Halloween Date Night! I Can See!! I Can See!!!

My husband and I had a wonderful date night tonight!  We escaped from our place just as the littlest trick 'r' treaters were beginning to make their rounds...very few in our complex, but we could see them staggering about on short, unsteady, spindly legs across the street, hanging onto mom or dad with one hand and a plastic pumpkin candy collector in the other.  Oh my...some of them are so small it seems impossible that they should be able to walk yet. hahaha Princesses, monsters, gladiators, ghosts and hobgoblins....such precious little folk.

We went all out tonight at the restaurant, partly to just have a riotous feast and also partly to keep us away from home until after the older trick 'r' treaters were done their rounds.  We noshed on Irish nachos (huge skinny hot potato chips slathered in melted cheese, jalapeno peppers, red onions and yellow peppers) for appetizer.  Then we ordered a pizza with corned beef, onions and Bell peppers. For dessert we had sticky toffee pudding.  Of course half of the appetizer and main course, plus all of the desserts came home with us in takeout boxes for tomorrow, but we ate and drank our fill and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The strangers sitting in the booth beside us were friendly, they too were hanging out for the evening to avoid having to be blackmailed into purchasing expensive junk to pawn off on kids, and we experienced the true pub atmostphere.  It was a lot of fun! Happy Halloween!

My husband got up early this morning so he was able to accompany me to several grocery stores for a major load of groceries.  It was so much fun and so much easier having him there to seek out some of the items and do the packing up and loading of the heavy bags into and out of the car.  YAY!  Thanks my dear for your assistance.  We will have to do that again next time we need this many items all at once.

I received a phone call from the eye clinic just before lunch today. My new glasses had already arrived, so off I went to pick them up.  I love, love, love them!  The frames are barely noticeably different from the last ones, so that is nice...no big shock when I look in the mirror.  It is marvellous to no longer be looking through all the scratches and peeling coating that were a result of my tumble onto a cement sidewalk a few months ago.  I also paid a considerable amount extra for the kind of progressive lens grinding that gives me a nearly 20% expansion of my side to side range of vision. Worth every penny!!  This is the clearest my vision has been, particularly my more peripheral vision, with any set of lenses since I began wearing progressives nearly twenty years ago.  Incredible.  

It has been a good day and now I pray for a good sleep tonight!!!

One Good Night’s Sleep And It’s All Over Apparently

A couple of nights ago I didn’t fall asleep until 6am, the next night I slept for 8 hours, now it is 5:30am the following morning and I have been awake since shortly after 3am. Hahahaha! What next???? Right?? 

Guess it is time to employ an old trick to fall asleep for at least another couple of hours: leaving the light and my glasses on, sitting up with my tv pillow behind my back, opening up my latest book in the middle, and placing it pages side down over my chest, shutting my eyes and emptying my mind….here’s hoping this tried and true method works once again! Good thing my light bulbs tend to last for a long time since they are on all night many times….hey, whatever works….zzzzzzzzz

Love Poem

Duvet

You are so groovet,

I would like to stay under you 

All of Tuesdet.

By Brian Bilston

Fun With The Complex Kids!

I had a lot of fun early this evening taking bags of Halloween candies to five families in our complex whose kids gravitate to us every time we go outside when they are out playing. Since we have so few kids going door to door here on Halloween, sometimes as few as three, my husband and I instituted a new Halloween tradition for ourselves: we go out for an early dinner at a nice restaurant and stay away until the whole “blackmailing by candy” silliness is over. Giving bags of treats to the kids’ parents the day before creates a good opportunity to connect with them and tell them about our interactions with their children. We have formed some good relationships with some of the families over the years as a result. Very fun!!! 

Tomorrow is my day to do an early morning grocery shop but I may not bother setting the alarm. If that means I go a little later than 7am, who cares? As long as the shopping is completed it js all good. I am so grateful that my two main stores are only a few blocks away from each other.

Although we supposedly reached a high temperature of +1C this afternoon, the strong wind was miserably biting. I hope it is warmer for the kids to go trick or treating tomorrow night.

The Longest Night!

Once every couple of years or so I experience a completely sleepless night. This is one of those rare occasions. No, I have no idea why.

I read until nearly 1am, a rather boring novel I have been slogging through only at bedtimes for the past several weeks, because it has been perfect for lulling me to sleep. Not so this night. I shut out my bedside lamp at 12:56am, tossed and turned until 2:12am, gave up trying to sleep, switched the lamp back on, picked up the book, completed the reading of it at 4:45am, turned the lamp back off and lay awake, eyes wide open until 5am, then officially gave up even the notion of actually falling asleep. Sigh…..

I suspect I will miss going to church again later this morning either because I will feel too wretched to go out anywhere or because the miracle of sleep will finally occur about the time I should be getting ready to leave. 

This is most disappointing. Oh well…..at some point in the next 24 hours I know I WILL fall asleep and sleep well. Sometimes “stuff” just happens. So be it. It is not the end of the world.

Time For Ye Olde Winter Menus

Now that winter is upon us, we have returned to our winter eating habits. The fun, ease and ambiance of restaurants has given way to homemade soups, chilies, curries and stews. Yup, healthy eating indeed and by next April 1st, about the time spring arrives, we will be sick to death of all of them; bored to tears; desperately missing being able to enter a restaurant to feed off the excitement of being surrounded by other people and to enjoy eating without meal prep and cleanup. 

Eating more healthy homemade meals will not advance our weight loss goals because in our boredom with the entirety of the winter season we will eat twice as much food as required! It happens every winter. Our exercising will be different, not quite as effective as walking longer distances in the fresh spring and summer air and enjoying the colours of autumn. 

Our at home menu goal this winter is to take time to find some newer recipes and not be too afraid of the icy streets to drive about the city to different grocery stores to find the necessary ingredients for slightly more exotic fare. 

Here’s hoping for a more exciting culinary challenge this winter that we are not too housebound and lazy to execute! 

Little By Little We're Gettin' 'Er Done!

The past couple of days have been productive!  Slowly but surely we are getting started on more downsizing projects, more tidying and cleaning in areas that tend to be ignored over the summer months when it is more important to be outside with friends and going for walks, a few more days of sleeping in, getting the car winterized and the studded tires put on; just a good "around home" kind of week that we rarely seem to have these days.  My husband spent his down time this week making adjustments on my old iPad so that he can use it now as a back up for some of his little writing projects and research ideas, download available e-books from the public library, use up his old iTunes account and have some fun learning more about the technology involved in syncing it with his other computers etc.  We have both spent some time reading novels and lazing about.   Yup, it has been a good week but now I am ready to see friends again.

My wish for that is being fulfilled already. Tomorrow I am having coffee with a church friend, Sunday we intend to be back at church after having to miss two Sundays in a row, Monday my walking partner is coming for a visit even though our ability to walk around the lake has been curtailed with the onset of winter snow and ice....other visits are pending that week and the following week. I am more than ready to be social once again.

