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Nanaimo Magazine Article
January 2011
By Lesley Lorenz
Hamster Party
Let’s pretend it is January, and very cold and wet outside. Wait, it is January, and my coat is still soaked from walking the dog last night. Is your head as foggy as the Nanaimo harbour too? I need an air horn to jumpstart my days, as the time from first coffee to getting out of jammies is dragging out longer and longer, until I find myself pulling on jeans just before the kids get home from school.
Working from home can allow the winter blues to settle in a little more securely if you aren’t careful. In preparation, I have entered carefully devised winter plans into my daytimer. Not resolutions, really, but items to remind me that the season has its influences – just like spring releases a torrent of allergens to smite my nasal passages, winter promises dark days that can drag one down like a romp in the quicksand.
Try these at home, or just think of me trying them, and see if it doesn’t make you feel a little cheerier:
1. Wear an absurdly coloured outfit. Black, grey and tan don’t count. Let out your inner purple. Attempt an eighties hairdo and add a dash of glitter to your lip gloss.
2. Hold a hand mirror in front of you like a tray, which makes it look like you’re walking on the ceiling. It’s much tidier up there, so you can avoid clutter without actually cleaning up.
3. Celebrate a pet’s birthday. Use cookie cutters to form canned pet food into festive shapes. January opens with a nice big hangover, but is lacking any other holidays. Make your own!
4. Buy the ab circle pro exercise machine as seen on infomercials. Invite your friends over to try it, then return it for a full refund after you post a lot of hilarious photos on the internet.
5. Visit the zoo. As there is no such facility in Nanaimo, instead go to a public pool and toss bread crumbs at the preschoolers.
6. Put a black light in the bathroom instead of using dental strips to whiten your teeth.
7. Set your ring tone as a laugh track, and have your message alert be a cuckoo bird.
Remember to look at the lighter side of life – the dark days of January will be over before you know it, and you can plunge wholeheartedly into all the fun and romance that February offers!
Posted December 31st, 2010. Add a comment
Nanaimo Magazine Article
December 2010
By Lesley Lorenz
As soon as the clocks are set back and night begins to fall before the dinner hour, my husband starts to string up Christmas lights. He doesn’t put them all up at once; the effect would be too startling. First, two tiny shrubs are lit all in white. Five days later, a cluster of colourful jewels are tossed amongst the rhododendrons. The next day the rain lets up, and he adds a long string of rope lights that snake between the fence posts. The rain presses on for more than a week, and just when the neighbours begin to think he’s finished, another barrage of electrical wonder begins. Huge blue snowflakes are threaded between red and white lights along our gutters (which fell off one year due to the weight of the decorations and a heavy snowfall). But, although it is still only November
, the transformation is not nearly complete. A blue spruce the height of a seven year old is decorated with flashing stars, and a trellis covered bench becomes a royal throne for holiday-clad teddy bears glowing under pink and gold lights.
Cars drive past and slow down, which my husband tallies, keeping score of all his fans. People walk by with children in tow, their faces peering up, hypnotized by the almost –Vegas effect created in our yard. Last year, when winter had melted into spring, a paper delivery man stopped by our front path and called to me in the yard. “Your house had the most beautiful Christmas lights ever.” Now that is a lasting effect! While neighbours and relatives and even household members react to the prolific display every year with ribbing and razzing and comments on our electrical bill, I can’t help but feel cheered by the Christmas spirit that pours out of my husband in his light-hearted approach to sharing the joy of the holidays.
A tip of my glass to all the souls that deck the halls with reckless abandon.
Posted November 24th, 2010. 1 comment
Nanaimo Magazine
November 2010
By Lesley Lorenz
A sombrero is thrown with gusto to the floor, and dusty cowboy boots stomp a noisy circle around the hat. Yipping and laughing, the traditional Mexican dancer turns sideways to the audience, showing off the brilliant silver studs that line each pant leg. He grins to the edge of the dance floor, and a senorita dressed in yards of billowy white skirts and a bodice embroidered with daring red roses enters the circle. She hooks her wrists under the edges of her skirts in a single flourish, and draws the edges skyward and begins to spin. The skirt floats around her in a perfectly tortilla-round halo.
