Author: teeteringontheedge2545967

The daughter of a film director and an actress, Clo Carey was born in the shadow of Windsor Castle and has gone downhill ever since. She has moved across the Atlantic three times, has lived in various parts of England, Ireland, and Canada and still doesn't know where she belongs. A voracious writer and reader, Clo loves every aspect of weaving words into stories. Her ever-growing stash of stories includes picture books, mid-grade and adult novels, as well as creative non-fiction articles. When she isn't gobbling and cobbling words, Clo can be found clerking at her local library where she mentors other writers and encourages readers to take home armloads of books. In the moments that her eyes are not focused on a page, Clo is a passionate vintage picker. Her wares can be found on her Etsy shop, Clozone, with some appearing in stage and screen productions. Her occasional free moments are spent brandishing a camera at unsuspecting seaweed on local beaches; designing blankets, garments and hooked mats; baking bread and creating chocolates. She loves to travel and wishes the lottery Gods would smile in her direction just once. Clo is full of opinions and Teetering on the Edge is a free-ranging blog featuring some of them.

What Is It With Eyebrows?

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I’ve never paid much attention to my eyebrows. Oh back in the day when I spent the required teenage hours in front of a mirror, I did pluck and shape them into symmetrical arcs leaving a smooth canvas for the application of lashings of highlighting white eye shadow. Otherwise, for the most part my brows behaved impeccably. They were dark; so never needed the application of a darkening agent. They were fulsome; so thickeners need not apply. They were the perfect wash and wear pair and all through the I-can-barely-drag-a-comb-through-my-hair-I’m-so-tired baby-raising years, I paid them no attention at all. As time went by, I would drag out the tweezers for special occasions but never had a great deal of weeding to do. By this time my beauty regime had been reduced to a daily shower, with visits to a clip joint to tame shaggy locks as infrequently as possible.

Then came the day I decided I was selling myself short by never succumbing to an upmarket salon. I booked myself in and prepared to be pampered. Highlights were recommended by my stylist du jour and my hair pronounced “challenging”; a special formula was devised and much mixing and inflating of the price followed. Did I want my eyebrows coloured to match – no, I did not. It was after the big style reveal that closer inspection of the brows came into play. There was a shocked silence and then minutes of tsking and tutting. Did I ever trim my eyebrows – no, I did not. I hadn’t even noticed their existence in months. Another shocked silence followed. I had obviously failed womanhood 101 and would be sent home with a failing grade. How could I be such a failure; it had never even occurred to me to trim the brows.  Stylist du jour clattered about in her box of surgical instruments, selecting and rejecting several pairs of scissors before gritting her teeth and settling in to the monumental task of taming the tangled masses.

Over the coming weeks I kept an eagle eye on the offending brows. Were they really so awful? Well yes, it seemed they were. They had, while left to their own devices, become downright errant in their ways. There were those who had some kind of longevity contest going on. Others had decided to grow straight out instead of hugging the brow line in a neat and orderly fashion. Still more had developed a curious kink and one or two, horror of horrors, had taken it upon themselves to change colour!

It’s true with the coming of what we might call ‘vintage years’, I do expect changes: The lumbago to play up, the Zimmer frame parking to be reserved, the prescription drugs to proliferate. I am stoically prepared for my hair to thin, my boobs to droop and my mental faculties to play hide and seek but eyebrows in open revolt were another matter altogether. To do so before I have come within spitting distance of my declining years is downright treasonous. My time is running out and minutes are wasted weekly as I make the necessary inspection and tackle the required pruning.  While everything else will be grinding to a halt, I suppose I should rejoice that my eyebrows did not get the memo but the situation raises serious concerns for the future. Will I end my years a disgrace to the human race, hiding my demented face behind herbaceous facial hair? Will there be anyone designated to tend the sullen brows?  Or must I add a care and tending of the eyebrows codicil to my living will? Bleak times indeed!

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Photo credit 1 – Drew Graham on Unsplash

Photo credit 2 – Unknown

Clo Carey 12/18 What Is It With Eyebrows

#eyebrows #aging #facialhair

I Remember

I remember miles upon miles of white crosses.
I remember the sheer size of the Vimy Memorial.
I remember the suffering still palpable in the air over
the Canadian and German front lines, decades later.
I remember my great uncle, killed in action 101 years ago
when he was not much older than my sons.
I remember my uncle who fought in two wars
and survived a close encounter with a landmine.
I remember uncles who served in the navy and the army,
who lived to tell the tale;
uncles and my mother who followed their consciences
and entertained the troops for the duration.
I remember foolish politicians and oligarchs who through ambition and desire
for personal gain have pushed us close to the brink of war again and again.
I remember because forgetting isn’t an option.
I pray that my kids and their kids will never be called upon to do their patriotic duty
but I also pray that they will never forget those, both related and otherwise,
who made the ultimate sacrifice so that they might
live in peace.
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Clo Carey 2018
#Remembrance #LestWe Forget #Peace

The Fat and the Furious: will butter ever rule the world?

