Prospective Son-In-Laws

Teapot has a penchant for giving people nicknames.... thus Frankie, which has been my nickname since almost the first day I met him. I have been looking for years for a nickname for him that would stick and then last year I came up with Teapot... it was perfect. It was with nicknames in our minds that the following occurrence happened.

Tonight the dear boy (that would be Teapot) took me and the Daughters in the truck and we dropped the Daughters off at the school's Coffee House as agreed, and we then proceeded on to a local food joint for some supper. As the Daughters were leaving us it became almost poignant that I could see a day when they would leave us for good. They carried on into the school to meet up with their chums and Teapot and I began to talk about them as we drove off for our dinner out. Daughter #1 is now 15 years old and is about 8 months from getting her driver's license. Daughter #2 is just 17 months behind. It is getting more and more apparent to us that there will come a time when it will no longer just be Mom, Dad, and the two Daughters. Teapot has been threatening the Daughters for years, with forcing their boyfriends (when they get them) into digging holes in the garden to tire them out before there can be any dating. I think this has something to do with the fact that Teapot knows how the teenaged boy thinks (probably about sex and nothing else). Tonight I decided to ask Teapot if he would give any future prospective son-in-laws nicknames and he said he would if I wanted him to. I said absolutely.

We discussed the nicknames of his best buds in University. They were dickie (with a small d), Pube, and Ralph. Perhaps you are beginning to see where this is going. By the time we got home we had come up with really good nick names for all prospective son-in-laws....


Booger and Skid Mark

I wonder what the Daughters will think....

Of course we mean it with the utmost respect, you understand.... ; }!!!

Rats

Stomach ills and a migraine yesterday. The day before?... was a day to demo spinning to school students at our local school. All went well except my voice gave out again... hmm.

Will write later today when I'm feeling better. For now I will go and brood about snow... which once again is falling.

Juried Art Show

I've entered this painting... (mixed media.. acrylic and silk on wood) in the Peace Liard Regional Art show...

~?~

I left to take Mom this morning to an appointment in DC...

After I finished poking out my eyes with forks they put me in a straight jacket. I'm typing with my toes.

Debating

Well, I guess I'm going to fess up and tell you about something that I'm not sure about....something that seems to be plaguing my mind lately.  For a while now I've been debating... I've been thinking about not going to  Olds College this year. It is for several reasons and no I'm not quitting on the Master Spinner's program... for that matter, this is only in the thinking stages yet. For a while I have been feeling burnt out. Fibred out... and everything in my life is suffering for it. More and more I've been looking at my wheel and thinking I really want to spin on my old wheel. I really want to spin something for a project and not just another sample. I really want to write a poem... You'll notice on Feathermist that I have not put a poem there since last autumn and that one sucked!  I really want to do that online writing course that looks so interesting. I really want to sew my quilt.... I really want to work on rug hooking. I really want to paint a painting. I really want to take the dogs for a walk... But I can't because I have another question to tackle. I'll be honest getting a meagre mark on my Level 3 contributed to this. I feel that I'm not satisfied to get a low mark and keep going as if I'm some awesome student. I'm not and I need to back up a bit. I went into this so that I could be the best spinner that I could be and that failed abysmally in level 3 when I passed but barely. So if I want to walk away from the MSP program having graduated with pride I think I need to take a year to complete my second version of Level 3 and finish my Level 4, and, most importantly, do it well. Every time I think about trying to complete three levels in two years my stomach does flip flops. And I get stressed and then I start looking at my wheel as the enemy and not as my best buddy. I'll also be honest... money is part of it too. Recessions are not for the faint of heart... and while Teapot and I do OK... paying for hay at sky rocketing prices, and veterinarian bills for sick dogs, and gelding alpacas among a whole bunch of other stuff, has taken it's tole.  The Daughters too have required this year, some fairly huge expenses and so I'm at the middle of April with my head in my hands going, "What do I do about Olds?!"

Still, I have a little time to decide on whether or not I will go. I've been thinking about trying to get a short job with the election process which would help with the money.... and yet I look at my wheel and can't help feeling a little resentful that my time is not my own.... The MSP was supposed to be fun... and somehow along the way I have lost the fun-ness of it and now it is well... a struggle. I'm sick of worsted and woolen and the flax just made me want to throw up. (We all have our likes and dislikes and flax is one of my most definite dislikes and guess what.. some of us can know it right from the get go... sorry R.G. that's the truth of it)! I'm still plugging away (note the description... plugging is not how I should be tackling it) at my level 4 homework but I really want to get to the 150 hour project because I am looking forward to that. I really want it to be awesome and beautiful and simply divine.... I am excited about that at least. But I want to do it justice. I want everyone else to look at it and say, "Wow, you made that?!" I don't want to do it because I'm on a deadline and I need to get it done before the next level. I want to do it because I love it.

