This is where we were today at lunchtime. This is a Taiwanese restaurant, completely vegan. There is lots of good stuff on the menu. Many items sound or look as though they contain meat, but it's all soy or wheat gluten.


The younger kids have a penchant for "lemon steak" and "veggie barbecue". We all love the spring rolls. It's all very tasty. And it doesn't weigh heavy on the stomach. I don't know if it's the lightly cooked vegetables, but it digests easily.

I forgot to take my camera with me, but this afternoon it hit 39 degrees Celsius so I took two of the boys to the lake. We spent a very pleasant hour alternating between cooling off in the water and reading our Usborne Time Travellers book - adding to our knowledge of the Egyptians.

I think Lego Nut must have picked up a bug in the water because not long after coming home he said he felt sick, and a little while later he threw up. Thankfully he had a bowl ready, or our computer keyboard would never have been the same again! I rubbed some oregano oil on his feet and he seems fine now. He's eaten an apple and feels much better.


This is a baby bird that I stumbled across yesterday while walking back up the garden from my clothes line. It was perched on a rock on the edge of a flower bed and let me get very close. I called the boys out to have a look and went to grab the camera, and while I was inside Ninja Boy scared it and it managed to fly into a nearby tree. I'm not sure, but I think it may be a baby robin (American robins are larger and look quite different from British ones).

We are lurking downstairs again - it's marginally cooler down here in the family room. We're watching a DVD of A Touch of Frost, a British police drama. Upstairs it's 33 degrees outside and 32 inside! Too hot.

This week's reading

I found a couple of interesting books at the library yesterday (while escaping from the 36 degrees Celsius heat).

One is called Farewell, my Subaru, An Epic Adventure in Local Living. It's written by Doug Fine, a journalist who decided to buy a ranch (he named it the Funky Butte Ranch - yes really) in New Mexico. I only just started reading it, but it looks like it's going to be a good read...amusing, full of anecdotes and factual tidbits like "The average tomato travels fifteen hundred miles from the field to the table".

The other is written by Paul Watson, the Captain of the Sea Shepherd. This man and ship have been in the news a lot this year...he works tirelessly to stop the the annual Canadian seal killing. The title of the book is Seal Wars, Twenty Five Years on the Front Lines with the Harp Seals. I was protesting about the seal hunt when I was a teenager at school, and it's sadly still going on. It's amazing that there are still seals left to kill - you'd think that people would have wiped them out by now, with a 350,000 quota each year. I am looking forward to reading about his experiences - I have long admired those who take action, get in the front line, spend their time actually out on the ocean in the inflatables, getting in the faces of those who kill intelligent mammals in cruel ways.

Sumerian clay tablets

I mentioned yesterday that we were planning to make some clay tablets following our reading of Story of the World.

I pulled out the Sculpey - it's actually white, though these photos don't give you an accurate idea of that.

We bought a huge "teacher's pack" of the stuff ages ago and there's still more left in the box.


We had so much fun that we were wondering why we didn't get the clay out more often.


The top picture shows a story by Lego Nut of someone spoiling Christmas (never mind the fact that they didn't have Christmas in 3000 BCE!). The second one is my version of a Sumerian shopping list. The third one is Ninja Boy's story of how early man found out how to put out fire.

The fourth is Lego Nut's racetrack (again rather modern subject matter). The fifth picture shows miscellaneous miniatures, and the last is my disc showing the phases of the sun and moon (don't know whether I had the moon pointing the right way). I also made a little coiled pot, just for fun.

Update...

It seems I have been neglecting my blog this week. I last posted on Thursday, which is almost a week ago. This is one of those life cycle things I was talking about recently - for a while I'm posting every day, then life intervenes and I forget about it for a while.

When I opened up Firefox just now, I had one of those automatic updates happen. I was quite happy with how it looked before - now I have to get used to the changes - sigh!

