A Casual Absence

Anger manifesting as sadness seems impossible to shake without an outlet and so the rift widens and throbs between my brain and my eyes. I do not want to cry, seems melodramatic now after so many years. After 7 years. Maybe I feel like I should because at the time I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was at work at the café, bussing tables and pouring coffee, putting on a smile for the regulars whose happiness depends on the 5 minutes of cheer from the supporting cast of characters, the baristas, of their lives.

It’s the mid morning lull and I’m stacking saucers and folding half-read newspapers when I see a wallet sized photo of Aidan smiling back from the front page. I almost brush it off. He’s started some Terry Foxian marathon swim along the Trent Severn water way, I think, something athletic and philanthropic. Something totally wholesome and totally crazy, all at the same time. But then this villainous, horrific word. Slain. It punches me in the gut and for a moment I would like to collapse in a heap on the tiled floor but the door tinkles the arrival of more customers and I tuck the paper into the basket and put on a smile.

It has happened more than once now I live in the north. The inner panic, the absolute agony of being handed a gun. People up here think nothing of it, they fondle them casually and show them off like a new iphone. But the weight of it in my hand conjures horrifying images in my mind, images of flesh torn open and a heart beating blood on snow. In my mind he is always wearing white. It was his Halloween costume from a month before. The last time I saw him. I don’t even know what he was dressed as. A pirate? This billowy white blouse and a grin so wide and so gentle, with this slight awkward twinge like he was not yet completely comfortable with how absolutely beautiful he was.

He was a bit of a fringe character in my life. Always at the same parties, the same pubs. Two years behind me at our small Liberal Arts University and so somewhat of a little brother in my mind. An embarrassment of curls and eyelashes and mischievous grin, so a kid that was hard to miss. I was really down yesterday, bombarded with thoughts of sadness and anger at his violent, senseless end and my partner asked if Aidan had been my lover. I scoffed. Of course not. One does not need to have been in love with someone to mourn their death, to mourn their death years and years after the fact. And then it occurred to me. Aidan was the world’s lover.

As human beings our emotions are bonded to the casual presences in our lives in ways we don’t always realize. The Chinese woman you see on the subway on your way home from work, who one day is silently weeping and you have this urge to take her into your arms. The cheerful bank teller who is so efficient you wish she were slower if only to enjoy a few more moments of her pleasant company. And then there is the neighbor you see occasionally in the fleeting moments of gathering the mail and shoveling the driveway, a twinkling rare jewel of a neighbor who respects your privacy, and you theirs, and this silent agreement goes unnoticed, but is so integral to your peaceful existence on the planet.

Last look

I've been missing this view just a bit...

We moved to another cabin in October. One south of Whitehorse instead of north. Same distance to town of about 30mins in the car. Our new view is not as majestic, not as open, but it is nice just the same. It is more forest than farm.

The big news is that we now have running water. It makes the little details of everyday life so much easier, as I am sure you can imagine.

So as I say goodbye to this view, I also say goodbye to hauling jugs of water, sponge baths, outside washroom facilities, winter pee buckets, greasy grey-water buckets, gas station showers, boiling water to wash the dishes ... etc etc etc

Medic Love

There is a story in What's Up Yukon this week about how awesome the EMS volunteers are in the communities and how awesome paramedics are in general. Oh, and I wrote it. No big deal. Toot Toot goes my little horn. Of course I am a bit bias as my love is a paramedic, an extremely dedicated and knowledgeable and passionate one at that!

Every time I hear an ambulance I get butterflies and I smile. A bit morbid? I don't think so. Whoever needs help is getting it, and they are in good hands.

Junipe`r is typing ``jc    c ccc ccxxmmmlsall xsd  bbc v vvvvf cccvbvc fxxxxx

unease

mountains were clouds and clouds mountains

more from the walk

Wellington is always game for the outdoors. This dog is my muse. He is so effortlessly beautiful. Such elegance and grace in all that he does. He's taken to running over and greeting my neighbour when she gets home from work everyday and the other night he just staid over there and had tea or whatever he does with her and I forgot about him and eventually went to bed. Then at 11pm I hear this barking and it's him huddled on the porch wanting in.

Juniper was awake for most of the 3 hour jaunt. She stays silent in the chariot unless I stop for too long. She looks sleepy because she decided to wake up every 1.5 hours for some miowks ALL NIGHT LONG.

