If you can't take the heat

Temperature is a relative thing really. I jest with my friends that summer in Canada is a blustery 40 degrees with rain. Some of them believe me. But when your winter is minus 65, then plus 10 is shorts wearing weather. I remember once, wearing a pair of ninja turtles clam diggers (what is now known as a sensible capri pant) to school in the 8th grade when it was minus 5 or so. Yes, I did just skip over the fact that I owned Ninja Turtle Capri pants and wore them in public! That is another posting, I'm sure. I remember thinking that Canadian summers were extremely hot and unbearable. Again, all relative to the fact that we froze our buns off half the year, with little to no sunshine I might add. (I cannot get a tan to save my life to this very day) Summer would come and we would play outside, go to the lake and swim (in what must have been only barely fridgid waters). We would go to North Battleford to go to the water slides and slather on the sunsceen. I remeber getting a sun burn once and the peeling skin and searing red hot pain that insued. We didn't have air conditioning on the farm so we would open every window in the house and turn on every fan. Most of the rooms have ceiling fans. Just a bit of trivia. When we got our house in North Battleford it had that coveted freon box. AIR CONDITIONING, what a luxury!!! (I might add that it was not central air, and we probably had to run that thing for 6 days straight to cool off the house). We also had a swamp cooler. If you don't know what that is, its kind of like this huge obtrusive fan, that has a compartment for water inside of it, and when you turn on the fan it blows across the water, creating cooler air. More like a source for spreading must and disease, plus a fantastic place for mosquitos to nest should they ever get into the house!! But it was the early 90's and we did a lot of things that weren't the best for our health. Neon prints for example..........I'm just saying!! We'd breakout our thongs (what Canadians call flip flops, not g-string underwear), shorts, tshirts, sunglasses and live like Californians for a couple of months. If you've never experienced a summer on the Canadian praries, you must know that the sun rises at about 5 am and it doesn't really get dark until about 11pm. Plus there are usually a million thunder storms cause its so hot (or our version of hot) and humid (again, all relative). The weather changes almost every 10 minutes on the prairies. I can remember dancing in the rain to cool off. Oh what fun. We had family in Arizona and sometimes would go there in the summers. Phoenix in the summer, now that's hot. Oddly though, we didn't die. Ours was a wet heat and completely different to the scorching of the American desert. We were tough, we were Canadian!!!

Then I moved to New York City. Well, let me say that before I moved here I was in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Also extremely hot and humid. New York is the same. It's currently 93 degrees outside, but with the humidex, its more like 100. Yes that's right, they tell us here how much hotter it is because of the humidity. At home you get the temp and wind chill factor. So its only minus 45, but with the wind, feels like minus 60. I live in a 6 story building built in the late 20's. So it would seem that central air wasn't much of a priority during the depression. Can't understand why not??!! I have a small air conditioning unit in my room, one of those kind you put into the window. It runs all night, poor little engine that could. I have a fan that blows constantly. The rest of the apt is a large furnace of terror. I kid you not when I say that I can't walk down the hall without shoes on, simply for the fact that I might burn my feet from the heat rising up from the 5 floors below. This morning I took a shower, cold I might add, and my shampoo was hot! :( Not warm, but hot. Fresh shampoo out of bottle, as if it had been in the microwave for a minute. The toilet seat is hot. You can't sit anywhere without getting a huge case of swamp crack. All I want to eat is Popsicles and ice cream. Maybe a yogurt. I ran some cold water (relative) from the tap into a glass to drink. I added ice cubes, like 5 of them. They had melted completely in about a minute. All 5 of them. Now, why am I typing this??? I just returned home from a week long visit to my parents in Canada. Everyone there was complaining about how hot and humid it was. Didn't get past 80 the entire visit. I was in heaven. I think I even whore jeans and a long sleeved shirt one day, and wasn't melting. I would give my left arm for that kind of weather. Warm, but not hideous. Humid, but not swimmingly so. The wide open spaces and breezes are heaven compared to the concrete furnace that is Manhattan.

Dear Diary, I didn't know you could sweat between your toes?

