Anti-Masker?

 Okay, it's not what you think. But first I should fill you in on some gifts I've received from my daughters over the years. Mysterious boxes arriving in the mail with items like candles and books, uplifting quotes and interesting tchotchkes. They were shipped three months apart, and I felt like a happy little kid at Christmas. 

They were the best surprise. Not the scary clown waiting for you in the dark, kind. (I used to think I liked the unexpected. I don't.) These packages of love burst into my life, turning ordinary days into something special.

Last year, thanks to my girls, I attended Master Class online. I learned the art of negotiation from an FBI expert, attended writing classes by Margaret Atwood, Judy Blume and a few others. There were cooking classes, gardening experts...anything I wanted to learn was on there. I also received the gift of Story Worth. I write something about my life each week and my girls will have it turned into a book.

This year's Mother's Day gift was a super expensive tinted sunscreen. My regular brand leaves me looking pale and ghostly. This one makes me feel like a movie star. They threw in some  bath bombs and a high end, ultra expensive tube of papaya facial mask. Probably six months worth. 

I've tried the mask a few times, dabbing it lightly over my face and leaving it for the two to five recommended minutes. Last night before bed, I decided to give it another go. I gently squeezed the tube and twice the regular amount shot out. Have I said the stuff is expensive? I wasn't able to push it back in the tube so I slathered it on. Less than five minutes passed before I felt a tingling which quickly morphed into the feeling you'd get holding your face near open flames. I rushed to the bathroom and washed the mask off. It took a while because that stuff adhered like some kind of alien protoplasm. When my face was finally bare, I had to take a step back.

I looked like burn victim Ralph Fiennes in the movie, The English Patient. I felt like him, too. Soaking a wash cloth in cold water, I gently laid it against my fire licked skin. It was so soothing, I wet another and stuck it in the freezer. This went on for the next hour.

 I couldn't decide if it felt like the kind of burn you get when you forget to use oven mitts, or if it was closer to the worst sunburn possible. Even as the redness slightly receded, I found new discomfort in the tightness of my skin. It was actively shrinking. I could hear it screaming for help as it clung to the bones of my face. 'What the fuuuuuuuuck!' was the message my skin cells painfully transmitted as they joined together in a desperate plea. I tried a new technique of lathering myself with a heavy cream before applying another cloth from the freezer. It seemed to work. But all night, I had to sleep on my back. I knew my skin would never survive contact with the pillowcase. It felt so vulnerable, like a billion tiny cells crying as one and blaming me for what I'd put them through.

When I woke in the morning, my skin felt tight but natural. I rushed to the mirror, expecting a miracle. Wrinkles gone, nothing sagging, my nineteen year old face staring back at me. Nope. I looked exactly the same as I did the night before the Great Burning. So, I'm giving the sunscreen ten out of ten. I'm giving the face mask a hearty thumbs down. In the meantime, I'll creep around with a large hat on and my old 100 proof sunscreen slathered over my vulnerable skin, hiding from the light like a vampire. Fortunately we're going through a cold spell. There's always a silver lining to these things.

Home of the Beaver

 I got my kayak out today for the first time in 2021. It feels a bit early, but I dipped a toe into Hook Lake and it was so much warmer than last spring, thanks to our amazing winter. Yet off in the distance, snow still sugared the edge of the water in some places. On the second lake, chunks of ice floated in one long sheet, like someone was throwing a party and waiting impatiently for the tequila to arrive. 

I was a party of one. As I dropped my bum into my kayak, followed by my trailing leg (it's not elegant, but it works) I got the same feeling I get every time I leave shore, paddle in hand, filled with far too much excitement for such a serene undertaking. But the lake is never just a lake. It's an experience, and I'm never the only player involved. 

I hadn't gone far on the second lake, reached via a skinny, boulder filled narrow channel, when I noticed three little heads popping up around me. They were either young beavers, or very large muskrats, and they were making the strangest sounds. Like a bronchial cough, but with a certain tone to it. A Peter Lorre tone. If you're not familiar with the actor, let me fill you in. He always played the part of a ratfink, or a murderer. Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon. His voice gave a sinister aspect to their presence on the lake. They kept swimming ahead of me, ducking into the lake every few minutes, and surfacing with that malevolent cough. I left them behind, but after five minutes, I saw them again, trailing behind me. 

"You're creeping me out!' I called. "Stop following me." As if they understood English, they turned around and left. But it had me wondering. Were these beavers a thrupple? I've only seen them alone or in pairs before. But it's 2021, for heaven's sake. Live and let live, I say. 

Shortly after, I spotted two baby loons on the lake. They were quite small and I would have thought them ducklings if not for their distinctive colouring. They let me get close enough to take a photo, but flew off before I could accomplish my mission. Since I'm not the most stable paddler, I decided not to lean into the shot. 

Loons mate for life. Were these two chicks matched up? Did they zero in on the first bird they saw and just decide to settle? If so, they're very different from humans, who can hem and haw and date for ten years, and still have a fifty percent chance of things not working out. It must be easier for a loon. Find food. Fly away from danger. Leave when it gets cold. After that, there's probably not much to talk about. 

There doesn't seem to a be a lot of dissension in the animal/fish/fowl kingdom. I tried to picture the fish down below me divided on subjects like politics. Do they argue with the beavers about all the wood cluttering up the lake? They could do so safely, since beavers are herbivores. But muskrats like some tasty protein, and I'm sure the fish are wary enough to know it. 

'How did you vote in the last election?" I asked. Nobody replied. I went back to singing, which is my usual paddling activity, working my way through the Canadian paddling song, Land of the silver birch, home of the beaver, and finishing with a Loggins and Messina tune about Christopher Robin. It was one of my husband's favourites, and since his ashes are scattered in that lake, it seemed only right to serenade him. Then the beavers came back and I decided to head to shore. It was the Peter Lorre cough that spooked me. Anyway, it's their home, not mine. I"m just visiting. But I'll be back. I tell them this in my best Arnold Schwarzenegger voice. I can be sinister, too.