Which is why I look so ghastly tired. Sometimes I think I see a glimmer of Grace Under Fire in my photos. Strange. 

I went barefoot on the way back. Just had the urge. I spent an entire week barefoot during frosh week in my fourth year at Trent. Helped kids move bar fridges into their dorms and brought them on tours of downtown Peterborough. What a fucking hippie I am sometimes. Anyway, the path from the cabin through the fields to the river is basically sand and it had warmed in the sun. Walking with such awareness of the texture and the temperature of the earth, how  utterly Buddhist of me. haha. I hope the farmer finds my prints and gets a thrill from the thought of Pocahontas meandering through his back forty. Are toe rings really relics of the 90s? I think maybe I've had that one on since then haha. 

Obligatory mountain shot.

(Shizzzzop talk: I figured out how to make my photos stretch to fit the page perfectly thanks to a blog called My Girl Thursday here! This is so exciting because I was never happy with how puny my photos looked and making them bigger just made them bleed into the sidebar. Yes, I am a techno weenie who doesn't know anything knows a bit about html.)

fog in the morning

These cravens were clattering around on top of the hangar this morning and the noise drew me outside and I immediately went back in to grab the camera. I tucked Juniper in the chariot with a few blankets and Wellington followed along as I took what I thought would be a few photos. A few hours later we had meandered our way through the fog and the fields of oats all the way to the Yukon River which is about 2kms from our cabin, snapping photos all the while.

 Such a crude, industrial looking building but so beautiful. 

Sasquanch would know. Raven or Crow. Either way they drew me out with all the cawcawcawing and flailing around on the tin roof. Of course I thought they were greeting me. That's what we humans do. We assume things about nature. Things that include us. What we forget is that nature has simpler intentions, more basic, yet infinitely more important than us. They were probably using sound to help them get around in the fog. (Or they were just whooping it up because the fog was so beautiful, tehe).

I found this child in the oats...

how she came to be - (Lil'Ian)

In the cabin where she grew up hangs a picture her mother painted before she left. Lillian always felt there was a message in this painting, some kind of signal to explain what went wrong. She’d study it with her eyes and follow the ridges with her fingers, feeling for a language like brail. The painting is of a leveled landscape, gnarled with trees and brush. The greens and browns and yellows and blues all come together in intricate, frenzied knots. The only thing that makes sense about the painting are the little vertical strokes of green you can see jutting out of the rubble in lines swaying up and down over the undulating land in a tight grid across the canvas. “Baby trees,” Lil’s father said when she asked him what they were. She was eleven years old. Like me, Lil thought. And she was right. For out of a complicated mess, out of the destruction of the forest before, Lil took root, and in the sunshine that bears down on emptiness, grew up strong.

Arden

If she didn’t know better she would think he planned his life cinematographicly. That first time in the car when he reached over and touched her face and then ran away. And then that time he pressed her up against the map of Canada and kissed her under the naked light bulb in the back hallway of the B and B, leaving her astonished - fixed, like a wild animal caught in a trap in that moment right before frantic thrashing when surprise holds more than the trap itself.

hail me a taxidermist

Our landlord is a taxidermist. (a really good one)

The other day we were in a bit of a hurry so Jon pulled the car around to the shop and had me jump out to pay rent. I was feeling off. Not personable at all. Feeling like the perfect mixture of both my agoraphobic grandmothers, aching knuckles and all. And sometimes when I am feeling this way I say things without thinking. 

I can't see through the shop door so I knock and open it slowly. A beautiful life size diorama of animal death welcomes me. A caribou, neck curved towards me, nostrils as if drinking me in; bear skin upon bear skin piled upon the pollished concrete floor; chocolate brown, tawny, snow-white furs hanging on hooks or draped over wooden crates; trophy busts with glorious racks; entire creatures frozen in this beautiful imagined moment. 

The taxidermist asks how are things and I say great.
I turn the question back on him.
"We're surviving," he says.
"Not these guys," I say.

gnome in a chariot

That stroller is amazing. Here we are a few weeks ago when daddy was working in Watson Lake for the week (making the monies). This little forest has cute little trees. I found some poplars and picked the resiny buds to make salve. They are soaking in olive oil for a few weeks and then I will strain it and mix it with melted beeswax. My fav all purpose salve. Never made it before but ran out of the one I had so am excited to have remembered to gather the buds before they burst!