Next week I will see the bone specialist to go over my September bone densitometry results and also have my hair cut again.  A good week for friends and activities is looming.  The following week we are finally able to have our Flu' and Covid shots at a pharmacy way out on the farthest east end of the city...one of the few places that still has the Covid vaccine in stock.  YAY!  

Our son faithfully went for his annual physical examination earlier this week and is awaiting his lab results. We are hoping and praying for good things this year after the debacle a year and a half ago when he cratered so badly.

The sun has broken through the clouds today and although the roads are still iced over and scary for driving, at least we have our winter tires on and neither of us has to go anywhere today.  YES! One more down day. I am going to go now and do my ironing after spending a happy day yesterday doing the laundry....on my own schedule, not having to work it around other appointments!

Positive Appointment!!

 I am delighted that my annual eye examination went very well this morning. There has been a slight change in my worst eye, pretty much none in the other and my cataracts have not changed much in the past year, so don't have to worry about that for awhile yet likely.  My new glasses are on order, between insurance and a seniors' discount I received a noteable saving, for which I am grateful.

Although it is cloudy again today, there is a brightening of the clouds as the sun attempts to peep through.  So, the day is much less depressing than yesterday as we watched the snow coming down and creating massive amounts of ice all over the streets and sidewalks and parking lots. When my husband drove me to my eye appointment this morning it took us nearly 15 minutes to safely make that 7 minute drive we make when the roads are not covered in ice. Good grief!  Orignally I had planned to take the bus, but after my husband's frightening walk home on the ice yesterday from the same area as my optometrist's office, he forbade me to even consider such a thing.  After seeing the thick ice on the streets I have to agree with his pep talk about my safety.

This afternoon my husband is going to meet a good friend at the Science Centre and then they will see the IMAX production about the James Webb telescope.  I will stay home and read a book I think!  My suite is cleaned up, laundry doesn't have to be done until the weekend and I don't have any more appointments or meetings today.  I will savour the couple of hours alone just relaxing.

My husband came across an old photo of himself last night, in Miami, in 1974.  This is what he looked like when I first met him.  Ooooh, how we change with age....it is a tossup which one of us has aged the most over the years.

With shorter hair than when we got together the following year.

 

Sandal Wearing Weather, It’s NOT!

Sigh….winter is here. Overnight about 8cm of blowing snow arrived. Our car has nearly 15cm of build up on our car hood and windshield. My husband was able to push open our back door against the high drift just enough to slip the shovel through sideways and shake it back and forth enough to start the snow falling away from the bottom of the door. It didn’t take long to get the door open widely enough to get my husband and shovel outside to clean the deck off properly. 

As I was vacuuming and washing floors this morning, I hauled all my sandals and summer shoes upstairs to the closet and brought my winter boots downstairs to the boot rack. How very depressing….big sigh…

Oh well, every day that goes by now is one day closer to next spring. I have the bags of Halloween treats all prepared for the kids in our court. We have Christmas Eve church services and a January trip to Vancouver to look forward to. We will enjoy making use of bitter cold and snow storms over the coming months to happily stay inside and continue slogging through our downsizing and start seeking a new place of residence by the spring. As much as both of us detest winter the older we get, we are not as depressed as we usually are this time of year. There is so much to look forward to! Very, very grateful! 

Update on Cee: he improved greatly during his time in hospital. The pneumonia is responding well to the meds, his BP is back up and he was released yesterday. Please pray he can walk a bit more using his walker, even if it mostly just inside the house. Thank you! 

Back to vacuuming now after this little break. Dusting, kitchen, bathroom, lino washing all done. All that is left is to vacuum the upstairs. Yay! Ankle is almost all better and I am moving carefully but more sure footedly around the house. 

Sunday Shopping

 My husband had a horrible night last night.  He was awake for a few minutes every hour all night and it wasn't until the dehydration headache hit him at 6am that he realized that was the problem.  The sausages he ate at the mens' breakfast yesterday were so salty that I couldn't even eat the ones he brought home for me and he admits he didn't drink as much water yesterday as he usually does. Compounding his issues was the ingestion last evening of a very large cup of barley tea....THAT was a huge mistake. It really upset his system, so now barley goes up alongside chicory on his DO NOT INGEST list.  Poor guy!

So, we stayed home from church this morning. The service doesn't start until 11am, so perhaps my husband would have been well enough to go to the service, but afterward at the missions luncheon the meal was home made bread with beef BARLEY soup....yeah...not gonna work for him today. 

I decided to try out my ankle instead of going to church this morning and drove out for three short grocery runs at three different stores.  It went well. I only needed a handful of items at each store so wasn't on my feet very long and had a good ankle resting drive in between.  Now I am home and it is only a teensy bit stiff and swollen. I will keep it propped up for the afteroon and let it heal some more.  My cane was a good prop for walking through the stores and it fit perfectly into the large grocery carts without getting in the way of the items as I pushed my way around the aisles.

Having had a 10am breakfast today, I can't eat lunch until at least 2pm, so I have another hour to go.  I purchased a bag of 3 romaine lettuce heads that look quite fresh and delicious so I think I will make myself a tuna salad.  Yum!  My husband is making chili for dinner tonight with the last of our ground bison.  I brought him home a red and a green pepper and some celery to add into the mix. Should be deeeeeeelicious!!!  That will be the end of our bison orders.  Our supplier has been forced to start selling larger orders in order to remain viable after a terrible drought last summer and over the previous winter killed off a lot of the organic greenery that her bison eat and so she was forced to spend a fortune on feed for them over the past year. The natural ground feed was a bit lacking again this summer so more feed will have to be purchased for the coming winter. The jury is out on how much longer this ranch will remain viable if there isn't more moisture this coming spring.  It will break her heart if she has to give up her beloved bison. It is important to her to raise her bison organically and that is so expensive.

My husband is busy watching the last 3 televised CFL games on tv. I already know the outcome of all 3 games so I have to be careful to keep my mouth shut when I sit down to watch parts of the games with him.

This is the last of the really nice days for temperature. Tomorrow a drastic drop begins and by mid week we will likely have our first snow.  Sigh.... HOWEVER, forcing myself to get out and do something this morning helped me perk up quite a bit.  It is not good for me to be inactive for more than a day here and there, so that is why winter is so depressing.  It cuts me off from my spring through autumn contact with friends and the general public.  Yuck!!

First job to start the work week tomorrow is to get our car rentals booked for our January trip and then get our 'flu and Covid injections appointments set up. Winter tires go on the car this week and I am finally going to the optometrist to get a new prescription and replace my damaged lenses.  I have been looking through deep scratches for months!  New lenses coming soon!!  YAY!!! What kind of frames to get this time....always a hoot since I am too blind to see what they look like on me no matter how long and hard I stare into the mirror at the shop. haha

Aging Is A Process of Relinquishing

 Having spent the past couple of days sitting in a chair with my sore ankle elevated, I have had lots of time to think about why I have been feeling less than excited about life lately.  I suspect it is because of losing so many of our family members in such a short time, being surrounded by friends in various stages of chronic illness and dying, knowing we are trapped in this city due to the cost of living and the lack of medical care elsewhere and now realizing that winter is once again about to strike; these events have all combined to overwhelm me.

