We can finally allow ourselves to dream of Spring. With the last day of March, finally night-time temperatures, while still edging below the freezing point no longer have that icy bite. Although we have more than ample snow left to melt and ice as well, before we can really celebrate the entrance of the new season, we can smell spring in the air; it is palpable.

It is the promising fragrance of soil released from its frozen sleep. Of perennial plants re-awakening, and bulbs realizing it is time they evinced their above-ground presence to flaunt their exuberant, colourful blooms in mid- to late-spring.

And we hear it as well, in the lilting trills of the returned cardinals, and the paeans of the lone robin returned. We've seen redpolls, heard red-winged blackbirds, and the maniacal cry of the Pileated woodpecker. And high above, during the night, lines and vees of geese continue their long journey back North, plaintively calling to one another.

A seasonal reversal is underway as migratory birds begin transiting from winter-habitation south to summertime-habitude north. The waves of returning birds has commenced. It should not be long before warblers too make their ingress to this new season. Time we turned our thoughts to liberation from the cold and denial of growing flora.

Soon the trees will begin to bud, and day by day, startling in its increasing speed, they will once again be fully leafed.

There was a time when we delighted in setting out suet balls encrusted with seed for the winter birds, and seeds and peanuts for the chipmunks and squirrels, but that time had long passed, when we realized that neighbourhood cats were taking advantage of too-unwary birds and rabbits and chipmunks eager to gather food. We began to find what was left of lifeless little bodies, and determined to no longer put out food that would disarm our area wildlife and render them susceptible to the predations of roaming cats.

It was different with the raccoons. We thought it was kind of interesting, as a way of recycling edible food scraps when we found the lids of our composters askew, knowing that neighbourhood raccoons had been into them. These raccoons were clearly respectful of their opportunities, skilled at withdrawing what they wanted, and leaving no messes behind them. We would often see their bright eyes at night as they perched on top of the composters or foraged inside them with the dark impression of their busy occupation left to our imaginations.

We began using bungees to strap down the lids when our two little dogs became too interested in the peculiar odours they discovered. And the native belligerence of the smaller of the two, a toy male poodle worried us, knowing how capable raccoons are of defending themselves and their turf. So we turned to discouraging the raccoons from coming around just as we had the birds and squirrels and chipmunks, to avoid the potential misery of violent confrontation.

Instead, we took peanuts and seeds and crusts with us daily out into the nearby wooded ravine which hosted quite a few of these neighbourhood creatures that gave us so much pleasure. This morning we discovered that a truly clever raccoon had managed to pry the lids off our two composters, despite the bungees holding them down. This new breed of raccoon is evidently far less mindful of courteous behaviour having left a real mess of scraps littered everywhere.

Obviously, we require greater attention be placed on securing the composter lids.

Our granddaughter, on her way to fifteen years of age, mirrors the age her grandparents were when we first met. We represented the first wave of Canadian-born children of the first-quarter 20th Century Jewish immigrants. Most fortunate for us our parents, for whatever reasons decided to depart their European origins, for we escaped the fate of six million Jews for whom the Holocaust became their lasting memorial.

I believe that young people today, living in Canada, receive an education superior to that which we received. Speaking solely of the traditional 3-Rs. Throw in science and geography and social studies. They are more socially aware but in a frivolous sense; we had a more global, international awareness born of overhearing our parents' and their friends' frantically concerned conversations of what was occurring in Europe, during a time of international conflagration.

Today's youngsters have fewer concerns, accustomed as they are to living in an egalitarian, pluralistic-responsive society, despite the constant impingement and bombardment of the news of conflicts elsewhere, even those with which Canada is in some measure engaged. It is the superfluous, the engagement with celebrity, music, entertainers that consume young people today. We do, however, have the comfort of knowing that our granddaughter immerses herself in literature, as we did and continue to do.

Hard for us to believe that fully sixty years have gone by since we first met, my beloved and me. That our 57th wedding anniversary is fast approaching. We are as we were, although we have also become other than we were. When we look in a mirror without intent, we are startled to recognize our parents' visages, not our own. Our own are to be found in a myriad of faded old black-and-white photographs, portraying us as we were when we met.

On that account, time has stood still. But it has passed at an astonishing pace, taking us through life's many passages of discovery and productive lives together.

Poor little thing, he's disconsolate, dejected, feeling oh so-hard-done-by. He lives for his creature comforts. To eat, to snuggle, to bask in the sun. He is not terribly fond of exercise and feels quite disaffected by our insistence that he have daily recreational exercise. In the heat of summer, the cold of winter, he would simply far prefer to remain ensconced in his home, eating, sleeping, cuddling with us when we're available.

Not his fault, he must snuffle, that in his 11th year, his constitution has taken such a turn. So that from time to time his gut rebels and his stool become gelatinous in nature, signalling a tummy upset. Which necessitates are restricted diet. Not that he minds his kibble suddenly turning into boiled minced beef and rice. Sprinkled over with a packet of bacterial culture to restore the flora to his intestines.

