Laughing eyes

Laughing eyes
Originally uploaded by Misty Croney

Stand over here, I need to take a picture.

No, not like a goof ball, like this, here. (I bend and twist his head so he's in the light)

Now, stay there. Stop laughing (I say through my own giggles, they are so contagious). I want you to look thoughtful.

Think about english. (His eyes glaze over and become dull)

Ok, not english, think about math. (His eyes liven up again, but standing still with a camera in his face is taking it's toll. He's starting to giggle again. I'm losing him.)

Think about not being a goofball. (Click)

Saturday

On more occasions than not, I stumble into my weekends.  A million things to do zip by my brain and yet, I sit still and watch the time be wasted.  As much as I want things done, I don't want to do any of them.  I just want them done. 

I crawl up the stairs from bed, having slept in, because the devil (or angel, depending on perspective) on my shoulder told me I deserve it, and I believed them, to find Owen going full tilt.  I make my coffee and contemplate my day, knowing full well, half of my ideas won't get done and watch Owen play. 

I'm in awe of him.  He leaps into his days.  Bounces from bed with ideas seemingly carried from his dreams.  One foot touches the floor and he's a lion, a soldier, a .... Ordinary objects become extraordinary and he's traveled through time and around the world before I've finished my coffee.  All the while my butt remains planted.  My mind unable to decide with ease where I should start on my long list of chores.  So it gives up and I sit here. 

Where did that go? That boundless energy?  The eagerness to greet the day?  I must have vacuumed it up by accident because I haven't seen it around in a long time. 

Art of conversation

At the supper table:

Owen: I know how many sides a circle has.

Me: How many?

Owen: 1

Me: How many sides does a square have?

Owen: 4

Me: How about a rectangle?

Owen: 4

Dad: How about a tetrahedron?

Reiley: 28.  I bet it's 28.

Dad: I bet someone is talking out of their butt.

Reiley: I can't help it, it's in my genes.

Hot November Sun

This really isn't my story to tell.  But one I was told that changed the impact of this day for me. 

Since our very first years, we've gathered.  Held close in our mothers arms.  For something we had no way of understanding.  The poppy a new toy to fiddle with attached to our mothers coat.  Stories were told about relatives we never met.  The story short, for no one knew how it really went.  Just that it did.  Once in school, old enough to know the word war but not truly the meaning of freedom, we sat on the gym floor and listened to the veterans.  We gathered quietly outside and stood in the cold and watched them lay the wreaths.  The sadness on their faces a truth, not a gesture. 

The cold she said, was what she noticed most.

The scene could not have been more different from the one we grew up with every November 11th.  Everyone gathered on the tarmac, soldiers remembering soldiers in the very place our countries have made the most recent sacrifices.  People remembering, who understand and know in a way I never can. 

She stood there dressed in uniform, but instead of the biting cold November wind on her cheek, she felt the hot Afghanistan sun.  Then over the horizon the thump thump thump of chopper blades cut through the ceremony and those needed scattered to meet the helicopter carrying one of their own. 

It couldn't have been more real or surreal.  Soldiers of the present remembering soldiers of the past.  Some they called friends. 

I'll never be able to imagine the reality they know, but I can be thankful and honour them.

The power of love.

The tornado ripped through town picking up the house and tossing it into the land of Oz.

Well, it wasn't a tornado, but it was stronger than the so called hurricane we had.  And it did pick up the house and toss it 20 ft away, leaving the turkeys in an unfamiliar world.

In the past 4 days we've had more than 5 inches of rain, leaving everything soaked through. The turkeys are still here, but I must say, having turkeys in weather like this is not fun.   The poultryminium 1000 we built is showing wear, has no bottom and only one wall.  It was perfect during the summer and offered plenty of shade and shelter and allowed for grazing.   Recently, the cows and horse have been chewing on the tarp that is its roof, making holes and the rain has decided to fall horizontally.  So the turkeys are wet to say the least.  The tips of their wings and tail feathers are brown.  The tail feathers are nothing more than the center quill and look more like ass end of a porcupine.  There isn't a dry place in the field to move the coop to.  The best I can offer is a spot without puddles and even this is now hard to come by.  Keeping an eye on the weather, I can point the wall of the coop into the wind, giving them some reprieve.  So long as the wind direction doesn't change the turkeys stay relatively dry.  When it does change though, they're off to Oz.

Friday I spent the day an hour away in meetings.   Mart walks in the door, home from work to the phone ringing.  It's our neighbour, Fred. 
Fred: Have you looked out the window?
Mart, confused, but accustomed to Fred's odd way replies: No, why? 
Fred: Your turkeys are on your lawn.  Where's your wife?
Mart: Work
Fred: Can I videotape you trying to catch the turkeys then?