Thus the mental process of age related relinquishing is again underway.   

I have, for the past couple of days, been relinquishing all my perceived rights to the fulfillments in life that I have experienced until fairly recently, fulfillments that are no longer available to me due to deaths, my own aging process that brings new physical and mental limitations: the inability to just pack up and move away with the option of setting up my medical team elsewhere during these dire days of health care in our county,  to go on a road trip spur of the moment, or hike for hours, to spend time with our families any time I want, to keep up with my other, younger friends the way I used to, to sing in the church choir, to play my piano, to eat whatever I want whenever I want, to have the freedom to make my choices based on the desires of my heart instead of the practicalities imposed by an aging body, weakening mind and financial limitations that never used to matter to how I lived my life.  Aging has struck me like a brick to the side of the head over these days of inactivity and I realize how trapped I have been feeling for the past couple of years....not because of the pandemic, but because of my own frailties showing up more often and more intensely, as they do for all of us who live long enough to age to this point.

I want to age gracefully, without depression about it, just accepting the fact that I will be relinquishing many things I have until recently taken for granted, and that it is normal and ok to do so.  That is my prayer for myself.

I am grateful today for walk in clinics where a person can get help for ankle pain, where a person can discover that the pain is not the result of a micro fracture, but a badly pulled and bruised tendon brought about by a combination of overstretching it during overly intense home physiotherapy sessions and changing walking shoes too many times in one week for the titanium hardware screwed into said ankle to deal with!   The type of pains are rather similar I was told. Aaaaah, good old weekend walk in clinics and doctors who care enough to take the time to discover reasons for pain and have good ideas to help that painful tendon to heal!!

It has been a very good day in many respects and I am grateful for it. Ruminating on aging and relinquishing, getting ankle assistance, enjoying my husband's conversation...experiencing and loving the second last day of warmth before the winter weather descends upon us....yes, a good day on so many levels.

Scraaaape, Scraaaape, Scraaape…..

Welcome to the start of more wintery weather. My husband was heading off to the church to cook for the men’s breakfast shortly after 7am and after starting the car returned to our basement to get the ice scraper for the windshield. I am going to have to start remembering once again to leave extra time in my errands schedule for performing that task between now and sometime next April. 

In other news, Cee was ambulance’d to the hospital last evening with multiple issues and he has been diagnosed with pneumonia. Fortunately, although the search for a proper ward room is still ongoing, he is going to be kept in hospital for a few days on IV meds so his recovery can be monitored. Thanks again faithful prayer warriors for remembering him. He has just completed 8 consecutive days without neuropathy pain so it appears his most recent blood treatments and pain meds are finally beginning to work for him! It may just be a wonderful answer to many months of prayer. 

It is chilly today, but the sun is shining in a clear blue sky….just lovely.

Healing Rest

 I have spent a fair amount of time today with my feet elevated, reading, watching tv, emailing, phone chatting; my ankle is less swollen today and whatever exactly my injury is it is less painful today. The length of time I stand and which way I turn my lower leg is what seems to affect any pain that occurs. Using my cane is a big help. I was hoping to get over this quickly but can tell it will take awhile. Unless things get worse over the weekend I will continue to rest my leg and reassess on Monday. 

My husband had a few errands to run today and a hospital pastoral visit so I got dressed after lunch and drove him around the city. When we finished the errands I dropped him at the hospital and drove myself home. He got a nice walk home after the hospital visit so he was happy for the exercise. I enjoyed getting the bit of fresh air by driving him around. Since the weather is to undergo a drastic change for the worse next week, we will both enjoy any and all chances to get outside in the meantime!

Poor Wee Mousie...Poor Giant Ankle!!

I got an unhappy surprise when I opened my car this morning before I went to pick up my friend for our coffee date.  Inside the front, all over the floor there was a shredded napkin and an even more shredded kleenex. Sigh.....although there were no visible droppings, obviously a mouse had taken up residence in our vehicle overnight.

So, I pulled every single item out of the car, out of the trunk, dumped out bags of stuff, shook out some old towels, looked through every inch of the car, but no sign of Mr. or Mrs. Mousie!  I grabbed some hygienic, rubbing alcohol drenched wipes out of the house and wiped everything off as best I could while racing quickly so I could still pick up my friend.  My concern was that the blasted mouse was going to suddenly appear while I was driving.  Fortunately that didn't happen, but I knew better than to think it was gone.

As soon as I got home, my husband loaded up some traps with nummy cheese and peanut butter and set them around inside the car.  Two hours later we found in one of the traps, our napkin shredding offender.  It always hurts our hearts when we have to kill mice, but what option did we have?  Sigh..... We still have another trap out there to check in the morning just in case our former "friend" was not alone.  Oh man.....a couple of weeks ago our car is broken into by people and last night it was broken into by a blasted mouse.  At 10pm tonight my husband checked the second trap and thus far it is still set.  This is the time of year that mice are looking for a warm place to nest for the winter, but so sorry wee mousies, our car is not an option for you.  It would be so much easier if we weren't so impractically soft hearted about killing things. It doesn't seem completely right somehow.  Okay, I know how crazy that sounds, but my husband's softy toffee heart has rubbed off on me.

In other news:  I hurt my "bad" ankle somehow today.  This morning I took a short walk and at some point I managed to strain/sprain a tendon or ligament or muscle on the outside of my ankle...right around where I have a long titanium plate held in place with eight screws that were all put in to stabilize one of my many ankle fractures after a fall about 12 years ago.  My poor ankle is swollen and painful. I can weight bear, but bending it enough to walk properly  hurts like the dickens.  My hope is that I have not developed a hairline fracture under or around that plate and screw arrangement. If so it would require major surgery that I don't have time for right now.  I remember straining it like this once before a few years ago and it was okay after a few days of partial rest and using a cane to shift some of my weight off of it.  Praying and hoping that is all it is!  The pin that goes through the "balance bone" on the other side of that ankle is showing intial signs of working its way out again....not unusual after this many years of it being in there, according to the surgeon who put it in originally, so I am keeping a close eye on that, but it should last another year or more before anything needs to be done.  As one of my friends says about herself, myself and many of our mutual friends, "We are getting old and parts are falling off and breaking down!"  True, so very true!!  If my ankle isn't a LOT better after this weekend I will go and have an x-ray...what a nuisance!

This afternoon my husband helped me hobble into our fellowship and study group for a couple of hours.  It took my mind off my ankle issues and we enjoyed very much another installment of N.T. Wright's series of short video talks on "Salvation".  Today we listened to his ideas of death being a two step process and, although it is certainly not a new idea to me, it still reminded me that my parents, even in this stage of death are with Jesus.  It reminded me as well to always remember that God's ultimate purpose with his creation is to restore it and that includes us!  Wow, it was such an encouraging message, all wrapped up in that coherent, succinct manner N.T. Wright is so very capable of.  If you are looking for encouragement about what salvation is all about, get onto YouTube and watch the series. Most of the videos are between 7 and 12 minutes long. Great, great stuff!

Razzle Dazzled Frazzled!!

