Shadows contrast during visit

Visiting longtime friends at their comfy yellow house just outside my home town of White Rock, BC, I was struck by the contrast of light and shadow on their lawn and under their eaves. Small birds had emptied the feeder, but crows sat on a wire, hoping for the crusts of bread my friend Ruth and her husband Harmen often throw them.

© Photo by Kay Davies

Posted for
Shadow Shot Sunday 2
hosted by Gemma Wiseman, Magical Mystery Teacher, and Rose (Chubskulit).
Thank you to Tracy in Brisbane, Australia, for hosting the first version of Shadow Shot Sunday for so long!
To see other shadows from around the world, please click  HERE!

Coffee Klatch Friday: candy bucket list

Vicki, who hosts Coffee Klatch Friday at her blog The Tapestry of Life, has asked us this week what is on our "bucket list" (things we want to do before we die or "kick the bucket") and following hard on the heels of Hallowe'en, asks us what candy we like best! Yes, I left the comma out of the title on purpose—more fun that way. (Ten candies I would like to try before I die.)

Well, I'll start with candy first. Always a good place to start, especially if it involves chocolate. I love chocolate, dark, milk, light, white, hot, cold—chocolate! But my favorite individual kind of candy would have to be Peanut Butter Cups, for my own peculiar reason. I like the taste of peanut butter but I don't like the texture or even the smell of unadulterated peanut butter. Coated in chocolate and dressed in cute little ruffled paper pantaloons, it is magnifique!

Bucket List

Well, now, let me see...we've done a lot of traveling this century, and I did quite a bit of it on my own in the last century, but there are always places...

1. I was going to list Scotland first, but I'd better start with England because my best friend and her British-born husband have just moved from the west coast of Canada to the middle of England where they now live in a narrowboat on a canal.
2. Scotland, because I've spent a week in Edinburgh, but haven't been to the Highlands or the Islands. Looming large on my bucket list is the tiny island of Eriskay, followed closely by the larger island of Skye, both in the Hebrides.
3. Sydney, Australia. I spent a few days there in 1982 after touring Queensland with my little brother and a friend. Now I'd like to go back to visit new friends, if I can find a ship to take me there. I'm willing to fly home (which will be awful enough, and will likely involve several weeks of bed-rest) but I refuse to arrive there with jet-lag.
4. Africa. Ditto. Travel by ship. Or by leaps and bounds by plane, overnighting every time a change of plane is required.
5. Singapore, if my friend Robin and his wife are still there. If not by ship, at least the same overnighting requirements as in #4.
6. Antarctica, or close to it. Somewhere with penguins, such as the Falklands. I loved the Galapagos penguins and now I want more. Animated movies are entirely too cute, and visiting the penguins behind the scenes at Sea World Orlando was wonderful, but I want to see the real thing, in the wild, once more, or more than once more.

7. Trains. I love trains. The Orient Express would be fabulous. There are some elegant trains in Africa, too. (See #4.) The Rocky Mountaineer in BC and Alberta would be lovely, also. Really, however, what I like best about trains is sleeping. I sleep like a baby in a lower berth on a train.
8. I was in New Orleans in 1980. I think I'd like to return. After both of my parents had died, my siblings and I said we had no regrets about the life Mom and Dad had lived, and it's true, although I would have liked to take them to New Orleans.
9. Ireland, and Wales. I spent an afternoon in Wales when traveling with my parents, brothers, and sisters-in-law in England after our week in Edinburgh. I'd like to see more of Wales, and I'd love to visit Ireland, where I also have a friend I'd like to visit.
10. I'd like to meet Tony Bennett. He's the only one left from the 50s. And, if not Tony Bennett, I'd like to meet John Fogerty. Creedence Clearwater Revival played all my favorite dancing songs in the 70s, and I love Fogerty's voice.

So, there we have ten, or maybe ten and a half. I'm looking forward to seeing what others at Coffee Klatch have on their bucket lists. See you there!

PS — I know the list is long, but my friend Sherry just reminded me of Haida Gwaii, formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands, in British Columbia. A must-see!

WHAT DO YOU MEAN???

CHAPTER 4 – JUST ACCEPT IT?????

Perhaps you’ve never really accepted being less than completely fit. Maybe your mental image of yourself is from an earlier time, when you felt ten feet tall and bulletproof.

My self-image is of the day in my mid-30s when I walked to Peace Arch Park with my mother and my youngest brother, Rob. It was a beautiful day for a walk. It was also a beautiful day for a run, and I suddenly found myself shouting, “Race you to the arch, Robbie!” It felt wonderful, moving as fast as I could. In my mind’s eye, I still see an idealized mini-movie featuring soft green grass below me, blue sky above me, the Canada-US border in front of us, and Mom laughing behind us.