So MSP or not to MSP this year.... I'm not really sure. Besides I'm supposed to submit my in depth study topic this year and I have about five and can't choose and I don't have time to think about it. Basically I just don't feel ready for level 5 and I really just want to carry on at my own pace. Perhaps I've taken too big a bight out of the apple right now.

There is one slight boomerang in all this. All along I have been going to Olds with two friends and so far we have kept pace with each other which has had it's good points and it's bad points. I love going through the class with them but I hate the feeling that I have to keep up with them. I'm tired and keeping up with two really awesome ladies who outstretch me in spinning experience far and away, is making me more tired... but I will miss terribly their input into my work and the ability to discuss things when we run into problems if I don't do level 5 with them this year.

So you see I am in a terrible dilemma... and there is no reprieve in sight...

Ah if only there were someone who could tell me what to do... but that's ridiculous, I realize...

So I will wait for a while and keep thinking about it all... sooner or later I will be able to decide or the decision will be made for me... especially if the class fills up and I can't get in...

We'll see...

Companion For Daughter #2

Bailey has come to live with us. She's a Sheltie x and she comes to us from the FSJ SPCA. She is not quite a year old. She is a lovely dog, full of personality. Daughter #2 is very happy to have such a loving dog. Jiggs however, is not quite sure.

Baching It... And A Few Thoughts On War

Teapot has left for the weekend of his dreams... He is gone on a Canoe Convention. Yup he is gone to oogle and ogle canoes of every shape and size. He left at 1:00 a.m. Argh! I'm pooped from being up in the middle of the night to give him a kiss good bye as he went out the door. But he checked in at about 2:30 p.m. to let me know that they had made it safe and sound... all was good and he was in high spirits. I'm sure that he will have a high old time.

As for the Daughters and I... we are baching it for the weekend. And as usual whenever Teapot goes away the mice play... and so we have been watching movies though I will say that we could have watched better ones... The first was a Jackie Chan flick... so so.... but then we watched The Wind That Shakes The Barley... a really good movie, but I want to kill Teapot for picking it for us right at this moment... We've all been crying for two hours. It's the story of the beginnings of the civil war between the English and the IRA and Sinn Fein, a dreadful time by any standards.

Being a light hearted soul, Teapot always manages to make us laugh after a movie of such sadness and desolateness, thus the reason for wanting to kill him... he picked the movie and then ran off to let us drown in our own tears with not a bit of light heartedness to pick us up and save us from ourselves. As with all movies of civil wars, there is no doubt that it is the women that suffer the most when their men go to war, and the Daughters and I empathized maybe a little too much with the women in this movie. With hands bound by the words of freedom and higher ideals, they watch their men going off to fight and they can't stop what they know will come. In the epic words of Ruby Thewes from Cold Mountain.... "Every piece of this is man's bullshit. They (men) call this war (the American civil war) a cloud over the land, but they made the weather and then they stand in the rain and say, "Shit! Its rainin'!"

There is no doubt in my mind that fighting is not the right way to seek our rights, or to help the underdog.  I watch daily as this world around us deteriorates into chaos and wonder what Mahatma Gandhi would think of our efforts in Afghanistan.... or our efforts in Libya. And yet there is something dreadfully poignant about the first scene in the movie we watched tonight, as British soldiers descend willy nilly on an Irish peasant home and beat a young man to death for playing a game of field hockey because there are to be no public meetings.  You want to bash the brains out of the British soldier who is the leader as much as the Irish must have for the injustices and feckless abuses they received at the hands of the British. These types of abuses play themselves out all over the world regularly as we speak, in places like the Yemen or Syria or the Ivory Coast or the Congo. Why oh why do the strong and mighty feel the need to repress and crush the weak... why do they not have the need to support and uphold weak... why do they not take care of the weak? Why is nurturing not universal?

In the end all is quiet now in our house. Daughter #2 is above deck no doubt plugged into her iPod... Daughter #1 is glued to a book on the couch. The dishes are clean after a yummy supper of Nachos and cheese and Salsa. And all the wet and soggy tissues are in the garbage.... but in our hearts lingers the ethereal... the bight of pointless death and wasted lives... of gentle hearts who long for a better time... and who long for peace. What could be more ethereal... more magic than that.

Sweet Peace