Three years ago today, this big beautiful boy wagged his way into our hearts and lives. He arrived a week before Christmas fresh off a plane from Egypt.
Every dog has their own unique personality and spirit, but Bentley is special. He instinctively knows which one of us needs him most. This past week, when Dave was as sick as a dog with the flu, Bentley barely left his side and when Grace comes home tomorrow, I’m sure he will be snuggling up to welcome her home and make up for lost time.
He’s stupid, loveable, stubborn, lazy, ball crazy and we love him to bits.
Happy Gotcha Day Bentley.
The time he was drinking the toilet water and caught the toilet paper roll.
I’ve been sporting a new look this past week. Dave and Clare too. We’ve been going to work and school all glammed up with tiny pieces of dainty silver glitter on our faces and outfits.
No, it’s not a new fashionable holiday trend or a case of a family craft night gone bad. Let me explain.
It started a few weeks ago at Halloween. Grace and her boyfriend Devon dressed up as the Impossible Dream, the Maple Leafs hoisting the Stanley Cup. Devon was wearing a Toronto Maple Leafs Jersey and Grace was wearing a cute silver party dress she bought off a cheap online retailer. Here is a picture of them with the Toronto skyline in the background.
A few days later, Grace came home for a dentist appointment, and like a typical teenager, dumped all her laundry on the floor. After she left, I put on my hazmat suit and swept her room for suspicious substances, dirty clothes and garbage, then loaded the laundry machine with some towels and her clothes, including the glittery silver Stanley Cup dress.
You can guess the rest. When I went to fold our laundry, all the towels and clothes were covered in little grey sparkles and we’ve all been very glittery ever since.
We’d been styled by a cheap party dress and a dryer.
The reactions at work were priceless. People looked at me with a slightly bewildered look and asked if I had done something to my make-up. My friend Peggy said I looked like an angel. It resulted in a few laughs to brighten up the early dreary days of November.
The holiday season is soon upon us. This week’s #HappyAct is to add some glitter and glam to your life.
I walked into the bathroom the other day and found two toilet paper rolls sitting on the counter with cartoonish frowny faces and the words “Recycle me” drawn on them. The one toilet paper character looked like it was giving me the finger.
I did the only logical thing, which was to take another toilet paper roll, cut it in half and make two little toilet paper roll children with the words “Mama” and “Dada” on them.
These are the types of love notes you send after 31 years of marriage.
Next weekend, Dave and I will celebrate our 31st wedding anniversary. In a funny twist of fate, we’ll be spending it up north at the same cottage we spent our honeymoon before going to Algonquin Park to see Grace.
I wish I had some brilliant insights about marriage but I don’t. After 31 years of marriage, I truly believe it’s a crap shoot whether people stay together or split up. We’ve just been lucky at crap.
The one thing I will say and they don’t tell you in marriage courses is marriage changes over time.
You start out madly in love and lust, then become each other’s best friends as you begin to build a life together. Children rock your world and your relationship takes second string as you focus on raising your kids.
You learn to live with each other’s foibles and idiosyncracies and intimately know each other’s aches and pains, regrets and dreams.
But if you’re lucky, you still wake up every morning not being able to imagine going through life without that person by your side, sharing a laugh or two, and planning your next adventure together.
Just make sure you recycle the toilet paper rolls and put the seat down before heading out.
We were greeted in the farm store by a young girl, who handed us a self-guided map and invited us to take a tour of this working farm.
Our tour guide was an Australian shepherd who led the way from paddock to pen to the various barns and milking stations.
The farm has a massive herd of 800 water buffalo and the paddocks are organized by age, with the adults, tweens and babies separated in the calf barn.
I was very taken by these interesting creatures. The babies in the calf barn were either very curious and friendly, eager for a pet or very shy, backing away from the stall when you went to touch them.
The adults were HUGE with massive teats, broad girths and some with devil horns that twisted around their head.
The farm operation was very modernized, with robotics in the milking barn that steered the cows into their stalls and automatic milkers that disconnected immediately as soon as the cows gave their 8-10 litres per day of milk.
We learned 15% of the world’s milk comes from water buffalo and an adult water buffalo can reach weights up to 2600 pounds.
After our tour, we shopped in the farm’s Buff Stuff Store which carries every type of buffalo meat you can imagine from testicles (limit one per customer!), to liver, to beef patties and steaks and cheeses made from the buffalo milk, their most popular being their mozzarella di bufala, as well as jewelry and steins made out of buffalo horns.
After buying some buffalo burgers for the barbecue, we chatted with owners Martin Littkemanna and Lori Smith, whose young daughter was selling lemonade and homemade cookies to raise money for a friend whose mother was fighting cancer.
Dave asked about the different species of water buffalo, since when we were in Tanzania we had been warned that they could be aggressive. Martin explained there are two main types of water buffalo, river buffalo and swamp buffalo and the ones found on their farm are domesticated with a much more docile personality than the ones we saw in Africa.
Fall is a great time to tour a farm and many local communities host farm events. If you live in eastern Ontario, Open Farm Days in Frontenac County run from September 1 to October 15 and offer a huge array of back-to-the-farm experiences, some free for the whole family. For more information, see openfarms.ca.
With groceries, hotel and restaurant prices through the roof these days, it can be a challenge to find things to do without spending an arm and a leg.
But as I recently discovered, there are still lots of things you can do for free and still have fun. Here are some fun events and things to do that don’t cost a dime coming up:
Fantasy in the Forest, July 15-16: if you’ve never been to Jamie Brick’s art show, you’re missing a real treat. Set on the shores of his beautiful property on Draper Lake, this unique local artist invites other fantasy artists to showcase their wares. One of the most interesting and unique shows you’ll ever attend in a drop-dead gorgeous setting.
