Must be Christmas...

So here it is, the keyboard Hubby gave me two years ago for Christmas, up in the livingroom with the book of Christmas Carols, ready to go.

That book of Christmas carols, my Grandmother gave me when I was 14 years old. And I still can't play them!

Every year I drag them out and give it a go. They're written as hymns - 4-part harmony.

I'm not very good at reading music. Hah! That's the understatement of a lifetime! I never learned how to properly read music. Interestingly enough, I can teach it though! So I struggled with any music, but 4-part harmony was a nightmare for me. See, that means you are playing four notes all the time, using four separate fingers, all going in different directions. Every beat of the song, no letup, no respite. Your brain has to direct four uncooperative fingers in four different directions from start to finish. 

Imagine trying to read four lines of text, grouped one above the other, all about different subjects, in one continuous process from the top to the bottom of a page, and be able to tell someone what each of them were about when you reached the end. Here, I'll try a sample:

Merry Christmas to us all, see the doggie chase the ball, wagging his tail down the hall.

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy-ass Red Bull dog while barking his head off.

Lorem Ipsem something-or-other Latin phrase that's used as filler and here as example.

Boom-boom, ain't it great to be crazy? Well that depends on your point of view though!

Go ahead, read all four at the same time. That means you read "Merry the Lorem Boom" and "Christmas quick Ipsem boom" etc. (Actually if you're going to do it properly, you start at the bottom and read to the top. So it would be "Boom Lorem The Merry" and "boom Ipsem quick Christmas.")

And don't forget,  you have to do it in the correct amount of time, since people are singing along. Yeah. New respect for the church organist!

Grandma used to listen, not particularly patiently, while I struggled with the Christmas Carols. Then she'd pontificate on the one thing she'd ever heard from someone-or-other about reading music.

"It should be just like reading a book!" she'd parrot away, frustrated with my inability to get through a christmas carol without stumbling numerous times. "Smooth and continuous and seamless!"

She never could understand what the problem was. 

With 20/20 hindsight, there was a solution to this, except I didn't see it at the time. I should have offered to teach Granny how to play the piano. I should have begun her instruction in the names of the notes and the placement on the staff, and stuck her down in front of the piano with the all-intimidating "C-D-E, has a tree, full of apples as can be!" from (I think) Teaching Little Fingers to Play.

That would have shut her up. There's nothing like trying to coordinate fingers, which are remarkably stupid and uncooperative, with symbols printed on a page 2.5 feet away from where your fingers are. And "C-D-E" is only three notes with one finger each. Music doesn't stay that simple for long.

But I digress.

I actually love this book of Christmas carols. My favourites are "O Christmas Tree" and "Good King Wenceslas," and "Silent Night." That's because they're the easiest to read, with the fewest number of changes in chords. "Deck the Halls" is a nightmare - it changes chords every single word. It's dizzying!

But I love playing them all, nevertheless, despite the annoying memories of frustrating years enduring Grandma's sermons on a topic she knew nothing about. Despite not being a Christian - heck, Christmas is a pagan holiday from start to finish anyway! (Spoiler alert!) The pagans are celebrating the birth of the god from the Mother Goddess. Sound familiar?

Anyway, another reason I like "Good King Wenceslas" is because of the story. "Ye who now will bless the poor shall yourselves find blessing." Unfortunately it comes after five verses and doesn't often make it that far in today's fast-paced world where we sing one verse and move on to the next song.

So I play all five verses. Actually, at some point during the holidays, I play all the verses of all the carols. Just to be...I don't know...pedantic? Thorough?

Have a good time? Yes, I think that may be it...I enjoy playing them. Badly, yes, but I'm so glad I'm not a concert pianist and I can thump away and sing at the top of my lungs and scare the cats, because it's actually f u n !

Separating the Men from the ... not men ...

It snowed today. It started late last night, on our way home from Boyfriend's office party. Boyfriend was psyching himself up for a day spent shovelling. I laughed at his angst, because I do a good deal of the shovelling. I said he wouldn't be alone, that I'd be out there doing the stairs while he took care of the snowplow pile in front of the tempo.

Apparently, I lied.

I did get the Christmas cards done. All new addresses duly stored - physically, in a book, one of those things you use pencils and pens in, remember? Everything stamped and ready to go to the post office. It takes hours to do christmas cards, even when you're not writing a personal message in them.

I wasn't actually feeling quite up to snuff today either. Got a bit of a cold. I was actually surprised that Boyfriend came out to get groceries with me. And right up to the last possible minute I was still deluding myself that I was going to in fact go skating today, in town, at the Principal's Skating Party - a McGill tradition.