 I should be in bed and sound asleep by now as it is after 11pm, but I am too geared up to fall asleep for awhile yet, despite knowing I have to get up early for my weekly coffee date.  

Tonight our son and his girlfriend called to get our info so they could book our plane tickets to the west coast in January!  They had more airline credit than they realized, so they are actually paying only thirty dollars for our flights!  YIPPEE!! Bonus for all of us.  We will be able to participate in our son's art exhibit opening event and spend a bit of time with him and his girlfriend.  All four of us are extremely excited about this chance  to have Christmas together only a month late! hahaha  My husband has booked a very nice hotel for us to stay in.  We are going to be there for an entire week. Tomorrow we will try to set up our car rental.

Oh my goodness, I am not sure either of us will sleep at all between now and then as we are so very excited.  A REAL holiday in the winter.

We are already praying about our transfer flight in Calgary on the way there and back.  Not having any under the plane luggage will be a help keep us from losing things, but I am going to have to be very trusting that all will go well.....or at least that I won't freak out if it doesn't.   My husband is the most patient person in the world and if we arrive in Calgary to discover our flight has been cancelled or badly delayed I will leave it to him to sort things out for us. No more direct flights between Calgary and Regina on the airline our kids had points for.....boohoo....oh well, God will help us one way or another. That I do know for sure.

My husband spent the day making saskatoon syrup. The consistency is not what he hoped for, BUT he says it is very tasty and wonderful still for pancakes, waffles and iced cream.  We had nothing away from home that had to be accomplished today, so we both enjoyed a day here at the house. I took a brief walk this afternoon as it was a perfect autumn day...about +14C, very little breeze and sunny.  It was lovely.

So Relaxed Staying Off The Highway!

 I am embarrassingly grateful our trip for this week was cancelled after all. Over the past three days I have watched the weather forecasts for this coming week and early next week deteriorating in the places we were scheduled to travel; from somewhat sunny, warm days to cooler temperatures, rain snow mix, and plain old snow! This autumn we are determined to avoid getting caught on the highway crawling along on a bed of ice!

Enjoyed an afternoon at the church listening to friends tell about and show pictures of their recent trip to the Holy Lands. They are still a bit shaken up by how close they came to being trapped there by the war that broke out a couple of hours after they left. On the weekend one of our ministers will share stories of her recent trip to Beirut. Looking forward to that.

My meals were off kilter all day after sleeping in…WAY IN….this morning and I found myself eating lunch at 3pm! I was on my way to the computer store to purchase a cover for my new iPad when I suddenly realized I had to eat immediately. Conveniently I was only a few blocks from Agave! One fab taco salad and I was good to go! 

Ended up with a gorgeous, textured, hunter green iPad cover. I love it! Nice way to end the afternoon!

A Happy " Old Married Couple" Kind Of Day!

Today has been a lovely, relaxed, warm, sunny, happy day!  Just the kind of Monday I enjoy after a busy weekend of fun and fellowship.  YAY!!

We both slept in a bit so that was a treat to start the day. The sun came out quite early this morning and has stayed with us all day long. The wind is more of a light breeze today, so that is wonderful!!  So unusual for this time of year. Just love it!

After a relaxing morning of taking our time to wake up and eat breakfast, a bit of football on tv, some small home chores and lunch, we headed out to do some errands.  We were pleased when we went to the library to find out that a book that the library lost after we had returned it, has been found!  That is great news.  After dropping off some more books at the downtown branch we decided to head up into the northwest part of the city to a branch we had never been to before. My husband found a book he has been searching for that was at that branch, so rather than wait to have it sent downtown we just drove up there to explore a part of the city we never see much of.  It is a nice little community branch of the public library and I think we will go there again one of these days. With Saskatchewan's provincial library interbranch programme we can take out books at any branch anywhere in the province and return those books to any branch anywhere in the province. This huge inteprovincial system is a marvellous programme!  Books can be put on hold and shipped from any branch in the province to any other branch in the province to make getting a book you want badly incredibly easy.  Wow, it is a bonus for living in Saskatchewan!

We dropped letters off in a neighbourhood post box, returned our large tomato growing pot to its owners in anticipation of them seeding and planting more tomatoes for us next spring, we grocery shopped for some specialty items at a grocery store we have not gone to before.  Now we are home relaxing and preparing for more chores tomorrow.  The weather is supposed to be quite good all week actually, although tomorrow we may get some rain showers that the land does need.  

It has been a quiet, enjoyable domestic day around here. Very nice......rather unusual for us, but very, very nice....

Looking Forward To Each Sunshiny Day Between Now And Next Spring!

We had a lovely drive out of town this morning. When I woke up this morning the car window was covered with its first autumn thin layer of frost, but when we drove out of town a couple of hours later it was soft enough from the rays of the rising sun to remove with the windshield wipers. When we arrived at the church the sun was shining through a bit of cloud, so it was a pleasant 40 minute drive despite 50km wind gusts. 

The 125th church anniversary for the church was not particularly well attended, sadly, with one family out of town, another couple absent due to a needed hospital visit and not one single community member in attendance despite all the contributions to the community that congregation has made since its inception.  However, our tiny turnout of people had a marvellous time of worship and snack time fellowship. The Bishop was presiding and preaching, their new priest did a stellar job and the congregation loves her. Our former parishioners were delighted to see my husband, their former priest. We had a super time! 

By the time church was over, the sky had clouded over again and we didn’t see the sun for the rest of the day. It is going to be a long six months if we are already experiencing several consecutive days of overcast skies. Waaaaaaahhhhh....I hate winter!!!!! 

Seasonal Thinking!

 For most of the spring and into the summer, as the daylight hours begin to increase after the equal hours of daylight and darkness at the Vernal Equinox and peak out at the Summer Equinox, every evening becomes more exciting to look forward to.  6:30pm has always been a favourite time of the evening for me to note during that time and on into August.  At 6:30pm I know there are still several hours of daylight left for walking outside in the warm breezes, enjoying the sun still streaming in the windows as I wash dinner dishes, driving to the homes of friends without worrying if it will be dark before I have to return home, etc.  However, by the middle to end of August I have a vague awareness that the evening are slowly becoming a bit shorter in terms of daylight until now, at mid October, when the sun has almost set completely by 6:30pm.  Suddenly the evenings are nearly non-existent.  My husband and I go out to eat at restaurants mostly at lunch time now and visit friends for afternoon tea times because we know we won't have to drive home in the windblown darkness that, we now remember, will be complete by 5pm within the next month to six weeks and by 4pm for much of December and January.  6:30pm has become my point of reference for the change in the number of daylight hours during the change of seasons.  Tonight at 6:30pm, instead of being energized about washing the dinner dishes and scrubbing a small bag of garden fresh carrots delivered to us today by our friend Kat, I was absolutely certain it must be late enough in the evening that I should get ready to go to sleep for the night!!!  Talk about big change in thinking!

