poplar road

...Richard would be doing the yippy-skippy dance right now. He has spent the first half of this year on the road all over the province demonstrating Unimogs on ski hills, on highways, in mines, in fire halls, and finally word is getting out and Richard's perseverance has started to pay off. This week (after weeks of hard work, mind you) he has made TWO Unimog sales!!

That makes 4 in total for this year. Hurrah! One of this week's sales was a fire-fighting Mog, for the fire department that he was en route to demo at when he stopped to help put out that flaming semi-trailer in McLure. The other is to an individual as an off-road expeditionary vehicle. I haven't heard much more about the sales than that, because he carried on to the next appointment (and hopefully the next quote) and hasn't made it home to sit back and savour it yet. There are another four potential clients he's working on right now, so he's feeling very positive that this is the year Unimog in BC gets off the ground. Then maybe he can slow down enough to sleep in his own bed more often than not. (And I could finally get my new master bath!)

As for me, I jumped from a 20 hour week to a 30 hour week this week, am probably working a few hours more this weekend, and next week I'll be up to full time. Maybe even the odd week on Richard time (60 hrs) because suddenly my job is insane!

I've been involved in some facet of education every year since school began at age 5, and it's always the same: the arrival of September causes an anxious knot of anticipation (or dread, initially) in the pit of my stomach as the education season begins again. I started this new job after the spring training season ended, so I've yet to experience registration and certification processes in full swing. But if I'm going to be swamped with work, that gets us closer to a working second vehicle, a finished master bathroom, and a flat screen tv, so I'm happy to get the hours.

On the third work front, Richard's heat pump business, he made a sale to yet another co-worker last Saturday, and plans to do the installation tomorrow. This one will actually make the business some money. I just hope the full day tomorrow on top of his usual 60-hour work week won't drain away all the energy he's got from making those sales. If nothing else, Richard has proven that honesty, integrity, and high standards for quality and workmanship can exist in the world of sales. I'm so proud and grateful that his hard work is being rewarded.

It was clear and moonless when I got home from bellydance at midnight last night, so I went looking for Mars - you may have heard that last night was supposed to be its closest proximity to Earth for the next hundred lifetimes or so. I turned off the outside lights and couldn't believe how clearly I could see the Milky Way. Didn't know which of the brightest three stars was Mars, but just seeing that infinite sky.... I said a thank you to the universe for the clear night, the cool clean air, and the good things that have happened this year. Whether you have a telescope to pick out the planet amongst all the other pricks of light or not, I suggest you get out there tonight in a clear, unlit place and look up. And if you think of anything at all, think, Yes.

I love language, as you can probably tell. The play of sound as well as the play of meaning. It's the reason I studied poetry, the intense pleasure of finding words with many levels of meaning, reinforced by their sound. English is especially wonderful, I think, because we blithely absorb any words from other languages that take our fancy – why say silk dressing gown, such a mouthful, when kimono is so easy to borrow from Japan – and we create new meanings for the words we already have. With today's "global community" the dialogue is endless and new meanings and implications, denotative and connotative, arise so quickly it's hard to keep up.

Take Thursday's activities, for example. Would you say, from this entry's title, that we were eating, or exercising? "Dip" describes a sort of circular motion of dropping down and coming back up, which in turn is what we aptly call the food that we dip veggies or chips into. "Kick" is of course the movement of one's leg outward by bending the knee. Or, Richard's favourite word to describe his latest food fixation. Schnitzel is breaded veal, at least if you're eating it Vienna (Wiener) style. Since Richard makes it with pork (much cheaper) we debated whether or not it's really Wiener Schnitzel. In any case Thursday morning as Richard was driving home from a meeting in Quesnel, he began to think about schnitzel, because Thursday night is belly dance night for me, and his night alone in the kitchen.

