I am sitting in my bedroom back at the farm, a place I’d resolved never again to be. It is really only from this place that I can write this blog, because it’s hard to seek a life of the mind while living a practical life on the farm if you aren’t actually living on a farm.

Until last month, when to my great surprise I returned here for good, I lived on the LaHave River in an exquisite small cottage owned by two of my dearest friends. How and why I came back here is a story for another time. 

My marriage is completely over and has been for a long time. This time, no attempt was even made to save it. Although my ex husband and I are cordial, we have not really managed to remain friends. He has no idea how to do so, and I am far less invested in this notion than I was when we separated all those months ago. It was the romantic in me, I suppose.

Sadly, right after his return from a residential treatment programme in the Valley, he began a sexual relationship with a woman in his recovery group, thereby foreclosing on his chances of becoming self-sufficient and creating an immediate new set of co-dependencies with her. He is now deeply enmeshed. Although he appears to be clean and sober, his complicated interior problems have obviously not been resolved and this makes the chances of relapse far greater in the long run. As unfortunate as this may be, it is the path he has chosen to follow. With all the challenges that lie before him, I wish him nothing but the best.

In the year that has passed, I’ve had a great deal of growing to do on my own behalf. I’ve worked with a good therapist, had the help of an incredible support group, and benefitted greatly from the emotional and practical generosity of my friends. Slowly I have found my way back to reconnecting with the woman I once was and the woman I want still to be - free spirit, idealist, adventuress, dreamer and warrior in the cause of creating a better world.

Without the constraints of the film business to circumscribe my leisure, the enormous beauty of the Nova Scotia summer has made itself once again wonderfully apparent to me. And then there is the companionship of my girlfriends - kindred spirits encountered anew and woven, this time forever, into the fabric of my life. I am a lucky woman and I know it.

So from this place that was once our home and where I’ve begun to make a life on my own, I plan to live in nature, care for the animals, work, love, dream and, in countless other ways, live out my story. To make this my own sanctuary, a cocoon of serenity and comfort, a haven for friends, I began by painting the kitchen and living room pink. May the warm glow cast by these pretty walls envelop all who come here and invest this lovely old house with renewed life.

It seems that all I think about nowadays is either blue food for Sasha’s film gig or his pending appearance in Small Claims Court where he is being frivolously sued by the photographer, Sherman Hines. Both played a part in our weekend because it was the only time that Sasha could be here at home and that we’d have any chance at all to get caught up on anything. So, while dipping cold cuts and cheese slices in blue food dye, we reviewed the legal situation while toasting our nephew’s twenty seventh birthday with pink champagne. I guess you could say that we got a lot of bang out of the weekend buck.

In my own small world, my maiden effort at blogging, Sherman’s Behind,  apparently got itself noticed by another blogger last week, someone who writes about marketing and communication, who has suggested he’d like to include it in an article about “how the internet makes the David and Goliath story obsolete.” His readership, he tells me, is about five thousand people, but so far nothing further has happened on that front. 

In the particular situation detailed in my blog, David has yet to score a victory and Goliath keeps coming on strong, so I’m not sure I can agree with the premise anyway just yet. In the meanwhile Sasha has started a  new Facebook group called People Supporting Sasha in his Claim against Sherman Hines, so the saga continues in that universe as well. As fascinated as I am by social networking and the power of the internet to disseminate information rapidly, I am beginning to find the entire thing quite fatiguing intellectually and would far rather focus my own attentions elsewhere. If I didn’t believe so strongly in this particular struggle, I’d have packed it in a long time ago. 

When I’m not reflecting on the vagaries of the legal system. I am still enjoying myself quite a lot these days. One bit of happy news is that yet another broody hen in another habitat entirely, seems to be sitting on another clutch of eggs. This time I had the wit to turn to my friend and mentor, Ron Rogerson, of Oaklawn Farm Zoo, for some advice on how to achieve a happier outcome this time around. According to Ron, it is likely that the previous hen had, at some point in the past, eaten an egg or two and that the behaviour just resurfaced again in the barn. Cannibalism can apparently lie dormant sometimes .