I had no reason other than the reduction of daylight to be so tired after dinner.  I had a refreshing and energizing walk around the lake with my walking partner this morning, I made lunch and dinner and did the cleaning up after each meal and I ironed for an hour.  Hardly onerous, labourious, time and energy consuming chores....BUT it is "that time of year" once again where I have become tuned in to the loss of daylight hours.  In the mornings now when I awaken it isn't quite light yet, so I feel like the darkness is closing in on me for another six months, trapping me between the end of one darkness and the arrival of the next one.  Ooh, how I dread the onset of snow and ice that these dark evenings are a harbinger of.  Brrrrr........(but I did notice on my morning walk that the rabbits that live in the parkland around the lake are still quite brown...not a lot of transformation to white yet, yay)

I was hoping to catch a glimpse of today's partial eclipse of the sun as my friend and I were walking around the lake. It should have been visible between about 10am and 1pm.  However the entire day was so overcast in my area of the city that I didn't see it at all, had no awareness of it even happening.  That was a bit disappointing.  I am always in awe of such things. Oh well, next time.....

Tomorrow we will go out of town to church to a former parish having its 125th anniversary and that will be a lot of fun.  We are, however, rethinking our plan to go to Alberta this coming week. None of the people who originally requested a visit have contacted us to confirm plans and we have not been able to reach them. Perhaps they have changed their minds. Since we haven't had time to book our hotels yet that is just fine, but if we can't get in touch with people tomorrow and confirm exact days and times, we will quite happily remain here at home. Now that we have a trip in the planning stages for January on the west coast with our family we certainly don't need to pay for another expensive trip away if it isn't absolutely necessary.  We shall see how the next couple of days work themselves out.  I thought I would be disappointed if the trip didn't happen next week, but to be honest, if it doesn't happen then I will feel more relieved than disappointed.   The following week I have a number of medical and other appointments, so it would be nice not to have to go into them completely exhausted from travelling. Guess I will know if there is going to be a trip next week by this time tomorrow.  Is it wrong to hope not?

Spontaneous Invitations Are So Much Fun To Accept!!

  last sunday my husband accepted an invitation out for lunch today with a new aquaintance from church and he has been looking forward to it for the past several days.  I assumed his absence would be a great time for me to wash some dishes that sit out on the china cabinets and get a bit dusty over time.  Then I planned to iron clothes and have a peaceful (read "boring") day at home.

However, part way through the morning a friend phoned to ask if i could join her for lunch.  yay!  of course I could!  No further thought required.  Dishes? Ironing? What are those exactly?  teehee 

I am always game to go out to have fun at the drop of a hat.  Usually only medical appointments will stop me.  So I didn't get the ironing done...so what?  There is always tomorrow afternoon.  At least I did get the dishes washed.  AAAAND I stuck to my diet and exercise programmes!

What a happy day!

Slowly Regaining The Discipline

 I am very pleased to discover that I am regaining the diet and exercise discpline I totally lost over the COVID and "the continuous stream of deaths in the family" of the past three years.  This week has gone pretty well with consistency of sticking far better to my diet regimen and exercise regime.  My mind finally seems to have made the adjustment that losing weight is no longer an option. Yes, it will take awhile to do that because it will take me awhile to be fully on track once again and that is okay.  The trajectory is steadily heading upward and forward and I am very happy indeed.  The miracle has been that my blood sugar hasn't gone skewumpus along with the weight, so I am extremely grateful for that.  So, the challenge to myself is on: can I regain the strictness of self care that I adopted when I was first diagnosed with type 2 diabetes??  I think I can....but I am pretty sure that soon the upward slow trajectory is going to have to succumb to waking up one morning knowing that "this is the day I am going to cold turkey my ongoing bad habits, like I did when I got my diagnosis".  It can happen with God's help.  It happened once, it can happen again....with God's help!

The Drive Is Worth It! Again!!

 We both had a very busy day today.  I trucked up and down two flights of stairs so many times today doing laundry and other chores that I think I set a record for myself.  My husband was trying to accomplish three things at once all day and by dinnertime tonight we were both tired out.  My husband said he felt we deserved to go out for dinner, hahaha....apparently we "deserve" that quite often in his opinion. I asked him where he wanted to go and after discarding several  possible options he decided we were going to return to The Fancy Fork out east.  No arguments from me. Despite the terrible service last weekend, the food deserved a second chance, so away we went.  It was a wonderful treat, my Tuscan Chicken with half a plate's worth of wonderful fresh cooked vegetables. Such variety too: pea pods, green beans, asparagus spears, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, all cooked just right for me.  The Tuscan chicken with its sundried tomatos and spinach in the lovely creamy sauce and the tiny herbed potatoes in their skins made for a delicious and reasonably priced meal at $25.  My husband had the daily special: a 7 ounce steak with fries and home made herbed gravy and a good portion of caesar salad for $21. Now that I have been there twice I have learned a few things. eg When we are ready for our bill, we need to put on our coats and stand at the cash register.  Waiting for the bill to be brought to the table without having to loudly and obviously flag down our server....or any server at all actually....is a waste of time and frustration.  We ended up getting out of the restaurant well ahead of another table of customers who went through the whole flagging down, getting the bill at last, waiting for staff to return with the electronic payment machine....naaaaa, forget that. Just put on coats and head over to the cash register. Now we know!  hahahaha  It was a very fun spontaneous date night.

We came home to an email from our son.  He wanted to confirm his and his girlfriend's arrival date in Vancouver in January and offered us their airline points to fly out to join them. Those points will expire at year end and our son and friend are not flying with that airline this trip.  His girlfriend, a flight booking wonder with all her overseas travel experiences, has offered to book the flights for us, so we are thrilled to pieces.  Assuming we can make this work out, we will celebrate a very late Christmas with our son and his lovely girlfriend in January.  So, once my husband finishes with his seminar this weekend, we will start making plans with our family.  YAY!!  Oh, how we pray this will work out.  It will be fun to be booking hotels and car rentals once again as it has been a few years now since our last trip anywhere of real interest.  Okay, we will see how it goes.....hopefully the winter weather will not stand in our way at the last minute.

My L'il Buddy!

Friends of ours have an adorable Shih Tzu puppy.  His name is Milo and he is everyone's friend.  I take an antihistamine every time I get the chance to visit him so that I can pick him up for the cuddles he loves and not have me end up with a rashy skinned, sneezing fit.  Milo and I had a chance to have a visit the other day.  I loved every second of it.  Fer shur if I wasn't such an allergic mess I would have a dog or a cat!

Milo is a good listener!

Awaiting permission.....

.....to cuddle up!

Have had some fun grocery shopping over the past couple of mornings.  Good grief though, the prices continue to rise and it seems I am bringing home fewer items for the size of the bill every time I shop.  Sigh....it is getting really crazy just trying to get staples for some kind of semi-reasonable price!  Yikes!!  Scary times.

This is a nice week for me. My husband is deeply involved in completing his seminar presentation for this weekend, so I am free to bop about on my own.  Today I am taking it easy since I was up at 6:45am to go grocery shopping and unusually, I was NOT awake when the alarm rang.  I will, I WILL do something useful and active for the rest of the day.  I WILL, I WILL!!!  (I think.)

