September in Scotland with Granite and Cuddles

WoolGathering has taken a break for the month of September.  Visit my other blog, Granite and Cuddles on tour, which follows Barb and Tom on their trip in Scotland.
Granite and Cuddles on Tour

How I Spent my Summer Vacation

How I Spent my Summer Vacation
      The end of August is fast upon us.  I am NOT going to say, “Where did the summer go?” or, “My, the air feels like fall, doesn’t it?” or  “The days are getting shorter, aren’t they?”  No, I’m hanging on to summer for Dear Life.

Dear Life by Alice Munro

High School Reunion
     Forty years.  Can you believe that?  Sitting at the Hampton Pub in late June with Friends of my Youth, I was absolutely thrilled when the ever-charming Leo Kelly took my hand, gazed into my eyes and crooned, “Barb, I loved all the girls in our class, but you were my favorite.”  Butterflies.  Just like when I was 18.  Five minutes later, Leo had moved down the table and was holding Dorothy’s hand.  I overheard him say, “Dorothy, I loved all the girls in our class, but you were my favorite.”  Sinking feeling in my stomach.  Just like when I was 18.  Charming Leo continued to change seats about every 5 minutes.  “Tanya, I loved all the girls in our class, but you were my favorite.”......  “Cathy, I loved all the girls in our class, but you were my favorite.”  ET CETERA!!!  You get the picture. 

FIND LEO!!!!

     A Lady Never Discusses the Size of her Yarn Stash
     Then there was the daytrip with my cousins Susan and Peyton from Halifax, and my cousin Mary Ruth from Ottawa to Harvey to shop at the Briggs and Little Woolen Mills.....because, I don’t have enough wool in my life.  And neither do they!

That Could be Me!

Send me a Letter... 
    I had a quick visit with my daughter Julia in Toronto in mid-July.  Sweltering Toronto is not my favorite place to be in July; however, the temperature was pleasant and I had an event-filled week.  One of the highlights was attending a play performed on various porches in a downtown neighbourhood.  Postman, based on the life of Toronto’s first black letter carrier, was excellent!

Laurence Dean Ifill as Albert Jackson

Aunt Gladys to Norwood     
     While chatting with Aunt Gladys earlier this year about my friend Ines who is converting her family homestead to a Bed and Breakfast, we determined that Aunt Gladys had been to that very house in the 70s to buy hens.  At the age of 92, Aunt Gladys is no longer in the hen business, but she maintains a definite interest in old houses.  I suggested that Aunt Gladys might like to visit this house again.  She was keen, so away we went! 

Aunt Gladys on the Verandah at Norwood

The Hen Story:  One warm summer day, Aunt Gladys and her husband, Uncle Eldon, travelled 60 kilometres from Gorham’s Bluff to Cambridge Narrows to buy some hens.  The hens were packed in threes in burlap bags and loaded in the back of the Dodge half-ton.  On the way home, Aunt Gladys suggested that they stop at The Country Kitchen for dinner; being on a farm, they did not often get a chance to eat out.  Reluctantly, Uncle Eldon agreed.  Unpacking the hens at home later that afternoon, they discovered some hens to be half-dead and many to be dead-dead.  Uncle Eldon was not impressed.  There followed a beheading, gutting and pin-feather picking Hen Party.  A memorable day. 

Not Aunt Gladys; Not a Hen

The John Deere Trail
     We hit the John Deere Trail in Carter’s Point one hot Sunday in early August.  This trail, built and maintained by twin brothers, features a gentle walk through the woods and an inspirational tour of impressive vegetable and flower gardens.  At the end of the walk, you are rewarded with refreshing lemonade and home-made cookies and cakes!  One Sunday every summer, Jerry and Joel host a tour of their trail and gardens as a fund-raiser for Long Reach United Church.  What a gift!

The John Deere Trail

Cemetery History 

     One August afternoon, my cousin Betsy, my Aunt Muriel and I made a stop near Gagetown at Elm Hill Road,  the site of an early settlement of  Black Loyalists in New Brunswick.  In the Elm Hill Cemetery, field stones with no markings indicate the head and foot of most of the gravesites.  Occasionally, you will find a tombstone with writing. 

