Friday, November 21, 2025

Banana Bonanza and a few other life's like that moments

 Flashfoods  (an app where we get a lot of our groceries from at 50%off or more) often disappoints us with showing a picture like this but what you are buying is actually a bunch of bananas. So I chose to buy two bunches at $2 each. And then, at pick up, I discovered that I'd bought 2 40 Lb boxes of bananas! So we went from banana starved (no bananas for over a month, not even frozen ones) to way more than we can eat, bake with, and freeze before some go off! So, if you're in the area... want some bananas?

We've had some exquisite beauty in the mornings lately: heavy hoar frosts and wintery sun make for a breathtaking wild beauty landscape! Of course, a phone camera held by a novice can't hope to pick up the multilayered beauty... frosty mist in the distance with frost silvered bare trees melting in around the edges, the random harmony of fall colors still clinging to some trees, sun sparkling off the frost gilded foreground grasses... 
Last winter we wrestled with our wood stove, trying to learn its quirks to keep the house warm relatively consistently without it smelling like a campground nor having to nurse a reluctant fire. This year so far we seem to have figured out a few things, but now we wrestle with a voraciously hungry roaring fire that we can't seem to dampen a bit too often. But since it is doing a much better job at actually heating the house, it's not so grievous. 

Every household experiences "that time" sometime: the one where every appliance or gadget seems to break at the same time... for us it was Jasmin's phone, Mom's laptop keyboard, Grace's monitor. All big ticket items. And yet, it happening in November is very fortunate with two important annual sales to find replacements that don't cost too, too much. And, of course, with two techies in the house (Dad and Aiden) and a thrifty Mom, there were enough bits and pieces to cobble together some solutions in-house as well. 


Saturday, November 08, 2025

November rain

 November rain

So welcome to this drought dried land

And yet

The dark, dreary nature

of rainy November days

Not so welcome


Remembering the need to pay attention to weather

What coat, what footwear necessary

Slow adapters or simply protesters

Our children still often venturing out

Barefoot (or flipflops) and coatless


Learning again to keep the fire lit

Stock it just so

So heat radiates and smoke doesn't


Wonderment at our animals even still

Freda prone to dash-leaping in the pond

Bedraggled chickens pecking through their yard


Erratic morning runs

Waiting for dry days

Cold but glorious in wan Fall sun


Adjusting to afternoon dark

Pushing back against the time dislocation

Missing after supper dog jaunts in daylight

Why do we do this again?


The smell of wet Fall forest

The bursts of red berries, yellow leaves 

Backdropped on deep greens and greys

The sound of the stream running again

Thank you God


Light busting through wintery grey clouds

Rain on the windows, running in the gutters

Pattering on coats and umbrellas

Ponds refilling, streams again running

Feet squelching in cold mud

November rain






Monday, November 03, 2025

Things We've Learned from Close Proximity to A Movie in the Making

It's possible to cater to up to 500 people from a food truck!! Not that that is what happened here, but revealed in talking with the chef. He produced amazing food - The Nomad Gourmet indeed.

Movie filming doesn't happen on schedule. In fact, so much so, that the schedule is posted is without times, and the evening before is when cast and crew find out when they'll need to be at work for the next day. This was ok for us mostly as we parked our car down the drive way so we could get out when we wanted, and we don't have a strict schedule ourselves. Where it hurt more was learning the night before at 9:30 pm that we had to be gone from our house for a filming by 7 am and stay gone until after supper! Thankfully it was a day Grace didn't need her set up for school work, and we had somewhere to go for the day that worked.

Meal times are as fluid also. This messed up our family schedule quite a bit, but sneakily. We realized just how out of kilter we were one night about 11:30 when Mom (who is usually in bed if not asleep by 10:30) was still up and about and noticed Jasmin was tuning her violin to start practicing, Aiden still playing a computer game with friends, and Grace and Dad were still working full bore like it was still afternoon. Not even sure if we'd had supper yet... When lunch happens mid to late afternoon, your sense of time gets really out of sorts!

Work start and end times are strictly counted when there are child actors. Countering this is the need for flexible hours for all sorts of reasons. Days can start at 5:30 am or 11 am and end at 2 am or 6 pm. It went ok for us, but it was sure nice to have the house to ourselves again with no imposed early mornings or late nights when it was all over.

We didn't get to see the sets or watch a filming: no extra people are welcome in case of accidental, super expensive to fix noises or movement. So we are just as eager as everyone else to see the final product.

Different, interesting, unusual: an its-worth-it-once kind of experience.