The week in Winnipeg was nice.

There is a bakery called Tall Grass that makes the most heavenly whole wheat cinnamon buns in the universe. M & I swung by there and grabbed 2 and went and ate it in a cafe looking out onto Broadway, all the traffic whooshing by. I thought about the day I saw Robin Williams in that cafe and he walked up the block to his hotel with a double espresso while passers-by gawked. Poor guy.

I had dinner with a dear friend at The Magic Thailand Restaurant, which is a scrungy hole in the wall near the worst area of town. But they serve the cheapest, most delicious green curry stirfries. We talked about the "old days" and the time I backed his car into a dumpster.

For the most part, the sun was shining like it does a lot in prairie winters. But it got cold. It was minus 30 with windchill a few times. The kind of cold where your nose sticks together. On the last night I was there, I slipped and fell on some ice and nearly knocked the side of my head on some cement stairs. I thought: Okay. I can go home now. I've gotten the whole Winnipeg experience.

Felt nose hairs sticking together? Check.

Drove frustrated around downtown unable to find parking? Check.

Almost get knocked unconscious slipping on ice? Check.

In Winnipeg someone is always getting their car towed and someone is always staggering along the sidewalk. Someone is always rushing with coffee in their hands and someone is always waving, late for a bus. Churchbells are always ringing somewhere and a taxi is always cutting you off and pigeons are always roosting in the house next door. People leave their Christmas lights up too long and the sky is always too bright and there is always a trail of smoke spiralling into the sky and there is never any parking.

Drove by my old house. The windows were dark. No one home. A small sadness.

On Saturday, M & I did a show at Vesuvio. It was good to see old friends who came to the release of the new record. Everyone stayed late. No one wanted to go back out into the cold.

When I got back to the house afterwards, I saw that I had a poppy seed stuck between one of my teeth. From dinner. 5 hours previous.

Thanks a lot everyone! Could no one have slipped it into the conversation that I had a big black something in my teeth? Does our friendship mean NOTHING?

Flying high over my new city as the plane pulled in, I saw the wide lakes and the farm land, the mountains and the valleys. Getting off the plane, the air was warm and spring-like. It was nice to be home.

I'm upstairs in my room at M & L's house in Winnipeg. I'm here doing some tracks on M's new CD. The windows are covered in frost. Outside, there is snow piled high on all the roof tops and the branches of the bare elm trees are all tangled in the air.

This city is so familiar. I feel as if I could just get in the car and go home to my old house, go inside and make toast. But someone else lives there now.

This room I'm in is stange alright. It belongs to M's old uncle and it's full of his old things. Ancient photographs, dusty magazines from 1968. There are old postcards taped to the back of the door. I pulled one off to see in the writing on the back (1976) and found that the masking tape had petrified, there was no stickiness left, it had become dry and brittle like an old leaf.

There are old books lining the shelves; Doctor Zhivago, Arabian Nights, every Shakespeare book under the sun, works by Beckett, CS Lewis, Flannery O'Connor, Dickens. A book called "Do You Sleep in the Nude". One wonders what that would be about.

I wonder what would cause this old uncle to hold onto so many things. I find myself wanting to know more. Does he come here to remind himself of who he is? Does he wish he could go back to that year, 1976, when someone gave him a black & white postcard of two boys walking down a long prairie road?

The wallpaper is stained in one corner from water leaking in, bubbled and raised. That's the thing about Winnipeg. There is always melting snow seeping in through the walls, basements flood, lines get etched on the paint. Ceilings crack. Foundations shift.

It's nice to know nothing has changed. Winnipeg is still here with its old windowsills & frost on the glass & bare, crooked trees.

-Patrick O'Connell

It seemed as if spring was on its way but all week its been snowing. It's nice to wake to snow, there is something so quiet and stilling about seeing it spread out all over the grass, falling between the thin pines behind the house. The wild grass has been blowing like thousands of tiny white flags. But I'm anxious for spring. Anxious to be running again above the orchards, anxious to hear my own breathing loud in my ears again.

I'm not one of those hard-core runners with the fancy-schmancy outfit that matches the shoes, the kind that go even if it's minus forty. When winter comes, I close up like everything else, stay inside with a blanket and lots of good books and something warm to drink. But this time of year, I always get restless. I begin obsessively checking the weather channel and dreaming of that burning in my lungs.

