Family Funeral Reunions

The weather has been beautiful the past two days after Thanksgiving Monday’s rain, sleet and heavy snow flurries. The sun is shining. There is a stiff breeze, but not a very chilly one. Today when out walking a sweater is just barely needed. I love this weather in mid October! Long may it last. 

Today my husband was reunited with cousins and second cousins he has not seen for years as all were in attendance at their mother’s funeral this morning. It was a lovely service with professional singers and instrumentalists, some of whom are those same cousins. The songs they performed were in Auntie’s four known languages: German, English, Latin and Zulu. (A number of years living in Tanzania is responsible for that last one, German was her language of childhood, followed by English, with Latin being the predominant language of her beloved church until a few years ago.) She and her husband raised nine children in Whitehorse Yukon Territories in the 1960’s and ‘70’s. 

Tonight there is a family dinner at the home of one of the daughters so that will be a better venue for visiting than the noise carrying church hall where the post funeral lunch was held. Tomorrow there will be a family mountain hike, but I will forego the “pleasure” and take advantage of a day alone to read and blog and stay in my jammies all day. YES!

A funeral is a sad reason for getting together but it is lovely to have everyone together again, the last time being for a family wedding in our own city of residence! 

We have many weekend plans, hopefully a day on our own to do some tea leaf shopping at my husband’s favourite tea shop, another family meal and visiting with four sets of long term friends, none of whom we have seen in at least two years. Lots of happy days ahead! 

Total Cuteness!

Cutest thing ever heard by me in a hotel: 🏨 

One thing I cannot handle in any hotel is being stuck in a room with adjoining doors to the next room. As far as noise between rooms go we and our neighbours might as well be sharing one room. There is close to zero soundproofing with the adjoining doors between us. However, sometimes it is worth it if there is a cute five year old girl in the next room. Our latest experience was having a five year old girl open her and her family’s section of the adjoining door and hearing her say: “What’s in here? Potatoes?” 🥔 

Hahahaha…I nearly fell over I was giggling so hard and I haven’t heard my husband laugh like that for a long time! 

Not An Auspicious Start To The Day!

 I went to bed last night with possible symptoms of a cold which I treated with a few OTC meds but woke up this morning with more vague symptoms. So, I popped a Claritin and within a couple of hours or so I began feeling better. Now, at 4pm I have fewer symptoms and am continuing to feel better. Yay! I will continue the Claritin for a few more days, as allergies hit me hard every year at the serious onset of autumn. 

Today has been cold and rainy in our little city, with freezing slush needing to be shovelled from our back deck. The morning was filled with deep grey clouds overhead, rain, sleet and snowfall. Thankfully things will clear up over the next day or so……at least the forecast tells us so…so who knows?

After breakfast I decided to water all the plants in my dining room. The Christmas cactus sits on two plastic placemats at one end of the dining room table. Somehow I also managed to soak not only the placemats with water, but the water also ran under the mats and all over my teak table! Noooooo….I was fortunate to be able to move the pot of cactus easily and pick the mats up in time to remove the table water quickly. 

As I was trying to get the water mopped off the table my husband wandered into the dining room with a peanut butter sandwich that proceeded to drip oily peanut butter onto my winter coat I had just hung on a chair, as well as onto the dining room carpet. Aiii yiiii what a mess…again with a mess, one each! My coat was easy to clean and we eventually got the peanut butter scraped and washed out of the carpet. Aiiii yiiii…

Later this morning we were in Moose Jaw so my husband decided to take advantage of the low price at a discount gasoline station and fill our car’s tank. At $1.69/litre compared to $1.83/litre at home, it was a GREAT price. Unfortunately my husband got the numbers of the avenues mixed up, drove over the wrong bridge to get to the gas station and ended up driving us back and forth, up and down the streets all around the north end of the town before finding the station at last! Thankfully he eventually figured out what he had done wrong, haha. So, not the most encouraging start to the day, but things could only get better from there….and they have. They have!! Yay!

From shovelling freezing slush off our back porch this morning to losing our way in a town that is familiar to us, we can only be thankful all our “messes” were so easily cleaned up and corrected!

Canoeing In October On The Saskatchewan Prairies

While I spent today doing laundry and grocery shopping my husband and his friend decided, "Hang the lousy weather, we are going canoeing today!"  So, that is what they did.

It is the end of the canoeing season, past the end actually, with low temperatures arriving today and for the next several days, the wind was blowing from all directions as they paddled about on the narrow river south west of here, gloves and toques were a must, but they had the most wonderful few hours in the canoe looking at the fall colours.  I am happy for my husband who has struggled the past two summers and autumns to find someone willing to go for so much as a couple of hours of "lolly paddling" with him.  Today was a triumph, chilly weather and all:

 

My husband brought me an autumn "bouquet"! from the river bank. 

So "purty"!!

 

Yes, I DO Know It Seems Like An Unneccessary Fuss Over A Refrigerator!

