fresh minds / young bodies

Listening to an enthusiastic fourteen-year-old explain the growth of slime in sunlight seems as good a way as any to open the new year.

Skating even though it was minus thirty-seven. Or because it was minus thirty-seven and four boys under the age of sixteen in a single house could quickly turn into mayhem. (Five boys if you include the sixty-year-old masquerading as a tongue-replacing surgeon.) The sky is big, the land flat, because this is Winnipeg.

There was reading together

reading alone

begging to go ice-fishing even though it was so cold there were sun dogs

helping with chores

cleaning jack fruit

Another afternoon of skating





And did we see Star Wars? We did. My first 3-D movie experience.

games of ping pong


making empanadas, pizza, and jam donuts


listening to a BBC podcast


and always more reading

not giving up on the fish under the ice.

black jack too



I questioned the betting (silly me) and was told from all parties playing that pennies weren't worth anything anyhow, and a game was more fun when there was risk.

meanwhile the slime and the closed jar terrarium were still growing



I make no apologies for the energy that blurred the pics


or the COLD


the Prairie sun dogs that stretched high in the sky all afternoon set only when the sun did