Click. Click. It was a barely audible, irregular sound that awakened me from a deep sleep just before 6 a.m. I huddled under the bedcovers, trying to guess its source, then got up and could find no evidence of its origin. Not good that it had been raining, no pouring, all night, and continuing to do so, though. Just before I left for work a couple hours later I checked again and this time a wet circle on the ceiling told the tale.
I’m an optimist by nature, so I put a bucket under the drip, checked in at the office then returned home, thinking I would just go up into the attic, put a bucket under what must be a leak in a fairly new roof, and carry on with my day. I couldn’t find an obvious point of entry, so I poked a hole through the vapour barrier and sheetrock to give a small pool of water an easy way out, into the bucket in the bedroom. I’ll deal with it later, I thought.
I headed back to work in my little Chevy S10 truck, thinking about how some problems simply resolve themselves. The truck’s fuel gauge, which went berserk more than a year ago, had only this week seemed to have cured itself. Proof positive that one of my favourite sayings—“Don’t just do something, stand there.”—is not without merit.
The truth is, I wasn’t about to be deterred from what I was sure would be a highlight of the week. I had a lunch appointment with Skimmerhorn Winery sales rep Brenda Silkie and was looking forward to her company and, of course, a meal at the winery’s bistro, which just opened for the season last week.
At the crack of noon I pulled into the winery’s parking lot and there, on schedule, was Brenda. I have a particular affinity for punctual people, being one myself. The day just got better when Skimmerhorn owners Marleen and Al Hoag offered to make our lunch a foursome. We sat and chatted and laughed for the next two hours, thoroughly enjoying food prepared by the amazing Chef Andy. My braised beef had, only a couple days earlier, been part of a side of local beef that Andy schlepped back to the bistro in his SUV, then proceeded to cut into chunks. The bones were cooked into stock, which now forms the base of a beef and barley soup. My beef, braised in Marechal Foch, was matched to perfection by a glass of Devil’s Chair, a Foch-Pinot Noir blend that goes well with most any dark or grilled meat. My panicotta topped with honeyed apricots dessert was to die for. Lunch and the company were, what’s the word? Perfect.
Later, I returned home to find that the drip had stopped and the damp circle on the ceiling had not expanded. Good sign. While I made dinner (burgers topped with fried onions, shitake mushrooms and asiago cheese) I put the third batch of ice cream into my Kitchen Aid ice cream freezer in 24 hours. Why buy the commercial stuff when you can make it with Kootenay Meadows milk and cream, local and organic and oh-so-tasty?
Burgers ready and the ice cream tucked into the freezer, we took our glasses of Summerhill Pyramid Winery’s Alive red, also organic, and settled into watch, for the first time, Walt Disney’s Fantasia. How did I ever not see this movie, I wondered, being completely captivated by the great classical musical selections and the amazing animation. This movie is now 73 years old and remains fresh and fascinating. I found myself grinning at my own ignorance, not having known that the great ballet music from Ponchielli’s opera La Giaconda was much more familiar as Allan Sherman’s comedic song, Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah (Here I am at Camp Granada, camp is very entertaining, and they say that we’ll have some fun if it stops raining!). Eerily coincidental to the drip that started out my day? You be the judge.
To make a long story short, I have, over the years, written several “Perfect moment” (or (Perfect day”) columns, inspired by a piece by the great, late monologuist Spalding Gray. But none of those moments or days included drips from a ceiling. I was reminded of a routine by the late Canadian stand-up comic Irwin Barker, who said that an optimist is someone who sees the glass as half full, unless it contains poison, in which case he sees it as half empty. The bucket catching drips in the bedroom never did get half full--it was far, far more than half empty. And that’s a good thing, just like the rest of my day.