Tombstone, Elm Hill Road Cemetery

Life on the Lakes     
     A weekend of heritage, nature, arts events took us back to the Washdemoak in early August.  We attended a quilt show, a book sale, the Flowers House Tour.  Several artists and craftspeople were on site at Norwood demonstrating and selling their talents.   We purchased a gourmet picnic and a bottle of wine at Motts Landing Vineyard and Winery and sat in their field to eat it.  Beautiful.  We could have been in Tuscany, but we weren’t.  We were in Cambridge-Narrows overlooking the Washdemoak. 

Mott's Landing Vineyard and Winery

Charlotte’s Tea     

      In mid-August, a tea was held at 1810 Carter House in honor of my mother, a dedicated member of Peninsula Heritage, and an excellent tea-maker.  Ladies arrived in hats, gloves and pearls to enjoy the wide variety of teas and vast array of desserts. Charlotte, who would have been 99 years old on August 16th, would have enjoyed that tea party!!

Tea at 1810 Carter House

Noel at the Camp   
     Noel, my "Little Brother", was able to spend 3 nights with us at the camp this summer.  I am going to let the pictures tell that story.  We all had a good time!

Noel at the Camp

Fisher Noel

Hammock-Lounger Noel

FireFighter Noel

Captain Noel

Tree-Climber Noel

ZooKeeper Noel

Kitten Farmer Noel

Puzzle-Solver Noel

Land of Potatoes and Plenty
   Last weekend, my sister and I took our elderly Aunt Carol to visit her elderly cousin Freda in Carleton County.  Freda would be our first-cousin-once-removed, in case you’re wondering.  We have many second, third, fourth cousins in Carleton County.  Our second cousin Gary took us on a wonderful tour of the area where we saw acres and acres and acres of potatoes, fields and fields and fields of oats, hectares and hectares and hectares of hay, big sky, rolling hills, antique cars, tractors, trucks, seeders, harvesters, sprayers, etc,etc,etc.  Plenty of evidence of lots of HARD WORK and agricultural success stories.  What a beautiful corner of our province.   And what kind, genuine, generous relatives I have in Carleton County.

Potato World

Until Next Time.....

Mountain Doctor:

Mountain Doctor

While the plane was descending on my flight from Toronto last week, I felt my right ear go into some distress.  An avid gum-chewer most of the time, I realized too late I had forgotten to pop the trusty Trident into my mouth having been too absorbed in conversation with my seat-mate, the HR man from Sobeys.  By the time I noticed the crackling in my ear, it was too late.  I deplaned and went home where my ear condition worsened as the day progressed. 

That evening and the next day I did extensive research on "airplane ear" or “barotrauma” and felt myself to be quite an expert by Saturday evening.  My room-mate Tom refers to me as Barb Fullerton, MD….Mountain Doctor.  The MacMillan girls call that DWOL….Doctors WithOut Licence. 

Mountain Doctor

I treated myself according to online direction—hot compresses, yawning, gum-chewing, valsalva.  Valsalva.  That’s the medical term we doctors use which means pinching your nostrils and exhaling to cause the ears to pop thereby unblocking the Eustachian Tube. 

Valsalva

Eustachian Tube.  That’s the canal in the ear that allows air to flow into the middle ear to balance pressure.  As you can see, I am quite confident in my medical knowledge…a little TOOOO confident as it turns out. 

Eustachian Tube

 

By Sunday morning I was deaf in my right ear, and the pain was heading toward excruciating. I decided it was time to consult a DWL----Doctor With Licence.  One millisecond after she looked into my ear she said, “It’s an infection.”  I was shocked; I had not even considered that!  I had misdiagnosed.  I could hardly believe it. I got my two antibiotic prescriptions filled and headed back to the hills with my room-mate Tom at the wheel.  He didn’t say much but I saw his eyebrows raise and his eyes roll when I admitted to him that I had been wrong in my diagnosis. 