But I pulled the plug on that and went to bed for the afternoon instead. And felt much better for it.

Just before suppertime, "Untold Stories of the ER" was on. Boyfriend suffered quietly through one of them, but drew the line at eating his dinner in front of the tv to watch the second one. So even though he'd done all the shovelling alone, I let him eat by himself in the bedroom while I stuffed myself through all kinds of medical procedures.

And then Downton Abbey came on, and the rest of the world slipped away. Basically, the world does cease to exist for me when Matthew and Bates and Anna and Mrs. Hughes and Lady Mary are onscreen.

At some point Boyfriend got back into his snow shovelling clothes and made a good deal of noise outside, scraping and hitting the railings. I even had to get up to turn the light on for him. Fortunately, it was in a break from the show while they were running the Ralph Lauren and Viking River Cruises and Kells Academy ads. He did the deck too, for Bijou's sake, who wasted no time in enjoying the fruits of his labours.

I even poked my head out to encourage him. "Such rampant enthusiasm!" I cried. When he came in a few minutes later, he assured me he was far from enthusiastic. I've never seen him so drenched in sweat! He pointed out, pointedly, that he was only doing his duty.

I reminded him that occasionally I do my duty as well. But he didn't get to chuckle for long, because Lady Sybill was busy dying in childbirth and the world, and Boyfriend with it, was fast disappearing.

He's a Downton widower.

You know, how people say "golf widow" or "fishing widow." Well, he's a man, so he can't be a "widow," he has to be a "widower."

Hey, I got dinner made, and the dishes washed, and the cat food made, and the dishes washed again, and two loads of laundry done too.

But I have to admit, he wore the (snow)pants today! 

A Quilt for Attawapiskat

Well, the First Nations community of Attawapiskat has suffered yet another blow. On the CBC, they reminded us of how, two years ago, the sewage system suffered a fatal breakdown, and the response was to install temporary housing for the families there.

Two years in temporary housing. Well, to some people that doesn't seem like such a bad thing. But have you looked at a map? We're talking just about Arctic here.

Families. That means old women and children. Babies.

One working toilet for 80 people. One working kitchen for 80 people.

I would hate to share my bathroom with 80 people. And I can barely tolerate my Boyfriend helping me in the kitchen, much less having 80 people trying to get meals going.

I'd be discouraged. Wouldn't you?

Then two months ago the power went off. Did Ontario Hydro rush to the scene? I mean, this is sub-Arctic climate here. Was it an emergency that all these people had no power?

Apparently not.

When we had the Ice Storm here, people started using fireplaces, Coleman stoves, candles, anything they could to stay warm.

And of course, that's what the people of Attawapiskat had to do.

Here, we had people burn their homes down in trying to keep warm. And two weeks ago, that's what happened in Attawapiskat.

Of course it happened. 

Now, I'm not a historian or a specialist in Aboriginal affairs. I can't begin to guess at how this situation got the way it has. I'm sure of one thing - there has been bad faith, mismanagement, lack of understanding and lack of trust, maybe on both "sides," more likely on "ours."

But I am a mother, a daughter, and a quilter. And I'm 56 years old. I've had experiences that have taught me that a little compassion goes a long way. That nobody gets up, yawns and stretches in the morning, looks in the mirror and says "Today, I think I'll become a statistic."

I've learned that life throws us curves. That some of us are luckier than others. We got born into a relatively affluent society, on the right side of the color-and-creed barriers.

And others weren't so lucky. The cynics would say "So what, that's life, it sucks to be you."

I'm pretty sure that if any of us had to live in these kind of conditions, we'd squawk. I'm also pretty sure that if the power went out here, they'd be working hard to get it back on.

Because. We. "Count."

Well, I could go on about this forever, but in the interests of getting to the point, I'm going to send a quilt to one of the persons who has been displaced by the fire.

It's nothing. It's a drop in a sea. It will actually be a large investment of my time and will take determination to see that it ends up keeping somebody warm, because I don't actually know anybody from Attawapiskat.

I'm well-placed in my job to have some contacts, and earlier this week I met with two Aboriginal women to discuss the way I could somehow get a quilt to one of these displaced persons. I'd like the label I will put on it to eventually read "You are not alone." Or "you are not forgotten." Or something like that. But that's even harder to figure out, because then not only does someone have to point the way to a displaced person, it means finding someone who speaks their language and can write the syllabics for me to embroider or appliqué onto the quilt.

One step at a time. If all I can do is send one person a quilt that will keep them warm, that's one thing I can do.

So, has anybody had experience with wool batting? I have a feeling it's warmer than cotton, but I wonder about shrinkage.

All kind comments are appreciated.