One of the most perfect moments I've ever had was last summer. I was at a little farmer's market at the coast and there was a professional reflexologist who was offering 15 minute massages for $10. I decided to get one. The reflexologist was a beautiful woman, not typically pretty, but beautiful like a weeping willow tree. She sort of reminded me of a dryad. I imagine she did a lot of dancing under the mooon and wood carving and chanting, that sort of thing. She had long hair that had gone naturally greyish and she spoke very softly & gently. I have always wanted to have a soft, gentle voice like that. I've always felt stuck with my low, strong radio announcer's voice. I once actually got kicked out of a place I was living partly because I talked too loud. The other part was that I used too much hot chocolate mix or something. But that's a story for another time.

The reflexologist woman sat me down on a reclining lawn chair and rubbed some sort of nice-smelling essential oil all over my feet and legs. It's probably important to metion here that I was 9 months pregnant with my daughter Ella, and so any comfort was heightened in my large, weary state. She began to speak of how important it was to be kind to ourselves, and then she shared her own story of her childbearing years and even though I felt swollen and puffy and tired, I also felt beautiful. She made me want to go dance under the moon and pick wildflowers and wear ribbons in my hair.

She went way longer than 15 minutes, and when she was done, and it was time for me to get up, I found I could barely move, that I was in some sort of pleasure-induced coma.

After I was finally able to get up, I wandered slowly around the market, fingering handmade jewelry, smelling fresh cut sprigs of basil and lavendar at the produce stands. That was a perfect way to spend an afternoon.

But lately I have been having a lot of perfect moments on Sundays, taking naps and having dinner with friends. Yesterday was one such day. I drank way too much tea and fell asleep after reading something mindless for awhile. Then, it was coffee and dinner with some dear friends who live on an orchard. They have a fireplace and huge windows that look out to where the sun falls behind the bare cherry trees and the rows and rows of apples trees and when I'm there, it's not hard to remember that it's the simple things that are the best things in the world.

Soon it will be spring. Soon the snow will be gone and the sun will be warm and the apple trees will bloom and I will run with the wind whooshing past me and breathe deep again.

-Brian Andreas

This morning it hailed
and I stood,
walked over to the window,
watched it fall,
a hundred thousand pieces of styrofoam
scattered on the grass.

Unfold to me, day
like the sky emptying out
and the garden swing
cold and creaking
in the back yard.

It is enough to wait by a window.
To stare out at the butterfly bush,
brown and stiff in the February air.
It is enough to watch the hail turn to rain.
Puddles on the concrete.
To boil the kettle for tea again
and think of you
out there
with no umbrella

So the Cd release is over now. It was a good night. It was amazing to look out into the crowd and see so many friends & fans who had come out to support me and buy Little Grey House. There were friends that were new and friends I have known for years & years and friends I hadn't seen in a long long time.

As per usual, the evening didn't go off without a few hitches. For starters, the soundsystem we rented didn't work. The sound board didn't turn on, which, if you know nothing about sound systems, is pretty much the piece of equipment that runs the whole thing.

Yes, I was panicking my head off.

It wouldn't have been so bad if the odd person was straggling through the door. But before starting time, the place was packed. It was in a downtown cafe, but there were over 80 people, standing in the back, waiting to begin, and nothing would turn on. It was a little maddening. At one point, 4 guys with cell phones were pacing around the stage area. Finally, finally, Ari Neufeld, who was my opening act, pulled through for us and called a friend, who brought us a new soundboard.

I had a friend there who came to look after Ella, my 4 month old. The plan was, she would take her off my hands so I could focus on setting up and doing a soundcheck before the night started. It didn't work. I think Ella could hear my voice but couldn't get to me and she screamed and screamed and screamed.

So there was the screaming and the panicking and more people coming in the doors and no soundboard in sight yet, and then, even though I wanted to be a superstar just for one night, I ended up walking around with my baby on my hip. And at one point I found myself wandering through the crowd with a bottle floating in a container of hot water. So rock & roll.

