Life's a Stitch

Off to see the world, there's such a lot of world to see

We're after that same rainbow's end, waiting 'round the bend,

my Huckleberry friend,

Moon river and me.

A very romanticized view of our current situation, those lyrics. Two drifters, not exactly seeing the world, but lots of the Northwest, while our house is nearing the halfway mark in its rebuild. Our time has been filled with so much good stuff, the biggest being daughter Mari and KC's wedding in beautiful Canmore. AB, after a three year engagement:

More to come: living out of a suitcase (three months down, three and a half to go), the house before and during photos, life as artists on two more movie sets, a new painting and at long last, a completed Taize scarf just in time for fall.  It won't be so long in between posts. I promise. 

A sudden thought startled me awake at 3:00 a.m. Oh no, where is my garden angel? The one at the house in the rain forest, who for 18 years, protected our periwinkle, iris and bamboo. The guardian angel that watched over a sweet sixteen party, our games of bocce and the white tented wedding rehearsal dinner. She witnessed painful conversation while we sat on the Allan block wall, out of earshot of the kids and Gracee romping all crazy doglike in the grass or bunny hopping through the snow.

The next morning:

"C, did you remember to take the garden angel when we moved?" 

"No," he replied, a panic inducing simple two letter answer.

Those two letters turned me into a woman on a mission. A rescue mission. So off I went on a sunny day determined to recover a small, but significant part of our former life.

Stealth would be required, good thing it was Sunday when the construction crew was nowhere to be seen. Are you kidding me? The construction crew seemed to have given up quite some time back. What a mess:

As I got out of the car, I spied across the street neighbour, J. Within seconds we were accomplices; two women on the same mission. Nobody was going to mess with us.

"Anything else you want while you're here?" 

"My hostas." Some from our previous house, making them thirty years old when I met their acquaintance. Who knows how old they really were? How many houses they had seen?

"OK, you get the angel and I'll bring over shovels and a pot." 

First glance revealed no angel. Then I spied the tip of a wing protruding from the periwinkle. A slight tug and here she was, green with moss, but all in one piece.  I would have taken her wingless. In fact, when I arrived back home, C offered to pressure wash her. No, I said, I like her mossy accumulation of experience. 

In total, we rescued the angel and five hostas. J egged me on and we actually attempted a Japanese Maple heist and, although we really wanted to try, we left the fifteen foot tall palm trees. That's what neighbours are for. To help preserve physical proof of the memories we shared in a now rapidly changing neighbourhood. Me, because we left, her because she remained, staying in one of the last houses standing on the corner of Canyon and Cedarcrest, in the rain forest.

Mission accomplished.

 

It was a good thing that I scheduled the Chinese brush painting for earlier in the month (my posts have been a week or two late), because the latter half was moving mayhem. How did we open so many boxes while at the house for such a short period of time?  And if we acquired nothing while there, how is it that I had to buy an additional 20 moving boxes? It's Murphy's law of moving house, I suppose.

Now we're settled in back in North Vancouver for a brief while. It's strange being closer to the city again, in the midst of the turbulence of ongoing construction and traffic. We are staying close to where we lived when the kids were little, but the small nearby shopping centre, framed with woods and mountains, is being transformed to a community of high rise apartments. One surprise was that our previous house in the rain forest has been issued a stop work order due to permitting issues, or lack thereof. So there it sits, stripped naked and at a standstill. Very sad.

On a more positive note, our current house has received all necessary permits and deconstruction begins on Monday.  CONstruction begins in under a month. Believe it our not C and I are are still happy and grateful to be involved in this all encompassing retirement project. Ask me again in December when our builder told us we'd be putting up a Christmas tree. The project foreman commented that we should listen closely to what he said, not that we'd be moving in by Christmas, but that we'd be decorating a tree. Hmmm.

For balance I ended the period just how I began, bookending the chaos with a weekend painting class. This one was of Helmcken Falls in Wells Gray Provincial Park. 

A little over a year ago we were living in our house in the rain forest, dreaming of finding our forever home. We zoned in on White Rock, a seaside community, a place we thought we could never afford. I researched what it had to offer as a community and something caught my eye – a course in Chinese brush painting. 

In our second year of retirement, it's all come together. We sold our house in North Vancouver and were able to find one in our desired location, somewhat affordable as it was "structurally deficient," in need of significant work. We still hope that the major renovation will come in on budget. Originally planning to move to a condo, we hope to able to live without association fees and those dreaded special assessments plus have the benefit of a secondary walk out apartment on the ground level.

