Our Easter Sunday Improved As The Hours Went By! YAY!

 Despite the disappointing start to the day...having to Zoom church instead of being there in person and having to cancel our dinner invitation....things improved.  Our son called us very unexpectedly this afternoon for a good chat and more good news about his life.  Then this evening a couple of friends called to see if we were home for awhile so that they could drop in for a visit. They felt badly for us having to cancel our plans today and so they went to the Creme Patisserie and brought us a couple of treats...a strawberry creme choux and a creme brulee croissant!  Oh how fabulous!  Some of the best French pastry baking we have had in Regina.  What a lovely treat to receive them, but even better of a treat was being thought of today.  One of our friends dropped off a new kind of muscle relaxing, pain reducing cream she purchased from her massage therapist for me to try.  If it works as well on soothing muscle pain for me as it has been working for her, I will sleep very well again tonight.

I spent some time today forcing my muscles to relax, putting my cane aside and doing some light physiotherapy to get the bruised muscles used to the idea that they are going to have to remember how to move in the directions I need my leg to go when I am walking.  So very grateful for my binder of old physio notes I collected from other, more serious, issues with broken bones and hardware.  Thank you AGAIN to my marvellously helpful physiotherapist Serge who helped me initially so many years ago and so many times since!  Grateful I had enough foresight for once to keep the notes!!

Tomorrow...curry lunch that friends are making for us. I think, after some success with my physio today, I will risk the trip to their place.  Staying home too many days in a row wreaks havoc with my mental health....I need to get out for awhile.

A Suite Deal!

I was looking online just now at the suite our son and his girlfriend will soon be renting thanks to the NYC lottery. In Canadian dollars, without being recipients of the lottery, they would be paying over $8700 a month for their suite! Because they were chosen for the lottery they will be paying “only” about $3200cad. What a miraculous blessing , not only having their application drawn, but being the recipients of such a beautiful suite. The suite is about the same size as the one my husband and I currently live in, so we know it will be plenty of room for them. Thank you, thank you, thank you God!!

Yes, I Slept Quite Well, Thank You For Praying!

 Good morning on this chilly, snowy Easter Sunday morning! 

The Lord is risen! 

He is risen indeed! Hallelujah!!

Despite the sore muscles and bruises after my fall yesterday, I slept quite well and am so grateful. After I post this I may be able to fall asleep again for awhile longer. I would love to be down at the marina at the lake right now with the rest of the church congregation for the outdoor Easter sunrise service and then breakfast at the church, but it is pretty cold out there so maybe it is just as well I have to stay home. My husband is still sound asleep so obviously he is not planning to attend either. 

This has been a different kind of Easter weekend for us. The turkey is still in the freezer waiting for another time to be thawed, cooked and served. Our place looks like a war zone as we have things sitting out to be packed, cupboard doors hanging open as we decide what to get rid of, books scattered everywhere as my husband sorts through them. Yikes! We haven’t even begun our serious search for new housing but already are living in a mess. hahaha I am picturing myself this coming week, cane in one hand, vacuum in the other, cleaning up around this disaster. Seeing how much still has to be done before we move it is tempting to feel discouraged, particularly by how much stuff my husband still has to take care of, but I trust it will all work out on the end.

Our Ukrainian neighbours came over yesterday bearing a paska cake…cake more like bread dough, filled with raisins, not so sickly sweet as proper cake batter, with a thin layer of icing on top. On Orthodox Easter, May 5th, my husband will take them one of his yummy paschal breads. We have fun exchanging baking for the various religious holidays each year. What a cheery visit! 

Today we will watch the Easter church service on Zoom. I am sad to miss being there in person for the three baptisms. We have a little gift for each of the people being baptized, but they can wait until next week’s service to be given. It is disappointing as well to miss the after church dinner we were invited to. 

So, this weekend we attended the Good Friday service with the Anglicans and that was wonderful!! Although…..my sense of humour being what it is, as I looked at the particular way the cross on the podium had been draped in black cloth, I half expected it to speak, “Luke, I aaaaam your faaaaather!” hahaha (Yup, I still love the original Star Wars)  We neither served nor attended any Easter dinners, my falling down means we are missing attending church this morning….just a very different kind of Resurrection weekend for us. Hopefully next year we can return to our usual weekend of celebration. 

Fall Down Go Boom....Again! Dang It!!!

 After going along well for a number of years, this morning I took another tumble. Thankfully it was in the bedroom, not outside, and I didn't break anything...hallelujah x 100....but I am pretty battered and bruised on one side...the side where all my hip and ankle hardware are installed.  There is quite a narrow space between the end of the bed and the edge of the desk and I managed to tangle my feet up as I was passing through the gap while carrying a laundry basket on my way to do the last load down in the basement.  How I managed to make such a mess of myself I don't know, but the next thing I knew I was falling down in that tiny space.  Sigh....fortunately I landed on the side opposite my hardware filled leg and the other side of my body sustained only a minor knee scrape, plus there was a head bang when I hit the back of my head on a lowboy right beside the desk.  It wasn't a bad hit and I have no concussion or broken skin on my scalp...again with the hallelujahs!  However, I smacked the other side of my lower back on the corner of the desk, bruised my wrist grabbing for the end of the bedding in an unsuccessful attempt to stop the fall, smashed my ankle on the leg of the bed and twisted and pulled all the muscles and tendons around both sets of hardware. Dang it....I am using my good old cane again so that I can walk, because without it I cannot manage more than a couple of inches forward at a time per shuffle step.

