Kim and baby Zoe heard Uzume Taiko in concert as part of last week's Cumberland Lantern Festival performances.

I missed the flamenco dancers on Monday alas, but I'm glad I didn't miss the Big Drums.

Uzume Taiko was loud, fun, energetic, and combined tradition drumming techniques with their own choreographies, mask work, martial arts and humour.

As well as big drums, gongs, and wooden flutes, this group can also play a mean musical trio with Frying Pans.

And Zoe, aged only eleven months, seemed very pleased with her very first Taiko drum concert. Kim was a little worried Zoe might be fussy, or the drumming might scare her, but on reflection she noted that, as daddy is a musician, Zoe's quite used to musical noise.

Actually, I've seen her with her own drum-sticks in hand...

Uncle Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Okay, rationally I know there are few, if any, Oompa Loompas involved in my family history (although we are as a whole rather on the short side), and as far as I know "Bucket" is not a name on my geneaology tree...

Nonetheless I am pleased to share with you a picture of my Great Uncle Charlie.

His claim to fame?

He owned a Chocolate Factory. :)

Lantern Festival

So Happy Week of the Chinese New Year everyone!

Kim wrote a lovely and thoughtful post on our time at the Taiwanese Lantern Festival in Cumberland last weekend, so check it out if you like.

Me, I thought I'd post a few pictures of my favourite of the lanterns on display, and a picture of us all huddling under our brellies in the rain at the outdoor festivities.

I took a picture of my friend Tai in the rain too(oh boy, the girl does NOT like rain), but she was sticking her tongue out at the camera so, like a good friend, I am refraining from posting it here. Because there would be repercussions I'm sure.... :)

Yes, it Rained on Our Parade. Oh yes, it rained like billy-o! The chance of a paper lantern surviving the torrential onslaught of water pouring from the heavens seemed slim (fortunately the display was indoors), but nonetheless there was an enormous crowd that turned out to parade along with the Chines dragon and a lively band of drummers...down to the park we all went, wet as wet could be.

And then, the Giant Tap in the Sky turned itself off. It was a twenty minute gift from the gods.

Leaping into action as the weather broke, a troupe of amazing fire-spinners entertained the crowd with Fiery Hula-Hoops of Death, the ethereal Sky Lanterns were released into the suddenly clear and starry night sky, and great bursts of fireworks exploded over head. Gorgeous.

The show ended. Ten more seconds of clear skies.

And then, boom! The Tap turned itself on again. Perfect.

Well, except for my tragically sodden shoes. (Thanks for the dry socks, Kim!)

Would the Stale Beer Work, D'Ya Think?

I was lying on the floor on at the gym doing crunches, bored and trying to ignore the mutiny in my tummy muscles, when distraction and entertainment arrived in the form of three elderly people.

As they stretched and limbered up for their workout (I'm always impressed when folks in their eighties are gym rats), they began to chat about the good 'ol days back on their farms and dogs they used to have.

The talk turned to chicken-stealin' dogs:

Harold: "Yeah, an' then while I was up there, visitin' and having tea and cake with the lady of the house, that darn dawg of mine was around back getting after the chickens. Fifteen chickens he killed! And imagine my embarrassment at that!"

Betty: "Especially after you were eating her cake and all! What did you do?"

Harold: "Well, I, uh, paid for the chickens. And then she told me that the only way to cure a dog of stealin' chickens is to tie two dead chickens around the dog's neck and keep them there until the chickens are all rotting and stinky and there's nothing left of 'em. That's how it's done, they say. So that's what I tried."

Roy: "So, did it do the trick?"

Harold: "Nope. That dawg just kept eatin' chickens no matter what. But I hear it worked for some."

Betty: "Say, Roy, I just now had a fantastic idea! I think we should try hangin' a couple bottles of stale beer around your neck. Maybe that would cure you.'"

Roy: *snorts* " Yeah, well, I dunno about that...."

Heh, those three sure kept me entertained. As for the chicken trick, apparently people really do try that, but you'd think it would just make you not want to hang out with your dog.

Rally Rant

We came .
We rallied.
We waved our signs.

But I'm not very sure that many people noticed.......

There was a red carpet out on the steps of the Legislature, but it wasn't for the thousands of people protesting nasty cuts to the child-care system in British Columbia, that's for sure.

One thing I learned this past Tuesday at one of the province-wide rallies: if it's not a Slow News Day, you probably aren't going to make a big splash on the evening news.

Way to get eclipsed by the Throne speech and Valentines Day lead-up articles!

Bah! Bah, I say!

Daycare fees are going up. (The hundred dollar a month gesture nicknamed The Beer & Popcorn Money Plan that Harper is replacing the old system with is dismally inadequate for most families who need childcare. It's about six hundred dollars a month for daycare 'round these parts...)

Childcare worker wages are going down. ( At the end of June my wage will be lower than when I joined this profession ten years ago. I knew this wasn't a high-paying profession when I went to college for it, but I didn't expect the future to be a few bucks from minimum wage and going backwards. Grrr!)

