Pessimist: glass half empty
Optimist: glass half full
Psalmist: my cup runneth over
(Thank you Diocese Of Algoma)
Monday, August 31, 2020
Brrrrr....Chatter, Chatter, Chatter.....Brrrrr......
This morning at 8:15am we drove our car to the dealership, dropped it off and then at 8:30am we started the long walk home again. Knowing it wasn't quite as warm outside as it has been in the mornings lately, I wore long pants, a knit top with 3/4 sleeves and a cotton scarf around my neck and across my shoulders as the neck on the top is somewhat open. I assumed that at some point on the walk home I would have to shed the scarf because I would be too warm!
HAH! Too WARM??? The howling wind that came up right about the time we walked away from the dealership was Straight Outta WINTER!! I nearly bloody froze to death for the entire HOUR it took us to get home as we dodged pedestrian walkway construction and sidewalk closures, waited around, shivering, on street corners for pedestrian walk lights that turned out to be disconnected from a previous construction project,etc., etc., etc. By the time we arrived home I had the aforementioned scarf pulled over my head and around my shoulders with the ends tied around my neck in a futile attempt to become reasonably warm. BRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!! Now I can only pray that the hot drink I poured over my goosebump covered lips shortly after arriving home warmed me sufficiently to avoid coming down with a cold!
WOW...it has been cold all day, bright sunshine and all. The air temperature is actually quite pleasant but the cold wind has not ceased for the entire day. It is still chilly and miserable.
Welcome to Autumn, kiddo!!
On the plus side: the long walk was really good for us both. The cold wind kept us moving between holdups along the route, so we weren't lallygagging when we were actually moving, when we weren't standing around trying to figure out how to dodge rush hour traffic to get across streets, so we got the aerobic workout we both need. Huff puff!
Knowing I was going to be able to have Indian food leftovers for both lunch and dinner warmed the "cockles of my heart" as I marched along this morning, watching my hair blowing straight up as my watering eyes followed my trembling shadow along the sidewalk.
As I sat slurping a hot drink back at home I enjoyed watching the Riverdance 25th Anniversary performance on PBS. Celtic music makes me cry so it wasn't just tears from the bitter cold wind outside flowing down my cheeks as I watched. The most wonderful live performance I ever attended in my life was the original Riverdance production at a theatre in Edmonton the year I turned 40. A friend in Edmonton who was also turning 40 purchased tickets for us to see Riverdance live. Oh, it was FANTASTIC!! We loved every moment of it.
We got a call from the car dealership a little while ago letting us know the car is ready, but since the place closed for the night less than 45 minutes later, we decided to leave it there and pick it up tomorrow after our morning appointments. They prepared a list of several other items needing attention so we are going to compare their list with the list we recently received from our regular mechanic, then make an appointment with him and get some of this work done that we promised ourselves we would do in the autumn. Autumn....it is all ready autumn. It seems like we only just had last winter's snow tires taken off the car and the summer tires put on. Where has the time disappeared to??
My husband is delighted that instead of having to expose himself to who knows what disease at the medical clinic tomorrow morning after his usual Lections Zoom meeting, he will be able to have a phone conference with his doctor to get his official test results. All his results have appeared on his personal online health account all ready, except for the cholesterol tests he just had last Friday. There is nothing untoward there. Hopefully the statins he took will have begun winning the battle to lower his exceptionally scary-high cholesterol numbers. He is on a rather high dose of statin to get started, but if it has worked well over the past 4 weeks perhaps at some point he could take a lower doseage. Here's hoping.... After his phone conference he will meet me outside the eye clinic when my appointment ends tomorrow and we will walk back to the car dealership for our vehicle.
Tonight we have to plan our trip to my bone densitometry exam in Red Deer 3 weeks from now. The way the COVID19 numbers are rising in Alberta I am suspecting that our plan to visit with Mom may not happen. I am half expecting she may be in lockdown once again. My husband's family has had a tentative plan to meet us in Calgary and stay at the same hotel so that we could have some visiting time together after not being able to see each other since the first week in January. May not happen after all? I am wondering right now if I may be quarantining for 2 weeks after we return. I HAVE to get this testing done. I am all ready late having it because of the pandemic and unless I can produce results from another bone densitometry before the end of this year, I will lose the medical insurance coverage I presently have to be able to afford it.
Always something isn't there? hahahaha Glad my life is no different from everyone else's.
Well, I think I can hear the faint call of leftover Indian food emanating from my refrigerator, so it must be time for dinner. Oh, yes...yes I do and the call is becoming louder by the second. Ooh, now THAT is pure joy!
HAH! Too WARM??? The howling wind that came up right about the time we walked away from the dealership was Straight Outta WINTER!! I nearly bloody froze to death for the entire HOUR it took us to get home as we dodged pedestrian walkway construction and sidewalk closures, waited around, shivering, on street corners for pedestrian walk lights that turned out to be disconnected from a previous construction project,etc., etc., etc. By the time we arrived home I had the aforementioned scarf pulled over my head and around my shoulders with the ends tied around my neck in a futile attempt to become reasonably warm. BRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!! Now I can only pray that the hot drink I poured over my goosebump covered lips shortly after arriving home warmed me sufficiently to avoid coming down with a cold!
WOW...it has been cold all day, bright sunshine and all. The air temperature is actually quite pleasant but the cold wind has not ceased for the entire day. It is still chilly and miserable.
Welcome to Autumn, kiddo!!
On the plus side: the long walk was really good for us both. The cold wind kept us moving between holdups along the route, so we weren't lallygagging when we were actually moving, when we weren't standing around trying to figure out how to dodge rush hour traffic to get across streets, so we got the aerobic workout we both need. Huff puff!
Knowing I was going to be able to have Indian food leftovers for both lunch and dinner warmed the "cockles of my heart" as I marched along this morning, watching my hair blowing straight up as my watering eyes followed my trembling shadow along the sidewalk.
As I sat slurping a hot drink back at home I enjoyed watching the Riverdance 25th Anniversary performance on PBS. Celtic music makes me cry so it wasn't just tears from the bitter cold wind outside flowing down my cheeks as I watched. The most wonderful live performance I ever attended in my life was the original Riverdance production at a theatre in Edmonton the year I turned 40. A friend in Edmonton who was also turning 40 purchased tickets for us to see Riverdance live. Oh, it was FANTASTIC!! We loved every moment of it.
We got a call from the car dealership a little while ago letting us know the car is ready, but since the place closed for the night less than 45 minutes later, we decided to leave it there and pick it up tomorrow after our morning appointments. They prepared a list of several other items needing attention so we are going to compare their list with the list we recently received from our regular mechanic, then make an appointment with him and get some of this work done that we promised ourselves we would do in the autumn. Autumn....it is all ready autumn. It seems like we only just had last winter's snow tires taken off the car and the summer tires put on. Where has the time disappeared to??
My husband is delighted that instead of having to expose himself to who knows what disease at the medical clinic tomorrow morning after his usual Lections Zoom meeting, he will be able to have a phone conference with his doctor to get his official test results. All his results have appeared on his personal online health account all ready, except for the cholesterol tests he just had last Friday. There is nothing untoward there. Hopefully the statins he took will have begun winning the battle to lower his exceptionally scary-high cholesterol numbers. He is on a rather high dose of statin to get started, but if it has worked well over the past 4 weeks perhaps at some point he could take a lower doseage. Here's hoping.... After his phone conference he will meet me outside the eye clinic when my appointment ends tomorrow and we will walk back to the car dealership for our vehicle.
Tonight we have to plan our trip to my bone densitometry exam in Red Deer 3 weeks from now. The way the COVID19 numbers are rising in Alberta I am suspecting that our plan to visit with Mom may not happen. I am half expecting she may be in lockdown once again. My husband's family has had a tentative plan to meet us in Calgary and stay at the same hotel so that we could have some visiting time together after not being able to see each other since the first week in January. May not happen after all? I am wondering right now if I may be quarantining for 2 weeks after we return. I HAVE to get this testing done. I am all ready late having it because of the pandemic and unless I can produce results from another bone densitometry before the end of this year, I will lose the medical insurance coverage I presently have to be able to afford it.
Always something isn't there? hahahaha Glad my life is no different from everyone else's.
Well, I think I can hear the faint call of leftover Indian food emanating from my refrigerator, so it must be time for dinner. Oh, yes...yes I do and the call is becoming louder by the second. Ooh, now THAT is pure joy!
Sunday, August 30, 2020
I Confess.....
I ate Indian food for breakfast this morning....sigh....that chicken samosa just looked too darned appetizing sitting there in the refrigerator. I could have sworn it actually called my name as I stared at it, so indecisive about having this kind of "treat" for an early morning meal. Oh, it was SO delicious with a bit of tamarind sauce to dip it into....YUMMY!
For lunch I had avocado toast....on chicken naan. teehee YUMMY AGAIN!
Tonight we will open the chicken jalfrezi and the dal mahkni for dinner. Oh, this is so wonderful. What an amazing treat to have as summer ends and autumn begins.
We are under a frost warning tonight. So, my husband brought in the rest of our ripe and nearly ripe Golden Sun tomatoes and will cover the plant with a bedspread overnight. He is currently picking the rest of the basil and thyme and preparing to dry them in our herb dryer. The dill and rosemary never did very well this summer for some reason so we have used already the little bit that grew. I think we will cover the roses and other beautiful flowering plant as they have lots of life left in them until the first hard freeze.
The wind has that chilly autumn edge to it today. Last night it was cold enough that I shut all the upstairs windows right around midnight. They stayed closed until after 7am. The sun is shining but there is not nearly as much warmth as there was a week ago in its rays. WOW! We are forecast to have overnight lows around +2C closer to the end of this week. Brrrrr!!
I made a banana loaf after lunch. It must be good because my husband has eaten exactly half of it in the past 2 hours!
I did the laundry after church this morning. It is all either folded and put away, or on hangers hanging over the ironing board to be pressed in a day or two. My husband vaccumed all around the laundry area in the basement this afternoon. It looks so good. No more old spiders' nests in the rafters above the appliances, no more bits of lint stuck to the painted floor that has had a slightly gummy feel to it for the entire 5 years we have lived in here. Eek! Later this week we hope to take in our collection of bottles and cans to the recycling depot and haul away the "stuff" we have collected for the thrift shops. This is shaping up to be a very busy week.
Tomorrow will be a healthy day with lots of walking from and back to the car dealership that is taking the Honda tomorrow for a check up. It is nearly 5km each way, so we will be getting our exercise, that is for sure. Since it will be a fairly cool day tomorrow I am really looking forward to all the walking. The dealership employees will likely be pushing us to replace the cracked windshield, but we would like to see if we can get a better deal elsewhere....well, my husband would like to see if we can get a better deal. I am content to let the dealership do it and just pay the price with less fussing about.
Time to go have a look and see what tv shows we have set to record this evening. In between loads of laundry and picking herbs we have watched a couple of fascinating boxing matches I recorded earlier this weekend.
For lunch I had avocado toast....on chicken naan. teehee YUMMY AGAIN!
Tonight we will open the chicken jalfrezi and the dal mahkni for dinner. Oh, this is so wonderful. What an amazing treat to have as summer ends and autumn begins.
We are under a frost warning tonight. So, my husband brought in the rest of our ripe and nearly ripe Golden Sun tomatoes and will cover the plant with a bedspread overnight. He is currently picking the rest of the basil and thyme and preparing to dry them in our herb dryer. The dill and rosemary never did very well this summer for some reason so we have used already the little bit that grew. I think we will cover the roses and other beautiful flowering plant as they have lots of life left in them until the first hard freeze.
The wind has that chilly autumn edge to it today. Last night it was cold enough that I shut all the upstairs windows right around midnight. They stayed closed until after 7am. The sun is shining but there is not nearly as much warmth as there was a week ago in its rays. WOW! We are forecast to have overnight lows around +2C closer to the end of this week. Brrrrr!!
I made a banana loaf after lunch. It must be good because my husband has eaten exactly half of it in the past 2 hours!
I did the laundry after church this morning. It is all either folded and put away, or on hangers hanging over the ironing board to be pressed in a day or two. My husband vaccumed all around the laundry area in the basement this afternoon. It looks so good. No more old spiders' nests in the rafters above the appliances, no more bits of lint stuck to the painted floor that has had a slightly gummy feel to it for the entire 5 years we have lived in here. Eek! Later this week we hope to take in our collection of bottles and cans to the recycling depot and haul away the "stuff" we have collected for the thrift shops. This is shaping up to be a very busy week.
Tomorrow will be a healthy day with lots of walking from and back to the car dealership that is taking the Honda tomorrow for a check up. It is nearly 5km each way, so we will be getting our exercise, that is for sure. Since it will be a fairly cool day tomorrow I am really looking forward to all the walking. The dealership employees will likely be pushing us to replace the cracked windshield, but we would like to see if we can get a better deal elsewhere....well, my husband would like to see if we can get a better deal. I am content to let the dealership do it and just pay the price with less fussing about.
Time to go have a look and see what tv shows we have set to record this evening. In between loads of laundry and picking herbs we have watched a couple of fascinating boxing matches I recorded earlier this weekend.
Saturday, August 29, 2020
Final Holiday Blowout! YIPPEE!
My husband shocked me at noon today when he arrived home from his morning canoe repairs. He wanted to know where I would like to go for our final lunch out to celebrate the end of our "not really" holidays. hahaha
I said I was happy to return to DarBar because I always feel so healthy after eating Indian food and it is easy on my blood sugar if I stay away from the rice and naan overdoses. He agreed. We know the staff well there now, we know their COVID19 safety protocols and they are wickedly strict about social distancing between the customers.
