Sel de Noël

Flying to another province is exciting in itself. You're not just driving six hours to Winnipeg. You're getting on a plane and getting away.

You know that you've arrived in a completely different environment, however, when you take a deep breath and the salty air settles on your tongue. This is not thin prairie air; it's the heavy, water-speckled stuff that skims above the ocean.

We've been balancing turkey dinners and ever-replenishing dainty trays with walks and runs to the Lawrencetown Beach.

Likes: a spicy Shiraz, chocolate haystacks and long walks on the beach.

Steve's found driftwood and stones swept into yin and yang formations by the waves and wind.

Seaweed has become my muse. Ganglion-like reeds and fronds, the plant-life of the Atlantic. It's 0 degrees out there, but the wind whips my fingers cold as I manipulate the weeds for a photoshoot.

Everyone has their traditions. On Christmas Day we arrived to find four surfers dipping through the waters, enduring the brainfreeze to be able to ride for a minute before starting again.

Christmas: Must love family. The sel to my Noël.

Brunch: Best Meal Going

You too can host your own Meaghan and Steve Christmas Brunch!

The Menu:

• sticky gingerbread loaf and creme anglaise
• crepes (made by mom) and caramelized apples (à la Baked Expectations)
• marinated steamed veggies with feta and olives
• mushroom, scallions, dill and feta quiche
• tomato and basil quiche
• pork roast with Jamaican jerk rub
• Christmas Morning Wife Saver (made by Mrs. Danby)
• sweet potato and zucchini latkes
• fresh fruit with chocolate yogurt dipping sauce and mini banana muffins (brought by friends)
• coffee and Baileys
• Momosas

Invite family, friends, neighbours and those odd, interesting people you would like to hang out with more. Prep and make as much of the menu as you can before the day of. Borrow chairs from your friend's parents. Stack firewood in a pyramid so that it looks like you always have such a ready, organized supply right at hand. Put on a dancer dress and the Stars, Buena Vista Social Club and Adele. Pull out the garage sale 70's yellow-flowered coffee urn (1'6'') and replenish regularly. Set out your collection of mugs and mug trees. Tell the cat to sit on all the chairs and the dog to guard the buffet table, like the troll under the bridge that he is. Fill your plate, fill your mug, fill your glass and get your fill of amazing people (and food). Then, after all are gone, a book has been read, the kitchen is cleaned, take a walk on the ice to Snake Island and lie down in the snow with your head on your lover's arm, face turned up to the falling flakes and the grey, cloudy skies.

Signs of the times

You know it's Christmas when...

You decide to cook a turkey for the first time in your life and think it would be a good idea to brine it. But there is no container large enough in the house to hold it except for the laundry hamper. Said hamper is diligently cleaned, then filled with oranges, onions, star anise, cloves, pepper balls, cinnamon sticks, honey, sugar, salt and all other manner of things to make a turkey succulent and tasty. Though once it's cooked, you can't really tell if the fancy brine has made a difference. And when the hamper is emptied (down the bathtub drain instead of directly into the septic tank), the cloves clog the pipes. But the turkey is delicious.


Also, you decorate. Even if only for a week. Strings of coloured stars from Ten Thousand Villages, strings of lights from MacCleod's True Value. A tree snipped from across the road adorned with all manners of decorations received and collected since birth. The Christmas Pickle, the East Coast lobster, Granddaughter's First Christmas, old sparkly silver balls, fairies, ballerinas, Pere Fouettards and mice. Many mice. Thankfully there's a sister to help.

So merry Christmas to all. Whereever you are, whatever your traditions may be. Love the ones you're with, love the ones you miss.

Love,
meg

I used to have a shirt

I used to have a shirt. Lovely shirt. It got stomped on and pulled and tored during reindeer games at school. Poor Rudolph? I don't think so. He would not have wanted to be a part of that.

So last night was spent creating a good luck charm. Not vengeance. That would be bad. Merely (merrily), um, retribution? Steve had a word with a positive spin to it, but it's slipped my mind.

Sugar and spice and everything. Nice.

Welcome Sights

Here's a couple of sights when you enter our house. Plastic moose, a skull stone, an owl-within-an-owl carving, some metal hitching piece, stone from Gody and Naomi's wedding and a castle on a cloud. And then there's our wedding rings, surrounded by wood knots (forever, you know). Right where we can see them, admire them, when our hands are covered in bread dough or are occupied by house and home tools.

