Filling the Well

Now that the chaos, otherwise known as JUNE, is over I can concentrate my energies upon "refilling the well". I have willingly although sometimes snappishly worn myself out on behalf of my family and my students, and now it's time to replenish my spirit and my strength.


June, as all teachers can attest, is the month that saps one's resources more than any other. Year end trips, culminating activities, exam preparation, IEP meetings, graduations, proms, shopping expeditions for said prom and graduation dresses, packing up the classroom, exam supervision, report cards all contribute to the bittersweet emptying of what was, the previous September, a very deep, very wet well.


On the last day of school my inner well resembled that dry and dusty pit of despair as illustrated above. But the proms and graduations are over, the exams are marked, the report cards filled in, lockers are empty though still smelly and supplies are packed into boxes to await another September.


Let the refilling begin.


The refilling of my well began at about the same time that my daughter filled out her prom dress and struck a pose with her beau. She puts a smile on my face and joy in my heart.


Stay tuned for more wellfilling moments.........

Monday Memoirs - Drama Queen

Of course the obvious question here is not why am I on the roof in my mother's skirt and high heels, no, the obvious question is where the heck was my mother when I was up on the roof in her skirt and high heels?

I can't answer that question except to say my brother and I most likely waited until mom was on her way downtown to do her shopping, oblivious to the risky activities her youngest two got up to in her absence.

On the back of the photo the words "no, don't shoot" are written in a childish hand. My brother and I loved to act out skits of our own making, especially since finding mother's old movie magazines in the small closet under the stairs. We tried using a tape recorder that Kim got for Christmas one year but got into major trouble one night when in the midst of creating quite amazing sound effects we dropped the tape recorder onto the glass top of our coffee table shattering it into a million pieces. The amazing sound bite was rather diminished by our mother's wrath.

So we turned to photography and my brother made me, yes made me pose in all kinds of crazy getups in all kinds of crazy locations while trying to emote major silent movie style mannerisms and facial expressions in my limited way(think Gloria Swanson - "I'm ready for my closeup Mr. DeMille). I can't recall the storyline which would rationally explain why someone was trying to shoot me after I had clambered up onto the roof but I bet it would be a blockbuster!

I'm sure they would have missed me anyway as I dove into the upstairs window - the bad guys were notoriously bad shots in old movies, still are in fact.

Monday Memoirs - Turkey Point

When I was a kid, yeah that's me kneeling on the blanket, my gramma Catton used to rent the same cottage at Turkey Point for a week every summer. This was quite a few years back and it cost about $30 for a week of sunburns, underwater handstands, potato salad and cucumber sandwiches. Yeah, pure bliss! Seated beside me is one of my older brothers - Kim, and one of my older sisters - Dale. I still remember that short set I was wearing - I thought it was so cool. It was white but had these red and white striped thingys you could tie into bows at the neck and on the legs of the shorts.

It was a great place to spend a week - the beaches were sandy and the lake full of dunes - you could walk out a mile and the water would only be up to your armpits. Not that I was a great swimmer, but I never came too close to drowning. The water and the food and the freedom were the best part for me, (no mother telling me to eat my vegetables or not to go out into the lake too far - just gramma who never said no to a second ice cream cone) however, from what my sisters remember it was the gin that my gramma doled out in generous amounts mixed with Wink that provided some of their best memories!

We always rented the same cottage - cottage #4. It is still there, now part of the "Whispering Pines" group of cottages, though updated and a bit more pricey at $535 per week. It has new siding, new windows and linoleum and I don't remember there being a firepit.

#4 was our favourite because in addition to 2 bedrooms it had a sunporch with a couch where another person could sleep.

Here's the sunporch now and you get a good view of the road leading down to the beach - the water isn't too far away. My cousin Murray and I would play on the road with our cars and trucks making roadways in the sand, impatiently waiting for gramma to announce that it was time to go to the beach. There was also a swing at the other end of the road behind a little hedge and a spring coming out of the side of a hill by the swing with cold wonderful tasting water. (Pesticides?)

My cousin Murray usually only lasted til about Tuesday or Wednesday when his dad would have to come and get him because he'd be sunburned so badly. No sunblock in those days. I survived somehow and usually only ended up with the usual assortment of scrapes, cuts, bruises and second degree burns.

Honestly, I was the most battered looking child ever. I was such a tomboy I was forever falling out of trees or falling while climbing over a rusty barbwire fence. Yet I never broke a bone or poked an eye out like my brother Kim. In fact, (correct me if I'm wrong ceeb) I don't remember a single broken bone in our entire family. I give all credit to our mother...."get down from there"...."put that down"...."get off the roof right now"...."stop shooting those arrows at your sister"...."no you can't play with your father's rifle"...."no, you can't drink that"....etc etc.

Now I have my own trailer to go to at a different lake but the feelings are still the same. Everyone needs a place to escape to in the summer, a place to let your hair down with no boss looking over your shoulder, no deadlines....just pure bliss.

Monday Memoirs - Life Cycle of a Laying Hen

Chickens have always played a large role in my family. What an odd statement. But true nonetheless. There's my dad holding a chicken in his arms at age 4. He lived almost 80 more years and raised countless chickens.

Unfortunately not all of my experiences with our chickens were pleasant. I have memories of one flapping around me when I was about 3 and digging its talons into my bare back. Not a happy memory. And I was always a little hesitant opening up the henhouse door when I had to collect the eggs. Hesitant was good because if I opened the door suddenly all the hens would fly up and flap their wings and the air would be full of squawking and feathers. Tiptoeing in was better and gently gliding my hand under their bums in one smooth quick movement to clutch and grab the still warm eggs.