As we ordered our last lunch out for a while I admitted to my husband what really, truly constitutes a holiday for me: not having to shop for, prepare or cook meals for three or four days in a row. So, my wonderful husband proceeded to arrange a giant take out order for us. WOW! Along with the Indian food we had yesterday, I now have the leftovers from our lunch platters that we will eat for dinner this evening, plus I have full orders of chicken naan, chicken alfrezi, dal mahkni, chicken samosas, veggie samosas and curried chick peas sitting in my refrigerator that will serve both of us until Tuesday sometime. All I need to do to stretch it out is to make a small pot of rice for my husband, and knowing him he would rather prepare his own rice anyway. I couldn't get over the price. Our combined total of today's platters and masala tea, plus all that take out food came to just over $70 including tax. Unreal! Our huge blow out, even with an added tip came to well under $100. For all our splurging on Indian food to make up for not being able to go away for a proper holiday, we have spent less than $200 on this particular "trip". hahahahaha
I know it is tacky to discuss prices and expenses, but I am so thrilled about our inexpensive holiday "escape" that I had to share it with family and friends who have been concerned about us not being able to go on a trip this year. My husband has a restored canoe and I am having 5 days away from meal planning and cooking. We are both happy!
HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO MOI!!
I said I was happy to return to DarBar because I always feel so healthy after eating Indian food and it is easy on my blood sugar if I stay away from the rice and naan overdoses. He agreed. We know the staff well there now, we know their COVID19 safety protocols and they are wickedly strict about social distancing between the customers.
As we ordered our last lunch out for a while I admitted to my husband what really, truly constitutes a holiday for me: not having to shop for, prepare or cook meals for three or four days in a row. So, my wonderful husband proceeded to arrange a giant take out order for us. WOW! Along with the Indian food we had yesterday, I now have the leftovers from our lunch platters that we will eat for dinner this evening, plus I have full orders of chicken naan, chicken alfrezi, dal mahkni, chicken samosas, veggie samosas and curried chick peas sitting in my refrigerator that will serve both of us until Tuesday sometime. All I need to do to stretch it out is to make a small pot of rice for my husband, and knowing him he would rather prepare his own rice anyway. I couldn't get over the price. Our combined total of today's platters and masala tea, plus all that take out food came to just over $70 including tax. Unreal! Our huge blow out, even with an added tip came to well under $100. For all our splurging on Indian food to make up for not being able to go away for a proper holiday, we have spent less than $200 on this particular "trip". hahahahaha
I know it is tacky to discuss prices and expenses, but I am so thrilled about our inexpensive holiday "escape" that I had to share it with family and friends who have been concerned about us not being able to go on a trip this year. My husband has a restored canoe and I am having 5 days away from meal planning and cooking. We are both happy!
HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO MOI!!
The Repairs Continue!
The canoe repairs are going along slowly but steadily for the three boating muskateers. A palm sander made sanding out the inside of the canoes fairly easy and using the handles of a snow blower stored in the work area made it possible to paint finish laquer on all the seats and slats on both sides at once. My husband cut pieces from one of my cutting boards to use for filling a couple of large holes where he replaced the ledge for holding a small outboard motor with a smaller piece of teak than was there previously and he used the screw top and its narrow plastic ring from a large water bottle to replace the worn plugs for the air sac inside each end of his canoe. Mr. Invention strikes again. All he needs now is for there to be no aphids or "no-see-ums" flying around early tomorrow morning so he can get the last coat of paint on the outside of the craft. Here's hoping......
Friday, August 28, 2020
Aaaaaaannnnndddd: Summer Gives Way to Autumn, Just Like THAT! Snap.....
Wow....tomorrow we are forecast for a daytime high of +29C, after a couple of pleasantly cooler days, but then that is it for summer temperatures...the end, kaput, finis, done, over, movin' on to autumn! UNBELIEVABLE! Sigh.....We had a late spring; a chilly spring that brought late blooms to plants and trees and gardens. Summer was ushered in equally late this year and it must be the shortest summer on record around here. We barely had a full 8 weeks of it and now it is ending already. HOW DEPRESSING!
The trees that annually are the first to turn their leaves gold and crispy brown have managed to pull that feat off in record time this year. Most of them are dropping their leaves already. The trees that are still fully leafed though are showing signs of that flat, dull green that heralds the onset of summer's end and the beginning of the next pre-winter season. By next week the daytime highs will be consistently 12 to 15 degrees cooler every day than what we have experienced over the past thrree weeks. Overnight lows are dropping as low as +4C. HOW DEPRESSING!
The Farmers Almanac is predicting a pretty lousy winter here: consistently cold temperatures and more ice and snow than we have had to put up with in several years. HOW DEPRESSING!!
The atmosphere outside has taken on that lacklustre fall aura. The brightness of the sun no longer pierces it, no longer dispels that ever so slightly visible amber tinge to the air. The autumn is upon us and well before Labour Day this year. HOW DEPRESSING!!
Oh please Lord, may we have a beautiful and LONG Indian summer through September and October...pretty please??
ON A HAPPY NOTE!
My mom called last night kind of distressed that she is running out of disposable masks. Her residence still requires her to wear them when she leaves the building for appointments and demands they be handed over when she returns so they can be thrown away immediately, but they have stopped providing them to the residents. They are not keen on the cloth masks because they cannot control how well the residents wash them between uses and I do understand that, but it leaves Mom with a plethora of unusable cloth masks and only a few disposables left to barely get her through all her medical appointments this month. She doesn' know who has disposables in stock in her area so I told her I would find some here and mail them to her. That turned out to be easier said than done.
This morning I dropped my husband off at the clinic for his lipids testing while I tried to find disposable masks at Shoppers and my neighbourhood grocery store, both of which had stacks of them 3 days ago when I was last in both stores. Today, NADA! Nary a mask graced their aisles. I was rather discouraged and didn't know where else to try. My husband asked me to try Canadian Tire, so I drove over there and lo and behold, there were many, many boxes of disposable masks: boxes of 50 for $34.99! I grabbed a box for Mom and one for us. Right now my husband and I are happy to wear our cloth masks, but they may not last through too many more months of washing and it is always nice to have disposables on hand if this pandemic continues on for another 6 months to a year or more. I mailed off the box of 50 to Mom, then called and told her they are on the way. She is thrilled! Once again I am ecstatic to still be physically mobile and to live close to so many shopping areas where I can usually find what I need. As much as I want to move out of this particular housing development next spring, I MAY have to reconsider since our location is perfect for us. Hmmmmmm.....well, the Lord will tell us what is going on as far as moving at just the time we need to know. He always has before.
My husband decided today would be a good day to take me out for Indian food again, as per our agreement to do so at least one more time before he is done with his holidays next week. I wasn't going to say "NO!" hahaha Off to DarBar where we had enough food left from our platters to bring home for a full dinner each this evening. Now, I just have to wangle an evening extravaganza sized order from Caraway Grill before next Tuesday as well so I can indulge my passion for Indian food for as long as possible! hohoho!! Travel Schmavel! THIS is my idea of good holidays!!!
Our son texted us as we were eating lunch. He completed his move from his boarding house bachelor suite to the sweet and temporarily rent free apt. on the upper west side of Manhattan. He has so many friends and a couple of "medically safe" fellows helped him make the transition of his assorted "stuff": personal effects to the suite and paintings and art supplies to the studio he rented in Queens. He has helped many of them move as well over the past few years, so he had a few favours to call in. I am thrilled for him and I am delighted for this major short term financial break. Hopefully 6 to 8 months from now when living in this dream residence comes to an end, the way will be open for more consistent employment once again so that he can find a decent place in his price range. The place he had in Bushwick was a great one for him, but his part of the neighbourhood has become more dangerous of late. So...we shall see what God has in store for him next!
After lunch I sent my husband to the canoe repair site with the vehicle while I had a beautiful walk home from the restaurant. It is only just over a half hour as a rule, but I took my sweet time, enjoying the light breeze and the slightly cooler day. Along the route I chose I came across the funeral home I have been wanting to contact about prepaid funerals. So, I stopped in and collected a packet of information to peruse with my husband so we can decide what kind of plan would work best, not only for us right now financially, but for our son when the time comes that he has to take care of the legal and financial details after we die. It is the least we can do for him since his inheritance will be pretty close to nil. Sigh...the "kid" never gets a financial break from us, that is for sure.
I also came across a wonderfully full neighbourhood library box I haven't seen before. There were many "treasures" inside that found their way into my purse for the remainder of the walk home. Yay big purse!! I will have to replace all those books with some of the ones I am reading now. I hate taking books without replacing them right away, but I had no idea the box was there. Since I have 2 books on the go right now and another one that I just completed reading, I will soon have a few for replacements.
It has been a good day of errands and walking and fab food. To be honest I have felt like I am on holidays since the COVID19 lockdowns began back in March! I feel less stress for myself than I did previous to the lockdown. As things got settled for our son over the past few months with his painting sales and now this fabulous answer to prayer about a place to live and the death of my Father removing some of the stresses for Mom as we ploughed through the ensuing legalities and got her moved, I have relaxed a lot! The month to 6 weeks of stress and shingles in the middle of it all was kind of difficult, but apart from that it has been a pretty amazing 6 months when all is said and done.
The trees that annually are the first to turn their leaves gold and crispy brown have managed to pull that feat off in record time this year. Most of them are dropping their leaves already. The trees that are still fully leafed though are showing signs of that flat, dull green that heralds the onset of summer's end and the beginning of the next pre-winter season. By next week the daytime highs will be consistently 12 to 15 degrees cooler every day than what we have experienced over the past thrree weeks. Overnight lows are dropping as low as +4C. HOW DEPRESSING!
The Farmers Almanac is predicting a pretty lousy winter here: consistently cold temperatures and more ice and snow than we have had to put up with in several years. HOW DEPRESSING!!
The atmosphere outside has taken on that lacklustre fall aura. The brightness of the sun no longer pierces it, no longer dispels that ever so slightly visible amber tinge to the air. The autumn is upon us and well before Labour Day this year. HOW DEPRESSING!!
Oh please Lord, may we have a beautiful and LONG Indian summer through September and October...pretty please??
ON A HAPPY NOTE!
My mom called last night kind of distressed that she is running out of disposable masks. Her residence still requires her to wear them when she leaves the building for appointments and demands they be handed over when she returns so they can be thrown away immediately, but they have stopped providing them to the residents. They are not keen on the cloth masks because they cannot control how well the residents wash them between uses and I do understand that, but it leaves Mom with a plethora of unusable cloth masks and only a few disposables left to barely get her through all her medical appointments this month. She doesn' know who has disposables in stock in her area so I told her I would find some here and mail them to her. That turned out to be easier said than done.
This morning I dropped my husband off at the clinic for his lipids testing while I tried to find disposable masks at Shoppers and my neighbourhood grocery store, both of which had stacks of them 3 days ago when I was last in both stores. Today, NADA! Nary a mask graced their aisles. I was rather discouraged and didn't know where else to try. My husband asked me to try Canadian Tire, so I drove over there and lo and behold, there were many, many boxes of disposable masks: boxes of 50 for $34.99! I grabbed a box for Mom and one for us. Right now my husband and I are happy to wear our cloth masks, but they may not last through too many more months of washing and it is always nice to have disposables on hand if this pandemic continues on for another 6 months to a year or more. I mailed off the box of 50 to Mom, then called and told her they are on the way. She is thrilled! Once again I am ecstatic to still be physically mobile and to live close to so many shopping areas where I can usually find what I need. As much as I want to move out of this particular housing development next spring, I MAY have to reconsider since our location is perfect for us. Hmmmmmm.....well, the Lord will tell us what is going on as far as moving at just the time we need to know. He always has before.
My husband decided today would be a good day to take me out for Indian food again, as per our agreement to do so at least one more time before he is done with his holidays next week. I wasn't going to say "NO!" hahaha Off to DarBar where we had enough food left from our platters to bring home for a full dinner each this evening. Now, I just have to wangle an evening extravaganza sized order from Caraway Grill before next Tuesday as well so I can indulge my passion for Indian food for as long as possible! hohoho!! Travel Schmavel! THIS is my idea of good holidays!!!
Our son texted us as we were eating lunch. He completed his move from his boarding house bachelor suite to the sweet and temporarily rent free apt. on the upper west side of Manhattan. He has so many friends and a couple of "medically safe" fellows helped him make the transition of his assorted "stuff": personal effects to the suite and paintings and art supplies to the studio he rented in Queens. He has helped many of them move as well over the past few years, so he had a few favours to call in. I am thrilled for him and I am delighted for this major short term financial break. Hopefully 6 to 8 months from now when living in this dream residence comes to an end, the way will be open for more consistent employment once again so that he can find a decent place in his price range. The place he had in Bushwick was a great one for him, but his part of the neighbourhood has become more dangerous of late. So...we shall see what God has in store for him next!
After lunch I sent my husband to the canoe repair site with the vehicle while I had a beautiful walk home from the restaurant. It is only just over a half hour as a rule, but I took my sweet time, enjoying the light breeze and the slightly cooler day. Along the route I chose I came across the funeral home I have been wanting to contact about prepaid funerals. So, I stopped in and collected a packet of information to peruse with my husband so we can decide what kind of plan would work best, not only for us right now financially, but for our son when the time comes that he has to take care of the legal and financial details after we die. It is the least we can do for him since his inheritance will be pretty close to nil. Sigh...the "kid" never gets a financial break from us, that is for sure.
I also came across a wonderfully full neighbourhood library box I haven't seen before. There were many "treasures" inside that found their way into my purse for the remainder of the walk home. Yay big purse!! I will have to replace all those books with some of the ones I am reading now. I hate taking books without replacing them right away, but I had no idea the box was there. Since I have 2 books on the go right now and another one that I just completed reading, I will soon have a few for replacements.
It has been a good day of errands and walking and fab food. To be honest I have felt like I am on holidays since the COVID19 lockdowns began back in March! I feel less stress for myself than I did previous to the lockdown. As things got settled for our son over the past few months with his painting sales and now this fabulous answer to prayer about a place to live and the death of my Father removing some of the stresses for Mom as we ploughed through the ensuing legalities and got her moved, I have relaxed a lot! The month to 6 weeks of stress and shingles in the middle of it all was kind of difficult, but apart from that it has been a pretty amazing 6 months when all is said and done.
Thursday, August 27, 2020
Prayer Warrior Update for Val and Cee
Happy almost weekend everyone. I am delivering some good news and some not so good news about friends you have been praying for over the past several months.
