Huzzah!

ManNorth came home with exciting news today:

We've been given a gift of something that we've really wanted.

Wanna know what it is? I won't be telling without a few of you venturing some guesses.
Perhaps these hints will help:

1. The previous owner also once held ManNorth's position and left it behind when he moved away by air.

2. Its only use in a desert would be to provide shade or shelter of some sort.

3. ManNorth owns one of these already but the cost of moving his here from where it is being stored in Yellowknife is about equivalent to the cost of buying a gently used one.

4. It can only be used for about 3 months of the year in our location.

5. We'll need to buy a few particular implements to make use of our gift properly. Two of those will be worn. Two of those will be tools.

6. It needs some repair work that will involve cutting, sanding and filling and patching with fibreglass.

7. Here's a photo of our gift as the final hint:

It's lovely honey. I'm just so thankful I don't have to wear it.

Subtitle: What hues are you?

A quick story before coming to the point of this post:
At an early age it was apparent to me that girls who were overly concerned with their new dresses and other clothing, staying clean and being pretty had far less fun than those who were willing, as I was, to climb that tree, get in that creek, risk the mud and catch those frogs (turtles, crayfish, etc…). Likewise, while pursuing those activities I found that running shoes, jeans and t-shirts were far more practical and comfortable than tights (shudder!) and dresses. Perhaps I romanticized my own image of a tom-boy but I likewise began to refuse all apparel associated with my vision of weak, scared girly girls. Out were any shades of pink or other pastel colours. Shoes could only be boys’ (as the girls’ shoes were always white or pink) and legs were only to be covered with pants, never skirts. I even refused to join the girl guides in grade 5 when I discovered that blue dresses with hemlines near the knee were the rule and pants were not allowed. (Thankfully, for girls like I was, now the rule seems generally to be simply blue clothing selected from an assortment of approved casual apparel.)

Since those early years, I’ve found that dresses aren’t the torment they once were and I happily own and wear them on occasion although my favourite pants and jeans get worn far more often. My closet contains a few shirts that one might otherwise label a pastel colour but by and large, my wardrobe is still dominated by the cool side of the spectrum and by deep dark rich colours (e.g. navy, burghundy, deep purple, black, deep green etc..). With the exception of a fleece sweater that I’d describe as a dark cranberry and was once called pink by a dear friend (who became momentarily less dear as I protested the pink label with great enthusiasm and shock at her mistake), I own NOTHING pink.

I think I look better in strong colours and that light ones wash me out. (Even my wedding dress wasn’t white for that reason! Why bend to a fad set by Queen Victoria and wear white when so many other colours suit better!?)

And I admit it, I simply don’t care for pink. In my mind, it will forever be associated with Barbie, Mary Kay Cosmetics and an unwillingness to step off the pavement out of one’s high heels into hiking boots and a back country trail.

So last week, when out of the blue (so to speak) The Man asked me if I liked pink, I snorted my tea out through my nose and aghast, denied such a ridiculous notion. His face fell and I immediately realized that he’d bought me something pink for my birthday. I think I did a pretty poor job of trying to make him feel better without outright embracing the notion of a pink addition to my wardrobe. He didn’t say much and I felt sort of badly. (But PINK! ? Gah! It’s sort of like me asking him to wear pleated slacks. With a Hawaiian print shirt.)

However, because I love him, I decided that I would TRY (ever so hard) to wear whatever it was that he had bought. (At least once.)

So it was with some relief that I opened my birthday gift to discover that the fuschia/bubble gum pink gift was a Thermarest camping mattress and not a new blouse! It coordinates with my red down sleeping bag in a cheesy, Valentine’s day sort of way, which makes me think of chocolate (a good thing if chocolate can be had) and most important (obviously) it’s entirely functional: It will keep my backside insulated from the cold ground and is designed for winter camping, it doesn’t have a big blister in it as my other (deep green & black) mattress that I bought myself years ago does and it packs down smaller and lighter than my other mattress. It’s a GOOD thing! (as Martha Steward might say in her pastel coloured blouse).

Perhaps I may start associating this particular shade of pink, with the pleasures of camping and hiking. Just maybe!