Ours is a purely professional relationship, not of particularly long standing, since we've only seen one another fewer than six times in the past two years. But she feels relaxed and comfortable enough to explain that this is not one of her good days. She had been unable to sleep well the night before, and she was tired. Usually, she said, she's more than able to cope.

Her husband has taken time off to be with their two infants, and she's expecting her father to come over to spend some time, helping out, from his home in Europe to hers in Canada. Her baby girl is now all of ten months old. She showed me a photo superimposed on a drinking mug of her three-year-three-month-old daughter, alongside the younger one. Both pretty, smiling, cherubic little girls with midnight-pitch hair like their mother.

Their mother looks different than last we met, about a year ago. Amazing what a year can bring; it has transformed her from a lovely, fresh, dewy-complexioned young woman bursting with energy and commitment to a drawn-looking young woman, determined and committed to her profession. A proud mother, and a woman whose profession dedicates her to the health of others, while hers inevitably declines.

She is my personal physician, a woman who is personal physician to many others as well, and as such compartmentalized in her loyalties, her attention, her responsibilities. This appointment was arranged reluctantly by me, a face-to-face encounter necessitated by the fact that I required my prescriptions to be renewed. And responsibly, they can be renewed only by presenting myself physically for an oral examination, discussion, and a brief blood-pressure check.

The latter resulting in the usual white-coat syndrome, though I feel perfectly relaxed, and the former clearing up a number of queries that I had, to the best of her abilities. Her responses are swift and garrulous, and since her Eastern European accent is very much present, despite her excellent command of English, I come away not completely in possession of the answers I sought.

I used to wonder how our old doctor, now retired after representing our health problems which have been scant over the past forty years, managed to retain his sanity. He was always busy, his office packed with patients, and he seemed to regard each one of them as his very personal responsibility. His English was tinged with his native Arabic, but never did we experience problems deciphering what he said and what he meant to convey.

His retirement, however, enabled me finally, to acquire the medical professionalism of a woman, something I'd long contemplated and finally achieved. And we've a shorter drive to arrive at that destination than previously, a plus given our weather, and that today is blustery and snowing, heavily.

Scooter is a good-natured, still-rambunctious low-to-the-ground, grey Schnauzer-mix. His owners, a doctor and a nurse, had something done to his larynx when he was a pup so they wouldn't be annoyed by a barking dog. Their little Shih-tzu prior to having Scooter, always tied to a stake on the front lawn, had been an incessant yapper. Scooter is now in his 13th year, and according to our neighbour who lives down the street, he is slowing down considerably. Instead of running before her, he now lags most uncharacteristically. The neighbour who walks Scooter isn't his owner.

She, in fact, had her own dog once, Della, a large, loose-limbed golden Retriever, equally good-tempered, anxious to please, loving to be noticed, and ecstatic when someone would toss her ball for her. Della was once our neighbour's companion on her ravine walks. Della, however, was her husband's dog, she always says, not hers. Her husband, being twenty years her senior, outpaced her considerably in the 'creaking elderly' category, and walking Della and looking after Della's needs increasing fell to her. And as Della aged, she swiftly became decrepit, suffering like many large dogs from hip dysplasia. Surgery helped a bit, but then deterioration set right back in. And because our neighbour felt so hemmed in, resenting that the spontaneity and pleasure had gone out of her life, Della was put down.

As our neighbour said to me, "Della had a life, I didn't". This, occasioned by a recent conversation where I related how constrained our life had become, looking after the increasing needs of our little 19-year-old miniature Poodle. Blind, deaf, her memory impacted by age, we've had to barricade stairs, be alert to her needs, walk her very carefully to guide her along, and clean up incessant messes in the house. But she still takes pleasure in life, her visceral organs, her heart and lungs are strong.

Our neighbour thinks we're mad for not putting her down. We don't.

After Della was put down, our neighbour was free to travel the world as an eager and happy tourist, leaving her elderly husband at home. The reasoning was that she was still young and eager to explore new places, while he was too old and disinterested. And his advanced age had left him unable to adequately care for Della in his wife's absence. Ergo: dispense with the nuisance and everyone was free; Della from pain, the husband from responsibility he could not carry through, and herself to roam to her heart's content, without guilt.

Because Scooter lives across the street from her, and isn't taken out for walks all that often by his busy owners, our neighbour has an arrangement with them to take him out to our neighbourhood ravine for daily rambles. Used to be a time when Scooter chased squirrels, outran our neighbour and took himself home. Now he ambles leisurely behind her. Time, she told me, to stop taking him out; she has no intention of being bogged down by an elderly dog.

Besides, she's got a trip to Italy coming up shortly.

A sigh of relief from these quarters. Having completed the door-to-door canvass on my street for the Ontario March of Dimes. People, my experience has confirmed, do not appear to know much about the March of Dimes despite its long history as a charitable organization providing prostheses, wheelchairs and medical devices to children and others in need.

They obviously don't blow their horn very much, although I do recall a campaign launched a number of years ago where they did embark on a concerted public relations trial before their annual fund-raising campaign. At that time, people were aware, recognized the charity, and gave. But peoples' memories are short.

In any event, it's done, finished, I no longer have to think about it, I knocked at the last door yesterday afternoon. The street was a minefield of slush, ice and snow piled high interspersed with deep puddles because this week it's a lot milder than the bone-chilling cold of last week when I first ventured out.

And the people who are usually wont to give to charitable enterprises did so, while those who only sometimes do, did not, and those who never give, I just skirted.

In the process I was informed in great detail by one of our neighbours in his mid-50s, that he had suffered a fall disembarking from a bus some months ago and wrenched one of his shoulders badly. He is now undergoing therapy, and his progress seems to be very slow, since he's still suffering a lot of pain and cannot move about and do the physical things we so often take for granted when we're in good health.