But it does assault his sense of the rightness of things that he is denied an important portion of his diet, and his companion is not. That so-delectable minced-fresh-vegetable salad that always follows their main course. Now denied him, but not her. She is older than him by 7 years, and in her dotage, although remaining a delicate eater, has an iron constitution. Where he is tiny and on the stout side, she is slightly taller, rangy and a bag of bones...which is how she presented in fact when she was just 6 weeks old.

And today, to make things even more difficult to endure, there is no sun to warm the lowering late-winter sky. Simply no way at all to welcome nascent spring and the comfortable aspirations of a pining little dog.

Living in Toronto, in Atlanta, in Tokyo, there was never any lack of opportunities to browse about, looking at 19th-Century art and antiques. Here in Ottawa, it's a vastly different story. For some puzzling reason this city appears incapable of sustaining an interest in and trade of arts and antiques.

Because it's been ages, or seems like it, that we've been out and about this winter doing something interesting other than working at enjoying winter recreation, we welcomed the opportunity to go along to the semi-annual antique show that has turned out to be the only one worth looking at in this city. At one time, years ago, these shows were held at the Nepean Sportsplex, then at Lansdowne Park, and latterly they've been staged at Carleton University's Fieldhouse.

All of these venues proved excellent showcases for the dealers coming along from Ontario and Quebec to show their wares. At these art-and-antique shows we were able to appreciate a broad range of offerings ranging from Continental and Canadian furniture, Eastern porcelains, and European sculpture, clocks and paintings. Some of which were accessible to we people of fairly modest means. Since we've been collecting both art and antiques for the past 50 years, we feel comfortable with the notion that we represent discriminating art-and-antique lovers.

So it's sad to note that the dealers of quality have fallen off of late, and many - too many - of the offerings of dealers that have replaced them represent floggers of inferior quality goods purporting to be quality but missing by a wide mile.

She has an orderly mind, that is abundantly clear. Quite unlike that of her grandmother; cluttered - and of course that is somewhat explicable, since I have an additional sixty years' worth of memories and interests and resources that she has not yet had the opportunity to gather. That explains, partly, the difference in how our minds work, but not entirely.

She neatly compartmentalizes the sum of her experiences and acquired wisdom. For a fourteen-year-old she is moderately mature, although given to exuberant bouts of childish enthusiasms. Nothing wrong with that; even we silver-haired ones fall back to that kind of behaviour on occasion.

She was doing some personal research, going through our collection of family albums, dating back well over a half-century and beyond. This was for an assigned school project. She also went through my computer, scrutinizing my treasury of digital photographs - roughly ten years' worth of them. And casually, she informed me one day that she had taken it upon herself to catalogue and categorize my various photographic folders, to make them more logical and accessible.

I thanked her, thinking little of it. And then, when she returned home after March break, and I tried to find some of my most important photograph folders they were simply not there. Extensive searches found them where it made no logical or practical sense for me to have them. They were no longer obvious to me in their presence. The way her precise mind worked did not reflect mine. I began the process of undoing all that she had achieved.

Time-consuming, irritating and baffling. Quite unauthorized. But then, can a sole grandchild do any true ill?

Our small backyard represents a true micro-climate. It is particularly evident, not necessarily throughout the winter months, but as spring begins to make itself felt, then on into summer and autumn. The temperature in the backyard is always much more intense on the warm side than it is elsewhere.

And prevailing winds seem somehow modified, adding to the presence of a kind of muted, specially reserved climate of sheer weather-pleasure.

Yet, even so I am invariably amazed and gratified in March to discover that as the snow's presence begins to wane, and small bits of the gardens are revealed, and then so are some surprises. I seem always to be taken by surprise by the resilience of the plants in our gardens. Recovering so speedily from the frigid grip of winter. Often even before the ground itself begins to thaw.

It is still cold, much more so than we might normally expect with only one-third of March left on the calendar. Night-time temperatures dip still to minus-16, and the highs of the day can go no more than minus-6 celsius, but yesterday, while outside briefly in the backyard with one of our little dogs, I could hardly believe my eyes. Primroses, green and fresh and ready to bloom, where the snow had melted from the heat of the sun despite the frigid temperatures, on a small portion of the garden closest to the deck.

And not far from the primroses, heuchera perky and green. Close beside them the unmistakable thrust of thick green shoots of the first of the hostas to come up in this spring of 2011. Makes me want to hug myself with exhilarating joy.

He is an exceedingly small animal fully invested in his creature comforts. Long gone the days of impetuous curiosity and energetic demonstrations of his youth. When I could hardly keep up to his impatient pace, when he consistently got into more trouble than I might have imagined possible for a small, rotund bundle of canine personality. Now, at the age of eleven, he resembles a little old man whose approach to everything is cautious pessimism.

Give him the opportunity to sit basking in the sun and his satisfaction reaches completion. He anticipates his comfort, and being warm and ensconced in an atmosphere conducive to comfort is what he seeks. His world revolves around placidly seeking comfort. Of course he is also entirely devoted to consuming food, and the more he can get the more happy he feels about his quotidian lot. Food and the warmth of the sun succinctly sums up his entitled expectations.

Daily exercise for this little fellow is not a choice but an imposition. While it is to his health advantage to go out for daily walks regardless of the weather, and certainly throughout our long, cold winters, he would, if he had the choice, allow us to go out on our own, while he remained behind in the house, sad to be alone, but happy enough not to be out and about.

