Midnight Dreamers......

Mister Moon
We waltz in your starlight
Feet planted firmly
On ground growing cold
Once popsicles melted on tiny warm
fingers
Lifes sweater's unravelling
Chilled to the bone
Knit me a new one
With stars shining buttons
Yarns made of memories
Woven with love
We'll dress you in kindness
Stars silky fingers
Will knit you a love song
To wear up above

Image" Midnight Dreamers" by Cara & Pam - Hand-Carved/Mixed Media

On Becoming an Old Goat......

Last Sunday I turned 40. I took it a lot better than I thought I would and am actually quite pleased to be half-way to 80. Indeed! When I was a tadpole, I thought 40 was ancient. I thought that when I was 40 I'd be  a great-grandmother with lovely blue-rinsed pin curls, wearing homemade shawls and support hose. 

I thought I would be eating 3 prunes a day. 

As it turns out, I am not a grandmother at all and my hair is pink. I DO wear home-made shawls but they are funky and "cool" and so is eating 3 prunes a day. I never heard anyone complain that they were too "regular". (SHE just peeked over my shoulder and informed me that talking AND writing about being "regular" is definitely a sign of aging.)

I am forty. I took the long way to get here. The unpaved road that was bumpy and often times almost impassable but I finally arrived. And that is just how it feels. I followed my Nana Bea's advice...I never go barefoot and always wear socks and have never frozen my uterus on cold floors. She also taught me to always ice a cake with three times more frosting than it calls for. She taught me how to laugh at myself, how to be myself and that being by myself isn't being alone. She always painted her nails red. Even when she was very old and had shaky hands and got nail-polishy smudges around the edges, she still painted her nails. She was awesome and I am glad I had her help along the way. I know who I am. Today. I am not sure who I'll be tomorrow but I hope it is still someone who doesn't mind milk coming out of her nose because she is laughing so hard and doesn't mind getting paint on her best shoes.

I turned the page from 39 to 40 on an evening spent with the dearest of Dears. There is nothing more important than friends and love and laughter. I am 40 and one of the luckiest gals I know.

Wee Rose is still trying to discover who she is but she has lots of time to find out. After all, she's just a kid.

Tantrums Will Get You Everywhere.....

Image: "Cat on a Clothesline Clock- BooBoo is Just Hanging Around..." Mixed Media by Cara & Pam

I very often paint cats that are wearing very funky, very chunky, very groovy, oh-so-swoovy high heeled shoes. I didn't own a pair myself until last week when we were in Quebec and SHE filled the Red-Shoe Shaped Hole in my heart. My painted cat shoes came to life. In my size. Un. Believeable. John Fluevog shoes are cool.
BOOBOO owns many different sets of shoes and her collection is quite eclectic. Strappy sandals, flip-flops, loafers, sneakers, mary-janes and cowboy boots. She does NOT, however, own a pair of very funky, very chunky, very groovy, oh-so-swoovy red high heels. When she saw mine, she cried. She bawled. She threw a tantrum. She caterwauled.

It doesn't help matters that I have been wearing my shoes all day-every-day ( a 24 hour All You Can Feet Buffet for my toesies) while unpacking the squillions of boxes canvas reproductions we brought back with us from Ontario. I am just making BooBoo jealous. She has gone on a hunger strike (and I am just going to let her ride that wave for another day or two) and then I will try to get her her own set of Red Darlings. Tantrums WILL get you everywhere......................

......AND THEN HE CUT THE CHEESE

   Frank and Ed were brothers

   Who searched the globe for cheese

   They sailed through gales

   Fought wind and hail

   Upon the Sunflower Sea

Image: "The Sunflower Sea" Cara Kansala * Water colour

I wouldn't say no to a piece of cheese

I love cheese. I love good cheese. 

SHE loves good cheese too.

In Montreal we discovered our darling Mimolette. Nope, not my long lost sister but the cheesy equivalent of my soul mate. 

Mimolette completes me.

We were standing in front of a very charming cheese shop when a very charming cheese man waved us in. He was the cheesy equivalent to Vianne Rocher in the novel "Chocolat".

He saw us coming a mile away. He offered us little tasty-fulls of this cheese and that cheese and when he knew he had us hooked, went in for the kill.  

With a slightly evil glint in his eye he offered  up the crumbly, orangey loveliness that is Mimolette. 

We both thought we had died and gone to Mimolette heaven. Oui! Oui! Oui!

"Mimolette, will you marry me?" I said.

"No!" She cried, "I will marry Mimolette!"

With an even evil-ler glint in his eye, the cheese man offered to cut a piece from the magic wheel for us to take home. That was when we saw the price. 