Music in the Park: Thursday and Friday nights in Kingston. My favourite night is country music night on Thursdays when you can catch live music in the park, then head over for Movies in the Square. South Frontenac Township also hosts live music at a different beach each month in the summer. On July 29 it’s Dewy Roadkill at Gilmour Point Beach and on August 19 it’s Tyler Brett Forkes at The Point in Sydenham.
Brockville Railway Tunnel: Walk the 1km long old railway tunnel and marvel at the magical lights. Still one of the coolest, free tourist attractions in Eastern Ontario.
Princess Street Promenade in Kingston: it’s always a fun day when the main street in Kingston becomes a big pedestrian walkway. The next promenade is August 5, 2023.
Movies in the Square: grab a lawn chair, popcorn and beverage of choice and watch a favourite flick under the stars in Kingston’s beautiful market square. Every Thursday night throughout the summer. Read my post “Watch a movie under a starry sky”.
Jones Falls Stone Arch Dam: Park the car at the top parking lot and hike the trail, from the magnificent stone dam, down along the locks of the Rideau Canal. Bring your bathing suit and a picnic and make a day of it.
Elbow Lake Environment Educational Centre offers free presentations on Thursday nights throughout the summer. Upcoming talks include Nocturnal Animals on July 27, What Lurks Beneath: Aquatic Species Study on July 3 and a viewing of the Perseid meteor shower on August 10. You can even stay overnight (for a fee) in one of their cabins. Clare and I did this one summer.
For more ideas on fun, inexpensive things to do in this region, see 25 Things to Do in South Frontenac. Everything with an asterisk is free.
Kingston is a great place to catch music in the park followed by movies in the square on Thursday nights
Some time ago, I stumbled across these statistics on happiness.
There’s not much we can do about our age and genetic disposition, but we can make an effort to reach out to friends, spend time with our loved ones and focus on what’s most important in our lives: developing positive relationships.
If all else fails, wear something orange or yellow.
On Friday, when the temperatures were forecasted to soar into the thirties, I said to Dave, “I’m calling a cottage day”.
You don’t need to actually own a cottage to call a cottage day. A cottage day is when you pretend you are at somebody else’s cottage, where there’s no laundry or chores calling your name and you spend the entire day lounging around, relaxing on the deck reading books, playing games, eating and drinking.
It’s a day where you give yourself permission to do whatever you want and not even think about housework or chores.
I slept in, read a magazine while eating my breakfast, did a few things around the house, then headed to the lake. I read my book on the dock, threw the ball endlessly for Benny in the lake, went for a long paddle and three long swims, before heading up to have lunch on the back deck.
After lunch, I took a nap in the screened porch, then we went to our local farmer’s market to stock up on fresh greens and bread for dinner. It was exactly what I needed and the perfect panacea after a busy week and month.
Years ago, after we got married, Dave and I had the great debate. Do we save and buy a cottage property, or buy a home on the water? Two big factors swayed us to our decision to buy a year-round waterfront home.
The first was we were both absolutely useless at home renovations, repairs and maintenance. The idea of maintaining two properties was just not in the cards for us.
The second was our decision to move out of the Greater Toronto Area to north of Kingston where lakefront properties abound. We made it a goal the minute we moved down here to own lakefront and bought our little piece of paradise six years later and have never looked back.
Now Dave’s favourite thing is to go fishing on Sunday nights after supper. When we’re out on the boat, he always says the same thing. “If we were up at a cottage, we’d be stuck in traffic right now driving back to the city.” Then he casts his line into the still waters, the setting sun casting a warm glow behind him, and turns to me and smiles.
The perfect end to the perfect cottage day.
This week’s #HappyAct is to call a cottage day. Enjoy!
Sometimes, when life is a blur, I like to look back on my camera roll to remind me of all the things I’ve done in the past month. It reminds me that no matter how busy and tired I am, I’m blessed to live such a full life, filled with good friends, good food, people who love me no matter what, and lots of fond memories. Here are some of my favourite pictures from my camera roll this month.
What’s on your camera roll? Tell me about your favourite photos in the comments.
Pictured above: We had Dave’s Dad visiting us last week and we went for a drive up to Wheeler’s Pancake House for breakfast. If you’ve never tried their maple breakfast sausages, they are definitely worth the drive!
This is my friend Audrey. We went to the Frontenac Women’s Chorus spring concert and Audrey won the door prize, this beautiful herb basket!
These are my friends Steve and Katie. They’re getting married in June and I went to their stag and doe. Here they are feeding each other cupcakes blindfolded.
We love dog visitors and one of our favourites, Rip came to stay with us for a few days this month. It’s also been great having Grace home.
One night after work last week I stopped by to drop off my seedlings fundraiser money to my friends Helen and Roger. Roger gave me a tour of his beautiful gardens.
This weekend, Clare competed in a hockey tournament in Kingston. She played six games in three days. They took home silver.
I once read the greatest thing you can do for your children is to give them roots and wings.
Roots where there is…
People who love them unconditionally
A shoulder to cry on
Food in the fridge
A hug to share
Doggies to cuddle with
Respite from the daily stresses of life
A sympathetic ear
…no matter how messy their room is
Wings to…
Venture out on their own
Race down mountains on skis
Swim across lakes
And win face-offs at centre ice
Set their own study and work schedules
Discover what they’re good at
Make their own decisions and mistakes
And tackle the world on their own terms
…even if it means worrying and sleepness nights
To my beautiful girls Grace and Clare, I’m so proud of you. It has been a privilege to watch you find your wings and soar. Know we’ll always be here for you.