Tomorrow the fun begins again: my weekly coffee "date", ladies' prayer meeting, walking with my walking partner on the weekend, etc. etc. etc.  I LOVE keeping up with my buddies. It is health and life for me.  

The weather is certainly cooperating for me to have good times, walking here and there, driving across the city for errands.  Apparently we will be snow free for awhile yet, and may that turn out to actually be true!  The earliest appointment we can get for putting the snow tires on our vehicle is over two weeks away!! 

I am also excited to have my annual eye examination in a couple of weeks' time.  New lenses to replace these poor old things that got scratched badly a few months ago after a trip and fall landed them on a cement sidewalk.  The one lens is particularly bad and I know it is starting to interfere with the comfort of my eye.  I may get new frames as well and then have prescription sunglasses made from my present ones.  I have never done that before but have always wanted to be able to do it. The time has come.....

Apart from being overweight and struggling to lose a few more pounds...okay, quite a few more pounds....I am pretty happy these days.  Stresses of long standing have been lifting one by one, God has reminded me again that he is bigger than any OCD issues I have dealt with in recent months so I am doing much better again. Hallelujah!  Thanks prayer warriors, you are helping me a lot.

So.....time to go and do some work around this suite!!  

Reaping Our Back Deck Harvest!

 My husband has been getting various items ready for getting rid of as it becomes more and more clear that he really wants to downsize for the upcoming move....a FIRST for him in our 15 or so moves.  YIPPEE!  

Today he attacked the many potted herbs and veggies on our teensy back deck.  In about twenty minutes he had removed the last dozen tomatoes from the vines for bringing inside to ripen, sheered off all the herb stalks for drying inside, dug up our little "hobby pot" of a dozen medium sized potatoes, cut down all the rest of the foliage and loaded all the pots into the car to be taken over for winter storage at a friend's place.  If we are not doing any "gardening" next spring she can just keep the pots as she has an enormous garden and flower growing space in her own yard.  

It is incredible to see my husband so motivated to do so many things related to our upcoming move that should be done around here before the snow flies, in order to cut down the amount of work in the spring at actual moving time. SO PROUD OF HIM!!!  He is even severely downsizing his theology and philosphy texts....incredible.  

Rather than continuing to dread all things moving related, I am glimpsing a slight spark of excitement within myself when I think about getting out of this place after way too many years!

Where to next Lord, where to next???!!!??? 

We Are NOT Amused!!! HaHaHa!!

When our son was small, around age 2 to 3, he had an extremely expressive little face!  One look told us exactly how he was feeling and what he was thinking.  The photo below was taken at a family gathering where there was a great deal of tension between various family members and our discerning son was not happy...his face says it all:

I do not like the aura of this place!!

 

A Special Thanksgiving Treat For Us!

Really excited to have had a very long Zoom conversation with our son and his girlfriend this afternoon!  We blabbed on about all kinds of things for well over an hour.  As a result of our conversation we just MAY take a quick trip to Vancouver in January to take in opening night of our son's art exhibition there.  He and his girlfriend will both be there and are hoping we can make it and spend a bit of time together around the exhibition.  So.....LOTS to think about between now and then.  It would be a lot of fun, we miss Vancouver and even a short trip in the dead of winter would still be a great deal of fun....yup, must seriously consider it, that is for sure.  We will see how things work out. Our son would like to continue our annual post Christmas visiting tradition.  This time it could be even a lot more fun than them coming here!!

After the wonderful visit with them, we got a phone call from  good friends, apologizing for interrupting our planned weekend of hibernation, with an invitation to lunch tomorrow.  I think we will probably do that with these very special friends.  We can stop being selfish about our down time long enough to celebrate life with these friends.  It will be a nice bookend to our Thanksgiving weekend....a special time with friends on Friday evening and then another special time with friends on the long weekend Monday. 

After we talked with our son about the possibility of a short trip to Vancouver  in January, I felt a surge of mental and physical energy like I haven't experienced in a long time.  Since it is a very real possibility, it feels like my  foggy mind has begun clearing and the idea that it is "just too much trouble to plan" has been replaced by  more of a "LET'S DO IT!!" attitude.  How very encouraging as I have been wondering lately if I would ever feel like doing anything interesting and fun again!  Glad the adventurous spark has not completely deserted me like I was worrying it had.  Hallelujah!

Our son is a wonderful cook but his girlfriend, also a wonderful cook in her own right, is also blessed with the baking gene that no one in our little family inherited.  Here is a photo of the plum torte she had cooling while we were talking today:

Yum, yum, yum!!!!!!!!!!!

 She told us she wished they could share the torte with us...well, not nearly as much as WE wish she could share the torte with us! hahaha  It is like having virtual Thanksgiving dessert!  hohoho!

Grateful Our Friends Are Home From The Middle East!

Several weeks ago dear friends left saskatchewan for their first trip to jordan and israel. They are seasoned world travellers, but were a bit concerned about entering an area of the world where peace between nations has been tentative at best for a very long time.  However, away they went and we were uncertain of their exact date of return. When the attacks against Israel began a couple of days ago we kind of freaked out, wondering if our friends and their travel companions were safe. This morning we found out that they left Israel the day prior to the terrorist attacks. Whew!  One of our friends has come home with covid unfortunately, but she and her husband are alive and safe from the disaster going on overseas.  We are most grateful they got away before all hell broke loose.

And now we pray for the people of Gaza and Israel and the surrounding nations.  The last time there was this much violence in the area was about 50 years ago, but there is a difference this time. The last round of outright war centered more on oppposing military fighting  on behalf of their respective countries, but this time the attacks are centered on civilians, ergo the reason for calling it a terrorist attack rather than a simple declaration of war.

It all is just so very sad....the number of wars around the world seems to be growing by the week.  I don't remember the last time my husband and I, as well as our church prayer groups, spent so much time in prayer about war.  Dear God, please help all who are suffering as the result of these wars, please help the rest of us to know how we can be of the most aid to the people being adversely effected. Sigh.....and now earthquakes in Afghanistan are responsible for the death of thousands of people this weekend....sigh....

It's a rough old world out there!

Wha??? It's Thanksgiving Weekend? Again? Already???

It seems like it was just Thanksgiving a couple of months ago and now here we are again celebrating all that we have to be grateful for!  Incredible!

Last evening we celebrated with a lovely meal at the Fancy Fork east in Emerald Park.  Apart from very slow service due the the packed out dining room and a low number of wait staff, it was a very happy time with nice ambiance, very decent food, (ya' GOTTA try the grilled Mediterranean salad withe Greek chicken or the chicken penne or the grilled pickerel with mango topping or the steaks), plus wonderful visiting with my walking partner and her husband.  Tomorrow morning will be church where I am reading the Scriptures, but apart from that we are luxuriating in having a long weekend without a lot of other social niceties to be facing.  Our dinner with our friends last evening was wonderful and after we dropped them off back at their house my husband and I recited a litany of friends and circumstances in our lives that we are indeed very grateful for and blessed by.  We are starting to really enjoy having a few holiday weekends with lots of time to do whatever we spontaneously want to do or doing nothing at all.  2023 has been a wonderful year in that respect. With all the stresses of the past three years finally starting to lift, we are reveling in the present recovery interim before the new stresses attached to moving next year begin. Now THAT is something to be grateful for. 