He does abhor the cold. We discovered while he was still young that as soon as September rounded the weather horizon he would begin to shiver. Dressing him in a baby-sized warming tee-shirt helped enormously and he thereafter acquired a fall and winter wardrobe. On really cold days he is dressed in a shirt plus a doggy coat and home-made boots to ensure he doesn't freeze on our hour-long forays.

And the little fellow endures the indignity of our encouragement to get along. To which he responds will ill grace and the slowest imaginable gait.

It's a beautiful, early spring day. The sky is a huge, wide bowl of blue. The sun is fiercely bright, just managing to tinge the air with a bit of warmth despite the crisp iciness of the atmosphere.

We dressed our two little dogs against the cold in their little jackets and set off into the ravine for our daily ramble. It usually takes us upwards of an hour and more to negotiate the hills and the trails. More, when the trails are ice-encased and the dogs are hesitant to commit to too-speedy advances where they'll slip and slither. We're fine, because we wear cleats strapped over out boots.

We hadn't got very far before we saw Stumpy. He was the only squirrel out and about. We haven't seen him in a week, and before that for several weeks. The squirrels go into semi-hibernation throughout the cold winter months, coming out occasionally to poke about. They're also accustomed to our leaving peanuts for them in caches they've been aware of for years. And while Stumpy knows all of those places throughout the ravine on our daily circuit, if our times coincide, he prefers to confront us directly.

And then stand, waiting for us to acknowledge him, which we're always delighted to do. He knows our voices. When we call him he invariably comes running lickety-split to await his due. And his due consists of three-chambered peanuts, more generous in size than those we place out for the other squirrels. He will remove himself slightly to begin eating the peanuts in his methodical fashion, checking before discarding the final outer shell that he's got them all. And then re-approach us (we generally wait until he's finished the first one for the opportunity to offer him another) for a second, repeating the ritual sometimes for a third peanut.

By the third peanut he's ready to make off with it, rather than stand around eating it, having filled his little tummy with the previous offerings. On one occasion I shall never forget I ventured into the ravine with no peanuts, meaning to do a quick circuit, awaiting my husband's return from a mission that took him elsewhere. Poor little Stumpy approached me time and again at various points in the circuit, only to have me apologize that I hadn't brought anything for him. He was puzzled, quite obviously, and I felt dreadful.

I've never repeated that error. We never enter the forested ravine opposite our house without Stumpy's due share of daily treats. And when we see him, then that becomes our treat.

Several months into her 19th year of life as our faithful companion she is entitled to her discriminating pickiness. She will deign to eat only what truly appeals to her. Which means that if we want to convince her to eat the high-quality kibble (with glucosamine) that we buy for her to ensure she gets all the vitamins and minerals she requires for optimum health, along with her balanced diet, we often have to 'sweeten' the offering for her.

She feels entitled to share 'treats' that we humans eat on occasion. She can easily distinguish from her well-functioning olfactory sense when we're having bacon or sausages, pancakes or French toast for breakfast. Holding out from eating her own meal until she's been given her 'share' of what we're having. Then, when she's had her treat, she goes progresses to eat her normal meal, entitlement satisfied and appetite stimulated.

We tolerate this kind of behaviour because she is old and we want to keep her with us as long as we possibly can. She is incredibly skinny, her bony structure almost protrudes under her flesh with its fast-growing, black-and-grey silky hair. She no longer has all her teeth, her hearing nor her eyesight. We are sacrificing no scruples in assenting to her foibles.

So, at breakfast time, we sprinkle Cheerios sparsely over her kibble, and pour in a little milk, to entice her to eat. And when on occasion that isn't convincing enough, we've discovered that she has a liking for cooked oatmeal, and that's the clincher to get her to daintily and taking her time, consume her meal satisfactorily.

At dinner time she gets a salad following her main course. The salad consists of a melange of vegetables of which red bell pepper is the favourite as well as corn and green peas. The main course consists of kibble, and over that bits of cooked broccoli or beans or cauliflower, along with steamed chicken bits and chicken soup to moisten everything for her delectation and ease of consumption. Occasionally we have to put her salad down to entice her to eat her main meal.

She is the grand dame of the house.

He does give my opinion some consideration. After all, he does give me a heads-up. In the sense that he lets me know what has been cooking in his mind. Once he has completed one project it's on to another. I should have known. In 57 years of marriage that has been a constant.

It had taken him months to complete the new door he designed and executed for the powder room. Finally it was installed. Quite lovely, the brilliant glass and the underwater scene he designed beautiful. So, what next to do? Beats me. But not him, his febrile mind always on another prospect.

We could use a light, he said in the little hallway between the kitchen and laundry room. How about a bit of a drop-ceiling and a few pot-lights there? Really, do we really need light there? We've got on very well without one for over twenty years in this house.

So that settles it, we get a drop-ceiling and a few pot-lights. But we're not quite finished. He dislikes the way the powder room looks. Now that he's installed the new door with its exotic, colourful stained glass panel suitable for a watery atmosphere and matching the coloured porcelain tiles he had laid on the bathroom counter years ago in its original transformation, it could use an update. First, the foil wallpaper that I so admire gets stripped.