There's no place like home

I can't tell you the exact location of our house, but I can tell you that if you see the small graveyard and little white church you've gone too far. Our address is RR#1, which is code for, mailbox about 8 miles away at a junction where the highway (and I use that term loosely) will either take you to Rabbit Lake or Mayfair. Where? Exactly! My dad built our house. He and my Uncle Henry. They drew it on the back of an envelope and then built it. Pretty amazing if you ask me. 33 years later its still standing. There are many old houses on our property. The one my grandfather lived in; the one that my great grandparents first built when they moved here from the Ukraine. There are houses that neighbors lived in, Plaxton, Haggas and other strange names. Once they were someones home, where memories were made and times shared. Now, they serve as a landmark for where to turn to get to the next field. We used to have this old blue house in our yard. I don't know who lived there. It was whoever my dad bought the land from. The floor had pretty much sunk and we were not allowed to go upstairs. My dad used it as a place to store wood for the furnace. (we still snuck in and explored whatever we dared) I'm not sure how old I was when it was torn down. Probably with good reason, the wood was rotting and probably the next strong wind would have taken the house and all its contents somewhere over the rainbow. We have an old chicken coop in our yard too. Its still standing, something to be said for a house built with sticks and mud. At one time, someone actually lived there, in that tiny house, not more than 10 feet by 10 feet. A lot of these places are almost a hundred years old. None of them are in move in condition, but they are still standing. By all terms of logic, these houses should have fallen down years if not decades ago. The winds here on the prairies can be relentless. Add that to the harsh winters and these things should have crumbled like a house of cards. But they stand proud, almost defiant. Sentinels that act as a reminder that there is something more important than just sticks and beams.

My parents celebrated their 34 anniversary last weekend. They are tough people to shop for. My sister and I decided that we should surprise them with a visit. Heather has 2 little girls now and travel isn't the easiest. Plus her and Greg live in Green River, Utah. Where? Exactly. (their white church is quite a bit larger) She decided to come up to the farm for a visit and since I have no job at the moment, and by moment I mean since November and it is now July (Happy Canada Day to you too) so I decided that I would come up to the farm as well. My brother Daniel and his wife Jenny have identical twin boys that were born in December and I have never seen them, so it was great incentive for me to come. So Heather and I schemed together. They drove up, not telling my parents at all. I mean, they literally drove into the yard and walked in the door asking what was for dinner. Oh, Hi Mom and Dad. It was a great surprise. My niece Allie is a beacon of happiness and hope for my mom. First grandchild. Whenever she is feeling down she just looks at pictures of Allie and she feels better. I flew in a couple days later, landing at 10pm. My sister took my mom to Saskatoon, (where the airport is, almost 2 hours away BTW) under the guise that they were having a girls night out. Shopping, dinner, and oh yeah, must swing by the airport to pick up the brother. Surprise!! The next morning my dad walked into the kitchen, declaring that he couldn't believe it was 8 in the morning already. Me neither I said as I turned the corner. It was quite the cinematic moment. Well he was certainly surprised. This was the first time our entire family had been together since Daniel and Jenny's wedding, almost 2 years ago. Of course now there were 3 new additions to the family. We had a photographer come out to the farm to take family pictures. Sam, Jessie, Steven, Heather and Greg with daughters Allie and Brailie, and Daniel and Jenny with sons Andrew and Jakob. We all went to the lake together for Canada Day. We had a picnic lunch of hotdogs and macaroni salad. Then we played in the lake and watched the people. We played games as a family around the dinner table. It would have been nicer to have had more time together and to have done more elaborate things, but that isn't as important. We were together. New memories were made however great or small. I look around this house and feel all the memories that live within. Some good, some bad, some just plain silly and strange. But they are here. They keep this house alive. It doesn't matter that the walls are a different color or that the linoleum in the kitchen has been replaced. The floors may creak, or perhaps moan, when you walk and I have more water pressure than the upstairs shower. The kitchen counters don't feel that tall anymore and the ugly brown couch was hauled to the dump years ago. My parents don't move as quickly as they used to. There is more clutter than there once was. All of my things fit neatly into a trunk in the spare room or in a few boxes in the basement. But this home is alive and kicking. The memories within and the love blossomed and grown here will live on forever. Sure we may yell at each other and get frustrated from time to time. We may feel unappreciated and even left out. But at the end of the day, we all love each other. We don't say it enough and we have strange ways of showing it but we do love each other. This home stands as a constant reminder of that fact. A family was built within; a family that will be forever.

Dear Diary, a house is not a home!