With a new opportunity before us, this time we are planning to take Ron’s suggestions and handle the situation a bit differently. We will, by night, remove the broody hen and her eggs  to an apple box or bushel basket which we will then cover with a small blanket or a towel. This we will remove again to a secure and private habitat in which no other birds will be present and the hen and eggs will be left in peace. Apparently, once uncovered, the hen will hop in and out of the box (or basket) for food and water and the eggs should be quite secure until they hatch. Unless she’s another cannibal, that is. 

If that happens, we are definitely giving up.

Isn’t there an expression somewhere about screaming “blue murder?” Because I had occasion to scream those two words a few times myself this past weekend although not in the same sentence and not in the way anyone might think.

I should have seen something coming last week when my absent spouse posted to his Facebook a photograph of his right hand on which he sported several fingers that were partially stained blue. I was aware, of course, that the movie he is working on involves that colour in a big way and that virtually all the food consumed by the actors has to be coloured blue. Although I certainly recognized that film food comes under the purview of the property master, I also know that it is often contracted out to caterers, which is probably why I made a little joke of his photograph and didn’t give it any further thought. I thought he was just messing around.

Like a lot of other parts of our domestic existence, Sasha’s return every week-end is usually planned to be relaxing and low key. At whatever time he might arrive, I try to prepare something quick and simple for us to eat (this week it was a lemon pasta/green salad combo), and after sharing a bottle of wine and some of the week’s biggest news, we turn in and make it an early night. With the animals, there is always a busy workday lying ahead.

This past Friday, however, when he arrived from the city carrying the usual duffel bag full of laundry, his book bag and computer case, my husband also handed me a large shopping bag from the Bulk Barn, asking me to take it with me into the house. Thinking it was a gift, I opened the bag eagerly and realized right away that I was in for it. The contents could have no possible relevance to me. 

What was I ever going to do with a supply of blue ‘chocolate’ baking chips, blue jelly beans, blue cake sprinkles, a bag of blue cake “sparkles” (which looked like the same thing to me), a tiny vial of blue food paste, three small bottles of blue food colouring, two tubes of royal blue ‘decorating’ icing,  four tubes of something blue called “sparkle gel” and two aerosol cans of another blue product called food colour spray? In another bag, from a restaurant supply house, arrived an additional litre of blue food colouring and a vat of blueberry puree. There were also some disposable storage containers, a Granny Smith apple and a small jar of mayonnaise. A frisson of anxiety gripped me then because, having lived through similar circumstances, I could see the Food Experiments coming on.

By mid Saturday morning I was taking the mumbling non-sequiturs in stride as my partner had begun to think aloud about the making of what he was now describing as “a ton” of blue food. My feeble inquiry about using a caterer received the slightly testy reply that it was still his responsibility to “work out the logistics” before the actual food production could be consigned to someone else. 

Early that afternoon, after his "emergency" run for yeast and flour, I could hear him cranking up the bread machine which soon began to conjure large amounts of wretched looking smurf blue dough. Pools of dark blue water sat in a number of bowls and pots in our white apron sink. Worried about staining the porcelain, I reached in at once to dump the offending liquid, emerging from that fiasco with a pair of hands that were smurf blue right up to the wrists. They probably heard my screaming several kilometres away. That’s when the word “murder” came up. 

Luckily for him, Sasha is pretty proficient at removing stains, having needed this skill on his own flesh many times over the years. However, the tension between us continued to escalate when the isopropyl alcohol he first recommended failed to do the trick. After I had scrubbed hard with the heavy industrial hand cleaner that he keeps in our mudroom, my mitts paled to the soft robin’s egg blue with which I will apparently have to live until the colour fades on its own. 

Less surly on Sunday morning, and attracted by a large, expensive bag of frozen crab legs and claws, I assisted voluntarily in the enterprise of removing all the crab meat from the shells (most of which were long, multi-jointed legs) without cracking them at all. Snapping at the joints was a no-no because the resultant tube-like receptacles were later going to be dyed blue and filled with marzipan. Blue marzipan, of course.

