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April 16 Sunday Bicycle touring France Draguignan France We were joking around as usual and Madeleine said my mother had raised a droll child. Looking this up in my dictionary, I found "funny, humorous, queer." Hmmm. I wonder which one she had meant. (When she said it, I had just returned from the kitchen with three knives to cut the cheese, and came out with them sticking in my chest saying, "Thank you, Madeleine.") At 10:30 PM Sharon phoned her mom and dad. She talked to everyone for an hour as most of her brothers and sisters were there for Easter dinner -- three of them were on the line at once. A real old-fashioned party line. Sharon's brother, Neil, has a new job in Warburg -- an hour from Edmonton. His wife, Lara, quit her job. They are selling their house. Neil is staying in a cabin at Pigeon Lake with no power, heat, or electricity. The maximum temperature has been 12º C. It is still freezing at night, so he has been cool. Just like camping. They have an offer in on buying another house. Her brother, Chris, hasn't sold his house
in Red Deer yet and his renter moved out. He is working on Larry's
farm and couldn't come to his mom and dad's for Easter as he's
up to his neck artificially inseminating cows (figuratively speaking,
I hope). Diane, Sharon's sister, says he likes to play God. Our friend, Heide, had brought some of our slides out to the farm, but they have no projector. Viewing minuscule cardboard encased pieces of gelatin is not the way slides were intended to be viewed. Sharon's mom, Lil, says the two rolls of film we had sent home from Spain with Susan finally arrived via Vicky. Vicky's dad died in January. Sharon's sister, Faye, is going to NAIT the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. She says it is too easy. She has 100% in one course and 97% in another. Sharon wanted to know what happened to that other 3%? Faye says the teachers at NAIT treat you like high school. Coming from university, she says it is somewhat restricting to be asked "Where's your homework? Why weren't you here?" Faye informs us that our Mastercard expired. Ah,ha! Maybe that's why it wouldn't give me money from an Instant Teller I tried earlier! Paul is working for Darrell now. Larry is working mainly out of town. Cal does his confirmation June 4. He wants different stamps. Have I got a surprise for him. Madeleine has been saving the ones at work, so I have a pile of cool ones to give him. Guess Loran wasn't as macho in the delivery room as he was acting beforehand. "It'll be just like calving. If she has any problems, we'll just hook the tractor up to her." Annette did have problems with the big baby and they didn't quite hook the tractor on and pull. But close. They had to use forceps. The baby had a broken bone in its pushed-in face. Loran was still white when he got home a couple of hours later to tell the folks. "It should be illegal to allow men in the delivery room," he said. They may have downgraded their quest for six kids to one now, Lil says. Good thing Annette has a high pain tolerance, I say. We haven't phoned for almost three months ... we were afraid to after our hour-long call from Sardegna. Robert says it's averaged down to 50¢ a day now, so it's not too bad. It must have been a while since we called -- even Robert said we should call more often. Diane did our taxes and paid them. She said our savings were all gone. "Come home -- you're broke," was the implied message. We told them to pay Sharon's Chartered Accountant CA dues just in case. Diane said, "Can't we tell them you're pregnant to get a reduction?" Sure. But they would probably demand a doctor's certificate as proof. The institute is absolutely unyielding -- like a gator's jaw on a monkey. After hanging up, after being tired all day, we couldn't get to sleep from rehashing all the news. Oh yeah, it has been so long since we phoned that we forgot our PIN number for our calling card. Serves us right. |