Let's see, why have I been away from the computer? Well, the weather's been pretty good, and I have been spending some time outside , catching the rays. Not much knitting, I'm afraid. A fair amount of cleaning - I have set myself a schedule of blitzing each room, one a week. It'll only take three months! I did the utility room this week. It really needed it, especially around the washer and dryer - lots of dust and lint and grime behind and underneath the machines. We have a lot of shelving in there for tools and sports equipment and cycle helmets and stuff, and they were cleared off and dusted. Some things were thrown out. It looks way better now.

The last three mornings, I've woken up with a really stiff neck. I assume that this is just another symptom of my emotional state, so I'm not worried about it. Maybe some more EFT will do the trick. It's surprising how this simple method of tapping on certain points on your face and body helps to release blocked emotions. Sometimes I find myself crying when I'm doing it and that's when I know I've identified the emotion that's causing the problem.

I still made it to Taekwondo classes, and Ninja Boy and I have started learning the second and third patterns that we have to learn at First Dan level. The first, Gae Baek, we know pretty well now, and performed at the tournament. Now we have to learn Kwang Gae and Po Eun. All patterns seem really hard when the instructor first demonstrates them, but I know that after doing them a few times they start to stick and get easier. However, the real challenge is to remember the previous patterns at the same time!

Another thing that's been taking up more of my time is that I am doing some schooly stuff with the younger boys. In a fit of enthusiasm, I used the last of Lego Nut's reimbursement money to buy 6 grades of math workbook - grades 3 to 8. Math in our house has mostly been a life-learning thing, with the boys earning and spending money, working out the tax on their purchases etc. However, remembering the words of Raymond and Dorothy Moore, who wrote Better Late than Early, I know the boys are ready for academic learning. They are 10 and 12 and if anything the 10 year old has shown more ability in math than his older brother. I wish Computer Geek would join us, starting with the basics and working up, but at this point he's not interested. I make sure that they do their work in the morning before they get on the computer.

We've started reading Story of the World by Susan Wise Bauer. This is a four volume series all about history, written for children in a very understandable way. It starts with the early nomads 6000 years ago and works its way, in date order, up to modern times. We have already supplemented it with reading from our Usborne book collection, and today we will be camping out (like the nomads) and making clay tablets with picture writing (like the Sumerians). I also plan to dust off our paper-making kit and try making paper out of plant material from the garden (our previous paper-making adventures just used torn up paper).

Our little Festiva, which has been sitting unused in our carport for the last couple of months, has finally gone to the automotive workshop in the hope it can be made well again. They'll be running some tests, but we're expecting it to need an engine rebuild. Not sure how much it'll cost yet - maybe $1500 to $2000 - but that will still be less than buying another car. We've had that one since 1995, and it was about a year old when we bought it. When it's back on the road, I think I will treat it to some new seat covers!

I was cleaning the Aerostar yesterday (our 7 seater van) and I think it's in excellent condition for its age. We bought it new in 1994, two days after we emigrated to Canada. I washed it, vacuumed it, cleaned the windows and dashboard, and cleared out the accumulated clutter, and it's like driving a new car! The front of it was really gross - on the drive back from the tournament in Vernon, we drove through a swarm of bees. I wasn't sure that they were bees until later, when I found lots of little bee bodies stuck in the front grille, but maybe the yellow guck on the windshield should have been a clue! Probably lots of pollen in there.

I think that gets you up to date. Hopefully you won't have to wait another week to hear my news.

Mists of Avalon

I so enjoyed the Jack Whyte Skystone series that someone recommended I read The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. I think it was Joanne. It's another version of the legend of King Arthur.

I am well into the book now, but when I read Sheila's blog post, I thought it would be a good opportunity to share in the tagging. So here are three sentences from page 123, five sentences down from the top.

Finally the girl said, in that same strange tone, "I see deer - a great herd of deer, and a man among them with his body painted - they put the antlers on him - oh, he is down, they will kill him -" Her voice trembled and again Viviane passed her hand above the surface of the water, and the ripples passed over the surface.
"Enough," she commanded. "Now see your brother."

