December first(ish) marks the start of my holiday season. The lights go on, the mantel is decorated, the tree goes up.
Tra-la-la-la-la!
In our house, we celebrate Christmas and New Year’s Eve at this time of year. We are more spiritual than religious but we still have family gatherings and dates with friends, snow-filled New-Year’s Eves at a favourite place in the deep, deep woods, and stockings filled with chocolate that you’re allowed to eat for breakfast (it’s a rule). Some years, we have a festive gathering in December, where we invite friends and family to join us at our wildly festooned house for snacks and visiting but this year, things are a bit different.
This year, we have an extra visitor and it’s the visitor no one wants.
Practical Man was diagnosed with cancer in September and started treatment in November. He’s supposed to be finished the actual treatments on December 20 (Merry Christmas!) but the side effect symptoms likely continue to worsen for a few weeks after that. His type of cancer has a good prognosis (everyone keeps telling us) so we’re hoping that this “blip” will be something we will simply remember years from now as “that time he had cancer”.
Say it enough and that will someday become a sentence that just rolls off the tongue, right?
Anyhoo.
Throat (oropharyngeal) cancer may be quite curable but the recovery from it seems especially cruel — the treatments wants to attack your speech, your skin, your swallowing, your saliva, your breathing, your nourishment and YOUR BEARD! Food tastes terrible and he chokes quite frequently and he is more tired than I’ve ever seen him. But, his treatment is manageable at the moment, if he rests. What the final few weeks will bring, we don’t know.
It could be a lot worse. We tell ourselves this with every new symptom and struggle. We are grateful that we can be together through this, without worry over money or time. We are fortunate not to have to forgo food or housing to find the funds needed every day for parking or new creams or medicines that could help. We are blessed to have supportive family and friends and to be enduring treatment with a likely positive outcome.
Lucky, lucky, lucky.
“You’re getting to the hard part now,” they said this week.
His “team” keeps close tabs on his symptoms and weight, prescribing jams and jellies with long names and lineups at the pharmacy. When you’re using the over-burdened Canadian healthcare system and you have a TEAM that meets with you every week, you get the idea that it’s fairly serious business. He endures the mask of torture with each of his 35 treatments and never complains, even though I see the toll it takes on him to be pinned to a table under an extremely tight web of fibres across his face and throat.
The Team warns constantly of the “cumulative effects of radiation” and what’s to come with worried eyes and check-ins that make my stomach drop out. He made it through a rare arterial hemorrhage, surgery to fix it, and repeated hospital visits and stays in week #2 of treatment.
But, that was early days–the supposedly “easy” part of treatment.
“You’re doing really well,” they also said this week, their tone telling us not to get complacent.
Despite everything that has already happened, I constantly feel like we are waiting for something large and mysterious to come down the chimney–and it’s not Santa.
When the treatment dates were revealed, it got me thinking about what our holiday season would look like this year. We have no children of our own, so who would miss it, if we didn’t bother with the lights going on, the mantel being decorated, the tree going up?
Practical Man endures the holiday palooza for me. He wouldn’t mind skipping it. So, why do it?
Um…have you met me? The one who loves little more than some seasonally-approved festooning?
Still, maybe we should just forgo the lot for this year, I thought. Decorations are really superficial, after all. He won’t feel well enough to attend many gatherings and we anticipate the height of pain and symptoms to be around Christmas Day. We should just skip it.
But, but, but.
A thought caught my breath in my throat: what if?
What if we were like my friend? Her daughter took her last breath on Monday as her body rejected the lungs that were transplanted in her only last year.
My heart breaks.
What if we were like others we know of who endure radiation and chemotherapy and still face a terminal outcome?
More breaking.
What if?
Would I want this Christmas to be festooned and full of light?
Or dark and passed over, as not worth the effort?
I realize how fortunate we are to worry about something so seemingly trivial. But, when I called it “silly”, Practical Man pointed out:
“If you turn off the lights before it’s time, you may never find a reason to turn them back on.”
And our decision to partake in the sparkle of the season is not to say everyone should do it this way. But, I am a silly, festive-loving person and even if the holiday festooning is a bit much for him, Practical Man loves that about me.
And I love him. So very much.
The lights are up and they get to stay on. Which reminds me again:
Despite this very cancer Christmas, we are so very blessed.
Merry Christmas and Happy Festive Season to all who celebrate at this time of year.
Our wish for you this year is a most precious one: good health for you and your loved ones.
Know someone who is thinking about becoming a doctor? My new book, “Just What the Doctor Ordered: The Insider’s Guide to Getting into Medical School in Canada” is now available.
I went to Disney World, for the first time, on my 40th birthday.
As you do.
That year, they had a “Come to Disney for Free on your Birthday” promotion.
We were already going to be in Florida and it was the perfect excuse to go. Disney isn’t cheap and as you may remember, Practical Man loves a good deal, yes indeedy.
He’s just not a huge fan of Disney.
Or crowds.
Or mouse ears.
“You’re not going to wear those when I’m with you, are you?” I could already hear him asking at the prospect of my dreamed-about Mickey ears.
Umm…
SIGH.
I knew this would be the question he would ask because he asked it when I came home with rubber boots that had large, purple and pink flowers all over them.
And when I found the perfect artsy-hippy-dippy-trippy shirt.
He also asked it when I made the first large-ish felt flower for one of my hats.
But, 20 or 30 large-ish felt flowers later, he’s kind of getting used to me now. I think he’s realized that he can still maintain his preferred position “under the radar”, even when I’m wearing something attention-grabbing, because people are too busy gawking at a 40-something woman wearing items normally associated with 4 year olds, to pay any attention to him.
I don’t mind the gawking. Adults don’t smile nearly enough so, anything I can do to help in that area is right up my street.
My festooned, childlike street, of course.
(You may recall how much I love a bit of festooning.)
Back to my point, which is that we were going to be in Florida for my birthday, visiting my aunt and uncle.
My first hint that Practical Man didn’t really want to spend a festive 40th birthday day with his dearest at Disney was, well…okay, I married him, so I like to think I know about some of his likes and dislikes.
(I’m always studying, in case we we end up on one of those newlywed games, even now that we are 20 years into our romance.)
