Big Raven

Hapi and I have been sick the past week, I am recovered but I don't know if Hapi is. She looks un-Hapi and she hasn't eaten her dinner in a couple of days. She does eat any treats offered though and still likes her morning walk. No one else can see any sign of her not being her usual self. I'm thinking it is temporary, she's done this before.

As a result of not feeling well I have had no motivation to go outside for anything other than Hapi's walk and I have to say I am enjoying that. I did get out skating once and skiing once at the Reservoir. The skiing was interesting, I got a lot of advice on how to ski as I made my way around the ponds. The advice was coming from older dogwalkers who used to ski back in the day. I think they were envious, they wanted to ski too. Two mentioned that they still had their skis in storage somewhere, maybe they'd dig them out. I'm not a good skier so I don't mind advice. Who knows, maybe I'll have company for another ski.

Meanwhile back at the ranch I've been puttering around. I got it into my head to finish the woodcarving that I started in Toronto years ago, it has been sitting on a high shelf in a closet since I moved to Nova Scotia (in 2010). I got it down and looked at it.

Where are my carving tools? I spent a day ransacking the house looking for them. In the process, found all sorts of other interesting things and decided to throw away half of them. Interesting garbage, not much more than that. Found the tools.

Then I thought I'd rearrange the furniture in the living room so that Hapi's bed is closer to the armchair I usually sit it, I thought she might spend more time indoors if she could be closer to me. Did that. Didn't make a difference, she seemed to think the new location was a bit odd but she could live with it.

Where are the notes I took in the woodcarving class? Another day ransacking, but still haven't found them. I suspect I may have tossed the notebook they were in. After looking at the set of tools I realized that I have forgotten what many of them are for. I may have to find a book on it.

The instructor in the woodcarving class was a woman whose name I forget. Most of the students were older than me and had been in that class for years, they had a nice thing going. It was a 4-hour class, but halfway through they took a leisurely coffee break and sat at a round table together just chewing the fat. We each had our own project that we worked on independently and the instructor was available for advice. When I joined the class (I was only there for two years), she took several half-sessions to get me up and running, and she did that with every new student. We shared the tools, which were high quality carving tools that she provided. She was a professional carver, actually made a living doing it. It was a very relaxed fun time and I very much enjoyed listening to their stories. One carver was the same age as my Dad would have been and he had the same name! Both given and surnames! They were both in World War II, what an amazing coincidence.

My project is a bas relief (that is what she started everyone on, once you completed that you could do anything you wanted) based on an Emily Carr painting called Big Raven. I love almost everything Carr has done, but Big Raven is my favourite. The instructor approved of my choice, she said it was not too detailed and would transfer nicely to a bas relief.

The first step was to photocopy an illustration of that painting from a book and blow it up to the size of the bas relief, about 12"x16".

Then I laid out a slab of plasticine on a piece of masonite and transfered an outline of the photocopy to the plasticine by poking a needle through the photocopy along all the lines. I also traced the same lines onto a transparent film of mylar with a magic marker. I used the mylar outline to draw the picture onto a 2" thick slab of balsa wood.

The plasticine was for a mockup of the final bas relief, I started by carving the plasticine using the same tools I would use on the wood. Plasticine is a little more forgiving than wood if you make a mistake.

I started carving the wood before I completed the plasticine mockup, the idea was to always be a little further ahead on the plasticine than on the wood. Actually there are parts of the final bas relief that are started (some background details and a tree) that don't appear on the mockup. I don't remember why that is the case.

While I was writing this my neighbour phoned and we had a long conversation about this and that. By the time we were finished I had been given three assignments—call my son about his daughter, call another neighbour about a concert ticket, and call a mutual friend to arrange to go out for lunch this week—which I had to complete before getting back to this blog post. All done now. Texted my son, left a message about lunch, and reserved a ticket for Friday.

PS, I looked through old blog posts about my time in the woodcarving class, the instructor's name was Ruth.

A weekend of nothing

Weaving and woodcarving classes at Mimico Adult Ed end on the 19th, I have two more classes left. I didn't think my weaving project would be done by then and our instructor wants everything off the looms because there are no classes in the summer and she wants everything to be ready for new students in September. So she let me take the loom---it's a collapsible table loom---home this week to try to get my project finished. It is not completed but it's on target.