Now, you've read this, so if you have a blog, you're tagged!

Stuffed peppers

This was part of dinner the other night, along with a Greek salad and a lettuce salad. Unfortunately, my kids took one look at it and thought "yuk" and didn't even try it, but Tai Chi Man and I really enjoyed it. As I made it up, I can share the recipe with you.

6 peppers (2 red, 2 orange, 2 yellow), halved, stalks and seeds removed
1 cup brown rice
1 cup raw almonds
1 onion
half a zucchini
a few button mushrooms
a few cloves of garlic
seasalt, pepper, 1 tsp dried oregano
optional - Soycheese/Veganrella

Cook the rice in 2 cups water until all is absorbed. While the rice is cooking, chop the onion, zucchini, garlic and mushrooms finely in a food processor and saute them in olive oil until softened. Add some seasalt, pepper and oregano. Grind the almonds in the food processor.

Mix together the cooked rice, sauteed veg and almonds. Use to stuff the pepper halves. Sprinkle with a little Veganrella or other cheese substitute.

Bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees F.

Summer is here

What a beautiful day! The weather is finally bucking up and I have been able to toast myself in the garden a few times in the last week.


Today, one of the kids mentioned they'd like to go to the beach, so once all the housework was done that's exactly what we did.


We went to a small lakeside park about 5 minutes drive away. It has grass, sand, a playground and water. We decided to limit ourselves to an hour in the sun so that we didn't burn.


While I applied some coconut oil and reclined on my favourite beach quilt, the boys ran off to the playground. It wasn't long before they were hot enough to brave the lake. They went in up to their middles. It was cold enough to numb the skin. I know - I went in up to my neck! Our first dip of the year.


Computer Geek of course didn't come with us - the beach and swimming are not his "thing" any more. Ninja Boy and Lego Nut had a good time pottering at the edge of the water and looking for cool rocks. (See sidebar for the guide to who I'm talking about here!)


I brought a thermometer with me, the one I usually use for cooking. We put it in the lake water, but I don't think the 19 degrees Celsius reading was representative of the temperature - it was in the shallow water right near the edge. The air temperature was 26 degrees, but when I left the thermometer resting on the quilt itself, it went up to 52! We measured a temperature of 35 degrees in the grass in the sun and 21 degrees in the grass in the shade of a tree. And my flip flops were 40 degrees, according to the kids!


When we came home, the wet swimwear and towels were hung out to dry on the deck (and that's my Sunrise Circle Jacket drying on the table too).


I know summer's here when there's a quilt on the swingseat and some of the houseplants have been moved outside for a few months. Our deck is like an extra living room in the summer.

Medals

This is how K and I spent Worldwide Knitting in Public Day (Saturday)... earning medals in Taekwondo! Didn't have time to knit.

We were up at 6.30 to be ready to leave at 7.30 for the one hour drive to Vernon. The morning was spent watching the younger/lower ranked competitors. As a black belt, I had my first experience of judging some boys performing their patterns and sparring. In patterns, there are five judges, in sparring there's a centre referee and four corner judges.

Later, K competed in his division, earning a silver medal in patterns. His group was split into heavy- and light-weights for sparring, which was good as K is on the light side. At the same time, I competed in my division - there were five women in my group. It was a relatively small tournament, so they grouped all the women red and black belts over 18 together (normally I would have been lumped with the "35 and better" women). I made a mistake the first time I performed my pattern, but did it perfectly the second time, and made bronze. I sparred two rounds, first with my friend from my own club, and later with a woman from Vernon. No medals there!

Once that was out of the way, I was free to judge the men's black belt sparring. That was great! The black belt men always compete last and a bigger deal is made out of it than anything else. It's somewhat sexist, I'm afraid. I loved the judging - I was a bit nervous about doing it at first, but I got the hang of it by the end of the day.

I was happy with my bronze medal, as I have had a painful health problem the last few weeks that I thought might stop me from competing, but I resorted to a couple of preventative painkillers and made it through okay.