I am beyond grateful that nothing seems to be broken!  Once I sat still on the floor for awhile and recovered from the shock, I realized my husband had not come running upstairs when the huge bang created by my fall reverberated through the house.  He had just gone down to the basement before I fell, tripped on the stairs himself, but fortuantely didn't fall down and didn't sprain anything. Thank you Lord!!  However when he tripped the basement door jiggled shut behind him and he didn't hear my fall at all.  hahahaha  Aiiii yiiiii....I didn't realize he wasn't downstairs right below me so I was hollering like a banshee and couldn't figure out why he wasn't responding.  At least, had I broken something, the phone that fell off the lowboy and onto the floor was right beside me, so I could have called for an ambulance had I needed one....unlike the last time I fell outside and DID fracture my hip and watched my phone rolling out of my purse, landing just out of reach!!  As the shock wore off I realized my husband wasn't coming to find me, so I gingerly rolled over and stood up. What a relief to find no broken bones!  I was able to stand up and hobble a bit. About that time my husband was on his way upstairs to tell me he had slipped on the basement stairs, so was quite surprised to find me barely mobile, phone and jewellery on the floor and the lowboy rocked out of place by the force of my hitting it. hahaha  

So, that wonderful man proceeded to complete the laundry for me, made me a fabulous pizza pita lunch and has been most solicitous of me.  As the afternoon has worn on more bruises are appearing and more sore muscles are making themselves known.  I am so very grateful for the cane I have had for a number of years, purchased several falls ago, as having it means I can still get around the suite quite easily with minimal pain.  Unfortunately sitting down is extremely painful, but I have an orthopedic cushion I purchased quite a few years ago and that is most helpful.

I cancelled our attendance at a lovely Easter dinner tomorrow because I know how much pain I am going to be in by then....not my first Fallin' Down Rodeo!  

So, it was great to get the laundry all done and put away, thanks to my husband, but wow....I was not prepared to be in pain once again with those wretched hip and ankle muscles and tendons.  Here's hoping the worst will be over with by tomorrow evening as we have a lunch date at friends' place the following day. I don't want to miss both our special Easter meal events due to a silly fall I likely could have avoided if I had been paying better attention. Guess I will be watching the celebration of the resurrection church service online tomorrow. Drat!

I am just grateful I am not lying in a bed in emergency with yet another broken bone....SO GRATEFUL to GOD!!

Cee Update

Thankfully, after several hours of prayer, his pain has lessened considerably and he is able to sit up in his chair to watch a bit of tv. The pain is not completely gone yet, but the amount of relief thus far is certainly an answer to all of your prayers. Thank you everyone! Thank you Lord!!!! 

Re: Cee

Good morning prayer warriors! I have a somewhat urgent request to pray for Cee this morning. After several days of being free of neuropathic pain, he is in agony this morning and none of his meds are helping reduce the horrible spams of pain. Nan is struggling having to watch him suffering so much, as you can imagine. 

Thank you for sending prayers to God for them both right away. When I get an update I will post it.

Bless you all. And huge thanks!

Feeling So Much Better Today! Hallelujah!!

I hauled out a binder of old physiotherapy exercises last night and found some that  helped my shoulder one time when I wrenched it very badly...years ago now.  I did the exercises before bed last evening, paid more attention to how I was positioning my shoulder before I fell asleep and woke up in far less pain this morning. I did the physio exercises twice more and tonight my shoulder is almost back to normal. I will keep up the exercises for a week just to be certain all is well.

I was happy I felt enough improvement to keep my Thursday morning coffee "date".  The coffee bar was more crowded for a Thursday than it usually is and I wonder if it is because with tomorrow being Good Friday, the Friday  regular customers realized the place will be closed for the day.  I picked up a few groceries afterward and the store was unbelievably crowded with shoppers stocking up on the final foods required for family Easter dinners and the long weekend.  The air of excitement about the holiday weekend among the other shoppers rubbed off on me and I am somewhat elated by the Sunday Easter Dinner invitiation we received the other day.  We are invited for the purpose of providing conversation and entertainment to the elderly visiting parents of our hostess...our newest role in life for our younger friends...what a hoot!  This is a "ministry" I never considered for us, but...you know....what comes across our path is sometimes surprising.....