There are some warmer daytime high temperatures on the way for a few days.  Originally there were to be highs in the low +20C's but now those have been scaled back a few degrees to the higher +C teens...all good.  For us at this time of year every day without snow and ice is a bonus that we greatly enjoy no matter what else is going on in life.

Have a most blessed and praise filled Thanksgiving everybody. May there be at least one small thing going on in your life for which you can give sincere thanks, even if that one small thing is difficult to find right now!! 

An Apple A Day

 My husband bought me a new ipad today!  I am thrilled.  He is not a big gift giver, but occasionally there is something he knows I need or soon will be needing and then he immediately steps forward and buys whatever it is.  I am thrilled to pieces with this new ipad.  It was incredibly easy to transfer all the information from the old one to the new one.  With my husband standing watch ready to jump in if necessary, I completed the task all by myself!!!  Miracle of miracles, is all I can say!!!  Soooo, NOT a techie this woman.....  The only glitch came when we tried to sync the google calendar to all the "aliases" my husband has used for different google accounts that put different types of events onto the calendar.  He spent about 40 minutes online getting the information he needed and a few more minutes of trial and error, but eventually he got that problem sorted out.  This is very exciting.  My other ipad is 9 years old and amazingly has given me very little trouble until very recently when its harddrive was no longer capable of downloading the latest operating systems.  So thankful tonight for my dear husband wanting to help me with this by giving me such a wonderful gift!

It was another day of running errands and what a relief to have them done.  Mostly we were able to get to and from the car and various businesses between downpours of rain that started again overnight and kept it up all day....it is 10:30pm, still raining and this drenching is not supposed to end until sometime tomorrow afternoon.  I only got caught in the actual rainfall once, so that was a relief.  It is so chilly that my husband insisted we HAD to turn the furnace on for the first time since the end of March or early April even though in a couple of days we will have highs in the low +20C's.  I didn't even wear a coat today and the poor man was bundled up in a long sleeved turtleneck shirt with a flannel shirt over top of that, a wool sweater over top of both of them and a jacket over the whole works.  He had thick woolly socks on as well and a hat. Still he was freezing cold so on went the furnace.  I have never met anyone who gets cold and stays cold as easily as he does.  He can't go swimmimg with any enjoyment even on the hottest days of summer in warm water. After five minutes he emerges from the water shivering and pale and it takes him until the next day to warm up properly.  Poor guy.

Had a haircut today.  My stylist is getting the cut back on track now and I am so happy.  Instead of waiting five weeks between cuts (and sometimes even longer because I lose track of the time) I am now booked in advance for appointments with four weeks between cuts.  With the style I am returning to it is simply a necessity.  I feel great this evening knowing my hair is getting back to a style I can handle well here at home on my own.

Tomorrow will be a busy day.  My friend and I are going out for our weekly coffee and conversation, then I have to race around a bit doing some errands, cram my lunch down and be ready to go to our Bible study and fellowship group that meets every two weeks.  It is a necessity to be on time this time because the leader contacted my husband tonight to say he is ill and to ask my husband to please lead the group.  We are watching and discussing an N.T. Wright video about salvation, so that will be a lot of fun and generate some interesting conversation.

Shakin' In Muh Boots!

As new details are being released regarding the grizzly bear attack in the Ya Ha Tinda area of Alberta, my mind keeps returning to all the years my husband and many of our friends went hiking in that same area every spring, summer and fall.  I am remembering today specifically the solo hikes my husband took at this time of year,  remembering most clearly the year he ended up spending the night on a huge boulder that had been desposited there, possibly at the end of the last ice age, because there had been a black bear following him earlier that day and it seemed to be the most difficult thing in the immediate area for a bear to climb. Aaaaaargh!  Once again I am filled with gratitude that neither my husband nor any of his friends were physically attacked by any sort of bear during their many travels in that beautiful area of Banff National Park.  I am at the same time filled with deep sadness for the loss of life of two seasoned hikers and their dog last weekend due to an aggressive attack by a predatory grizzly.  Sigh....their poor families will never know exactly what happened to them and I pray the event will not haunt them for the rest of their lives.  The grizzly had to be killed by the  Bear Attack Response Team.  It would have been less shocking if the attack had been by a black bear as foraging at twilight is not that unusual for them, but a grizzly attacking anything at that time of evening is very unusual.  Grizzlys tend to be shy bears who stay away from humans who are just at their camping spot minding their own business.  Did the bear have rabies or some other kind of disease?  Had it reached the end of its tolerance for having its ever decreasing habitat invaded by humans and dogs? Guess the general public will never know, but the whole situation is so very sad.  The loss of lives:  two people, a dog, a bear....tragic.  I get shivers down my spine and my stomack flips over every time I realize afresh what kind of dangers my husband exposes himself to every time he goes hiking and climbing in the mountains and foothills.  In this instance I am intensely grateful for old age that has severely limited his ability to hike the way he used to.

I downloaded the photos from my parents that I mentioned in my last post. They were taken about a year prior to Dad being moved into long term care....the term being only six months before he died.  When I remember my parents this is no longer how I think of them. I am more focused on how they were a decade or two prior to this photo, when they were still relatively healthy and active.  Good memories.... It is a relief knowing they are no longer going through the aging process and all its pains and fears.

Sadly Dad looks great here compared to how he would look 6 months later as he was heading off to the long term care home.  4 months after arriving there he already looked like a cadaver despite receiving quite good care.  I can hardly bear to see Mom in this picture as it is, but she looked so much older when she passed two years later.

Mom 'n' Dad 'n' Me 2019

My husband's tooth just broke! Hallelujah!  Seems like an odd response I suppose until I mention that his next step for diagnosing this troublesome tooth was to set up a panoramic scan that would cost us several hundred dollars out of pocket and result in the need for a crown. The fracture did not show up on the regular x-rays, of which he has had several over the past few months in attempt to diagnose the problem.  So, now he can go straight to getting a crown on the go.  He will head to the dentist in a couple of days for the consult and hopefully to begin the procedure.  We are still trying to get to Alberta BEFORE the snow flies, so don't want to end up being delayed by a tooth issue.  Hopefully the dentist will agree to get going on this as soon as possible.  We are ridiculously grateful for the tooth breaking before the extra expense of the panorama scan!

Chilly and rainy again today.  We will save our next set of errands for this week until tomorrow.  It is always a difficult adjustment to leave the summer behind, so a bit more rest is a good thing today.  It will give my husband a full day to work on his next diocesan presentation coming up in less than two weeks' time.

Lovin' The Family Errand Days!