The good news: after a meeting with the hematologist a few days ago, a meeting where she was told that the problems with clotting have come to an end at last, the hematologist also told Val there is no need to wait another 6months to a year for Val's other hip to be replaced! So, yesterday she had her regular 3 month post-op check up with her surgeon. He looked at the hematologist's notes and agreed, SO as of this afternoon Val is scheduled for her second joint replacement the third week of September....ONLY ONE MONTH until she can get that second surgery that should restore her life to her after 2 years or more of agonizing pain and immobility. So, we need to bathe her in prayer between now and then. She already has been given the post-op plan for blood thinners after the second surgery so that this clotting problem doesn't become an issue again. Hallelujah praying friends! She is so ready to reclaim her life and get back to work! If she can be mobile again a couple of months from now it will also be a great weight lifted from Kat's shoulders as she won't be having to care for Val nearly as much on a daily basis. This is truly a delightful answer to your prayers for these two women.
The not so good news: Cee is still struggling mightily with neuropathy. He has just received his test results from myriad tests he and the doctors were hoping would show a cause for this that is NOT the result of his intense chemotherapy for his rare cancer. However, no such fortune. The only test left is a nerve biopsy and it cannot be done here. He has to go to another city for it. Please pray for him and for Nan. The neuropathy is so bad that he injured himself badly from a stumble a few weeks ago and he didn't even realize the injury had happened as he felt nothing at all. The specialist conducting the nerve biopsy has been away but will be back at the beginning of next week. Please, please, please pray Cee will be able to reach his office on the phone and find out when he can have this very important test. The results could tell his doctors if any of the sensation in his body might be restored at some point in future now that his maintenance chemo is done for the time being. This neuropathy is very serious and life changing. The man needs help. Nan is beside herself with worry and who can blame her. Cee amazes me. His statement to Nan after getting the recent test results that show no other causes for the problem was, "I am discouraged. BUT I have not given up hope!" What a guy!!
Thanks everyone for your prayers for these dear people who have suffered so much for so many years.
The good news: after a meeting with the hematologist a few days ago, a meeting where she was told that the problems with clotting have come to an end at last, the hematologist also told Val there is no need to wait another 6months to a year for Val's other hip to be replaced! So, yesterday she had her regular 3 month post-op check up with her surgeon. He looked at the hematologist's notes and agreed, SO as of this afternoon Val is scheduled for her second joint replacement the third week of September....ONLY ONE MONTH until she can get that second surgery that should restore her life to her after 2 years or more of agonizing pain and immobility. So, we need to bathe her in prayer between now and then. She already has been given the post-op plan for blood thinners after the second surgery so that this clotting problem doesn't become an issue again. Hallelujah praying friends! She is so ready to reclaim her life and get back to work! If she can be mobile again a couple of months from now it will also be a great weight lifted from Kat's shoulders as she won't be having to care for Val nearly as much on a daily basis. This is truly a delightful answer to your prayers for these two women.
The not so good news: Cee is still struggling mightily with neuropathy. He has just received his test results from myriad tests he and the doctors were hoping would show a cause for this that is NOT the result of his intense chemotherapy for his rare cancer. However, no such fortune. The only test left is a nerve biopsy and it cannot be done here. He has to go to another city for it. Please pray for him and for Nan. The neuropathy is so bad that he injured himself badly from a stumble a few weeks ago and he didn't even realize the injury had happened as he felt nothing at all. The specialist conducting the nerve biopsy has been away but will be back at the beginning of next week. Please, please, please pray Cee will be able to reach his office on the phone and find out when he can have this very important test. The results could tell his doctors if any of the sensation in his body might be restored at some point in future now that his maintenance chemo is done for the time being. This neuropathy is very serious and life changing. The man needs help. Nan is beside herself with worry and who can blame her. Cee amazes me. His statement to Nan after getting the recent test results that show no other causes for the problem was, "I am discouraged. BUT I have not given up hope!" What a guy!!
Thanks everyone for your prayers for these dear people who have suffered so much for so many years.
Wednesday, August 26, 2020
Energized! Amen!!
I don't know if it is because my weekend walking is completely responsible for restoring my energy, or if it was the promise of cooler days ahead that spurred me on to better activity levels because winter is closer than I wanted to think about previously, but the past few days have been just awesome!
Yesterday I woke up just before my 6am "Tuesday AM Shopping Alarm" sounded and hied myself over to a few grocery stores. We are WELL stocked with food for the next two weeks. YAY! Unlike other recent early morning shopping sprees, I didn't feel exhausted before I even left home, I woke up on my own after a great sleep, I toddled merrily around the stores and had a clear head to remember those few items that never quite make the written list, but that come to mind on the drive to the first store.
By the time I had everything I purchased disinfected, my husband was done with his own early morning Zoom meeting and away we went on an errand run. I took a book to read so that I could wait in the car happily while my husband went into various hardware stores to buy the final repair parts for his canoe. It just happened to be exactly noon when we were finished, so my husband acquiesed to my holiday request for a few more Indian meals before his holidays end next week. Off to DarBar for a platter each: lamb roganjosh for my husband and chicken tikka pour moi. The dessert yesterday was gulab jamun and the extra side dish curried chick peas. The raitta was particularly good yesterday, the samoas freshly baked and the salad seemed to have doubled in size since our last visit. It is a pretty great combo for $11.99 a person. We didn't order tea masala yesterday, only the platters, so for our $30, tax and 15% tip included, we had a wonderful lunch and enough leftovers for a wonderful dinner as well last night. It is difficult to make a decent meal for only $7.50 a person here at home and it would be a pretty plain, prairie food meal at that!! A scoop of mashed potatoes, one piece of meat and a cup of steamed veggies....blaaaaaaahhh!!! I really detest prairie meals, I have to admit. I grew up with them and didn't know there was anything else available, apart from the occasional A&W or MacDonald's burger, until I was a young adult. At that point I finally discovered pizza! Yup, it took me that long to find out that pizza was a thing. My parents didn't eat pizza, none of our friends ate pizza, so I never had the opportunity to learn it existed. So, I have the old Calgary Pizza Downs to thank for introducing me to a wider range of tasty joys.
In the afternoon we cleared off another boxing match on tv. Thank you Fox network for picking up where TSN left off after its summer programming. Watching Sean Porter is always exciting. Wow, it has been the best summer for televised boxing EVER! Thank you Coronavirus for the changes in boxing programming and scheduling.
Last night my husband went over to assist Kat with her canoe repair for awhile and got a bit more work done on his as well. He is tired today and so since rain is predicted for this afternoon and tomorrow, he will likely take 2 days off to relax and do other things. This morning he sorted out a computer glitch, arranged for our communications provider to replace our dying system battery, deadheaded the roses, picked the tomatoes, discovered 4 giant 2x10 oak boards someone discarded in the outside bin, which he subsequently washed down and hauled to the basement to cut and replace our wimpy storage shelving down there...he has had a good morning of relaxed production!
Last night while my husband was working on the canoes, I decided to get a start on the ironing to get me on my feet after dinner. I thought I would just get a start on the project, maybe for half an hour, but it felt good to be accomplishing something and I completed the whole load in just under two hours. YAY!
This morning, after another good sleep, I happened to wake up and look out the window just in time to see a good friend from church coming up our walk, bearing a letter for me from her charitable organization. I threw on my housecoat and went out to chat for awhile. I haven't seen her in person since the end of March, so what a treat to be able to speak together, even for a short time. I noticed the air was much cooler than it was when I went to bed last night.
After breakfast I was able to get some emails answered, a pile of garbage taken out, bottles and cans sorted for our next trip to the recycling depot, the dishwasher put on and all the clean dishes then put away, as well as other assorted small chores that seem to keep being put aside because, "well, they will only take a minute so I'll do them later". Of course later never comes, so it was a good morning to do them all! This afternoon I will walk over to the post office to mail some letters. I am pacing my walks each day so that once again I am getting at least 30 to 60 minutes of exercise after each meal. I will go for my complete physical later in Sept., only 6 months late, again thanks to the pandemic, but I do want to make sure my blood sugar isn't rising after my lack of exercise for the past 3 or 4 months. I suspect it may be, but if it is, will I be able to regain control without meds once again?
My husband just called me over to his computer to read his test results online from the lab tests he had nearly a month ago. Everything is well within normal range, his EKG is completely normal for a man his age, there are no abnormalities anywhere in the bone, heart, lungs, surrounding tissues. Praise the Lord for this good news. Unfortunately none of his cholesterol tests for the past year have been posted, so until he goes to the doctor next week he will not have access to the last set of numbers pre-statin. I really hope and pray this drug is working for him and that perhaps the amount he is taking could be reduced. He is on twice the dose I am on, BUT his numbers were far scarier than mine ever were even at my highest. So, it is looking more and more as if we are right...all his health issues of late stem from a recurrence of CFS, BUT he has done very well over the past 3 weeks and we are being very careful to keep his diet and exercise on track. If that is "all" it is, particularly at his age, we can only be very grateful.
Oh how I LOVE "puttering" days like this one.
The temperature today is only forecast to go to +26C, about a 6 degree drop over most of this past week. YES! There is one more possible very hot day on the horizon before the forecast daytime highs drop to the high teens and low 20's. Fall is in the air......since summer is officially over 5 days from now I suppose I shouldn't be so shocked. hahaha
Yesterday I woke up just before my 6am "Tuesday AM Shopping Alarm" sounded and hied myself over to a few grocery stores. We are WELL stocked with food for the next two weeks. YAY! Unlike other recent early morning shopping sprees, I didn't feel exhausted before I even left home, I woke up on my own after a great sleep, I toddled merrily around the stores and had a clear head to remember those few items that never quite make the written list, but that come to mind on the drive to the first store.
By the time I had everything I purchased disinfected, my husband was done with his own early morning Zoom meeting and away we went on an errand run. I took a book to read so that I could wait in the car happily while my husband went into various hardware stores to buy the final repair parts for his canoe. It just happened to be exactly noon when we were finished, so my husband acquiesed to my holiday request for a few more Indian meals before his holidays end next week. Off to DarBar for a platter each: lamb roganjosh for my husband and chicken tikka pour moi. The dessert yesterday was gulab jamun and the extra side dish curried chick peas. The raitta was particularly good yesterday, the samoas freshly baked and the salad seemed to have doubled in size since our last visit. It is a pretty great combo for $11.99 a person. We didn't order tea masala yesterday, only the platters, so for our $30, tax and 15% tip included, we had a wonderful lunch and enough leftovers for a wonderful dinner as well last night. It is difficult to make a decent meal for only $7.50 a person here at home and it would be a pretty plain, prairie food meal at that!! A scoop of mashed potatoes, one piece of meat and a cup of steamed veggies....blaaaaaaahhh!!! I really detest prairie meals, I have to admit. I grew up with them and didn't know there was anything else available, apart from the occasional A&W or MacDonald's burger, until I was a young adult. At that point I finally discovered pizza! Yup, it took me that long to find out that pizza was a thing. My parents didn't eat pizza, none of our friends ate pizza, so I never had the opportunity to learn it existed. So, I have the old Calgary Pizza Downs to thank for introducing me to a wider range of tasty joys.
In the afternoon we cleared off another boxing match on tv. Thank you Fox network for picking up where TSN left off after its summer programming. Watching Sean Porter is always exciting. Wow, it has been the best summer for televised boxing EVER! Thank you Coronavirus for the changes in boxing programming and scheduling.
Last night my husband went over to assist Kat with her canoe repair for awhile and got a bit more work done on his as well. He is tired today and so since rain is predicted for this afternoon and tomorrow, he will likely take 2 days off to relax and do other things. This morning he sorted out a computer glitch, arranged for our communications provider to replace our dying system battery, deadheaded the roses, picked the tomatoes, discovered 4 giant 2x10 oak boards someone discarded in the outside bin, which he subsequently washed down and hauled to the basement to cut and replace our wimpy storage shelving down there...he has had a good morning of relaxed production!
Last night while my husband was working on the canoes, I decided to get a start on the ironing to get me on my feet after dinner. I thought I would just get a start on the project, maybe for half an hour, but it felt good to be accomplishing something and I completed the whole load in just under two hours. YAY!
This morning, after another good sleep, I happened to wake up and look out the window just in time to see a good friend from church coming up our walk, bearing a letter for me from her charitable organization. I threw on my housecoat and went out to chat for awhile. I haven't seen her in person since the end of March, so what a treat to be able to speak together, even for a short time. I noticed the air was much cooler than it was when I went to bed last night.
After breakfast I was able to get some emails answered, a pile of garbage taken out, bottles and cans sorted for our next trip to the recycling depot, the dishwasher put on and all the clean dishes then put away, as well as other assorted small chores that seem to keep being put aside because, "well, they will only take a minute so I'll do them later". Of course later never comes, so it was a good morning to do them all! This afternoon I will walk over to the post office to mail some letters. I am pacing my walks each day so that once again I am getting at least 30 to 60 minutes of exercise after each meal. I will go for my complete physical later in Sept., only 6 months late, again thanks to the pandemic, but I do want to make sure my blood sugar isn't rising after my lack of exercise for the past 3 or 4 months. I suspect it may be, but if it is, will I be able to regain control without meds once again?
My husband just called me over to his computer to read his test results online from the lab tests he had nearly a month ago. Everything is well within normal range, his EKG is completely normal for a man his age, there are no abnormalities anywhere in the bone, heart, lungs, surrounding tissues. Praise the Lord for this good news. Unfortunately none of his cholesterol tests for the past year have been posted, so until he goes to the doctor next week he will not have access to the last set of numbers pre-statin. I really hope and pray this drug is working for him and that perhaps the amount he is taking could be reduced. He is on twice the dose I am on, BUT his numbers were far scarier than mine ever were even at my highest. So, it is looking more and more as if we are right...all his health issues of late stem from a recurrence of CFS, BUT he has done very well over the past 3 weeks and we are being very careful to keep his diet and exercise on track. If that is "all" it is, particularly at his age, we can only be very grateful.
Oh how I LOVE "puttering" days like this one.