My husband began working on his income tax forms this morning, I joined him after my coffee date and by 4:30pm we had all the calculations done on our rough copies.  Tomorrow afternoon we will check the calculations one last time and complete our good copies. Yes, we still do paper copies and no, it is not an act of rebellion against doing taxes online, it is just easier for us as it takes us awhile to figure out some of the newer instructions and steps and we can easily take lunch and coffee breaks without "timing out" on the CRA website. 

To celebrate getting the dreaded annual tax task completed my husband decided we would try out the newly opened Joey's Fish Shack for dinner and wow, it was really a good meal....so similar to the original Joey's Only store that opened in Calgary in 1985.  Happy they have rebranded and returned to specializing in fish and chips with only a few other items. When they started expanding and expanding the menu and the number of franchises back in the late 90's and early 2000's things got out of hand and they didn't do that well. So many of them closed down.  Now the original good quality food seems to have returned....at least to this particular franchise. We truly enjoyed our meal.  Next time we will have more cole slaw and fewer fries!  I promise! hahaha

We are to get snow overnight, possibly after a bit of freezing rain and wow, right now at 7pm the sky is looking ominously dark....yukko! However, if we can survive this long weekend then the spring warm up will begin.  I hope the freezing rain doesn't ruin our plans to go to the 11am Good Friday service at the Anglican Church!

Congratulations To DarBar!!

 We have had such a blast this week celebrating birthdays and anniversaries....our own and other peoples' as well.  Last night we went to DarBar and ordered plate after plate of their marvellous Indian food.  We brought home six take out containers!!!  What fun!  We ate Indian food today for lunch and dinner and there is enough left over for us to eat one or two more meals tomorrow as well.  YUMMY!!  We were so happy to find out from the owners last night that beside their second location in Warman that opened a few years ago, they will be opening a third location in Saskatoon this coming weekend.  We hope it is a huge success there like it is here.   Okay, we admit that part of our hope for them to flourish in Saskatoon is selfish:  we only go to S'toon occasionally but when we do, probably because we don't know the city, we seem to end up eating at restaurants that run the gamut from mediocre to downright terrible!  hahaha  At least next time we go there we will have a great place to eat a meal! hahaha  Seriously, we hope they do well there.  They work so hard and their food is about the best Indian cuisine we have found in this province thus far.

My husband had an early morning meeting today, so my husband ditched the idea of doing any income tax and he spent most of the afternoon looking up campsites in AB for a planned trip with our son this summer....a men's trip to the mountains.  He will do income taxes tomorrow instead.  I slept horribly last night because I pulled some muscles in my shoulder hauling a heavy water jug around during the day and then I slept on that shoulder awkwardly for some unknown reason.  I spent most of today sitting in my recliner in pain, feeling horrible!!  Fortunately by late afternoon the pain was nearly gone and tonight those muscles are still tender but I think if I am careful how I lie in bed tonight I will be a lot better tomorrow.  So, I didn't do any taxes either.  My husband will get a jump start on his in the morning while I am out with a friend and then I will join him to do mine in the afternoon.  Thankfully our income taxes are pretty uncomplicated so we can do them ourselves.  We shall see if we can get them done by the following day and into the mail so we can concentrate on other things of the next most immediate importance.

Had a cute thing happen just before dinner tonight. Someone started pounding on the back door. We opened it to find the two young visiting cousins of some neighbours in our building. They are about 8 years old at most and have been visiting for a couple of days. One of them had stuffed one of our neighbours cats into his backpack with just her eyes and ears showing and the other was the spokesman for their cause. hahahaha  "We were wondering if you had some garbage we could take out for you for $2 and maybe a tip as well, so we can buy cat supplies for this cat we found." hahaha  Enterprising little liars, I will give them that.  We kind of chuckled and pretended to believe them, handed them a full bag of kitchen garbage and watched the pitch man run it to the bin while the second waited at our door to be sure they were going to get paid.  My husband gave them the requested tooney...no extra tip...when the pitch man returned from the garbage bin. We wished them well.  The pitch man turned to us as he was heading down the steps and said, "Our cousins told us to come here because you are really nice people." hahahahahaha  Unfortunately we are likely now going to have a run of visiting cousins and friends of this family...and there are many....thinking of various ways they can pitch us a reason why we should give them money.  Fortunately I have a stack of toonies to spare and if I am correct about what may happen, it will be interesting to see how many crazy stories they can come up with to get their money. hahahaha  After such an excruciatingly painful day for me, these two little characters really cheered me up and made me howl with laughter after they left.

This should be the last really cold night before the weather starts to warm up for awhile...hopefully until the end of October!!!  My husband had to do some serious ice scraping off our windshield at 7:30 this morning and I will have to do the same tomorrow moring I am guessing. But then, slowly the spring temperatures will begin in earnest. I can hardly wait!