And this, I believe, may be a colour palate for the outside of the sauna building come this spring. Steve thought that Hugo Bay should be the inspiration (seeing as we were standing there when we were talking about it) and we quickly found the stones and snippets of trees to match. Sauna is coming along beautifully--all insulated, pine tongue-and-groove verathaned, just need to complete the wood siding on the inside of the sauna walls. We also have a debate about light fixtures going on. Doesn't everyone have a debate about light fixtures? And doesn't "magical" always win? (It's my blog, after all.)

Shots of Fall

It's the type of weather that has people raking lawns, pruning trees into November. Here's a few shots from this weekend:

• Steve superimposed
• Evil Berries Wonderland
• Prairie Chicken Claw (Steve's shot...it was a good life)

Crunch and Moo

My sister is a baking elf. If she were to open a bakery café, she would have a large and faithful clientel, drawn back by her particular magic. Like Chocolat, but no full-skirted cutesiness. More like a pyjama-bottom and running-top production. Her baking vocabulary includes "handfuls", "I found some" and "it's got everything". I never know if she has a recipe nearby or if she really knows what makes a cake the right consistency or which ingredients keep cookies together.

This particular beauty was her own birthday cake creation: chocolate and peanut butter baked to "moo-i-ness" underneath a crunchy, almond-slivered top. No eggs, cause no eggs were in the house. She ate the top (smart girl) and formed the bottom into a fudgy likeness of London (with hyena-ish ears). We all sat around the kitchen table, followed her lead and left the forks in the drawer. Death by chocolate.

Qallupilluit

Qallupilluit: Female ocean creatures of Inuit legend created to keep children away from the cracks in the ice. The story goes that if a child comes too close to the cracks without their parents, the Qallupilluit will rise up from the waters and take the child to live with them forever on the ocean bottom.

Qallupilluit are short with cold blueish skin (according to Vladyana Krykorka's illustrations in Michael Kusugak and Robert Munsch's A Promise is a Promise). They wear parkas made of loon feathers and their wild hair is home to fish, crab and seaweed.

Michael Kusugak came to our school a couple of weeks ago and told stories in his singsong voice. Like Robert Munsch, he tells his stories to groups of kids over and over before he begins to write it down. He had our students hanging on his every word.

We read his story, A Promise is a Promise, soon after his visit. Once again, the kids were listening, slack-jawed. Their eyes were wide whenever the Qallupilliut spoke in voices that sounded like wind blowing over the ice. Just the right amount of creepiness for a lead-up to Halloween.

And the perfect idea for a Halloween costume. I love this holiday! Unfortunately, when I reused the feathers for my loon costume at the social the next night, things didn't go over as well. Lots of "What are you supposed to be?" and "That's abstract." I guess my skirt wasn't short enough.

Tribute

This wall (the greatest wall in the world ) is a tribute.

To all who live or have lived on the Canadian Shield.

To all who have planted rock fields up the Kississing Road.

To all I have kissed up the Kississing Road. (kidding)

To Darcie who goes on dusty rhino rides for buckets of stones.

To Jess who trades sea glass and shells.

To dad who spends a cold fall day gently balancing boulders. (what's the key word?)

To Steve who brings drinks, gets excited and admires.

To Dave the collector and mason and.

To the camp at Wabagiegik (how do you spell that?) and the first stone wall.

Yea!

The sound of Borealiso

It rhymes with Calypso. Has that musical feel to it. But break it down and it becomes Boreal Is So...Beautiful.

Calypso, by the way, is also part of the latin name for the Fairy Slipper, elusive moss-loving boreal orchid that Sara and I stalked throughout the Isquasum spring trail this past June. Which slows the hike considerably. But a photo shoot had to be had.

Then, there is Calypso, a sea nymph in greek mythology, as well as calypso, a style of Caribbean folk music.

Music, nature and mythology. All this from research done at 2 in the morning in Sioux Lookout's Best Western.

Count our blessings

A friend just recently shared this quote on her blog, " A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, and always with the same person." -Mignon McLaughlin. How very true. I dream about the feeling of falling in love; it's a feeling of anticipation, of joy, of magic. A marriage can't kill the magic...it's got to feed it.

I know, I've been married for 24 days.

Blueberry Summer

The blueberries arrived. Smaller than before. Half an icecream bucket in 2 hours small.


But spending time with a friend, even in back-breaking tedium, is worth it. So is the fact that my oatmeal will be stained purple for the next couple of months. The milkshake and onion rings at Flin Flon's drive-in ease the muscle ache, too.


(Steve said to "just go for it, don't worry about what you're going to write". So I did.)