What?! The wallpaper! I like it, a lot! And the light fixture, it would be nice to replace it with something different, say two hanging fixtures side by side over the vanity? The light fixture with its oh-so-lovely glass shells? I love that fixture! This time I'm not going to roll over, I love the way the room looks, with its Victorian flair, the comfort and suitability of it. So forget it, think of something else, another kind of project, anything else.

Two days later, when I pass the powder room on my busy way through the house, doing the Monday house-cleaning I note that the powder room door is closed. He never closes that door. So I know what he's doing. And when next that door is opened there it is, that sound I heard was the wallpaper being stripped off the walls. And the light fixture has been taken down. Ditto that large beautifully silver-framed mirror. And he's measuring, planning to produce all manner of elegant woodwork to be installed in his new version of our powder room decor.

Bummer, eh?

My daughter and I, after forty years of excellent health-provision service by a male doctor, now retired, have both turned to female physicians for our family doctors. After a Pap smear, when it was revealed that there were some abnormalities present, my daughter was referred by her family doctor to The Ottawa Hospital's Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Shirley E. Greenberg Women's Health Centre.

My daughter's physician, herself a young woman with young children, cautioned my daughter that the Centre has a reputation for excellent treatment in women's health issues, but that the doctors and surgeons performing there are not known for warm and cuddly consideration for their patients.

They are cold and distant, and thoroughly professional, utterly lacking a bare modicum of bedside manner.

We talked about that, she and I, telling one another that the main issue here is the expert professionalism in applied medical knowledge and technology that was of importance. Far less so the amount of, or in this instance, total lack of emotive compassion for the patient. Better to have a competent surgeon than a warm and friendly incompetent bungler.

It could be left to the nurses, nursing assistants, technologists, orderlies, to exude compassion and care, for they invariably do. As they did on this occasion when she and I entered the hospital for her scheduled surgery. The nurses, nursing assistants, technologists and orderlies were all consummate professionals, but they also were caring human beings.

My daughter's surgeon did not speak with her pre-surgery, nor did she approach to speak with her post-surgery. She saw the surgeon in the operating theatre surrounded by her medical subordinates, coldly efficient, and obviously unwilling to compromise her methodical professionalism by betraying any vestiges of humanity.

We have heard on occasion that it is too difficult for such professionals to become personally involved with their patients. That the most effective approach for them is to simply view the succession of patients they care for as surgical patients, not human beings who are in need of ameliorating surgery to allow them to continue to live healthy lives.

In my own experience, with doctors and surgeons who have so expertly and professionally looked after me, all those medical personnel, both male and female, have treated me with kindness and human compassion. Mine has not been a broad experience for I have been healthy throughout my three-score-years-and-ten-and-then-some.

But I have encountered enough surgeons and appreciated their human concerns for me as a vulnerable human being, from cardiologists to internists, ophthalmologists to anaesthesiologists to know the difference between a decent human being willing to acknowledge their humanity and one whose hubris places them above all that.

It is a shattering experience to face the uncertainty of an invasive medical procedure. There is the knowledge that things can go very wrong. There is the fear of the unknown; how you will yourself come through the surgery, whether the pain will be manageable, if the operation will be a success, and how you will manage recovery to your former state of health.

A brief reassurance by the physician in whose care you are obligated to entrust your medical future would speak volumes in calming many of those fears. Assurances spoken directly from the lips of the attending surgeon who might take a few moments to speak to the patient, before and after surgery can make a monumental difference in the confidence of the patient.

Any doctor who is incapable of recognizing this vital and simple fact may be an excellent surgeon technically, but an abysmal failure as a decent, caring human being.

Mother-daughter relationships, so endlessly fraught with emotional concerns, with differences of opinion, with complaints and offers to mediate and remediate, with downright interference.

Mothers implicitly demanding of their daughters that they make 'good choices' in their lives, so they will not find themselves trapped, in undesirable jobs, with malfunctioning interpersonal relationships, with ill-choiced companions. And left with the care of children for whom they must negotiate life's byways on their own.

Mothers seem to feel entitled through their elder years and consanguinity, to proffer endless advice and criticisms.

Although the admiration for their daughters' abilities and compliments on their achievements do emerge, they tend to be lost in the conflicting issues of feckless choices and dire consequences which mothers endlessly remind their daughters they were more than adequately given warning of.

Mothers feeling the pain of their daughters disadvantaged by hapless life-choices and determinedly forging ahead into the future, making additional unfortunate decisions continuing to impact deleteriously on their lives. The anguish mothers feel for their unhappy daughters is manifest yet awkward for the daughters for they know they can do nothing to alleviate their mothers' pain, since they are helpless to relieve their own, the source of that doubly-affecting mental ruin.

The daughters' fathers, if they are present, look on with consternation as the emotional relationship between mother and daughter is in flux, witnessing the conflict, helpless to intervene. But to caution their wives that their mature and responsible daughters are fully capable of getting on with their lives, and need no interference from the mothers.

And even while the mothers will acknowledge the deleterious effect of their constant interference has, they seem powerless to halt the endless cause-and-effect.