And in the middle of it all, a girl came in with a group of her friends and she looked about 14 but I think she was more like 17. All of them sat in the front and talked very loudly and I had no idea who they were. I smiled at her and she came up and said "Yeah. Like, my friend called me, and she was like, Ari Neufeld is playing on Saturday with some lady."

She called me some lady.

So the night went on, and I felt a little elsewhere for most of it. And now the record is out and there is nothing to do but mail it off to various radio stations & newspapers. There are envelopes lying all over the place around here. And when I send one off, I kiss it and say ever so dramatically, Go.... GO little Cd. Fly into the world and find your place... And I feel a little bit like Kate Winslet in Titanic, standing at the front of the boat with the wind in her hair.

A special Thank You to all who came out and toasted the record with me. It was great fun...

January 2,

This past year has been a grey sort of year. I haven't laughed much. I have cried an awful lot. I have wanted to throw things. To throw things at the walls and for it to break through the paint and the plaster and the gyprock.

But I can't. I'm renting.

Do you ever have those days? Those days when you look out on the blue sky or the trees blowing in the wind or the rain reflecting on the roads and you know you should be grateful? You know you should be grateful because you have so much. You really do. You know you should love the sky and the wind and the light on the roads, but you don't. You can't see through whatever is in the way. You can't figure out what's broken. You can't quite get the pieces into the right holes. You shake your head but it's still unclear.

And then, one morning.
Or evening before bed as you stand by an open window.
Or maybe it happens slowly, so slow you hardly notice, opening like leaves.
Whatever. It happens.
And you realize how rich you are. Not rich as in "I have a car and my health and a house and a bed..." but rich like the way you feel right then looking out that window, or sitting next to someone or waking too early in the half-dark. A feeling that if only you could see like this all the time, you would see you own the whole world.

Christmas was sitting by a fire with Chai Tea, visiting old friends, one who was long lost, my very best friend from elementary school whom I haven't talked to since seventh grade. We met for coffee and I saw her sitting in the window as I walked up to the little Italian cafe where we met, and I knew her instantly, her naturally curly hair exactly the same as I remember it from years ago. We talked about how the 8th grade was the worst year of both our lives, how we are both crazy about self-help books, how we're both still slightly bitter at Melanie Sondergaard who was always the teacher's pet in elementary school.

It was strange. I suddenly felt 11 again and it was nice and I wanted to sit with her on the monkey bars again and talk about boys and whatever else girls talk about when they are 11. I thought about asking her if she could sleepover at my house, but I didn't. We just said goodbye and walked out into the melting roads.

My inlaws have this hilarious screen saver on their computer that kicks on every few minutes with dramatic symphony music and pictures of the apostles across it, and some guy quoting the Bible. I was down there wrapping presents late at night and it scared me every time. Cue dramatic music: "A CITY ON A HILL CANNOT BE HID, THEREFORE LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE..." etc... etc... Then the music would end abrupty and the basement would sink into silence again.

It was a little weird.

My mother-in-law has one of those, Oh, what are they called… a lint remover with batteries. A lint razor? Anyways, I have this black sweater that I really love. It’s not terribly beautiful, but very cozy and soft and it’s my favorite. It had years of accumulated lint on it and when I found out she had a lint remover, I went at it. I swear, I spent around 6 hours with it buzzing. I found it very therapeutic. Very Zen-like. It really brings you into the moment. Everything else disappears and all that exists right then is that next piece of lint you’re going to suck up.

I think I became addicted. I did it all the way to White Lake in the car (over an hour), for another hour in front of the fireplace one evening, and during a really long and way too drawn out game of Clue. Who even plays Clue anymore? It was all we had. To compensate for the dullness, I got out the lint remover and everyone had to keep telling me when it was my turn because I was so absorbed with said lint-removal.

There was of course, the ordinary sadness always associated with Christmas. Small reminders that things change, and there are some things you can never get back.

Yesterday was so warm, 6 degrees in the afternoon, snow melting everywhere. Unusual. I wonder if winter is over here. After so many long, prairie winters, it is hard to believe such a lovely thing could be true.

I did some errands downtown, a trip to the radio staion, putting up a few signs for the CD release on January 14th.

Then, driving home up the long hill, I looked over and saw the blue hills covered in snow like a painting.

You forget. You forget how beautiful the world can be.