On My Husband's Birthday, I Was The One Who Had Fun!! Teehee

What a happy day we had yesterday.  My husband's meeting at the church didn't last too terribly long, so he came home right about the time I needed to eat lunch.  His suggestion was that we drive out to Emerald Park to the Fancy Fork and I thought it was a fantastic idea!!  Between the drive out there and the usual wait for food at the restaurant I was getting past my six hour mark between meals, but I told myself I would be fine and wow, surely did enjoy my incredible beef dip when it arrived tableside!!  It was delicious: packed with freshly sliced beef, not much fat at all, a delicious au jus and a soft bun that was still dense enough not to disintegrate in the au jus.  There were sliced onions and a mild caraway mayo on the sandwich that made for a very MESSY but incredibly TASTY lunch!  There was a nice caesar salad side dish.  I was so ravenous that I ate the whole thing!!  Baaaaaaadddd, BUT then after lunch I spent 90 minutes running around the east end of the city doing errands to try to work off those extra carbs.  It worked too!!!  My husband's mediterranean style wrap was so packed with ingredients that he could only manage half of it and half his fries....mostly I think because he decided to celebrate with a pint of beer and beer is very filling.  That meant he had half his wrap and fries order to bring home for his dinner last night.  Driving out there and back in the sunshine was amazing. 

Today the sky is just as blue. Although it is a bit chillier today than yesterday, tomorrow seems to mark the end of our distinctly winter temperatures and I can't wait for that!  Maybe some snow flurries on Friday, but it won't be cold outside.  I expect we will have our spring snow blizzard sometime in the next month and then spring weather will truly be upon us.

We had such a blast after lunch yesterday:  we started at the east end Staples where my husband was able to locate a couple of new Address/Telephone books for me....the stock is almost sold out and likely won't be replaced since such books are going the way of the dinosaur now that everyone can store that information on their iPhones.  There were two styles of book in Staples and I bought one of each, assuming I live long enough to need another new one in a few years' time.

Then we headed west and went to Peavey Mart!  I LOVE Peavey Mart for all our blue jeans and tee shirt needs...great prices compared to the regular retail mens' and womens' wear stores and sturdy quality materials.  I bought my husband two new pair of pants and a new jacket shirt for myself.  That was an unexpected bonus for me...an added anniversary gift!  Off to the neighbouring Superstore for a few groceries, to the bank and then to Dad's Health Food store for my husband's favourite orange toothpaste and some organic turkey sausages and corn chips and salsa.  We still had a couple of more errands we could have run at the west end of the city and I was geared up and keen to complete our list, but my husband said it was time to go home and relax.  My "let's go like bats out of hell" method of shopping exhausts him,racing store to store and up and down the aisles looking quickly at every available item just in case of a good sale, so he did very well yesterday keeping up with me.  hahaha  I shop like I do everything else...once I start it is nearly impossible to stop before I have ticked off every possible item and store from my list.  I GUESS we can wait and do those last two chores tomorrow morning before we start doing our income tax.

I have just over eleven dollars left from my thousand dollar grocery gift card I won back at the end of January.  I decided to stock up on a few items we use all the time and get ahead while they were on sale.  So the card lasted me 2 months and I am ever so grateful for it.  What an amazing blessing.

Tonight  my husband wants us to go out for Indian food to our favourite restaurant to celebrate our 47th anniversary.  47 years....amazing!  My card to my husband had an African hedgehog on the front that appeared to be asking,"Why do I love you so much?" and inside the same little hedgehog answered itself, "Because you love me even though I am so prickly!"  My husband's card to me said, "Why ask in anger..." and inside it continued, "when whining works just as well?"  hahaha We know each other well after all these years.  

Our son called us yesterday to wish us well and caught us up on his latest doings.  He sold another painting from the Vancouver show and has one more possibility with a buyer who is still somewhat on the fence, but the gallery owner is working on it.  If he can do well for sales at his NYC show coming up in May, the Vancouver gallery owner will likely put together another show for him on the west coast next year. Good things!  He is very happy.  He and his girlfriend are excited about their upcoming move.  They have no time to be packing and hauling boxes and furniture themselves so have hired movers. In three weeks they will be resettling in their new space. I can't wait to see it!  His girlfriend is going to be travelling a lot for the rest of this year for her job, so he is going to come out here in the summer and spend a week in the mountains with his dad.  A whole week of dad/son activities will be a boon to both of them.  Hopefully we will be moved by then....if our car is gone to AB with the guys, I can enjoy getting things sorted out in new digs while they are away.  OR I will just go to AB with them and spend my week with friends there. Nice to have options.

My husband was asked yesterday if he would be willing to preach more often at our church and that it would be a big help to our minister. He thought about it for awhile and then asked me and we decided he should say YES!  He is feeling well enough now to take on a few more preaching engagements and it won't be that often anyway.  He gets such life and encouragement from preaching occasionally and I would hate to see him lose out on something that gives him  life.

So life is buzzing along okay right now.  My intense hip issues have settled down again after my husband's inadvertent help last week and also by identifying the footwear responsible for throwing my gait off now that I don't need my winter boots any more. I am praying and praying that I won't need to have x-rays showing the extent of the arthritis until after we get moved. The waiting list for hip replacement surgery with my surgeon of choice is about three years, so a few extra months won't make that much difference.