The vision was complete, when this weekend I took a two day course in Chinese brush painting, offered through the local art guild that I was able to join, despite spending significant time on the waiting list. The art of brush painting takes years to master. It is a method of conveying, through a series of exacting brush strokes, an image from your head to rice paper. There are no photo references or pre-drawings, you develop your subject from within.

Scary stuff, this brush painting. There is no going back, no correcting nor improving upon what you've put on the paper. You only get one chance. What you paint is an impression of the object and a reflection of yourself. In consideration of the philosophy, so different from western thinking, I suppose this is me as a bird:

The most important lesson: there's no such thing as perfect. I like my little imperfect little me-bird.

Times have changed in the 40+ (!) years since I finished my undergraduate degree. Googling crazy college stories you get a top ten list, a wide variety of tales from Tinder to other types of hook ups. We probably had our share of similar arrangements in my day, think the Summer of Love, but out of ten stories they would be minimal. 

My dorm stories would include opening a wine bottle with an umbrella, only to have the pointy end come out the bottom end, bottle in tact. Or the time (in NY) when after a night of partying (I'm not sure party was a verb in that era), when five of us crammed into an orange MG MGB GT and drove to Central Park, arriving at 5:00 a.m. to "borrow" a rowboat and row around the lake to watch the sunrise. Funny, my two years older cousin was involved in both those escapades.

In the latter years I remember a long night involving far more red wine than I would now choose to consume and a young woman claiming to have links to others' past lives. It was a warm starry night, sometime in the early pre dawn. She went one by one, telling us our past incarnations. The first one in the circle had been an Egyptian princess, the next a medieval noblewoman. She went round the circle and finally got to me, the last in the line of women with auspicious pasts.

You, she said. I held my breath in wonderment. What was my story going to be? You, she declared strongly, were a prairie pioneer woman. What? Amongst all these queens and duchesses, I crossed the prairies in a covered wagon, hauling wood and collecting kindling? No wonder that book about the Donner Party scared me to death. I must have heard of their fate and dreaded my own expedition on the Oregon Trail. 

Really, though, I have an appreciation for the prairies, with the exception of the absence  of large bodies of water. Remember, from past posts, I am quite happy 1500 miles out at sea, especially when the weather is good and seas are calm.

This past trip to Alberta included daily walks in a park in the high prairie, where the natural vegetation has been preserved, including a huge blue sky, waves of grasslands and shady stands of cottonwood and balsam poplar. The majestic Canadian Rockies in the background, you could almost imagine what it would have been like in years past. 

I wonder, when looking back, what crazy retirement stories will be like?

 

Taken out of context that could have dire implications. In child bearing years anyway. Or for certain situations such as a job interview. For me, it's sticking to a weekly blogging schedule. In retirement. Can you imagine I've given up my career and still lack time? I was warned by very wise people that this would happen. 

We are back "home" for a few weeks while moving yet again. Our building permits are imminent and the deconstruction crew is due to take over at the end of the month. There is hardly time to sit for more than a brief bit as we continue our part of the demolition. Our builder has humoured C in letting him try to fit the current kitchen cabinets into the downstairs suite.

We couldn't bring ourselves to let go of such beautiful maple cupboards, not to mention the blue oyster granite, which will fit downstairs with minimal cutting. If I were renting a walk out apartment in a house, I'd love to have a smaller version of that kitchen.

We had intended to hand over demolition to Habitat for Humanity's restore, but all they were interested in was the kitchen. They don't use salvaged items for their new builds, and are quite selective about what goes to their Re-Store. Instead we turned to the free section of Craig's List. Some of our interior doors are now being shipped to the Philippines where a local man is building a five room house for his sister, the rest went to a couple to repair their rental unit that was trashed by drug dealers. I believe that some of our bathroom fixtures are also being shipped to Asia.

The one thing that's most difficult to sacrifice is the 3/4" oak hardwood after seeing what a good job our neighbour did refinishing his. In reconfiguring our house, flipping the main and the top floor, there'd be so much patching it would be far more expensive than replacing with engineered hardwood. Add in the fact that the house will be roofless for a period of time leaving the floor exposed to the elements. I don't want to be around when it goes. 