The temperature today is only forecast to go to +26C, about a 6 degree drop over most of this past week. YES! There is one more possible very hot day on the horizon before the forecast daytime highs drop to the high teens and low 20's. Fall is in the air......since summer is officially over 5 days from now I suppose I shouldn't be so shocked. hahaha
Monday, August 24, 2020
Backfield In Motion
Walking over a km to my friend's house on Saturday was a good idea, even though it was completely exhausting in the +33C temperature. It got me over my ongoing spring/summer mindset that I couldn't go for a decent length walk because:
--it is too windy
--it is too hot
--it is too crowded
--it is too dangerous
--it is too far
--it is too (insert any inane, lame excuse here)
Saturday's walk gave me the energy and inspiration to run up and down the stairs dozens of times yesterday to complete the laundry. Completing the laundry yesterday inspired me to walk nearly 2km this morning to fill one of the area neighbourhood library boxes with books. We drove past it the other day and I noticed it was completely empty. Since I had an entire bag of books I had read since June, what better place to take them? Carrying the heavy bag was also a good addtion to the walking exercise.
This afternoon I walked another half km home from the post office after mailing my mom some treats I purchased at the store on my way home from the library box. My husband took time out from the canoe project to come home for lunch and insisted on driving me the better part of one way to the post office because once again it is intensely hot outside. No matter, I still had a second walk today. If I wimp out on my post dinner exercises tonight I won't feel so guilty now. hahahahaha
One or two more days of this heat wave and then we are going to begin experiencing more autumn like temperatures. Sigh....There are hundreds of crispy, dead tree leaves covering my Saturday friend's large back deck and lawn. The creeping ivy on some of the fences in our neighbourhood is already turning a deep red....NOOOOOOOOO!!! Surely we aren't going to go from heat wave to early winter???? Please say it isn't so! (and mean it) I have to return to Alberta the third week in September for a delayed medical appointment and I cannot CANNOT miss it even if it is snowing and icy, so I am praying very hard even now about that long drive coming up a month from now.
My husband is certain he can complete the canoe repair this week, at least he will complete the one on his own canoe. Kat's and Claude's will take a bit longer, but he will be happy to put in some more time assisting them so they can get theirs out on the water before freeze up....unless freeze up happens in September this year. O brother....just what we need in an already disastrous 2020!
I think I have broken through the bubble of inertness that has surrounded me for the past few months and kept me rather exercise-free for far too long. YAY! I am happy about that and I have a good long walk planned for tomorrow as well!
My husband asked me how he could make up for not participating in any holiday activities with me this summer. He goes back to work in one week and there is no time for us to go anywhere or do any of the things we originally planned before the canoe project appeared on the horizon. I told him all he has to do is guarantee me we can eat Indian food two more times in the next week and he is off the hook! hahahahaha He thinks that is a pretty sweet deal! ME TOO!!! Decent Indian food is worth giving up many other things to enjoy. hohoho!!
Oh, and there is one more thing that he dared not deny me since thanks to his wretched canoe, I get no holidays with him at all this summer (and no, the trip to Calgary last week was no holiday), and that is that for the entire fall and winter he HAS to donate one day per week to our basement cleaning/downsizing/purging project so that we will be ready to move next spring, should the opportunity present itself. GREAT trade off as far as I am concerned. He is feeling so guilty about running out on me for our holidays that he readily agreed to it. teehee He is feeling far worse about bailing on our holiday plans than I am, but he doesn't need to know that. I now have a wonderful little guilt button to push if he balks in the future about keeping his end of this bargain.
Nyaaaa haaaa haaaa........
--it is too windy
--it is too hot
--it is too crowded
--it is too dangerous
--it is too far
--it is too (insert any inane, lame excuse here)
Saturday's walk gave me the energy and inspiration to run up and down the stairs dozens of times yesterday to complete the laundry. Completing the laundry yesterday inspired me to walk nearly 2km this morning to fill one of the area neighbourhood library boxes with books. We drove past it the other day and I noticed it was completely empty. Since I had an entire bag of books I had read since June, what better place to take them? Carrying the heavy bag was also a good addtion to the walking exercise.
This afternoon I walked another half km home from the post office after mailing my mom some treats I purchased at the store on my way home from the library box. My husband took time out from the canoe project to come home for lunch and insisted on driving me the better part of one way to the post office because once again it is intensely hot outside. No matter, I still had a second walk today. If I wimp out on my post dinner exercises tonight I won't feel so guilty now. hahahahaha
One or two more days of this heat wave and then we are going to begin experiencing more autumn like temperatures. Sigh....There are hundreds of crispy, dead tree leaves covering my Saturday friend's large back deck and lawn. The creeping ivy on some of the fences in our neighbourhood is already turning a deep red....NOOOOOOOOO!!! Surely we aren't going to go from heat wave to early winter???? Please say it isn't so! (and mean it) I have to return to Alberta the third week in September for a delayed medical appointment and I cannot CANNOT miss it even if it is snowing and icy, so I am praying very hard even now about that long drive coming up a month from now.
My husband is certain he can complete the canoe repair this week, at least he will complete the one on his own canoe. Kat's and Claude's will take a bit longer, but he will be happy to put in some more time assisting them so they can get theirs out on the water before freeze up....unless freeze up happens in September this year. O brother....just what we need in an already disastrous 2020!
I think I have broken through the bubble of inertness that has surrounded me for the past few months and kept me rather exercise-free for far too long. YAY! I am happy about that and I have a good long walk planned for tomorrow as well!
My husband asked me how he could make up for not participating in any holiday activities with me this summer. He goes back to work in one week and there is no time for us to go anywhere or do any of the things we originally planned before the canoe project appeared on the horizon. I told him all he has to do is guarantee me we can eat Indian food two more times in the next week and he is off the hook! hahahahaha He thinks that is a pretty sweet deal! ME TOO!!! Decent Indian food is worth giving up many other things to enjoy. hohoho!!
Oh, and there is one more thing that he dared not deny me since thanks to his wretched canoe, I get no holidays with him at all this summer (and no, the trip to Calgary last week was no holiday), and that is that for the entire fall and winter he HAS to donate one day per week to our basement cleaning/downsizing/purging project so that we will be ready to move next spring, should the opportunity present itself. GREAT trade off as far as I am concerned. He is feeling so guilty about running out on me for our holidays that he readily agreed to it. teehee He is feeling far worse about bailing on our holiday plans than I am, but he doesn't need to know that. I now have a wonderful little guilt button to push if he balks in the future about keeping his end of this bargain.
Nyaaaa haaaa haaaa........
Sunday, August 23, 2020
Welllll, My Husband Is Nothing If Not Inventive!
My husband had to leave the canoe repair site for a while yesterday to go to the hardware store for something and as he drove into their parking lot, a good 20 minute drive from the repair site, he realized he had left his mask sitting by the canoe. Hmmm....to drive another 20 minutes back to retrieve a mask and then make another 20 minute drive back to the hardware store seemed like quite a time waster, so he decided to get creative. He found an old sport sock in his little canvas "bag of tricks" that he carries in the trunk of the car. He tried stretching it across his nose and mouth and it was certainly long enough to make a mask out of it. So he pulled a shoelace out of his workboot and make his own makeshift mask before entering the hardware store. hahahahahahahaha
Behold the man:
Behold the man:
The Weekend
It's the weekend! Not that it means anything at this point in time, other than it is the 2 days of every week when we do not do any shopping because of the crowded conditions...although with so many families at "the (ubiquitous) lake", there are not quite as many people in the stores on weekends lately.
We both had a wonderful day yesterday. My husband worked all day on the canoe repairs and the end is finally in sight. Since he had Kat to work with he enjoyed the project and was able to stay for the entire day, rather than coming home early like he does when he has to work alone. There was a bit of a breeze wafting through the workspace from a big fan in the church buildings surrounding the space and that made for pleasant conditions. He spent the evening with me watching boxing matches on tv and eating a light supper.
I spent the entire afternoon at a friend's house. Her husband was also away for the day, so we ate a yummy lunch together and talked for hours. Toward the end of the afternoon another friend dropped in and it was fun to visit with her as well. I have been praying for friendships like this from my new church to form for quite awhile and to see these women becoming answers to that prayer is amazing and exciting and joy inducing! Along with my dear friends from my former church here, I am feeling surrounded by care and friendship.
This morning I had an eye appointment at 8:30am. The dreaded peripheral vision test happened again. I hardly slept last night because I was so afraid of taking it, which is absolutely stupid because the test is supposed to help the ophthalmologist find glaucoma problems and actually HELP me retain my vision as long as possible. This time was much easier than the last time, more like a game as I sat clicking the buzzer every time a tiny light appeared in my line of vision. I realize the first time I had the test was the same day I received news that my father was moving into long term care the following week and we would be taking a winter drive to Calgary to help him and Mom with the transition. I had been at the doctor all morning for the first set of eye examinations and received the call from my parents during my two hour break before returning to the office for the peripheral vision test. My mind wasn't on the test. I was so distracted that I found the little flashing lights annoying and frustrating; my attention was not directed toward the test and I think I even closed my eyes for a few seconds because I thought the testing would never end. SO, hopefully I didn't do any worse on today's exam when I was paying close attention than I did on the last one where I didn't have the energy to care. So happy I got home by 9:15am. Now I am doing laundry and blogging in between watching and listening to my church adult Sunday School class on Zoom. I love being able to mute my mic and cover the camera so I can zip around the room putting new sheets on the bed and folding laundry, drinking water and eating a snack, posting on a different lap top, all the while listening to the class but not providing any kind of visual or vocal disruption for any of the other participants.
Apart from laundry, I will see if the day holds any kind of interesting surprise to perk things up around here. The forecast high temperature for today is "only" +28C, down substantially from yesterday's high of +35C. YAY! Now we are expecting a couple of more very hot days before the temperature actually plummets for at least a week. The overnight temperatures for a couple of nights this week are forecast to be between +6C and +8! Oooh, it is too soon for that kind of chill overnight on the prairies....please Lord, after such a hot summer of being stuck indoors, please, please, please do not let the snow and ice arrive early this year. Amen!
We both had a wonderful day yesterday. My husband worked all day on the canoe repairs and the end is finally in sight. Since he had Kat to work with he enjoyed the project and was able to stay for the entire day, rather than coming home early like he does when he has to work alone. There was a bit of a breeze wafting through the workspace from a big fan in the church buildings surrounding the space and that made for pleasant conditions. He spent the evening with me watching boxing matches on tv and eating a light supper.
I spent the entire afternoon at a friend's house. Her husband was also away for the day, so we ate a yummy lunch together and talked for hours. Toward the end of the afternoon another friend dropped in and it was fun to visit with her as well. I have been praying for friendships like this from my new church to form for quite awhile and to see these women becoming answers to that prayer is amazing and exciting and joy inducing! Along with my dear friends from my former church here, I am feeling surrounded by care and friendship.
This morning I had an eye appointment at 8:30am. The dreaded peripheral vision test happened again. I hardly slept last night because I was so afraid of taking it, which is absolutely stupid because the test is supposed to help the ophthalmologist find glaucoma problems and actually HELP me retain my vision as long as possible. This time was much easier than the last time, more like a game as I sat clicking the buzzer every time a tiny light appeared in my line of vision. I realize the first time I had the test was the same day I received news that my father was moving into long term care the following week and we would be taking a winter drive to Calgary to help him and Mom with the transition. I had been at the doctor all morning for the first set of eye examinations and received the call from my parents during my two hour break before returning to the office for the peripheral vision test. My mind wasn't on the test. I was so distracted that I found the little flashing lights annoying and frustrating; my attention was not directed toward the test and I think I even closed my eyes for a few seconds because I thought the testing would never end. SO, hopefully I didn't do any worse on today's exam when I was paying close attention than I did on the last one where I didn't have the energy to care. So happy I got home by 9:15am. Now I am doing laundry and blogging in between watching and listening to my church adult Sunday School class on Zoom. I love being able to mute my mic and cover the camera so I can zip around the room putting new sheets on the bed and folding laundry, drinking water and eating a snack, posting on a different lap top, all the while listening to the class but not providing any kind of visual or vocal disruption for any of the other participants.
Apart from laundry, I will see if the day holds any kind of interesting surprise to perk things up around here. The forecast high temperature for today is "only" +28C, down substantially from yesterday's high of +35C. YAY! Now we are expecting a couple of more very hot days before the temperature actually plummets for at least a week. The overnight temperatures for a couple of nights this week are forecast to be between +6C and +8! Oooh, it is too soon for that kind of chill overnight on the prairies....please Lord, after such a hot summer of being stuck indoors, please, please, please do not let the snow and ice arrive early this year. Amen!
Friday, August 21, 2020
Evening Prayer
“Goodnight moon. Good night Zoom. Goodnight impending sense of doom.”
(Thank you for this, Amy Peden Haymie)
(Thank you for this, Amy Peden Haymie)
Lovin' Those Aforementioned Details....
After we set up our pretty new chairs, I happily dragged the old chairs out to the industrial sized garbage bin outside. I stood on tip toes to get them over the edge of the bin, but in they went, the tops of them sticking out as there is so much in that bin already that they were sitting on top of other items. FINALLY something old went out to the garbage BEFORE my husband could figure out a reason to keep them! (well, 3 of the 4 chairs went out....he did decide to keep one of them on our all ready overcrowded wee deck so he would have somewhere to sit when he picks the herbs...hopefully the spiders will cover it in webs overnight so he will be more willing to get rid of it.
The chairs are still useable, but have definitely seen better days. I was overjoyed when I looked out less than an hour later and realized two of those chairs had disappeared from the bin. Someone had all ready taken them. I will be so happy if someone has a use for them and can enjoy them for awhile longer than I did. Good timing. Someone around here needed chairs at the same time that I tossed mine out. Thank you Lord! The dear old things live on and are useful to another person. YAY!! That bin sees a LOT of "recyclers".
The chairs are still useable, but have definitely seen better days. I was overjoyed when I looked out less than an hour later and realized two of those chairs had disappeared from the bin. Someone had all ready taken them. I will be so happy if someone has a use for them and can enjoy them for awhile longer than I did. Good timing. Someone around here needed chairs at the same time that I tossed mine out. Thank you Lord! The dear old things live on and are useful to another person. YAY!! That bin sees a LOT of "recyclers".