Anyhoo, the second clue was that for most of the drive to Florida, Practical Man kept saying to me, “Don’t you think you’d have a better time at Disney with your aunt?”
I tormented him through Pennsylvania and both the Carolinas and Georgia, but knew that, yes, I would have a great time with my aunt Feather at Disney.
She has no problem with Disney, crowds or mouse ears.
And, she encourages things like staying overnight in the Herbie the LoveBug themed Disney hotel (Hurrah!) and eating Mickey Mouse-shaped ice cream bars (Yum!) and not minding when her niece wears Mickey Mouse ears all day long over her sunhat, even though she’s 40.
I am 40ish going on 4. Yep, that’s me.
As if it could get any better, the Magic Kingdom folks gave me a giant button at the gate that said “Happy Birthday Christine!” in two foot letters on it and every time there was a parade or a character going by (which was a lot), they would lean down from their stilts with a giant smile and yell, “Happy Birthday, Christine!” which Practical Man would have hated, but which I love-love-loved.
But, my favourite part was the parade that started, right after the sun went down. All the floats were lit with thousands of coloured lights and it was warm and beautiful with my Aunt Feather and there were fireworks all for me, I’m sure, on my 40th birthday.
SWOON.
The Magic Kingdom really is just a festooned, childlike street, after all.
Have you noticed how “festoon” rhymes with “swoon”?
Last night took me right back there. It was the Santa Claus parade in my hometown and I was invited to join Fairy Godson and his family and friends at the big event downtown.
Even though there were shades of Magic Kingdom in this festival of lights, Florida it was not. I was wearing down-filled everything with an added layer of neoprene on my feet, thank goodness.
Brrrrrr.
My magic kingdom for some down-filled undies.
Even though the weather is finally turning a bit more wintery, just for the record, it’s still a bit too early for Santa.
Practical Man has rules about these kinds of things: no Christmass-y stuff until December 1st.
Or, maybe that’s the earliest date I have cajoled him into. We definitely follow the “out of respect for our veterans and their families, absolutely nothing festive until after Remembrance Day” rule.
Even though it was early, it felt like the festive season at the parade. All the kids lined up to catch their candy canes and stickers and wave at Rudolphs with blinking noses and Elves and that giant marshmallow guy from Ghostbusters.
Who knew that Ghostbusters were festive?
My friend Grover, that’s who.
Fairy godson was taking it all in, with a line of other kids his age. They were, like me, wrapped in down-filled everything, from head to toe.
Sucking on candy canes, naturally.
I was jealous of their ear flaps.
It was 16 degrees Celcius yesterday afternoon, my friends. The climate changed just in time for the parade and our recent rash of Spring-like-weather-in-November had done nothing to harden us for standing out in the festive wind coming straight up Princess Street, off Lake Ontario.
Did I mention I’d like someone to invent down-filled undies?
But, it was still as lovely as that time at Disney.
I had no mickey ears last night but, just look at all the pretty lights!
We waved at baton twirlers and gymnasts (there were a lot) and dancers and pipe bands. We yelled Merry Christmas at passing elves and tigers and snowmen. Float riders reminded us that “Santa would be coming soon” and we jiggled to the assorted Christmas tunes emanating from the passing parade. There was even a ferris wheel float!
I’ve decided I’m a night-time parade kind of a girl.
No matter the season or the location, this kind of joyous, sparkly, celebratory event is right up my street.
My festooned, childlike street, of course.
With a side of down-filled underwear.
Copyright Christine Fader, 2016. Did you enjoy this post from A Vintage Life? Share on Facebook Tweet
“Auntie Kiss, it’s the first day of school!”
These words were fairy godson’s greeting to me this morning, when I arrived at his house to help walk with him on his very first day of school ever.
As in, it will never happen again, EVER.
It’s probably a good thing that Practical Man and I don’t have any children.
I don’t think the Kleenex industry could handle it.
Never mind that my heart has a tendency to plummet its beats per minute, without warning, and make me faint. Yes, my biological heart is a drama queen. But, my metaphorical heart is also kind of high maintenance. I’m the person who cries during every Downton Abbey and Little House on the Prairie episode. I can’t get through a whole verse when I’m singing the song that reminds me of Ugly Orange Sweater Guy’s mom. I even get weepy at TV commercials (there was one when I lived in England, 30 years ago, that still makes me choke up.)
Suffice it to say, we go through a lot of Kleenex around here. The extra-strength kind.
Yet, somehow, I manage to forget this fact from one minute to the next. I run around in life, completely un-prepared, when it comes to mopping up my emotions. The 3-ply Tempo tissues from Germany that I bring pillow-sized packages of back, every time I visit, are piled neatly in the hall linen cupboard. Practical Man buys the bulk boxes of Kleenex so we’re never, ever out. I even have some lovely vintage handkerchiefs but, they are not tucked into the wrist of my sweater set, like they should be (in 1952).
Fat lot of good all this preparation and stockpiling does me when my eyelashes runneth over (as they do multiple times daily).
Case in point: I turned up this morning and there was Fairy Godson, aged 4 years and 32 seconds, looking cute as a button for his first day of school. Immediately, I realized that I Was In Trouble.
Double decker doo-doo kind of trouble.
If ever there was a day to carry on-board swaths of cloth for the mopping up of my eyelashes, today was it.
Sniffle, sniffle.
So, I distracted myself by helping his parents take the requisite First Day of School photos on the front steps and then, Fairy Godson and I headed to the back yard so he could open his “Schultuette”. This is basically a giant cone (the closer the cone is in size to the child, the better) that is a tradition for a child’s first time s/he goes to school, in Germany. As my former German exchange partner said, “I’m surprised it hasn’t caught on in other countries. It’s great for kids and also for commerce”.
No kidding.
We can’t buy ready-made Schultuette here (but, this could be my million dollar business idea #823, ho ho!) so, Practical Man and I wielded the trusty packing tape gun and with some grunting and contortions, managed to fashion a piece of bristol board that I had cut, into some semblance of a giant cone, in which to put treats and school supplies.
A few M&Ms. A couple of gumdrops. Some jelly dinosaurs (a “Stegosaurus – that’s the one with the points on his back, Auntie Kiss”.) Crayons. Stamp markers. Pencil case. Frog and Ladybug magnets to hang artwork on the fridge. Mini chocolate bars.
