If I post some cloud pictures first, yes right there, and some wheat, the kitten pictures should effectively make a subliminal impact.

This is not a food blog, but into every life comes a hot milk sponge cake. No one in this house likes shortcake - it's just a biscuit - and one person in the house, the tallest one, likes those store-bought sponge things made from corn syrup and cellophane. I promised to make a real sponge if he brought home strawberries. Here it is. It's from an internet recipe, only I opted against the obsessive sifting at every step. Really, in this day and age there are whisks. Use one to mix the dry ingredients and you're fine.
I knew you'd want to see it, this nice cake.
The sad thing is that this got flooded with milk in his bowl the same as if it was a nasty chemical cake. The good thing is that this looks like breakfast.

So I post only pretty things or things I find interesting. But I live in SW Ontario, where not everything is pretty or interesting. It is only by ignoring a great deal of the surroundings that I get nice-ish pictures. I suppose that is the same everywhere. Would you like to compare? This is the village in which we had a little job to do on Saturday. I was not trying to make this village look bad. Of course, I could have made it look fine by focusing on flower petals or, well, not cornices or anything because there weren't any. Not rain barrels. I stood in one spot nearly, moved a bit, and snapped what I was seeing. Horses! Those are pretty. But they have giant satellite dishes beside them and no thought went into that fence. And so on. Are you in a more depressing place than this? Really sorry if so. I'll cheery up the next post.

Still in spring cleaning mode and found this. It's circa 1974. I appear to be the only one not taking seriously the flood conditions in which we are canoeing.

I'm just not capturing clouds the way I want with this little digital camera. I mess with the midtones in the editing so that you see what I saw before I snapped the photo, but it still doesn't work out. See, this was a series of what looked like innocuous funnel clouds -- slow-moving, non-destructive, lighthearted tornadoes pirouetting from the wheat field to Rick's pasture. Just doesn't come across, does it. A little?

Canoeing on Good Friday, we (the patient sternsman pictured and I) passed, then stopped to take a look at, this cow skeleton on the riverbank, surprisingly cohesive after storms, floods, scavengers. We (I) took photos that day of many living things, mostly turtles and ducks, but we (I) liked these photos best, less for the dead cow in them and more for the utter stillness of the place.

Once a turtle counter, always a...

Took a photo this week while walking to Florence, and then couldn't help but sneak up on my unsuspecting subject, paparazzi-style, to get another shot.

Then, camera already out, I took a photo of a tree (that I deemed not interesting enough even for blogdom) and a gate (mostly for the sunpath around it, not the gate itself) on the way back.

Lord willin' and the creek don't rise.

Just got called, by my husband, a temptress, for sending him a text message. And he's right. If you're not too squeamish, here's what I said:

Let's ditch work and go canoeing.

Oh, it is so beautiful here today. Something like 16 C and sunny. You can smell spring. There are lines of trumpeter swans in the sky. But I'm trapped behind this computer and he's trapped in a bathroom renovation. Probably had to dig himself out from under the crawlspace to answer the ring.

(Pussywillows, magnolia buds, nearly melted snow.)

Oh no, oh no, oh no! It's written in the stars! (On a fortune cookie insert - same thing.) But this was Harry's fortune; mine was some advice about happiness or whatever. I suppose they mesh: the fact that the waters are warm is a comfort.

Won a turtle-counting award yesterday. Yes, sir. It's three of us sharing the big wooden plaque. (We three think we, Jan, Janice, and I, were chosen for our spokesmodel qualities. Why else would Donald, Paul, Cam, Nancy, Harry and Hugh have been left out? Not cute enough, maybe.)
Why is this on a sailing blog? Because I was reminded, during yesterday's powerpoint presentation, of how much I like being on the water. You have to be on water to count turtles, at least the kinds of turtles the Conservation Authority cares about, and I like being on water. Calm or just slightly ripply river water. In a canoe. The paddler is in charge of the canoe. No matter what a skipper says, it is the wind that is in charge of a sailboat.

From what I've seen.