 Monday seems to be the best day for us to run errands around town. Today was no exception.  We had a number of chores to do, mostly downtown, and out of a long list there was only one we were not able to accomplish today due to retail supply issues.  Of course we had to enjoy a bit of lunch at The Cure since our last errand for the morning was only a block away.  Nice food, the music wasn't too loud this time, good service, semi comfortable chairs this time....it was a happy way to end a happy morning.  (On days like this I always think of that old hymn:  "Welcome Happy Morning"! hahaha)

My poor old iPad needs replacing. The hardware simply does not support the latest operating system that I will need to have to access things like online banking, and a number of websites I have until recently been able to access with no problem.  SO my husband has decided to gift me with a new iPad that we will shop for later this week.  Unfortunately there is no Apple Store anywhere in our province, so we will have to purchase the thing somewhere like Staples locally. That is okay.  I am excited for the new iPad of course, but even more excited that my husband has chosen to gift it to me.  What a nice man!

Gratitude today that although my cell phone fell hard out of my purse today on the floor of The Bay and it came apart in two pieces, I was able to snap it back together. After a period of recovery....about a half hour....the red "I am not well" light stopped flashing and everything is working just fine. Whew!

I have slept better the past two nights than I have in months.  It seems to be because I am sitting most evenings in my recliner chair now. For months I had trouble getting comfortable for more than a half hour on our sofa and tub chairs because my hip hardware was bothering me so much.  Therefore, the financial risk of a softer, more padded recliner chair just in case it might help. So far it seems it is helping a lot.  Both nights I have not been waking up aching every time I turn over.  No hip or back issues....just marvellous!!!  Thank you God for this apparently simple fix to some of my pain and insomnia issues.  I wonder how much of it is psychosomatic, because as soon as I sit down on the chair I am aware of my whole body relaxing immediately.  There is no muscle  tension brought on by wondering if the chair will be too uncomfortable.  Whatever exactly is going on, I like it!!!

One of my errands today was to buy some facecloths and hand towels for a disabled friend who cannot get to the store any more.  I found some decent ones at the Bay; bonus was the sale price, and I took them over to her place after supper tonight.  We enjoyed a glass of pinot grigio while we looked at the towels and visited.  It seems she does like them and so next week we will get together again to discuss a bit of clothes shopping for her.  That will be fun too.

I was able to make restaurant reservations for this weekend at a restaurant we haven't tried yet.  Another couple are going with us...four brave souls, but the menu looks interesting enough and the prices are quite reasonable it would appear.  One of the things the four of us do well together is share meals, so we are really looking forward to seeing them. He has been teaching my husband more about the rules of football and took him to his first in person game a few weeks ago.  She is my walking partner.  Looking forward to a great evening.

A couple of Bible study/fellowship groups this week that my husband and I are both looking forward to, my weekly coffee date is coming up, but we both have the next couple of days free for some more house chores, perhaps a day travelling to an out of town second hand book shop to drop off MANY of my husband's books.  Since his decision to take all our vinyl recordings and audio equipment to his friend, my husband has been experiencing for the first time in a long time the relief of "getting rid".  There are boxes and boxes of old slides ready to be burned and soon the boxes of photographs will be ready to go to the fire pit as well.  I don't think he has ever before had the luxury of sufficient time to downsize properly until this upcoming move and bless his heart, he is getting right into it now.  It is exciting for ME to see how well he is accomplishing this purpose and also how far in advance he has begun the process.  I am newly inspired to begin tackling the next of my own items that can be gotten rid of before we move on once again. YAY!

One of the surprises my husband discovered tonight as he was figuring out there was no way to download the newer operating system onto my present iPad was a series of photographs of my parents and ourselves. They were taken several years ago...about 4 I believe....one evening at my parents' suite as we were trying to figure out how to make the camera on the iPad work and then store the photos.  I am very glad he found them. He put them on a computer file and we looked at them on the large tv screen.  Honestly, as I sat and looked at my already shrunken and emaciated parents, particularly dad who was "fading away to a grease spot" as my grandparents used to say,  I found myself intensely grateful that they are no longer having to deal with aging and the sad changes it brought to their lives.  My husband asked me if seeing the photos made me sad again that they have died and to be quite truthful, it did not.  It was just another confirmation to me that they left at the right time, both of them, before their earthly journeys became any more difficult.

I must remember to call the hair salon tomorrow and make an appointment for a cut.  The time is flying by so quickly that I was certain it hadn't been more than a couple of weeks since my last cut and I was wondering why my hair seemed so long!  It has actually been a whole month since my last cut.  I must start getting it cut more regularly every 4-5 weeks instead of letting it get too long and unruly between every cut.  Ridiculous.  Life is spinning past me and I can't seem to keep up any more, hahaha.

 

A Good Sunday All Around!

Today, despite a very rainy morning, was a wonderful day!  My husband and I are both most grateful for that.

We got ourselves moving this morning in time to get to a church service out of town to celebrate a special anniversary with the congregation there; the church where my husband did his postulancy prior to ordination.  There were quite a number of old friends in attendance and we had some lovely visits.  It was wonderful sharing worship, the Bishop's teaching, and the Eucharist together with them.  Then we shared a time of fellowship around a luncheon, then a quick cuppa at the home of the friends who are taking our vinyl record collection and audio equipment.  Before we knew it, it was nearly 2pm and time to return to Regina so we could spend the rest of the afternoon playing board games and snacking with dear friends from our own church here at home.  An evening spent in my recliner in front of the tv, while my husband finished reading a library book that is due tomorrow, capped off a fun day!!  The rain didn't hinder our travels at all, but wow....trying to drive while wearing an actual coat is a skill I have to re-aquire every autumn! hahaha HOW VERY UNCOMFORTABLE TO HAVE LONG SLEEVES PULLING AT MY ARMS WHILE STEERING!!!  YUKKO!!!  I always forget how caged I feel once I have to start wearing long sleeved tops and coats again when summer ends.  (I think my subconscious reaction to aging has been to kick hard against ANYTHING that impedes my freedom in any and every area of life.  I finally figured that out just this evening.)  

So, a good weekend. Tomorrow my husband and I will do some errands around town.  We always have a good time doing the simplest things together.  Looking forward to another good day.

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Oh yeah, I finally tracked down the saga of my poor chair, hahaha. Good grief!  Although the sales clerk did mess up the delivery aspect of my order, she wasn't the only one confused as it  happens.  I THOUGHT I had ordered the instore floor model, as it had just arrived in our store the afternoon before I did, so hadn't had too many behinds sitting in it.  The sales girl was on her way out to the warehouse to tell the guys in the warehouse to wrap my chair up for delivery a few days later.  Then the big mess happened, then we went to the warehouse on the weekend and brought the chair home. Weeeelllll, there was one more issue that explains why I received a call from the Saskatoon warehouse to tell me my chair had arrived and that I needed to come pick it up there:  at some point after it was wrapped up for delivery in Regina, the warehouse staff managed to pick it up along with the other furniture pieces that were SUPPOSED to go to Saskatoon and tossed my chair in with that load.  It spent the next few days on the road and in the other warehouse until I got the call to pick it up there. Then it had to be reloaded and returned to Regina, where it was unloaded off the truck and into my husband's waiting arms for loading into our car.  

My chair is more well travelled than I am it appears, hahaha.