If my stolen idea from Germany catches on here, may I suggest one minor variation to the Canadian version of a Schultuette? Ours should have treats and school supplies and TISSUES for the Auntie Kisses in the crowd.
This is how you know your Schultuette has been a success: the child loses his arm down in it.
Sniffle, sniffle.
After all the treasures were discovered and Kite Papa gave Fairy Godson permission to taste one M&M and a jelly Stegosaurus from one of the treat bags in the Schultuette, we headed off for school.
I wasn’t sure what to expect.
Fairy Godson wasn’t sure what to expect either, since he was only born three weeks ago, by my count, but he was running at the beginning of the journey, so I’m pretty sure he knew that whatever was coming his way, it would be lots of fun.
In the schoolyard, it appeared to be controlled chaos. Kids and parents everywhere. Giant backpacks on impossibly small-ish people and water bottles and teachers wearing name tags. It was loud and busy and I felt as if I’d stepped inside the pages of a Richard Scarry “Busy Day” book (without the piglet firefighters).
I’m 47 and a half years old, not to mention 5’9″ and not waif-like. I am pretty much built for handling a crowd.
Fairy Godson, on the other hand, is only 2 months old.
Oh, wait.
Anyway, he is small and sweet and was wearing a ginormous backpack that contained all the things he needed for his very first (never happening again, EVER!) day of school:
Lunch.
His water bottle.
A sweatshirt, in case it gets cool.
His “inside” shoes. (Apparently, this has not changed since I went to kindergarten some 43 years ago. Perilous the child without indoor shoes!)
And a partridge in a pear tree.
Why not? Christmas is already happening in Costco, after all. It’s only a matter of time before it ends up in kindergarten backpacks on the first day of school.
Fairy Godson’s Kite Mama pointed out some of his neighbourhood friends and friends from his daycare, too. He was quieter now, looking around and holding his parents’ hands and taking things in. It was very, very busy and hot and loud and all kind of new and strange, if you ask me.
Meanwhile, I was inwardly fuming. I couldn’t believe they didn’t let the parents (and Auntie Kisses) stay for the first week or few months. Y’know, just to get everyone used to things, like how my heart is probably breaking and fainting because for goodness sakes, Fairy Godson is just a baby!
Look how small his shoes are and his little hat.
Sniffle, sniffle.
I was without tissues and I had turned into a helicopter Auntie Kiss.
The time came for Madame to lead Fairy Godson and his classmates into the school. I took a deep breath and followed along at a distance. And then, it happened. This was the moment where Fairy Godson had second thoughts. He clung to his parents and turned his face away from the red, brick school that he had talked about, with such excitement, all summer long. He cried all the way into the school with Madame. I cried right along with him.
We’re kindred spirits, y’know. That’s how fairy godmother-ing works.
Believe it or not, there was NO volunteer handing out tissues (or therapy) to the parents and Auntie Kisses at the door.
Heartless, heartless, education system.
I can say that, because I’m part of it. I work at a university. In fact, it’s my turn for the first day back, tomorrow.
Sniffle, sniffle.
Of course, I won’t have any tissues.
Copyright Christine Fader, 2016. Did you enjoy this post from A Vintage Life? Share on Facebook Tweet
Practical Man–my main squeeze, my boyfriend, my love–is in the kitchen whipping up a batch of banana muffins.
As he does.
I am mostly sitting in his favourite chair (as I do), holding my belly button with both hands and trying to take deep, cleansing, banana-muffin-scented breaths.
My hands are cupped, as if I’m carefully holding a baby chick, but what I’m really doing is attempting to keep my belly button from making a fast getaway. It’s a task that requires vigilance and dedication, even through my bewilderment. I don’t honestly know why my belly button has forsaken me in this manner. I mean, I’ve been good to the thing, over the years.
- I’ve kept it (mostly) from being sun burned.
- I’ve kept it (mostly) from being mercilessly tickled.
- I’ve never pierced it (my sister holding the waistband of her pants out for two days after she had hers done a hundred years ago, was a good deterrent).
As in most things, I am a belly button goody-two shoes.
Yet, here I sit. In full-on Belly Button Betrayal.
I got terrible books out of the library and Olympic Golf has officially come back. This is what misery looks like, my friends.
Every once in a while, I limp into the bedroom to the full-length mirror and lift my shirt to look.
Is it still there? In one piece?
Now, I’m navel gazing.
For real.
Except, not like Gandhi or Elizabeth Gilbert (author of the wildly popular memoir, Eat, Pray, Love). Someone with important socio-political/existential/spiritual (Gandhi) or even spaghetti questions (Elizabeth Gilbert) on their minds.
I do have those questions but, tra-la-la, the Olympics are on.
So, I’ve been navel gazing for a week, on account of the laparoscopic surgery I had. Note to self: my belly button does NOT look like the ones on the Canadian beach volleyball team.
Actually, navel gazing and fussing. Lots and lots of fussing.
I don’t remember Gandhi doing much of that, do you? Maybe you lose your belly button when you’re fasting for important, civil rights reasons. Not that I’ll ever know. I came out of surgery after lunch, ready for a 3-course meal, since I hadn’t eaten since MIDNIGHT the night before!
I’m really more like Elizabeth Gilbert than Gandhi.
More foodie than faster.
Uh huh, that’s me.
By the way, do you think making banana muffins is a sophisticated avoidance technique? Practical Man is…well, practical. When there’s a problem, he usually has a very practical solution. And, making banana muffins does afford a brief respite from your fussing/navel gazing wife doesn’t it? Actually, don’t answer that. I’m not sure I care if it’s a sophisticated avoidance technique, so long as I get some banana muffins out of the deal.
Naval gazing and fussing. I feel like that might be on my headstone some day, darn it. Kind of sums me up pretty well at the moment.
And, while I am a talented fusser, as Practical Man can no doubt attest, I would like to stop.
Really, I would.
It’s just that I never thought my belly button could hurt quite this much. On account of, I am a documented ‘fraidy cat and I’ve never had a single baby and everyone knows (or at least, I knew with utter certainty when I was 6) that babies come out of that aperture thingy in the middle of our belly buttons.