I haven't had time to blog lately. Feeling so tired and run down and sore. Going off gluten again because I  am pretty sure I am sensitive to it. Here I am. White kid who grew up on pasta and bread. And all my life I had no clue.

This is boring. I know. Oh well. post post post.

super (whiny) mom

I'm re-doing week three of the running program because apparently throwing a jogging stroller into the mix disagrees with my joints (ankles and knees). We'll see if it helps. Not gonna lie, I'm dreading getting out today.

some thoughts lately

I haven't written in forever. But I have been thinking and doing a lot! Here are a few things that have nothing to do with each other:

1.
I started running a few weeks ago using the Runner's World 8 Week Beginner Program recommended by my best friend. She is on the last legs of the program and I am super impressed with her. I am having some trouble finding my groove, but her success is spurning me forward. I did the first few weeks without a jogging stroller (Bigfoot came with me pushing the regular stroller and I would run off ahead of him when the running intervals started and then walk back to him. He was really supportive, even when I whined on the first day of week 2 when "those bastards doubled the running and halved my walking!" I bought a chariot (used) and am super stoked with it but am getting used to running with it for week 3. Also, the deeper I get into the program the more ground I cover which means I've ventured out past our 1.5km driveway and down along the highway on a quad trail frequented by linx and etc so I feel a bit bearanoid and bring the bear spray. The dog comes along and I noticed the baby watches him running beside her. Fun for all.

2.
Why are people selling baby clothes on kijiji? I mean come on! First off, I don't think any mother should spend a cent on baby clothes when it is so readily available in the form of hand-me-downs and gifts from relatives. A friend of mine on facebook linked to a listing on kijiji where the lady was selling a bunch of 0-3 month sleepers for $25 with this lengthy diatribe on how "you NEED these sleepers because you are not going to have time to do laundry and blah blah blah." Most people thought this was funny but it just angered me. In my opinion, baby clothes should be used as a currency of goodwill between mothers. Sure, sell the outgrown crib or stroller on kijiji, but don't use it as your own personal ongoing garage sale for every little item you can possibly think of. And don't tell impressionable new moms that they NEED something just because you want to make a few bucks. I looked into the kijiji thing some more and there are people listing stuff like shirts and pants and some for as low as $1. Come on people. Give that shit away. Create some good karma. Having a baby does not automatically turn your life into a business! On the other hand, I am lucky I was given so much baby stuff for free. Maybe others are not so lucky? I plan to change that for as many new mothers as possible as I will be handing down all of my used baby items (and I'm pretty sure Joon's stuff could populate the wardrobes of about 10 babies).

3.
I'm copying the number bullet post thing from a new blog I've been reading and enjoying. Sorry Caitlin who doesn't know me and who lives far away in a land where there are dangerous sharp objects known as cacti everywhere. Um I'm also not sure if the link highlighty thing works or if it is proper etiquette to just randomly link someone's blog in a random post. Sorry, again. Am I being cliche Canadian for saying that? Sorry. oh frig. The reason why I mention another blog is that I am wondering if reading other blogs is kinda stultifying my own blogging voice and maybe i shouldn't be reading as many as i am? I'm not talking about the blog I just mentioned, that one I love, but some of the others on my reader do not apply to me or they just make me want to vom and i just hastily followed them for no good reason except that they were there.

4. 
Non-conformity. Is there really such a thing? Does it not disqualify itself simply by existing? The internet has connected so many niche communities and ideas that people who used to feel badass for being so unique no longer feel special anymore. Wah. When subversion becomes the norm it eats its own tail. The internet did this. Not sure if it is a bad thing. Maybe society needs the kick in the ass to let them know they aren't special and if they want to be special in this internet age they better start doing something amazing like curing cancer or something else we can't even fathom...

5.
House-sitting at a place that has a hot tub soon. Holla!

boys with beer

My cousin Antony (left) was in the Yukon for a few days working, which is super rare because we live 6000km away from everyone, and so we had him over for dinner and a walk (the guys brought roadies as you can see, but our "road" is not much a road). My Sasquatch is being allusive over there on the right as always. He is private like that. He doesn't even have a real facebook with his real name. I really, really would love to blog photos of him to show off how dreamy mansquanches can be once they get cleaned up and civilized. Oh well, there's my cousin. IT's so crazy how much he is starting to look like OPA!


