A Snow Globe

It started to snow again today.

I opened my eyes, looking outside, remembering again that I am surrounded by windows, and I had this feeling that I have had before; I am inside a snow globe!

I have loved those snow globes ever since I was little. I picked one up a few weeks ago at President’s Choice.

It was in the space where there were small toys, 5 for $10.

I shook the globe a couple of times, and then picked up a small toy, a wooden beaded animal sitting on a pedestal.

The kind where if you push a button on the bottom, the strings collapse, bringing the animal into a seated/downward position. When you release your thumb, it pops back up to a standing position.

I put 4 of those and one snow globe into my cart, and continued to walk up and down the aisles of Christmas decorations. I didn’t need to be there at all, except I had accompanied Bonnie to a medical appointment and I had nothing to do for an hour.

But the time I had finished my Christmas shopping, I knew to return to that aisle to put the snowglobe and the animals back: they had reminded me of Christmases long ago, and this Christmas I will not be surrounded by little ones.

So those toys should go to other homes, not mine.

It was fun to think about that as I was sitting in the chair, watching the snow fall all around me through the windows.

That feeling that I was the subject of the snow globe.

I wondered if the snow was falling in Cornwall, Montreal, St. Albert, Lethbridge, Calgary?

A phone call from Duncan let us know that it was, indeed, falling in Victoria.

David Camps-Johnson came out to the lake today.

He told his mom he wanted to come and walk around the property for the day.

He was amazed at the work done on lots 3 and 4.

Last year, he cleared a small path between the two lots so that branches and vines did not whip the legs of Betty, Alice and Michael as they ran back and forth between the two cabins.

David loofed at the clearing and said “Well that was a waste of my energy last summer, because now there is not even a hint of my path, let alone groves of trees having been there.”

He was amazed at the different look between the two yards, and he looked at all the stones that are piled and ready to be moved – moving some of them.

I am amazed at the tones as well. I see them around the telephone pole and the two larch trees where they have been gathered.

They need to be moved to their final resting place. The job looks absolutely daunting to me, and yet I know that, in a couple of years, all that area will be grassed and mowed, and look as if it always existed that way.

At any rate, Bonnie and David Camps wandered up to David and Shawna Pilling’s house, and took a lot of pictures along the way. David brought out his own hamburger, telling his mother, there is no use going through the fast food when we can just buy some beef, and have a better hamburger at Grandmothers.

During the course of the afternoon, Rebecca introduced David to the movie “Pulp Fiction”, telling him it was a classic movie, one that all teens should be familiar with. She hung out in the kitchen with him, as they watched on the computer screen. She coached him along the way, telling him that the movie was comprised of small vignettes which would pull themselves together as they approach the climax of the movie.

It is a long movie (well over 2 hours), and before he went home, I sat in the room with David and Rebecca while he tried to answer 10 questions for 10 dollars. This is always such a draw, this 10 dollars. I felt I could see David working it out in his head (how much will go into his bank account, if he can watch a movie a day at this rate and be paid for it). He said if I had known there were questions at the end, I would have paid attention in a different way. He did head to google for one quick piece of information (the title of the book was Travolta reading on the toilet?), and then the David and Rebecca threw questions back and forward, laughing at the difficulty or simplicity of the questions. The answers were present either way. I have seen Pulp Fiction twice. For me, it is not a memorable movie. I can’t even think the of the name of the genre to which it belongs. 

Rebecca suggests: hyper-real-Kungfu-influenced-gangster-pulp-inappropriate-drug/mob culture genre.

Arta