Spring is coming....I am so very happy about that. 

Reneging On The Spring Cleaning...And Thoroughly Enjoying It!!

One joy of preparing in the spring for an upcoming move is being able to ignore some of the usual spring cleaning tasks in the current residence.  

My vacuuming tasks are becoming less onerous as more boxes filled with "moveables" line the walls in every room, taking up at least some of the floor space that normally would need vacuuming attention.  Those spaces will get a good cleaning with the baseboard attachment when we leave here.  

I am not washing the venetian blinds this spring.  It has been an exercise in futitility the past two springs because the blinds are aging and their dust resistant finish is getting soft and gummy, attracting more dust and trapping it on each slat. Some of the slats are beginning to bend and twist and crack with age. When we move, all the blinds here will come down and be thrown out into the big garbage bin by the maintenance staff because window coverings are no longer provided by the management like they were when we moved in nearly ten years ago.

I am not washing the windows.  This property management company does not clean the windows.  It seems to be up to the tenants and from what I have seen in our particular court, we are the only tenants since we moved here who actually do wash the windows.  It is almost useless as it only takes one dust storm followed by a bit of early morning dew to cover them up again with sludge, but twice a year we have been faithfully removing the grime, even on the upper floors where we have to pop one window out and clean the window beside it with a soft rag attached to the curved end of a hockey stick to reach all of the corners of the glass.....then pray like ten bears that we will be able to pop the window back in just as easily as we popped it out. 

I am not going to clean the gutters up under the eaves this spring.  It should never have been our job to have to do it in the first place, but after our first year here, the management company ceased to clean them.  We had to do it ourselves and we did do it because clearing out those gutters full of leaves and spiders and tree fuzz redirected the rain water over to the downspout on the side of the building and drained it away from our leaky basement; no more curtains of water flowing down over the edge of the packed gutters and straight down into the soil right beside the main leaking points.

I am not going to scrub out the shelves in the cupboards. I will wait and do it when moving day finally arrives, but it is not on the regular spring cleaning schedule this year.  I washed down the doors and frames a week or two ago and that will be sufficient effort to put into the project until we leave.

I am not going to clean the carpets professionally this spring, or likely even when we do move out, because it will all be torn up and replaced with vinyl plank flooring for the new tenants.  I will clean all the fixtures in the bathroom and kitchen of course, but only the minimum required as all the appliances and bathroom fixtures will be replaced to get rid of the rust and broken enamel and dials and burners and cracked hoses.  

My husband will spend no more money and time chasing down where the new leaks in the basement occur and sealing them. He is slowly getting stuff moved out of there and pushing what is left either farther up the walls or into the centre of the floor, farther away from whatever new leaks may show up this spring.

There will be cleaning to be done in whatever our new place of residence turns out to be. No matter if it happens to be a brand new build, there are always a few cleanups required before we know it is safe to move into a place.  My prayer is that there won't be as much basic cleaning for this next place as there has been for the last eight out of fourteen places!  

My regular weekly cleaning chores are slowly being reduced as the pile of packed boxes grows and the realization that I no longer need to take such good care in the cleaning of some of the items and places in this suite gains traction.  It will be so easy to clean cupboards and carpets and linoleum once we have all our possessions moved out of here.

Knowing we are planning to leave and beginning preparations is cheering me up considerably....along with the wonderful weather forecast for the rest of this week and into next.  While I continue to pray for badly needed rainfall, it is wonderful to see the predicted temperatures beginning to rise by the end of this week. Spring may actually be in the process of arriving and that is another boost to my spirit.

Waving The Palm Branches

This Palm Sunday I had the opportunity to take in two church services….each very different from the other. The experience certainly has me thinking about my own preferences for worship styles as they pertain to Holy Week! 

This morning we were at the Anglican Church where my husband did his postulancy. Since there was a Palm Processional the Deacon warned us it would be organized chaos, but there was mostly loose organization resulting in almost zero chaos. We processed through the hall and around the sanctuary waving our palm fronds and singing hosannahs to the Lord. Then we enjoyed the Palm Sunday liturgy and hymns and prayers. Oh how I miss Collects that I still mostly remember by heart. I miss the Eucharist prayers, the responses and the hymns that are uniquely Anglican in the Blue Hymnal. Having a friend from here in Regina in attendance made it extra special. 

After a fabulously healthy and delicious lunch with dear, dear friends, we came home and I watched an online recording of the morning service held at my own church. It was so different from the first service I attended. Only the kids processed with the palms and they were adorable, but the adults were left out of it. Lots of observing and chuckling at the kids’ antics, but no actual participation. I am used to the Anglican way of processing the palms, so would have felt disappointed to be left sitting, inactive, in the pew at that point. The music was very appropriate and I looked forward to the sermon, but that was kind of a dog’s breakfast, completing our series on the Gospel of Mark, but more teaching about the “widow’s mite” than about Jesus’ donkey ride into Jerusalem on the way to his death. Although there were many fine spiritual and practical  pointers for Christian living in that sermon, I admit that I didn’t get the connection to Palm Sunday. I must have missed something. It just seemed so detached from the point of this particular Sunday. I think I will listen to it again tomorrow and see if I understand it any better than I did today. 

