fluffy and stripe

So Jeff and I finally got to meet Sara's and Annie's new guinea pigs last night, Fluffy and Stripe. They were very small (and young).

I've never had a guinea pig as a pet before, so hadn't realized how placid they were. They genuinely seemed content to just be held. Sara showed me how to gently scratch Fluffy behind the ears ("she likes that a lot").

Sara and Annie are very gentle with their new pets. I shudder to think of what happens when their more rambunctious classmates come over to visit. I guess Fluffy and Stripe will just have to learn to adjust.





Sadly, both Fluffy and Stripe have distinctive markings, and Stripe definitely seems to know Annie's voice already. So much for my plan to find emergency replacements for either of them if tragedy strikes while they are in Jeff's and my babysitting care!

Both Sara and Annie have started guinea pig diaries. Sara's is elaborately annotated with daily events, drawings, and photos.





Before dinner, Sara and Annie put on a Mamma Mia mini-performance for me. Sara and I are going to see Mamma Mia at the Royal Alex in June; we are both VERY hyped about this. I gave Sara the CD soundtrack for her birthday, and she has already memorized the lyrics to six of the songs.

Sara is starting to ask me what some of the songs mean. Uh-oh.

I've been trying to find a good synopsis of the musical online. The official Mamma Mia site gives the following unhelpful information under their "Synopsis" page: "MAMMA MIA! is ABBA's greatest hits woven into 3 wonderful love stories: A young girl about to be married; her mother about to confront the past; and the best love story of all - the audience about to jump out of their seats with joy!"

Guess I should start listening to the CD soundtrack more myself, though I still think I'm going to have a hard time trying to explain why poor Sophie is trying to figure out who her Daddy is in the story...





Jeff and I put the girls to bed last night. Usually this consists of Jeff reading them a couple stories while I try desperately not to fall asleep on the bed beside them. Sara and Annie are so used to this by now that they bring their noisemakers with them to bed for the story reading, in case they see me dozing off.

Sometimes I can see their little faces eagerly watching me (instead of listening to Jeff's story), waiting for my eyelids to droop so they can start shaking their noisemakers and banging their plastic cups and pots together (from the kitchen set). They'll get impatient waiting sometimes, and Annie will lean over to me and whisper, "Auntie Debbie, you can fall asleep now."

Last night, Annie got distracted by the plastic cup she was holding, finding that she could make her voice sound funny if she talked while pressing the cup hard against her mouth.

"My Preciousssssssssssssssssss," she'd whisper over and over again while I tried not to giggle at her Gollum impression.

Jeff was very patient. :-)

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Today's Blatherpics:

	Sara holding Fluffy.
	Annie holding Stripe.
	A page from Sara's diary (which Ruth says she started on her own). "Day 4 - Friday, April 14, 2002. Boo got eye sicknes. I cryed a lot. We had to returne her after dinner. But I got a new Guinea pig and named it Fluffy." Ruth said that Sara was crying when she wrote this entry.
	Another page from Sara's diary. This drawing is of Ruth trying to get one of the guinea pigs out of the cage so they can clean the cage.
	Sara's plasticine model of E.T. and the flowerpot.

cora's adventure

Cora, as I've mentioned in an earlier Blathering, is The Lamest Happy Meal Toy Ever (TLHMTE), and was acquired on a foolhardy expedition to MacDonald's on the way to the cottage. Cora is an extraordinarily ugly doll, with her lips pursed and dotted with pseudo-lipstick, white plastic panties, her plastic hat permanently affixed to her misaligned curls. I usually give my Happy Meal toys to Sara and Annie, but I don't want to inflict Cora on them.

Here's the picture of Cora on the ice that I included in an earlier Blathering.

I decided to take a photo of Cora at the cottage after ice-out, so perched her on the deck railing (see photo at top of this Blathering). Moments after taking the picture, however, a malicious gust of wind whipped Cora off the railing and into the icy waters of Canoe Lake.

Jeff (my hero) leaped to the rescue and took the canoe out to retrieve poor Cora just as she began to sink.