Another neighbour, perhaps a decade older than the previous one, told me he is blaming the medication he's taking for high blood pressure (statins) for making him feel constantly cold, and for depriving him completely of energy. Everything tires him out, the slightest physical effort, so he spends most of his time resting. He's set to see his cardiologist in two weeks' time, and as far as I'm concerned, it's not soon enough.

On the more positive side, one of our neighbours is set to go off on another travel adventure, this time to Italy, for a few weeks, while up the street yet another of our peripatetic retired neighbours is leaving in two weeks' time for a return visit to Colombia, which he had enjoyed so much first time around that his cousin, who is in the travel business, arranged for a group tour with about 40 people, and he's going with them.

I've a habit of scrutinizing the cash register receipt detailing our weekly food purchases at the supermarket where we usually do most of our food shopping. For the most part I find nothing amiss; I am enabled to identify food items through the print-out, and the prices charged. And I remember what the prices should be, so that if there is an error I can focus on it.

Studies have been conducted with respect to inaccurate pricing of items purchased at supermarkets and the general conclusion was that there are often inaccuracies, but they tend to balance out. Some occur in favour of the store, others favour the purchaser. And studies have concluded that it is generally the consumer that comes out ahead. Consoling, but in my experience, not true. I have seldom come across incidents where an error has been in my favour.

Last week's cash register receipt caught my eye when I saw a charge of $17.95 for two bags of frozen haddock. That fish was advertised on sale at half-price; $4.99 each, which was why I bought two of them. Clearly, whoever was responsible for inputting the weekly sales data in the store's computer hadn't done their job properly. We returned the following week for our usual shopping bringing with us both the advertisement and the cash register receipt, to claim an overcharge. Obviously, most people who bought that fish paid full price rather than the sale price, given our experience.

We, however, were the only customers of the supermarket who returned requesting a refund, since most people don't take the time to peruse their receipts. Understandable, in a busy world with not enough time to discharge all of our obligations and duties, and find, somewhere in the chaos a little time for relaxation. And those people who do discover they have been overcharged usually do the metaphorical shrug, feeling the energy required to return with the receipt claiming an overcharge of a dollar or half-dollar simply isn't worth it.

On yesterday's cash register receipt there was another error. I had bought two canary melons, on sale, 2 for $5.00. Except the sale price hadn't been inputted and I was charged the full price of $2.99 each. This receipt too will be brought to the attention of the store's service department.

Just as I was cleaning up the breakfast room after our leisurely breakfast, this morning, I was rather surprised to see a middling-sized spider scuttling across the floor. Wondered where he had come from, but felt I'd rather he not be where he was.

So I asked my husband, who was standing nearby in the kitchen, reading a news item out to me, whether he wouldn't mind removing the spider. Knowing full well how he felt about ousting any creature from the house into the fatal cold of a January morning.

Obligingly, my husband enfolded the spider within a soft, clean tissue and gently transported it. To his workshop, down in the basement. Free to wander where fancy takes it, in pursuit of life, forage and liberty.

It's all about responsible conservation, being aware of environmentally sound ways to live, short-named "living green", the current mode of citizen-participation in a universal call to respect our planet, nature and our surroundings. Most people have that awareness and subscribe to a certain extent, to the ethos of using energy and resources sparingly. As far as energy is concerned, the growing cost to the consumer certainly acts as an incentive.

As for us, we years ago replaced all the light bulbs in our house from incandescent to the newer, more energy-conserving fluorescent types. Which contain mercury, and which do not, during the winter months when Canada is very cold, produce heat-energy, so it's kind of a half-dozen of one, half-dozen of the other.

It's been over two decades that we've recycled our kitchen waste into compost for our gardens, substantially decreasing the amount of garbage we put out at the curb on collection days. For the same length of time we've lowered our thermostat at night either manually at first, or mechanically in the later years to ensure we kept our energy usage reasonable. During the day the ambient temperature in the house is lower than many people find comfortable; we wear additional clothing to keep reasonably warm.

We make every effort possible to ensure we don't waste food. We rarely use any kind of processed food. The use of a dishwasher is kept to a minimum, but I'm not one of those who go a giant step further and refuse to use a clothes-dryer. Having done those things we feel we have modestly altered our lifestyle to a more sustainable one, environmentally, though truth to tell we could live in a smaller house.

The lifestyles section of newspapers are full of hints on how to live more energy-wise, environmentally sustainable lives. We do use some solar-powered light sources in the exterior of the house, for example. We rarely water our lawns in the summer months - almost never, though we do water the garden plants. We have planted trees around the house for shade in the summer and windbreak in the winter.

We recycle everything that can be recycled, faithfully placing our blue box (containing metals, plastics, glass) out for bi-weekly collection, or, on alternate weeks, all paper products in the black boxes. If there are items we consider to be extraneous to our needs we deliver them to the local branch of the Salvation Army for sale in their thrift shops. And we shop there ourselves for items of interest to us, particularly reading material.

We have not yet, and likely never will, however, resort to the latest suggestion (not even tongue-in-cheek) that people might consider urinating in their backyards rather than having to flush toilets incessantly. One wonders whether the bright mind that thought that one up interviewed people in India without indoor plumbing whether they consider themselves environmentally virtuous by having by necessity to relieve themselves outside in public places.

Granted, one's backyard is not a public place, but a private one. But we're speaking of a suggested practise that might not find complete favour with one's neighbours. Despite that an article in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry reported successful use of human urine (which in healthy individuals is almost sterile) to fertilize cabbages.

After a spate of truly sub-zero days and nights the current turn to slightly below-zero temperatures has opened the Ottawa River in some places, although thick ice still prevails, and will close up again as soon as the temperature dips significantly again, as it most certainly will. Our usual January thaw doesn't generally last that long before frigid winter returns with a vengeance. Our leisurely drive along the Eastern Parkway is always pleasant, no matter the season. And the reason, most often, is to drop in at the Byward Market.