R spent all day Saturday and Sunday in a First Aid course, renewing his certification. It's paid for by his employer, but unfortunately he has to do it on his own time.

And today we celebrated S's tenth birthday. Yes, double digits for my youngest son. Ten years ago today, my bedroom was set up as a birthing room. Two midwives were here to assist me. My oldest son was 6 at the time and was standing in the hall with my neighbour, who had been looking after him and my 3 year old while I was in labour, watching me give birth to his littlest brother. (I just reminded him and he said he doesn't remember it. Boo hoo! My neighbour certainly remembers it, though - she got more than she bargained for that night!) It was wonderful and definitely the best birth experience of the three (not that I had a bad experience with the other two, but this was the BEST)!

I didn't have to make cake - S said he wanted some mango coconut Good Karma rice ice cream instead, though I also bought the Mudd Pie and Mint Chocolate flavours. We had home-made sub sandwiches and strawberries dipped in melted chocolate too. A gift was easy - I took his wish list into ToysRUs and found a Lego set that he wanted - a Mars Mission set called Alien Infiltrator, which he just finished building and brought to show me.

Happy birthday, S.

The ocean, red letterboxes, and Marmite

This is a typical letterbox, or mailbox, in Jersey. It's set into a granite wall, not freestanding like the ones we see in Canada. And they collect on a Saturday!


More of the photos that R came back with after one of his early morning rambles.




This is St Catherine's breakwater. It forms a safe harbour for boats. The boys and I walked along this - it started to rain as we headed seawards, but thankfully stopped again. Many people were fishing off the breakwater.



And of course a visit to Jersey wouldn't be the same without bringing home souvenirs.....five jars of Marmite. R's mum bought five of them, thinking we could each carry one in our cabin bags. However, it would probably have been considered a liquid, and therefore banned, and anyway those 500g jars are heavy. So we put them in plastic bags and wrapped them inside our clothes in our checked-in bags.

At long last - some knitting

It took me a while, but I finally took some photos of my knitting. I don't have any batteries in my camera, so I had to borrow R's "office" one. Most of our rechargeables are currently residing in the motor inside a Lego remote control spider!

My first photo is of me sitting outside an old Jersey pub. It's called the Moulin de Lecq. Moulin is of course French for mill, and you can just see the top of the mill wheel behind me. There I am, working on my sock while waiting for R's and my parents to show up so we could go inside and have lunch. A good lunch it was too! And I'm wearing my Sunrise Circle Jacket, for which I was very grateful on the cooler days.

The socks were worked on while I was in the island. I didn't risk bringing skinny dpns in my cabin bag. I finished them off a few days after I returned home. This is my second pair with the Berroco Comfort Sock yarn. I cast on 60 stitches this time, which on the 3.25mm needles seems to give a better fit than the last pair, which I made with 64.


This light green bamboo yarn is lovely to knit with, but the measly amount I knitted on the flight to Heathrow proved to me that I will probably need 10 balls of the stuff to make the sort of top I had planned - and I only have four. So this will be frogged and I will come up with a smaller project.


This looks a lot like the picture I posted before my holiday. However, the previous picture was a gauge swatch. I frogged that and started afresh with a few more stitches. The holes you can see along the bottom edge will become a picot hem - turning up the first few rows to the back will create a pretty edging.

Green lanes

Many of Jersey's little roads are designated Green Lanes. Maximum speed is 15 miles per hour. (I was rather amused to see that the number one in this painted sign had been applied backwards.) The idea is that cars have to give way to pedestrians and cyclists. Of course, the locals don't pay much attention to the speed limit, from what I've seen.



This is the lane that leads down the hill from our holiday accommodation. There's a lovely green meadow on the right. Further on, around that bend, you come to this...


a lovely little conservation area full of foxgloves. Unfortunately, it was private, or we'd have walked through it.


