Vacation (day 327)

Well here I am near the end of my vacation.  It's been both better and worse than I expected, in spurts.  You know, like life.  The first week I spent with my brother's family on Bainbridge Island.  My parents were there as well.  I have a great connection with my niece Liliane and I cherish the moments we spend together.  She's 4 now.  And for the first time, when I left and was on the ferry, still glowing from all the fun, I became sad that she would never be 4 again.  It's like I wanted to stop time, just for a little while.  I know she'll grow up to be wonderful.   I just really enjoyed being with her fun-loving, story-spinning, energetic, beautiful self.   I know there will come a time when some of that will be obscured, to surface again later to be sure, but I will miss it.
My nephew Julien is 2 now and for various reasons it's taken longer to "apprivoise" him.  I use this French word because there is no equivalent word in English as far as I know.  The closest is "tame" which I find has too much of a master-slave connotation.   The verb "apprivoiser" means to establish a relationship, to approach slowly so as not to scare, to be gentle.  Julien requires this kind of care.  I think Liliane did too but because I got to know her before there was was another child in the picture, I started earlier and things were much more calm and gradual.  With Julien I'm mindful to ask before picking him up or directing him to do something.  This time around he was much warmer and comfortable around me and he was also very funny.  I'm really loving the differences between Liliane and Julien.  How does it happen? I keep asking myself in wonderment.
The day after I came back, I was sitting in my living room sipping tea in the sunshine and, another first, I missed the hustle and bustle of the family life.  There is something about having children around that  propels in a sort of joyful momentum.  If it is indeed true that your network of family and friends has a big impact on your look and outlook, children must have a multiplier effect.  I'm painting things a bit rosier than they deserve maybe but there is something about the ebullience of youth that is hard to resist.  Still I didn't go straight back to Bainbridge as Steve suggested when I described this nostalgia to him.  I needed time to be alone and not be jostled about by chaotic waves.  I needed some boring time.  This is the luxury of only being an aunt.
The second week of my vacation did not go as well as I'd hoped for reasons I don't think I could even explain even if I wanted to share them on this blog.  Luckily, the unfathomable circumstances brightened by the third week.
One highlight was swimming in Sasamat Lake in Port Moody.  In my 14 years in Vancouver I'd never been to this lake which is a bit out of the way if coming from downtown.  It's well worth the trip.  It's a warm, clean lake in a beautiful hilly and treed area - a lot like an Ontario lake.  I'd forgotten how good it feels to float in fresh water.   Hopefully we'll go back before summer is out.
Another highlight is getting healthier.  Both Steve and I have been putting on emphasis on eating well and exercising.  We still can't seem to get a handle on getting to bed at a decent and consistent hour but maybe that's for the next phase.  We've been eating salads mostly, and doing the Grouse Grind every 2 or 3 days.  We've both lost weight but the best part is just feeling good.  I wonder if we'll be able to keep this up during the winter when the dark season seems to beg for pizza, mashed potatoes, and pie.  It does sneak up on you, the junk food slope of winter.
One disappointment was the low yield of the sour cherry trees at my friends' farm this year.  Last year the season was at least 3 weeks and I was able to get something like 16 pounds of cherries, maybe even more.   This year, it was only one weekend which I missed because I was just coming back from Bainbridge.  I still managed to order 6 pounds from them.  I wanted 8 but there were other orders to satisfy.  The disappointment was both not being able to be there to do the picking and not having as many cherries to preserve.  I made about a litre of jam.  I think I'll be able to make another litre with a couple of pounds of sour cherries I picked up at the market.   I want to make another litre because I think I screwed up the first batch by sweetening with Stevia and not quite following the procedure properly.  I noticed a couple days later that there was a chunk of pectin in the half jar I had left for myself.  I have no idea how the other jars fared but now I'm a bit worried.  It's not the end of the world, a chunk of pectin is tasty, if unexpected and weird looking.  Still if I'm to give them as gifts, I would want things to be perfect.  The thing with pectin is that you can't just add it to boiling fruit.  It needs to be mixed with sugar which I couldn't really do with Stevia powder.  I thought I could get around this by mixing the pectin with a little bit of Agave nectar and the Stevia but I now know that doesn't quite work.  The proper way to do it is to boil some water, add the Stevia and pectin and blend, blend, blend.  This mixture can then be added to the boiling fruit.  As an aside, I use Pomona's pectin which is fabulous.  I pick it up at Whole Foods.  It's also available on their web site.

I feel I should say something about the frequency of posting on this blog winding down.  I made a deliberate attempt to go offline during most of my vacation just for a mental break from the constant flow of opinions.  But even before that my postings were more sporadic than the once-a-day goal I had initially set.   The goal may have been over ambitious given the predictable life circumstances that inevitably take priority but I've still learned a lot from it.   I will write more about this in a later post.

Now I'm off to the Grind.

A song for this post.