It's a colourful area of the city, and during the spring, summer and fall months bustling with shoppers who stop at all the stalls operated traditionally by area farmers and growers with their bulging baskets of fresh produce and flowers in abundance. During the winter months it is a far quieter scene, but still busy with people stopping in at the various restaurants offering their specific brands of food experiences. We mostly go by to stop at a magazine shop that carries a wide choice of art and antiques magazines. And, on more clement weather days, to dally, popping in at shops we've long poked about in, with exotic cheeses, excellent breads and other choice offerings.

On our way to our destination we pass fields covered with thick layers of snow and ice, the stubs of the corn and pumpkin crops that had been lavishly displayed in the fall no longer to be seen. We pass parkland with magnificent trees, and trails following the river as it winds its way along the landscape, the prized and beloved Gatineau Hills in the distant background. Passing the Aeronautical Museum, eventually a number of foreign embassies, the Canadian Mint, the Catholic cathedral, the National Gallery of Canada, the Peacekeeping Memorial, and a number of other notable sites, we eventually approach the market and park there, to discharge our mission.

Taking in the colour of the Market atmosphere, the people intent on shopping or strolling about, the low-rise architecture of the Market buildings, the nearby American Embassy with its odd bunkered appearance, then en route back home, pass External Affairs, the National Research Council, Japanese and Saudi embassies, and the old City Hall, now part of External, where a small crowd of protesters has gathered, waving signs such as one that reads: "Respect First Nations", outside the meeting venue where Prime Minister Harper and several hundreds First Nations chiefs are gathered to discuss a new focus on the country's direction in addressing the never-ending dilemma of the country's First Nations peoples.

This is typical Ottawa Valley month-of-January wacky weather. We have experienced the usual extremes of excruciatingly frigid temperatures brightened by clear skies and a wan winter sun, and the opposite; our usual January thaw. We've had rain and freezing rain in below-zero temperatures and snow during above-zero temperatures.

And, of course, melting snow, glazed under the sun into water, then transformed into sheets of sheer ice as soon as the temperature drops to bone-chilling overnight levels, remaining so with slight variations throughout the day.

When I ventured out on Saturday in icy temperatures, albeit a sunny sky with a fierce wind whipping the frigid air about, I discovered just how treacherous it was, underfoot. Homeowners who had gone to the trouble of scraping every last bit of snow off their driveways had succeeded in creating personal skating rinks.

Our next-door neighbour, a woman in her early fifties and rather overweight, managed to lose her footing and break her left wrist, necessitating surgery. I had gone out on Saturday to canvass the street for charitable donations for the Ontario March of Dimes. And froze for my efforts.

By Monday afternoon it was sufficiently temperature-benign to suit up our little dogs in both winter jackets and raincoats over them because of an all-day rain, to venture out for a lengthy ramble in the woods. Because we wear cleats over our snugly warm winter boots we're assured of excellent traction; our little dogs' paws with their nails secure the same for them.

This morning we're set for another long traipse in the woods, scattering peanuts for the little creatures as we go. It's even milder today than it was yesterday but while yesterday it rained incessantly, today it's snowing. Go figure, as the famous saying would have it.

There was wind, exacerbating the icy minus-11-degree Celsius temperature, but the month was getting on, and I decided to go out on Saturday afternoon to begin the door-to-door canvass on the street on behalf of the Ontario March of Dimes. Another fund-raising campaign for charity I couldn't bring myself to refuse assisting. Although who designed the month of January for such an event couldn't possibly be someone who would have to slog through snowy and icy streets to present as a volunteer canvasser.

Most people are unfamiliar with the work of the March of Dimes. Originally a charitable group that came into being to cope with an epidemic of polio among children, it now provides prostheses, wheelchairs and other medical devices to children in need of them, suffering from the effects of cancer and other debilitating diseases, that strike them in childhood. There are, admittedly, other public and private agencies, particularly at the municipal level that focus on the same needs, but perhaps the greater number of such sources the better for society as a whole.

Because most people don't see it as a high profile need they don't respond. So I received quite a number of disinterested turn-aways. Still, a decent number of our neighbours agreed to part with some of their cash or through cheques, to make a donation. One of them, is a young mother of two toddlers, three and one, and we spoke of children and household duties as we often do when we meet, though my experience reflecting hers took place a half-century before.

Although women have a very difficult time balancing time and energy and concerns between raising children, household chores and paid work outside the home, they do have the advantage of technological advances in domestic chores. Despite which, I still wonder how they manage to do what they obviously are able to manage. They are hugely exhausted, as a result of such Herculean efforts to be a loving, emotionally supportive mother with all the physical let alone mental work that inspires and requires, along with being a part of the wage-earning workforce.

I described for her what it was like for me a half-century earlier, having three infants in diapers all at the same time - cloth diapers that required daily laundering, not the paper disposables used today. Washed with a wringer-washer, and hung out to dry in all weather. We laughed, and compared the differences in household management, then and now. At that time commercial babyfood didn't crowd the shelves of supermarkets, and mothers prepared a lot of their own food for their babies, after breastfeeding - although truth to tell even back then it was more common to give babies formula milk than breastfeed, though I did. On the other hand, even with all the new and cleverly-designed household management equipment, the chores never end.

The comfortable leisure of the future that was once predicted and hailed for liberating women from unceasing responsibilities and chores never did materialize. For with the greater ease that chores can now be accomplished with we have hampered ourselves with more possessions and more distractions and more things that must be tended to.

To my husband falls the selection of videos when we visit the Sally Ann's Thrift Shop, among the superannuated choices that happen to be present at any given time we happen to be there, looking through the second-hand book offerings. It appears that he scored really big the last time we were there. For, last night, cuddling up as we are wont to do on the sofa, with our little dogs fast asleep comfortably next to us, we viewed two of the latest.

Often, we come away with classics. These two were most certainly classics. Of a type. Like most men, my husband, when nothing else is available that looks desirably like a reflection of what we would enjoy viewing, will eventually make a selection among the prevailing Hollywood 'action films'. There are some actors he just happens to find entertaining.