The waiting lists for getting in to most daycares are so long.... that your child may have to be a foetus when you sign up. (Yes, it's literally true, we've had unborn babes waiting to get into our centre and it doesn't necessarily mean they'll get a spot in time.)

The government is closing every Childcare Resource and Referral Centre in B.C. by the end of September-- people are losing their jobs and daycare providers are losing job training, lending libraries, and the people who keep an eye on licensing requirements and criminal-record checks and a whole lot of other important things.

Yeah, the whole fragile child-care system in B.C. is getting a little more dodgy, I'd say.

On the bright side, even if I got up early and trekked to the Parliament Buildings in Victoria for very little effect (and less a day's pay), at least the sun was shining and I had a nice walk around Beacon Hill Park to show for it.

Oh, and I got to see a whole lot of Mounties, parading politicians, and the Lieutenant Governor herself. Dang it, the red carpet was for them, wasn't it?

We Are Very Small

Brighid's Day

In Celtic tradition, the spirit of a sacred candle flame resides in the wick of the candle and not in the flame itself.

A sacred flame such as the one that is tended by the Irish Brigidine nuns of Kildare can be passed onto others because of this.

And on the eve of this past Brighid's Day (February 2) I was honoured to be part of a small gathering of women who received the gift of Brigid's Flame in a beautiful ceremony (candle-lit, of course)created by a good friend who recently visited the cathedral and shrine at Kildare and had the flame gifted to her by the sisters there.

My friend, not a Catholic at all, but a devout pagan, was thrilled by her experiences in Kildare. Brighid is one of those beloved saints/goddesses with tangled crossover links to pagan mythology, and my friend had also experienced a physical healing at one of Brighid's sacred wells on this trip--and any time you're able to avoid extensive dental surgery you are bound to be spiritually moved as well in my opinion!)

This is part of what she wrote in her invitation for us to come and share the flame:

Brighid's Holy Day will be celebrated this year in Kildare, Ireland, by devotees of both the Goddess Brighid and Saint Brighid from around the world.

For many She is one and the same, and a bridge between the worlds.

The year 2oo7 marks the centenary of the re-establishment of an order of Brigidine Sisters in Kildare. It was started in 1807 by Catholic Bishop Delaney, who in commemoration planted an oak tree which still stands today in Cill Dara(Church of the Oak). On Feb. 1st, 2006, the President of Ireland lit Brighid's Sacred Flame in the town square where it will continue to burn in perpetuity.

Last year I was blessed to have Brighid's flame passed on to me twice in Ireland. First of all by Mary, pictured below with her holy candle, and then by the Sisters of the Brigidine order who were responsible for rekindling Brighid's flame at a Peace Conference in 1993, re-invigorating this ancient link to pre-Christian Ireland that had been forced underground after the perpetual flame was extinguished by a Pope in the 1600's.

It is speculated that the flame may have originated up to 1000 years earlier, with the Goddess inspired Druidic priestesses that long preceeded the advent of Saint Brighid's egalitarian monastic order in the 5th century AD.

Well, after an evening full of singing, story-telling, poetry, chocolate cake and Irish lore, I am very happy my friend decided to create such a meaningful way to share a personal experience.

And I now have a beeswax candle with mystical links to ancient Ireland and a Brighid's cross hand-woven from reeds on my kitchen wall.

Misty

This whole week has been shrouded in fog and mist like a Victorian melodrama.....

But, unlike a Victorian melodrama, this week's plot-line consisted mostly of serious back-to-back staff meetings, an allergy flare-up, cleaning out the garage and the like. Hence, I haven't written much.

However, last weekend (and this weekend too! ...but that's another post) redeemed the mundaneness in between by being full of friends and food...and er, fog. Fog can be a marvellous thing when you're out in nature and swathed in it.

We (Kim, Shawn, baby Zoe, Tai, Jeff, and I) took an icy-cold but briskly beautiful walk around the trails at the Airpark last Sunday morning.

Walking in the mist was like being in a watercolour painting. The colours were muted blues and greys and tawny-yellows and ran into one another. The sun hung watery and low with a strange pale light.

It was cold...really cold. And you can't wear your mittens when you're taking pictures....but it was gorgeous. Still, I'm glad we ran for the nearby coffee shop right after.

(Note to self: New drink to love called "London Fog", basically frothed and steamed milk mixed with Earl Grey tea. It wasn't on the menu but they made one for Kim when she asked for it.)

The day before Tai and Jeff and I were out and about buying salmon at Portuguese Joe's (apparently endorsed by Hollywood celebrities: mmm, famously-good fishies). I took some pictures down by the beach there too. I love the look of seagulls and docks in the mist.

But first we had lunch at Taco Del Mar .

Tai (pictured below shivering in her coat at Taco Del Mar ) proved conclusively that just because a restaurant has fake palm trees and surfing bric-a-brack on the walls doesn't mean you're going to find your inner Baja there. Brrrr!

No, the only antidote to the weather was to get my friend Tai to cook the most colourful dinner she could (pink salmon, bright dill and lemons, orange butternut squash, green beans) and serve it up in my colourful kitchen.