We Take Lousy Cell Phone Photos....Sigh....
However, here are a couple of us with my Mom. Did we think to take any photos of the picnic and the scenic area we were eating in? Of course not! Why would we be alert enough to do such a thing? Anyway, that is how it goes.
My Dad painted the crucifixion painting on the wall above Mom.
My Dad painted the crucifixion painting on the wall above Mom.
When God Is In The Details....
....I have days like this one!
My husband and I both had a good sleep last night, waking up none too early this morning! YAY! There was a glorious rain storm about the time we were going to bed...short lived, but it did cool the overnight air. The lightning was so glorious and the sound of the rain so soothing, that we fell asleep with only our ear plugs in place, no white noise sound loop necessary. I set folded towels along the window sills to collect any wayward raindrops so that we could leave the windows open all night. It was a grand night for a good, sound sleep in the midst of the light show and booming thunder in the sky.
After a leisurely breakfast we lazed about watching the 3 hour finale of ALONE: the Arctic. Thrilled for the winner and I am personally delighted that the two women in the final three contestants only went home near the end of the 100 day endurance test because of frost bitten feet and a realization that a personal goal had been achieved and it was time to go, the winning money not being the main issue. Talk about strong, independent, capable, amazing women...how I wish I had known women that obviously in control of their lives when I was young. Talk about examples for the next generation of girls. The fellow that won the million dollars for lasting a full hundred days alone in the Arctic in winter, fending completely for himself, was so deserving! It was an excellent season!
Finally we hoisted our butts of the sofa, got dressed and drove about the city running a few errands. My husband picked up the last of the canoe repair supplies, (a torturous procedure for him as he had a very long wait in line to purchase his 3 items due to the number of customers and the lack of number of cashiers, but for me it gave me just enough wait time to clear my cell phone of over 200 ancient text messages that are no longer relevant.), we dropped off supplies at Kat's, we checked on the canoes over in their storage/work space and then we went up to Madison Furniture to collect the dining room chairs. My husband had already assured me that even if I made a disastrous choice, we would just live with it and enjoy having NEW chairs for a change. What a nice guy, right?
I was shaking when we got the boxes home and sliced them open to view the contents. Praise the Lord the chairs are perfect for colour, size and design. My husband is delighted with my decision to purchase these chairs.....sigh....his delight and praise forced me to confess the truth: the chairs we picked up and brought home today are not actually the chairs I ordered! The particular company that makes the chairs I did order also make a second style of chair...that second style, the one in my boxes, is a FAR better match for the wooden dining table we inherited from Mom. The wood stain is an even better match with the table, there are cushier seats and a more comfortable seat back!!!! WOW!!! They also cost several dollars more per chair than the ones I actually ordered. I think God was in the details for me. Just in case we had ended up with someone else's order accidentally, I called back to the store and talked to the salesman who took my original order. Guess what? HE had written down the wrong purchase order code on the order form. It is his mistake that resulted in my receiving the exactly perfect chairs for our dining room. Thanking the Lord for that wonderful man's error. Although he did order the chairs I received, I was still only charged the price of the other chairs I thought I ordered! What a delight.
Once we established that I do have the chairs that the salesman ordered for me, my husband decided it was a good idea to have Indian lunch at DarBar to celebrate the purchase. We each ordered a lunch platter along with a "side of take out boxes please." Our waiter there always giggles when we do that. In fact, at this point he usually brings them at the same time he brings our meals to the table, even if we forget to ask him to, because he knows we are each going to pack up half our platter to take home for dinner that night. NOW I am excited about dinner on this very hot day...no cooking required! Only reheating!! YAY!
Only a couple of more days of serious heat is forecast for the foreseeable future. I certainly do hope the longer term forecast is at least somewhat correct and we will soon see fewer of these over 30C daytime highs!
My husband and I both had a good sleep last night, waking up none too early this morning! YAY! There was a glorious rain storm about the time we were going to bed...short lived, but it did cool the overnight air. The lightning was so glorious and the sound of the rain so soothing, that we fell asleep with only our ear plugs in place, no white noise sound loop necessary. I set folded towels along the window sills to collect any wayward raindrops so that we could leave the windows open all night. It was a grand night for a good, sound sleep in the midst of the light show and booming thunder in the sky.
After a leisurely breakfast we lazed about watching the 3 hour finale of ALONE: the Arctic. Thrilled for the winner and I am personally delighted that the two women in the final three contestants only went home near the end of the 100 day endurance test because of frost bitten feet and a realization that a personal goal had been achieved and it was time to go, the winning money not being the main issue. Talk about strong, independent, capable, amazing women...how I wish I had known women that obviously in control of their lives when I was young. Talk about examples for the next generation of girls. The fellow that won the million dollars for lasting a full hundred days alone in the Arctic in winter, fending completely for himself, was so deserving! It was an excellent season!
Finally we hoisted our butts of the sofa, got dressed and drove about the city running a few errands. My husband picked up the last of the canoe repair supplies, (a torturous procedure for him as he had a very long wait in line to purchase his 3 items due to the number of customers and the lack of number of cashiers, but for me it gave me just enough wait time to clear my cell phone of over 200 ancient text messages that are no longer relevant.), we dropped off supplies at Kat's, we checked on the canoes over in their storage/work space and then we went up to Madison Furniture to collect the dining room chairs. My husband had already assured me that even if I made a disastrous choice, we would just live with it and enjoy having NEW chairs for a change. What a nice guy, right?
I was shaking when we got the boxes home and sliced them open to view the contents. Praise the Lord the chairs are perfect for colour, size and design. My husband is delighted with my decision to purchase these chairs.....sigh....his delight and praise forced me to confess the truth: the chairs we picked up and brought home today are not actually the chairs I ordered! The particular company that makes the chairs I did order also make a second style of chair...that second style, the one in my boxes, is a FAR better match for the wooden dining table we inherited from Mom. The wood stain is an even better match with the table, there are cushier seats and a more comfortable seat back!!!! WOW!!! They also cost several dollars more per chair than the ones I actually ordered. I think God was in the details for me. Just in case we had ended up with someone else's order accidentally, I called back to the store and talked to the salesman who took my original order. Guess what? HE had written down the wrong purchase order code on the order form. It is his mistake that resulted in my receiving the exactly perfect chairs for our dining room. Thanking the Lord for that wonderful man's error. Although he did order the chairs I received, I was still only charged the price of the other chairs I thought I ordered! What a delight.
Once we established that I do have the chairs that the salesman ordered for me, my husband decided it was a good idea to have Indian lunch at DarBar to celebrate the purchase. We each ordered a lunch platter along with a "side of take out boxes please." Our waiter there always giggles when we do that. In fact, at this point he usually brings them at the same time he brings our meals to the table, even if we forget to ask him to, because he knows we are each going to pack up half our platter to take home for dinner that night. NOW I am excited about dinner on this very hot day...no cooking required! Only reheating!! YAY!
Only a couple of more days of serious heat is forecast for the foreseeable future. I certainly do hope the longer term forecast is at least somewhat correct and we will soon see fewer of these over 30C daytime highs!
Thursday, August 20, 2020
Down By the Riverside and Round About Back Home~~~~YAY!
I am back at home with recovered WiFi and so can write about a couple of memories I will have to enjoy after taking Mom on the picnic: I will remember the look of excitement on her face when we told her we were taking her to Little Elbow Falls area for the picnic and I will remember how much she LOVED sitting on a bench after our meal...the bench was so close to the rushing river and it was quite a thrill for her to be able to see all that water racing past.
I will also remember handing her a newly opened bottle of distilled water to drink with her sandwich. Before I could give her a glass to pour the water into, she picked up the bottle and took a big swig out of the top of it. She smacked her lips and informed us that, "I have never taken a drink directly out of a bottle ever before in my life. This is the first time!!" She was SO proud of herself. We laughed and laughed. She seemed to think she had truly gotten away with something sneaky! hahahaha Generally she will only eat half a sandwich at a time for lunch with no dessert. This time when I asked her if I could repack the second half of her sandwich and her muffin to take home, she glared at me and announced that, "I am eating the WHOLE THING!!!!" And she did!! She declared that as a result she would not eat dinner, but she actually ate TWO strips of pork loin, scalloped potatoes and some kind of soup....and of course the maple walnut iced cream served for dessert. hahaha How cute is she???
After we packed up our picnic, we drove back to Calgary by taking a big circular route past Priddis and Spruce Meadows, so that Mom could see all the road construction going on in areas that used to be familiar to her, but that have changed in appearance rather drastically with the addition of new overpasses and interchanges. By the time we got her home she was happily exhausted and confessed to us that evening that she had taken a short nap before her dinner. haha My mother does NOT nap...EVER! I hope she will make a habit of it to keep her energy going the rest of the time. I do see some changes in her that indicate she is starting to feel her age more, so I wonder what life has in store for her over the winter, when, even if she has more chances to escape her residence if the Corona virus numbers drop in her city over the next month, the cold winter weather will once again leave her trapped inside. Lots of concerns for her, but for the present things are positive and she is happy most of the time.
After we dropped Mom back at her place my husband and I had a rest before returning to Mom's place after her dinner hour was over. It was our last time to chat for this visit so we made the most of it and barely got out of her place prior to the 8pm visitor curfew. We DO know how to talk and talk and talk some more. Mom gave us a cheery wave this time as we left instead of bursting into tears, so that was encouraging. I asked her on the phone today if she had experienced any sadness this time upon our departure and she admitted she didn't because she knows we are there for her whether or not we are in her city.
We had a short but decent sleep last night, not waking up until closer to 5:30am. We were packed up and on the road again at 6:30am after a quick breakfast. Today there was no feeling of stress, no sense that "We HAVE to get home as soon as possible!!" So although the short sleep and the intense heat of the day made us tired by the time we got home, it was a most pleasant drive. The lack of August holiday traffic, thanks to the pandemic keeping more people at home this summer, also contributed to the excellent trip. We braved a restaurant meal in Swift Current along the route, at Original Joe's and we have to commend the staff there for their attention to cleaning the tables and chairs, distancing the customers, insisting on everyone following the directional arrows on the floor, wearing masks and providing two very delicious lunches. They kept the traffic moving in the restaurant. Customers were not encouraged to linger after finishing their meals. The dishes were whisked away as soon as the last bite of food passed lips and bills followed immediately afterward. With only half capacity seating and people lining up outside I don't blame them. They were fantastic at letting people know it was time to leave, without making anyone feel like we were being booted out the door. We noticed in Calgary that a lot of the online restaurant websites listed "Table Times" along with their menu items. Customers were allowed to spend anywhere from 45 minutes to 90 minutes from the time of arrival to the time of departure in the restaurant, depending on the type of food served. Very efficient and very smart as these businesses attempt to recover from the disaster of the pandemic and keep their doors open.
I will be so happy when these daily high temperatures of +33C to +37C are over. Looks like we have another two very hot days here before the weather begins a slow cool down by the end of the weekend. Tonight we had a short lived thunder storm with teeming rain that poured through our open kitchen window to pool on the floor, but the raindrops fell straight down in big sheets of water. There wasn't so much as a breeze along with it...so unusual for even such a brief prairie storm. Even with the floor fan running all night I don't think we will sleep very long or very soundly.
About fifteen minutes after we arrived home I got a call from Madison's Furniture informing me that the dining room chairs I ordered nearly 8 weeks ago have finally arrived on their truck that comes up from the USA. I was expecting to have to wait another month at least, but no, they are here! YIPPEE! Tomorrow morning I will drive up to their loading dock and collect them. O how hard I am praying that they are the actual chairs I ordered and that they go with our new dining room table as well as I thought they would when I ordered them! Yikes...here's hoping that my husband doesn't hate them. Usually he is very involved in the choosing of new furniture but wasn't able to be this time and I am afraid he will be disappointed in them or find them uncomfortable. My fear is that I didn't match the wood finish with the table as well as I think I did. Anyway whatever they turn out to be, that is what we will be using for chairs for a long time to come. I am just happy they actually arrived!!! SOMETHING NEW IN OUR SUITE....NOT FROM THE SECOND HAND STORE OR OFFICE SUPPLY....YAY!! Okay, despite my fears about how suitable they will turn out to be, I am pretty excited to be bringing them home tomorrow.
Thank you for your prayers praying friends and family. We had an excellent trip, accomplished a lot of business for and with Mom and had time this visit for some meaningful fun as well. There were enough "holiday" elements crammed into the 4 days to make it feel like a true break from the same old same old. Thankful for that...SO thankful! I don't even mind that I slopped bleach from the cleaning cloths, given to us by Mom's facility to wipe down her chairs and other surfaces we touched in her suite, all down the front of my favourite summer dress, requiring me to put into the garbage that night. That is how good a time I had!
PS: I learned something on this trip. I learned that $75 can purchase many onsale paper products....for example: it can purchase 108 rolls of toilet paper, plus 8 giant rolls of paper towels and 6 large boxes of tissues! (Penelope, take note as I think this will be of interest to you!) I also learned as a result of this intial knowlege, that my car can hold that much extra "stuff" as well as all our suitcases and other travel "stuff"! I like our car...I like paper product sales too!
I will also remember handing her a newly opened bottle of distilled water to drink with her sandwich. Before I could give her a glass to pour the water into, she picked up the bottle and took a big swig out of the top of it. She smacked her lips and informed us that, "I have never taken a drink directly out of a bottle ever before in my life. This is the first time!!" She was SO proud of herself. We laughed and laughed. She seemed to think she had truly gotten away with something sneaky! hahahaha Generally she will only eat half a sandwich at a time for lunch with no dessert. This time when I asked her if I could repack the second half of her sandwich and her muffin to take home, she glared at me and announced that, "I am eating the WHOLE THING!!!!" And she did!! She declared that as a result she would not eat dinner, but she actually ate TWO strips of pork loin, scalloped potatoes and some kind of soup....and of course the maple walnut iced cream served for dessert. hahaha How cute is she???