My loving, patient husband suits up in his rain gear and goes out to round up the turkeys.   They had wandered from the pasture, under the barbed wire fence and onto our lawn.  Since they had already been under the fence Mart thought (and sensibly enough) that they could and would, walk right back under and into the pasture again with guidance.  He forgot they're turkeys.  There are a few things dumber than a turkey, but none come to mind right now. 

I should add that between the barbed wire, at approximately the level of a man's crotch, there is an electric fence wire we use to divide part of the field.  Oh, and it was on.

Our turkeys are friendly enough but not used to being handled.  Ready for the roasting pan, they are nearing 25 lbs each.  Not having any luck herding the turkeys, Mart simply picks one up, carries it over the fence and returns it to the coop.  It was simple really.  I don't know what the fuss was about.  It was only a 25 lb turkey flapping its wings and kicking its legs and trying to escape what it believed to be an attack on its life, with Mart trying to hold it under one arm while straddling the fence and getting electrocuted every 10 seconds in the crotch.  No big deal, really.  Before long he had all 5 back in the coop.  They were wet, disheveled and bright blue in the face showing just how put out they were by the whole ordeal, but no worse for wear.  They're turkeys, and with fresh feed in front of them, they quickly forgot the whole thing I'm sure.  Mart, likely not.  

He truly loves me, I can tell.  He'll cross the driest desert, sail the largest ocean, climb the highest mountain and catch turkeys in the rain, just for me.

Home

I knew something was missing, but could never quite place my finger on what it was. An uneasiness of some sort, always waiting for something.

The town was never home. We lived there, but when asked where I was from my childhood town passed my lips. We lived in the town for 8 years but had not grown roots. We tried. We joined groups, reached out to make friends, bought a house. But it all remained superficial. Something to do until...Until what, we didn't know.

I think choosing to live somewhere and ending up somewhere makes a big difference in how you view the town. Perhaps that's why it never felt like home. Why that uneasiness and sense of being in transition never left.

In the late fall of 2007 all the stars aligned and we were presented with an opportunity to move. So in February of 2008 we packed up, left the town and moved home. This little town, half the size of the one we left was immediately that.

Friends were made easily, we found a rhythm and the sense of uneasiness vanished. We unpacked. We stood still. And quickly our roots dug deep into the mud. I love our little town. The beauty of it never ceases to amaze me.

Now you can ask and I'll tell you, I'm from Windsor. I live in a little community outside town, where the population of horses exceeds that of people, called Greenhill. But we call it home.

Jammies

Yesterday I spent the day at home on the couch sick.  I prepared the coffee table with necessities so once snug I wouldn't have to move.  I had the phone, remote, glass of water, the usual.  Unfortunately I forgot that daytime television doesn't change depending on health.  Daytime television is worse than being sick.  But I was snug.  I didn't want to move.  So I flicked through the best of the worst and settled on Gene Simmons Family Jewels.  The guy is pretty funny and his kids are funny, so I was surprised.  It wasn't awful.  Glad I didn't move from my perfectly snug spot at any rate.  The best part of the show was when they showed him in the morning wearing cozy jammies with feet in them.  The kind I wore when I was 5.  The kind I wish I could still fit into.  With the zipper up the front and the rubber grips on the bottom of the feet.  I guess that's what having millions of dollars will buy you.  Fuzzy jammies with feet.  Sigh.

It reminds though of Owen wearing those jammies.  He had a few pair when he was small.  He only wore them until he was 2 or 3 though.  Unlike Reiley who wore a pair until he was 8 which he had really out grown when he was 6.  Some things are just hard to let go of. 

Anyway, Reiley and Owen would often linger in their jammies long into the morning and play together with the big duplo legos.  I don't pretend to understand the motivation behind what my boys do, or how they come up with their ideas but that one morning still leaves me scratching my head.  It wasn't until I was changing Owen's diaper that I noticed a huge blister on the inside of his knee.  I mean huge.  Red and chaffed  and painful.  I asked him what happened and he said he didn't know.  So I asked Reiley, he didn't know either.  Come to find out, they had been playing with the legos like usual and Owen had on his jammies with the feet in them like usual.  But that morning they decided it would be fun to see how many legos they could stuff into Owen's jammies and zip them up.   They stuffed so many legos into his jammies they were stuffed down his legs and when he walked, they rubbed a blister on the side of his leg.  To the boys I'm sure this was quite funny.  Seeing Owen double in size with squares sticking out everywhere.  After the blister I'm not so sure how funny Owen found it.

That was the end of that game and the end of the jammies with feet in them for Owen.  Not by my choice, by his.  I never understood how he couldn't just love those kind of jammies, but now that I think of it, maybe he has his reasons.