Splicing is fairly fun. It's a little like weaving rugs, maybe more like macramé. It requires cool tools and patience. Since I weave, spin, braid rugs, knit, I am a big fan of activities that require cool tools and patience. I bought Harry a red rigging knife/awl for St. Valentine's Day, and it's a little (okay, a lot) like when he bought a router on my birthday. I may end up borrowing it, especially if my new dream comes true. New dream: that Harry indeed sails among the BVIs and I stay ashore one of them, who cares which?, and pick up rope-splicing jobs. It could work...

Big talk around the kitchen table last night about sailing among the British Virgin Islands. Maybe, they think, it will be an all-guy trip. My services as nauseated and frightened galley cook will not be required in that case. Those who want to sail get to sail, and those who want to stay clear of pirates and storms get to stay clear of...
This is promising.

Stars align...
1) Yesterday, I decided once and for all this blog should be about sailing.
2) Yesterday, I directed Anna to the blog in a pathetic bid for readers. Anna was surprised to see that I began it in 2002. That's before blogging was cool, right? Just a minute, though - is blogging cool? I guess it is okay if you comment, but I'm afraid of what you are going to say. I should add that the number of posts per year must be some sort of bottom-of-the-barrel record. That's something.
3) Yesterday, I promised to donate my monstrous old metal filing cabinet to the local Cultural Coalition. You think this is unrelated, but wait. That involved cleaning it out. It would be nice to simply dump it all into a sack and make a burnt offering to the gods of accumulation, but I suspect there may be land deeds in it and, what's this?, yes, an important 1968 Sunday School diploma. I could take it to church meetings to add authenticity to myself when foisting crackpot ideas on our unimpressed vestry. But I digress. In the sifting, I found this photo.
It is of my sailor brother and said Anna in 2002, and was taken just after the sailing adventure of which I wrote at the time. Look at how they survived unscathed. Smiling. Unafraid.
Maybe sailing isn't so bad.

Although I consistently purchase books with titles like Death at Sea and Terror on the Waves as Christmas presents for my husband, each one only makes him more keen to try his hand at the tiller of something bigger than his 11-ft homemade skiff.
Time for a new tack, as the sailors say.
I booked us a blustery end-of-January weekend trip to downtown Chicago. The Strictly Sail Boat Show. Discount passes for early booking, cheap train ticket, discounted room a few snowy blocks away. If that didn't take the wind out of his sails...

But no. The city was fantastic, and so was the show. Why, there were seminars every 45 minutes on Sailing Basics, Cold Water Survival, Line Splicing, Keeping Your Eggs Fresh (I think that one was called The Essential Galley), Topless Sports Moms (that one was Sailing in Northern Italy), and my favourite, Two Royal Marines Sail the Northwest Passage and Run Out of Fresh Water. Boy, though, that last one did nothing to dissuade our man. The stars in his eyes shone bright. We may soon be living in the high arctic in this:

Must find a copy of The Franklin Expedition. For all the good it will do.

Just because I don't look busy from afar - there's no commute, for instance, for the neighbours to witness - or from close up - never stick my tongue out of the side of my mouth, for instance, when editing - those around me are fooled into thinking I have time to tear down and rebuild their chimneys. Does this happen to you? It's only me, isn't it? I knew it. And if you said no to such a request, they'd accept it, right? Yup, it's only me. They wouldn't laugh at you if you offered to write out the instructions for mixing the mortar. They wouldn't say, "No, no, just come when you can."
I've got to start sticking that tongue out.

Hey, know what can get a person updating his/her blog? Having something else that needs doing. It's just like scrubbing the floor when there's the letter to the relatives out west to write. My *letter to the relatives* is a book in two languages, one not mine, that I must type. So here I am, not typing it. Typing this.

You know, I'd forgotten I even started a blog, even had one out there, until I read an article in Utne recently about blogs. "Oh right, I have one," I said. Bit my bottom lip and looked off. Ten months is a very long time between updates, but Saskabush seems to be in about the same boat. (That's a nearly unrelated aside just to make me feel better.) We'll call this blog my stepping stone to bigger things, other sites with information so recent you'll gasp. But I'll be back.

How did they get so picky anyway? They were raised by someone who eats cheese rinds.