I have to admit there was a certain fascination for me in watching my dad select an old hen for the stewing pot. He had a long metal hook and would reach with it into the chicken coop and give a quick yank on the neck of one of the older hens. Then he would chop its head off with an axe and yes, I have seen them run around headless, but not for long. Then he would dunk it into boiling water and pull out the feathers.

Now for the insides. Dad would spread newspaper over the picnic table and carefully explain to me each organ as he would remove it - I was spellbound but in no way did the experience make me want to be a vet or a doctor. It was more an interest in the whole process - from a live chicken in the coop to a simmering chicken pot pie in the oven. Yum.

I never remember feeling sorry for the chicken, I do remember feeling "lucky me"! Chicken for supper! I mean, that's the way it was. We eked out our diet by raising chickens and growing a large garden. The chickens roamed free most of the time, had a good life laying eggs and scratching about in the dirt, then when they were old and couldn't lay eggs anymore, sacrificed their lives to give us one more meal.

I just can't feel sad about that!

Top 100 Movies

Here's a great Sunday afternoon blogging idea borrowed from A Gentleman's Domain who, in turn borrowed it from Lillasyster's Life who got the list of 100 top movies from IMDb.

It looks as though I spend a little too much time watching Turner Classic Movies channel but I've always had a passion for movies, old and new, since discovering my mother's movie magazines from the 1930's and 40's in the closet under the stairs. I think that's where my mother must have picked up her leggy pose and penchant for dramatic clothing (the magazines, not the closet). Ahhh mom, Linda Darnell couldn't hold a candle to you!

Just last night I watched "No Country for Old Men" (that one will need a second viewing I think) bringing my total to 65 out of 100 movies seen on this list. Tommy Lee Jones seems to be in just about every movie going these days, but I do like his craggy ol' face. He and his deputy bring a little levity to this heavy movie. How many have you seen from this list?

1. The Godfather (1972)
2. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
3. The Godfather: Part II (1974)
4. Buono, il brutto, il cattivo, Il (1966)
5. Pulp Fiction (1994)
6. Schindler's List (1993)
7. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
8. Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
9. Casablanca (1942)
10. Shichinin no samurai (1954)
11. Star Wars (1977)
12. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
13. 12 Angry Men (1957)

14. Rear Window (1954)
15. Goodfellas (1990)
16. Cidade de Deus (2002)
17. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
18. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
19. C'era una volta il West (1968)
20. The Usual Suspects (1995)
21. Psycho (1960)
22. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
23. Fight Club (1999)
24. Citizen Kane (1941)
25. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
26. North by Northwest (1959)
27. Memento (2000)
28. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
29. Sunset Blvd. (1950)
30. It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
31. The Matrix (1999)
32. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
33. There Will Be Blood (2007)
34. Se7en (1995)
35. Apocalypse Now (1979)
36. Taxi Driver (1976)
37. American Beauty (1999)
38. Léon (1994)
39. Vertigo (1958)
40. Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain, Le (2001)
41. American History X (1998)
42. The Departed (2006)
43. No Country for Old Men (2007)
44. Paths of Glory (1957)
45. M (1931)
46. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
47. Chinatown (1974)
48. The Third Man (1949)
49. Leben der Anderen, Das (2006)
50. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
51. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
52. Alien (1979)
53. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
54. Laberinto del fauno, El (2006)
55. The Shining (1980)
56. Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (2001)
57. The Pianist (2002)
58. Double Indemnity (1944)
59. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
60. Forrest Gump (1994)
61. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
62. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
63. L.A. Confidential (1997)
64. Das Boot (1981)
65. Requiem for a Dream (2000)
66. Reservoir Dogs (1992)
67. Untergang, Der (2004)
68. Aliens (1986)
69. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
70. Raging Bull (1980)
71. Metropolis (1927)
72. Rashômon (1950)
73. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
74. Modern Times (1936)
75. Hotel Rwanda (2004)
76. Singin' in the Rain (1952)
77. Sin City (2005)
78. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
79. Rebecca (1940)
80. Sjunde inseglet, Det (1957)
81. All About Eve (1950)
82. Some Like It Hot (1959)
83. City Lights (1931)
84. Amadeus (1984)
85. On the Waterfront (1954)
86. Vita è bella, La (1997)
87. The Great Escape (1963)
88. Touch of Evil (1958)
89. The Prestige (2006)
90. The Elephant Man (1980)
91. Jaws (1975)
92. Full Metal Jacket (1987)
93. The Sting (1973)
94. Nuovo cinema Paradiso (1988)
95. Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
96. The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
97. The Apartment (1960)
98. Braveheart (1995)
99. The Great Dictator (1940)
100. Blade Runner (1982)

Just How Nutty Am I?

I have to say that I like all kinds of nuts. Just keep your mind out of the gutter, however, and we'll get along just fine. I only talk about walnuts, pecans, brazil nuts etc and....oh yes, I often refer to myself and other folk I know as "nutty" or "off their nut" and if I get really upset I just might whip off a bold "nuts to you" type comment.

Take today for instance. Although I am well past my lunch-time I have yet to leave the computer to go downstairs and partake of some. Instead, I sit here trying to start up a blog in the hopes that there just might be some people out there, like me (hear me out), who will stop by to visit and share their wisdom with me from time to time.

People like me could be over 50 years old (yikes, I admit it, I'm over half a century old - but only on the OUTSIDE!), a single parent, (I have a 17 year old princess but that's another post, or even another whole blog...hmmmmm), a teacher, a family history researcher, and/or could be trying, really trying to live a simpler and hence greener lifestyle.

So welcome to "Just How Nutty Am I?" and let's explore the world's nuttier side. So many nuts, so little time....