And so it was, this time around; with nothing else available, he selected two films: a. Palmer's bones, with Rutger Hauer, and b. M=I-2 (Mission Impossible 2) with Tom Cruise. Perhaps it was the presence of Anthony Hopkins that sold him on that one.

When he decided which we'd view, it was Palmer's bones. As we settled in to watch, lights dimmed, the usual Interpol message was displayed - and then, well visions of pouting, unclad young women fully bosomed and ready for sex. Smut, in other words, not quite what we'd expected. The film that we had unwittingly acquired was actually the French-language film "Emanuelle", and it was, I imagine, pure porn. The outside slipcover and the interior cover for the video both earnestly promised Palmer's bones, but Emanuelle was what sprang forth in full pulchritude and colour.

Out it came and in went Mission Impossible. And it was entertaining at first, mostly because of the geographical and geological settings, particularly the rock climbing portion which was mesmerizingly fascinating. Above all the grandeur of the scenery, the vastness of it all was amazing. We do have some familiarity with such scenes, having ourselves done, in the past, a modest amount of mountain climbing, albeit not of the variety witnessed in this film.

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Relieved at first that this film appeared to reflect what the cover offered, we watched a story of intrigue revolving around a sinister biological virus threatening to be unleashed by malign forces whose agenda was not ideological but the acquisition of treasury, gradually unfold. And as it did, and the story progressed, it turned out, in fact, to be in a certain league with the earlier one we had rejected.

Simply another form of porn, this type revolving around extreme acts of bloody violence posing as the righteous battling the enemies of the world; fascistic greed on the part of violent petty criminals, and pharmaceutical corporate world that unlocks the secrets of nature at her most destructive, with a view to capitalizing on a curing antidote to the killing epidemic-guaranteed virus they have manufactured.

Exploding bombs, a continual barrage of gun-toting killers on a spree, improbably horrific vehicle chases, all of which conspired to give law and order a very, very bad name.

When we were out yesterday afternoon at the Supermarket doing our usual weekly food shopping, there were present, as usual, many elderly people. Those who fall into the age category, let us say, of being over 70 years of age. They appeared to be in various stages of physical condition, which is reasonable enough, since people are individuals and stricken with bad health due to genetic inheritance, lifestyle and misfortune.

I'm not all that much a keen observer of people. I tend to glance, then become distracted with whatever else I'm involved with. And in this instance, it's selecting the foods that we will be placing on our table for the next week.

But I do note the presence of older people. And take pleasure in noting that often there are presented a husband and wife of advanced age. Paying tribute to their long-lasting marital status, most appear to share the shopping experience. As do we.

Yesterday I became aware of the presence of a truly elderly pair, white and wizened, bent with age, and so fragile-appearing that if the merest hint of a breeze were present surely they would have been bowled over. Good thing there's no wind to speak of in interiors. They quietly went about their business of hovering over the fresh fruit and vegetable selections. Then I lost sight of them as I went about my business myself.

Only later to wonder how they might have travelled to the site to do their shopping. Wondering whether one of those faint remnants of what they once were, was still driving. Bringing me to recall an incident that occurred a few years back when we had parked our car, and I was reaching into the back seat to remove one of our little dogs to place it into a dog carrier I had slung over my shoulder. As I straightened up, withdrawing myself and the little dog from the back seat, I was shocked to suddenly feel something hard strike my backside.

An elderly driver had pulled his vehicle into the parking spot next to ours, paying no attention whatever to the obvious sign of the open door signifying that it might be a good idea to wait before proceeding. And in so doing, he hit me with the side of his car. I wasn't hurt physically, other than a slight bruise, though under the circumstances it was obvious that much worse could have occurred.

As I angrily remonstrated with him, he simply responded adamantly that I had hit his car. I was in his way. Besides, he muttered, his wife was blind. I had to remind him that his wife wasn't driving the car, he was. And he absolutely refused to admit he was in any way responsible for hitting me.

Invariably it makes good sense when you're accustomed to purchasing food items in bulk, to tag them. You bag the bulk items in the bulk-food store, and when you get home you generally empty the bag contents into clean jars, plastic containers or whatever else manner of sturdy containers you've collected for that purpose.

Without taking the trouble to tag and identify what you're placing in handy jars it can get pretty irritating when you don't recall what's in them. Sesame seeds cannot be mistaken for poppy seeds. Anise has such a distinctive odour and its size and shape identifies it as not being caraway seed or fennel. But you can mistake fennel for caraway seed if you're just grabbing the jar to use it in a hurry and not bothering to ensure you know what you're handling.

Sweet basil and oregano look very similar. Without the sniff test you can discover you've used the wrong one, but without catastrophic results. On the other hand, when you buy bulk flour, there's always the possibility that without tagging the flours for identification you can mistake whole wheat flour for light rye flour. And that's where things can get a little iffy.

My husband bakes bread, quite often, at least twice a week, occasionally more. And they're always different kinds of bread; he becomes bored quite readily with too much of the same thing, and he enjoys experimenting. But he's still a novice baker, and unlike me, he uses technological gadgetry to make his bread. Not that I'm complaining, since I'm a major beneficiary. But I still like to prepare my bread dough by hand, and I know by the feel of the product when it's been sufficiently kneaded, and if the ingredients are in the right proportion.

He scrupulously reads recipes, while I rarely do, relying on my long familiarity with the chemistry of food preparation to guide me. But his enthusiasm is genuine and commendable, and the products he turns out are generally more than acceptable, some of them quite exceptional. The last bread he baked, a light rye, didn't seem to be a rye. And it wasn't; it was a variation of a whole-wheat bread.

Good, but no cigar.

As a decorating device we have always chosen to use wallpaper in our decor. Not in every room of the house admittedly, but in enough of those rooms to reflect how important wallpaper is to our aesthetic. In every house we have ever lived, those we owned and those we lived in otherwise, the use of wallpaper, carefully selected to reflect our shared sense of what constituted a beautiful background, remained an integral part of our decorating plans.