I, meanwhile, was practicing my dips and kicks. I bought a set of DVDs for a bhangra workout, which as I mentioned in an earlier post is a folk dance from India which has been popularized in Bollywood movies. Some of the moves have been incorporated into what's called "tribal" belly dance, which just means a fusion of folk dance moves and music from anywhere around the globe. (Back to the global community.) The Gidda Dip is one of the first moves on the first DVD which I could actually do, most involving so much bouncing and kicking I nearly melted into a puddle. Today's bhangra arose from a men's folk dance celebrating the wheat harvest, so it's very exhuberant and athletic, just as the name sounds. Another poetic element, irony: me practicing a dance celebrating wheat on the day Richard gets to cook dinner alone and make all those wheat-covered foods I can't eat because I'm allergic to it. Only I was indulging in them last year to the tune of 40 pounds weight gain, which is one reason why I've chosen bhangra to work out to. Really, really good cardio. And lots of fun at Tribal Night, which is every other Tuesday.

But back to Thursday, I went off to my regular belly dance class in town, my girl's night out to celebrate the female body and work all those stomach muscles that are supposedly in there somewhere, and Richard started his schnitzel kick. I say started because once wasn't enough; he made it again last night while I was outside visiting with the llamas. His other once-in-a-while fixation are wontons and walla wallas, and I'm grateful that I've never been fond of onions, wontons or schnitzel because although the kick may start on a belly dance night, he often has to make them a couple more times to get the craving out of his system. I get the same way about cheese. For the llamas, it's compressed alfalfa cubes, which they weren't familiar with when they came here from their grazing land up the mountain. Buddy finally buried his nose in the loose fragments left from the bottom of the bag the other day, and he's hooked. (Should I feel guilty about that?) He can't seem to chew the cubes, I guess because he's still young and his teeth aren't hard enough yet, but on Thursday when I held up the bucket of alfalfa dust, he was so absorbed he let me scratch him behind the ears for the first time. It always comes back to food, doesn't it.

I think it's because most of us, whether we accept it or not, actually desire change, and the easiest way to make a change is to change what you eat. A change in perspective is a little harder, because you get used to seeing things a certain way. I took the photo above the other day as I was snapping shots of the llamas in the yard, and when I opened it on the computer later, the view surprised me. I don't often look at our house from that angle. I still see all the things we want to change, but in this view, I forget the strange pseudo-Spanish shape and ill-planned plantings. I see home. It's got potential, doesn't it?

It's hard to make a drastic change that the body is resisting. Richard and I have decided to eat healthier and try to lose some of this extra baggage. I've added daily exercise and am trying to eat more healthy veggies and cut out the rice noodles and mashed potatoes in addition to sticking to my allergen and yeast diet restrictions. Richard has put away his deep-frying pot and oil and has been stopping at the grocery store close to work frequently to pick up pot roasts and pork roasts when they're on sale. We're enjoying my mother's recipe for orange-ginger-glazed BBQ chicken. I've even been thinking about where to start a compost and a vegetable garden for next year. When Richard is travelling for work, which has been often this summer, he doesn't have as many options to eat properly, and the man gets no exercise, but he's changing. We're trying to focus on where we want to be, and how to get there. Even the biggest plans require the tiniest of steps these days, but luckily even the small things like the sounds and ironies of bhangra and schnitzel can be hugely satisfying.

We're having a lazy summer long weekend with NO visitors! It's 30 degrees, the sky is an amazing shade of blue, the air smells of pine (not smog), and the breeze is blowing off the Shuswap (at right).

I spent a few hours in the garden today, and when I admired my neighbour's thriving rows of vegetables, she gave me a few. We'll have the peppers and lettuce with our barbequed sirloin steaks tonight. I'm going to let the llamas into the yard so we can watch llamvision as we eat! Wishing we had a backyard patio complete with real lawn furniture, but that's a project for next summer.

I hope you're relaxing in sunshine and peace and quiet like we are this weekend, whether you're in the sunny interior or enjoying the sea breezes on the coast. Happy BC Day, everyone!