On a side note: On my walk a few days before this, when the dirt from the ground was starting to emerge from beneath the snow, I became emotional, like the dirt was some long lost friend and we were finally being reunited. Seriously, I almost bawled. Being a tree planter, you become quite well acquainted with the earth, and when you see it you want to sink your hands into it. 

post planting poundage

huge slashpile somewhere in alberta 

I'm not one to exercise. I like sports and doing fun activities in nature, but exercising for the sake of exercise or to reduce or to get muscles has never really been my thing.

For a bunch of years in my twenties I spent 4 months of the year running a marathon for 6 days a week. A marathon called tree planting. Ok, yes, when you are planting trees you aren't running (unless you count the few times you run from bears, not recommended, but when the bear is just as scared as you and is running in the opposite direction it is fine). You aren't running, but you are strapping 200-400 saplings to your waist (50 poundsish) and then trudging (all day long) through some drunken logger's massive impression of pick-up-sticks (the term clear cut is insulting to me, that shit ain't clear). 


And while you are maneuvering through this maze of nature, chewed up and spit out for your specific inconvenience, you are expected, every few steps, to slam a shovel into the ground, crack open Canada, bend over and feed her a tree, a few thousand times. 


Let's not forget how you get to this slash laden workplace. You walk. You walk for maybe an hour, maybe more maybe less, with all of your gear, sometimes carrying full bags of trees, always carrying the shit ton of water you need to consume so you don’t die. HeeHaw. And always along some path where trucks don't go, where trucks don't go for a reason, because, before you put one tree into the ground, you are expected to complete some seemingly impossible feat. Something like swimming the English Channel, or tightrope walking across Niagara Falls. Something like crossing a raging river in a dingy, or walking for 7 miles over muskeg, MUSKEG, you know, the kind of mossy watery spongy swampy expanse that probably swallowed all of Dinotopia. 

One plus to tree planting is you are basically being paid to go to fat camp. You start the season soft and you end it hard. You end it athlete hard. The trade off is a few months of hell and some really bad tan lines. 


And another thing, while you are there you can eat as much crap as you want. I'm talking  archipelagos of French fries swimming in seas of cheese and gravy. I’m talking Andes of pasta. Rivers of powdered sugar “juice.” Entire Saskatchewans of bread. If you wake up early enough and your camp cook lets her guard down for mere seconds, you may experience that magic moment where you eat your own weight in bacon.

Because of this I haven’t really had a problem with weight or body image or anything like that for a long time. And if I did, I would just wait a few months and it would be spring again, time to mash a lifetime’s worth of working out (and eating) into a few months.

But I just had a baby. And for the last bit of my pregnancy I was on bed rest. I was a beached whale (ya I said it) kept alive with the splashes of food Squanch brought me and my own faith that one day soon the tide would come high enough to reach me and I would be able to swim once again.

And so now I am feeling a bit soft. The organs that used to be tucked behind my abs are flopping out over my pants. I have a belly reminiscent of a 5 month pregnant person and pre-preggers clothes is not fitting me. The baby is 4 months old. I am not going treeplanting, but I am going to kick life up a notch and renew my teen obsession with cross-country running. My awesome red running shoes are in the mail and as soon as they get here I’m gonna be out the door!

"When the student is ready..."

"...the teacher appears." Buddhist proverb

Late last summer Squanch and I were exploring in our area and we ended up on a nearby mountain slope picking wild cranberries with two strangers, while our dogs intermingled, weaving golden threads in and out of the little pine trees around us. It was one of those encounters that feels like a gift from the universe. These two women were wonderful berry picking companions, and every time I sprinkle those frozen red orbs into my blender for a morning smoothie, I am reminded of the serendipity of that afternoon.

Well, the gifts from the universe keep coming (I sound cliche new-agey when I say stuff like that but oh well, it is the only way I can explain it). Turns out one of those women runs an outdoor learning centre from her home where there is a beautiful building (I describe as a hippie/zen church), that hosts, among other things, yoga classes. And so, by this chance encounter I was enrolled in the best yoga classes I could possibly imagine!

The teacher blends her incredible knowledge with an uncanny intuitiveness. She takes time to explain things, allows us to experience the poses how it feels best to us and guides us gently with her calm wisdom. By the time class ends there is a sense of balance to my energy, I feel as if I have exercised and had a massage at the same time. 

The atmosphere of this hippie-zen-hall is perfect for yoga. We do mountain pose in front of a wall of windows overlooking a mountain range. A wood-stove crackles in the corner while we lay down on our mats for our final relaxation pose.