After we packed up our picnic, we drove back to Calgary by taking a big circular route past Priddis and Spruce Meadows, so that Mom could see all the road construction going on in areas that used to be familiar to her, but that have changed in appearance rather drastically with the addition of new overpasses and interchanges. By the time we got her home she was happily exhausted and confessed to us that evening that she had taken a short nap before her dinner. haha My mother does NOT nap...EVER! I hope she will make a habit of it to keep her energy going the rest of the time. I do see some changes in her that indicate she is starting to feel her age more, so I wonder what life has in store for her over the winter, when, even if she has more chances to escape her residence if the Corona virus numbers drop in her city over the next month, the cold winter weather will once again leave her trapped inside. Lots of concerns for her, but for the present things are positive and she is happy most of the time.
After we dropped Mom back at her place my husband and I had a rest before returning to Mom's place after her dinner hour was over. It was our last time to chat for this visit so we made the most of it and barely got out of her place prior to the 8pm visitor curfew. We DO know how to talk and talk and talk some more. Mom gave us a cheery wave this time as we left instead of bursting into tears, so that was encouraging. I asked her on the phone today if she had experienced any sadness this time upon our departure and she admitted she didn't because she knows we are there for her whether or not we are in her city.
We had a short but decent sleep last night, not waking up until closer to 5:30am. We were packed up and on the road again at 6:30am after a quick breakfast. Today there was no feeling of stress, no sense that "We HAVE to get home as soon as possible!!" So although the short sleep and the intense heat of the day made us tired by the time we got home, it was a most pleasant drive. The lack of August holiday traffic, thanks to the pandemic keeping more people at home this summer, also contributed to the excellent trip. We braved a restaurant meal in Swift Current along the route, at Original Joe's and we have to commend the staff there for their attention to cleaning the tables and chairs, distancing the customers, insisting on everyone following the directional arrows on the floor, wearing masks and providing two very delicious lunches. They kept the traffic moving in the restaurant. Customers were not encouraged to linger after finishing their meals. The dishes were whisked away as soon as the last bite of food passed lips and bills followed immediately afterward. With only half capacity seating and people lining up outside I don't blame them. They were fantastic at letting people know it was time to leave, without making anyone feel like we were being booted out the door. We noticed in Calgary that a lot of the online restaurant websites listed "Table Times" along with their menu items. Customers were allowed to spend anywhere from 45 minutes to 90 minutes from the time of arrival to the time of departure in the restaurant, depending on the type of food served. Very efficient and very smart as these businesses attempt to recover from the disaster of the pandemic and keep their doors open.
I will be so happy when these daily high temperatures of +33C to +37C are over. Looks like we have another two very hot days here before the weather begins a slow cool down by the end of the weekend. Tonight we had a short lived thunder storm with teeming rain that poured through our open kitchen window to pool on the floor, but the raindrops fell straight down in big sheets of water. There wasn't so much as a breeze along with it...so unusual for even such a brief prairie storm. Even with the floor fan running all night I don't think we will sleep very long or very soundly.
About fifteen minutes after we arrived home I got a call from Madison's Furniture informing me that the dining room chairs I ordered nearly 8 weeks ago have finally arrived on their truck that comes up from the USA. I was expecting to have to wait another month at least, but no, they are here! YIPPEE! Tomorrow morning I will drive up to their loading dock and collect them. O how hard I am praying that they are the actual chairs I ordered and that they go with our new dining room table as well as I thought they would when I ordered them! Yikes...here's hoping that my husband doesn't hate them. Usually he is very involved in the choosing of new furniture but wasn't able to be this time and I am afraid he will be disappointed in them or find them uncomfortable. My fear is that I didn't match the wood finish with the table as well as I think I did. Anyway whatever they turn out to be, that is what we will be using for chairs for a long time to come. I am just happy they actually arrived!!! SOMETHING NEW IN OUR SUITE....NOT FROM THE SECOND HAND STORE OR OFFICE SUPPLY....YAY!! Okay, despite my fears about how suitable they will turn out to be, I am pretty excited to be bringing them home tomorrow.
Thank you for your prayers praying friends and family. We had an excellent trip, accomplished a lot of business for and with Mom and had time this visit for some meaningful fun as well. There were enough "holiday" elements crammed into the 4 days to make it feel like a true break from the same old same old. Thankful for that...SO thankful! I don't even mind that I slopped bleach from the cleaning cloths, given to us by Mom's facility to wipe down her chairs and other surfaces we touched in her suite, all down the front of my favourite summer dress, requiring me to put into the garbage that night. That is how good a time I had!
PS: I learned something on this trip. I learned that $75 can purchase many onsale paper products....for example: it can purchase 108 rolls of toilet paper, plus 8 giant rolls of paper towels and 6 large boxes of tissues! (Penelope, take note as I think this will be of interest to you!) I also learned as a result of this intial knowlege, that my car can hold that much extra "stuff" as well as all our suitcases and other travel "stuff"! I like our car...I like paper product sales too!
Wednesday, August 19, 2020
Down By the Riverside 2
....to be continued after I stop cursing 🤬 the WIFI connection that went down a few minutes ago and deleted the last half of the previous post. I don’t have the energy to redo it just now.
More to come. 😉
More to come. 😉
Down By the Riverside!
What a perfect day thus far! My husband went out at 8am for fresh deli sandwiches, muffins and cold drinks. He brought them back to store in the refrigerator in our hotel room, ate his breakfast, then we picked Mom up to spend the day together. What fun she had riding around the city with us while my husband picked up new filters for his spray mask in the industrial area of the south east, then drove into beautiful old Inglewood to pick up an order of assorted loose leaf teas he had ordered from home last week. We went to drop off a cheque across the city at the home of a friend who has knocked himself out buying groceries for Mom, then back to the south west to her bank in Signal Hill. She thought we were finished with the errands and would have to return her to her facility, so we surprised her when we drove to our hotel instead. Teehee Dell went inside and emerged a few minutes later with the cooler and our picnic pack, then announced that if she was up for it we would take her out west near Bragg Creek for a very simple picnic. Mom was so excited she appeared to actually be glowing! haha We braved the massive road construction project and subsequent traffic tie up to drive the closest route, but it was fun for Mom to see all the changes being made to the roads and overpasses.
We found a secluded picnic table at the Allen Bill Ponds picnic area, only 8km downstream from Little Elbow Falls and far less congested with people than the Falls picnic area was. The table was situated in a small clearing in a giant spruce tree forest and we could hear the Elbow River rushing past. Even though the water level in the river is extremely low right now, exposing many gravel bars and sandy banks, there is a curve in the riverbed right beside our table and what water was in that bed was racing and churning at top speed. After our lunch we walked a short distance to a comfy bench sitting on the bank, only about five feet above the water. We sat there enjoying the bit of spray from the water and the view of the southeastern slopes Rocky Mountains with the puffy clouds in the blue sky above.
We found a secluded picnic table at the Allen Bill Ponds picnic area, only 8km downstream from Little Elbow Falls and far less congested with people than the Falls picnic area was. The table was situated in a small clearing in a giant spruce tree forest and we could hear the Elbow River rushing past. Even though the water level in the river is extremely low right now, exposing many gravel bars and sandy banks, there is a curve in the riverbed right beside our table and what water was in that bed was racing and churning at top speed. After our lunch we walked a short distance to a comfy bench sitting on the bank, only about five feet above the water. We sat there enjoying the bit of spray from the water and the view of the southeastern slopes Rocky Mountains with the puffy clouds in the blue sky above.
Tuesday, August 18, 2020
God Bless the Inventor(s) of Air Conditioning!
Of course our travels this week are taking place during an intense heat wave! It is covering the prairies. There is no escaping the heat....except in our air conditioned vehicle and in our air conditioned hotel room....HALLELUJAH!
Since it is +36C at home and will be for two more days, and since we have no A/C in our suite, this trip definitely is happening at the best possible time for us. Wow, I am so grateful.
Mom is looking and feeling great. It is wonderful to see her this happy and content. We ran errands today and had a nice visit in her suite as well. Tomorrow is picnic day...Lord willing....
Since it is +36C at home and will be for two more days, and since we have no A/C in our suite, this trip definitely is happening at the best possible time for us. Wow, I am so grateful.
Mom is looking and feeling great. It is wonderful to see her this happy and content. We ran errands today and had a nice visit in her suite as well. Tomorrow is picnic day...Lord willing....
Sunday, August 16, 2020
Are You Ready???? I SAID I Was Ready!
This evening my beloved husband kicked it into high gear, surpassing me in preparedness for traveling. When I went to the refrigerator after dinner to prepare some leftovers for putting into the freezer, voila, the task was already completed; ditto the preparation of our breakfast foods both for the plastic tub AND the chilly bin! All my husband’s clothes and gear are packed...everything is sitting by the back door to be trekked out to the car in the morning. As for me? My suitcase is still lying open on my bedroom floor awaiting those last minute items....good on ya’ to my husband....and what colour is my red face???
Pretty Much Ready To Go...At Least I Am...My Husband However....
It is the usual pre-trip scenario around here. I have everything I personally need packed up to leave tomorrow for our short trip. I have the food items I will need for my breakfasts sorted out in my head and organized in the refrigerator and cupboard so that all I have to do is toss them into the food boxes at the last second in the morning. I have the main food box and the chilly bin cleaned and sitting in the kitchen for loading. Despite my husband's best attempts to lose it in the mire of our basement storage, I have located the picnic pack so that we will have dishes in our non-kitchenette hotel room.
My husband put a few shirts and a pair of jeans into a travel bag. He located his net bag filled with personal hygiene items and put it on the bed. Thus endeth his packing preparation. hahaha For the past 2 hours he has been signing up for memberships to various tea and other shopping venues in Alberta, then placing his order online for pickup while we are there visiting Mom. He gave me a somewhat vague answer to my question about some of his cooking attempts that are residing in the refrigerator, but can't last until we return unless they can be frozen...I am still waiting to find out if they can be frozen so I can get that done. It is the usual scenario for travel with us: while I am as ready as I can be ahead of time and champing at the bit to get necessary food preparation and storage accomplished, my husband is in his usual state of confusion. 'Twas ever thus. The poor man can be as ready in 2 hours as he can be in an entire day....in other words, he never has enough time to get ready for any sort of travel, no matter how much time he actually has. It is the wierdest thing I have ever seen. It no longer bothers me. I just stand back in awe and watch him NOT getting anything packed until the last possible second....every trip....ever year....forever and ever, Amen. hahahaha
He has promised me that since, apart from this quick trip to see Mom, his canoe repair project is taking up our entire month of "holidays", he will dedicate one day per week to work with me on cleaning out the basement and continuing to downsize over the next 8 months....it is a promise he IS going to keep! He is not working full time and won't be once his church reopens, he is not working half time, he is not working one third time. He is working one quarter time. (plus a bit until he doesn't have to do separate YouTube sermons and evening Zoom prayer services) Even with his CFS running rampant, he still has enough energy to give me one day a week for at home projects, so that is our pact! AAAAAAAAND we will see how long it lasts, haha.
Oh that man....fortunately I love him madly and he loves me!
My husband put a few shirts and a pair of jeans into a travel bag. He located his net bag filled with personal hygiene items and put it on the bed. Thus endeth his packing preparation. hahaha For the past 2 hours he has been signing up for memberships to various tea and other shopping venues in Alberta, then placing his order online for pickup while we are there visiting Mom. He gave me a somewhat vague answer to my question about some of his cooking attempts that are residing in the refrigerator, but can't last until we return unless they can be frozen...I am still waiting to find out if they can be frozen so I can get that done. It is the usual scenario for travel with us: while I am as ready as I can be ahead of time and champing at the bit to get necessary food preparation and storage accomplished, my husband is in his usual state of confusion. 'Twas ever thus. The poor man can be as ready in 2 hours as he can be in an entire day....in other words, he never has enough time to get ready for any sort of travel, no matter how much time he actually has. It is the wierdest thing I have ever seen. It no longer bothers me. I just stand back in awe and watch him NOT getting anything packed until the last possible second....every trip....ever year....forever and ever, Amen. hahahaha
He has promised me that since, apart from this quick trip to see Mom, his canoe repair project is taking up our entire month of "holidays", he will dedicate one day per week to work with me on cleaning out the basement and continuing to downsize over the next 8 months....it is a promise he IS going to keep! He is not working full time and won't be once his church reopens, he is not working half time, he is not working one third time. He is working one quarter time. (plus a bit until he doesn't have to do separate YouTube sermons and evening Zoom prayer services) Even with his CFS running rampant, he still has enough energy to give me one day a week for at home projects, so that is our pact! AAAAAAAAND we will see how long it lasts, haha.
Oh that man....fortunately I love him madly and he loves me!
A Cutter.......
I have been doing a lot of reading about various mental health issues lately. As I read how today's young people are handling (or not) their various stresses and issues of dysfunction and abuse in their families, I am also looking backward at my own mental health as a child and teenager. There have been some sobering thoughts.
My physical manifestations of the stress in our home/at school/with peers and my own inability to cope well with it all were confined to severe nail biting, banging my head against my bedroom wall a couple of times a week and constantly peeling all the skin off my lips....I exhibited all three behaviours from the age of 3 until I was about 16, when I finally got a handle on them and quit once I realized that I had developed an allergic reaction to all the medicated creams I used on those bleeding, blistered raw lips that was more painful and ugly than the bleeding blisters!! I stopped biting my fingernails after reading a report on various bacteria a person can ingest from doing such a thing! I stopped beating my head against a wall because by the age of 16 it just seemed like a stupid thing to do. In those days nail biting and lip peeling were considered bad habits, not as symptoms of an actual mental health issue. No one knew I was banging my head against walls so....
As I thought back on those years I began to realize that, had I known about it, I likely would have been a "cutter". That is a frightening thought, but if I am being honest, I am quite certain that the only reason I wasn't a cutter was because I had never heard of such a behaviour. Wow....I am grateful that I didn't know about it, didn't have it occur to me spontaneously. I have more than a sufficient number of body scars from surgeries and accidents without having cutting scars added into the mix!!