And, to this day, after a succession of houses and fondly-recalled wallpapers, we are still employing their use in parts of our home that we feel would benefit by their presence. The latest being the make-over of our ground floor powder room. Which, truth to tell, I was resistant to having redecorated, but the opinion of the principal decorator prevailed in this instance, as in all others.

This time, however, in searching out a suitable wallpaper to replace the one that I liked so much, but which dissatisfied his exacting taste, my husband conducted his search on the Internet in the hope that he would find something different and suitable to what he had in mind. He did, in fact, find two landscape wallpapers that took his fancy, at two separate sites.

And he set about making his final selection, placed his order, and in a week's time it arrived, to his great satisfaction. Ordered from a site in the U.S., the solid vinyl wallcovering with its green-emphasis landscape and fetching detail was exactly what he was looking for. And it was quite the international product.

Designed and created in Canada for an American company, and produced in Korea.

We waited yesterday until one in the afternoon, at which time the atmosphere for a woodland walk looked inviting enough to set out, the temperature risen to minus-four-degrees Celsius. Meaning that, we hoped, even with the abundant snowfall we'd received in the last two days, including what was currently in free-fall, our two little dogs could manage the walk without their paws freezing up. If we can avoid putting their boots on, we do.

The trails had been whacked down nicely of their burden of snow, by other trail walkers who come out faithfully to take advantage of the cold, fresh air and the beauty surrounding them in the forested ravine. Our little dogs have a tendency at times to walk slightly off the trail, so the length of their short legs become entirely encased in snow, and we too do likewise, to enable us to deposit peanuts in the usual cache places, so perambulating along our usual route presented a bit more of a physical challenge than is usually the case.

We saw a few other hardy souls out with their dogs. All the other dogs were large; German Shepherds, Malamutes, even a Dalmatian, whose owner had dressed him in a coat and short boots to enable that short-haired dog to gambol happily to its heart's content, in the depths of the snow. All the other dogs are younger by far than ours, immune to the cold, entranced by all that white snow, and busily investigating the entire landscape, their nature-attuned environment.

The people whom we used to see a decade ago and earlier, no longer come out for walks in the ravine. Their dogs, with whom our own had been so familiar, had grown old, and had gone on to Dog Heaven. Sometimes the people replaced their dogs, more often they did not. Occasionally we see the second- and the third-generation of dogs being walked by old familiar faces. More often we see younger walkers taking their place, and dogs of more recent vintage.

I experienced a little fuss attempting to manipulate my digital camera with gloved-and-mitted hands, but managed to get a few shots, before having to abandon any further such venture. The uphill clambers in the snow were more difficult than usual. The wind picked up the soft, deep cover of snow on branches and made of them a ghostlike veil, whipping off tree branches.

And the snow kept tumbling out of a pewter sky, enveloping us in accumulated layers of a fine white dusting as we plodded forward and onward. By the time we reached home an hour-and-a-half later, we were truly exhausted, eager to reach the warmth of our house interior. We dipped our little dogs' paws into warm water to dissolve the snow packed into their paws, and towelled them off, leaving them to find their own places of comfort and warmth in their habitual places around the house.

Then I peeled and cubed an eggplant, salted and weighted it down in preparation for the assemblage of the evening meal - which included a large Jalapeno pepper, garlic cloves, onion, bell pepper, zucchini, tomatoes, and rice, and patties of fish separately prepared, to be finished off with fresh blueberries for dessert.

It's what's termed 'healthy living'. Tasted good, too.

There's another one on the way, we're to batten down the hatches. The brittle cold has given way to milder temperatures, at last. With that, an oncoming storm. We've been warned to expect freezing rain, snow pellets and snow, lots of it. Following hard on last week's snow storm this will mean we're finally catching up to the levels of the usual winter snowpack for the Ottawa Valley.

Canadians never fail for a topic of conversation among themselves. The state of the weather is forever a convenient subject to elicit agreement, and sometimes rage at the elements we know we can do nothing about. As Canadians we're torn between pride that as a people of the northern hemisphere, we have learned to cope with winter weather extremes, from days-long ice storms, to highway-dangerous winter fogs, to towering mantles of snow over our landscape and miserable wind to accompany the bone-chilling cold.

That's when the hardy among us take to the ski hills, or cross-country ski, or snowshoe over frozen lakes and streams and through our forest byways, or any number of other winter-recreational activities to appreciate the wonder of the white beauty surrounding us. Alternating that celebration of winter with huddling for warmth around a fireplace, cooking up comfort foods, and complaining about what we cannot alter.

Some Canadians make their own alterations, by posing as the fabled snow geese seen in winter along the St.Lawrence, making their presence in Ontario and Quebec in huge numbers, presenting as a spectacular phenomenon of nature.

They aren't exactly transformed by their yearning for warmer climes into an aviary species, but they do fly aboard silver-hued air vessels to places of eternal sunshine; Florida, Mexico, Costa Rica, and there wait out the short days of winter that make for long months of waiting....

Some people donate because they recognize me as representing the street's charitable door-to-door canvasser, and respond out of a sense of what might be called obligation to society. Others no doubt respond grudgingly, fed up with seeing me once again representing the interests of yet another charitable enterprise. Reflecting, in fact, what I feel myself as being too often at their doors in every season, for yet another reason.

It's cruelly cold out, and doing this door-to-door canvass, entreating neighbours to be charitable and give to various causes like Heart & Stroke, Cancer, CNIB, Arthritis, Diabetes, MS, and any other groups that have approached me to represent their interests as a reluctant volunteer, is no pleasure - at any time of year. In January it represents pure misery.

But, although I gird myself psychologically to repress my instinct to reply in the affirmative, I too often do. I tell those recruiters to work a little harder at impressing others besides myself, of their volunteer obligations to society. Forty years of canvassing is enough for anyone. They wail that there's no one on my street to take up the cudgel. And looking at their records, remind me of how much I had collected last time around.

