The girls are away this weekend. I've been Value Village shopping for vintage skirts, on a few short, cold walks, and spending a lot of time holed up with my books and my guitar. I've wasted much too much time looking at THIS and trying to figure out how to save the world.

Again and again, I find that I am much more efficient with only a few hours. But I have to admit, I'm enjoying the empty time.

Also, some lovely hours spent at the recording studio on Saturday where I'm working on a second album. I love being there, it's quiet, and surrounded by apple orchards full of snow.

I've been at my desk a lot, trying to finish a project I've been working on forever, scribbling early in the mornings when my mind is clear and calm.

My window looks straight into the window of Greg's small house next door, which has been sitting empty for over a year, the lonely FOR SALE sign still up in the front yard. I've been plotting about how to buy it. It is a beautiful house.... a lovely little tutor-style place with a small rose garden in the back yard and a sun porch. There's a tiny room upstairs that would be my writing room. It has slanted walls and I would paint it pale citrus and put flowers in the window.

All I need to do is sell 25,000 more copies of my CD and the place is mine. Anyone know how to get on Oprah?

The ducks across the street are getting bad. When we pull up in our car, they all start to crowd in. Lately I've heard myself saying: "Let's hurry up and get in the house before the ducks get us." The lady 2 houses down says "It's like that Alfred Hitchcock movie, Birds." They have become quite agressive, despite the fact that we all feed them, or maybe I should say because of the fact that we all feed them.

I have exactly 4 hours left until everyone gets back, so I'm going to put on my coat and head out for a walk before I return home and try to get a bit more work done.

I'm making Winter Squash & banana soup, and the smell is wafting through the air.

It's snowing again... It has been the most perfect winter, really. Not too cold, piles of snow for Christmas. It has been hovering around freezing most days, and many mornings we wake to freshly fallen snow all over the roads.

Yesterday I pulled Ella on her red sled down the road to the beach. No one had walked much yet, so we made footprints across the long stretch of snow-covered sand. We made a small snowman and threw snowballs in the water and watched as the waves washed them away. There was a clear-blue sky and the light was almost blinding on the snow. I wanted to just sit there and let all that light melt my S.A.D away.

I'd thought about renting a lamp this year. I've heard it works. But then I won... I WON!... a tanning package in the library Christmas draw. This only MILDLY compensates for the hundreds of dollars I have paid to them over the last few years in library fines. They have no idea that I, and I alone keep them afloat. But this tanning package will allow me to sit in some sun - albeit fake sun - for short bits of time... I am, theoretically against tanning for the sake of tanning... I mean, who wants that sickly orange glow? But I think I will use it in these months when sunshine is scarce.

I am still mostly floating along after my gorgeous stay at the Monastery. I stayed for 2 days, although it felt a lot longer. I meditated and read books and took many long walks in my snowpants through the forest. On my first walk through the snow, I felt this unexpected rush of joy... I felt 12 years old again, with not a care in the world. Why? Walking in snow is not something reserved just for kids. I realized, with a wee bit of sadness, that probably the last time I went walking like that was when I was a kid. After leaving home, I moved to a rain-drenched fishing community for 3 years, and following that, I lived in the city in the prairies where you rarely wanted to venture out in minus 30.

So here I was, finally walking again in deep snow, in snowpants. They made that swish swish noise I remember so well.

I did not work. I did not work on one single creative project. I just did things that brought me joy. I've had headaches again the past few months, and when I asked myself what I needed, the answer always came: JOY.
So I've been doing things out of joy. At Christmas, I read a Joan Didion book about her husband dying, strangely, because it brought me joy...the beautiful way she tells her stories. I thought: What a depressing thing to be reading at Christmas." But I coudn't argue. Everytime I had a spare moment, I rushed to the book to see how it unfolded.

At the Monastery, students had the opportunity to talk with the head Monk. I made an appointment. We mostly talked about Bob Dylan. We talked about my writing and about balance. The one thing that stuck in my head in the end was something I already knew. It was a reminder, really. That art should never come first. Life comes first, and art flows out of that place. I realized that's why I write here. Despite poeple encouraging me not to talk about my family, my kids, etc... I write about it here because I think that as a society, we've divorced ourselves from our lives enough. And I am not going to contribute to that.

Notice I spare you the dull potty-training stories though. And trust me. There are many.

Being back home, it is definitely harder to find those quiet moments that abounded at the Monastery. Right now my 5 year old is being sort of mean. Yesterday I said: "You need to learn how to say things nicer. No one is going to want to be your friend if you talk to people like that." She said: "Mom! Of course I don't talk to anyone else like that!"

Right. Just me. How nice.

So we are working on that.

It's one of the 10 perfections; Energy. "May I strive diligently until I achieve my goal."

I"m working hard on #10: Equinamity: "May I be ever calm, serene, unruffled and peaceful."

Unruffled.

As much as I would LOVE to move to a Monastery and move about in perfect quiet all day, that is not my life. A quote I found in the Monastery Journal downstairs said this:

When Mother Theresa received her Nobel Peace Prize, she was asked the question: What can we do for world peace? She answered: Go home and love your families.
This, then, is my task at home.
And, of course, to write. After the girls go to bed, I plink on my piano and have been writing many lovely things.

A kind producer has befriended me and we plan to make a record soon. He gave me a painting for Christmas of 2 ladies in big hats. They are both looking off to one side. They look the same, but with opposites: One has a red hat, the other orange. One has orange flowers, the other a red shirt.

I can't help but think of those ladies as ME. Me doing the kindergarten run, and then, me at my writing desk after their bedtimes, scribbling away on paper. This painting reminds me that both can exist in one frame.

What else? Just that the ducks are here with a vengeance this winter. Over a hundred of them are living across the street, and when we get home, they crowd around us, pecking at our shoes. One actually attacked Iryn, my 5 year old, the other day, jumped up and started ripping the bread from her hands. People see it and think it's strange...a tourist attraction...like all the pigeons in Times Square.
They give me the feeling of living in the the pages of a book when they all gather in our yard, and the cars slow down to watch. I can't help feeling special, like the ducks stayed just for me.

A long drive along a gravel road plus 2 5:30 am meditation sessions plus 3 long walks in deep snow in my snowpants plus 2 long afternoons to read and write, plus a little photographic adventure, plus a bluer-than-blue sky and a whole lot of tea equals one rejuvenated girl!

Christmas was nice, but my 2-day stay at the retreat centre was amazing.

I'll be back to share more later...