Sensitivity to their daughters' plight by its demanding emotional nature overrules caution and common sense. An instinctive, subterranean need to shelter their daughters from harm, to guide them toward sensible and fruitful pathways in life's choices motivate these mothers.

They forget how irritatingly maddening it was when their own mothers incessantly reached untoward conclusions, offered their own solutions to problems that never quite existed in the ways that their mothers interpreted them to be.

In removing from their consciousness their own fraught mother-daughter relationships, they simply succumb to an endless, circuitous misery of repeating the dysfunction.

Suddenly, problems with my Outlook Express, dammit. Incoming emails appear fine, but outgoing ones balk. I keep getting 'error' messages. The interpretation of which are completely lost to me. And despite this, the messages appear to be going out regardless.

Problem is, the system is not content with sending out each individual email merely once, but sends them out repeatedly. So I am then informed by my email correspondents that once is enough, thank you very much. They read the initial one and then set about deleting the following identical six messages.

I enjoy using Outlook Express, and have no wish to change to another email system. I've called Bell Sympatico twice thus far, and know that I will have to call them again for technical assistance to solve this truly irritating problem. The last technician who so kindly gave his expert assistance also rendered his expert advice, that I turn to using Hot Mail.

My granddaughter has demonstrated to me how Hot Mail is used, and I am not impressed. My Outlook Express, said the second off-shore technical advisor, has been corrupted. Well, is it too much to ask that it be uncorrupted? Because, as far as I'm concerned the 'corruption' occurred when Bell Canada originally decided in complicity with Microsoft that it would no longer support sending out emails with 'too many' graphics.

I've long been accustomed to forwarding emails containing attachments which I receive from friends. I ordinarily circulate them to a number of my email friends. A week ago I discovered that my emails were being blocked, and that is when the first notices of 'error' began to appear, discomfitingly.

And it's also when I called for the first time and that technician explained to me that sending on emails containing 'too many' attachments was now forbidden by Bell Sympatico to whom I pay a monthly fee for services. Services the quality of which are steeply declining, alas.

Despite which, they always end the sessions by chirpily thanking me for using Bell Sympatico's services. And well they should. And well, perhaps I should not be.

The second technician recommended that I allow him to direct access my computer by authorizing it on line and I followed his instructions, then watched as he remotely tried this that and the other remedy, finding nothing, apparently, that would solve my problem of balky email sending. Upon which, after a tedious 40 minutes of trying and talking, he pronounced the program to be inoperable.

After that session I set about correcting a number of changes he had initiated which I had not authorized and which were decidedly to my disadvantage, and discovered that the situation remained as it was before I had contacted Bell Sympatico to speak with the second off-shore technician.

Patience is a virtue, but mine is definitely growing slender. I cannot, given all the urgent matters to be attended to in my life at present, submit to another irritating consultation through Bell Sympatico's expert call centres, but I will get around to it, eventually.

Learned my lesson. I'll never again succumb to the urge to aid someone knocking at the door, claiming they represent university students looking for some work to tide them over the summer and earn a few dollars toward their tuition. But when I did open the door last Monday to see a nice, clean-cut-looking young man standing there, earnestly delivering his spiel, I relented, against my better judgement and said, sure, we'd consider hiring him/them to clean the outside of our house windows.

We usually get it done at least once a year, in the spring. For the past twenty years professional window cleaners have done their rounds in the neighbourhood, cleaning windows for those interested in procuring their services, and we always have been. At a relatively modest cost between $60 and $80. They are professional, it is not a perfunctory job they do, they focus on cleaning all of the windows, and the screen doors as well. It has never taken them long to complete the work, and we've always been satisfied with their work.

This time, why not give the work to young kids attending university? How much, I asked, stating what we usually pay for the job. Well, that's about right, said the young man. One of his colleagues, he said, would contact us and give us an estimate. And two days later an evening telephone call informed me that the fellow on the other end of the line wished to make arrangements to come over, survey the job to be done, and render his estimate. Why? I asked, why was it necessary to have a formal meeting over such a small, insignificant job? This was a house with a large number of windows, some of them sizeable, didn't they have a rough estimate? Nope, had to have an appointment.

Again, instead of heeding my better judgement and just cancelling the whole thing, I assented. And when the young man - not the same one who had originally knocked - came around, smoothly and with great self-assurance insinuating himself into the house - it is winter, after all, and you cannot leave someone standing on an outer door sill to freeze - complimenting the beauty of our interior stained glass windows in an effort to ingratiate himself, one's defences crumble.

This lad went on a tour of the house to count the number of windows, to measure their height, width, and to crunch numbers to determine the cost of cleaning them. He also mentioned that an additional service on offer was cleaning the eavestroughs, since they looked to his discriminating eye, as though they were covered with mould. Quite the eye he had, in the dark; the light of day might have revealed to this super-salesman that they were clean of mould.

The young man, glib and talkative, filled out a complex contract with all manner of interesting legalese, requiring our names in full, address, telephone number and etcetera; something we've never before encountered, and when I mentioned this and that I considered this rigmarole to be an utter time-waster, he kindly cautioned against work done by fly-by-night artists who would never do a commendable job.

