Ivan E. Coyote

Wow!!! What a great storytelling performance! Two hours of personal narrative by Ivan Coyote, a storyteller, creative writing teacher, short story writer and novelist from the Yukon. She was funny, provocative, and honest ... and Tamarak, Carlos and I had a great evening. If you ever have the chance to watch her perform ... drop everything and go!

And now I must shovel some more gravel away from the house so that the wood can breathe and stop getting wet ... in the spot where "The Perfect Man" (you remember him perhaps from my writing blog ...) installed the stoop for the clothesline. He spent an inordinate amount of time filling in the gravel that is going to cause my house to rot if I don't move it now. Such is perfection.

One of those busy days ...

Today has been one chore after another ... a medical appointment in which I learned little but the doctor is speeding up the weaning process for this ugly drug ... a Costco shopping trip (ugh) ... a trip to Ritchie Feed and Seed where I bought potting soil and big pots for two plants that need to be moved and a very expensive chewy thing for Kenya ... then Giant Tiger to pick up the last of the nifty craft corner stuff ... then two sledloads of stuff to haul in ... including a huge bag of sunflower seeds for the birds and two big bags of soil ... then the assembly process ... and the putting away of things ... and the disposal of the recyclables ... and finally at 3 p.m. a lunch of soup and a sandwich and an exhausted sprawl on the couch with Kenya watching West Side Story.

Then in the front hall a leak started ... damn ... damn ... damn.

So ... at almost 5 p.m. ... not much accomplished except the necessities of life ... but isn't it interesting that I found the class DVD version of West Side Story on Obama's inauguration day?

And isn't my craft supply corner cute ... did you notice the little blackboard ends on the fabric baskets? As a former teacher it is always fun to find a blackboard and to use coloured chalk on it ... especially when I can label things and change the location and the labels so easily. I like fluidity, I am discovering ... I like to use spaces for more than one purpose ... to allow furniture to move according to need ... to have portable rocking chairs as part of the living arrangement.

But at the same time I cannot abide chaos. I really do find some measure of peace in organizing my life.

My buddy Tamarack is so very different from me. She can operate at a high level of efficiency when all hell is breaking loose around her. I need to get my life under control ... to know that everything has a place ... to create order from chaos ... or I cannot possibly be creative. Funny that both of us are blogging about this right now.

First Swim of the Season

Tammy, Carlos and Little Tammy came out with Teddy and Shea ... and brought dinner.

We couldn't convince Carlos to join us in the water. (We were moving the pump away from the muck.) He had "forgotten" his bathing suit. He was too shy to go in without it. He had to get ready for an exam. The excuses ran on, but of course we all knew that he was a hot blooded Latino who prefers bath tubs to lakes. It ended up that he worked harder than any of us running up and down the hill to run our errands for us. And of course he made the dinner ... chicken cacciatore ... yummy.


So there we were ... three women, a wharf spider that sent Tammy into paroxysms of terror, a leech that made Little Tammy nervous, Shea who wanted to play rescue dog, the pump, the electrical cord and the heat line ... and, of course, the cement blocks.


Little Tammy and I kept floating away for some reason, and neither of us was good at diving and doing stuff underwater, so Tammy ended up doing the lion's share of the work.




We struggled to attach the cement blocks to the heat line, and managed. Then we attached the pump to the last block, and placed it in one of the holes. The plan was to work together to get it out to the correct spot. Tammy was carrying the cinder block and we were to transport the rest of the paraphanalia attached to it.




That was when Little Tammy and I suddenly felt our feet go out from under us (it gets deep quickly and we are both short) and we floated away dropping our bits. Tammy discovered suddenly that she was the only person holding the cinder block plus its accoutrements and the weight took her straight to the bottom. After a bit more juggling, things seemed to be in place.

We also put the ladder I rescued in the spring in place.
Sarah arrived with Remi in the middle of all this.

Carlos took the Cinderblock Ballet photos.
He was errand boy, cook and photographer.

The water was great, by the way.

After the Party

It is a misty morning here at the lake, and I am recovering from a stomach flu that attacked me the night of my birthday. My birthday itself was wonderful, but the next few days have been fraught with less pleasant things.

