80 is the new 60!!! Happy Birthday Dad...March 19, 2009

Lessons in the Snow

Santa and Frosty are trapped until Spring buried behind mounds of snow that have no intent of decreasing in size in the near future. The snowplow had just made another pass by our driveway when Lyndon decided to head out in the car. Rather than shovel away the pile of snow left behind he (as is his usual way of clearing the driveway) decided to try to plow right through it. To his dismay, oncoming traffic stopped him midway through the heap and the car became lodged with the rear end sticking partway onto the road! When I arrived home from work he was frantically shovelling (probably not wanting me to know what had happened) but when he saw me coming, ran down the road to greet me, all smiles he said "I got the car stuck!" I guess you have to know Lyndon but I couldn't help but laugh at him. After 2 and 1/2 hours of digging and spinning the tires it was discovered that the underneath of the car was resting quite comfortably on the thick layer of ice and snow that had been packed down over the last two months compliments of Lyndon's snow clearing techniques...the car was not going to move! Our good neighbour, Sandy came over to investigate and assisted with the shovelling. I saw the two of them standing back thoughtfully looking the situation over and Sandy reached up, put his arm around Lyndon's shoulder and said something I couldn't hear. The sheepish look that came across Lyndon's face gave me the feeling that it was a fatherly comment about the importance of keeping the snow and ice from building up on your driveway and I found out later that was pretty much the jist of his remark. A tractor with a front end loader was removing snow from the apartments across the road and the driver offered to pull Lyndon out. With the help of Sandy's tow rope the car was dislodged in a matter of minutes and the driver then cleared away all of our snow and even some of the ice from the driveway.

I heard today that they are calling for more snow on Friday...it will be interesting to see if any lessons were learned.

Lyndon would probably say the lesson he learned is to make friends with someone that owns a tractor!!!

My lesson was: if you can say "Someday we will look back on this and laugh" ...you might as well just laugh today!

What's up with Down East?

I have wondered for a long time where the term "Down East" came from. When looking at a map it always appeared to me that I would be going up and then out East from Ontario...not down! Why do we say we are going "Out West" and yet we don't say we are going "Out East"?

Apparently the term as it applies to Eastern Maine originated long ago when ships were sailing from Boston to ports in Maine, which is east of Boston, the wind was at their backs (downwind) so this is why they would say they were going down East. On the return trip they would be going upwind and to this day you will still hear people going from Maine to Boston saying they are "going up to Boston" even though geographically Boston is about 50 miles south of the Maine border.

Canadians refer to the Maritime provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and PEI, as going "Down East" because it is in reference to being "Down" river from more western provinces up the St. Lawrence River.

So there you have it...a little trivia that you can wow all your friends with!

Since my spare time is in abundance these days, I have finally been motivated to get the paint brushes off the shelf. It was suggested by a dear friend that I paint my dad a picture for his 80th birthday and this was the result. The covered bridge is located minutes from St. George by Lake Utopia. I have been told that covered bridges are also called "Kissing Bridges" where when crossing in a horse and buggy, lovers could steal a kiss in the privacy provided by the bridge. How romantic! Unfortunately for Lyndon, I am terrified of crossing these in the car and when we do cross one, I cover my eyes and scream the whole way! How NOT romantic!