I love that culture is retained through dance. While my recent trip to Mexico proved that the country is as cosmopolitan in its city centres as we in Canada are accustomed to, dance invites us to look back in time, at the cultural values and traditions that are a most respected part of their past. Movements that mimic bullfighting and cattle roping are threaded through the steps of the male dancers. The women’s arm movements and poses are designed to flaunt the dancer’s embroidery skills required to create her ornate skirts and blouses. The traditional steps form a rhythm for a safe courtship – the accepted manner to meet and get close to a potential partner. How fit are they, how shiny their buttons, how careful their steps, how exuberant their yelps?
Ukrainian, Chinese, Middle Eastern, Inuit, Irish; the traditional dances and music of these and other cultures are treasured, kept alive, and still performed. We can find the dances both in the country of origin and here, where it has been packed along with the other belongings of new Canadians. What a beautiful way to see into our culturally diverse past.
I have studied belly dancing, Ukrainian dancing and Flamenco, along with ballet. I am very happy to be teaching dance to children and adults again – it is fun and a half! If you haven’t tried dance yourself, maybe now is the time. More fun than aerobics, and you (or your kids) could learn about your own culture…
Special Thanks to the Calpulli Mexcian Dance Company for the wonderful photo. For more on Clapulli, please visit www.calpullidance.org
Posted October 28th, 2010. 1 comment
Puppy Love
September, 2010
Nanaimo Magazine
By Lesley Lorenz
She is a whirling dervish, a girl with no regrets. She bravely hurdles the lettuce in the garden, grazing her speckled belly on the tips of the leaves. Mango found her way to our house when the family she belonged to faced eviction if they didn’t find another home for her. Just ten weeks old and irresistible, we rushed in to save her. Feeling both heroic and at the whim of her super-cuteness, we bend over backwards to make our home her new kingdom.
Mango has two cushy beds, one which she drags around our bedroom, and fills with the various stuffies that are still kicking around from when the kids were toddlers. Her kitchen bed, for afternoon naps, is nestled under a couple of prints featuring bunnies and Weiner dogs (Mango is half Weiner, half Beagle; we call her a ‘Beaner’.) Tiny rawhide bones and drool-soaked squeaky toys complete the décor. Our three cats provide hours of entertainment, as do the chickens in the yard that haven’t laid a single egg since she arrived.
New babies disturb the balance – we knew this – but the scales dip sharply in her favour, as her tiny white-tipped tail thumps frantically on the floor every time we approach. She has that wonderful puppy smell that renders her irresistible, and makes all the accidental puddles instantly forgivable when paired with a doleful gaze from ankle height. As I ride my bike with her curled up in the front basket, drivers honk and smile, old ladies flag me down to rub her velvety ears and passers-by exhale in an audible ‘awwww’. And just so you have an idea of how small she is, in the standard size basket that graces the front of my bicycle, I can fit a loaf of bread, a bag of apples, a carton of milk and one Mango.
August, 2010, Nanaimo Magazine
By Lesley Lorenz
Bleeped across the top of my cellphone, out of service brings a smile to my face. Tucked in behind Mt. Benson for a few days of living in the woods, we are camping and splashing about in the lake. In the evenings, we stare in to the campfire – and ever so luckily – there is a bluegrass troupe camped not too far away. We can hear the strumming of a banjo, decorated with a jiggidy fiddle and accompanied by a husky voice belting out “May the Circle Be Unbroken”. Heaven, descended, lays amongst the campfire smoke and frog song that surrounds the lake.
2:00 am, and I am awoken by a single star, its light piercing through a fold in the curtain, winking at me. I creep out of the wee campervan we own, and stare upwards, but the canopy of branches blocks my gaze. I decide to head towards the lake, first convincing my new husband that I would be such delicious cougar bait that it is imperative that he escort me on my trek to the water if he wants me to be around to fry up his bacon in the morning.
As we reach the water’s edge and the mirror of the lake opens up before us, my heart jumps to my mouth. The sky looks as if royalty had played Hansel and Gretel, dropping jewels instead of breadcrumbs across the velvety sky. The big dipper is poised over the lake, ready to scoop up its dark watery coolness in its gigantic ladle. The immense “W” of Cassiopeia also presides over the lake, a striking constellation found near the North Star. And soon to be on the dramatic ebony stage – the Perseid Meteor shower! Pack a midnight picnic in August (peaks around the twelfth) and look skyward to see what the ancients called the “Tears of St. Lawrence.” Actually debris from the comet Swift-Tuttle, the grains of ice and dust from the comet’s tail enter the atmosphere at 71 miles per hour. Boldly cast your desires to the sky -the display allows for dozens of wishes on falling stars in just one night. Good luck star gazers!