My woodcarving is progressing, but I am at a point where I need to be referring to my plasticine model for direction. I haven't actually completed the model, I left parts of it rather vague. So I brought it home to work on as well. My subject is the Emily Carr painting, Big Raven. It's interesting, she translated a three-dimensional object into a two-dimensional painting, and now I am trying to translate her two-dimensional painting into a three-dimensional carving. Not as easy or as simple as it might sound!


The blob in the upper right corner is intended to become a tree. I may or may not finish that, I have already blocked the tree into my carving so I am not too worried about that part. The area that really needs work though is the bottom, particularly on the right hand side. I have a set of small carving tools that are not very sharp, but they are perfect for working the plasticine.

Also, I am knitting another beret, this one without a brim. I am knitting it for a friend in Nova Scotia, I promised it to her last year. The pattern is complicated, I have been working on designing it all weekend, and now there are bits of coloured graph paper everywhere. I think I have it worked out though, I just have to knit it. It will have waves and little fishing boats and Cape Split as seen from Baxter's Harbour, and an Acadian stella maris (gold star on blue background) on the top.


The stella maris is both the Star of the Sea and the Star of the Virgin Mary, the Acadian patron saint. I am not Catholic (or Acadian) but I have a bit of a fondness for the Virgin Mary. She has many titles, one of them is Queen of Heaven. Some say that this harks back to her previous incarnation as the Goddess. She is not all that she seems. The Catholic Church only reluctantly admitted her to their pantheon of saints, she came to be there by popular demand.


And in my spare time I am reading Aging Well by George Vaillant, a very interesting book. He's a doctor who spent a lifetime working on a project to follow several hundred men and women through their lifetimes, from the teen years well into their eighties, to study adult development. He says, "And so whenever ... I write pedantically of successful aging---think joy. The heart speaks with so much more vitality than the head."

My only quibble so far with this book is that it seems very skewed toward the masculine experience. Women are included in the project, but I sense a distinct masculine filter, even though he tries very hard to be non-sexist.

I have not been outdoors except for some grocery shopping, a trip to the library and a couple of trips to the dogpark. When I don't get outdoors I feel like I am not doing much. Somehow I equate going outside with doing things, doing stuff indoors doesn't count. So even though I actually have been quite busy, I feel like I haven't done a thing all weekend, except drink seemingly endless cups of tea.

We had a cold low pressure pass through yesterday, it brought strong winds and snow! Well, I didn't actually see the snow, it was late at night and Isaac says he saw it on his way home from work (he's working very late with the Hot Docs film festival). We actually had to turn the furnace back on, it's so cold.

Last weekend I took Dobby to the dogpark with a new toy, a kind of sausage-shaped ball on a rope tether. I would swing it around over my head and let Dobby jump for it, then throw it as far as I could. Well, on one particular throw, I was swinging the thing over my head and Dobby was leaping up trying to get it. He leapt up behind my back and missed, but as he came down one of his legs caught on my shoulder bag strap and he lost his balance. He fell backwards, with his leg still tangled in the shoulder bag strap, which of course brought me down backwards on top of him. I smacked my head hard against the ground.

I was OK, as was Dobby, but a bit shaken up. The next day my neck hurt and I didn't make the connection until a couple of days later when a neighbour suggested it might be whiplash from the fall. My neck still hurts and now I have a headache as well. There's no bruise or tender spot, just the headache and neck stiffness. What with all the other health issues I am reluctant to take aspirin or any other pain killer, so by evening I am just tired of the headache. I hope it clears up soon.

Needless to say, I am not playing with that dog toy anymore.

The pleasures of sleeping in one's own bed

I am at home. Spring appears to be just around the corner, we have sun and above zero (Celsius) temperatures all week. There's hardly any snow around, I would love to go for a nice long walk or bike ride, it is so lovely out.

Gretel came to pick me up at St Joe's on Tuesday morning with a little bag of potato chips, my first food request after a nearly salt-free week. It was great, I truly savoured all that salt.

I signed myself out of the hospital, I did not wait for the doctor to sign me out. Several people advised me against doing that, but I was just so fed up with being there. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about why I was fed up, just to say it was a lot of unnecessary little irritants, both for me and for other patients I came to know over my time there. Somewhere along the line it got to me, I stopped trying to be polite and patient about it. When the nurse said I couldn't leave, I said, Is this a jail?

On the positive side, the cardiologist who treated me at St Mike's was wonderful, bedside manner coming out his ears. He actually came by after the procedure to apologize for causing me pain. I looked him up on the internet when I got home, turns out he is the head of cardiology at St Mike's and a professor at the U of T school of medicine.