YAWN. (That’s how I thought the aperture part opened, when I was 6. The doctor would tickle it a little, and the mama would YAWN and then the baby on the bench nearest the belly button door, would pop out.)
Uh huh. Inadvertent childbirth. That must be it.
That’s really the only reason I can think of that my belly button would feel like it’s had a grapefruit pulled through it.
Ta da!
Ouch.
Maybe not. As far as I know, there is no tropical fruit lurking in my belly.
I’m more of a vegetable–okay, carbs–girl, to be honest. With an ice cream chaser.
Good thing, too since I now know how much it hurts to get (what feels like) a grapefruit pulled through your belly button. All you women who gave actual birth to an actual human and not a grapefruit. Pfffffff. Sure, that’s cool. But, I mean, really.
Have YOU ever had a grapefruit pulled through your navel?
It’s almost time to head to the mirror again.
Watch for my life-changing memoir:
Eat,
Fuss,
Banana Muffins.
Copyright Christine Fader, 2016. Did you enjoy this post from A Vintage Life? Share on Facebook Tweet
It’s early Spring in south-eastern Ontario and oh, wait, what?
This just in: the flowerbed is trying to kill me.
Based on how I feel about The Nature, you might have already guessed that I am not really a gardener type. In fact, I’m rather a grey thumb. That is, when plants get anywhere near me, they turn a sickly sort of grey and hang around, torturing me for a while with their droopy leaves and browned-up flowers and unrequited dreams of a life spent being watered, before finally expiring and leaving me with a plastic container thing-y that I don’t know what to do with.
I can’t just throw it away. Those plastic plant containers take about a zillion trillion years to compost down. Not like my poor, dead plant, which was composting (drama, drama) in the plastic container thing-y, long before it officially died.
Usually, I give the plastic container thing-y to Practical Man and he puts another plant in it.
Sigh.
Yep, he’ll plant a seed from the apple he was eating at lunch. Or, the stem of the celery we have in the fridge.
Not to give back to me, oh no.
He’s not stupid, that one.
He does, however, have a very green thumb. He can grow sticks, that man. Not to mention, bits of kale from the grocery store that I cut off before chopping up some to put in the oven.
Show off.
Anyway, my point is that I don’t grow stuff. So, I’m not quite sure why there is a flower bed out to get me.
Last summer, when the flowerbed and I had called a (all too) brief truce.
But, there is. Right along the front sidewalk (which no one ever uses because we live in the country and in the country you always enter people’s houses through the open garage door), it lies in wait. It and its companion on the sunny side of the house.
I have to confess that there are no windows overlooking the second flowerbed on the sunny side of the house so that one gets largely ignored because I can pretend it doesn’t exist. It’s not as if I wander around the perimeter of the house and see it all the time.
That side of the house is out in The Nature people. Don’t you read my blog?
So, I can see where the flowerbed on the sunny side of the house would feel put upon and maybe even downright hostile towards me.
But, with four windows facing directly out on it, the front bed gets a fair bit of attention.
It spends most of the day in the sun so it’s a little micro-climate of its own (that sounds like I’m all official and garden-y, doesn’t it?) that doesn’t require much intervention to keep things alive. That is to say, Practical Man no doubt revives it while I’m at work, but, full of perennials, a couple of bushes, and no annuals, I can pretend it’s just magically growing on its own. We mulched it last year with that store-bought stuff that looks seriously artificial and probably leaches chemicals into our water table, but I desperately wanted to make the flowerbed feel loved so that maybe, maybe, it would play nice.
I have viewed others’ gardens, replete with chemical mulchiness and they look lovely. Tidy. Weed-less. Just like I thought ours would look.
Ha!
So, I don’t quite understand how when the blanket of snow came off and the softly-rounded heads of daffodils, pasque flowers and grape hyacinth started poking out of the ground, mere days ago, this source of Springtime pleasure and much celebration turned so very very quickly to Yes Indeedy, This Flowerbed Is Trying to Kill Me.
More on that in a moment.
In other gardening news, we pulled out two giant clumps of bushes in the lawn last summer and Practical Man has put down repeated layerings of grass seed, only to have the spots – a year later, still look like male-pattern baldness in our lawn. Now, the baldness doesn’t really matter because seeing it would require me to go out in The Nature, to fume over that which some suburbanites would find an atrocity, but I really don’t understand why grass won’t grow very well, even for a green-thumbed Practical Man, when you want it to.
Except if it’s in the flowerbed.
The flowerbed, which has only been “awake” (that’s probably not an official, garden-y term) for a little over two weeks, is full. Full, I tell you, of evil, extremely healthy and prolific G-R-A-S-S. Several, virulent country types, no less.
All that green stuff? GRASS!
All that straw-looking stuff? More GRASS!
Oh no, you can pretend you’re a grape hyacinth all you want – but I know you’re in there, GRASS!
And not the male pattern baldness kind either. This is full-head-of-hair-and-lots-coming-out-the-ears grass. Clever, clever grass that sneaks its way up the middle of a single iris stalk, barely out of the ground. If I didn’t hate it so much, I would admire its sneaky tenacity. To remove the grass root means digging up the entire bulb and painstakingly teasing away the grass. Painstaking is not in my vocabulary (unless it’s painstakingly licking every last drop of chocolate off the tinfoil it arrived in) and I can’t deal with more plant murders on my record, so I’m not doing that.
This weekend, while Practical Man installed the mower deck on the tractor in preparation for acres of lawn mowing over our male pattern baldness areas, I decapitated grass shoots in approximately 3% of a square foot in our front flowerbed and tried not to get all fainty (from the bending over and standing up) or spinny (from the turning my head recklessly looking for sneaky grass shoots) or fall down, weeping hysterically, every time my eyes accidentally swayed to the right or left of my “section”.
It was like doing hard time. Like I was on a chain gang, except with grass and fainting and spinning.
Okay fine, there may have been some Feels Like Jagger music to help me cling to my sunny disposition. A girl can only take so much murderous intent from a flowerbed before she has to find her flowerbed anthem–What Doesn’t Kill You (Makes You Stronger)–and sing along with Ms. Kelly C.
It was at some point during this torture with a peppy soundtrack, that I remembered something.
