A Question About Cars. Well, THIS car.

UPDATE: Apparently, the dark blue model is NOT AVAILABLE THIS YEAR. So no one else is allowed to say "dark blue" because I can't have it.


I am finally trading in my old Honda SUV for a new car. We've had seven going on eight wonderful years together but it's time to kick it to the curb and get something that doesn't suck back fuel like a teenage boy rooting around in my fridge. I also no longer need a car that seats eight people since I'm not carpooling kids all over the place, though I used to fit as many as eight people at a time in there. I remember the days of my son's rugby games, schlepping several large, mud-coated members of the team to and from the fields. Ah, those were the days...the towels-and-garbage-bags-over-the-leather-seats days....but those days are finished, my friends.

So, my new car is going to be a Subaru Outback. We need an all wheel drive to handle our rough country road at the lake and it has something called a "continuously variable transmission" which makes my husband happy as Larry. (Who is this "Larry" and why is he so happy?)

So my question. What colour do you think works best? (Here is the chart if you really want to invest in my happiness and want a good look at all the options.)

I don't like the shades of green or blue offered.

White is apparently the most popular car colour for women according to the salesman, but just like I rarely wear white clothes because they're practically begging to have something spilled on them, I'm afraid I'll have the same problem with a white car.

My first choice is black, because it looks classy. But our road is dusty and I have the feeling that the one and only time it's going to look good is the day I drive it off the lot.

There's charcoal grey, but it looks like a poor version of the black when they sit side by side. It's like you almost decided to get black, but chickened out.

Then there's light grey, which is practical (shows less dust) but it's kind of meh. It is nice, but safe. Like a practical blazer, it looks good but you don't really notice it. It doesn't have the wow factor of the black.

My current car is a bronze-gold colour, which is the perfect colour when it comes to not showing dirt. Unfortunately the gold coloured Outback is more beige, like old lady beige velour couch beige (my apologies to anyone with a beige Outback or velour couch.)

So what are your thoughts? What colour is YOUR car? Anyone have a black car? Regrets?

There is a poll I posted. See it at the top right hand corner of the blog? Feel free to post your preference or put something in the comments.

Dating Advice from the 30s For You Ladies Out There

But as for you women out there, you might want to take it with a grain of salt.

Preferably after a shot of tequila.

Dating Advice, or The Rules of Engagement

Rule #1. Don't slouch or chew gum. Check. But wearing ugly shoes on a date is A-okay.

Rule #2. This implies if you don't need a brassiere, you can skip it entirely. But wearing a girdle is a given. And call me crazy, but if you don't know you have a stocking hanging down around your ankles, you've had a few too many before the date has even started.

Also, if your date has this kind of reaction to wrinkled stockings, imagine what he'd do if eventually you got married and he witnessed, say, the birth of your child. Or your Saturday morning sweatpants.

Rule #3. So if applying makeup and touching the interior of a car is verboten, I'm guessing driving the car would annoy him even more.

Rule #4. How did "careless" and "talking" get thrown into the same category?

Rule #5. I expect he already is talking about the things he wants to talk about which is why she is no doubt pondering whether or not she is able to pull her sweater up over her head in order to block out further conversation.

Rule #6. I'm fairly confident that his annoyance stems from how she is showing affection, i.e., jamming a finger in his ear while bending the cartilage and pinching his lobe, and that given some encouragement about a possible change of location, her "escort" might find this rule as bendable as his ear cartilage.

Rule #7. Silly has always been seriously underrated. Ditto dignity.

Rule #8. If your date sits around all mopey because things are not going his way, tell him not only does he risk having his face get stuck like that, but you will pick up the check and the waiter.

Rule #9. Don't be conspicuous... Wait. Conspicuous means "attracting attention." In other words, if you want to lean over in a drunken stupor and rub the head of a total stranger sitting behind you, do it discreetly. Duh.

Rule #10 (which also looks a lot like Rule #1)

Do you really want to date a guy who keeps score?

Macro Madness

Enough about the damn dishwasher from H E double hockey sticks.

PIONEER WOMAN is having another photo contest, and this time the assignment is Macro shots. Here are a few I dug out of the archives. Feel free to shout out your favourites!

1. Dragonfly - (Why does this make me think of Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver?)

2. Horsetail
3. Orchid
4. Milkweed
5. Love in a mist (I actually think I'm wrong about this being a skeletonized nigella leaf, but I like the title anyway so I'm leaving it as is. If you know what kind of leaf this is, let me know. Damn it Jim, I'm a photographer, not a botanist!)

6. Day Lily
7. Alium
8. Day Lily with Raindrop

9. Frost on the window

10. Day Lily Centre
11. Columbine
12. Hosta La Vista, Baby
13. Lilac
Lucky thirteen.

Have a great weekend!

Time marches on, folks

Just like a burly man in steel-toed boots.

You know why I feel it so strongly today?

Because my baby, my baby, turned 20 today.

This marks the official end of teenagers in the house. On the one hand, I have fought the good fight(s) and emerged victorious! However, I still can't believe she has gone from this, and please ignore the random foot, which is probably her brother about to sock her one (pun intended):

To this, in the span of what feels like twenty minutes, not twenty years...