July, 2010, Nanaimo Magazine
By Lesley Lorenz
Two weeks in paradise. I’m still floating and gloating over a magnificent honeymoon in Italy.
We took the train from Milan to Venice, and while I had premonitions of the city of canals being ultra-cheesy, I was whole-heartedly wrong! It is beautiful beyond words, magical and romantic, and easy to wander into a non-touristy part of town and enjoy the achingly beautiful architecture reflected in the waterways. An evening gondola ride down the side canals was silent and mysterious, and as we poled our way under a stone bridge, we looked up to see a full moon throwing silver ribbons into the canal ahead of us.
The ancient walled city of Lucca was our next stop, a smaller, less touristy destination. We enjoyed lunch in the Theatro (a huge round plaza) and an excellent view of everyone’s laundry which flapped from every balcony. Curved old ladies whizzed over the brick streets on bicycles, their daily shopping in a handlebar basket. No helmets, dressed in skirts and fashionable shoes, a cigarette perched on their lips. Viva la difference!
By train, we zipped through the countryside, past marble mountains and on to Cinque Terre, five beautiful villages perched on the coast and declared a national treasure. Breathtaking! We saw homes and gardens terraced into the surrounding mountains, dotted with church spires and tiny restaurants. Next, we rented a car and our adventure really began. Snaking up the Tuscan mountainside, one lane barely accommodated the mini-vehicle I was driving, and yet we would encounter trucks, and find ourselves spilling into the grassy shoulders or patiently backing up to allow passage. The drive was so treacherous that we traveled for over 2 hours in second gear. Our final destination was worth the effort though. High above a gorgeous valley speckled with sun-drenched villages, our hosts ran their B & B in a 450 year old homestead. Besides the tremendous view, we were greeted in the morning by a cacophony of birds – including a cuckoo bird that was, to quote our hostess, “looking for his wife”. We visited Rome at the end of our trip, rooting our way through the dusty ruins in the heat of the afternoon, awed by the grace and grandeur of the 2000 year old architecture.
A trip of a lifetime – and I stepped where Caesar once walked, and slept where the cuckoo bird called to contemporaries of Galileo.
To read more of Nanaimo Magazine on line, visit www.nanaimomagazine.ca
June, 2010, Nanaimo Magazine
By Lesley Lorenz
It was heaven – and there we were in the perfect setting, high above the Nanaimo skyline, enjoying the sparkling stars and the sparkling wine.
The Coast Bastion is the perfect place to celebrate your own love story – and ours began at that very hotel, when I met my future husband for the first time, during a business interview in the lounge regarding his posting as the new Executive Director for Tourism Nanaimo. Full circle, and almost two years to the day we begin our honeymoon with the Bastion’s Romance package.
Greeted for the first time as Mr. and Mrs. Drysdale, (butterflies!!) we are ushered up to beautiful newly renovated suite. The subtle lighting and chestnuts-and-cream colour scheme created a wonderful relaxing respite after hours of tearing up the dance floor and carousing with our wedding guests. A large Jacuzzi tub snuggled up to the huge floor to ceiling windows overlooking the harbour was too inviting to be missed. Set on the table next to the chaise-lounge and cozy armchair, we found an ice-cold bottle of champagne and a sumptuous serving of chocolate. Candlelight added to the romantic ambience that permeated the room. Every detail was attended to in perfection, and we dreamed on clouds of soft pillows and an exquisitely comfortable mattress.
Sunrise was glorious, rolling up hallelujah-style behind Protection and Newcastle Islands. We began our first day of wedded bliss with a full breakfast in Minnoz Dining Room, which is the crowning glory of the Bastion romance package. Eggs Benny is a house specialty offered in so many variations, you’ll be browsing your options while your mouth waters at the combinations – I enjoyed a fantastic Italian Benny with grilled chorizo and basil, while Mark savoured the West Coast Benny, featuring crab cakes and baby shrimp. Of course the classic back bacon is offered for traditionalists. The entire menu is magnificent, renowned throughout the island for fresh, local fare prepared by an excellent chef with international flare. Treat yourself and your sweetheart – book the Romance Package for a weekend you’ll never forget!!