And this is the view after walking up the road a little way, towards the cemetery where my grandparents are buried. That roof in the centre with the orangey paint below it is our accommodation, which as you can see is set in a rural area of agricultural fields, mostly filled with Jersey Royals (potatoes) and Jersey cows.

Five minutes walk away, there is a farm shop which sells lots of local produce, bread, frozen meals cooked by local people, wine, chocolate, oils and vinegars, even rice milk.

We interrupt this programme...

to bring you an introspective post, as a change from the travel talk.

While I was on holiday, I was immersed in my family and revisiting familiar places and I was able to (mostly) forget about my issues back in Canada. Now I'm home again, I'm back to assessing my emotional landscape and I have to say it's not pretty!

When I look back over my adult life, I see a pattern. It's like overlapping Ferris Wheels. One wheel relates to diet and exercise - raw/not raw, lots of exercise/minimal exercise, weight up/weight down.

Another wheel relates to volunteer work. I have been on a few committees in my time and what usually happens is I take on a job, I do it for too long, I fail to delegate, get fed up and overburdened, and quit. You'd think by now I'd know that I'm not indispensable. If I step down, there's someone who'll take over, and they'll do things differently, but that's okay. That's what's happening with our local homeschool support group. I just had to get out of the way.

A third wheel would be my emotional health. I don't suffer from depression (I don't think) but no one can go through life being "up" all the time. Most of the time, my life trundles along satisfactorily, relationships are working out, no major events to push things off the rails. However I will suddenly go through a phase of insecurity, when I will misinterpret things, second-guess myself, make assumptions and generally make myself miserable for no apparent reason!

I think what I should do when I go through one of these slumps is to lock myself away until the feeling passes! Not make any big decisions or communicate with anyone for fear of alienating people. (Oops, too late, I already did that!)

When I'm in a "life is wonderful" phase, I feel valued, I feel loved, I feel supported, I feel needed. I have a suspicion that this is all an illusion. I have organised the local homeschool group for about 5 years and been there almost every week for 8 years, and a few weeks ago I dropped out suddenly - and hardly anyone noticed. Very humbling.

The reason for my avoiding meetings is that my relationship with some of the mothers has soured. I thought it would be a good idea to put some space between us as meeting at the park, even with others there, would be uncomfortable for all of us.

However I now realise that in withdrawing from the group's activities, I and my kids are losing out more than anyone. The rest of the group has lost one family - we have lost many.

Can I ever recapture the good feelings of being a part of this group? Will I have the courage to go to the beach this summer so my kids can play with their friends? And, most importantly, is there a chance that the friend who made it painfully clear a few weeks ago that our friendship of 7 years was over is as unhappy as I am and will reconsider her position?

Who'd have thought peri-menopause would be this rocky? When I was 25, I probably thought that I'd know it all by 45. Not! I was recently confiding in my 74 year old friend and she says she still doesn't have her shit together, so it looks like I have many years ahead of me to work on my "stuff".

Sigh!

More images of Jersey

This is Grouville beach in Jersey. It's in the east of the island. Lovely fine sand. This was taken by my husband on one of his morning forays that he regularly took before the rest of us were out of bed!


Looking in the opposite direction, you see Mont Orgueil, locally known as Gorey Castle.


One of the views from the 60 metre high "Jersey Eye", a smaller version of the London Eye. This one has 40 gondolas, each seating 6 people. It has been set up in St Helier on the south coast for a few months. This is looking west towards St Aubin's Bay.


Here's the other castle in Jersey - Elizabeth Castle. This is south of the Jersey Eye. The encroaching development in the left of the picture is the controversial Waterfront Development, which was built (and is still being developed) on reclaimed land. Many tonnes of waste were dumped within a retaining wall that was built 20 years or so ago. At the time, the Jersey Greens were pointing out the dangers of dumping toxic ash in there from the incinerator that dealt with Jersey's waste, worrying about it leaching into the sea. Concerned people are still talking about it today.


Les Jardins de la Mer (gardens of the sea). Small children love these fountains squirting up from the ground, unpredictable as they are. This is just below the Eye.