Shoppers

Tom, uxorious as usual, waited on me hand and foot with tea and blankets and hot compresses.  By late afternoon, I pried myself off the couch, grabbed a knife, and told him I was going to the garden to get some greens.

Garden Knife

“You can’t do that!” he exclaimed.  “You have an imbalance in your Fallopian Tube!”

Tom has a way with words.  He has a way of mixing them up.  It makes me MAD because I think he is just being careless, and if he gave ANY THOUGHT WHATSOEVER to what he was going to say, he wouldn’t make such RIDICULOUS mistakes!

Fallopian Tubes

 

“My fallopian tube!” I yelled.  “MY FALLOPIAN TUBE!!!???"  I’m impatient with this quaint little quirk of his at the best of times, but fueled by pain and painkillers, perhaps I was a little harsher than usual in my response.

“I mean your Estrogen Tube,” he sputtered, his eye on the knife in my hand.

Estrogen Tube

 

“My ESTROGEN TUBE!?” I screamed.  “I DON'T believe it!  EUSTACHIAN TUBE!  I have an infection in my EUSTACHIAN TUBE!!!”  I yelled, waving my hands and stamping my feet for emphasis.

 

“Right,” Tom repeated, cowering in his armchair, his eye still on the knife.  “Eustachian Tube.”

Until Next Time.......

 

Mutt's in a Name? The Dog Blog

Mutt’s in a Name?:  The Dog Blog



Nugget

      As you may have gathered, if you read my blog on a somewhat regular basis, I have a thing for names. They interest me to the point that I keep a list on the fridge of names that I find to be unique or unusual or new-to-me.  With all due respect, I get a lot of them from the obituaries.

Names on the Fridge

     So it’s not a real stretch that I have begun to pay close attention to the dog names in my life.   What I am noticing is that dogs more and more have people names.  Instead of Sport, Rover, Rocky, Lady, Tippy and Skipper---dog names from my distant past, the dogs in my neighbourhood whom I see almost daily have people names.  Brad, Ernie, Haley, Rosie.  Sammy Davis Jr. lives on the next block and you must use his entire name when addressing him.  Astrid Elizabeth Ann is a boxer who lives down the street; her friends call her Astrid.  Charlotte lives around the corner.  My mother’s name was Charlotte.  My middle name is Charlotte.  The new princess’ name is Charlotte.  And so is the West Highland Terrier who lives around the corner.    

Princess Charlotte and her Parents

West Highland Terrier, Charlotte

 

    Is it because families have fewer kids that they use their favourite names for their pets?  Larry, Elvis, Ellie, Emma, Mabel, Basil, Doug.  My dog Nugget was already named when I adopted her.  Who knows, if she had been nameless, I may have called her Alice Munro or Angela Merkl or Helen Mirren.  She looks more like an Alice than an Angela, I think. 

 Alice Munro

 Angela Merkl

Helen Mirren

Nugget.  Or Alice Munro? 

     When I was a kid, we always had a dog and he (or she) was always called Skipper.  One Skipper would follow another Skipper.  This was mostly due to the fact that my father would not call a dog anything else.  So if anyone in the family got creative and tried to call the new cow dog Blue or Patches or Lassie, that name  would not last more than a week.  Because my father would never change,  in order to avoid a totally confused dog with an identity crisis, the dog's name inevitably reverted to Skipper, as in “Skipper, go get the cows!”  , "Sic ‘em Skipper!” , “Skipper, go lay down!” , “Skipper, get  home.”  That would be the extent of the interaction my father had with the dog.  You see while I’m made of granite, as my family repeatedly tells me, my father was made of cement laced with rebar.  Not exactly warm and fuzzy.  Every animal on the farm had a job; there were no pets.  Skipper’s job was to get the cows to the barn at milking time.  Skipper the First, Skipper the Second, Skipper the Third ---same old job.  You get the picture.  Skippers were never allowed in the house; they slept in the porch and ate table scraps from an old tin pie plate with a hole in the bottom. 