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To my mind, it already does. That’s right; you’ll never find me pitching my tent in the margarine camp. I will never use “You can Tell It’s Not Butter” when cooking scrambled eggs or baking cinnamon buns. I even like butter with my peanut butter and if that’s not diehard fan, what is? To be fair, I have given the opposition a fair shake. I have tested the relative merits of avocado versus olive oil margarine (can’t tell the difference) and just to be perverse, prefer mayo on my baked potatoes but welcoming any butter substitute into my life on a long term basis is just not going to happen. My debate is more along the lines of which butter rules them all.

I grew up in Ireland, well versed in and fattened by the outstanding grass fed butter that is, as far as I’m concerned, the Holy Grail of butter. Canadian butter, while tasty, is but a pale shadow in comparison and, rumour has it, also contains its fair share of antibiotics and other unmentionables. American butter, subject to different regulations, is supposedly even worse.

What is the real difference? Grass as opposed to grain feeding. You know those fifty shades of green that represent the fields of Eire, well they add up to create one heck of a cow. One heck of a cow produces a European-style butter with a higher butterfat content which translates into stronger flavoured, richer and creamier butter. Richer and creamier can’t be all bad, now can it?

Except from certain stand points, and I’m not talking arteries here, it can. The doyenne of Irish butter is Kerrygold and as a result of curmudgeonly Canadian dairy farmers and an aggressive dairy marketing board, it is not available in Canada. While it is possible to bribe friends to smuggle it across the border, a quick check on Amazon reveals that it retails for $35 a pound plus shipping and is currently out of stock. It’s also true that a trip down south to purchase it cheaper will end up costing a whole lot more than the already over blown $35. As a result, richer and creamier butter no longer lives on my fridge shelves.

Don’t get me wrong. I support Canadian dairy farmers despite their blockage of my favourite butter. I don’t take it personally that their marketing board charges more for milk in impoverished but dairy-rich Nova Scotia than they do in wealthy Beef Rules Alberta. They charge what the market will bear, the local rep informs me, happily cheating milk buying Nova Scotians out of every last dime. For that reason I am not a supporter of NAFTA, believing that any trade deal signed with the US screws Canada sideways but this time around, with negotiations having handed the dairy farmers another bum deal, I can’t help hoping that the borders will be opened a crack wider. Is it possible that the occasional block of Kerrygold richer and creamier butter will filter through and rule my world again? Sure do hope so.

Clo Carey 09/11/18

Photo credit: Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

blog challenge South Shore Scribes NS @www.emilybowers.ca @http://chasscribbless.blogspot.com @ https://contentinretirement.blogspot.com @https://www.facebook.com/groups/1470587219691626/ #butter #Kerrygold #IrishButter

Welcome!

When meeting people for the first time, best known advice is to steer well clear of politics and religion. The default topic has always been the weather and here in Nova Scotia these days it is a HOT topic. We had an unusually cold and late Spring but now, along  with many other parts of the world, we have endured steamier temperatures than normal for this moderate location. Complaints are inevitable, with those who don’t have A/C making a beeline for the nearest public building that does and those of us lucky enough to work in those buildings arriving for our shifts earlier and leaving, reluctantly, later than normal.

Of course, as with every phenomenon that Mother Nature hands us enterprising entrepreneurs are doing well; food trucks are selling out of ice cream and local mom and pop hardware stores are scrambling to restock their fans. Wells are running dry, crops are wilting and roasting marshmallows are banned from campsites. The Farmers Almanac is consulted and eyebrows are cocked knowingly at the sky. It’s Nova Scotia, wait fifteen minutes and the weather will change. But this time it takes days instead of minutes and before we know it we’re knee-deep in debate about Global Warming and Climate Change; blaming politicians and invoking God. Weather is no longer a safe topic of introductory conversation; religion and politics have infiltrated, and soon enough our weather antennae will be tuned southwards as hurricane season girds its loins and zeros in on the eastern seaboard. In the coming weeks we’ll stock up on storm chips and batten down the hatches, knowing that the mother of all storms might be in the not to distant future. More than a few of us will be praying to our various Gods that politicians will finally stop kowtowing to big business and do something constructive about our poor, long-suffering planet, while quietly acknowledging that such an achievement is beyond the capabilities of even the most powerful Deity. One thing is certain, be you rich or be you poor, white, black or rainbow, the weather doesn’t descriminate. We’re all in the same leaky boat. It’s time to start bailing.