It took several tries, but Cora was successfully rescued from a watery death (she spent longer in the water than I did yesterday). Thankfully, she has not lost any of her horror-movie charm, though her jaunty curls are not quite as jaunty. (See her just-rescued photo at the bottom of today's Blathering)

As a child, my favourite doll was Casey, Barbie's tomboy cousin. She had bendable arms and legs, and a chic blonde crewcut. In a fit of rage, my sister had drawn on one of Casey's legs with a permanent marker...a thick, angry slash that never came off. I was furious, though I'm sure I had given Ruth ample cause for this act of vandalism; I was a horribly cruel big sister at times (I recall that Jim and I used to hang Ruth's dolls and teddybears).

My favourite comfort toy was John the Teddy Bear. I adored John, even when he got very old and fragile and his stuffing started to come out.

One of favourite adult comfort stuffed toys is my fuzzy dog Mendelssohn. My friend Michelle gave him to me when Jeff and I split up once and I spent hours crying on her shoulder. I took Mendelssohn to Philadelphia with me.

Jeff let me take his own childhood comfort toy Flatmouse with me to Philly, too. Annie and Sara are fascinated with Flatmouse; Annie has asked Jeff if a truck had run over it to make it that flat.





I also love a fuzzy green frog that Scott and Amanda sent to me when I was in Philadelphia. I found their package after coming home after a particularly bad day at work. It was basically a comfort package, with funny toys, noisemakers, a homemade pedicure kit, and the fuzzy frog. I started crying as I pulled stuff out of the package, and hugged the frog for a long time.





Cora (TLHMTE) isn't that kind of comfort toy, but I do find that I've grown somewhat fond of her in a pitying "how can anything be that lame" sort of way.

Don't be surprised if she makes appearances in future Blatherings. :-)

first dip!

The thermometer hanging outside the boathouse read -3 degrees Celsius when I got up this morning, and there was some thin ice on the water near the shore. It even snowed a bit. When I made eggs and bacon for breakfast, some of the eggs were frozen inside! Still tasted fine, though. :-)

We've only had a few phonecalls during our visit. Two yesterday...one from Larkin asking if we wanted to go to the zoo for Brittany's birthday in a couple weeks, and one from Dan Gibson asking how ice-out was. No tv, no real radio (we sometimes get a very crackly Toronto station); I only found out about the local earthquake yesterday from my sister in e-mail (we had slept through it).





This morning, I went for a swim in the lake. All right, so maybe "swim" is a slight exaggeration since it lasted all of three seconds. But I had to do it.

I went in the sauna first, soaking in as much heat as possible, pouring water on the electric coals to get the steam in the air. The cottage sauna is always much hotter than the sauna at any health club or spa I've ever tried. I'm sure falling asleep in the cottage sauna would be a very bad thing. Jeff and JBR last much longer than I do.

Anyway, I sat on my towel with my back against the hot wood, closing my eyes, sweating, sizzling, frying. Every time I felt like I couldn't stand it anymore, I'd think about how cold the lake water was going to be. And then I'd find the stamina to stay and sweat some more.

Finally I really couldn't stand it anymore. Ran outside, down on the deck (careful not to slip on the wooden boards, which had been slick with ice earlier that morning). The air was pins-and-needles cold; I was glad I was already on the dock heading for the water by the time my brain registered the icy temperature because if I wasn't, I'd have chickened out for sure.

But then I was jumping off the dock, folding my legs under me, arms outstretched, flying. And in that split second I really DID change my mind, thinking WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING??!?!! but it was also a fine and wonderful moment, suspended in the air with the blue sky and bright sunshine above, glittering lake below, knowing that it was too late to turn back.

And then I hit the water, the icy cold enveloping me all at once, and I was thrashing to get out, screaming at the top of my lungs, the cold balanced on the exquisite edge just before pain takes over. My arms and legs were numb by the time I scrabbled at the wooden stairs, stumbling out of the water, back into the sauna, shivering as I clasped my arms around my knees, leaning against the walls, trying to absorb as much heat as quickly as possible.