I must remind myself, as socially anxious as I am, such gifts often come from outside my comfort zone. We approached those women in late summer, on the side of a mountain, and struck up a conversation, and after a long dark winter, I am still benefitting from the harvest of this encounter.

front yard

I'd prefer ocean front. Atlantic ocean, to be specific. But this will do for now. I guess.

keep baby safe

Mornings at home are easy. Sundrenched and slow. I sip coffee and listen to the radio. Juniper is happy to play, feed, then fall asleep for a few hours.

It’s the afternoons away from home when it hits me. Lethargy. Weight. A hollow fullness of the gut. Senseless anxiety resulting in a fatigue so strong it’s as if my body is moving through syrup and not air. There is something wrong deep inside my abdomen. Yesterday, out shopping in town, bent over my cart, I become disoriented in the store. Dizzy with the danger of all the strangers around me. Every single one of them is a bit off. My body stiffens when I pass them, they all have arms to reach out and touch the baby, to grab the baby, harm the baby. What am I there for? Wandering around on the border of panic, feeling as if I may fall over. Rational thought tells me I’m ok, I will not pass out, but rational thought is such a pushover, extremely susceptible to the convincing powers of anxiety.

I pull through. Always do. Go to the library. The new one with the stairs. Somehow I make it up them, grab the book, walk back down. It takes all my power to let the sight of the railing pass through me as I ascend and descend, to ignore the scary drop to the hard tiled floor. How does one ignore gravity? Of course, more attention is paid to something being actively ignored, and in so ignoring, quite the opposite effect is attained. The muscles clench, the bowels tie themselves in knots, in tatters, in muddy mats like a messy head of hippie hair. My innards. Dreadlocks. Locked with dread.

This is how it is. My role as mother. Walk around in constant computation of danger to baby. And, everything means danger. Worse, every possible horrific outcome, I witness inside my mind. I am in a constant state of trauma, grief, agony over everything that could possibly happen, because somehow my brain can’t tell that these images are simply meant as warnings, are not actually happening.

a mommy blog moment

She is sleeping. Thank you Royal Wood. Thank you coffee. Thank you sunshine. I have a rare, alert, calm, cozy, beautiful moment to myself.

don't look down

Squanch took this a few weeks ago. Happens often. No Big Deal.

So it's nighttime in the woods right now and while sitting reading, sleeping baby in my arms, it suddenly occurred to me I was going to have to, ahem,  poot.


Usually, I do it during the day. How could I possibly schedule such an event? You would too if you had an outhouse. Believe me, it's a terrifying event to use the shitter at night. The dark is scary enough as it is, but add the odd nearby coyote sighting, or midnight howl fest (feast?), and it becomes terrifying.


Squanch is especially good in that he will often lead me out into the darkness and wait outside the outhouse, contemplating his old life as a mythological creature. Bigfoot not afraid. 


Of course Squanch is sleeping at this moment, and so my chaperon this time is the dog, the wimp who was freaking out at the meer presence of tin foil earlier today.


I maneuver the baby into her crib, shove on my big boots, put on a head lamp and run about 100 feet into the woods.


That's when it happens. Something more terrifying than coyotes. I shine the light into the hole.


Think of everything you have flushed in 6 months. Now imagine peering into a pit of everything you have flushed in 6 months.

Ya. Living a running water free life is not for everyone. It may seem idyllic, and it is for me. That is until I forget a very simple rule: DON'T LOOK DOWN!

Mushaboom

Next time I'm feeling shitty I'm gonna play the song Mushaboom and remind myself Fesit wrote it after travelling into the future to life as I know it right now.

woof meow poop

Why have I suddenly taken up blogging? Because a few days ago I realized the most coherent sentence to come out of my mouth all day was to my dog Wellington: "Dodo, you want a kookie?"


A few more tidbits from the transcripts of my daily life with a cat, a dog and a newborn baby:


Me: Bika Bika want a brushie? (to Milo the cat)


***
Me: Dodo, no runned away, dingdong dodo! Go fo a wok dodo?


Wellington: *wags tail* (this being the most coherent thing I hear all day)


Me: "Git the schquirrel dodo."


***
Juniper: Wah wah cooooo wahh Awhooohunn


Me:  Oh daas baybay, you sad? Dawahweeewahwoz.

As you can see the most I get in return is a muttacular wag of the tail, a reassuring feline narrowing of the eyes, or sphinct-orations from a newborn about the robo-calls scandal in the US of eh! aka Canada.