It seems that since Dad died I have felt more free to look backward and examine what was going in with me when I was growing up, not looking to blame anyone or any circumstance, not feeling anger or pain. It is a peaceful time of recollection that is bringing more understanding about that time in my life. It is nice to be able to look back NOT in anger, just with an acceptance of what happened and how things were back then and with joy that life has changed so dramatically for the better for me.
I am grateful I limited my "acting out" to relatively innocuous expressions of frustration and anger. The head banging could have been quite serious, but it wasn't in my case. My fingernails grow as well as they can after 16 years of constant abuse along with a problem absorbing calcium that makes them weak and my lips healed decades ago.
YAY! I survived! I pray now for the many who do not...far too many do not.
The prairies are about to experience a week of intense heat. The entire area will be experiencing day time high temperatures of between +32C and +36C every day. THRILLED that we now have a vehicle with AC!! It is only our second such vehicle and how wonderful to have such a luxury this coming week!
My physical manifestations of the stress in our home/at school/with peers and my own inability to cope well with it all were confined to severe nail biting, banging my head against my bedroom wall a couple of times a week and constantly peeling all the skin off my lips....I exhibited all three behaviours from the age of 3 until I was about 16, when I finally got a handle on them and quit once I realized that I had developed an allergic reaction to all the medicated creams I used on those bleeding, blistered raw lips that was more painful and ugly than the bleeding blisters!! I stopped biting my fingernails after reading a report on various bacteria a person can ingest from doing such a thing! I stopped beating my head against a wall because by the age of 16 it just seemed like a stupid thing to do. In those days nail biting and lip peeling were considered bad habits, not as symptoms of an actual mental health issue. No one knew I was banging my head against walls so....
As I thought back on those years I began to realize that, had I known about it, I likely would have been a "cutter". That is a frightening thought, but if I am being honest, I am quite certain that the only reason I wasn't a cutter was because I had never heard of such a behaviour. Wow....I am grateful that I didn't know about it, didn't have it occur to me spontaneously. I have more than a sufficient number of body scars from surgeries and accidents without having cutting scars added into the mix!!
It seems that since Dad died I have felt more free to look backward and examine what was going in with me when I was growing up, not looking to blame anyone or any circumstance, not feeling anger or pain. It is a peaceful time of recollection that is bringing more understanding about that time in my life. It is nice to be able to look back NOT in anger, just with an acceptance of what happened and how things were back then and with joy that life has changed so dramatically for the better for me.
I am grateful I limited my "acting out" to relatively innocuous expressions of frustration and anger. The head banging could have been quite serious, but it wasn't in my case. My fingernails grow as well as they can after 16 years of constant abuse along with a problem absorbing calcium that makes them weak and my lips healed decades ago.
YAY! I survived! I pray now for the many who do not...far too many do not.
The prairies are about to experience a week of intense heat. The entire area will be experiencing day time high temperatures of between +32C and +36C every day. THRILLED that we now have a vehicle with AC!! It is only our second such vehicle and how wonderful to have such a luxury this coming week!
Saturday, August 15, 2020
A Decent Day
Today has been pleasant for both of us. The day has been warm and overcast with sunny breaks, perfect for my husband to complete the major canoe repairs and spray the first coat of paint on it. This afternoon he brought home most of his tools to put away again. Some seat repairs and another coat of paint are about all that remain to complete the project.
We spent the last couple of hours vacuuming and detailing our vehicle to the best of our somewhat limited abilities, taking our time and enjoying doing it together. This trip we will start out with a clean car for a change.
I had a good chat with Mom today. Her shoulder is continuing its slow healing process, but she is being diligent with her assigned exercises, so is aware of good results from her discipline. I received the weekly update this morning from her facility and everything is still in place for our visit.
This afternoon I have been fighting a mild headache...an extremely rare event for me. It seems to be centred on the same side of my head that still experiences the remains of the shingles, so I am suspicious that I am secretly stressed by our upcoming long drive and dealing with Mom’s current banking and other issues that need solving. Texting with my son this morning was difficult because he misses us as much as we miss him, but the border being closed between our two countries means visiting in person isn’t possible and even after it opens, it could be another year or more before plane travel is safe. It is also going to be costly to travel and employment for our son will continue to be sporadic for a long time. These stresses have been brewing for a few days but I only just now recognized them. Time to put the outcomes of these situations into God’s hands and let the headache go! God is certainly able to give me peace of mind if I can not be too stubborn to admit I need it!
We spent the last couple of hours vacuuming and detailing our vehicle to the best of our somewhat limited abilities, taking our time and enjoying doing it together. This trip we will start out with a clean car for a change.
I had a good chat with Mom today. Her shoulder is continuing its slow healing process, but she is being diligent with her assigned exercises, so is aware of good results from her discipline. I received the weekly update this morning from her facility and everything is still in place for our visit.
This afternoon I have been fighting a mild headache...an extremely rare event for me. It seems to be centred on the same side of my head that still experiences the remains of the shingles, so I am suspicious that I am secretly stressed by our upcoming long drive and dealing with Mom’s current banking and other issues that need solving. Texting with my son this morning was difficult because he misses us as much as we miss him, but the border being closed between our two countries means visiting in person isn’t possible and even after it opens, it could be another year or more before plane travel is safe. It is also going to be costly to travel and employment for our son will continue to be sporadic for a long time. These stresses have been brewing for a few days but I only just now recognized them. Time to put the outcomes of these situations into God’s hands and let the headache go! God is certainly able to give me peace of mind if I can not be too stubborn to admit I need it!
Friday, August 14, 2020
A Tragedy On Our Street
Our day started off very well after a good night's sleep, some helpful communication with a BC friend and some time preparing for a distancing visit here with a friend.
Unfortunately our joy was marred just before the arrival of my friend by a vehicle/pedestrian accident right outside our front door. Thankfully we didn't see the accident and only became aware of it when I opened the living room blinds and saw people with cell phones crowded around someone lying in the street, taking his pulse and covering him with a jacket, as well as a car with a smashed in hood and front end pulled over along the curb.
A couple of minutes later 4 police vehicles arrived, a fire truck and ambulance following close behind....it took an age to get the vicitm into the ambulance and all of the people who had taken care of him to that point were crying and giving statements to the police. As the minutes ticked past it seemed perhaps the accident was even more serious than it first appeared.
As the statements were being given, the police blocked the entire street with yellow police tape, then the forensics unit showed up with the big cameras, orange cones, and yellow chalk to mark where the pedestrian had been intert on the pavement. The people giving statements were sent on their way and the driver of the car hustled into a police vehicle and driven away. Her smashed up car was covered in a shroud. The police are still outside taking measurments four hours later.
We feel that with the arrival of a bevy of news reporters, one of which even rang our doorbell looking for our take on the situation, the interviews with staff here at our complex and the ongoing work of the forensic unit onsite, that it has likely been a fatality accident.
My husband and I feel very ill about it all. There is a curve in the road right where this particular uncontrolled intersection is located and it isn't always easy to see pedestrians stepping off the curb. Cars also tend to be speeding along this stretch of roadway and sometimes don't stop for pedestrians even when the traffic in the lane beside them is all ready stopped. It is one of the most dangerous intersections I have ever had to cross for these reasons, plus the fact that so many drivers here do not give pedestrians their legal right of way. In the winter, when the street is icy and I can't walk very quickly to cross the street home from the bus stop, I have many times ridden all the way around the loop through the university just to be able to get off at the stop right in front of my own front door....an extra half hour of riding...so that I can avoid having to cross that uncontrolled intersection. I can hardly believe this is only the second vehicle/pedestrian accident there in the more than 5 years we have lived in this complex.
I feel terrible for the vicitm and whoever his family members may be. I feel terrible for the woman who hit him. Even if she is held not at fault for some reason, she will have the memory of the accident and know it has taken a life and effected the lives of so many others, regardless of whose fault it actually was. The man may have run out in front of her and she was unable to stop. I didn't see it, I didn't hear it happen...when the reporter came to my door and asked me what kind of aftermath I saw, I refused to answer because I am not interested in using speculation or inaccurate visuals to help create a sensational news story.
After being a victim myself of a couple of accidents, even though I lived and had a positive recovery outcome, what happened to the victim this morning will continue to cloud my day with sorrow.
O Lord, I pray for the soul of the victim, I pray for his family, I pray for the driver and for her family...what a sad day for them all.
Unfortunately our joy was marred just before the arrival of my friend by a vehicle/pedestrian accident right outside our front door. Thankfully we didn't see the accident and only became aware of it when I opened the living room blinds and saw people with cell phones crowded around someone lying in the street, taking his pulse and covering him with a jacket, as well as a car with a smashed in hood and front end pulled over along the curb.
A couple of minutes later 4 police vehicles arrived, a fire truck and ambulance following close behind....it took an age to get the vicitm into the ambulance and all of the people who had taken care of him to that point were crying and giving statements to the police. As the minutes ticked past it seemed perhaps the accident was even more serious than it first appeared.
As the statements were being given, the police blocked the entire street with yellow police tape, then the forensics unit showed up with the big cameras, orange cones, and yellow chalk to mark where the pedestrian had been intert on the pavement. The people giving statements were sent on their way and the driver of the car hustled into a police vehicle and driven away. Her smashed up car was covered in a shroud. The police are still outside taking measurments four hours later.
We feel that with the arrival of a bevy of news reporters, one of which even rang our doorbell looking for our take on the situation, the interviews with staff here at our complex and the ongoing work of the forensic unit onsite, that it has likely been a fatality accident.
My husband and I feel very ill about it all. There is a curve in the road right where this particular uncontrolled intersection is located and it isn't always easy to see pedestrians stepping off the curb. Cars also tend to be speeding along this stretch of roadway and sometimes don't stop for pedestrians even when the traffic in the lane beside them is all ready stopped. It is one of the most dangerous intersections I have ever had to cross for these reasons, plus the fact that so many drivers here do not give pedestrians their legal right of way. In the winter, when the street is icy and I can't walk very quickly to cross the street home from the bus stop, I have many times ridden all the way around the loop through the university just to be able to get off at the stop right in front of my own front door....an extra half hour of riding...so that I can avoid having to cross that uncontrolled intersection. I can hardly believe this is only the second vehicle/pedestrian accident there in the more than 5 years we have lived in this complex.
I feel terrible for the vicitm and whoever his family members may be. I feel terrible for the woman who hit him. Even if she is held not at fault for some reason, she will have the memory of the accident and know it has taken a life and effected the lives of so many others, regardless of whose fault it actually was. The man may have run out in front of her and she was unable to stop. I didn't see it, I didn't hear it happen...when the reporter came to my door and asked me what kind of aftermath I saw, I refused to answer because I am not interested in using speculation or inaccurate visuals to help create a sensational news story.
After being a victim myself of a couple of accidents, even though I lived and had a positive recovery outcome, what happened to the victim this morning will continue to cloud my day with sorrow.
O Lord, I pray for the soul of the victim, I pray for his family, I pray for the driver and for her family...what a sad day for them all.
Thursday, August 13, 2020
Well....TODAY Has Been the Day I Have Needed For a Long Time!
Aaaaahhhhh....that feels better! Today I was not alone all day. Today it wasn't just myself and my husband trundling about in this suite trying to amuse ourselves day in and day out, or me completely alone while he was working on the canoe. Today was a stellar day for us both!
We both slept in today and had a fairly relaxed morning. I took a walk to the pharmacy and the post box. A friend called me around lunch time to see if I could come over for a patio visit at her place and I said yes...OF COURSE!! She sounded as lonely and confused as I have felt of late. Before I went over there I rode around the city with my husband while he ran a few canoe repair related errands and that was good. We were in parts of the city I rarely see...kind of a localized sight seeing jaunt, hahaha.
My husband dropped me off at my friend's place at about 2pm and went to work n the canoe for a few hours. He borrowed a power sprayer from her husband to wash the canoe and prep it for the next step in the repairs. When he returned at 6pm my friend and I had dinner waiting for him and for her husband who spent the afternoon making repairs on the roof of their house. We ate fresh lake trout, baked new potatoes and put together a wonderful mixed green salad complete with halved baby brussel sprouts in it...YUMMY! We gorged on my friend's freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. I arrived there at 2pm and left at 8:30pm....we wandered between her shaded front porch and the huge back deck. There is so much room there that none of us had to get within 8 feet of each other, even when the four of us were together. My friend and I took turns working in their narrow kitchen, making sure only one of us handled the food items. All the food came freshly out of the grocery bags and freezer to be cooked. We wore masks, we washed our hands incessantly AND we had the most wonderful visit!!! Having such a "normal" day...yes, it seemed normal even though we had masks, weren't sharing the kitchen space, were not working together on the food and sitting far apart all day, even farther apart when we were eating...this is as close to normal as visiting friends can get right now...WAY WAY better than hiding out at home every second. When the COVID19 numbers begin to surge again....a real possibility as the kids return to school and as more businesses and offices are starting to reopen more people return from travelling in an attempt to have some kind of real summer this year....it is likely that we will all return to some kind of more locked down conditions again by the middle to late autumn, so a day like today is a huge blessing indeed! Who knows when once again all visiting will have to cease for a time. Thank you precious Lord!!
Tomorrow morning I get to have another visit with another great friend. Wow...how badly I have been in need of such times and to have two in a row like this....it doesn't get much better for me. I am blessed! I was worried about myself over the past few days because of the stress I was feeling about the social isolation etc., but today was a wonderful reprieve and there is more "good stuff" happening tomorrow.
Also, I came home to the news that our good friends from the East who just bought a house out west a week or two ago, listed their Eastern house yesterday and today it sold...for their asking price!!! There are people lining up trying to get their hands on it, so if there is any problem with this sale for any reason, they will not be at a loss for another buyer. I am SO impressed with how everything has been going for them. They are friends who live with many health stresses and to not have as many of the often usual house buying and selling fiascos is a wonderful blessing for them. It is good to see other people being as blessed today as I have been. WOW!
We both slept in today and had a fairly relaxed morning. I took a walk to the pharmacy and the post box. A friend called me around lunch time to see if I could come over for a patio visit at her place and I said yes...OF COURSE!! She sounded as lonely and confused as I have felt of late. Before I went over there I rode around the city with my husband while he ran a few canoe repair related errands and that was good. We were in parts of the city I rarely see...kind of a localized sight seeing jaunt, hahaha.