Skipper at Work

     Our Skippers had no dish with their name on it, no poop bags, no leash, no collar, no ramp to get on the bed, no doggy backpack, no stroller, no trips to the vet, no needles, no kangaroo dog food, no dental work, no allergy tests, no flea medicine.  If the dog got into a porcupine, one person held his head down between the tines of a hayfork, and someone else pulled the quills out with a pair of pliers.  If the dog got sick, you stopped feeding him for a while.  If he got really sick, you called the neighbour to come shoot him in the back pasture.  Dogs did merit a grave, however. 

Not Skipper in the Stroller

     Today's dogs are pampered and privileged compared to our Skippers.  And I can’t really say much.  I have a pampered privileged dog who eats kangaroo dog food and wears a coat, boots and a New Brunswick tartan ascot. 

Nugget

 

     What's more, I have a pampered privileged cat who is quite sure she deserves the very best of everything, including several high-falutin’ names such as Josie, Josee, Slippy, Ring-Tailed Snorter.  She acts more like an Elizabeth or a Victoria or a Sheba if you ask me.

Slippy and Julia

Slippy in her own Mind

 

 

 

 Until Next Time.............

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Mudder's Day

 

Happy Mudder's Day

 

      What can I say?  What is new about mothers?  It’s all been said.  It’s in the Mother’s Day Cards. 

 

Mother's Day Card

     Most mothers are wonderful.  Most care most about their children.  Not all.  I watch Criminal Minds; I know there are evil people out there. 

   Criminal Minds

     I could tell you that I had a wonderful mother.  I did.  She was exceptional, not just as a mother, but as a human being.  I could tell you I am a wonderful mother.  I would be lying.  I do try but I have not lived up to the gold standard.  I might score "adequate" on the Provincial Rubric.  I am not going to enumerate my successes or my failures here.  My daughters could probably fill you in. 

 

Barbara and Mother, Charlotte

 

     Mothers are so vital in the construction of human beings, beyond the biological creation.  I am just realizing, in my late 50s, that I put a lot of stock in mothers.  I jump to the conclusion that if the mother is a good person, her children are likely to be good people too, and vice versa.  You might call that judgemental.  Go ahead. 

     Just imagine the mothers of these people.

Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa, Barack Obama

 

     And consider this  mother, author Isabel Allende, who nursed her 28-year-old daughter to a premature death, then wrote a book about it.  Mothers do phenomenal things.

 

Isabel Allende with son Nicholas and daughter Paula

Paula, by Isabel Allende

     Around Mother’s Day last year, I met a man whom I have come to admire in many ways.  A very successful businessman, he is a Newfoundlander by birth.  You might call that racial profiling.  Go ahead. 

Newfoundland

     This man and I were randomly thrown into a social situation that involved a bottle of rum.  Lest you think me an avid drinker, let me assure you I am not.  You might call that denial.  Go ahead. 

Appleton Rum

     As the rum in the bottle diminished, this man's Newfoundland accent strengthened remarkably.  My Newfoundland accent strengthened minimally.  His stories were most entertaining, his speech patterns downright musical.  Eventually the word Mother became Mudder, and Mudder figured highly in the ensuing stories.  There was the story of childhood mealtime in the family of 5, mostly boys.  Mudder never saw the older brother stealing off the plate of the younger brother and only turned around in time to see the victim of supper-theft stab the thief-brother in the back of his hand with the fork.  But of course Mudder figured it out and cuffed one boy and bandaged the other. 

Hungry Brudder

     Then there was the story about two of the brothers who were stationed in Afghanistan.  One brother was not sharing his access to extra rations with the other brother.  A phone call was made from Afghanistan to Mudder in Newfoundland and that bit of sibling inequity was soon straightened out.  I call that one powerful mother. 

Brudder Calling Mudder

     I could go on about mothers… Mother Theresa, Mother Earth, Mother May I, Mother Superior, Motherboards, Whistler’s Mother, MotherLode, Mommie Dearest, Mother Jones.  Some of those mothers are not mothers in the literal sense of the word, but they can still be mothering.  Think of all the people who have mothered you.  I’ll leave you with Jann Arden’s Good Mother . “I’ve got a good mother and her voice is what keeps me here.”

Jann Arden

 

 

......Until Next Time....