oh, saskatchewan

we drove to lloydminster thursday night, a small town who's claim to fame is that it is half in alberta and half in saskatchewan.  we stayed at a hotel on the alberta side - if you're anywhere near a border it seems important to cross it for some reason.  we started driving at the kids bedtime, with the utopian dream that they would sleep all the way there. silly silly parents.  do you know what two nights in a row of fighting your children to go to sleep while locked in a car with them for three hours is like?  you should try it!
but, there was redemption.....
                                            the view.
i know, many of you do not believe me.  like i used to, you think of saskatchewan as a flat field, stretching on and on forever, with a straight highway in the middle that reaches out to the point of invisibility - one of those perspective drawings you did with a ruler in grade 8.  

but picture the real saskatchewan.

there's a field, freshly tilled, with a peach fuzz covering of green - new shoots beginning to venture out.  the field is slowly rising up from the highway, and you can see the lines of the rows that move along the contours of hills and circle around groupings of trees - the word copse comes to mind.  in the middle of one copse, lets say its made of birch trees, their trunks white and gleaming, their leaves tiny and rustling, is a farmhouse.  behind this field the land rises and falls, revealing other fields and tiny beautiful forests and small lakes and silos and red barns...can you see it?  its breathtaking. 
we came to a section of land just west of the Battlefords where i could imagine i was in england.  the saskatchewan river was close to the highway at this point, and the land on its banks had these flat topped cliffs - i was thinking of the scene in pride and prejudice when kiara knightly is standing on the cliff in the lake district, her dress bilowing around her. 
a few years ago i read the no.1 ladies detective agency book series and one of my favourite parts, that in all honestly made me cry,  was when in the last paragraph she would say "oh Africa, Africa, Africa, Africa."  like she was speaking out her heart for her home, despite its trials and inadequacies.  and, not to be overly dramatic, but it happened to me!  i watched my new homeland out my van window and heard 'saskatchewan, saskatchewan, sasktachewan" like a rhythm, calling me to stillness and beauty and rest and thankfulness. 
growing up in Ontario i have an affinity for fields and lakes - i find them romantic and enticing.  as i watched this similar landscape roll by me the other night i started thinking about the last number of years.  how i would visit ontario and see such a landscape and have this great urge to run.  to get out of the car and run through the field and into the trees and escape.  not that my life was horrible, but the weight and the pressure and the seemingly unending work would rise up in me and i would want to run and run and run.
i looked out my window thursday night at the beauty around me and i realized that i don't want to run anymore.  i don't want escape.  i can let that beauty sink in and warm me up and move me on.  it was an amazing revelation.

i realize it's been a long time since my last post, and i apologize.  i'll fill you in on the highlights of the last two weeks:

• i put my upper back out somehow in the middle of the night in my sleep two mondays ago and today's been my first discomfort-free day.
• i got a traffic camera ticket for 230 dollars for running a red.  i wanted to go to court and fight it by pleading for mercy because at the time i ran it i was lost coming home from my husbands first slowpitch game that i had to leave early because my daughter peed all over her pants while attempting to pee in the bush.  scott convinced me to just pay it.
• my four-year-old graduated preschool and was a part of a graduation concert that included the song "jesus wants me for a sunbeam".
• i can now add "vbs decorator" on my resume
• the waterparks are now open all over the city, and all public parks have children's activities like games and crafts daily.  awesome!!
• i bought tickets for a concert with the children's festival, packed a picnic dinner, got the children hyped, my husband home early from work and we headed out.  we arrived at the festival grounds excited and ready and quickly realized that it closed an hour earlier.  so, my poor poor children ate their picnic surrounded by closed booths with signs like "oragami" and "lego creations" and "dinosaur dig".  heartbreak.  thankfully, the show - a black light puppet display of three eric carle stories - made up for the loss.
• i gained five pounds.
• i had an awesome time in lloydminster with kimberly bogelund and family - 6 kids and four adults at a park for 6 hours.  we fought the sun and the mosquitos and sun stroke and came out victorious!  i mean, we had burns and bites and headaches, but it was worth it.

time for bed.