The Eye itself. Of course, people grumbled about it, but I'm sure the tourists will love it.

Photos of the holiday

The view from 37000 feet up!


Leaving Jersey - looking out of the airplane window, we could see the whole island laid out like a patchwork quilt. This is the view from the west of the island. It was lovely to have a clear day and be able to appreciate the smallness of the island. We also had a perfect view of the coast of France and England as we flew to Heathrow.


Inside our accommodation. It was very comfortable - kitchen/living room, two bedrooms, a bathroom, a shower room, a washing machine, and a play area outside with trampoline. L spent a lot of time draped over that sofa with his laptop! No internet though.


This is the outside view with our rental car, a Ford Focus, in front. Around the corner to the left of the picture is another smaller apartment and behind is the main house, a traditional Jersey granite farmhouse, where the owners live.


And one more for today....this is a two-way road....er, lane. This is the road leading to my parents' house. Once you get off the main (two lane) roads, this is what you get - a maze of lanes that are barely wider than a car. You have to hope for a layby (a temporary widening of the road, or someone's driveway, or the entrance to a field) if you want to pass someone. Admittedly, the hedgerows don't always encroach this much - June is the month for the "branchage" when all property owners have to cut back their foliage along public roads.

More tomorrow...

You are my Sunshine

One of the funniest ads you'll ever see - and the song will get stuck in your brain for hours too!

Home

We're home! We had to drag ourselves out of our warm beds at 5.30 am yesterday (UK time) to finish packing and get to Jersey airport for 7. We left on schedule and had about three hours of free time at Heathrow so we could eat an early lunch and browse the shops.

The flight from London was 9 hours which I spent watching the in-flight movies, eating the (quite good) meals, doing puzzles, reading a magazine and, eventually, knitting. As it was a daytime flight, none of us slept. However, we were pretty tired when we arrived in Calgary.

We had a couple of spare hours in Calgary - the two younger boys fell asleep across the seats of the waiting area - the rest of us just sat there with our gritty red eyes. When they called the flight, I had to carry S (he's only 10 but he's heavy) and K had a hard time getting vertical! All the boys slept for the 45 minute flight to Kelowna.

I still don't have photos organised - still waiting for L to give me a disc full of them.

The anniversary dinner went well. The restaurant had made an effort with vegan meals - not the best we've ever had, but OK. There were 14 of us - apart from my parents, R's parents were there, my sister, her two teenagers and her partner, an old friend of my parents, and our family of five. Sitting in the restaurant was like being in a boat, with wood panelling and porthole windows, and a large bay window looked out over a pretty harbour - the tide was up, the sun was shining. Lots of photos, lots of wine consumed, lots of laughter. No one made a speech but I did propose a toast to my parents.

On Friday, R's side of the family were informally invited to see us at R's parents' house. Many of the cousins were in the island for another anniversary party on the weekend. It was a good turnout, with R's aunts and uncles and many of his cousins showing up.

Lots of laundry to do today!

Thanks for your comments - I did make an effort to read them while I was away, but it's nice to be back on my own computer.

Lots of rain

Rain all day today...hopefully it's not going to be constant for the next few days, as we want to enjoy some more sunshine. There's a structure down on the waterfront that's a smaller version of the London Eye. Unsurprisingly it's called the Jersey Eye. Sixty metres tall, it's like a Ferris Wheel with gondolas that look like they seat about 6 people each. A 15 minute ride is £7 per person, so we'd like to fit that in and get some good views.

L is going to Youth Club with his cousin again tonight. R is zipping down to his brother's to see if he can get his girlfriend's laptop working properly.

I think I'll be returning a few pounds heavier from all this cooked food! Tomorrow lunchtime, we're taking our parents out for a pub lunch (unlike Canada, the kids are allowed in too). Wednesday night we'll be having dinner at the house of some vegan friends. And Thursday night is the big event, the one that we came here for, my parents' golden wedding anniversary dinner. Phew!