When I was a kid, my mom used to tell me stories about how she was required, in the state of Wisconsin, to spend half an hour (per month? per semester?) talking about dairy products. Even though she was an art teacher.

How I laughed to hear that! And yet: my son now knows EVERYTHING there is to know about salmon.

Scott, raised in Illinois, knows everything there is to know about Abraham Lincoln. So is salmon more like Abraham Lincoln, or more like Wisconsin cheddar? You have to admit it’s an interesting question.

I suppose most places have some kind of special regional thing the kids have to know, but I’m from Kentucky and I can’t think what ours would have been. Daniel Boone? Horses? Tobacco? I don’t remember a particular emphasis on any of those. I did have to read “Henry Clay: the Art of American Politics” in high school, but that was because I went to Henry Clay High school, I suspect.

And we retitled it “The Fart of American Politics”. Of course we did.

I wonder what rude salmon jokes my son knows. Maybe it’s best not to know.

* There are many kinds of pitcher plants, actually. This is one that’s supposed to be relatively easy to keep alive.

Awwww! They’re super cute! They live in the gerbils’ old aquarium, now fitted with a glass ceiling and fluorescent lights. We haven’t named them yet, but we are already planning out who we want to feed to them, and in what order, once they get big enough.

Haha, I kid! I’m just going to try not to kill them, at least for a while. I am world-famous for my ability to kill plants of any kind.

Magnolia buds
Awkward, furry, ugly things
Pure, sweet potential

Walked to the dentist
Crocuses like purple eggs
Mouthwash helps my gums

Una frolicking
Under the first plum blossoms
Don’t eat poo, you mutt.

Today I took Clang and Klink to the vet to be euthanized. I cried. Lots. But it was time. Klink had a scent gland tumour for many months, and he’d finally taken to chewing on it and bleeding everywhere. It got infected. Clang had an eye infection and (when the vet palpated him) an internal tumour as well. With palliative care (involving ointments and injections) we could have bought them another 2 weeks to 2 months, but it seemed more merciful to end it painlessly now, when they had not yet suffered very much.

They still had personality to the last. The vet remarked on how Klink was more docile and Clang was more feisty. I ended up telling her all kinds of anecdotes about them. I had originally intended to see them go, but in the end I couldn’t do it. I said goodbye as I put them in the carrying box.

It makes you think, as death always does. How is it this little death can still hurt? They’re just rodents. But here I am weeping and typing, still. I have a living dog here, though, who needs to go out and poop, the way living things often do. I suppose there’s some odd comfort to be taken in that.

Hug the people you love. I’ll  be doing the same, when my lads come home from work and school.

Scott: Buddy, you need to play it the way it’s written, so you can learn it.

B: I’m playing it BETTER than what’s written.

Scott: Yes, but your teacher wants you to play it this way first.

B: Dad! I’ve BEEN to the country, OK? I KNOW how they like their music to sound!

[In the kitchen, I quietly fall over laughing.]

I hadn’t realized what an occasion for politicking the parade is. Our premier was there; the mayor was there; people were passing out little red envelopes with pictures of Stephen Harper in them (I thought it was supposed to be something nice in those red envelopes? Shows what I know).

Stephen Harper is still on our dining room table, in fact, although he seems to have sprouted horns and wings. It’s the Year of the Dragon, maybe that’s not surprising.

There were lots of dragons in the parade, some more competently danced-with than others. There was one made of balloons, one of umbrellas, and one of plastic water bottles.

We had a boring lunch at Tim’s (Chinatown was just too packed and crazy, and we were already overstimulated and extremely hungry, if not starving). The we went and decompressed at the library, believe it or not, before coming home. We all needed some quiet before we ventured back on the bus. Still, I’m glad we went. The Chinese New Year parade happens every year, but we’d only been one other time, when B was much younger. The noise scared him, as we should have predicted, and we’d never been back.

This has got me thinking, of course. It’s hard to sum up an entire year! So much happened! After several dog-walks worth of contemplation, I think I’m going to sum it up with “overwhelmed”.

That’s how I felt much of the year. Byron started a plethora of after-school activities, which made me feel like I was running all the time. I suffered an intense case of burnout in the spring when I was in the home stretch with the novel. Actually finishing the novel for real was a huge thing. Starting the sequel has sometimes left me feeling at sea. Somehow, everything was too much this year.

Coming up with next year’s word was easier, because it’s a reaction to this year’s. My word for the coming year is “perspective”. With Seraphina finally coming out, Byron’s schedule unabating, the sequel ongoing, everything I felt last year has the potential to repeat and then some. I want to be able to weather those storms and not feel like I’m flailing and drowning half the time. I want  to look and think and keep things in proportion, to take my experience of “too much” and LEARN from it.

I turn 40 this coming year. There are a surprising number of good things about being this age, but one of the best is the view it affords you. You look back over everything you’ve been through and see bigger patterns, stuff that wasn’t visible when you were 25 or even 35. And that, I hope, is a tool I can use this coming year as I head into the unknown. I’ve got experience. I don’t have to be taken flat-footed every single time, and when I am, I can take a big step back and get a different angle on it.

I almost chose the word “clarity”, and that is something I want, but I think that’s incorporated into my idea of “perspective”. And, well, “perspective” was inspired by Seraphina’s North American cover, which I will be revealing soon. Once I made that connection, that was it. End of discussion. I have my word for going forward.

I loved it. Seriously. I could watch Kazakh herdsmen chase sheep all over the steppe for HOURS.

The film is about love of place, but what a bleak place it is! Flat as a pancake, dust devils like lazy tornadoes that reach all the way up to the clouds, scrubby vegetation that even the sheep aren’t quite thriving on. But to Asa, just returned from a stint in the Russian navy, it is a slice of heaven and the only place he wants to be. The trick is finding a way to stay; his brother-in-law thinks he’s useless as a herder, and the only eligible bride for miles around thinks his ears are too big.

One review we saw called it “aggressively plot-free”, and it kind of is. There are whole minutes devoted to looking at the horizon, or watching Asa help a sheep give birth, or watching his sister make dumplings. But it charms you, and not just because it’s an exotic place and existence. In fact, it works just the opposite: it charms you because you’re able to recognize something in these people, despite the unfamiliarity of their surroundings. It was the youngest child, Nuka, who got me first. He is the Platonic form of a three-year-old, prancing around on his stick-pony, unable to speak in an indoor voice, using a tortoise as a toy car. I know that kid. Hell, I raised that kid. From there, it’s a short hop to identifying with everyone: the harried and lonely wife; the husband irritated by his useless brother-in-law; the little girl singing at the top of her lungs just outside the tent because her father was sick of her singing inside; the overachieving eldest son who memorizes newscasts; daydreaming Asa.

Even Tulpan herself, who we never, ever see.

Good stuff.