It was a lovely relief to be back into such a well organized, professionally executed Anglican church service. From the prayers to the sermon, to the palm procession, everything was relaxing and meaningful. Even the person running the sound system, a notorious problem in so many churches, including mine, knew exactly what he was doing. There weren’t any obvious glitches to put me on edge wondering what would go wrong next. I needed that today. I needed the chance to participate instead of sitting back just watching the service.

Today was a nice change of pace and reminded me why I first became an Anglican. For me personally the service today was very special. We go there again in May and I am already looking forward to it. 

Quel “Poop” S’il Vous Plait? Le Choix T’appartient! Le Plaisir Est Pour Moi!!

 Welcome to our shared back lawn area. This spring, along with our annually featured piles of rabbit and goose poop, we now have a new addition for your side stepping pleasure: puppy poop!  💩 

Pooch Owner, (formerly known as Our  Neighbour From Heaven), (and I stress formerly), has spent her entire life until two years ago living on a farm where the dogs pooped where they pleased, as did the cattle and pigs, so the household kids “learned where not to step “ when playing outside. Sigh…..

Dear Lord, help us to be patient, please!! We have such a good relationship with this woman and don’t want to ruin that on the cusp of the time when both we and she are preparing to move out of here. Thus far the poopy piles have not strayed across the invisible pathway separating her path to the car lot from ours and I do hope it stays that way. I just feel badly for the kids here who are starting to play outside more now that so much of the ice has melted. Now they have a third kind of animal poopy doo to navigate around. 

One more week and it will be time to begin our accommodation search in earnest! Yippee!! Oh please Lord, help us to find something at least a bit better than this that we can afford. Thank You and amen!

Well, Doesn't That Just Figure!!???!!

This year I have been very excited about celebrating my husband's birthday and our anniversary, which fall one right after the other.  This year has been particularly fun to plan for and look forward to because it is one of the only years in more than twenty when these happy events do NOT fall at a time when Holy Week church activities have previously interfered, particularly now that my husband is fully retired.  My husband has a committment the day before his birthday, but that is closest I thought he was coming to being too busy to celebrate.  Hoo Haw...wrong again!! hahahaha  As of today he now has a committee meeting on his birthday at the church we attend together and then the next day on our anniversary he has a mandatory diocesan meeting...all day.  hahahaha  I have now officially cancelled my surprise plans to take him away for a couple of nights out of town. Sigh.....  I would say that I can't believe it, but I can...sadly. Maybe next year.....????  We have reached "ludicrous speed"!

Today has been a very good day.  I was up and out the door to go grocery shopping at 7am and was able to find all but one of the items on my list at the same store. YAY!!!  This afternoon I had coffee with a dear friend and after that my husband and I took our filthy car to the carwash and had at it!  We drove through no puddles or miry mud on the way home and our car is so clean it is nearly unrecognizable...well, except for the brightly coloured rims on the tires. hahahaha  We have been waiting for nearly two weeks to do that little job on a day when there weren't any puddles to worry about and the air temperature was just right for drying the car, but without freezing the doors shut.  YAY again!

I am SO READY FOR SPRING!!!  My morning energy levels are getting better and better, I am getting up and dressed first thing, getting daily errands planned so I can get out of this suite almost every day for at least an hour or two, watching the snow melting nearly all of the ice off the places where I most like to walk. Hopefully next week I can make a maiden voyage along at least one of my more enjoyable routes.  I need to get as much outdoor exercise as I can before forest fire season gets underway and I am trapped indoors once again to avoid too much smoke inhalation. With the lack of snow this year I suspect it will be Regina's turn for being inundated with dense smoke day after day all summer. We were so fortunate to have mostly avoided the terrible smoky haze that many other communities in other provinces suffered, day after endless day.  I am guessing it may be our turn this year.

I am excited about this weekend. I have a few chores to do outside the house tomorrow while my husband completes tweaking his Sunday sermon and then on Sunday we will head off to the church that sponsored my husband for ordination and he will preach and preside at their Palm Sunday service.  We are seeing friends there for lunch and first there will be lots of visiting in the coffee room after the service. Oh, so fun!

As a result of the church meetings on our special celebration days, I have toned down my plans.  I will give my husband a card and wish him well, then take him out for dinner both nights to two of his favourite restaurants. End of celebrating!  For a gift I am purchasing him a new Japanese traditional style teapot, but he wants to pick it out himself in person, so that will wait until our next trip to Alberta to his favourite Japanese pottery shops. There is zip, zero, zilch here in Regina for proper Japanese tea pots.  He is good at waiting in order to purchase exactly what he wants, so that will also add to the fun during our next trip west.

Two New Family Members!