In the first few seconds back in the sauna, it was like a cocoon of cold air had followed me in; I felt like I was floating in ice. But then the warmth seeped gradually back into my skin, my bones, and I relaxed all over. An incredible, unbelievable sensation.

So of course I had to do it again, a few minutes later. :-)





Jeff and JBR came out of the boathouse just as I was hanging up my swimsuit to dry.

"You went in the lake?!"

Jeff said I should have told him first so he could get a photo. :-)

We went for a boat ride this afternoon, checking out the rest of the lake and some remaining ice near Don Lloyd's place. Cold boat ride! I was wearing a zillion layers of fleece but still got chilled near the end.

I love it up here.

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Today's Blatherpics:

	The sauna, with my swimsuit hanging outside to dry after my icy (and very brief!) dip in the lake.
	JBR holding up some of the last of the lake ice this afternoon. No, the ice did not stick to his hand, though it kind of looks as if his thumb has gone through the ice, doesn't it?
	Me on the boat ride today, bundled up against the cold.
	Jeff and JBR on the boat ride.

northern lights

By the end of yesterday, the ice had pretty much disappeared off the lake (from what we could see from the cottage) except for an accumulation in the Portage Store Bay.

Lazy day. We opted to postpone doing our usual full opening up routine until today. No running water, of course, but we do have power. We took turns washing up in the sauna; a somewhat more laborious process compared to just turning on a shower (involves heating water up in the sauna), but we were all feeling pretty grimy from the day before.

Barbecued steaks (with slices of blue cheese on top, yum) and salad for dinner, then we wandered outside to watch the Northern Lights. No colours, but white curtains of light rippling across the sky.

Got word from Ruth that the girls had to take back Boo, one of their new guinea pigs, because she was sick. :-( The guinea pig replacing Boo is an Absynnian they have christened Fluffy. It looks like Jeff does in the morning just after he's woken up.

Today's Blatherphoto was taken yesterday morning, when I wandered onto the dock to watch the remaining ice bits drift slowly by.

cottage

I woke this morning at around 8 am, and stood on the dock for about ten minutes, watching the last of the lake ice drift by and tinkle in flat drifts against the shore. A pair of loons drifted nearby, eyeing me curiously.

We made it, obviously. :-) You can find the details in Jeff's ice-out report.





It was fun chatting with Don, Linda, Libby & Ric before setting off from Don's and Linda's dock. Don and Linda have the kind of life that Jeff and I lust after, spending a large portion of the year in the park...Don's a writer & photographer, Linda's a teacher.

If there had been more ice on the lake, we wouldn't have been able to get in. In fact, we tried from the Portage Store bay, but couldn't. Setting off from Don and Linda's place enabled us to stick to the shore. Even so, there were places where we had lean out and break the ice with the tips of our paddles in order to get through.

When we got to the Days' cottage, we dropped JBR off to lug some stuff through the forest, then went back to get the rest of the gear.





We couldn't have timed our visit to the lake more perfectly.

I'm sore all over today and have bruises on my knees (from leaning forward on the bottom of the canoe to break the ice), but it was well worth it.

By the time the night had fallen, the ice was already breaking up, pushing silently past our dock in the darkness in the wind of the approaching storm. Jeff, JBR and I stood on the dock for a while, watching the storm coming. Sheet lightning at the south end of the lake lit up the surface of the lake for brief seconds at a time, illuminating the moving ice.

VERY cool to watch. :-)





p.s. Please don't send me big files while I'm at the cottage, thanks; I'm on a dial-up phone line and they take ages to dowload. :-)

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Today's Blatherpics:

	Me in the canoe pulling up to the cottage dock. Click on the top picture or here to see a bigger version.
	We had lunch at MacDonald's on the way to the park, and I got a Happy Meal with the lamest Happy Meal toy I've ever seen. I've named her Cora (after one of the glum sisters in Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast series). This is Cora on the ice.
	Slogging through ice in the canoe.
	Jeff and JBR celebrating a successful ice-out with scotch on the rocks (the rocks = ice-out ice, of course!).