Prairie Girls

Catherine, Me and Miranda roasting something over our open bonfire--Langham acreage, Saskatchewan circa late 1970s. I had so much fun hanging with my sisters and exploring the land.

Catherine and I-- Langham acreage, Saskatchewan circa late 1970s. Note my snazzy sandals--no matter what the occasion, or place, I always had to be stylishly dressed. Also I was always the kid who had to make a stupid face for the camera :P
I remember, Catherine and I would always play this really ridiculous game when ever we hung out around the bon fire. We'd say, "Let's play drunks." We'd stumble around slurring our words, acting so crazy.

I am editing my first Novel. The setting takes place on an acreage in Saskatchewan. When my family lived in Saskatoon my dad worked for the University commission. We lived in the city in a beautiful character home on a street that crept along the South Saskatchewan river bank. We owned (and would visit on weekends) two acreages on opposite sides of the South Saskatchewan River. My dad built a house on each acreage for our family.

My favorite acreage was the Langham acreage pictured above. It had good karma. We were so happy on that land. The other acreage was near the town of Aberdeen, Saskatchewan. It had bad karma. My novel takes place on this acreage (the bad karma one)--very near the banks of the South Saskatchewan River, relatively close to the North West Rebellion battles of one hundred years earlier than when my novel takes place. At one time, much later, my family was to return to Saskatchewan and live on this acreage full time for two-three years. That particularly dark time for my family is the setting for my first novel Queen of the Godforsaken.

Writing about the prairies brings back childhood memories. My family moved around Canada a lot. I always say my dad is a rolling stone (not the Rock Band). As a child, I lived in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario. These pics are a small ode to my wonderful memories of the prairies. Memories filled with visions of galloping horses, hot prairie sun and endless blue sky; smells of wolf willow, wild sage and horse buns; sounds of evening crickets and morning meadow larks; tastes of wild strawberries, tart Saskatoon berries and my mom's famous pizza.
Thank-you Mom and Dad, my darling sisters and dear pets for those incredible memories.

Things That Go Bump In The Night

Me (on back) riding our (Arabian/ Welsh) horse named Silver with my sister Theresa. We are posing in the huge pasture of our Langham acreage in Saskatchewan. It was beautiful land, many poplar and willow bluffs to explore. The soil under the grass was sand. We lived in the city (Saskatoon) during the week and spent weekends on our acreage--so many memories, so many adventures.

Silver was the most gentle, loving horse in the universe. When I rode her bare back I would lie back and rest my head on her bum. She was the best friend a girl could ever have. And if she was facing the camera you would see how beautiful she was. Her face was so pretty (the Arabian in her), with big, kind and beautiful brown eyes. I still remember how good she smelled and how soft her velvet nose was.

The above pic was taken when I was about nine years old at our Langham acreage in Saskatchewan. By that age, I was already quite a seasoned sleep walker.

I am lucky that none of my children have inherited my sleepwalking tendencies. They have occasionally called out in the night and have been up in the hall, unsure of why they were up, but no serious cases of night walking.

I was a sleep walker, a horrible sleeper walker as a child. One time ( I was about age 7), my mom heard the front door shut in the night. She got up to check and there I was in my nightgown, putting away my bike and coming inside. I'd gone for a middle-of-the-night bike ride around the neighborhood while still
asleep.

Another time, around age nine, in the middle of the night,  I walked from the top 3 rd floor of our house to the basement and was sitting on the sofa watching a blank T.V. screen. My mom came down stairs and asked me what I was doing. I replied that I didn't know.

In the same house--a large old character house--my mom heard something on the stair case in the night. She found me sleep walking yet again, sitting on the bottom stair quite distressed. When she asked me what was wrong, I pointed in terror into the darkness and said, "that man, he's trying to hurt me!" She was totally terrified and turned around to search the darkness for what she feared was an intruder. She saw no one.
"Where? Where is the man?" she asked me.
I pointed into the dark and very insistently said,"Right there! That man is going to hurt me!" She was sure I was seeing a ghost that she couldn't see.

Though, the strangest thing happened to me when I was 18. I was living with 12 other teenagers in a huge old farm house near Lake Huron in Ontario (I was on a language exchange co-op program). I slept on a top bunk. In the morning I discovered myself sleeping on just my mattress. My pillow and all my blankets were tossed on the floor. But the odd thing was the head ache I had. I never get headaches (and no, for the record I had not had any alcohol or drugs). I  got out of bed and looked in the mirror and discovered, to my horror, a giant, blue, goose-egg sized bump on  my forehead. Obviously my head hit something very hard in the night. I had no memory of anything happening in the night. To this day I have no idea what happened to me that night.

Lately, I am up for a few hours in the night for no reason. Thus, I was reminded of these events from my childhood and thought it was time to write them down. And for all those parents of sleepwalkers out there, don't fret. Look at me, I was a sleepwalking princess and I turned out normal...sort of ;)