Also late, I realized that I forgot to post my final picture of St. John, New Brunswick done in coloured pencil on canvas. The last time you saw it in the tonal drawing underpainting phase. I called it Twelve Red Chimneys, sort of an I Spy painting, I imagine the grandkids trying to pick them out. 

Downtown St. John has done a good job of preserving their old buildings as opposed to the Vancouver area where thousands are demolished and rebuilt, and so many people are rushing around trying to arrange moves and demolitions and end up late posting to their blogs.

 

Having our life's belongings packed up and ready to go has allowed us lots of flexibility. The past two weeks were spent in Calgary, Alberta for a family Easter celebration. 

Who would have expected a white Easter? Certainly not me, the British Columbian weather wimp, but apparently there can be snow during any month in Alberta. There was no stopping grandson Rye from his search:

Uncle KC was tasked with picking up a pocket bib for Mr. Parker. The only one left was hot pink with a string of pearls closure:

The purple yams were a hit with the men in the family:

By afternoon, the snow was gone. Elina had arranged an elaborate Easter activity, after blowing out the contents of 60 eggs and filling them with colourful tempera paint, we had an egg toss onto canvas. We each went home with a work of Easter art:

A colourful time was had by all. 

My eldest daughter's and my names are blends combining the first and middle names of a number of family members. Elina's has part of mine, my mother's, my MIL's, our sisters, my cousin… Throw in her middle name, Marie, and at least four more are covered. 

Mine is a combination of my mother's and grandmother's, with a slight spelling change of an "s" to a "c:" Lilice. If it had remained an "s" it might have avoided the mispronunciation that rhymes it with Alice, rather than Denise, and there would be no way my boating license would have been issued to "Lice."

Around the time wheaten Scottie dog, Gracee, joined our family, we had dinner at a local marina. Docked in front of our patio table was an old motor boat called, you guessed it, Gracee. A couple of the kids disagreed with the spelling choice, so we agreed to disagree, and for a time we each spelled it In our own way. It doesn't matter to a dog, does it? They eventually gave in.

A recent Saturday watercolour subject were the hulls of  old rusty fishing boats, one name meaningless to our family, so I changed it:

Oh that feeling of completion. From finishing a years-in-progress knitting project to finalizing the tax returns to small endings like using up the last of the blue cheese dressing and tossing the jar into glass recycling. More space in the fridge and one less thing to think about moving, storing or giving away.

I'll be glad to get to the end of my current read, the Indifferent Stars Above, by Daniel James Brown, the author of the Boys in the Boat. What possessed me to read an account of the Donner Party's ill-fated journey? It might require critical incident stress debriefing afterwards, similar to when I recently read the Holocaust parts of James Michener's Poland. I'm taking recommendations for a happy book.

This finished painting marks the end of winter weather. I think we're there – the cherry blossoms are finally blooming, three weeks late. Last year they were three weeks early!

What could that title possibly mean? There's a simple explanation:

On the set of the Christmas movie, in which C and I were acting as artists at a craft fair, C had an extensive conversation with the movie's Santa. C proudly showed him the picture of his post Camino beard.

With a beard like that, Santa encouraged him to develop his acting career. The possibilities include not only Santa, but roles as Vikings, bikers and the homeless. He also encouraged C to buy his own Santa suit and tuxedo (not sure for which part – imagining a biker dude en tux). When you can furnish a specialized costume, the movie actually rents the clothes you are wearing. A tux nets you an extra $35. It brought back memories of a movie of B's younger acting career where they rented a couple of my scarves for the production at $15 a piece.

Santa concluded his advice to C to pursue his  part time retirement career with the fact that plenty of Santas have died this year leaving room for more. That's reassuring.

On the morning of my rain-chequed birthday, C headed up to the local hospital thrift store to pick up a $30 tux he had seen. Thrift stores are a staple in the movie industry. He found the jacket, but the pants were missing. A hanger-by-hanger search revealed the missing trousers in the women's section. At the cash registered he discovered that all winter stock was marked down 50%. A short while later he appeared in his $15 costume (sans bow tie and appropriate footwear), to hand deliver my birthday gifts.

On the topic of Christmas, all the rain we experieced in the Coachella Valley over the holiday season meant lots of snow in the mountains. On our way home from the annual art show, I stopped to take a photo of the the snowy mountains with palm trees in the foreground, thinking that it would make an interesting painting. This is the finished watercolour: