100 things about me

while browsing Carmi's blog which is extraordinary I came across this meme thing which I found interesting.

100 things about me.
Assorted random facts. I ponderd a bit if I could even come up 100 random interesting things about me.


1. I was born in Scotland on a Monday. Apparantly there was snow on the ground.
2. When I was about two years old I lived in NorthWest River, Labrador - Canada.
3. We moved back to Scotland and lived in Glasgow.
4. I learned to read very late and was in remedial reading classes.
5. The first book I remember reading on my own was Naughty Amelia Jane by Enid Blyton.
6. When I was 13 I read the Lord of the Rings and knew that I wanted to be a writer.
7. At the age of ten, we emmigrated to Canada for 'good' to St. Anthony, Newfoundland.
8. I had the ring finger and my pinky finger broken there because I spoke with a Scottish accent.
9. The pinky finger is, to this day, crooked.
10. I know how to build an igloo.
11. I love to sail but I get very sea sick, I love to sail anyway.
12. My father died from cancer at the age of 54. I still miss his scent.
13. When I was ten I was hit by a car. There were no broken bones, but some bruises.
14. In highschool I learned to love school.
15. I went to QEH in Halifax, this year the school I loved will be torn down.
16. I wrote my first book at the age of 13. I illustrated in myself. It's terrible but I am still very proud of it, Finishing it was a huge accomplishment.
17. I have seen the Northern lights, they sing to me.
18. I have precognative dreams. When I don't pay attention -shit happens.
19. When I was in my mid-late teens I read a book called Messages from Michael. It changed my life.
20. I believe that a man and a woman can JUST be friends and I have proved this over and over again.
21. I met my husband through the internet. he is not an axe murderer, he is a gentle kind loving soul.
22. We played on line in a star wars club called the Imperial Order, we were and still are Imperials.
23. I absolutely embrace technology, it fascinates me.
24. William Giboson is one of my favourite authors. He replied to a letter I once wrote.
25. I don't drive the car even though I have a valid license. It scares me.
26. I have the most ecclectic group of friends in the world and I love them all dearly.
27. I am part of a world wide medieval society. We dress up and play make believe. It's fun.
28. I know how to make my own ink.
29. I can start fires from left over coals.
30. The smell of woodsmoke reminds me of home.
31. I loath cigarette smoke.
32. I am not a party animal but I have been known to go wild.
33. I do not understand war.
34. I am the oldest of three.
35. I am the only one of my family to not live in Nova Scotia.
36. I am unafraid to move to a different country.
37. I dislike selfishness of spirit and being mean for the sake of it.
38. I think guns in the hands of lay people should be banned and gun laws strict and upheld.
39. I love that the internet is bring peopel together, that I have made a lot of really good friends with people I have never seen face to face.
40. I trained to be an animal health technologist.
41. I walked away from that life because it was incredibly painful to kill healthy animals simply because people no longer wanted them.
42. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a bond my brother and I share deeply.
43.I can almost recite, word for word the entire film Serenity.
44. People who do not say thank-you irritate the crap out of me.
45. Good manners seems to be a thing of the past, the ruder the world becomes the more I counter that way of being.
46. I go to see a Cranial Sacral therapist.
47. He is helping me heal my spirit.
48. I love him deeply for his open kindness.
49. I collect teddy bears, actually I rescue them.
50. I can be horribly smug.
51. I think that sex is fun not something to be ashamed of, but it took me a long tiime to figure this out.
52. Naked bodies be it male or female are beautiful not sinful and I hate that society does this to us.
53. I can be incredibly stubborn.
54. I still want to learn to speak Russian and welsh.
55. My husband astonishes me with his insights and his love.
56. I am a lazy house keeper.
57. I love Star Wars but I dislike what the franchise has become.
58. I love reading.
59. I make art out of broken computer bits.
60. I love watching crows.
61. I relax by taking along hot bath and reading a book.
62. I can shoot a bow. (40 - 50 lbs) if you really want to know.
63. I am not afraid of heights but wasps send me screaming.
64. When I was a kid I hated brussel sprouts, now I love them.
65. I rarely laugh.
66. I have a very odd sense of humour.
67. The moment just before the dawn is one of the most exquisite moments in time.
68. I have flown in float/ bush planes.
69. I have also flown in helicopters.
70. I have a dirty mind, I blame it on monty python and being british. (And I am not ashamed of it at all!)
71. I am allergic to tree pollen and grasses so spring is FUN!
72. I believe in reincarnation.
73. I also believe in karma.
74. I did and still do not want children.
75. This does not make me a bad woman this makes me a responsible one.
76. I love to tell stories by the firelight.
77. I can belly dance.
78. I can also dance a jig and "Running the Goat"!
79. In my heart St. John's is home.
80. I have sung in public many times.
81. My favourite drink is a good cup of tea. Red Rose, milk no sugar.
82. I love tuna melts.
83. My husband is an excellent cook.
84. I am a crappy chess player but I like playing anyway.
85. I know how to play a flute.
86. I love roses and I grow them. I speak with them everyday.
87. I love reptiles. Our garden is full of little lizards.
88. I can swim.
89. I can speak German fluently.
90. I am amazed and proud of my family.
91. I miss girl's night out with my girl friends.
92. Fish and chips!
93. I love mashed potatos!!!!!
94. I can ride a horse, I do know what end is what!
95. my friends inspire me.
96. I like to wear dresses and skirts.
97. I live in a house with a glass roof, I don't throw stones :-)
98. We have tropical fish.
99. I named them all fred.
100. I can't believe I sat and wrote this!

add: 101 - I can't type either.

The art of avoidance

I am avoiding housework, putting it off till the last minute, as always. I was browsingthrough pictures to share of here, where I currently live and I found this. The best gold work I have ever done I think. I just thought I would share it.
I never heard if the person who got this scroll liked it or not. A common enough thing in the SCA. People seem to forget to say thank you a lot. It was a rewarding piece to do and one of my "well let's see if I can"... It took a very longtime and a lot of gold leaf to really cover the gesso and shine up like a mirror. If I recall rightly I used the gum arabic based gesso I tend to like, the paints are gouache and aquarelle. The ink will be an oak iron ink. I liked the intricacy of the tiny squares. they annoyed the crap out of me while giving me a real satisfaction I rarely feel when I do scrolls. The art of medieval style illumination and calligraphy is challenging for me because it requires patience and stillness which I don't tend towards. I like to get stuff done and be done with it. Once it is done, that's it, either I give it away or it collects dust someplace. Which is probably part of the reason I tend not to mind donating so much of my time and materials to a volunteer project. As long as it remains fun and is interesting I will continue, the moment I feel taken for granted or it becomes a 'job' then I will probably move on to something else. ( I have many boxes full of computer bits waiting to be transformed into art in the cellar)

The current projects I have on my to do list are pretty intense, large pieces requiring some research and a lot of work. I am looking forward to two in particular. It is a good job my studio is a fabulous place to work because I am going to be stuck in there for a while!!!!




This is where I live. Okay, so it's a bit of the view from the balcony. You are looking atthevalley which is Agno towards Lugano. The airport is in this direction so the small planes fly past the house all thetime. I find that comforting. I like the sounds of smaller planes, turbo props and single engine planes. I grew up with these sounds so they are familiar to me.
What is new about living in the foothills of the Alps is the way the season scome and go. Spring goes UP the mountains and autumn comes DOWN. Rightnow the green ness of spring is scramblingupwards are a very swift pace. It is kinda cool to watch.
Today is very hazy. You cannot see the hills across teh valley or the mountains in the other direction. every thing is shrouded in this haze. The wind carries a nip to it, can smell snow on it even though there isn't any snow any more. When the wind comes from the south I can sometimes smell the sea on it and that stirs up all manner of restless ghosts.

The garden is greening in a major way, the parsely is sweet and edible, the basil is growing for a nice change and the lavender is budding along with the established roses. I am hopeful that by the time my inlaws arrive the Westerland and gräfin roses will be in bloom. That would be oh so cool.

Tonight we are having a BBQ with M's workmates, so the house will be full which explains why I am avoiding housework... grrr arrrgg. House cleaning is a ness evil. I tend to it go until it gets annoying. More important things in life than a spotless house. Like whileing away time blogging, hey how about that!

anyway, enough blog-babble...

until later - be excellent to each other!

Me

This is me. These pictures werwe all taken within the last 6 years. I have not really changed a whole lot physically speaking. My hair gets greyer, and the usual signs of aging creep in but mostly I stay the same.
I am doing this so that the friends I have made out there in internet land can see what I actually look like. I don't generally have a lot of me photos but as I get older I value the ability to see where I was and who I was and where I go to. Kinda cool.
The first image is me at the Anne Leanowens gallery at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, setting up my solo show.









This is me with Max ( the lemur and favoured travelling companion) at the airport when I left canada to move to Germany. Note the patriotic t-shirt! Note: Max has beenmore coutries and travlled more than I have because he goes withMarcus on every business trip.
The photo below was part of a polaroid doccumentation project, I took polaroids every day almost the entire semester. This one is of me all decked out to go dancing with one of my best friends, Andrea- she is the one who took the picture.


This is me in the apartment in Ahrensburg with our part time cat poopsie. Poopsie belonged to the neightbours who lived next door, we were the only two apartments under the roof of this particular apartment building. Poopsie would walk the gutterlane between his balcony and out livingroom window to come visit. He was a mostly pliable happy cat who enjoyed having an 'aunt and uncle' to visit. I love cats but my husband is allergic so we don't have any.



so this is me.


Until then be excellent to each other!

These are my roses. These pictures are from last summer. The image in the post above is the corner where the Westerland ( tall tree), the Fiona ( the bright red), the Cherry brandy (the low peachy coloured ones)and the English tea roses (the yellow ones) are. The Westerland has doubled in height since this picture was taken and the rest are all at least two feet taller and bushier as well with the exception of the Cherry Brandy, which is struggling. They are being munched on by something which really likes their leaves I can't figure out what it is yet and pesticides are not an option. Still the roses are budding and it is only Mid April.

The image directly inc with this post is of the evil sleeping beauty roses, I actually can't remember their real name but they are spawn of satan. They have throwns that will tear through gardener's gloves, they grow like weeds and are just as pernicious, like wild roses or briar roses they have single layer petals and but unlike wild roses they have sadly no scent. This past weekend we removed 90% of the plants you see in the image and replanetd them in other spots in the garden where we had edel roses planted. The edel roses ( long stemmed) didn't like the places they were given last year so I decided to put them all in the sunny spot that the mad roses from hell loved. I figure the sensitive edel roses will do well with more sun and more space and the mad roses would survive a nuclear war...

In the same image you can also see my poppies. I love poppies though this year I also thinned out the batch that is growning mainly because they also have a must take over the world mentality and on top of that they are aphid hotel of choice. Now I don't mind aphids or ants to a certain degree but when you see more aphid than flower there is a problem..especially when they decide to wander over to my roses. We also planted a lot of lavender as well because neither aphids nor ants like lavender very much but the roses don't seem to mind sharing space with them. Other than that we have the usual suspects of pink things, white things and some forget me nots. There are also some giant black eye'd susan type flowers as well. There is an azalia (sp) that's slow growing and a delphinium which is growing nicely.

And the usual assortment of wild things that wander their way down from the fields above us to make home in my garden.

Should also mention the lizards, there are lots. I like lizards and snakes, although here some of the snakes are poisonous and could be bitey if threatened. So I don't wander around the actual garden barefoot any more.I tell the little lizards who get a scare when I appear on the terrace that this is a lizard safe garden, I won't harm them, give them a month and they tend to take this message to heart and not skitter away when I come out unles I make lots of noise.

We also get a decent assortment of insects, lots of bees, but I have yet to see any honey bees...worrisome given that mass populations of honey bees are dying and vanishing. We get huge black field bees and soft fuzzy bumble bees of several types. Last year whenthe weather was still cool in the mornings and evenings I found myself rescuing tired bees with a drop of honey so that they had enough energy to get them home. I'll post some pictures if I can find them.

We get all kinds of wasps, mostly the fliege wespe ( flies that look like wasps) and smoe non evil wasp types. It is worrisome that I have seen a fair amount of yellow jackets...early for them and many queens have been looking for a good nest place. Me and yellow jackets DO NOT GET ALONG. In the darkening of the evening we also get bat you can see them flitting about in the dusk, their wings making wuff wuff sounds as they zip about. Lots of birds too, for the first time since I have been here there are Amsels ( black birds) and a ton of piebald crows. There are also stein adler ( golden eagles ) here too, but I have not seen them yet. They ride the thermals that rise up from the valley in the summer, pretty damned impressive. See a lot of crazy humans doing that as well as they paraglide or what ever it is called...

I love my garden and my roses. I always wanted a rose garden and they seem to like me so it is a good thing, now if only I could get the mint to calm down a bit.

anyway, I thought I would share.

Until then be excellent to each other.

travelling

This morning I am posting from Carsten's house in Heusenstamm. We drove to here last Thursday to over night then on Friday drove up to Hamburg ( Pinneberg) to stay with the inlaws ( whom I adore). On Saturday was Leo's wedding and it was just perfect. Jaqueline was the vision of beauty and Leo was all jitters and smiles. The kiddies were total aufgeregt! Boy have they grown.
After the Elbe boat trip and wedding we all followed the horse and carriage back to Leo's and partied... well the adults partied, Marcus and I ( and Jacob) were all inducted into the Padewan school and through hard training with light sabers became Jedi knights, it is the first wedding reception I have fought with light sabers and run around like a mad thing. It was very fun.

Sunday was easter dinner with the inlaws and was also very nice, in the evning we just hid upstairs and watched mindless tv.

Monday we said goodbye to the folks and drove to Ahrensberg to stay 1 nght in a hotel. Once we were checked in we made the trip into Hamburg to wander around DOM ( this is a three times a year fair, with rides and stalls etc... it is HUGE) We wandered around teh Hexendorf ( witch village) and I got to do some archery ( 5 arrows for 2 euro), 40lb bow. Was fun I have bruises though.

and then Tuesday was by ACER and then we got on the go. The trip down wasn't so great I had super bad heart burn and got nausious( car sick) I never get car sick! So I was so glad when we reached here and the car could stop moving.

On the health side of things the magnesium is helping me. The muscle twitching, general nausea, heart paliptations etc..have all calmed right down. Yay for electrolytes.


so soon we will get on the go to head home....

until then be excellent to each other

Just something to think about

Florence had this up on her blog. I keep coming back to it but I don't know why.
It resonates.

We do need to rethink how we communicate.
We need to rethink a lot of things.

All information is worth having.

All information is worth sharing.

just a thought.

The shape of things

I love this image of a crow taken in Halifax. It almost doesn't look real, but it is.

So, it's been a while since I posted. I havn't felt great and have not had much to say about it unless it's been face to face. I put most of it down to that change of life thing, my body is not my own any more. The statement 'I am losing my mind' has crossed my lips so many times I sound like a broken record, but after a week of magnesium supliments I feel a whole lot better.

I actually had a GOOD day yesterday, I had energy and wasn't nauseous and did * gasp* house work. It was a good day. Today will also be a great day.

Trying to get past the fear factor. The trouble is I don't actually know what I am afraid of. It's just this nameless dread that seeps into my bones. When I break it down into managable parts there is nothing there. Fear- not just for breakfast any more. I think it comes from change, which is happening right now. Not sure what sort of change but something is rolling its way down the pipe. There has been a subtle shift if the lay of things, I feel this keenly. All my life I have known that 'something was about to happen' usually not what...but something. Grrr arrgh!

We have been here two + years and it has been limbo. In that time I have railed against the process of learning Italian though I couldn't tell you why. We have not expored the area much and don't really mind or care actually, and have made no lasting contacts here. If I were a betting person ( which I am not, because I usualy win) I would say this is a transition place, a down time before round number what ever begins.

I think the next phase will be busy, fun and exciting so much so that I will look back on the now and say wow I was glad I had time off.

Still, I never did well with waiting. Am not one of those anticipation types. I can wait, patiently if I have to it still drives me mad. Do or do not there is no standing in line waiting for the piano to fall.

I finished up book2 of dote last week. On Friday actually. It was relief. I hope the next book goes a bit easier and a bit faster. Then I can get 'on with it'. because stories in my brain are piling up. DOTE is a trial run the can she actually write and maintain an entire plot with all the trimmings test. My guess is yes but I have to stick to it and not waver all over the shop like I did in my 20's. My 30's were about gathering experience so that I could actually produce something worthy of reading. Well, my 30's were about figuring out who I am. I ran away to sea to do that.

Now I begin my 40's with a bang and not an overly pleasant one either. Why, I ask does every transition have to be such a frigging battle? Why on earth do I fight so hard against it? That's the head against the keyboard question.

I have no answers for this though I keep asking them.

On a happier note this morning I got a care box from home. *happy dance* wonderful treasures inside and the scent of home. How much nicer does a wednesday morning get, plus it's raining which we so desperately need. I love the rain, all misty clinging to the mountains clouds. It reminds me of Newfoundland and that in my heart is home. Fog is where it's at!

So what else is there to say? We bugger off for a few days to head back up North to Hamburg. Easter and a wedding - delightful.I am looking forward to it but lately travelling squirrels me out a bit so I hope I can maintain some calm. Of course we drive up north not down south so we drive away from the insane Italian motorway and its insane lawless ruless idiot drivers. When we head to Vicenza I am terrified. The bit from here past Milan is a nightmare of huge proportions. I am always breathing a HUGE sigh of relief when we pass Bergamo and the lunatics with cars seem to fade away.

For reasons I cannot explain I don't like Italy all that much but it may because all I have seen of it so far is its incredibly awful driving habits on terribly designed motor ways and down town Milan, Florence and Como. Though to be fair,I love Como and Florence is pretty. So far there has been no connection with this country at all, nothing that speaks to me on a soul level. I even fight learning the language for reasons I don't get at all. It should be easy but it isn't. I'd rather, actually, learn Russian - go figure. down time....

So my crow pal, looking at me with quizzical head tilt and shiney eyes is pretty cool. I love corvids and he's one of my favourites. It was a lucky shot. His expression sort of mirrors how I feel.

in the meantime... I have to gather words, prepare for book 3, pack for a wedding, get some more laundry done and sort my life out.

typical wednesday!


until then, be excellent to each other.