Something wise and scientific and mostly, probably, almost certainly true. I recalled what my former colleague and (this is an official and garden-y designation) Master Gardener friend used to say:
“Perennial gardens are meant to be looked at from a distance.”
That means: keep far, far away from the flowerbed that is trying to kill me.
If you do, I might just get out alive.
Tra-la-la.
Best to focus on this: the small moments of truce between me and the flowerbed.
Last week, I traded maple syrup for mold.
What, what, what?
Yep. You see, around these parts, it’s maple syrup season. I wrote about the details of this rural Canadian pastime last year. Basically, it means a whole lotta:
- gathering of sap
- obsessively clicking The Weather Network’s website to see if the conditions will be right for sap flow
- collecting sap into barrels and piling snow from around the yard against them so the sap won’t spoil
- obsessively clicking The Weather Network’s website to see if the conditions will be right for sap boiling
- spending from early morning until evening standing over a giant, homemade, sap-boiling extravaganza while sticky steam gives you a sort of reverse facial and, if you’re me, you somehow get a sunburn on your legs, even though you’re not really an outdoor girl and you probably only helped for a grand total of 15 minutes AND you were wearing two layers of clothing
- skimming and scooping and skimming and scooping and thwacking the thing that you used for skimming to get the sludge off and then some more skimming and scooping
- and so on and so on…for about 4-6 weeks
Practical Man l-o-o-oves this time of year. He is in his element. That is, out in The Nature, that I love not quite so much, and making something out of mostly nothing.
What could be better?
He looks cute in his lumberjack shirt and he smells of yummy wood smoke after a day of boiling sap, so I go along with it.
What can I say? I am weak for wood smoke and plaid clothing.
Anyway, the whole maple syrup thing, while quaint and stereotypical for some of us rural Canucks, is a LOT of work. There are many more bullet points I left out of my list above, because I thought you’d get tired of reading them (and I know I get tired just writing them) and I definitely get tired doing more than a few of them, so I am pretty much only a sporadic cheerleader, inept and inconsistent skimmer, lunch runner and such.
I’m basically maple syrup middle management.
Luckily, Practical Man is not a complainer by nature. Even though he’s married to a person who is a complainer about The Nature.
During one of the sap boils this season, I realized I had a bonafide excuse for getting out of maple syrup work and I gleefully embarked on it.
Dressed to kill, as you can see:
We have recently met some new Boler Buddies–people who are in love with the cute, vintage, marshmallow-shaped trailers known as Bolers in Canada and Scamps in the US–and we have offered to fix up their trailer a little, so they could try camping in it this summer.
This is our Boler Buddies’ Boler…but I’m sort of pretending it’s ours, even though I’m obviously giving it back once we’ve finished with its spa treatments.
Having two Bolers on our property made me as giddy as a Practical Man, boiling sap.
Tra-la-la!
So giddy, that I didn’t mind at all the first job involved with the little jewel: scraping the un-adhered interior paint, applied by a previous owner, where it had been disguising some fairly extensive surface mold.
Mmmmm. Mold.
And you thought my breathing apparatus getup was just for fun.
Scraaaaape.
Scraaaaape.
Scraaaaape.
I was scraping with a cool, rounded scraper thingy that only a Practical Man would own. It didn’t damage any of the interior insulation (called Ensolite) but it niftily scraped off the loose paint.
From outside the little Boler, it sounded as if a very large rodent was trying to claw its way out. But really, it was just a very large rodent who was not helping with the sap boil, whatsoever.
Ha!
Inside the Boler, there was lots of flaking paint. Lots of surface mold. But, the definite bonus was that I could pretend I was Darth Vader with a sunburn.
I do recall he was pasty like me, when they took his mask off.
Anyway, my arms jiggly from the scraping (yep, that’s why they’re jiggly), I then got to use one of my favourite tools: the shop vac.
Wee-whoo! I love me a shop vac.
Lady Gaga and I shop vac’d the flaking paint up a storm (and chipmunk droppings accumulated during the Boler’s 14 years bravely surviving The Nature). There may have been some gyrating hips, I do confess.
What happens in the Boler, stays in the Boler.
Tra-la-la.
Copyright Christine Fader, 2016. Did you enjoy this post from A Vintage Life? Share on Facebook Tweet
Tra la la. It’s finally happening: the heady days of March in southern Ontario.
Oh sure, there have been blizzard warnings (and worse–actual blizzards!) the last three Wednesdays in a row, but that can’t drag me down because I know, with a cheesy song in my heart, that Spring is just around the corner.
Practical Man, out in the Spring weather.
Yes, indeedy.
That mythical, magical time that we collectively fool ourselves into thinking is in March–when actually, let’s face it people, it’s really May–but no matter, it’s time to start psyching ourselves up for it. Watching for any sign, no matter how teensy-weensy.
Ahhhhhh. Spring!
Is that an above zero Celcius breeze I feel tickling my neck?
Is that the asphalt/gravel on my driveway peeking through already?
How time flies (when one is pretending one is on vacation with the rest of the country, in the Caribbean)!
This is how we Canadians survive the winter: we pretend we live in Victoria, BC. We pretend winter only lasts from after Christmas until late February, unless of course that pesky rodent–friend to no one but The Weather Network (I mean, how can they lose?) on February 2–dooms us to what we all know is inevitable anyway:
that is, It’s Still Winter.
But, let’s not go there.
Surely, Spring is on its way. Just around the corner. Past that eight-foot high pile of dirty snow in the parking lot.
Surely.
I can tell that Spring is nearly here by the way the complaining from my fellow Ontarians gets louder around this time in March. Even though we’ve barely had three weeks of real winter this year, it’s already begun with a vengeance. Yes indeedy, we love us some complaining about the weather.
It’s too CO-O-O-O-L-D! (Only Rolling Up The Rim appears to provoke any joy when it’s cold outside.)
Too much S-N-O-W-W-W-W-W!
Then, a few short months later:
It’s too HO-T-T-T-T!
It’s so H-U-U-U-U-MID!
No wonder Mother Nature is confused.
I can also tell it’s nearly Spring by the way the light changes. The changing light signals my urge to compulsively start sewing things for our vintage Boler travel trailer and our vintage, Fiat 500.
