Exercise

December and I am wondering why I can’t find time to blog. In truth, I can’t find anything to say after I get home from my early morning walk with Richard. Everything I might have said on the blog has passed in conversation between us. I like to talk as I walk and by the time our feet hit the pavement, I have a list of major topics. I say them to him, so that he will know I have to pace myself to get to the bottom of each one. Maybe it is my signal to him that I will take the talking feather and if he wants it, he will have to grab it back.

In the beginning our walks started at 6 am on the dot. A few times he wasn’t there. I would strike out on my own. Punctuality is my forte. He asked if I had to be that prompt, if just a five minute lapse would be OK for me. There is no five minute lapse. But I do walk up and down our own block in a warm up, waiting for that five minutes to pass.

He told me that he has it down to a science now – to know when to come out of the house. My bedroom light goes off. That light shines in his bedroom window so they wake up when I do. But I go back into my room a few times after turning it off – back to get my watch, back for a different set of gloves, some cream for chapped lips, morning pills I have forgotten – all of that has a strobe light effect since I do those things one at a time – lights on, lights off, lights on, lights off. He gets up.

He is not fully awake but still he meets me in the front of our houses, his winter jacket wide open and his hat awry – poking fun, himself, at the multi-coloured wool toque and intoning how he now just grabs any hat from the hat box -- it could be Alice’s for all he knows. Style is of no consequence at that time of morning.

On this same topic of walking, I have a new person living with us: Reza. In the first week of winter he had fallen twice – once on his cell phone and smashed it to smithereens. By the second week of winter he was up to eight falls. Richard and I remember this as we walk – carefully skirting the black ice and sidewalks that are unshovelled. There are now mini and maxi clumps of sharp ice on the sidewalks, one foot print after another reshaping the snow. Then it freezes and every step on it is a potential ankle-breaking moment.

“Let’s take the road since on 24th street at this time of the morning, there is no traffic”, says Richard, heading off of the pavement. I follow behind him though it seems odd to be walking down the middle of the street in the city.

That morning exercise?

A joy.

Arta

Die Meistersinger -- on Saturday

Annette Dasch and James Morris.
Credit Tina Fineberg for The New York Times

It seems like the best way to find out if this is the opera for me is to go out and read a couple of reviews. This one by Anthony Tommasini in the New York Tiimes warns the reader that the opera is a long one: six hours. I might just take a few snacks.

A shorter review carries a 2 1/2 minute utube of a chorus which I enjoyed listening to.

My new job is to go out and learn the plot.  Hello google. 

Goggle is where I go to discover a bit of what I will see ahead of time.  If someone asks me a question I always like to appear informed.

There is so much out there that my head began to ache.  I am not going to remember all of that.  I decided to just bite the bullet, make up 10 questions for myself to answer and try to get to the opera with enough knowledge that the 6 hours won't seem that long.  In my reading somewhere it said this was a 4 1/2 hour opera. I am guess that is without adding in the intermission time.

OK.  Ready for the first question.

What does "meistersinger" mean?
Arta

Matisee

Henri Matisse: Red Room

Tomorrow our local theatre is showing Matisse, an exhibition from the Tate Modern, now produced on screen for all of us in HD Live.

Here is a review from the New York Times.

I have my ride organized for tomorrow and am looking forward to the exhibit.  As the review says, all of the beauty without the jostling.

I love the comfort of the theatre and the big screen.

Hope some of you can join me at this showing.  I notice Rembrandt is coming in the winter.

Arta

Little Lamb, who made thee

From Catherine

The Nativity Cast - the Holy Family, shepherds and sheep

In the spirit of sharing creches with others as I am doing on my Facebook this year, I thought you might enjoy seeing pictures of this live creche.



It was put on by the Primary children of our ward at Friday nights Christmas party.


 Of course, I think the lamb stole the show.

Baa, little sheep, baa

Made me think of the famous poem Little Lamb Who Made Thee? by William Blake.


Catherine

Mincemeat Tarts

"You can have mine."

Wyona offered me a mincemeat tart.

 I took one eagerly, thinking that this year they would taste different – that they would be something I liked. 

Wyona told me to smother the top of the tart with whipping cream and add some dulche de leche on top of that.

None of that was enough.

 That will be my only mincemeat tart of the season. After all of these years, and still I pass.

“I don’t understand it,” Wyona said. “I have these warm memories of mincemeat and Christmas pudding and Christmas cake. Mother would shred the carrots for the pudding and then bottle it. When it was Christmas and she asked someone to run downstairs to the pantry and bring up a bottle for supper, it was me who headed down the stairs on the run. I can still remember that happiness. Later my girls asked me the recipe for the topping. I didn’t know there was a recipe. I just took the butter and icing sugar and began to beat the two together as I had seen my mother do.”

The tastes of Christmas.

Different for everyone.

Arta

Front Yard Rabbit

Richard and I meet a little after six am on the sidewalk in front of our houses. One of us gets there early and begins the warm up by pacing up and down the street. The walks are safe. The neighbour to the east of Richard not only shovels his walk, but he sweeps it, as well … and he does the same to the house next door to him. That is a lot of social pressure, but Richard and I do not succumb. We shovel – we don’t shovel and sweep.

This morning Richard came out of the house and his face was double wrapped with a scarf. He had on a toque … maybe two of them, for he told me he found on his bike rides in the winter, that two toques are better than one.

