quiet day

overcast, slight drizzle - slush. mild. temps freezing

another overcast day - but this seems to be the January thaw. Normally a January thaw in Canada is quite spectacular. Very mild, even warm, temps, melt all the snow...grass appears, sometimes even small green shoots. And then...February appears. Goodbye thaw.

Just finished ellipticating. Grrr. Wish I could say I like it. But I hate it. I keep trying to change my attitude, knowing that if I'm going to exercise, then hating it sure doesn't help. I think it's a combination of not liking to exercise and liking food. So, less food and more ellipicating makes me grouchy.

And then I think of what is happening with other people, and I'm less grouchy. Still Stinky, though.

Thoughts are underway here to do an event for Haiti when we get back from holiday...mid-February. So important to get help now. But equally crucial to continue the effort after the first wave...to not forget. Our IGA (grocery store) has joined so many around the world in collecting money...very easy. Just add 5, 10 - one dollar to the bill and it goes to the Red Cross. Brilliant, elegant idea. Easy and effective.

1,400 Canadians are missing in Haiti. The top Canadian cop - an RCMP Superintendent - was killed when the UK building collapsed. 40 of the 50 Habitat for Humanity workers are missing. But people are still being saved.

Hope. Now there's a quality. both a gift and a curse.

More stuff to do here before we head off to St. Lucia. Thank God Pat and Tony come and stay - look after all the details to do with the house...like feeding the birds and finding the bats. And Trudy, of course.

Amazing, though, the details to be sifted through to clear up the agenda before vacation. Slugging away. All well worth it.

A blessedly quiet day ahead...I think... writing the newsletter - working on permissions and a few translation questions. Tomorrow we're meeting My Assistant Lise for lunch - that's always a treat.

Talk to you tomorrow. Take care.

Hope

light snow, then cleared to blue skies, temps minus 2

I'm all better - no more cold or flu - but yesterday Michael crawled into bed and announced he was sick. I took his temperature. 101. Out with the hot water bottle, the Tylenol, the trashy magazines, and Sudoku. Poor guy.

But he crawled back out of bed to go with Maggie and me to the vets. Her leg is getting much worse and a decision has to be made.

Hope is a funny thing. It shifts, changes, adjust. It's alive. As we've gone through this with Maggie we first hoped her leg could be healed. Then we hoped it wouldn't get any worse. Then we hoped the steroids would work. Then we hoped amputation wouldn't be necessary. And when we took her to the vet yesterday we hoped it would. We hoped he wouldn't say there was no hope left, and her time had come.

At first he looked at her leg and said, if you tell me to put her down I won't stop you, I won't argue. I could feel the tears, and fought them down. I don't cry all that often, but when I do it's a mess. And I needed to think, not feel. Not yet.

So we asked about amputation. He hummed and hawed. What to us a month ago was unthinkable had suddenly become the thing we most hoped for. Please, say yes to amputation both Michael and I thought. The vet called a colleague, and reviewed Maggie's x-rays, then returned.

He examined her again and asked some questions...yes, she gets around fine limping on 3 legs (the rear left leg broke last winter and couldn't be fixed - it was actually the elbow joint...it's been getting worse since, though she didn't seem in pain until a couple months ago...but she hasn't put weight on it for 3 months or so). Yes, her appetite is great. Yes, she goes up and down stairs, with encouragement. She sleeps, wags her tails, goes to the dishwasher to lick the dishes. She still has a great quality of life. Except for the leg.

But she's a 10 year old golden.

I'm not saying this was an easy decision for us. Is it fair to put our beloved dog through an operation like this? Would it be more loving, more humane to let her go? Honestly? I don't know the answer. Are we being chickens by hoping for amputation? Just putting off the inevitable and forcing her to live with pain, longer?

I don't know.

We do believe she loves life still. Loves her walks to the pond, her treats, her food, her snuggles. And we honestly believe without that leg, her pain will be gone and her life will improve. And that she's in great shape, except...

The vet has agreed that amputation is a legitimate option - and the operation will be on Monday. Apparently it's more traumatic for the 'parents' than for the 'puppy' - I hope that's true.

But we love her - and while we'd hate to see her go, we'd really hate to put her down without trying every reasonable option. We'll see. And watch her closely. And if, after the operation, she's still in distress - well, then hope will shift one more time.

We hope we have the courage and decency to do what's right.

But for now, we have every reason to believe it will be a greart success, and three-legged Maggie will be in fine form!

A Deeply Cracked Easter

Sunny, cold, highs minus 9

Ring the bells that still can ring,
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything,
That’s how the light gets in.
Leonard Cohen

How can you not love a guy who wrote that? Actually I used that quote in A Fatal Grace – as part of Clara’s art.

Happy Easter.

I once said that on air at CBC radio and a listener called in to lambast me and point out that this is not a happy day. Christ was crucified on this day. I was about 21 years old and deeply sorry I’d offended someone. So I apologized on air. It was only decades later I realized I didn’t agree with that assessment. But I believe what makes this holiday so special isn’t that Christ was crucified, but that he rose.

This is a holiday of hope. And how can that not be happy?

Indeed, it’s such fun to be speaking to you on this day. This is exactly the time when my latest book, The Cruelest Month, is set. Over the Easter holiday. In my book it’s a very late Easter – being a movable feast I did my goddess thing and moved it to late April. So that the spring bulbs would just be poking out. A promise. But fragile, vulnerable. And in the book we find out what happens to anything that exposes itself too much and too soon.

In the words of Shakespeare’s Wolsley’s Farewell (a wonderful speech): A killing frost. It nips his bud. And then he falls, as I do.

In the book there’s a killing frost – both physically and psychologically. Aimed at a villager in Three Pines, but also at Chief Inspector Gamache.

Spring is an unsettling season – and Easter an unsettling time. As one of the characters says – not everything is meant to come back to life. Not everything that rises up is a miracle.

I hope you enjoy reading The Cruelest Month as much as I enjoyed writing it. It’s about murder, of course, being a murder mystery. But at its heart it’s about second chances, and redemption.

Here’s to our cracks, and the hope and compassion that springs from them.