Useful things, like bunting and flowery pillow head rests.
Bunting I am making to festoon the Boler. I love festooning!
I’m like a pregnant woman in her third trimester (or a Canadian on the brink of March).
I’m nesting, yep. God knows there are no birds doing that yet, even though, it’s practically (insert hysterical giggle here) Spring!
And, lest you think this is some sort of vintage-inspired female hysteria, men are not immune, either. Practical Man has been sniffing the air for weeks now. Air sniffing and more recently, hole drilling. Nary a maple tree in these parts is safe from his scrutiny.
It’s March after all. The season of joy, the season of nature’s bounty, the season of MAPLE SYRUP!
Oh sure, you need an ideal temperature of 3-4 degrees above zero during the day and 3-4 degrees below zero at night to produce the sap flow necessary for nature’s bounty.
No matter that it’s still -9 plus a windchill.
That doesn’t stop Practical Man from obsessively clicking over to The Weather Network and wielding his trusty tools until there is a tidy sap line just poised for a thaw.
One of Practical Man’s many sap lines, 2016
Tra la la Spring: we are READY for you.
See you in May.
Copyright Christine Fader, 2016. Did you enjoy this post from A Vintage Life? Share on Facebook Tweet
When I was about six years old, I remember my normally sweet-tempered dad getting all bent out of shape.
We were playing Old Maid and I was winning.
He was working on his PhD in engineering at the time and I think it perturbed him greatly that despite all his life experience, knowledge of standard deviation and parabolas (or whatever) and genetic predisposition (his mom–my grandma–was kind of a game genius), he couldn’t beat his eldest child at a simple, children’s game of cards.
Or possibly, it was the way his six-year old triumphantly cackled and danced around when he was stuck with the Old Maid (I’m sure I was just pleased to be making up for the indignities of a patriarchal society that thought that the punishment in a card game should be called something so awful, so tragic, so open to mockery as a SINGLE WOMAN OVER A CERTAIN AGE.)
This was before Bridget Jones, dontcha know and okay, so I might be having some slightly retro-active indignity not actually experienced at the age of six.
Anyway, sexist game name and premise aside, there’s another reason that I rarely play games these days. It’s because even though I am a delight 98% of the time, it turns out that when it comes to games, I am like my father. Since neither my father nor I appear to have inherited his mother’s game genius gene, we do, like most humans, tend to lose sometimes. A situation that leads quickly to the confirmed evidence that we are what you call Very Sore Losers.
I hope no one writes that on my tombstone.
And, I have become quite familiar with this darker side of my personality because when Practical Man and I have played Poker on holidays or Cribbage when we are camping in the Boler, he wins EVERY TIME.
And, not to put too fine a point on it, but actually “wins” is too mild a word. “TROUNCE” is more like it or maybe “WALLOP”. I sort of get it when it’s Poker (even though I’ve played since I was a pre-teen) or Cribbage in the Boler (because, how can I concentrate when I’m hanging out in the Boler that I l-o-o-ve?) but, I have the role of public wordsmith in our family. How come he always, always beats me in Scrabble and Upwords?
It’s annoying, I’m sure you can understand.
All this losing and blah, blah, blah.
So, then I act all mature and refuse to play.
But, since it’s the festive season and in our family, that is a time for games, I suggested to Practical Man that we have a couple of friendly games of crokinole on Christmas Eve.
Y’know, just for fun.
(In the interests of full disclosure, my mother’s side of the family are crokinol-ers from way back.)
Practical Man asked me for the rules, all innocent-like and then proceeded to TROUNCE and WALLOP me in game one, despite my God-given genetic pre-disposition to crokinole greatness. So, we started on game two of the best of three and suddenly, inexplicably, it seemed as if I actually stood a chance at winning.
It was practically a Christmas Miracle!
Even better, Practical Man had the unfortunate luck to hit the crokinole checker directly into one of the pegs on the board, four turns in a row. If you haven’t experienced this, let me just emphasize that when the checker hits one of the pegs on the board, it bounces back at you in a fairly humiliating sort of way.
Mwah, ha, ha!
On the fourth time, so giddy was I about the prospect of winning a game that I succumbed to a fit of giggles which quickly turned into “can’t stop laughing” followed by “falling off chair laughing” which is the universal sign in my house for “she’s about to faint“.
And so ended my magnificent path to crokinole glory. I had to spend the rest of the evening on the couch with my feet in the air, trying to get my nervous system to calm down and the blood flowing consistently back to my brain.
Nervous system: I know I’ve told you this before, but, you are seriously high maintenance.
And by the way, I WAS WINNING!
My great grandparents’ crokinole board from the farm in Grey-Bruce County lives with my uncle Gruff and his family. The original wooden board was always super polished and smooth or as my dad would say:
SmooooTH (rhymes with “tooth”).
(When he’s not being A Sore Loser, my father tweaks language in delightful ways like this.)
You could see your face in that crokinole board.
Having been thwarted at winning once this week already, I decided to press my luck at the Boxing Day festivities at my parents house.
Before I knew it, I was sitting down to a friendly game of crokinole with my two cousins and Practical Man.
I was pretty sure that with me and my two cousins SURELY all having at least a pinch of the family crokinole gene, I was definitely on a winning team.
Game one went like this:
- Practical Man and my cousin (team one) scored 80 points (we were playing to 100) in round one.
- Me and my other cousin (team two) scored 10 points in round two.
- Practical Man and my cousin (aka crokinole shark) took the game in round three.
Ladies and gentlemen: I give you possibly the world’s shortest crokinole game.
Cue my Sore Loser face.
My uncle Gruff’s daughter number two subbed as Practical Man’s new partner. Gruff’s first daughter and I decided that we were not “Losers” but rather “Points Deficient” (also – we were fond of the fact that PD is much harder for the enemy team to sign on their foreheads than L). Being only Points Deficient and not Losers, we talked the talk. We were “working a strategy” for the best of three games.
Then, she confessed that she had drunk more wine than she thought.
So, I did my best to distract the enemy team by blurting out random diversions like “German slippers” and this helped me and my cousin (aka tipsy teammate) slide to a tenuous victory in game two.
I was on a winning team! Well, at least a tied-for-winning team.