To read more of Nanaimo Magazine on line, visit www.nanaimomagazine.ca
Garden Thoughts
May 2010 Nanaimo Magazine
By Lesley Lorenz
Spring Garden
My garden is full of little spots to sit and think. Chairs, settees, benches and arbors are tucked into corners, surrounded by flowers and greenery. Each one offers a different view, a new way of looking at the blooms and the vegetables. I mix strawberries in with marigolds, roses together with beans. It’s a hodgepodge garden, and ‘volunteers’ – or weeds, if you want to be less tolerant – are left to fill in the spaces between my more desirable plants.
And somehow, that’s just like my head. I like to reflect on things from different angles, and even the weedy thoughts that pop up on their own can offer a little colour to the landscape between my ears. Some thoughts I purposely put there (they still get out of hand and need to be pruned) and others sneak in on their own, seeds blown in from the thoughts and actions of those close to me. It’s messy but colourful, just like my garden. Too much control could land you with a barren landscape. Good fertilizer helps – feed your thoughts with healthy stuff like time spent with friends or a walk in the back alleys. Avoid pests by hanging a little mental fly-paper strip, to catch should-haves and if-onlys.
The really nice flowers (okay and some of the weeds too) make it into the house where I display them on the table, putting the prettiest of the garden’s pickings in the centre of the table. So too, the best of your thoughts are the ones to lay on the table for family to enjoy. Share the good stuff – as my close friend MJ says – bring your best game home. Keep the orneriness and short temper for passing pedestrians and share your patience and kisses with the ones at home. So whether you’re plucking a peony from the garden or a compliment from your daydreams, letting a little love bloom will add colour to your day.
April, 2010 Nanaimo Magazine
By Lesley Lorenz
Hello Readers!
With my own marriage coming up in May, the fruit of my laptop this month turns out to be an article on surviving (and enjoying) the second-time wedding.
Love x Two
Helpful Hints for the (second time) Bride
By Lesley Lorenz
So you’re engaged. If you’re like me, you’ve already spent bucket loads of time staring at the sparkle on your finger as you flip through telephone-book size bridal magazines. Glossy photos of youthful, first-time brides in flamboyant, fairy-princess gowns surrounded by dozens of maids and attendants in pastel coloured outfits. So, if it’s time for round two, here are my suggestions:
1. Really love the guy. Deep down respect for his values, his shortcomings, his tolerance for your kids and his addiction to hockey.
2. And he really loves you. On your grumpy days, or when you put a fresh ding in his truck, he holds you and says “I’m still in, forever, you can count on it.”3. You’ve racked up lots of life experience – don’t worry about the social etiquette once demanded by great-aunts and tea grannies. Plan your event as a celebration of love. Wear what you like, serve what you like and your guests are invited along for a little joy ride.
4. The dress. Avoid going in to the bridal shops with your daughter. The staff will rush to her side, measuring her up and pointing out exorbitant gowns before you can open your mouth. Also, the selection these days is limited to strapless. So, if you’re like me, you’d need to hook up a chain like those used for the librarian’s eyeglasses to hold the damn thing up. Try on some of those bridesmaids’ dresses, which are usually a bit simpler and offer more coverage – lots of them are available in white too.
5. The flowers? I’m headed out to buy my hanging baskets before the wedding, and plan to use the baskets (wire hangers removed) on pedestal tables/covered barstools to decorate the hall. I’ll get to enjoy them all summer, and they’re my usual garden expense, so they’ll work twice for me.
6. It’s got a good beat that you can to dance to. DJ services will be provided by the ever-popular ipod, courtesy of three teenagers with (they promise) appropriate playlists.
7. Remember who the wedding is for. No need to impress anyone, except to impress on everyone just how much the two of you love each other.
Cheers and good luck!
You can read the rest of the Nanaimo Magazine April issue by clicking on the link below:
April Article Nanaimo Magazine
Cheers! (or as we will say, Nastrovia!)- Lesley
Posted March 29th, 2010. 1 comment
Hello Readers!
Thank you for visiting my blog. I’d love to hear back from you regarding my new article in the Nanaimo Magazine. Any input into small steps towards a greener lifestyle would be appreciated.
This is also a chance for me to let you know about my new book, “Someone Else’s Shoes,” set on the beautiful west coast. Read more…
Posted February 24th, 2010. 4 comments