Humour me?

tiny cocoon

I like this photo we took of Juniper right after coming home from the Whitehorse General Hospital/Spa because it makes it look like I gave birth to a multivitamin instead of a human being sized creature.

no running water

It didn't happen on purpose. We didn't seek out housing that lacked something so fundamental as running water because we were trying to save the world or the whales or the whatevers. This is just how things worked out and I am glad it did because it means we don't live downtown, it means our front yard is a field of horses, followed by a line of trees, followed by a slope, followed by another field of horses, followed by more trees and then the river and then, wait for it, MOUNTAINS!

For example: Early this morning I was outside and I noticed a single line of footprints in the snow. On closer inspection, Squanch attributed them to a fox. This fox makes up the bulk of the traffic in front of our cabin for the last week. Of course there are Raven's in our airspace, they heckle us from time to time, but I can deal with that.

Life without running water. RADICAL Eh? Apparently. It's one of the first things that came up when the issue of a certain neglected northern reserve close to a diamond mine was in the daily news. "How do they live? How deplorable for the government to let them live like that!" I have never been to this reserve, and I don't mean to belittle the issue, but whenever I heard mention of the no running water detail my first thought was: "Big deal."

Because it really isn't a big deal for us. Of course this is only because there are many places we can go to acquire free, clean, safe water.

• BLUE JUGS - Drinking, dishwashing, sponge bathing, face washing, teeth brushing. We have about 6 of them and we refill them at a nearby service station (gas / convenience / laundromat / showering place) where many other beardy locals draw water from as well.
• LAUNDROMAT - Laundry and showering facilities for Me (same place as above)
• WORK - showering facilities for Squanch
• RIVER - summer supply of all non-potable watering needs such as: laundry, watering garden, showering in the bathing house equip with a woodstove for warming water, and this spring, will be equip with a paloma for on demand water heating purposes (all those treeplanting camps we lived/worked/ran are coming in handy). 

Let's be clear:

I miss bathtubs. Words cannot express how spectacular baths feel when you can't have one at will. I am getting goose bumps just thinking about it. Today, I'm listening to Greg Brown while making lasagna and trying to keep the baby happy aka alive and there is a line in one of his songs "I want to buy you the biggest bath tub in the world." And to me, right now, those are the most romantic lyrics ever.

living at the cottage

Home right now  (taken before the snow came, forever ago in fall)

I've spent some of the happiest times at cabins and cottages and I've always wanted to live in one, didn't see why people kept them tucked away as sacred weekend and holiday places, when they could have that feeling all the time and live there.


And so when I get the sense from people that they think I am roughing it HUGE - like impossibly HUGE, like "you have no fucking running water? how do you bathe? where do you go to the bathroom? BUT YOU HAVE A NEWBORN BABY!" - I just have to laugh  because our life is so amazing, so steeped and strong with everything good and everything I believe in.

You may have a cottage or a camp. If not you may have been invited to one at some point in your life. How restorative do times spent in these outdoor focused places feel? How warm and calm and gooey do you feel hugged in the arms of logs, of wood, of the stuff the trees made so you could have a roof over your head?

privy to my privy

Open the door, leap down the two steps of the porch, round the cabin, down the path made in the snow by feet on so many similar pilgrimages, hug bare arms against the cold, open the latch, fling open the door, throw your pants down to your knees (not ankles), don't look down, sit on the clever pink foam warm in the place of toilet seat, pee or poo, more than likely poo, and as you do contemplate the constellations of purposeless tacks in the back of the door where copious amounts of "stupid-ass- sayings" used to reside, put there by someone else.

Somebody else's sayings... Eff that. No, thank you. I'd rather this door be blank than full of Oprahesque phrases and witty Bill Cosbyisms. I'm going to put a pen and paper in there so we can add to the sayings  at our leisure. Will keep you posted on new turd-bits of wisdom so the stupid-ass-ness of the saying are kept in check.

Air freshener in the freshest air in the world. What overkill. I love how nature is making fun of the tree smelling thing by hanging it's own little version adjacent. Our hole doesn't stink unless the frozen poo stalagmite that gets formed from the outhouse not being properly centered over the hole has built itself up close to the opening. Then Squanch has to wait until it gets warm enough to budge it with a broken shovel we used for poolagmite removing purposes only. Too much info, perhaps? Well, just be thankful I didn't take a photo of the glorious thing.