HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014

     Well, 2013 was dramatic; an extreme year all around.  This is my first blog of 2014, my first blog in quite some time, and hopefully the first of many.  A lot of traveling.  LA to UK to Canada to UK to Canada to UK to USA and back and forth and back and forth... follow the bouncing Leszczynski.  

     I said goodbye to the Pink Cottage and the Peahen for four months to help my father after my mother passed away in Toronto.  He is a heartbroken, cranky, irascible widower.  

Goodbye Peahen

Hello Toronto

      Returning to a family home left many, many years ago is a psychologically disturbing experience.  I cannot begin to catalog the Victoria Falls of emotions wrought by that situation. Interesting and educational to be with an aging parent, a real life-lesson.  Returning home after a mother's passing was sadly another.  Maybe, as time passes dribs and drabs of this journey will make it into this blog, but not quite yet.

     Toronto was eye-opening on many levels.  Reconnecting with old friends, some not seen since high school, was a mind bending joy.  But, a continuing source of endless entertainment was the Rob Ford Show, also known as the nightly news.  Rob Ford is the mayor of Toronto; a behemoth of a man with a ruddy red face and a formidable drinking problem.  In November he famously admitted to smoking crack, but excused it by announcing he'd been in a drunken stupor at the time. 

    
     His antics made the American late night comedy shows and the UK news. Canadians cringed, one eye open to see what he would do next, hopefully spontaneously combust.  He cursed, made disgusting sexual comments,

Mayor Ford is a wacky guy

knocked over a councilwoman in the Toronto City Hall chambers, hung out with crack dealers, and with each new transgression it became apparent his boisterous personality knew no bounds.  Most of his mayoral powers were stripped from him, but he clung to his office.  A large number of his supporters remain loyal.

     Rob Ford grew up near and still lives close to my father's house.  One day I took my dad to the doctor.  On the way home, five minutes from our doorstep, I noticed news vans parked on the side of the street.  A corpulent man gestured wildly on a snow-covered front yard flanked by thuggish security guards.  It was Rob Ford.  I wanted to stop.  I wanted to take a picture, shoot a video, something... anything.  I have no idea why I was so excited to see a fool in person.  'Oh my god', I cried out.  My nearly blind, nearly deaf father looked out the opposite window, unseeing, bewildered by my outburst.  "Why do you have to drive so fast?" was his only comment as we crawled past the mayor at thirty-miles an hour. 

Downed power lines

Frozen Yogi

     
     







     The Rob Ford Show went on hiatus as he tried to behave himself.  He was replaced by the Ice Storm, precursor to the Polar Vortex.   Never been in an ice storm before.  It's a beautiful terrible thing, breathtaking to look at, as long as you don't have to go anywhere.  Trees are encased in thick ice, and their limbs, unable to stand the strain of added weight, snap off, often into hydro electric lines, taking out the power.  The week before Christmas 300,000 residences were without power... in minus 17 degree temperatures.  Merry Christmas. 

     My sister arrived to take over helping my father.  She and I hiked on icy snow through a landscape of crystal glazed trees reflecting colours like prisms in brilliant sunshine.  We froze our rears off.   

Frozen still-life

 

Everything frozen

One day we went out in the car and found the fuel gauge on zero.  We pulled up to a gas station, and my sister went inside to pay.  I went to pump gas.  The gas tank cover was frozen solid.  That morning we'd chipped away the ice sealing the car doors closed, and marbling the front and rear windows, but the rest of the vehicle remained a four-wheeled ice cube.  Some guys at an adjacent pump came over with tools to chip open the gas flap for us.

Frozen sister

For a moment we were flattered by their gallantry, until we recognized that in winter wear we were merely Michelin Tire people, not women.  It was strictly a mercy thawing.

     I left for England the day after Christmas.  Arriving at the tail end of a storm the plane was buffeted wildly on landing.  Husband, already in the UK, had informed me there would be no rain, but intentionally, mercifully, neglected to tell me there would be gale force winds.  My friend Jane met me; surprisingly prompt since her car had been stolen that night and she only just discovered this heading out the door to Heathrow.   It was so good to see her and Lord Jel. 

Flooding in Somerset

Rose absurdly blooming

     Husband was waiting in the country with the Peahen, tending to the Pink Cottage.  Two days later I was there too, gazing out over the sheep in the field next door and admiring a rose bud blooming absurdly in December.  Another two days and I was battening hatches again, watching the sheep gallop up the hill as the water levels rose, listening to the BBC report that sections of Cornish coastline were crumbling from wild winds, and following news about flooding on the Somerset Levels.  

     Penny the Peahen sleeps in the upper reaches of a conifer in the garden.  The wind was whipping that fir tree around like a bucking bronco.  We prayed she wouldn't be flung across the property like an Andy Murray serve.  But Penny is a resilient old bird, and every night, through wind and rain, she remained, and remains, successfully secure in her treetop boudoir. 
    

Hello Peahen

 
     The Pink Cottage is on a hill, a hill now surrounded by lakes dotted with sheep one step away from demanding life preservers.  Inclement weather aside, it's wonderful to be back.