Here’s the thing: country living in an old farmhouse = mice in the house.

We’ve seen several mice hiding in the basement woodpile this winter so my husband set traps. (Country living tip: rodent traps are more effective set perpendicular to the walls along which the mice run.)

My three-year-old grandson has a toy snake that he threw down the basement several times without explaining why (and people brought up each time they fed the furnace). Crying, he explained, “I keep throwing my snake down and somebody keeps bringing it up. It needs to be down to catch the mice.” We couldn’t argue with the logic, so left the snake on the basement floor.

After my husband checked his trap-line this morning, here’s what Steven found.

He could not believe his eyes (after all, he knows it’s a toy snake), but once he took things in, he was delighted! Ah, the joys of grandparenthood (in the country).

Our three-year-old grandson has a pretty happy disposition and not much gets him down, but he was in tears this morning. We’re having a bit of a blow here on the east coast – a nor-easter with lots of rain and winds that are gusting to 100 km/hr (60mph). The ‘breezes’ caught the tree that held the start of the tree-house that Grampa is building for Steven – and took it out by the roots. Tire swing’s gone, too.

The silver lining? As Steven, who never cries for long, says: “I can fill up that hole with water and jump in the B-I-G puddle!”

I’ve found that some of the blogs I enjoy the most are the ones where I know a little about the person behind it. So, I picked this up from A Sorta Fairy Tale and thought I’d complete it A-Z. Some of these questions are not the ones I’d ask (or answer) but sometimes what other people want to know is what they want to know!

More book and country related posts this week…

A. Age: 57
B. Bed size: King (& pillow-top) and I can’t imagine going smaller now
C. Chore that you hate: Cleaning the toilets
D. Dogs: Wes, a yellow Lab and Farlow, whose mom is a Valley Bulldog & dad is presumed to be a German Shepherd. All of our dogs have been named after guitar players (Django Reinhardt, Chet Atkins, Lenny Breau, Wes Montgomery, Tal Farlow)
E. Essential start to your day: swing my legs over the edge of the bed!
F. Favourite colors: Wedgewood blue, soft gold and forest green
G. Gold or Silver: Silver
H. Height: 5’8”
I. Instruments you play: the piano (although I haven’t for years, so maybe I don’t)
J. Job title: Card Sender & blogger – and volunteer minister
K. Kids: a lovely red-headed grown daughter
L. Live: Tatamagouche Nova Scotia
M. Mother-in-law’s name: Eileen
N. Nicknames: Deb, Auditor-general
O. Overnight hospital stays: to have my tonsils out when I was 5, to have my daughter (decades ago), other surgery in 2001
P. Pet peeves: television! (It rots your brain…)
Q. Quote from a movie: it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. (Casablanca 1942)
R. Right or left handed: Right handed.
S. Siblings: four, all younger
T. Time you wake up: Usually between 7 & 8 a.m. (I used to be in the office every day at 7:30, so this is sleeping in)
U. Underwear: Yes
V. Vegetable you hate: Fennel
W. What makes you run late: Trying to do just one more thing…
X. X-Rays you’ve had: Dental, my arm, my foot, my other foot…c’mon I’m nearly sixty, there’s likely lots more I can’t remember
Y. Yummy food that you make: pasta with fresh garlic, tomatoes & basil
Z. Zoo animal: Elephant. I’ve always had a weakness for them.

And I love to get know my readers. What about you – want to answer one of these?

I was out doing volunteer work yesterday afternoon and got quite warm in the car. Each time we drove past an ocean view, the water looked so blue & inviting that I thought of stopping the car and just diving in.

Today promised to be as warm so we decided to make a last run to the beach. (Much cooler weather is forecast, starting tomorrow.) That ol’ Atlantic was darn cold – and rough, what with the stiff breeze coming in, but my three-year-old grandson had a ball while his mom & I sat in the sun.

Even if we have a very warm Indian summer next month, this will probably be our last beach trip for the year. Bittersweet.

What would you do if you suddenly lost your high-powered, high-pressure job in a declining industry, and received a year’s severance pay? Hit the pavement? Take up a hobby? Stay under the covers?