My half-day at St Mike's was a bit of a contrast with St Joe's, I think if I ever have to go to hospital again, I will do my darndest to go to St Mike's. I saw Emmanual on Monday evening and he said pretty much the same about Western, so if I can't get to St Mike's, Western will be my second choice. St Joe's will be down around the frozen reaches of hell.

Emmanual had an angiogram and two angioplasties, he also was going home on Tuesday. I could see that he had finally reached his breaking point too, he was pretty grim about being back at St Joe's.

I still have whatever my original condition is, if anything somewhat worse. However I think I have had every possible test for heart-related problems and nothing significant showed up. So we can rule out the worst case scenario.

My breathlessness is now so bad that I cannot go outdoors without panting. Even walking from one end of my small apartment to the other is problematic, it wasn't like that before. However, I managed to see a doctor today and she's ordering a breathing test, presumably for asthma or something like that. She feels confident that I don't have any serious heart or lung issues after all the tests they ran while I was at St Joe's.

Yesterday I went to my Mimico Adult Ed classes and it was so nice to get out and about! I just popped in to the carving class because I didn't think I was up to the physical effort of carving just yet, but it turns out that another person in that class had also had an angiogram (plus three angioplasties) the same time I did. He was still at home but the instructor was passing around a card to him for everyone to sign.

I said I would be back to normal next week, and Bill, the guy that only comes for the coffee break laughed and said anybody who checks herself out of the hospital is sure to be just fine next week. Well, I hope I can live up to that.

Later that evening though I called Telehealth because I noticed a bruise forming near the angiogram site, a nurse called me back after a few minutes. Turns out he (it was a male nurse) was the same age as me and he said he'd had an angiogram too so he understood my concern.

He said, They call it the Golden Years but I think they are colour-blind, it's really the Rust Years!

Anyway, he asked some questions and gave me some useful advice, I am glad I called. He said it didn't sound urgent but I should probably get it looked at by a doctor within 24 hours. After I got off the phone, a friend of Gretel's recommended a clinic out in Mississauga (west of Toronto) as better than any clinic in Toronto for wait times, and since we live not too far from the highway it was just as easy to go there as to a clinic downtown, so Isaac and I drove there shortly after the Telehealth phone call.

However, it turned out the clinic was in a hospital and I was so turned off of hospitals that I made Isaac take me to a walk-in clinic down the road from the hospital. I just couldn't bear setting foot inside a hospital, even if it was only an outpatient clinic!

About half an hour later a doctor had examined my bruise and said it wasn't serious, so we headed home again. A spot of whiskey to calm my nerves and I was off to bed. I sure do appreciate my very own bed now.

Next time I am tempted to call 911, I'm gonna call Telehealth instead.

Unless I really do want four burly firemen on the doorstep.

Coffee break

In my woodcarving class on Wednesday we take a half hour break for coffee. It's a three hour class once a week, and to me half an hour for coffee seems like a long time. I'm paying for a carving class, not a coffee break! But I'm the newbie here, most of these folks have been in this class for many years, and they take a half hour break for coffee. One guy, he doesn't even come here to carve anymore, he just arrives at coffee break time and leaves right after!

At the beginning of each class Ruth, our teacher, always makes a few announcements. Sometimes stuff about the school, sometimes about our class, sometimes about other students she has. Today she tells us that one of her students in another class just died. A young woman, maybe early 50s, she was enrolled this term but she told Ruth she had terminal cancer, and I guess she wasn't kidding. Ruth thought she seemed very alive and active, it was hard to believe that she was gone so fast.

It seems like most people who enroll in one of Ruth's classes only leave via a funeral home. She always tells us when one of her students dies. I think that must be very strange to have your students die on you.

Today, Bill arrives a little early with two big boxes of doughnuts. Not just any doughnuts, SanRemo doughnuts. that's the little bakery and deli up the street from Mimico Adult Ed. He sets himself up at the coffee table and reads the newspaper while we carve, waiting for coffee break. Bill says that he has all his own tools at home, and he only occasionally needs advice or help from our teacher, Ruth, so there's no point taking up space in the class except for coffee.

Soon we are all gathered around the coffee table, five women and seven men. The big news today is Adam Giambrone, the City Councillor for my ward who is running for Mayor of Toronto. Or was. He is officially out of the race as of today because he is accused of and has admitted to having an affair with a woman while living with another (he's not married). Not that that is illegal, but it has made the news and a lot of people are upset about it. So at coffee today we talk about sexual impropriety and other misbehaviours, the things men do that are rather unsavoury, and the things that women do that are rather unsavoury. There are a few jokes.