My participation in this effort was motivated purely by self interest, I confess, possessed as I was of a hankering for crab cakes made with the Old Bay seasoning a friend had brought me from the Carolinas. Since the meat was a superfluous by-product of the blue food experiment, I saw my chance and took it.

While I fried up the crab cakes for brunch, my happy husband stood beside me mushing up two big tubes of marzipan and dyeing them, once again, the now very offensive bright smurf blue. We ate our meal as the unbroken crab shells boiled on the stove in a huge pot of vibrant blue water.  Suffice it so say that things remained blue here for the remainder of the day.

When he left this morning with his bags full of colourful food props and supplies, I think Sasha felt the weekend had been a big success. I couldn't relive it if you paid me.

Much later today, when all the evening chores have been done and I can sit down in peace with a book and a drink in my hand, it sure isn't going to be blue Curacao. I can definitely promise you that.

I’ve always believed that somebody ought to write a book about the film business. I don’t mean how it works, or what impact it has on the economy or what the various stages of production really are, and I don’t mean anything at all to do with Hollywood stars. We already have lots of those. 

I mean that somebody ought to put together a chatty little tell-all from the point of view of the beleaguered spouse - those of us men and women who keep the home fires burning while our partners abandon all domestic reality from time to time for the adrenaline, creativity and fairly substantial paycheques that the business can provide. I am talking about the flip side of the mad rush to camera, the undocumented back story, the numerous little sub-plots that nobody has time to notice except those of us who inhabit the roles.

At the moment, quite true to established pattern, this particular film spouse has a cold. It is not a country cold that snuck up on me during the week,  but the same vicious cold that has been making the rounds on the production that has taken Sasha to the city for the past month or so, the production that lends me back his exhausted carcass once in awhile for so-called “days off” during which he will either work, obsess about working, or pass out mid-sentence from sheer fatigue. Bringing home a cold is just part of the territory.

When he is here, of course he will do his best to give me an account of his adventures and ask me for the news of my week. He will also do his utmost not to nod off when all the words I’ve saved up for the occasion suddenly come spilling out of me in an almost deranged monologue because our daily phone calls have become so brief and perfunctory, revolving around call times and menu selections and whether he has been able to get any sleep. 

Even words like “I love you," when they get spoken at all, sound like memorized lines from a script. For both of us, loving the other person at all during the making of a film is hard work, sometimes seeming like just another job to be added to an already formidable list. He is simply too bushed at this point to reach out to anyone except in the line of duty and I am too seasoned a warrior to ask for more attention than he has the wherewithal to give. I resent this at times, it is true. Somehow, we both try our best to stay connected in a dance we have been practicing for years.

When he has settled in, I know I can count on him to ask about each of the animals, make time to take care of anything that might have broken in his absence, tweak my technology if required, and climb the steep ladder to the hayloft to throw down enough hay for the sheep and llamas to do for the coming week. The man stuff. 

He knows that I will cook and serve food and that I will do everything I can to keep the outside world at bay. There are no social engagements. If something doesn’t need his attention it won't get mentioned. I will keep it to myself. He doesn't need the pressure and I'm an old hand at coping on my own.

The name of the game is to maintain at any cost the equilibrium that holds us together as a couple yet enables him to make it through the shoot. Even when he is here, the truth is that I am alone and I will be alone until wrap. I learned long ago that each week until then, on those mythical "days off," less and less of him will come home to me intact. It is what it is and I have to accept it.

That said, while my partner in crime is immersed in the grueling demands of making make-believe, I have ringside seats to the arrival of Spring. What I am living here is both joyous and real.

Whatever extra work I might have to do doesn’t consume fourteen hours of the day. I get plenty of sleep in my own bed and have time that is all mine to spend (or even squander) as I please. I have total control over the budget, nobody gives me directions, and if my call sheet changes without notice and I suddenly have to "wing it," the possible consequences are minor because it's usually been my own choice.

Even with the dubious and inevitable "gift" of yet another miserable film business cold, I am still the one who has it easy.

And he will be home again soon.