The author of Unfinished Business: One Man’s Extraordinary Year of Trying to Do the Right Things, Lee Kravitz, faced just such a situation in his mid-fifties. After taking stock of seemed to be a very successful life, he decided to spend that year reconnecting to the people in his life. As he says:

As good as my life looked on paper, it was sorely lacking in the one area that puts flesh on meaning: human connectedness.

We all have the kind of unfinished business to which Kravitz refers in the title of his book—emotional loose ends: old friends we’ve lost touch with, promises we made but didn’t keep, family we’ve grown apart from, things unsaid that need saying.

By the time we reach our fifties, most of us have accumulated a long list of such items, partly because we think we’ll get to them later, we need our own time, we’re busy with other things, or it’s just too difficult to or embarrassing to carry through. It’s true that as Kravitz says,

If we remembered how we could be separated from our loved ones at any moment, we would accumulate a lot less unfinished business.

In Kravitz’s year of making amends, he set out on ten ‘journeys’, including catching up with a loved aunt who had drifted out of his life, making an over-due condolence call, paying a 30-year-old debt to an associate, looking up a mentor of his youth, and visiting a high-school friend who is now a Greek Orthodox monk. Along the way, he gains insights into himself and into what really makes a life – his and ours.

Reading this book has made me aware of the emotional loose ends in my own life, but being aware and taking the time and effort to do something are two different things. Kravitz recognized how much of a struggle it would be to keep up the rekindled relationships on an on-gong basis once he ‘re-entered his life’. He determined to make time, and so should we all. I would be interested in a follow-up from Kravitz: how has he handled that intention?

Of course, you’ll relate to this book if you’re a baby-boomer, beginning to question the value of what you’re achieved thus far in life, but don’t wait until then. Read this at twenty, thirty, or forty and perhaps you’ll prevent some of the regret that comes of losing touch over the years with the people you care about. After all, as Kravitz says:

Life goes fast. Click. You are fifteen. Click, click. You are fifty-five. Click, click. You are gone. And so are the people who loved and nurtured you.

Link for my Canadian readers:

Unfinished Business

Note: Amazon.ca is charging twice as much (19.44) as Amazon.com ($10.00 for hardcover), so if you’re in Canada, I’d suggest the Kindle version:

Unfinished Business: One Man’s Extraordinary Year of Trying to Do the Right Things

First, let’s be sure you have this right. This is NOT the “daughter-in-law rules” as in “the cat rules, the dog drools” but as in rules of behavior for daughters-in-law or “101 Surefire Ways to Manage (and Make Friends with) Your Mother-In-Law”.
Read the rest of this entry »

Two time Emmy winning newscaster Deborah Norville is a successful author of several books including her latest Knit with Deborah Norville, as well as Back on Track: How to Straighten Out Your Life When It Throws You a Curve, and two children’s pop-up books: I Don’t Want to Sleep Tonight and I Can Fly!

The May issue of Success magazine contained an interview with Norville about her recent book Thank You Power: Making the Science of Gratitude Work for You.
Read the rest of this entry »

Part of rural living, especially in more remote areas, is the simplification of your approach to life. Living so close to the natural world–hanging out clothes on the line, growing your own vegetables, watching the deer in the fields–makes you aware of things that are not real.

Take toys, for example. Read the rest of this entry »

I read Success magazine every month at the suggestion of my business mentor. The articles are short & punchy; in fact, several features are only a paragraph or two. That makes it a lot easier for today’s busy professional to grab useful tidbits from its pages.

The regular “1 ON 1″ column in the April 2009 issue asks the question: “What are some everyday ways I can give back more to the people in my life who matter most–family & friends?”

Denis Waitley, sought-after speaker and best selling author (including Seeds of Greatness) suggests this:
“Take the time to send handwritten notes to those you care about. Text messages, voice mails and e-mails are convenient, but expedient. Be different. Send a card or note by regular mail.”

I couldn’t agree more! The novelty has long worn off e-cards. Hand-written cards, Read the rest of this entry »