I find myself thinking about the pre-cottage days when we lugged our tent trailer (bonus points if anyone recognizes those iconic curtains and can name that brand of Tent Trailer as ubiquitous as road kill on our Canadian highways) off to Charleston Lake Provincial Park. We'd make a camp fire every night and S'mores. We'd share baby stories and sing songs and look for shooting stars as we did our best to dry our hair from that last swim in the lake at dusk. My littlest one, my baby, in a quest to keep up with her older siblings, would take all the scary ghost stories she'd heard and mangle them into one, really, exceptionally scary story like her classic tale, "The Baby with a HOOK!"

Then as their little heads would begin to nod, I'd gather up my little chickies and settle them into bed. I didn't appreciate until they were older just how special and fleeting it is to have all my children sleeping under one roof, nor did I realize how much I would miss that.

And now my baby is 20.

So here's to you, my darling girl. We're so proud of you, of your many accomplishments, your kindness, your quirky humour, your incredible talent.

Happy, birthday my sweet girl.

The Benefits of Failure

And the benefits of choosing ancient wisdom over career ladders.

Every once in a while I stumble upon something - a video, a poem, a speech, a book - that really inspires me, and calls me back again and again to fill up my creative wellspring which sometimes comes close to running dry.

Set aside a few minutes of your day to listen to J.K. Rowling's brilliant Harvard Commencement Address. I can never finish it without tears. You can also read the entire transcript HERE.

Some highlights:

I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized.

I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

Some failure is inevitable.

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case, you fail by default.

You will never truly know yourself or the strength of your relationships until both have been tested by adversity.

Personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a checklist of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life.

What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. Plutarch

The great majority of you belong to the world's only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice, if you choose to identify not only with the powerful but with the powerless, if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped changed. We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already. We have the power to imagine better.

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

Easter Weekend

Then and now. To recap:

Two years ago, my three kids were off on their own adventures for Easter weekend (university and New York City to visit cousins respectively) so my husband and I thought we'd escape up to our cottage for a romantic weekend of our own. We'd had mad snowfalls that winter, but we spoke to the fellow who plows our driveway and he assured us the road was a go. He'd also shoveled our cottage roof because there was a concern about the weight bringing the whole structure crashing down.

I drove, as per our usual agreement (windy twisty road = one carsick passenger, so it's a given I drive anywhere with windy, twisty roads) and arrived to find that although the road leading into our cottage was technically clear of snow, the bright sun had turned it into a hill of thick ice. Thick, unsalted, unsanded ice. And when I say "discovered" I mean after I crested the hill. And by "drive" I mean gripping the wheel of what was now a giant sled without brakes nor capacity to steer while screaming like a cat in a blender.

Luckily my husband talked me through it "Don't brake just go let it go LET IT GO! If we get through this honey, I'll take you to Paris and we'll stay in the finest hotel!" (At least that's how I remember it.) Once we got to the bottom of our road, I threw our car into 4-wheel drive and gunned it up our driveway which was also covered in ice. At this point, the long drive coupled with the giant coffee I'd consumed along the way and the rush of adrenaline meant a desperate need for the loo. One small problem - I couldn't see our front door. What our driveway guy neglected to mention was that the snow he and his helper had thoughtfully turfed off the roof was now piled on top of the mountain of snow that had accumulated on the decks. To refresh your memory, this is what stood between me and the loo.

This marked the beginning of our romantic weekend. That's Doug digging right below the roof looking for the front door, the top of which is just below his boots.

Fast forward to this past weekend.

We had another opportunity to spend a couple of days at the cottage on our own before a big family Easter brunch. The experience could not have been more dramatically different than two years ago. The sun was shining, the snow practically gone except for random bits in the shade of the deepest woods. In fact, Saturday went to a record high of around 26C, and we found ourselves dressed in shorts. There was something very strange about hopping over snow-covered steps in flip flops in order to get to the deck, but it was hot enough to justify wearing them.

The ice still covers the lake, but it changed in one day from white to dark gray, indicating it is ready to sink any day now.

And at the edges, I saw water. That's actual meltage people! I resisted the urge to jump up and down on the ice to hasten its demise.

So it was that I sat with my husband by a frozen lake on the hottest spring day on record with a gin and tonic in one hand, and a juicy novel in the other. The breeze swirled around us, sometimes hot sometimes cold, depending on its direction. If it passed over the frozen lake, it was as though someone opened a freezer door in a hot room. Then it would change direction and swirl around from the sun-warmed cedar woods, so it was as though someone had suddenly covered us with a blanket warmed from the dryer. It was just amazing, and thrilling because we Canadians count on days like this. It's our reward for our long winters. This was like winning the weather jackpot.

The chipmunks and bluejays were back to beg for peanuts, the cheeky red squirrels were bickering and chasing each other up and down the birches over the sunflower seeds I'd put out for the chickadees, and there was even a large pileated woodpecker hammering away on a stump. And no bugs to bug us, no blackflies, mosquitoes or deerflies. Nada. Just serenity.

And say hello to this little guy who landed on our deck:

I don't care that it's overcast and cool today, nor that they say it's going back to a more seasonal 5C by the end of the week. This weekend acted like a tonic on the soul battered by another winter.

Easter Treat

In case you've had too much sweet chocolate this weekend, here's the antidote courtesy of The Easter Monster.



Thanks to kc dyer for the link!