When he finally did divulge the price for his priceless services - using, he explained at great length, special cleaning agents, taking special pains no other service provider even bothered with - we found it to be four times what we had previously paid. We'd get in touch with him, we said, with our decision.

Decidedly not interested.

Nice to have our granddaughter sharing time with us for the March break. Gives her and her mother a break from one another. Gives us the opportunity to live closely with a fourteen-year-old again. Not that it's been all that awfully long since the last time around, which was January.

On each such occasion our lives briefly take a bit of a lurch as we adjust to the new, albeit temporarily reality of two seniors sharing close intimate space with a teen. For a young girl, this teen has a ravenous appetite. No missed meals here. Although it's a struggle to have her agree to eat citrus fruits at breakfast. Toast, tea or coffee, eggs, poultry-type-bacon are all fine but oranges, grapefruits, not so much. She tolerates them crushed into juice form.

Her cellphone is never far from her swift grasp. It's never on ring tone, just buzz, and sometimes it seems like a loud buzz, causing us to wonder what on earth is that and where is it coming from, before we remember. Even through mealtimes she is constantly responding to text messages. She seldom initiates them, but responding is instant, and occasionally, judging from her reaction, hilarious.

Her grandfather has done an awful lot of unaccustomed shopping the last few days. Hauling granddaughter out to the shopping malls where her favourite shops are located. It's not time-consuming, since she knows exactly what she wants, doesn't particularly enjoy shopping, is intent on going in, and getting out as soon as she can. Shopping bags in hand, of course.

They exited one quasi-favoured shop when they understood they had erred in the pricing for sweat pants. Who ever heard of sweat pants priced at $50 each? She did end up elsewhere (Urban Planet) buying four pairs of jeans and nine quite nifty tops.

At breakfast this morning, we perused the news through the tiny computer, and newpapers while she chatted away texting with her best friend. She's working on school projects while she's with us and has set up shop on the dining room table.

At one juncture, her grandfather nudged her to notice an item in the National Post: "At long last", read the headline over the item, "scientists have a way to measure the carbon footprint of cow farts." Truly, that's what it said, and she was more than a little impressed.

I loved the privileged experience I had, living in Tokyo. Not for long enough, however. Lived there first in an apartment close to Ayoma dori, then in a house, in a compound with other Western-style houses. There was a large water tower in the compound and huge crows called "jungle crows" always roosted around the water tower, cawing hoarsely. The house roofs were metal, and when the crows walked about on the roof, and you happened to be on the second floor, it sounded like a man walking about up there.

No fixed-wing planes were used within the country itself, helicopters being flown instead, because of the mountainous terrain. Japanese use every bit of land they can to farm. The country is a tight little group of three islands, the main island, the northern one and the southern one. The southern island is warm, the middle one temperate and the northern one reflects the north; its winters are cold and snow is abundant. We used to go hiking on a regular basis, with a hiking club; once hiked through a bamboo forest and it was eerily strange. Hiked once up a mountain which had an immense ginkgo tree close to the top and it was said to be two thousand years old.

The temples in Tokyo and the other cities on Honshu island are wonderful, and their gardens sublime. The Japanese gardener's attention to detail is outstanding. Simplicity with the beauty of nature. The immense old carp, gold, silver, orange, that swim about in the garden ponds are beautiful creatures. They are carp, but named koi by the Japanese. The prized bonsai that many of the temple gardens set out on trestles are other wonders of nature, pruned carefully over generations as heritage objects.

On the streets in Tokyo people will place their valuable bonsai out in front of their homes. Knowing that no one will pilfer them. Bicycles are left without locks because there is an instinctive prohibition against taking or damaging other peoples' property. There is crime in Japan, but it is organized crime, the Yakuzi. They are readily recognized for they drive black cars. All other cars on the road are variations of white. It is rare to see grass in Tokyo, rarer still to view private gardens for they are small, discreet, and generally sheltered from public view. The fruit of fruit trees are often bagged while growing; Japanese have a dread of using pesticides.

Living in Tokyo was also an adventure in day-to-day shopping. Japanese live in little villages or neighbourhoods, with family-operated shops selling tea, fish, vegetables, rice, flowers, with the occasional Western-style supermarket, interpreted for the Japanese market. Japanese housewives shop daily, they live in cramped quarters and haven't the room or the modern conveniences to store food for a week. Everything one buys is amazingly fresh. Not merely fresh but consummately good-tasting. Fish-mongers wash down their stalls every night; there is never a fishy odour from their stalls.

This is absolutely absurd, that the Ontario Liberal government under the stewardship of Dalton McGuinty has steered Ontario taxpayers and homeowners into near desperation with the cost of energy due to the Premier's green plans for the province. Electricity rates have grown exponentially, and homeowners are hard pressed to pay all their bills, given the still stumbling economy and the fact that many people now are the working poor, the under-employed and the unemployed.

Collusion between the government and the energy providers to ensure that the hard lesson of 'paying for what you use' is well entrenched now, is hurting too many people. The province is producing an abundance of electricity. Sometimes too much for it to handle. In which case it seeks desperately to unload it from their inventory. Selling it at bargain-basement prices to other provinces and across the border to the U.S. Ontarians get no breaks.