Then, it was game three. Turns out that Gruff’s daughter number two alternated between being a crokinole savant and being the Julia Child of crokinole (that is, highly entertaining while simultaneously klutzy). Her partner, Practical Man, used some of his more aggressive manoeuvers to fling checkers off the board and on the carpet but, he was often successful at clearing the board of our checkers. My partner and I patiently gathered points, clawing our way, step-by-step ever closer to the magical 100.
It took a while.
There was a round with only 5 points scored.
There was a round with ZERO points scored.
Ladies and Gentlemen: I give you possibly the world’s longest crokinole game.
And then…
Cue my Sore Loser face.
The darn posts on the board: they leap out at your checkers, not to mention, we are highly suspicious that they may be magnetic.
My grandpa and my uncles could all do some kind of Jedi-voodo-crokinole magic and bounce their checker off pegs, knock about three of the opposing checkers off the board and land snugly in the hole that is worth 20 points.
Sure, sure.
I’d like to see them beat me at Old Maid.
Copyright Christine Fader, 2015. Did you enjoy this post from A Vintage Life? Share on Facebook Tweet
It’s easy to live a vintage life in the country. For example, our house comes with some property and on it, a little forest.
And having a forest, as we do, Practical Man likes to meander through it daily. He communes with The Nature in a way that I will never understand.
I love him, anyway.
You may recall that The Nature is my fair-weathered friend. Or rather, my only-in-weather-where-it’s-not-too-too-shivery-and-not-too-sweaty-and-there-definitely-can’t-be-any-bugs friend.
That is, approximately 3.6 days per year.
And, any of you who are sympathetic to The Nature and shocked at my cantankerous relationship with it, you can just calm down. The Nature is not all sweetness and innocence. The Nature has its moods, lemme tell ya. Just ask anyone who lives in the Canadian Maritime provinces right about now.
Up to their wazoos in snow, for the umpteenth time, they are.
And, if you don’t know where your wazoo is, well, if you ask a Maritimer, it’s approximately 3 feet above the average bungalow’s roof.
So there.
But, Practical Man doesn’t share my suspicion and distrust of The Nature. He’s a frolicker in rain or shine, snow or bugs. It’s weird, I say, from my perch safely indoors, where I am quite content to look outside through a window (in the manner of wise Canadians before me.)
Being a frolicker and fan of The Nature as he is, Practical Man’s favourite time all year is here: maple syrup season.
Very vintage activity.
Did you know that you can make that stuff you put on pancakes out of TREE JUICE?
The Nature is so weird.
In February, Practical Man starts to feverishly check the weather network…I mean, his Farmer’s Almanac…several times a day and then, proceeds to tap any sugar maple trees at the first sign that the temperature is going a few degrees above zero (Celcius) during the day and a few degrees below zero (Celcius) at night.
This year, we are nearly a month late.
The Nature likes to toy with us humans in this way.
We usually have around 30 sugar maple trees tapped, give or take. Some trees are thick enough around, that they can handle two taps:
I feel an affinity with these trees. Being thick enough around, I think I’m a two tap tree, myself.
Hook me up. I can take it!
But, I still say an extra little thank you under my breath when I pass these guys.
Practical Man came up with this ingenious sap collection system, using old (cleaned) water bottles, some sap tubing, a spigot (the part that goes into the tree) and ta-da! plastic wine glasses from the dollar store. The wine glasses have their bases removed and the sap tubing is threaded through their necks so that the glasses hang upside down over each bottle neck. The sap then drip, drip, drips down into the bottle.
This upside-down-wine glass system prevents rain and when it’s warmer, moths, from getting into the sap. The big bottles also mean that on days when the sap is really flowing, there will be no tragic overflows, as can sometimes happen when you use the old system of buckets like these:
There has been enough sap in one day some years that these buckets fill completely and then…shock, disaster! They overflow, losing precious sap on the ground.
Have you ever seen a Practical Man weep?
I blame The Nature.
Now, we leave one “demonstration tree” with its old-fashioned bucket so that kids and visitors can see how it used to be done.
Don’t let that lid fool ya. It’s cool and vintage but, it doesn’t keep out much rain or moths.
Then, depending on The Nature and the speed of sap flow, Practical Man collects sap for a week or so before he boils it off into syrup. You can’t store sap for too long without it spoiling and you can’t keep a Practical Man cooped up in the house, when the smell of Spring is in the air.
Early in the morning, on boil day, Practical Man goes to the stove he built for maple syruping (maple syrup turns into a verb in Ontario in the Spring). He gets some logs and kindling…
And then, he starts a fire in the stove…
Practical Man is kind of a fire show-off. He probably made this one with three twigs and a piece of chewing gum.
It burns at approximately 3 trillion degrees.
Our stove is an old household oil tank, turned on its side. Holes were cut in the (now) top to hold six pans over the fire. A door was cut in the (now) end so that he can load the logs (and chewing gum). He’s got draft holes with tubes running through the firebox so he can control the burn. A chimney off the (now) top/back of the tank draws the smoke up and out.
Those things up against the tank are paving stones. They insulate the tank somewhat so that you can get near it without singeing off parts of your skin (important for when I come out to play, since I come from long line of klutzes, including one person who cut herself on an onion bun.)
To keep the sap until he boils, Practical Man stores it in (new) clean garbage buckets. If it’s getting warm, he packs snow around them to keep the sap cool until boil day.
Yep, that’s sap ice in there. It hasn’t warmed up yet, but I won’t complain (see earlier note about The Nature and the maritime provinces) because that would just be rude to our PEI, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick friends.
On boil day, the sap is gradually put in the 6 pans over the fire. It begins to evaporate off the water and leave the sugar behind. We keep adding more sap as the steam boils off and the remaining sap keeps concentrating and so on and so on. It’s kind of a steamy miracle, really. Or, as I like to call it:
A maple syrup facial.
Then, all day, there is a lovely little dance that involves moving sap from one pan to another. Adding sap from the buckets to the coffee cans around the boil pans so that the new sap can warm up a bit before it’s ladled into the hot pans. Skimming the froth off the top of the sap in the pans, as it boils. Slowly, slowly, over hours and hours, the water evaporates and the remaining sap gets more and more concentrated in sugar.
(Or something like that. Honestly, I’m mostly the photographer, lunch fixer and product tester.)
All I know is, it takes a long time, a lot of work and a lot of patience. At the end of which, you get 40x less syrup than you had sap.
That is…40 litres of sap yields approximately 1 litre of sugar.
I know: all that time, work and patience and we get…what, what, what?!
And how’s this for a little more math: today, we boiled 190 litres of sap and we’ll get around 5 litres of syrup (that luxurious excess is because the first boil of the season is usually sweetest).
This is the part where I confess that I would (might) have boiled sap into syrup once and thought, “Wow, that was really neat (and boy, was it a LOT of time, work and patience.)”
I would never, ever have felt the need to do it again. Nope.
But then, I tend to the indoors and am a die-hard chocolate girl. If you ever find trees that yield sap that turns into chocolate, sign me up! I will boil that baby until the cows come home.
And, I am afraid of cows.
This is maple syrup season #11 for us and Practical Man still loves it.
He looks cute in his lumberjack ensemble too.
What can I say? It keeps me coming back year after year.
The sap is getting syrup-y now. And bubbly. All the better for the maple syrup facial.
Mmmmmmmm.
Not sure why my eyelashes are sticking to my face.
The fire gets stoked some more:
Slowly, slowly, the pans boil off enough water that the remaining, concentrate sap gets moved to the centre pans. It sounds simple – oh, yes – just move that hot, steaming, scalding pan full of hot, steaming, scalding sap!
Well okay, then.
I’ll stand over here because I am a documented fraidy-cat.
The centre pans contain the most concentrated of all the sap and will become syrup. There is a magic formula that involves a full moon, barometric pressure, the boiling point of water and whether you’re facing east and standing on your left foot (just kidding – you need both feet on the ground when you’re dealing with hot, steamy, scalding sap.)
Anyhoo, today, the super secret special maple magic thermometer had to reach 7 degrees Celcius (that’s hot, steaming, scalding to us lay people) above the boiling point of water before the sap would be the right consistency:
That is to say, it wasn’t SAP anymore.
It was SYRUP!
(I think applause is warranted. It’s taken us hours to get to this point, honestly, I can’t believe you don’t think this deserves a standing ovation).
Finally, it’s time for another treacherous journey: from the last hot, steaming, scalding pan into the first of the filters; a paper one inside a wool one:
Drip, drip, drip.
Yep, it’s definitely syrup.
And, that means that no matter what The Nature has up its sleeve from here on out:
it’s definitely Spring.
——————————————————–
Copyright Christine Fader, 2015. Did you enjoy this post from A Vintage Life? Share on Facebook Tweet
I think I owe The Nature an apology.
If you read this blog with any regularity, you may recall that I do tend to complain about The Nature a lot. Since childhood, I have avoided it like…well, like mosquitoes and poison ivy and frostbite and wind burn. But, I realized today that I don’t, in fact, truly dislike The Nature, as much as I sometimes think I do.
I just like the Starbucks version of nature.
I like the Frank Sinatra version.
That is, I like it my way.
Like today: today was The Nature at its sparkly winter best.
It was the kind of sunny, crisp and perfect day that we often get here in southern Ontario, Canada. The kind of day where, you can bundle up a bit and snuggle into some cozy mittens and a good coat’s hood. You can pretend that you’re in a little cave in your hood and the wind can howl but you’re all snugged up in your hood (as long as the wind is cooperating and blowing in the right direction) and you can giggle to yourself and marvel at how much better a hood is than a mere hat, even though hats are among your most favourite things in the whole world.
Anyway.
Then, when you get out in The Nature, you breathe the clean, cold air and act as if you totally meant to fall on your face as you skid off a patch of snow while attempting to stomp around in your–magnificent hood but, unfortunately also–boots that don’t have anywhere near enough traction.
As you were, neighbours. Nothing to see here but a woman on her keester.
Today wasn’t a snow pants day (but remind me to talk about that some other day because snow pants are one of life’s great joys that not enough adults indulge in) and it wasn’t a snowshoe day, so I was wearing my quasi-citified boots, instead of my “I mean Canadian winter business, heavy as two Godfather cement bricks boots” (which perhaps explains the falling on my face).
Barely a skiff of snow around my mostly inappropriate boots
Anyway, triple axle achieved, I wandered back through our property, traipsing through the skiff of snow with intention, with purpose. I put stray thoughts of rabid packs of coyotes out of my mind and pretended that The Nature and I were old pals and bosom friends. Into the Woods (humming songs from the play/movie), I went.
Then, I segued onto the farmer’s lane that joins our property and walked up to the giant field.
Field of Dreams and this only one quarter of it!
And, not just any giant field: this is a giant field of dreams.
That is, the field that a kindly neighbour has plowed around the perimeter. It is a cross-country skiing/snowshoeing/traipsing around in your quasi-citified boots masterpiece.
So around it, I went. (If you build it, they will come–or in my case, traipse, while trying not to fall on my keester again).
Last year, The Nature was having one of its temper tantrums and the ground was covered in a thick layer of ice with a gigantic pile of snow on top for the entire winter. There was no perimeter on the field of dreams. There was only heartache and sweating and occasional hysterical laughter as we tried to snowshoe in drifts up to our hips.
But today, it was grand. All the cells and atoms and thing-a-ma-bobs in my heart and brain and elbows went “boing, boing, boing” as they filled up with sunshine and started dancing around inside me, filling up my cozy mitts and magnificent hood.
No wonder I felt a little dizzy.
I traipsed on, around and around the field I went, holding my arms out at the sides to steady me so I wouldn’t fall over while my sunshine cells did their dancing.
As you were, neighbours. Nothing to see here but a dizzy woman walking.
Then, I thought it: the thing that makes me realize I need to apologize to The Nature:
I thought these four, incredible words: “I am having fun.”
Outside.
By myself.
In The Nature.
And, with a gasp, I realized that today is not the first time that has happened.
Plus, it’s also fun to make your legs look all gangly like this.
As you were, neighbours. Nothing to see here but a mostly-indoor woman enjoying The Nature.
Weird.
Copyright Christine Fader, 2015. Did you enjoy this post from A Vintage Life? Share on Facebook Tweet You might also like my book.
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