My husband received the gift this week of two new baby cousins in Alberta; a little boy and a wee girl. The little boy is a maternal third cousin and the wee girl is a paternal third cousin. After all the deaths in my husband’s family in recent years the birth of both these children this month is a huge joy!! Congratulations everyone!! Oooooh, baby gift shopping!! Yay!!!

God’s Timing…Always Fascinating!

Today, nearly a month after we invested our house buying money, the perfect house for us came onto the market, hahaha! It is a smaller cottage style house in one of our neighbourhoods of choice and that particular side of the area has low enough property tax for us to handle. The yard is tiny enough for us to care for easily and for my husband there is a detached double garage. Aaaaannnndddd, now we can’t purchase it. Hahahaha….typical of how God directs us every time we move. First we have a dream scenario that gets crushed, then resurrects itself when we are no longer able to fulfill it for some reason. Then the real answer presents itself a bit later on. Have we been down this road before? Yeaaah, you betcha!! Now it will be even more interesting to see where we actually end up! Sometimes the answer doesn’t immediately appear to be all that wonderful, but it doesn’t take long to figure out why it is indeed the right answer. Yippee, new adventures await!

Owie Owwwww....Oh...Wait....That's Better Actually!

 I have been having pain in my "bad" leg and wondered at first if it was arthritis...nope, apparently not....the if it was sciatica....nope, apparently not, but I have been having trouble with that pain overnight for a couple of weeks, interrupting my sleep quite often.  Yesterday I was about to make a doctor's appointment, praying there was nothing wrong that would require getting a referral to a specialist or some kind of surgery etc. etc. etc., when my husband inadvertently solved the problem....at least for now.

Our back lawn is a soggy lake with a few "islands" of boggy lawn sticking up here and there to step on as we try to get from the car to the back door without sinking into the water over the tops of our shoes.  The last cutting of the lawn here in October of last year was not picked up properly in bags so there is a ton of loose grass all over these islands and floating in the water. Of course they attach themselves like glue to the bottom of our footwear, to be deposited all over the carpet just inside the kitchen door. Sigh....

Yesterday when we returned from our errands my husband had the idea to bring one of the snow removal brushes from inside the car and brush the grass off the bottoms of our shoes before we went inside.  It was quite effective, but I can't twist the leg that was so painful sufficiently to see the bottom of the shoe on that foot. So my husband said he would help me brush off the grass if I could just bend that knee and stick my foot straight out behind me. Well, he did get most of the grass off my shoe, but in the process he accidentally pushed my leg over in a direction its muscles and tendons didn't want to go. The shot of pain that ran through my hip and thigh nearly toppled me, but it was brief.  "YEEEEEOOOOOOOWWWW", I hollered so loudly that my husband dropped the brush on the porch!

However, when I put my foot back on the ground and turned around to go inside, the pain I had been experiencing this past few weeks was almost gone!!!  I slept well last night with minimal discomfort, the longest, most uninterrupted sleep I have had in several days and today there is just the slightest ache in my thigh that comes and goes....mostly it has gone!!

Whatever happened when my leg got pushed about seems to have mostly corrected the problem....a nerve?  A muscle?  A shift in the metal hardware that hip sports?  For now I don't know and don't care.  Hopefully I can take care of myself so it doesn't return...at least, please God, not until after we find a place and get moved!  Thank you and AMEN!  I am so grateful for whatever happened yesterday that made this change.  Thank you Lord! Thank you husband!

Am I Regrowing My Spine At Last? Hmmmm….

 I wonder if my little protest at the grocery store the other day has reawakened my inner protestor....the one I started, over 20 years ago, stuffing down and ignoring and trying to eliminate completely.  I used to be more involved in social issues of all kinds, contributing what little I could to the Voice of Fairness and Equality For All, questioning members of the government about laws and proposed legislation, participating in the occasional peaceful protest march.  It has all gone by the wayside over the past two decades.  

There were a few contributing factors:  some of the issues began to show themselves as less important than I originally thought, some of the nasty responses got harder to take as I aged, but most noticeably was the recurring voice of my father telling me through the years that no one was actually interested in my opinion...and you know what?  He was right all along.  No one who had the power to actually bring positive change about was interested...no one at all. 

However, the sermons our minister has been giving the past few months have been challenging my submissiveness, my deliberate refusal to actively engage in issues of importance to me and to some other folk, my hiding out to protect myself from having my feelings hurt again, my wanting to ignore Jesus' words and examples of bringing justice to the world while he was here on the earth because standing up for some issues is a tremendous amount of hassle.  I have been pondering these sermons for awhile now and find that my spirit of seeking justice, legislative sanity and resolution of other issues....well, it is reawakening....just a bit.