My husband dropped me off at my friend's place at about 2pm and went to work n the canoe for a few hours. He borrowed a power sprayer from her husband to wash the canoe and prep it for the next step in the repairs. When he returned at 6pm my friend and I had dinner waiting for him and for her husband who spent the afternoon making repairs on the roof of their house. We ate fresh lake trout, baked new potatoes and put together a wonderful mixed green salad complete with halved baby brussel sprouts in it...YUMMY! We gorged on my friend's freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. I arrived there at 2pm and left at 8:30pm....we wandered between her shaded front porch and the huge back deck. There is so much room there that none of us had to get within 8 feet of each other, even when the four of us were together. My friend and I took turns working in their narrow kitchen, making sure only one of us handled the food items. All the food came freshly out of the grocery bags and freezer to be cooked. We wore masks, we washed our hands incessantly AND we had the most wonderful visit!!! Having such a "normal" day...yes, it seemed normal even though we had masks, weren't sharing the kitchen space, were not working together on the food and sitting far apart all day, even farther apart when we were eating...this is as close to normal as visiting friends can get right now...WAY WAY better than hiding out at home every second. When the COVID19 numbers begin to surge again....a real possibility as the kids return to school and as more businesses and offices are starting to reopen more people return from travelling in an attempt to have some kind of real summer this year....it is likely that we will all return to some kind of more locked down conditions again by the middle to late autumn, so a day like today is a huge blessing indeed! Who knows when once again all visiting will have to cease for a time. Thank you precious Lord!!
Tomorrow morning I get to have another visit with another great friend. Wow...how badly I have been in need of such times and to have two in a row like this....it doesn't get much better for me. I am blessed! I was worried about myself over the past few days because of the stress I was feeling about the social isolation etc., but today was a wonderful reprieve and there is more "good stuff" happening tomorrow.
Also, I came home to the news that our good friends from the East who just bought a house out west a week or two ago, listed their Eastern house yesterday and today it sold...for their asking price!!! There are people lining up trying to get their hands on it, so if there is any problem with this sale for any reason, they will not be at a loss for another buyer. I am SO impressed with how everything has been going for them. They are friends who live with many health stresses and to not have as many of the often usual house buying and selling fiascos is a wonderful blessing for them. It is good to see other people being as blessed today as I have been. WOW!
Wednesday, August 12, 2020
Nearly Ready To Go....Almost a Week in Advance!
I've been buzzing around this morning getting my suitcase packed for next week's trip....nothing like being ready way too far in advance! Despite it not being a real holiday, I am primed and ready to get out of here for a few days. I am tired of the inside of this suite, tired of walking around the upper lake and dodging the ducks, pelicans, geese and their poo poo pidoo, the cyclists who sneak up silently behind me with no bicycle bells and then curse me for not moving out of their way quickly enough because I didn't hear them coming, the mosquitoes and wasps....it was all lovely for the first fifty walks, but now it is just another boring activity with little visual variety. I am tired of walking downtown and to the post office and to the pharmacy and to the walk in clinic and everywhere else I have been able to walk since the snow melted back in April. Boring, boring, boring......I blame the pandemic, because of the severe limitations it has put on everyone, me included. I can still walk to many other places around town, but there are no unrestricted access businesses. I can't go and gawp about in the clothing stores because of limited customer access, so it is best to leave those stores to the buying customers. I don't need any clothes for myself. It wasn't a lot of fun shopping at Chapters Indigo because of the need to maintain social distancing, although I appreciate how careful the staff and other customers were about following the rules. I can't just wander over to my favourite coffee bars because either they have removed all the seating and become take out only for the time being, or are still closed completely. Grocery shopping has become a nightmare now that the Seniors Only shopping hours have been abandoned by so many of the stores and I dread the day it also ends at SaveOn foods, because it has been a true shopping haven for me all spring and summer.
So, I am not complaining....truly, I actually, really, fer shur I am NOT, I am just not sure how to feel right now about this summer. My husband didn't go into his holiday time with a plan to spend at least the week and a half required to complete a canoe repair, to the detriment of our plan to go on day trips around the area. One of those trips would have been cancelled anyway as the place of business we needed to go to many hours drive from here has just closed completely due to an outbreak of the virus in that area. Now we have to work in a trip to see my Mom while it is still possible before the next expected lockdown happens in both our provinces of residence. It will be wonderful to see her, but again, not a holiday. We are hoping to take her out of the city for a couple of hours to a lovely area closer to the mountains to give her a real break away from her still partial lockdown situation. As long as we don't get out of the car and go into any businesses, she will be permitted to go. I checked that out this morning. As long as my husband and I prepare the picnic lunch ourselves and the 3 of us eat the meal out of doors, safely distanced, it will be allowed. My mom really, really, really needs this to happen, so we are praying for good enough weather to make it work. Once we return home I have a scheduled eye appointment, on a Sunday morning would you believe, that may open up the doors for a bunch more "emergency" eye tests (I've been down this road before and I see it coming) and then my husband's holidays will be nearly over. Since he will be spending that week after we get home working on the canoe(s) again, any sort of holiday together will be at an end by the time he is done. The basement chores we had scheduled to do together will not get done, the rest of the premove downsizing won't happen either, I have already accepted that....it is so difficult to have expectations, only to see them dashed by something unforseen. With my husband's health issues he can only do about 1/4 of the things in a day he used to be able to do, so spending this much time on canoe repairs will deplete his energy to do the other household chores with me, even if he has a few days free before he returns to work. It doesn't make me mad, it doesn't even discourage me that much because after all these years of dealing with his CFS and my health issues that also seem to crop up just in time to ruin plans even if his health issues don't, I am very used to it. I simply do not know how to feel about any of this.
In the midst of my confusion, good things are happening too! I woke up this morning with a plan to ensure that all the staff at my mom's residence have the same information about our upcoming visit, that they all know where our visiting times have been recorded and that they have been approved by the administration. Had that all finished by 8:30am when the Service Canada phone lines opened for the day. Got my call accepted immediately and had an issue taken care of for both my husband and myself before he even woke up!! YAY! A happy visit has been arranged for me a couple of days from now when a dear friend comes over for a morning of fun chatter. An old friend is calling tonight, someone we haven't talked to more than once in the past 30 years. The delicious Indian food we ordered a couple of nights ago stretched into 6 complete meals and we finished it for lunch today. YUM, YUM, and lots of reheating, NOT cooking fresh....nice for us both to have a cooking break. We are both tired enough of our own abilities in the kitchen to be dreading cooking dinner every evening at this point.
Mom has solved a couple of the problems herself that she thought she was going to have to leave for me to solve next week, so that frees up more time to just enjoy the time together. Wow, she is tracking down every detail of things that she needs clarification about, needs help with, needs to straighten out with scary places like the tax department! SO PROUD OF HER!! She has been faithfully doing her shoulder exercises ever since her fall out of bed several weeks ago and is seeing some improvement now in mobilty and pain relief. SO PROUD OF HER.
My determination to spend at least a month thinking only the best of Dad and making a deliberate decision to think only about the many good things about growing up as his daughter has left me able to think more recently about the many not so good things in our relationship and reach a point where none of it really matters any more. Instead of feeling hurt or upset and angry, I can now view many of those issues and events, shake my head and wonder what he was thinking at the time. I didn't know at the time, I don't know now, I never will and it no longer means much. Moving on.....thank you Lord. I am grateful to have had the time to take to think about all those things, good and bad for the past couple of months and reach a point of much more emotional freedom. I have some good memories, but I don't miss Dad being in my life at this point. He too has moved on, to a far better place and situation with God. I am genuinely happy about that, happy for him and enjoying my own freedom during whatever time I have left on this earth. When we see each other again in heaven it will be a joyous reunion: two new beings with all the old issues healed and gone!
The son is out on Long Island again for a couple of weeks between temporary jobs. Once he returns it will be time to pack up his belongings for the temporary residence in Manhattan. He was able to find and sign a lease on a nice art studio in Queens, only a 6 month lease, which may coincide nicely with how long he will be in the temporary suite. It is affordable, the first place he viewed and it will hold all his belongings that are not going into the temporary suite, as well as give him sufficient space in which to create paintings. He said it seemed most providential. He is very excited to be able to live for a few months in a higher quality neighbourhood and not have to haul his belongings to the offered storage space on Long Island, only to have to turn around again a few months from now and haul it all back again to wherever his next rental turns out to be.
So, in spite of my wondering about how I should feel about our summer during the pandemic and particularly about our "holidays", I am pretty happy about all the good things that have been going on as well. I am just bored...boredom makes me feel unsure about life in general...boredom is a bit foreign to me, so the odd time I experience it I am not sure what to do with it that's all.
Happy day everyone....the giant storm we were to have here this afternoon amounted to about 20 minutes of rolling thunder, a short lived downpour of rain mixed with a few small hailstones and now the sun is shining and it is very warm outside. I can only pray that other towns in the area escaped with as little damage as we did here.
So, I am not complaining....truly, I actually, really, fer shur I am NOT, I am just not sure how to feel right now about this summer. My husband didn't go into his holiday time with a plan to spend at least the week and a half required to complete a canoe repair, to the detriment of our plan to go on day trips around the area. One of those trips would have been cancelled anyway as the place of business we needed to go to many hours drive from here has just closed completely due to an outbreak of the virus in that area. Now we have to work in a trip to see my Mom while it is still possible before the next expected lockdown happens in both our provinces of residence. It will be wonderful to see her, but again, not a holiday. We are hoping to take her out of the city for a couple of hours to a lovely area closer to the mountains to give her a real break away from her still partial lockdown situation. As long as we don't get out of the car and go into any businesses, she will be permitted to go. I checked that out this morning. As long as my husband and I prepare the picnic lunch ourselves and the 3 of us eat the meal out of doors, safely distanced, it will be allowed. My mom really, really, really needs this to happen, so we are praying for good enough weather to make it work. Once we return home I have a scheduled eye appointment, on a Sunday morning would you believe, that may open up the doors for a bunch more "emergency" eye tests (I've been down this road before and I see it coming) and then my husband's holidays will be nearly over. Since he will be spending that week after we get home working on the canoe(s) again, any sort of holiday together will be at an end by the time he is done. The basement chores we had scheduled to do together will not get done, the rest of the premove downsizing won't happen either, I have already accepted that....it is so difficult to have expectations, only to see them dashed by something unforseen. With my husband's health issues he can only do about 1/4 of the things in a day he used to be able to do, so spending this much time on canoe repairs will deplete his energy to do the other household chores with me, even if he has a few days free before he returns to work. It doesn't make me mad, it doesn't even discourage me that much because after all these years of dealing with his CFS and my health issues that also seem to crop up just in time to ruin plans even if his health issues don't, I am very used to it. I simply do not know how to feel about any of this.
In the midst of my confusion, good things are happening too! I woke up this morning with a plan to ensure that all the staff at my mom's residence have the same information about our upcoming visit, that they all know where our visiting times have been recorded and that they have been approved by the administration. Had that all finished by 8:30am when the Service Canada phone lines opened for the day. Got my call accepted immediately and had an issue taken care of for both my husband and myself before he even woke up!! YAY! A happy visit has been arranged for me a couple of days from now when a dear friend comes over for a morning of fun chatter. An old friend is calling tonight, someone we haven't talked to more than once in the past 30 years. The delicious Indian food we ordered a couple of nights ago stretched into 6 complete meals and we finished it for lunch today. YUM, YUM, and lots of reheating, NOT cooking fresh....nice for us both to have a cooking break. We are both tired enough of our own abilities in the kitchen to be dreading cooking dinner every evening at this point.
Mom has solved a couple of the problems herself that she thought she was going to have to leave for me to solve next week, so that frees up more time to just enjoy the time together. Wow, she is tracking down every detail of things that she needs clarification about, needs help with, needs to straighten out with scary places like the tax department! SO PROUD OF HER!! She has been faithfully doing her shoulder exercises ever since her fall out of bed several weeks ago and is seeing some improvement now in mobilty and pain relief. SO PROUD OF HER.
My determination to spend at least a month thinking only the best of Dad and making a deliberate decision to think only about the many good things about growing up as his daughter has left me able to think more recently about the many not so good things in our relationship and reach a point where none of it really matters any more. Instead of feeling hurt or upset and angry, I can now view many of those issues and events, shake my head and wonder what he was thinking at the time. I didn't know at the time, I don't know now, I never will and it no longer means much. Moving on.....thank you Lord. I am grateful to have had the time to take to think about all those things, good and bad for the past couple of months and reach a point of much more emotional freedom. I have some good memories, but I don't miss Dad being in my life at this point. He too has moved on, to a far better place and situation with God. I am genuinely happy about that, happy for him and enjoying my own freedom during whatever time I have left on this earth. When we see each other again in heaven it will be a joyous reunion: two new beings with all the old issues healed and gone!
The son is out on Long Island again for a couple of weeks between temporary jobs. Once he returns it will be time to pack up his belongings for the temporary residence in Manhattan. He was able to find and sign a lease on a nice art studio in Queens, only a 6 month lease, which may coincide nicely with how long he will be in the temporary suite. It is affordable, the first place he viewed and it will hold all his belongings that are not going into the temporary suite, as well as give him sufficient space in which to create paintings. He said it seemed most providential. He is very excited to be able to live for a few months in a higher quality neighbourhood and not have to haul his belongings to the offered storage space on Long Island, only to have to turn around again a few months from now and haul it all back again to wherever his next rental turns out to be.
So, in spite of my wondering about how I should feel about our summer during the pandemic and particularly about our "holidays", I am pretty happy about all the good things that have been going on as well. I am just bored...boredom makes me feel unsure about life in general...boredom is a bit foreign to me, so the odd time I experience it I am not sure what to do with it that's all.
Happy day everyone....the giant storm we were to have here this afternoon amounted to about 20 minutes of rolling thunder, a short lived downpour of rain mixed with a few small hailstones and now the sun is shining and it is very warm outside. I can only pray that other towns in the area escaped with as little damage as we did here.
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