Three million dollars per 100 grams........(only the smallest of exaggerations). 

After a lengthy consultation and talk of re-mortgaging the house, we purchased a piece of Mimolette the size of a cocktail toothpick and carried away our cheese crack as if it were our first born.

When we arrived in Quebec City, our darling Mimolette was gone. 

The paper had been licked clean and I saw Her sniffing the sticker label with tears in Her eyes.

We had to have more. After a desperate search that possibly involved the theft of a phone book, a bribe and tripping an elderly woman  who might have been impeding our progress, we found a new cheese shop. 

This time, no idle chit-chat, tastings or pleasantries.

We begged the man to give us Mimolette! Vite Monsieur! VITE!

Looking back now, it was all very ugly. I think we are going to have attend the next C.A.A. 

meeting in our area. (Cheese-Aholics Anonymous) 

We are hoping that someone will bring hors d'oeuvres.

Mimolette and crackers perhaps?

Your horse is also lovely.

Image: "Just Ask Edna" Detail ....Hand-Carved, Hand-Painted. This is one of my favourite pieces we have ever done. SHE hand-carved the rollers and hair pins out of pine and I hand made the pearl earrings and made Edna's hair out of brushed wool. Edna's "cheval" is gorgeous!

SHE thinks I should stop trying to speak French to the poor people in Quebec. SHE says it must be like a cheese grater attacking their ear drums. I think it is important to try and that I have done quite well. So far, there have been only two disasters that I am aware of.
#1. A bizarre but funny exchange with a woman who we think was trying to tell me she liked my hair, while I explained that I didn't have a horse, just a goat.(cheval-cheveux) You say potato, I say tomato!
#2. I wished Claude at our hotel a Bonne Lapin! "Lapin" sounds like "Matin". What's wrong with saying Have a Happy Rabbit?
SHE asked to me to please stop before I gave away our car or asked someone to dance with me in the street. Really? Would that be so bad?
Found gorgeous GORGEOUS gouache paints. Am forbidden from opening them in ultra fancy hotel room with twirly brocade curtains and real-live, squishy carpeting. C'est domage.

Driving Miss Crazy........

Last Thursday we left Newfoundland for the mainland. A work trip with a few tablespoons of fun thrown in for flavour.
I am a very cranky-pantsy car passenger and usually after one hour of being trapped in any vehicle I start to panic. We had packed up the car with everything we needed for the incredible journey... life vest (ferry), rubber boots, paints, sketchbooks, camera and clothes.
After 45 minutes.....
Me: Are we almost there?
Her: We have about 18 more hours of driving and 6 hours of ferry travel.

Just when I thought I was coming to terms with my entrapment, I panicked and started thinking of escape routes and possible reasons why we had to go back home.
Me: The stove is on?
Her: I turned that breaker off.
Me: I have to pee?
Her: Rest stop just ahead.
Me: I forgot my contacts and my glasses. I can't see anything!!!
Her: You don't wear glasses.
Just when I thought I'd come to the end of my rope, she reached behind my seat and pulled out a brand new, shiny pink ukulele with songbook.
I thought it was a magical pink mirage. Nope. Real Live Ukulele to keep me occupied during the 256 hour trip. Shining stars, She is fabulous. Sometimes things that seem too good to be true aren't !!!
Hours later, I have Ukulele claw.

Somewhere in New Brunswick....
Me:I feel like there is something in my boot.
Her: Well take it off and check.
Me: No, it is too hard to take off.
Her: Well, you took them off in the car....
Me: Yes, but now it would be too hard. I'm fine.

Later that night in our Montreal Hotel room I removed my rubber boots and found what I had been walking on all day...........
The next morning at the Jean Talon market in Montreal, She sees a giant squid and asks me if I would please find one when we get back home and make Italian fritti calamari for Her.
Oh GROSS ! I am thinking, but as I have the shape of her new, very cracked iPod embedded in my foot, I say "Yes , I will make that just for you."
She doesn't yet know that I was walking on her iPod for 6 hours yesterday and that it fell in my boot while I was "tidying the car". I hope she isn't too upset. I hope She doesn't take back my ukulele as I am now the only source of musical entertainment for the drive home. Plus, I just downloaded all of the ukulele chords for Barry Manilows greatest hits. I hope THAT will make things better.