Not only that but the disparity between charges for rural and urban communities is astonishing. I do know that at one time rural customers got a break and paid less, subsidized by their urban neighbours, and somewhere along the way that got turned around. Now, everyone in theory is being charged at the same exorbitant rate. And being urged to dedicate their use of hydro to off-peak hours.

Off-peak use places families where both parents work and there are small children at home in very difficult situations with the press of time to get chores done already compromised by too much to attend to, and too little time to devote to the necessary household events. The government's green schemes have proven to be excessive, costly, and a dreadful burden for families.

My daughter lives rurally. A single mother with one child. She occupies a small heritage log home that was modernized. It is heated with propane. She has no furnace, and cannot afford to use the electric heaters that were installed in the home to supplement the propane furnace. She uses a washing machine, never a drier, and even then uses the washer at off-peak hours only.

She never uses her dishwasher, and is exceedingly careful with her electricity use. Her monthly hydro bills through Hydro One run over $200. When she calls for information or explanations for the size of her bill she gets nowhere at all. The meters are now read electronically through the new "smart meter" system.

We live in a much larger house. I use my dishwasher once or twice daily. I use a washer and dryer, and I do my household tasks whenever it suits me, heedless of the urging to perform them at off-peak hours. Our electricity bills may reflect the usage we make of our appliances, but we pay an average of $170 per month as opposed to our daughter's $50-greater bill.

Does that make any sense?

Does Dalton McGuinty really expect the people of this province to be so grateful to his futurist approach to handling environmental issues that they will be eager to re-elect him? Heaven forfend.

This nonathletic girl has been challenged.

She detests organized 'exercise', or group sports (has a soft spot nonetheless for basketball when she can play with her friends and they whoop it up and have a grand old time), or going out of one's way to pose as being athletically inclined. This is an attitude she surely has inherited. None of her extended family is particularly involved in sports, either engaged with any segment of it personally, or much interested in viewing it.

On the other hand, her grandfather played high school football, and was good at it. And one of her uncles is an enthusiastic skier, canoeist, mountain hiker. Actually, fact is, all of the members of our little family have enjoyed years of mountain climbing, hiking, canoe-camping, and the general pursuit of enjoyment in the great outdoors.

We thrive in the natural environment. While organized sport activities bore us.

Her school, Arnprior High School, which has an excellent academic reputation, as well as an outstanding one for team-sport activities engaged in by its students, introduces students to an array of what might normally be thought of as outdoor activities. In the winter, understandably confined to the interior. In this instance, the opportunity to spend a week of gym time rock climbing and rope climbing.

For which each student is assessed a $30 enabling fee. Enabling the school to hire a private climbing company on a contract basis to haul in the required equipment, to introduce, teach and permit the students to have a taste of those rather exotic enterprises. Our granddaughter, in her first year of high school, was not anticipating these events with even a modicum of enthusiasm. The harness, she groaned, is awful, really uncomfortable.

Yesterday, however, she proudly recounted that despite the bruise on her rear end, the challenge of hauling herself timorously at first, determinedly as matters proceeded, up a rope toward the considerable-height ceiling of the gymnasium was quite the experience. Some of her friends made it to the top, some of them trembling with fear from the height they attained.

She made it only to the mid-point before descending. Not discouraged, however. Strengthened obviously by the partial success of her efforts. And grateful to one of her girlfriends for the support she gave, by placing her hand encouragingly here and there, on a foot, a shoulder, an elbow for moral and emotional support.

Today, another try, though, so she can test her ability, endurance and strength against the physical and psychological challenge of reaching the top. Just, she said, so she can tell herself she prevailed.

Had to rouse ourselves too early for my appointment at the Riverside Hospital. Our little dogs were somewhat disconcerted at such an early breakfast; Riley performed nicely outside, Button refused to deposit anything. She will doubtless, in our several hours' absence, leave a token of her affectionate regard for us somewhere in the house. It's disconcerting for all of us to have our usual comfortable routine disrupted.

Ample parking room at the hospital campus lot, because of the early hour. By the time we leave, people will have parked anywhere they might shoehorn a vehicle into. It's a wickedly cold morning, with a nasty wind blowing snow everywhere. Traffic was surprisingly good; we arrived with time to spare. Just as well, only one of the two elevators to get up to the sixth floor was in working condition. The hospital was crowded with people and becoming more so by the minute.

The cardiologist was right on time for our appointment. He's a nice, personable, albeit coolly professional man. Not averse to being personal at times, though. Must be nudging 50; about 47 I'd guess. He had looked after me during that emergency admission to the Heart Institute at the General campus in the fall. I trust him. We spoke, he made enquiries about my general state of health. Had a quick look at the blood-pressure readings I've been recording, pronounced himself satisfied with them.

Then set me up for a series of readings on the hospital's machine. And they were sky-high. I wryly mentioned "white-coat syndrome" and he smiled. I described how high they go at my GP's office, how alarmed she had been. He said he wasn't concerned, given the good readings I normally have. Checked my own blood-pressure cuff which we'd brought along, against his; right on.

He wouldn't change any of my medications, protocol to remain as is. Another visit won't be necessary until a full year has passed. My husband finds that very appealing. He considers the visit far more of a success than the last one. That heart murmur that was detected back in the fall was no longer in evidence; an anomaly caused by my low haemoglobin level, caused by the bleeding ulcer, caused by H. Pylori; an unfortunate and debilitating sequence of events.