At a certain point one of the men says, It says something about our society that we can have this conversation now, in mixed company, without name calling or embarrassment or hurt feelings. I don't think we could have had this conversation twenty years ago. We are a bit surprised by that comment, but we all agree with him. We probably could not have had this conversation in times gone by.

For all the unpleasant things going on in our culture today, there are a few things that are improving.

Emilie and Vasily

This morning I pulled into the Mimico Adult Ed Centre parking lot in my truck for my day of weaving and woodcarving classes. As I cruised around looking for a convenient parking spot I noticed a woman with a bike watching me. She had a stern look on her face, for some reason she seemed to disapprove of me. Or something. I parked and walked toward the entrance, passing the lady with her bike. She stopped me to talk, asking if I worked here.

I had a hard time understanding her, she seemed upset or concerned, she held up her bike lock and gestured toward my truck. I looked at her blankly, I had no idea what she wanted. Then she pointed in the other direction, at a man walking into the parking lot

Wait, she said, He speaks good English.

So I waited, and as he approached the building entrance she called out to him. He came over and she began to explain to him what her problem was.

Finally he turned to me and said, She has her bike lock but she brought the wrong key, it's her son's bike lock key. She can't lock her bike up and is wondering if she can put her bike in your truck while she is in class.

In the mornings at Mimico Adult Ed, they run ESL classes for immigrants. They are from all over the world. In the hallway, they have posted little one page personal descriptions of many of the students, written in their own words. They are quite poignant, some have good language skills, some do not, they are of all ages and from many different countries. These two people are obviously in an ESL class, but I do not know what language they are speaking, or where they are from.

Once I know what she wants I agree to it. I arrived early today so I have some time to kill anyway. I get a rag to wipe some of the slush off her bike wheels and fortunately have a couple of tarps I can use to protect the stuff I store in the back of my truck. The man helps me manoeuvre her bike into the truck, and I lock it up. I tell the man that they should follow me to my classroom so they will know where to find me when she needs her bike back. I ask the man to be there to help get her bike out again.

A couple of hours later, they are at the door of my weaving class looking for me. I go out to unlock my truck for her.

She pats my shoulder and says, You are a very nice woman.

I say, I am sure you would do the same for me.

After we get the bike out, the man asks my name and I tell him. He tells me that my name is the most popular name in the whole world. Then he tells me his name, Vasily, and she tells me hers, Emilie. She is Polish and he is Ukrainian.

I look at Vasily and say, You just had an election! How was it? Are you happy or disappointed?

He looks around and then says, I am very disappointed. That man is a murderer.

He starts to say more, and then stops and says that he must go, he will explain more the next time.

After my woodcarving class I am ready to go home. I go to the hallway where all the student descriptions are posted and I look for Emilie and Vasily. I find their descriptions, on the wall across from the lunch room. Emilie has included a photo of herself, Vasily a little cartoon of a teddy bear.

Emilie has come here with her husband and children, she has an MA in Administration from a Polish university, and hopes one day to learn enough English to get a job as an Administrator.

Vasily is here alone, his wife and children are still in the Ukraine. He came here to be free. Life is very difficult, he does not have a job, but he hopes to get himself established here and to bring his family to be free too.

Another life

He was in his early 50s---53 to be exact---when he was laid off by the hospital. He worked in a lab there. They gave him a severance package and a counsellor, and sent him on his way.

The counsellor was actually quite helpful, told him the best way to handle his severance for tax purposes and encouraged him to go back to school. She told him there was money available for retraining but it would take time for the application to go through so he should get that started right away. He could figure out what he wanted to study later.

Well, this was in Ontario's Bob Rae days and that counsellor wasn't kidding about there being money available. However she grossly overestimated how long it would take for Walter's application to go through, he had hardly submitted it when they told him it was approved.

Now what school was that again that he intended to go to?

He had no idea.

He did know that at 53 finding another job was going to be darn hard, but he didn't have a clue what he wanted to study or retrain for. The counsellor helped him fill in applications for various community colleges.

He grew up in Saskatchewan, when they said they wanted his high school transcript he was dumbfounded. His graduation diploma had been typed out on a slip of paper, how could he expect to get a transcript? But he wrote away for it and I guess that high school managed to type out a transcript for him, 35 years later.

Most of the colleges he applied to said forget it. They weren't interested in his transcript or him. But he got a call from somebody in Admissions at Centennial College who told Walter to come down right away and talk to him.

