Monday, April 29, 2013

Yes, I am Canadian (and I might be a little crazy)

I disappeared good, didn't I?

Well, I figured since so many bloggers were heavily involved in the A-Z challenge that no one would be the wiser if I slipped away for a bit of offline-down-time.

One thing I did... went back to Victoria and packed up/moved all my stuff. Well, most of it. I left about 1/2 my books, 1/2 my movies, all my sports gear (except my beloved Sims snowboard), and after a tragically long day of packing/movers, and the pond pump not working (so we ended up in the water bailing by hand), successfully managed to catch and transport 11 out of my 16 koi. They are now living happily in my parent's pond.

This past week I escaped to the family cabin.

It's on a little lake about 2 hours out of downtown Vancouver. I love going there. After driving out of the city, you hit the valley with farms/etc, then wind through the foothills a bit. My grandfather built the place when my mom was a little kid. "Rustic" would be the polite term for the place ;)

There was electricity, but I think I was around 7 or 8 when we finally got water... before that, if you wanted to cook/clean/etc, you had to walk down and draw a bucket of water from the lake. I was 13 or 14 when they finally installed a hot water tank, and a shower! Yup, washing your hair meant jumping in the lake, climbing onto the dock, scrubbing up, and jumping back in.

With no tv, no internet, and in a small town where there's not a whole heck of a lot to do, I managed to do a couple things I haven't been able to do for months: read (3 full YA books and a short/accompanying story to one of those books), and write (about 1,500 words on the Jay/Kell story).


Farms on the right, foothills up front. If I had aimed my phone a little to the right, you'd be able to see an amazingly clean/huge view of Mt. Baker (in Washington State)

Here's winding through the foothills... though you can't really see the big hill on the left, on the right, there are all these amazing seasonal waterfalls which pour down the melting snow each spring

 Ahhh... on the deck, 20 C (68 F), and that lake couldn't have melted before yesterday... No, I'm serious. It was frozen solid in January, and just a week before I went to the cabin, there was a fresh dump of snow that went half-way down that mountain! While Eva (as you can see) was good to wander around on the deck, Berkeley contented himself with hiding under the cabin and hunting tasty spiders. Cats :D He's used to wearing a harness/being tied up outside, and he's been to the cabin a number of time, but this was only Eva's second visit.

 Morning view from the deck of the cabin, around 9am. Seriously, can it get better than this? Truly a perfect moment to pause, consider, and feel blessed by the good in my life rather than focusing on the bad. Even coffee tastes better with this view.

The very first batch of new Canadian geese! These two parents were hanging out around the dock all week (on and off), and on my final day, I guess their little ones were finally strong enough to take their first tour of the lake. Pretty cool... though Canadian geese are noisy suckers, destroy lawns (hence the fence in the previous picture), and can be pretty vicious. By my count, I think there are 16 babies... but it's hard to tell with them all clumped up together, and zooming in on my phone isn't the best :p


Oh, the being crazy part I mentioned? I swam in the lake every day I was there, except the very first day. And no, not in a wetsuit or a drysuit. More than one neighbour wandered down to check it out... more than one called me crazy (or just thought it strongly enough that you could plainly read it on their face). I was smart though, limiting it to 20 min max because you lose body heat so fast in water that cold that it can be dangerous. The water was so cold it tasted of metal, but I still had a fun time swimming around and diving off the dock. I do love swimming ;)

Anyways, that's where I've been, and while I may not be fully healed, at least I've got a bit of my charge back now ;) I am already planning to commandeer the cabin again for at least a week in June and hope to get a good chunk of writing done ;)

Hope you all are doing well! Now it's time to leash up Eva and take her out for walkies ;)

10 comments:

  1. Welcome back and yeah A-Z was a busy thing this month.

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  2. All the good stuff is Canadian. My favorite hockey players are Canadian. Michael J. Fox and Justin Bieber are from Canada. All my favorite shows come from Canada. Canada offers affordable schooling to Americans and accepts student loans. Canada is great!

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    1. I know I love it here ;)

      Though I've loved visiting a lot of large USA cities (especially ones with baseball/football!)

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  3. A couple of geese decided to start their family on a deck at the local newspaper office. The paper had a full two page spread detailing the adventures. Someone makes sure to feed the geese, no goslings yet just eggs, but if a stranger goes out to visit them the birds shoo them away. We have geese when I take my classes also and I’ve snapped shots of them and some video

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    1. Hahahaha! ...so, that newspaper gets an exclusive ;)

      Yeah, they can be really aggressive... I've stopped walking Eva by Lost Lagoon (downtown Vancouver) because of all the nesting geese, but also the nesting swans, which are huge suckers and can do a lot of damage with their 7' wing span and long beaks!

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  4. Escaping to a family cabin always helps the writing and creative juices to start flowing (at least for me) :)

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    1. It's the first time I've done it in a really long time since I was living on Vancouver Island, and tacking on a ferry ride (and all that entails) mid-journey would mean taking 6-7 hours to get to the cabin, rather than the 2 it does now.

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  5. Amazing pics! Thanks for sharing :) Glad you managed to get away for a little while--wish there was a cabin like this I could escape to once (or thrice) a year. But I'll tell you right off the bat--there's no way you'd get me in that water. I'd be huddling in the sun wearing three sweaters. 20C? That's like close to freezing (says the Caribbean chick) :D So good to have you back!

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    1. Open invitation for visitors ;)

      Don't worry, you wouldn't have to swim ;)

      When I go up again in June, my cute bro-in-law & his wife will probably come up for a few days.

      OH, and 20C was the warmest day... most of the time I was there, it was 12-15C (53-59F)

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Type me out a line of Shakespeare or a line of nonsense. Dumb-blonde-jokes & Irish jokes will make me laugh myself silly :)