Alright, I know, my brother was only 13 at the time, and my legs were still longer than his. Okay, maybe Rob wasn’t trying very hard because he really didn’t think I could beat him. Nevertheless, I got there first.

Laughing and perspiring, I panted, “I won!”

“That was pretty good,” he said, with a grin.

Of course it never happened again. A year later, when Rob and I were traveling with a friend in Queensland, Australia, I tried to run, tripped over a tree root, fell flat on my face, and decided enough was enough. But I’ve carried the image of my one victory in my head for years, pushing aside the embarrassing memory of eating Australian dirt, ignoring the pain slowly overtaking me, and trying to ignore the years overtaking me as well.

So don’t think I titled this section “just accept it” because I’m good at acceptance. I’m not. I’m here to say don’t do what I did. Don’t do what I still do from time to time – don’t refuse to accept your limitations.

This may sound contrary to the moral “it’s better to go than not go” but it isn’t. Acceptance is key to enjoying adventurous travel. Accept your limitations by learning to deal with them effectively; accept being unable to do everything your traveling companions can do and, above all, accept help.

Accept help?

Become a little old lady escorted across streets by boy scouts? Oh no, your inner voice screams, I can’t, I won’t, and I never will, so there!

I know, I know. My inner voice screamed the same things, but there were times when I had to accept help from the most unlikely sources... for instance, from my mother.

Good grief.

I’d rather have had a boy scout help me.

Or a girl scout.

So how did I get from there to the Galapagos Islands?

CHAPTER 2 — FROM THE AUTHOR

This is a true story. It more or less has a beginning and an end, but it isn’t a novel and it doesn’t have a plot. It happened to me. The ‘I’ in the book is me, Kay Davies, a former workaholic and now a government-registered unfittie; the ‘he’ in the book is my husband Richard Schear, a senior who can still run fast enough to referee high school basketball and football.
Being away from home isn’t a new idea to me. My parents spent some 25 winters in Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, as well as many summers traveling and camping while my father gathered material and took thousands of 35mm color transparencies for his books about the rivers of British Columbia.
So travel isn’t new to me, either. When I was younger, I thought nothing of flying from the west coast of Canada to the east coast of the US for a long weekend, or catching a flight to southern California to rent a car and pop down the Baja to visit my parents for a week. I once took a year off to play rather than work, and during that year I took my brother to Australia for a month.
But the time came when it all stopped. Not just running foot races with my youngest brother. That went first, of course, because he got faster as I got slower. But my pick-up-and-take-off lifestyle eventually stopped, too.
I didn’t relinquish my wanderlust willingly, but relinquish it I finally did, because I could no longer work. I could no longer guarantee I’d show up on the job every day, or produce any significant amount of work once I got there. When I was thoroughly beaten down, the government ended up giving me money every month to make up for my general uselessness and lack of reliability.

KAY’S COLLECTION OF ILLNESSES
For a while (for too long, in fact) I fought my fate. I denied it even as I railed against it, and refused to apply for a pension until several different pains and problems in various parts of my body had me pretty much licked. I tried to work, but couldn’t, so I had to sell my house and live on the proceeds. Then I gave up, applied to the feds, and had to wait for my application to be approved. I moved myself and my two cats to a drier climate, but the medication prescribed for one illness had caused more damage to my already beleaguered body. My eyes developed cataracts, my blood sugar went wonky, my bones got terrifyingly thin, and I got fat. I swelled up like a balloon, and I’ve never lost that steroid weight.
I did, however, lose my looks. Sometimes I still wonder which I miss most, a successful career in the newspaper and printing industry, or a pretty face and a slim body.
It’s a tough call.
Newspaper compositors are being replaced by computers every day, and on the other hand, it doesn’t much matter if old ladies aren’t pretty. Dick thinks I’m cute, which is probably why I married him. However, it is a compliment about which I’m ambivalent. Most of the time, I am glad he thinks so, until I remember I’m a cute old lady, not a cute young thing. Sigh.
So, where was I? Ah, yes, I relinquished my lifestyle, moved away from the wet west coast, and some years later settled into semi-domesticity (I’m no one’s idea of a housewife) out here on the prairie, where the deer and the antelope play. I could book a seat-sale flight, or Dick would drive me out to BC to check on my elderly parents a couple of times a year. I’d see other members of the family, visit a few old friends, get some good fish and chips, and it was enough. I was content.
“There are penguins in the Galapagos Islands,” said Dick.
We’ve been traveling ever since.