Walter hurried down with his transcript, the fellow glanced at it and said, "You're in! Now what was it that you wanted to study?"

Walter didn't know.

So together they went through the college prospectus, and ended up selecting some art classes for him. The fellow told Walter that he could use these classes to put together a portfolio if he wanted to apply to OCAD, the Ontario College of Art and Design.

Walter spent a couple of years at Centennial. He'd never studied art before, but he had the most wonderful time at Centennial doing art of all kinds. By the end of his time there he was pretty sure he wanted to go on to OCAD, and he was pretty sure that the thing he wanted to study there was silk screening.

Walter applied to OCAD, was accepted, and then he applied to have his two years at Centennial accepted as the equivalent of the first two years at OCAD. They agreed. So another two years at OCAD, painting, sculpting, photographing, weaving and of course silk screening, and now he had a degree in art.

Walter owned a house. He bought it when he was in his 40s, back when interest rates were through the roof but house prices were still reasonable. He worked diligently to pay off the mortgage and in ten years he was debt-free. So when he got laid off he owned his own home free and clear, and he had a little bit in savings. Between the help that the Bob Rae government gave him and his own resources, he managed to survive four years of school. After that he just kept taking courses in things that interested him, quilting, weaving, this, that and the other thing.

He says he never thought he'd manage a "Freedom 55", but I guess he did, and two years early at that.

Walter started a small business. It was not intended to be a big moneymaker, but he loved to shop and he had an awful lot of stuff that eventually he had to get rid of if he wanted to continue to buy new things. So he started selling his puchases at the St. Lawrence flea market, then later he got space at an antique mall.

The antique mall suits him perfectly. He has space there for his items, mostly china and pottery, and the operators of the mall handle the sales and take a percentage of the sale price. He periodically shows up to resupply his space when his items have been sold. He goes to second hand stores to browse for more, occasionally goes to yard sales, and has handled one or two estates for people. It's perfect, enough work to keep him moving and learning, not so much to tire him out or prevent him from pursuing other interests.

I sit next to Walter in weaving class. He's been in this class for around 12 years now. He's working on a large tapestry based on a photo of a lake surrounded by multi-coloured trees and rocks.

He's been working on this particular tapestry for a couple of years.

He's in no rush.

Paddy and the U-boat

This is a third-hand true story, as told to me by the son of the central character, Paddy.

Paddy was Irish, he went to sea at an early age, sailed on a variety of ships and eventually worked himself up to owning and skippering a ship of his own. First ship he skippered was sunk by a German U-boat during World War I, second one was too, and the third one bankrupted him. Eventually he emigrated to Canada, settled in Baie Comeau, and his son grew up to be a merchant marine sailor too, got his captain's papers and spent half a lifetime sailing up and down the North American Atlantic coast. Now he (the son, that is) is happily retired in Toronto.

This story is about Paddy's second ship. Paddy was out there off the coast of Ireland, when they spotted the U-boat. It had risen to the surface and the U-boat's captain was out on deck hailing Paddy's ship. The German captain gave Paddy a choice, he could be bombed or torpedoed, whichever he preferred. I'm not sure what Paddy replied, and the German captain wasn't either because although he spoke perfect English, Paddy's thick Irish brogue was beyond him. So the U-boat captain got into a little lifeboat and had his men take him to the ship he intended to sink.

Paddy waited for him on the deck, and as the German captain climbed the Jacob's Ladder onto the ship, the two men cried out in surprise and delight, and embraced each other heartily. The tears flowed. Turns out that before the war they had sailed together as young men on a Norwegian whaling ship in the North Sea. In fact Paddy had saved the young German's life after he was seriously injured in a whaling accident.

After the emotional reunion they retired to Paddy's quarters to discuss the situation, and again the German captain offered Paddy the choice of torpedo or bomb. He told Paddy that he could not shirk his duty to the Fatherland in time of war, but he would certainly ensure that Paddy and all his men would be safely off the ship in lifeboats before the deed was done. Paddy chose the bomb.

True to his word the U-boat captain allowed time for Paddy and all his men to depart the ship in the lifeboats.

The U-boat submerged and disappeared and the men in the lifeboats waited.

They waited twenty minutes and nothing happened.

They waited another twenty minutes and still nothing happened, their ship still sat at a safe distance away.

In all, they waited a couple of hours in the lifeboats, no bomb went off, no ship exploded.

