I posted scenery photos on my Field Notes (work) blog but here are the more important parts of our road trip to Ontario: the people we visited.

In Maine, I made a new friend.

At the Gayman's in Uxbridge: Cousins!

Susan Beer and her mother, Colleen Ross, in Cobourg.

Find Mrs. Stinny!

After another fabulous dinner chez Shelagh in Cobourg.

So the latest problem around here are the vast lawns that we have. You don't think much about the lawn until  you can't cut it. I don't know how many acres (no more than a couple) but Dwayne says it takes 6 hours to cut it all, including the areas that need to be cut twice a week. 

BUT

he can't work the ride-on lawn mower with his right arm. Shifting gears (or whatever) hurts his shoulder. When he says he's not sure he can mow the lawns, that means it's REALLY hurting because this guy mowed the lawns the day after his foot surgery three years ago! 

What do we do now? He's not working so there's no extra money to hire someone but the grass is longer, going to get longer with a weekend of rain. 

My schedule -- absolutely no room to add six hours of lawn mowing. And I've never been a lawn mower. Can't imagine doing it, really, I can't imagine anything I'd like to do less. Outside of the flower gardens, my job, when I remember to do it, is use the push mower on Dad's plot. Which I don't like doing because it's sloped on three sides. 

Maybe...just maybe...Dwayne will now take seriously my perennial suggestion for dealing with all the lawn we have: SHEEP!

Dwayne is away on his annual fishing trip and Mum is in Georgia so they missed Archie's TV debut this morning when he walked through the last part of my community correspondent segment on CTV Atlantic Morning Live.
I also took a behind-the-scenes photo because I'd already planned to do a work blog post on doing the segment but today, CML posted the video on their website.
Point being: I wrote it all up on my Field Notes blog so click the "work blog" link on the right to check out the video and the photograph.

My Field Notes column didn't win in its category but we had a good time at the Atlantic Community Newspaper Awards gala on Saturday night.
Too bad I didn't win; the guy sitting next to me at our table (his wife was a presenter from Atlantic Lottery) vowed to give a big loud "Woot! Woot!" if the MC called my name.

Didn't know it was my birthday wish but it came true: The dogs did not get skunked this morning!
Before I take Abby for a long walk up the road and back, Stella wants to go up the lane and around the field for a spin so I take the dogs for that walk first, which lets Abby have a big run before being on the leash.
We didn't even make it to the end of the road this morning because I spied a large skunk waddling through the field. Abby was barrelling her way up the road looking for birds to chase but she came when I called and no one else saw the skunk. Obviously, the birthday gods were watching over me today. 

We're going out for Chinese food tonight (hey, Aunt Gail, wanna join us?!) after we run errands in town. My birthday is not a big deal this year; we're more focused on the ACNA awards gala dinner tomorrow night. Winning Best Specialty Column would be the best present.

Everything is due May 15 and I'm away this weekend for the ACNA gala dinner (fingers crossed, please, that my column wins!) so the best I can do for an information update is to show you photos of the garage, before and after. My brain is too full of grant applications and conference abstracts and getting a website put together that there is no room for creative thought to spit out something interesting. 

The woodpeckers were eating this one!

 Yes, this is as exciting as life gets around here right now. I'm glued to my office chair for now but the long weekend...I have five days away from the paper and both Mum and Dwayne are away, Georgia and fishing trip respectively, so I'm going nothing but reading and gardening the WHOLE weekend.

Who, I ask, drives into the city for a follow-up appointment with his surgeon and returns home with a mounted bear head?
Who, I ask, would do something so bizarre and weird and just so bloody ---- aaargh!
My husband, that's who.
And he wonders why I write about him .....

This is Dwayne, my dearly beloved, with his new best friend, Jack. Oh, yes, he already has a name.
"If you write a column about this, I get to hang him in the living room."
Oh, you think. Holy freakin' seriously, how could I not write a column about this? I had to take moose antlers down from the wall in the bedroom when I first moved in.
Only a country boy would ride along with this beside him in his truck and think it was a perfectly reasonable thing to bring home from the city.