However, people who have known me for the better part of my adult life understand exactly why a cheap fridge, economy model, no added extras, is a thrill for me; why simply having a shelf to divide the freezer compartment in two is a huge deal.  When you have lived in as many dumps, dives, tenements and church manses, (which are sometimes interchangeable with the first 3 types of housing listed) as we have over the past 50 years, a refrigerator that arrives with the packing tape still wrapped around the doors, a refrigerator that is new and clean and has never before been used by anyone other than myself is an amazing blessing indeed.

We have lived in places with carpets so old they were not only fraying at the edges, but had huge spots of rust, animal defecation stains and open holes in the centre of them.  We have had stoves that only had one out of four burners that worked, ovens that allowed us to play the "let's guess what temperature I am actually set at" game, dishwashers that didn't have access to sufficient water pressure to clean the dishes and had to be abandoned, mouse infestations, cockroach infestations, moth infestations, buckling linoleum, holes in the walls, broken kitchen cabinet doors and handles, chronically leaking pipes, rusted out sinks, stained cracked toilets, torn curtains, shattered window blinds, broken windows and tub faucets, torn siding and roof shingles, missing eavestroughs, counter tops that were so stained that no amount of bleach or scrubbing would clean them properly, furnace ducts filled with all manner of things people had dropped down into them in, those things catching and hanging onto huge batts of dust, dangerously broken wooden steps and decking, rusted out clothes washers and a dryer that gave us electric shocks upon using due to electrical insulation problems in the house, and my favourite of all....a connecting passageway between a manse and our church that had a giant hole in the roof where the rain fell through in such huge gushing torrents and the snow formed such deep drifts under that hole that we had to wear our coats, hoods up,and boots to race through the passageway between the buildings, (even a shovel needed to be used on occasion to clear the way), if we had some good reason not to take the long way around the outside of both buildings. Most all of these places were considered acceptable accommodation for us either due to chronic illness induced financial issues making rent next to impossible to come up with for any better sort of accommodation, or "in the name of ministry", which made those places a lot easier to take.

This list is NOT a complaints list, we made the best of each place and we did have a break for a few years after we built our own house before illness struck again. We are quite good at making the best of such situations and have become fairly skillful at it, thankfully. This post is simply a statement of facts to explain why I am so apparently unreasonably ecstatic with yesterday's delivery to our kitchen. 

Yeah....a brand new fridge, no matter how basic it may be, IS a huge thrill for me and I don't mind admitting it. I am DELIGHTED to have it and am grateful, grateful, grateful!!  I know most of you who have known me over the past few decades totally understand. And may the rest of you never, Lord willing, experience reasons of your own to understand.  Amen!

Playing With My BRAND NEW Refrigerator!

My husband just got into his beddy-bye for an afternoon nap after a very busy day of walking a few kilometres to doctor's appointments, cleaning hundreds of dead mosquitoes off our car after our Sunday trip out of town, (yes, the little turkeys are still hanging on, invading house and car, biting like crazy while we await a good hard overnight freeze to finish them off), hauling ice packs out of the old broken down fridge and helping haul it across the kitchen so our new one could be pushed into place.

Yup, we have a brand new, never before used by anyone fridge/freezer, so new the tapes were still in place to keep the veggie and cheese drawers and outside doors closed for transport.  WE ARE DELIGHTED!  

While it was having its initial hour of emptiness to cool down properly, we headed to Chuck's Roadhouse for a VERY late lunch...about 2:30pm.  (The food is good pub grub type food and their 11am to 5pm lunch menu features excellent prices for just the right sized portions of food....the Baja tacos and Cuban sandwich were delicious, although my husband said the fries could have been crispier! While we waited for our food we had a good look at the 2010 Harley Davidson bike on display....the front disc brakes were kind of new to us....fascinating to look at.)

As soon as we got home and checked that the cold level inside the fridge was correct I started removing all the frozen foods from the camper freezer so I could organize them properly. This new freezer compartment has a SHELF so it was much easier to arrange the foods and separate the meats from the breads and veggies while the small bags of frozen herbs and fruit fit easily into the two shelves in the door.  The main refrigerator unit is just slightly smaller than our old fridge, BUT the two inside the door shelves are twice as wide. They held what the old door shelves held, plus all the other condiments and jams and sauces that didn't fit in the door of the old fridge. So, plenty of space even with the cheese saver drawer tucked into the shelving in the centre of the unit.  A quick wipe off of the exterior to remove a bit of dust and another quick wipe inside the fridge before it got cold, then the joy of having a NEW REFRIGERATOR had me laughing and crying at the same time.  I do not remember the last time we had a brand new fridge in any of our previous rental homes and we started renting in 2001!!  Twenty-five years of well used fridges and freezers. What a blessing this new unit is. 