Cat-Astrophic Plans at Annual Board Meeting

The seventh annual meeting of "The Crabby Cat Cottage Cat Food Distribution Committee"
In attendance: Fat Aunt Sylvia, Itchy, Scratchy, Pumpkin, Powder Grey, Honey Pie, Liza Manelli
Absent: Queenie, Popeye, Boris Meowsin, Vincenzo, Leo and Snowy
Agenda 2012
* Work on manipulating "The Feeders" who live in the green house into giving us dry AND wet food every day
* Work on getting "The Feeders" to construct 4 new housing units so that we can commence our community growth and development program
*Provide "cutie-pie" training for new members in order to optimize the distribution of Temptations Cat Treats
*Work on negative behavior modification of creature called "Rose" in order to have her removed from the premises for possible take-over of luxury accommodations.

I think a Tennis Bracelet Would Help my Painter's Elbow.......

I just finished a 3 day painting-palooza trying to get caught up with orders and the like. If there is such a thing as Painters Elbow, I've got it! I asked Her if I should get one of those shiny, magnetic, diamond bracelets that people wear when they get tennis elbow. She laughed and said that I was thinking of a "tennis bracelet" which has absolutely nothing to do with "tennis elbow". I still think a shiny bracelet would make me feel better.

 SHE says that I should take the day off and do laundry (this is actually a treat for me, as I am rarely permitted to use the washing machine) so I am having a fabulous afternoon cleaning the clothes and tidying the kitchen though I have to say I am terribly disappointed in our new 'self-cleaning' oven. Clearly, that was just a gimmick to get me to make the purchase. There are no suds, no Jetson arms that come out of the heat vents, no bubbles. It just locked itself up for the entire morning, got so hot we didn't need the wood stove on and still, stubbornly, will not unlock its door. Self-cleaning. I wonder, if I give myself the once-over with the hot hair blower, can I call myself self-cleaning too?

Image: "Mrs. Peddle Shows Us her Drawers 2" Hand-Carved/Mixed Media by Cara & Pam

It was HER birthday last weekend. Our Darling friends and Shaggers gave Her a weekend fit for a king. (A king who is carnivorous!)It was a festival of meat like no other. Terrines and prime rib roasts, barbecued steaks and Yorkshire puddings. SHE was in Her glory and we had the most wonderful fun. Thank you to all for making it such a special birthday.....and Pigeon for the cherry-cake-extraordinaire!

For Her birthday, I gave her the gift of song. 12, never-heard-before custom songs created just for her, sung by me and performed on my air ukulele. After song 7, She asked to see my air ukulele and "accidentally" broke one of the strings. Then She informed me it would take at least a month to get a new one. At least a month? Really?

Nothing Says "Happy Birthday Breakfast-in-Bed" Like Cherry Cake Squirrels!

I'll Have to Give Away All of my Wooly Socks......

"Prague Sky" by Cara Kansala  -  Prague, the city I lived in when I was "cool".

Yesterday after leaving the hair dresser-beauty-parlour boutique:

ME: WOW! My hair is very cool. I have the coolest hair-do since time began.

HER: Ahh, it is fabulous. I don’t think people call it a “hair-do” anymore and I don’t think people say “cool” anymore either. But it IS an awesome cut.

ME: What people? Who doesn’t say “cool” ?  My hair IS cool...I am too!

HER: Well, my love, I wouldn’t go so far as to say you are cool. That ship might have sailed the day you started putting Benefibre on our cereal, but you ARE very interesting.

ME: NOPE. I am cool. Name 3 things about me that are not cool.

HER: (and I have to say, She answered A LOT faster than I would have expected)

You are wearing pull-on corduroy pants and knee-high pantyhose. Your slippers are in a cloth bag in your lap and you know every word to every Barry Manilow song he ever wrote.  This morning you said “good grief”.

ME: ACTUALLY, I am wearing “Action Pants” and trouser socks....and besides, that’s five things.

HER: Hmm. Can you name five things about you that ARE “cool”?

ME: Well, I can still do the entire rap for “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”, I make awesome home-made Sangria, I own the complete boxed set of “The Golden Girls”, I can still do my entire dance routine to “Eye of the Tiger” and I can play the ukulele.

HER: WELL, you’ve got me there kiddo. I won’t go so far as to say “COOL”, but you ARE lukewarm.

ME:HMMM. Thanks.

Lukewarm. I guess this afternoon I’ll have to do one of my ABBA routines so She can remember just how cool I am. My only hope is that if I used to be cool and now I am lukewarm, maybe by the time I'm 92, I'll be a hottie!

And at least my hair is groovy. Thank you Dorothy-the-best-hair-fairy-since-time-began for that!

Currently, BooBoo and I have the same Hair-Do. Pink with short-cropped bangs. Very lukewarm indeed!

A flock of very cool birds that landed in my lukewarm trees.