The urge to restrain myself dies a slow death and I end up most often agreeing to trudge around the neighbourhood on behalf of yet another charity.

Now, each time I pass the canvass kit for the Ontario March of Dimes, where I placed it (to ensure it doesn't slip my mind), prominently on a table in the foyer, I feel it glaring at me, demanding that I fulfill my duty, get out there and do the canvassing.

And then I look at the thermometer that tells me it's cold enough to cause frostbite, and I demur.

Our daughter, whose 6-acre property is located 100 kilometres west, on the edge of the Canadian Shield, from where we live, experiences greater weather extremes than we do. In the summer months that's all very well. In the winter months, not so much, given how weather impacts the safety and security of normal highway travel and domestic heating costs as well.

Yesterday, the day-time high struggled to rise above minus-20-degrees Centigrade. She took her dogs for a quick morning walk, but it became abundantly clear, quickly, that they weren't so much enjoying the walk as enduring it. As the wind picked up in the afternoon and the temperature was unable to rise at all, an afternoon walk went by the boards.

As for us, our day-time high soared all the way to minus-18-degrees, with wind whipping about the ambient snow, albeit under bright, sunny skies. Given the unalterable fact of age and energy, neither our two little dogs nor I are now able to jaunt along at a good enough pace to keep warm in such icy temperatures.

So when it's this cold out, even if we put boots on Button and Riley to protect their tender pads from freezing up, the boots make it difficult for them to gain traction going uphill, necessitating that we each pick up one of them, and the additional burden for me, trudging uphill in snow, becomes extremely tiring, slowing us down, and making us even more vulnerable to the effects of the cold.

So, on these very chill days, we're now agreed, there's little point in pushing ourselves for our usual daily ravine jaunts. Missing out on the beauty of the landscape, the pleasure of being out there, but that's life.

Last night's stiff winds brought in a much colder atmosphere than that which prevailed yesterday. But although yesterday's temperature was higher than normal for this time of year, it was windy and damp, and heavily blowing flurries of snow were incessant. As soon as the shovelling was done, it had to be repeated since the snow kept accumulating faster than we could clear it away.

And my husband offered to clear the driveway of one of our neighbours who was facing a dilemma of having to pick up his son at the bus station, but unable himself to use his mechanical snow thrower because of problems with his shoulders. So, on top of clearing out our own driveway, and walks and backyard to enable access to our two little dogs, the job of cleaning another drive was assumed by my husband.

It was the only way our neighbour would be able to exit his driveway with his car, because the snow was piled so high, so there was little other option. No other neighbours, most busily clearing their own drives, made the offer to be helpful to Mohindar. Since he is our friend, it was left to my husband, at 75, to do double-duty.

When we left the house later in the day on our weekly food shopping expedition, driving was treacherous, the roads were slippery, despite having been ploughed and sanded and salted. Traffic was heavy, nonetheless, people feel compelled to get out and perform their normal activities, despite the awkwardness presented by the weather.

There were ample accidents reported; some casualties, no fatalities in this area, thank heavens. Overnight, the snow finally stopped, and the skies cleared, bringing that anticipated cold snap. We've now got clear, blue skies, and are well muffled with a heavier snowpack than we've had thus far this winter.

The trees are well burdened with snow, and will remain that way for awhile. Exceedingly lovely to observe. Last night my husband went outside to unburden some of the lower branches of the largest pine on our property, freeing them to spring back to their normal height. One of the branches had been smothering the columnar lights.

First thing this morning, looking out at the front of the house, we saw that the dreaded municipal plow had been by again, scraping packed snow and ice off the road and onto cleared driveways, and the foot of our driveway was once again barricaded with large chunks of snow and ice. With the new ambient temperature, it would be frozen in place, and difficult to move.

But when my husband ventured out after breakfast to tackle the snow-packed barrier he discovered it had already been mysteriously removed. The culprit was obvious; Imran, back from his Toronto trip, returning the compliment that had fortuitously cleared his father's drive the day before.

This morning I used the last of my daughter's apples from her countryside apple tree. They were still as crisp and fresh as the day we plucked them off her tree. They're extremely large apples, looking like a cross between a Northern Spy and a Macintosh apple. Round and juicy and so large that four apples are more than enough to make for a bursting apple pie.

I'm not certain how unique this method for preparing apple pie filling is to me alone, but it certainly works well for me. I mix together a half-cup to two-thirds cup sugar and three tablespoons of cornstarch, along with a third-cup of cranberry juice, and over that mixture I cut into bite-sized pieces the prepared apples. I never peel apples, just scrub the skin, since the skin contains valuable minerals and vitamins.

This is cooked slowly over a low heat until the sugar-juice mixture has thickened and the apples have cooked nicely. While still hot, I add plenty of cinnamon and a nice pat of butter, and allow it to cool. And that's when I set about preparing the pie crust. Before filling the bottom crust with the apple filling I add dark, large Thomson raisins, finally put the top crust in place, and bake until the crust is flaky and browned.

My husband waxes ecstatic over the aroma that pervades the house, and assures me time and again how much he loves apple pie.

Yesterday's ravine walk was most pleasant. They often are, but it helps, during the winter months, when the temperature rises sufficiently to enable us to venture out with our two little dogs, without having to place boots on them to protect their paw pads from extreme cold.

Yesterday was just such a day. As luck would have it, the atmosphere warmed up sufficiently to allow us to venture out with them, with their coats, but no boots. The boots are useful, enabling us to stay out longer with them before their feet start to freeze up and we have to carry them for awhile, until they warm back up again. On the other hand, the boots also don't give them the grip they need to clamber up the many snow-slippery hills in the ravine, and they often require help to make the grade.

When it's relatively mild like that too, we have the pleasure of seeing more squirrels out and about, anticipating our arrival with their daily peanut treats, placed here and there along our hour-and-a-half route. Long accustomed to us, some of the squirrels run toward us to face us directly, demanding to be noticed and peanuts given them, rather than await their deposit in the usual spots.

