The 2:00 Club

Cars zooming up and down the road in the dead of night. Splashing of fountain outside the window my husband insists on leaving open. Dog shifts and sighs and shivers, and I reach to cover him with a blanket. Night-owl son three floors down turns on a light switch. Husband deep in sleep. And I'm irrevocably awake at 2 a.m.

I move to the couch downstairs with a blanket and pillow...and the dog, of course, who now thinks it's morning and wants his walk and treat. The fridge hums. A raccoon walks across the roof. The low thrum of son's video game below me. The fountain is louder here, but not as loud as the stream of thoughts I can't turn off. What to leave out of the freezer for dinner...the latest sign language lesson I studied...whether the present I ordered will be delivered to my son today...should I bother planting peppers next year?

Now it's 4:30, and I've read my daily scriptures and checked my social media and puzzled over the latest book I'm writing and considered what to have for breakfast... I have church at 10:00, where I provide the closed captioning for the hard of hearing and also serve as sign language liaison for a deaf friend. I need to be high-functioning and alert for this. Maybe I can try snoozing again...

Sigh. Nope. Anyone else up?

The Harvest Begins

Bottled fifty pounds of tomatoes the other day (19 litres). Diced, blanched, and dehydrated 17 bunches of celery from the garden. Made 2 loaves of zucchini bread to freeze, instead of just freezing the zucchini itself. Got 9 baggies' worth of green beans from the farmers' market this morning to blanche and freeze. Started harvesting the carrots. I love this time of year!

The shishito peppers have produced well, but the Mennonite stuffing peppers will be a challenge to stuff!

Sheri

We were friends for 53 years. We met when we were in Kindergarten, had chicken pox together, sleepovers, and secret bacon fry-ups over a tin can in the backyard. We played ball with her poodle and lay on the family room floor reading Archie comics. We were baptized on the same day. She good-naturedly participated in plays I wrote and staged, and she helped me rip ivy off my parents' house and clean the rocks in my Zen garden. She was a server at my wedding reception and forgave me for not being around when she got married. 

Sheri visited me often here in Canada, aiming to visit at least once in every month of the year. One year she went to St. Jacobs and the Mennonite market, and one year she attended the Fergus Highland Games with me. She never complained about the bizarre lodgings I plunked her into, and she enjoyed serving and working with me on whatever project I was in the middle of. We both enjoyed doing puzzles, and she was the type of low-maintenance friend you could sit and read with, with no expectation of having to talk. She liked lemongrass and Nancy Drew, while I liked mint and the Hardy Boys, but we could always meet in the middle. On her last trip in April, she spent half the time cooking health food for me and trying to convince me to go off sugar. She introduced me to The Chosen, and we walked along Lake Huron and visited a friend's newborn chicks.

I was in awe of the fish ponds and sports days and outings she planned for her family. We went to New York City together and saw Come From Away on Broadway and ate amazing pizza. We stayed in Park City one year, and the power kept going off. We talked about going on a spectacular trip for our 60th birthdays. She was always generously cooking up great adventures.

She's gone on this latest adventure without me, now. She passed away on Friday night, and Saturday I had to go to the Fergus Highland Games without her. 

I believe this life isn't all there is, and someday I'll see her again. In the meantime, no doubt she'll be organizing angels into softball teams and converting St. Peter to cauliflower crusts. She's probably tie-dying heaven. But some of the colour has gone out of my world. I'm not quite sure how to navigate this new planet without Sheri in it.

Books on the Brain

Anyone who knows me knows I'm addicted to reading. What you may not know is I'm fussy about actual paper books and dislike e-reading. I don't even enjoy audiobooks very much, because the voice of the narrator never matches the voice I hear in my head when I'm reading. I love the feel, smell, heft, and sound of books.

Last night, books invaded my dreams. Not just one dream, but several, throughout the night. Details are fuzzy, but I recall one where someone told me the city of Guelph had decided to become the oasis and refuge for books (implying maybe books weren't safe elsewhere?) and I should move there. In one, I opened a physical-books-only bookstore and considered calling it either "Stick in the Mud" or "Hardcopy." (Which would you choose?) And I have a vague recollection of our old church we're renovating playing a role somewhere, but it had morphed in the dream and now had a big auditorium and crowds of people and I was to give a book reading.

I'm supposing all of this was triggered by the fact that I finally got the library book I've had on hold for ages, Susanna Kearsley's The King's Messenger. All I want to do is curl up and devour it, but alas, there are other demands on my time. If you haven't tried Susanna's books, please do. They're the perfect blend of action, romance, a whiff of the paranormal, intriguing history, and meticulous research. They're also clean, and she guarantees a happy ending. Which we could all use about now.