My pump is in a mucky part of the lake and needs to be moved because it is constantly bringing sediment into the system. My water pressure becomes a dribble and I have to clean the filter to get it back. This interrupts washing cycles and makes filling kettles and water bowls or cans take longer, but is most annoying when it happens in the middle of a shower. Some days I was cleaning the filter half a dozen times in a day. Moving the pump is a chore I cannot manage without help because there are cinder blocks attached to the hose and the heat line. Once again I will ask friends.

There is a raccoon carcass rotting in the basement area of the old cottage which has to be buried or moved far enough away that dogs will not be tempted to roll in its execrescence. But first I have to calm my rather nervous stomach. I have prepared a waterproof box to shovel it into. This wouldn't be as urgent a matter except that Remi, the puppy, is arriving this evening, and he has already shown considerable interest in the corpse. Not only that, he is suffering from diarrhea, and I am sure that a raccoon snack would not help his medical condition. I will have Remi for the weekend.

And then there was the birthday card from Revenue Canada telling me I owe more money than I have already paid. RRSPs are hazardous to one's financial health. So is house building, especially when you hire the wrong people. The repairs to the roof which was done so badly will cost almost $9,000. It is the surprises that attack from behind when you least expect to be hit that are the killers, I am finding. Had I known how RRSPs work I would have bought bonds. Had I known how Mike worked I'd have hired a Quebec licensed contractor and paid up front.

The days since my birthday have not been all bad. I received a lovely birthday card from one of my oldest friends, and my plumber (a former student) told me how to fix my problem without incurring more costs. When I didn't appear on the road with Kenya, Rowboat Flo phoned or came over every day to ensure that I was alive, and yesterday Sarah ran an errand for me and walked Kenya.

Life may have its setbacks, but I still look out at this lake which is now an oasis of green after last night's rain, and I realize I am glad to be alive and here.

Relative Poverty

Marta and I spoke about poverty the other day. She felt that only the really down and out, the hopeless, were actually poor. No one could argue with her that real poverty is different from what many people mean when they say they are broke or poor or feeling desperate about money.

My money worries are miniscule compared to those of someone who has nothing ... someone living on welfare ... a refugee anywhere in the world, but especially one living in one of the camps. My financial state is nothing like the poverty in which almost all Africans and Indians whether from the sub-continent or displaced here in the Americas live. I do not have to worry about starving to death or dying of one of the many poverty-related diseases that plague the really poor.

But concerns about money cause me anxiety.

It is not that I have nothing; it that I own something I value and do not want to lose it.

I have embarked on a project that will give me a home until I can no longer live here by the lake, a home which will in turn, provide security when I am really old and something for my children to inherit when I die. This project is swallowing huge amounts of money, way more than I expected it to ... not because I wanted to create a mansion but because of problems over which I had no control ... building problems caused by the landscape and by the builders I chose. Nature can be hard but at least you can't blame anyone. Human ineptitude and dishonesty are something else. They cause stress. So does wondering where you can find the money to fix the mistakes or complete the essential parts of the job left unfinished.

My pension provides enough to live carefully and when I look after dogs I can afford some luxuries. If the house does not devour more of what is left of my savings than I am prepared to spend this summer, I can manage ... at least until my car dies ... or unless some terrible calamity befalls me.

I am not going to go hungry or cold, but I might lose my home, and with it a good bit of the savings I have invested in it, because it will take time to recoup that investment. If that happened I would have to find affordable housing. If I were in the city I would not need a car. If I were in the country I could have dogs.

It usually helps me to look at worst case scenarios.

This time, however, the worst case scenario not only means I will lose the house on the lake I love, but it will have meant that I have spent a year living homeless, and another year living with construction going on around me and dealing with the problems of building. Over two years of my life have been invested as well as the money — invested in a dream that is still not fulfilled. I am still living in an unfinished house on an unfinished lot. In the past two years I have also spent a lot of money unnecessarily on moving costs, and on transfering my life to Quebec.

The past two years have aged me. I am not as well as I was before all this started.

So yes, I have more than someone who is truly poor, but trying to hang onto it is diminishing me and making me feel poor.

A Splitting Headache ... Several Actually ...

Sorry I have not been posting lately. The reasons are the same ones that are giving me the headaches.