He responded, to my query, that his own blood-pressure is being kept nicely in check. Watching his salt intake, regular swimming, he said, seems to help immeasurably. As, I imagine, does our own fairly scrupulous attention to a nutritious diet. And our daily vigorous ravine walks in all seasons; all that climbing and descending in the woods.

His son, he said, is preparing to attend Wayne State University for a medical degree. Hoped to get into U. of T., doesn't seem likely at this stage. $50,000 each semester in Detroit, but that's how it goes; he has never, after all, paid taxes in the United States. Entirely fair; his own education was heavily subsidized by the Canadian taxpayer, obtaining his medical degree here. Things are different now.

Squirrels aren't fond of fluffy, deep new snow. It hampers their ability to scamper swiftly when they feel they may be in danger. They prefer to stick
to the trees and branches where they can nimbly perform their acrobatics well out of danger of being caught unawares.

Still, you can see their tracks in the new-fallen snow, anxious to see if there'd been any peanut drops since they last took advantage of those we put out daily for them in little cache-places in the bark of trees, on stumps, inside the crooks of branches; they know all the places and check them regularly. Often they're patiently sitting there when we amble by, faithfully awaiting our passage.

They are not the only ones. Crows are increasingly aware that when we pass by, invariably there are peanuts to be found, and they track us, carefully watching the deposits. And then, in our wake, down they come, swooping for their prize. I shouldn't begrudge them the occasional peanuts, there's always plenty of them for the squirrels.

And for the chickadees and nuthatches that are around and about in the woods, so heavily frosted with snow, after the last big fall we had. There are also redpolls, but I'm not certain whether they like peanuts; they may. Haven't seen the pileated woodpeckers in a while.

Trudging through the fresh fallen snow would be a labour beyond my capacity for the length of time we're out there daily, were it not for the fact that there are others going into the wooded ravine and making their way along the trails. Each fresh bootprint helps tamp down the snow pack and by the time we make our way in there toward the morning hour nudging into noon, the trails are passable.

Just why is it that adolescent and teen-age girls who were not all that long ago, giggly, chatty, energetically mobile, suddenly become sedentary, fixated on being gloomy and pensive?

Ah, hormones, of course.

So long ago for me, how can I even recall? Though I do, some episodes of being enthralled by certain things hinting of the unknown, mysterious future...

The girls become focused on books like the the Twilight series. And then they veer off to books with a more morbid, real-world appeal, like those dealing with gender and justice issues, family struggles, sudden death, abortion, suicide, transgendered, euthanasia. I suppose we should be glad enough that they are thoughtful and introspective, though we worry that at their age they have become too much that way.

They argue with their mothers, they agonize over societal normatives, over having to conform to what they see little value in. They are assailed with self-doubts, they dig in their metaphorical heels and claim their independence, their right to be fully respected as functioning semi-adults. As matters heat up between mother and daughter, the gaps widen.

They cleave to one another for support and mutual validation of their values. The world appears a foreboding, hopeless place at times. And at other times they see their future beckoning, irresistibly.

Do so wish I could recall the details of having felt similarly when young. Too much to ask of human emotion, memory recovery, to delve back 60 years and retrieve the feelings that might reflect how the young react now. Perhaps just as well, since back then they seemed so overwhelming.

We did survive, we endured and we became what we now are. Proud, hopeful, concerned grandmothers.

It is a source of fascination to me that at age 74 my whacked-out hormones are still running amok, post menopause. Waking up suddenly from a sound sleep, all charged up and melting under the suddenly suffocating bed coverings on a cold winter night.

Makes me wonder, what on Earth might women have understood to be happening to them, those who lived long enough to experience the phenomenon of post-child-bearing years, in the Medieval era, for example. Would mendicant 'physics' have known anything of the female half of humanity's descent from its fecund state to its non-productive one? Would women think that the symptoms of menopause represented a personal decline in their health?

With a presumed paucity of elderly women living long enough to experience menopause, would women living isolated lives in vast countrysides outside urban areas have any inkling what was happening to them? For that matter, would the urban dwellers, likely the majority women of child-bearing years. Those who managed to live through to an elderly status, to whom might they speak to air their puzzlement?

Here we are, modern women growing gracefully into our elder status, bopping along trying to find quick fixes for a newly-diagnosed 'disease' of old age, which is simply nature's way of winding us down to find peace in an altered physical and sociological and psychical status.

Wondered why our miniature poodle came dashing into the house this morning after her morning pee, with her tail straight up. Didn't take long before the answer was discovered steaming on the dining room floor.

She is afflicted, poor old dear, with memory lapses. Hardly surprising, given her venerable age of 18, edging toward 19.

I know how she feels.

Why, he asked, at the breakfast table, does this taste so peculiar?

Um, yes. I always remember to scrub the outer skin of cantaloupe before cutting. Forgot to wash the knife I'd used moments earlier to cut up a garlic clove and onion, for the chicken soup I was preparing.

That wonderful man ate it anyway. I haven't his taste sensitivity, tasted fine to me.