And, on this occasion we saw Stumpy, a small black squirrel minus tail, waiting for us at the foot of the first long hill, beside the huge old pine whose crumpled trunk bark is the depository of many peanuts. Enabling us to give him the special, three-chamber peanuts we save for him as our favourite little woodland creature.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee were also there, a pair of young black squirrels who always travel together, seemingly inseparable, although we cannot distinguish one from the other, and one of them is bold enough to confront us demandingly, while the other shyly awaits being gifted, from afar.

And further along, a half-hour later in a different part of the forest, we came across Stumpette, yet another tail-deprived little black squirrel who resembles Stumpy, but whose personality is distinct from his.

Distinctions we have realized over the past three years of our acquaintance with them.

We don't appreciate being distracted, when we're perusing books. But the woman seemed to insist, wanting to know what kind of books, exactly, we were looking for. And the truth is, it's almost any kind of books, excluding romantic novels, that attract us; biographies, history, novels, detective-crime novels, adventure, almost anything, well written, will do to compel our attention.

And since we happened to be perusing shelved books, arranged by author and genre neatly enough displayed, at the Salvation Army thrift shop, one can never tell what one can come across. It was a lucky day for us, as it happens. My husband was able to acquire quite a few mint condition Tony Hillerman crime novels which he enjoys reading, on this occasion, and one translated from Spanish to English by an author new to him, but of whom he had read.

The woman who kept insisting she could assist us, informed us that she was a former librarian, with a degree in library science, and she did, in fact, know her authors. A very pleasant woman, now employed with the Salvation Army, and eager to assist her clients. She it was who led me to Khaled Hosseini's Thousand Splendid Suns, and promised to hold for me a copy of his celebrated The Kite Runner, if one showed up again.

I was also able to pick up a copy of Michael Ondaatje's Anile's Ghost, and one of A.S. Byatt's Possession. All of which will take their turn on our home library shelves and eventually make it into our reading grasp, soon as we've finished with those we're currently reading.

For me, that's Peter Newman's There Be Dragons, a tome of a book, following which completion, next in line is Norman Doidge's The Brain That Changes Itself, a gift for my 75th birthday by our youngest son.

A month after her 19th birthday our miniature Poodle-Pomeranian-mix, Button, is back on a week of her monthly-protocol of oral antibiotic. Her veterinarian recommended this to us two years ago, to ensure that she no longer becomes so dreadfully ill as she used to, when a massive infection would set in, causing us to feel we were going to lose her.

Her heart and lungs and other vital organs are all in good shape, but for a heart murmur, and she is still energetic enough to have her daily ravine walks, although because she is now blind and deaf she must be carefully and firmly guided at close range. She stops on the trail and begins to walk in tight circles from time to time, so we have to wait until she stops circling and is prepared to walk a straight line along the pathways with guidance controlling her through her harness and lead, so she does not veer off, as she often wants to do, into the woods, off the trails.

When the temperature dips below minus-6-degrees Celsius, she has to be booted, otherwise the frigid temperature ices up her little paws. And she wears a winter coat out in the ravine, a lighter sweater to keep her warm in the house, during the day. She looks unkempt, because her hair continues to grow at an amazing rate. Since I cut it with scissors when I can manage to get her still for a few minutes, she no longer looks well groomed; she tries to avoid being fussed over.

At least she is now accustomed to being without sight, no longer thumping her head so mercilessly against objects she cannot see. She has learned to negotiate her way around the first floor of the house; we carry her upstairs to the second floor at night, to sleep in our bedroom. We have had to block off access to the stairs; it's just like having a toddler around the house again; she has, in the past, fallen down the stairs and we want to avoid that re-occurring.

When it's time to eat, she no longer waits expectantly in the kitchen to be served, but has to be picked up and placed directly over her food bowl before a whiff of her food is recognized by her faltering sense of smell, and she begins to eat. Amazingly, her appetite has improved as she grows older. And now that she is so old we no longer worry about giving her treats like bits of bacon or sausage. And she loves her daily salads, a mixture of cooked corn, peas, beans, carrots, topped up with fresh red bell pepper and snow peas.

She sleeps away much of the day, just as she sleeps soundly throughout the night. Her daily ravine walk takes up roughly an hour and a half of the day, otherwise she paces around the first floor of the house restlessly, for hours at a time. If she has been sleeping up on the sofa in the corner that is her favourite daytime sleeping place, once five o'clock arrives, she wakes as though an inner alarm clock has roused her.

And then she begins her restless pacing until her evening meal is served an hour later. We do our best to gauge the right time to take her out to the backyard to urinate and evacuate, and mostly we're in luck, but sometimes not quite. She will go for hours throughout the day without urinating, and we realize she forgets to drink water, so we have got into the habit of picking up her water bowl and placing her directly over it, muzzle touching the water, to remind her to drink - and she does, copiously.

Once in a while, on a rare occasion, it is as though she thinks she is once again a puppy and suddenly, amazingly, begins to caper at a dazzling speed, just as she used to when she was a youngster, all those years ago.

During the winter months I like to prepare a hot soup for our evening meal. Comprised primarily of dried peas/beans that have soaked overnight. And complemented by the addition of tomatoes and vegetables like okra, zucchini, celery, carrots to make for a hearty vegetable stew. In the preparation process, finely diced garlic cloves, cooking onion and jalapeno pepper begin the process, before the addition of the soaked peas and beans.

And while I rely on each of these vegetables to add something to the final product, I am often puzzled by the effect of the jalapeno pepper addition. The volatile oils in the pepper certainly affect me while I am in the process of cutting it into small pieces preparatory to adding it to the initial stage of soup-making. I cough incessantly, my eyes tear. But when the soup is finally ready to serve in the evening, after the late addition of the fresh chopped vegetables, there is a dominating sweet taste, no hint whatever of heat from the pepper.

And, despite that I have washed my hands countless times after handling the jalapeno pepper, if I happen to finger a corner of my eye, I immediately transfer obviously residual oil to that corner of the eye, and I can feel the stinging heat of it for a long while afterward.