He seems taller. I think it is the winter boots that add a couple of inches of height but he seems so much taller that I wonder if I am going to have to yell to get my voice heard that high.

We chat about everything on the walk.

Rebecca, you are the one who started this walking in the summer – a different group, but that is where I learned to “toss the feather” to the one who needs to talk next. So Richard and I toss the feather and keep out of each other’s conversation unless something bubbles up and can’t be squelched.  Then we call for the feather.

Richard tells about the new hire of a  Chinese colleague at work: Junehua. Today is the office weekly luncheon. Last week it was the best prime rib he had ever eaten at the noon buffet of a local hotel. Today it will be Chinese food in honour of the new colleague.  That that is an employee friendly environment.

I take the feather to talk about yesterday: a phone call day. I was on the receiving end of calls from two occupational therapists, the druggist, the family doctor, and all of them give me jobs to do and some even ask me to report back to them. As well, I have go arrange a ride to see a second doctor and I have a list of questions to ask him. The health care system is my new family,

The wind must be cold for Richard has us turn around before we reach the Children’s Hospital. I don’t notice the chill for I have been talking for so long.

He tells me about Alice and Michael --  how he is tall enough to turn the lights in the bedroom on and off – and he tells me about his in-laws dropping by for supper and bringing a pot of fresh soup. He tells me about a new financial guru that Miranda has listened to on-line who says that most families can save half of what they make if they really put their mind to it.  He wonders if a single-income family can really do that. We talk about ways to save money. I can only think of ways to save nickles and dimes, though I do think about the two computer books I just bought which I could have borrowed from the library.  That would have saved $100.

We arrive back at our front yards, wondering if the garbage pickup has happened so that we can drag our recycling bins back out of the alley.

“There goes the front-yard rabbit,” he says. I think my hearing is going bad. I ask him the name of the rabbit again. “Front-yard rabbit. The front yard rabbit. We have a rabbit living in our front yard.”

He takes me to the spot where the rabbit burrows down for the night. I see a rounded indent in the snow beside the birch tree. The yellow rays from the street light above us make the snow glisten and I can see the rabbit tracks in and out of its nest. The rabbit doesn’t recognize the No Parking sign that is also beside the street light.

“When the rabbit saw us coming, it made haste to the end of the street,” Richard said, pointing to the east, where only he can see the rabbit.  I don't have my glasses on.  I leave them at the back entry, since they would only fog up on me anyway.

I wonder how a city boy has learned so much about where animals live in the city.

Yesterday, I was deeply affected by one of my trips during the day: the one to the podiatrist. Seven people, old people, were sitting on hospital beds, so close to each other that there was no way to get both of their walkers into a space between their beds. The Dr. would sit on a stool, look at the patient’s chart, then their feet, take a few pictures if he needed to, take his tools and work on their feet, then swing himself over to his disinfectant and water, dry his hands, swing himself back to the next patient and down the row he went, never getting off of his stool, only his feet propelling him up and down the isles.

I looked at the old people in a row.  Then I looked at the limbs in a row, sometimes only a half foot, sometimes a nail ripped off, but since there was no feeling left in the foot, the patient was in no pain – just asking that the Dr. take care of the place where taking her sock off had done that damage.

The Dr. stopped at Kelvin for a while, for I had written out my concerns and just handed the paper to him. He wrote out his perscriptions, told Kelvin to come back in two weeks, gave Kelvin advice and sent us on our way.

I knew that the whole event had bothered me more than I let on during the afternoon, for at night I gave myself a long foot massage – the longest of my life.

 I filled every crevice with cream and massaged my feet the way Doral had taught me to give massages.

 My feet were thanking him and me.

Arta

Tanning a hide

 ...a do-it-yourself-project ...
 ... hide stretching in Richard's garage ...

Richard is teaching me how to track animals in the snow on my early morning walks:  mule deer, white-tail deer, rabbits, and coyotes – all of them with different marks in the snow.

Richard walks beside me.

 I have my eyes on the sidewalk, looking for dangerous places to step (or not step).

He has his eyes on the environment, watching for animals. He often stops to point out animals’ tracks in the snow. The rabbits leaving clumps of four prints close together as they pause and then leap; the coyote prints could be mistake for large dogs ... except that dogs are on leashes with human prints nearby.

We are walking early. As the number of times we go increases, we get to know all of the people who take that route – the university student walking with skis over her shoulder; the serious biker (we can tell from his clothing) cycling to work; the university employee arriving at the heating plant with his lunch in his  back pack.

 Our collective timings are close – we can tell from where we meet the man on the bike, if we are early or late on our own walk. Richard always says good morning to the woman walking her dogs. Dog people must recognize each other. He laughs when he is past her, but he is not laughing at her. His mirth comes from the prancing of the smaller dog and he mimics it, his own hands up and his knees high and in little steps.

 “That dog has attitude,” he says.

Yesterday was the last day of the deer season. Today Alberta hunters begin elk hunting in 212 -- the area 30 kilometres around Calgary.

The second last day of the deer season Richard and Chris shot two, one of them a large one. The large animals is hanging in Richard’s garage now, ready to be skinned. I am going out to the garage this morning so that he can show me the difference in the two sizes.

It would have been tough skinning the animals in weather that is -25.

We will see some highs of just under zero, which will make tomorrow and the next day perfect for peeling the skins away from the meat.

Thus endeth the beginning of my talk about winter walks.

Arta