Finally, Paddy ordered the men in his boat to row him back to their ship. He climbed the ladder up onto the ship's deck and ordered his men to paddle safely away. He looked around, finally ending up in the galley where he found a note on a table.

The note said that not even for the Fatherland could his old friend bring himself to leave Paddy on the sea in a lifeboat, there was indeed a bomb but it was defused and the note gave directions for where to find it.

Paddy found the bomb, it was sure enough defused, and he called his men to return to their ship. They sailed away unscathed.

Unfortunately Paddy's next encounter with The Hun ended less happily, he survived but his ship was sunk.

I heard this story this afternoon, in my woodcarving class, the narrator swears it is true and that it can be found in the archives.

Today was the first day of classes in the new year, it was good to see my friends from last year in the weaving and woodcarving classes.

I am at a stage with my carving that I need our instructor's help, but she is busy with a new student for the first couple of classes, so I spent most of the class wandering around looking at other students' work and chatting. In this class there are four women and eight men, and I am one of the younger ones. Several of the men are in their eighties and full of interesting stories. Such as this one.

I also chatted with a fellow student who grew up in a Japanese internment camp in Kaslo, BC (during World War II). He said it was fun for him but maybe not so much for his parents. They started out in a hotel room, and later were moved to a little house. His father was required to do forced labour at another location, building roads. He said his father was a tiny man, it was hard to imagine how the Canadian government thought he was suitable for hard labour on road construction, but eventually they saw the light and returned him to his family in Kaslo.

The instructor tells me that I may have to switch to another class if I want more instruction, I hate to leave this class because these people are so great, but I may have to do it if I want to get anywhere with my carving.

Healing

Wednesday is my class day, weaving, carving and tai chi. The tai chi remains a challenge, I wonder if I am ever going to get it. In carving I continue to chip away at the wood around the Big Raven, I wonder if I will ever get to actual carving. Maybe next week. I filled two large dust bins with wood chips in the course of the afternoon.

In the morning weaving I do feel like I am making progress though. I've finished the sections of basic weaving and am now working on the parts where you have to be able to "read" the pattern that Line has created for our samplers. She spent a few minutes instructing Kendra and I in how to do that. Line also brought her finished tapestry called Healing. It is a brightly coloured abstract tapestry, about five feet long and a foot and a half wide. Very beautiful. It is the second in a series she is doing.

She also read to us a little essay she had written based on her experience creating this tapestry. She said that during the long process she felt many times that she was making mistakes, it wasn't working the way she designed it, there were problems with it that any fool could see. She said that feelings of defeat, failure, not being good enough and so forth came up continuously. But she realized that the weaknesses, mistakes and failings of this particular work were part of its character, part of the whole creation process.

And she realized the same things about herself, that her own failures and weaknesses were part of her character, part of who she was, not to be lamented but to be celebrated as part of what made her who she was. She said she felt a constant tugging to be down on herself for her various faults and weaknesses, but this was to be resisted.

She pointed out that when we create something we are intimately aware of its faults and our mistakes in creating it, when everyone else is admiring and being impressed by it. We should embrace our flaws as well as our strengths, the sum of it all is who we are and as an act of creation to be celebrated.

Getting there

Yesterday was my school day, all day spent in weaving, carving and tai chi. I feel like I turned a corner in all three classes.

In the weaving class I finally got my warp successfully strung on the loom and could start actually weaving, I managed to get just over six inches done.

In wood carving I mostly spent the class chipping away a lot of the wood. My project is based on an Emily Carr painting that I happen to like a lot, called Big Raven. I have to remove about half the wood in the areas that will be sky and background, so that the raven and the foreground will stand out, I should have most of that done by next class and can start carving the raven itself.

In tai chi I think I'm finally getting it, I was able to do most of the form without getting too lost this time. We're learning the 24 form version, but even that is hard to learn. I tend to focus on the arm movements, but the instructor wants us to focus on breathing and footwork. Interesting. Anyway, it's coming along.

Last week only five of us showed up due to the weather, and this week the instructor wanted to push on to the next positions. But most of the class was lost because they weren't there last week. So one person asked for a review, the instructor asked the class to vote on whether to review or move on, and review won. I was glad of that.

I have an appointment next week at the naturopathy clinic, hopefully they'll have something useful for me to try for my Brain Fog. I was supposed to go to the art gallery with Beth today but she called to cancel because it was so cold and she didn't want to be standing at the bus stop in the cold. I was so tired after yesterday that I was happy to have a day to piddle around.