Yesterday I had a long distance chat with an Island friend who told me she knew "it was a long shot and an unlikely possibility" that we would get a brand new fridge in our dilapidated unit and I agreed with her.  Well Penn....the Lord answered your prayer for us with a resounding "YES!"  And here is how it happened:  when the office manager called this morning assure us that a refrigerator had been secured she explained to me why it had not shown up yesterday when we expected it.  Turns out there was indeed a used one sitting in the warehouse that she earmarked for us and it actually was delivered: to the WRONG UNIT!!!  Since there are tenants in this unit....who no doubt wondered upon returning from work last evening why there was a different refrigerator in their home, (and what happened to the food in their old one I have no idea).....the refrigerator wasn't able to be removed from there and then re-delivered to our place, SO since it had been the only used one in the warehouse, there was no other option but to order a brand new refrigerator from their usual supplier of such newness.  THAT Is how WE ended up with a brand new refrigerator.  Penn, thank you for encouraging me yesterday to feel free to at least ask God if it was possible to receive a new fridge, even if still being prepared to accept an older one.  I didn't truly believe you and I would see that kind of answer.  (I realize there are a couple of other friends and family who also told me they were  praying for a new unit and I thank you so much and hope this answer encourages you in your prayers as much as it did me in mine.)

Oh happy day!!  We have leftovers from last night's meal at DarBar thawing for a late dinner.  It has been a blessed day.  Tomorrow the blessings continue with coffee hour with my Thursday buddy and Friday we are having friends in for dinner.  That will be a lovely start to the Thanksgiving holiday weekend! 

The weather is supposed to be less than wonderful between here and southern Alberta on Sunday into Monday of the coming week but then things should dry out and warm up a bit for our quick trip west. 

 

SLOOOOOOOWWWWLY Goes the Refrigerator Replacement, Hohoho!!

 In honour of the Cherry Cream Soda font I MUST use pink for this post!!

The saga of getting another fridge continues.  By 1pm today we realized we likely were not going to hear from the refrigeration technician, so my husband hiked across the parking lot to the office to ask what was going on.  As we suspected, the employee from the management company struggled with his English comprehension and didn't understand why we still had food in the refrigerator portion of the unit if it wasn't working, didn't realize that my husband was NOT telling him that unit was still working and didn't understand why there was over twenty dollars worth of ice slabs in plastic bins in there keeping the food sufficiently cold as to keep it all from being wasted.  He apparently told the tech that our fridge was still working so there was no rush on the order.  Sigh....why are we not surprised. Even the staff for whom English IS their first language don't seem to comprehend what we are telling them a good deal of the time. hahaha

So the office staff worker called the warehouse to see if there are any fridges in stock that are in working order. She finally got a response around 4:30pm and the response is there is a fridge and the tech will try to get it to us sometime tomorrow.  In the meantime we had to purchase another ten dollars worth of ice ($31 and counting...) after dinner tonight to get our food through safely until tomorrow until hopefully at least noon. The office staff worker begins her shift at 10:30am and will call to let us know, if she can find out that is, when the tech and the fridge will be arriving.

Unfortunately my husband has an eye appointment at 11am and will be leaving at 10:30am to be there on time. So, he will have to leave me to deal with this call, or with the tech should he arrive before or without said call. Tomorrow will mark my third day in a row of having to stay home all day waiting for assistance with the fridge.  Sigh.....I was really looking forward to going to his appointment with my husband so I could look longingly at all the expensive eye glass frames while he is in with the doctor and start thinking about what kind of frame I want to purchase after my own annual eye examination later this fall.  After accidentally sitting on my present very delicate frames that I've had only one year, they were so bent and took so much work for the frame techs to straighten out, it is unlikely I will be able to put new lenses into them safely ever again.  At present one of the original lenses is remaining in place "just kinda barely", so....guess it will be an expensive experience since I only get coverage for frames once every two years and then only if my prescription changes, which I suspect it may this time. Whatever....eyes are so important, so they are worth spending money on.

Tonight we had a wonderful time.  We met a now retired former colleague of my husband's and she treated us to a meal at DarBar.  Yum, yum! I decided to have a simpler meal tonight so ordered off the appetizer list: a chana curry with fried bread....basically a fluffy puffed up pillow of thin bread dough that was able to be dipped into their home made tamarind sauce...to die for....and then one of the best green salads I have ever had there, plus a helping of raita.  Gosh, it was a full meal even without eating both rounds of fried bread.  It was unexpectedly delicious...not a great fan of chana as a rule...and I was not expecting that amount of food from the Appetizer list. WOW!  I will order that again.

The conversation was wonderful and contrary to the last time we saw our friend, her face is smoothed of all the "worry wrinkles" from her last position in her career, she has lost weight; she looked so happy after her first year of retirement. She was cheerful and talkative.  Gosh, it was a wonderful time together.  We all look forward to getting together once again.  ( have been trying to think about what else it was that was different about her this time and it just struck me that this is the first time I have seen her without her clergy collar. She was completely clad in "civilian dress" and I can't believe how different she looks.  Incredible.)

Although it is well before 11pm I am more tired than usual tonight so am going to get to bed right away.  I think the stress over the mix up with the fridge has gotten to me, plus being stuck inside for 3 days in a row has precluded going for any long walks, so I am craving exercise.  Maybe tomorrow after the ruddy fridge arrives?  Stay tuned to the never ending saga of refrigeration!