We had also embarked on our usual walk in the wooded ravine with our little dogs, to ensure that, despite their advanced age, they still maintain their muscle mass. While there, and wearing gloves and over those, woolly mittens, enabling me to scrabble about in a bag for peanuts to disperse here and there for the woodland squirrels, I can feel the tips of my fingers becoming extremely cold. Later, in the evening, my fingers burn, leading me to suspect I may have been on the verge of frostbite while out trekking in the ravine.

How's that for a double-whammy on sensitive fingertips?

The old year has fled into history, the new year has made its debut, and our house is once again very quiet. The spaces are now our own to inhabit, though they are sufficiently commodious to accommodate far more than just we two and our two little dogs. They too recognize the difference, that two other people with whom they are intimately acquainted, have departed the scene, until next time they mysteriously re-appear to help us celebrate yet another milestone in our lives.

So, each is asleep in its own little bed, until we are finished with the day's chores and are prepared to take them out for a ravine walk on this bright and sunny day, where a few hours earlier, as we came down to prepare breakfast, flurries were lazily circling the atmosphere.

Although it has been over thirty years since our youngest child left the family home to make his own way in the world, when he arrives back home for a visit from his own home in Vancouver, it becomes a celebratory occasion. And even though it has been just over six years since we represented the workday caregivers for our granddaughter, when she too arrives for a week's visit, it too is a cause for celebration. When those visits intersect, it becomes an even greater occasion.

When they left, one after the other, the house began to settle into its accustomed air of serenity. Gone the bustle, the expectation, the little surprises, the joined activities and shared occasions that never fail to give us so much pleasure. We half expect to hear or see one or both of them rounding a corner, laughing, joining us for breakfast, dinner, a walk in the woods, an evening board game. Or to nestle together in the family room to view a film.

Father and son to decamp to the nether regions of the house where the workshop is located and together to work on a project or discuss alternatives methods of tackling a problem. Grandmother and granddaughter to confer on a choice for the day's dessert for after-dinner presentation.

It was difficult to become accustomed to the absence of our children, one after another, as they become independent adults and left the house. It is still difficult on these very temporary occasions to bid them farewell as we once again experience the rituals of arrival and departure.

It's been a peculiar weather-day. Milder by far than the preceding days this week. We woke to a dawn that gave us a pewter, cloud-filled sky, but temperature just at minus-6-Celsius. Soon enough we had clear skies and full sun.

Enabling us to have a ravine walk with our two little dogs who did not, this day, require boots to shelter their feet from fresh snow on the trails that would grip them with icy-cold in temperatures lower than minus-8. And we had the additional treat of seeing a Pileated woodpecker come back down from the boreal forest to thrum on the frozen bark of the ravine's winter-bare trees.

We set out shortly afterward to drive our granddaughter back home. Taking with her her new haircut, waxed, eyebrows, her new La Senza-bought underwear, her new school supplies for the new semester, and the suitcases full of clothing she had brought with for her six-day stay with us. By the time we had set out for the hour-long drive, the sun had disappeared behind clouds that brought alternately, freezing rain in a series of events, along with silver-rimmed cloud openings where the sun ventured to make its appearance again.

It was beyond pleasant to have our grandchild with us for just short of a week, coinciding with her uncle's visit with us on his way to attending a Fisheries conference in Moncton, before flying back to Vancouver. The interaction between the two was amusing and appreciated; we had our younger son to ourselves for the first half-week of his stay, and our granddaughter for the last half-week of her stay.

Sandwiched in between was a bit of exhaustion in ministering to them both in a manner that satisfied the standards of a mother and grandmother. Now it's time for a brief recuperation for both of us.

By coincidence yesterday our granddaughter spoke at length to me on the telephone about her English assignment for school; to produce, over the holiday break, a book review to be given orally to her class. Each student was assigned a classic piece of literature to read, admonished to read it at least twice, and then to produce an oral description of the book, citing relevant passages, so that the rest of the class would receive a picture of the novel's essence to more or less fire their imagination. the book she had been assigned was Jules Verne's Time Machine.

She is far more accustomed to reading novels that are current, very current, like Jodi Picoult's oeuvre; she had read every one of her novels and likes them immensely; they bring her into the world of present-day social concerns and how people deal with the adverse events of their lives. The infant we once looked after during the day while her mother worked, is now finding her place in society, as a young teen.

She has made it a habit of discussing with me the nature of each of the books she reads, what they portend, how society is impacted, and her impression of it all. She also consults with me concerning her English assignments. This one is interesting enough, she finds, albeit not her first choice of a topic, though she finds the language and the expressions stilted, a little antiquated, not surprising in a creative work among the first of its genre, dating almost a century back in time.

Later, in the evening, we settled down with our youngest child, enjoying his semi-annual visit with us from Vancouver, to view a film together that he had downloaded on his mini laptop from the Internet. Strangely enough, this film too focused on time travel, but with a very sinister, suspenseful undertone. It was a gripping film, enlarging on a topic that has always fascinated people; why time moved in one direction only, and why not explore the opportunity to go backward in time? The film, The Source Code, was gripping, melancholy, and brim-full of tension.

Very well done, in fact, although it had its faulty details; why, if someone had perfected an atomic-type bomb and was intent, as a brilliant, but psychotic lunatic, on expressing his contempt for society that is imperfect and unjust, to blow up the entire megalopolis of Chicago, would he first cause an explosion in a train? Why bother? And, why would it not be necessary to continue to ensure that a human brain has an energy source (glucose), when it is being used to experiment in time-travel, hooked up to electronic connections solely.

With the recent news out of CERN, and the experiment that was replicated by several teams of theoretical nuclear physicists, more than hinting at the final disclosure of evidence linked to the presence of the Higgs Boson, for a fraction of a second whose outcome will eventually - or perhaps, eventually - be the overturning and advancing of conventional wisdom, science fiction, as always predicts the future.