1. It took me three hours on the phone, another hour to write a letter and get the documentation Hydro wanted faxed, and another hour to take it into Wakefield and fax it because their line was continually in use. Five hours and the problem is still not resolved. My bank took my money, deposited it in a non-existent Hydro account, and then Hydro told me my bill was overdue. So that was one day and one major headache.

2. The following day the dial-up refused to do anything without bumping me off-line. Headache #2.

3. That was also the day I went to the ByTowne to see a movie with Marta. The movie was a disappointment. One of my favourite novels, The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence, had been badly translated into a film. The novel is a wonderful sprawling rendition of a life; the film is an awkwardly patched together attempt to capture what perhaps is unmanageable. The filmmaker's changes to time were disconcerting, as was the incorrect aging of the characters. Hagar was far too young for 90; Doris and Marvin far too young for 65; and the age difference between Marvin and John which was perhaps five years suddenly at one point became a twenty year spread. I am usually not as upset by the liberties taken by film makers attempting to move a novel onto the screen, but this was a travesty. Dickens' novels like Bleak House are also big novels, but the BBC did not ruin Bleak House by trying to fit a 400 page novel into 1 1/2 hours. They made a 3 DVD production. Better to have put The Stone Angel aside as undo-able than to seriously damage the integrity of a fine novel. Headache #3.

4. Today Tom and his crew came to finish up the removal of the cottage debris. They did not finish. They did create clouds of bilious, headache-causing smoke ... and on the May 24th weekend. (My neighbours are likely cursing me.) When I went to get them clean boxes out of the big blue bin, it (the bin) ... 4 1/2 feet high here in Quebec ... came crashing down on my head raising a long ridgelike goosebump on the scalp. Ouch! Headaches #4 and 5.


Not a good few days ... but I hope the air, my head, and my schedule will all be clear by tomorrow morning so that I can prepare for company (faithful blog readers all) and post a morning entry.

Tammy's Photos

39 steps

Shea surveying the work from the rock wall

The men spreading the topsoil while Sarah oversees the work

Mark and Mandara taking a break with Shea and Kenya

Moving the debris before dealing with the site

Breaking up the topsoil with every possible implement

May take all night but Tammy's shots are great ... so I will try! Again! There are two more.

It was a dark and stormy night ...

My dream stream has dried up ... I still dream but can't remember the details any more.

Last night I wrote down "pills" and this morning it meant absolutely nothing to me.

I was up a couple of times in the night. It was very noisy in my bedroom so I closed the window to shut out the racket of the stream. The noise continued. I checked other windows to stop the wind. No windows were open. Then it dawned on me — rain — on a tin roof. You know all those romantic notions about how you will drowse off listening to the rain on the tin? Well, rain being driven full force out of the sky is more alarming than sleep-inducing, especially when you live in a house that has already suffered from weather.

Before the house was built; when its foundation had been poured and construction just begun, I was staying at the cottage below the house. One night a giant storm blew in. It dumped tropical storm quantities of water on us. Sand and gravel from the road and the building site were swept down to the cottage and into the lake. I went outside with a flashlight and tried to see what was happening, but I could only get enough of a picture to banish sleep for the rest of the night. At first light I was outside taking inventory.

The cottage's kitchen door was blocked by sand and the recycling box covered.

The hill above the cottage was gashed open by the water flow. Three fissures wide enough to accommodate motorcycles scarred the earth.

The house foundation the day before had been invisible beneath tons of construction sand. Now one corner jutted out, obscenely naked, from a cavernous hole and a muddy stream bed leading to the lake via the cottage.

I felt sick.

We built a huge (and very beautiful) retaining wall above the new house to prevent the mountain and the road from ending up in the house. Then we created a second retaining wall down from the house to the cottage. And we placed rocks strategically to trick the next storm's deluge to go into the stream bed rather than overland. I say "we" ... but of course it was really Eric and his crew and their massive rock and earth moving machines that did the work. I planted clover and paid the bills.

I haven't been outside yet this morning to see if the barriers and tricks worked, but my first observations from the windows are reassuring.

As long as this house is vulnerable, so am I. When it is truly finished and secure, I will feel safe enough to be lulled back to sleep by rain on a tin roof, and maybe then, the dream stream will begin to flow again.