I have been watching a Canadian series on tv that is filled with "ordinary" Canadians, not actors, and realized over the past couple of weeks that some of the participants are engaging in active, blatant racism. MLK Jr. would be rolling in his grave if he was aware of this programme and what is happening. Could I just stop watching it and not say anything?  Yes I could and, until recently, that is what I would have done.  However last night I took the time and energy to craft a proper email to send to the television network that sponsors the programme and explained my concern about what is being portrayed in this day of "equality and inclusion" on their network.  The people involved don't seem to realize that by banding together in a racial grouping and coming together as a group against the other races in the show, they are perpetuating the very racism they claim to be so vehemently opposed to.  I believe their particular race has and continues to have opposition in most western countries and that history is something they want to rewrite. They have a legitimate beef about how they have been treated.  However, transforming from victim to victimizer is not going to solve the problem of racism.  It will have the opposite effect.  

I realized last night that this programme and the way the participants behave is making me deeply sad and it was time to stand up and say something about it to the network and the producers of the show. Will my opinion mean anything? Likely not.  Should I let that stop me from voicing it?  Absolutely not.  Opinions can be shared in an adult manner, without anger and ranting, but if I am bothered by what is going on it is up to me to stop being so spineless, say something about it and be prepared to toughen up if the response is negative, or at least to not be defeated if there is a total lack of response.

Hmmmm....what the heck is going on with me?  Am I finally secure enough in the Lord to start taking a few more risks on behalf of other people?  Who, self protective me??  Lord allow me to choose my issues with discernment and respond to them in wisdom. Amen!

Methinks ‘Tis A Good Night To Order In Pizza!

 I made it to church this morning despite a lousy sleep last night….outside noise. No big deal. Thankfully I was engaged happily enough in what was happening in the service to stay awake, but my exhausted husband spent the morning in bed trying to catch up on his lost sleep. He did sleep, but has felt wretched all day, poor guy. I was thrilled that we sang THREE of my favourite hymns from the Anglican Church today and discovered that two of them are in the Baptist Hymnal. Yay!! 

This afternoon my husband and I have been dragging our tail feathers around this place feeling kind of miserable, forcing ourselves to keep working on projects related to moving out of here. My husband is going through old sermons and articles he has written over the years and is thankfully able to get rid of quite a lot of those papers. He has arranged to have a bonfire sometime in April at a friend’s farm so is hoping to have all the burnables collected by then. I have a lovely five shelf display case that holds the family collectibles and antique china. It is tall and narrow and will be coming with us wherever we move to, so today I packed up those few things, put the boxes in a safe spot where we won’t trip over them and cleaned the glass shelves so they will be ready for removal and transport.

I am pooped just from all the finding, preparing and laying out of the special wrapping materials for those items, packing and then moving the boxes around the living room.…..only three medium sized boxes and I can’t do any more today. My “bad” leg is in serious pain, my back aches and my GERD is acting up for the first time in several weeks….just from that tiny amount of physical exertion!! Dear God, I am glad I am starting to pack this far in advance! If packing three to five boxes a day is all my worn out self is capable of accomplishing then I am going to need three months to be ready to leave this suite!!!! Aaaaargh!!!!!!!!??😩

Soooooo, a good night to have pizza delivered, don’t you think?? 

Cooking: bad!

Pizza Delivery: good!

Thinking Of My Dad Today

 It is St. Patrick’s Day today, one of Dad’s favourite days to remember his own Irish father who passed away back in 1970. At that point my dad had not yet been to Ireland to look up relatives and visit the family home town, but a couple of years later he finally got his chance. I was happy for him. He and Mom had a wonderful time in County Armagh.

Dad and I used to compete every year to see who could find the funniest St. Patrick’s Day greeting card. Such hilarity every March. I miss that.

Rogues' Gallery

Our son is the person who actually remembered we should perhaps take a quick family selfie before we left Vancouver in February.  It is quite the photo...sigh....

Our son looks the best of the three of us, while my nose and eyes are reddened from crying because our nearly perfect trip was coming to an end, so my husband is acting silly by making the Big Eyes to try and cheer me up.  Right after we took the photo we went out for our final dinner together before our son headed off to the airport so he could go home and we went back to the hotel for our final night.  Oh, it was so much fun and seeing our son doing so well was the best thing for my husband and I. It was so hard to say goodbye once again.

For what it is worth, here we are:

Did We Actually NEED Another Reason To Move Out Of Here?

Our neighbour on the other side of the wall has a new puppy and it is the cutest thing ever.  It is some kind of cross breed that I don't immediately recognize, but who wouldn't fall in love with deep brown eyes and long floppy brown/white ears, right????  hahahaha SO ADORABLE!!!!

Said puppy is very, tiny, very young and thus makes very little noise even when it cries and barks, so we didn't even know he was there until we saw her carrying him past our window yesterday.  Apparently he is going to grow a LOT larger in the coming months and therefore quite a bit louder when he make his wishes known.  Our neighbour is paranoid about the dog making enough noise to disturb us and we don't want her worrying about that because as he grows into himself and finds his voice, we will be on the cusp of moving out of here and the next neighbours in here may not have issues with a bit of barking....they may have their own dog to deal with.  We are among the last of the tenants in our court who do not have a dog or several cats or other pets.  The dog friendly property managers in this city are reducing the number of possibilities for us to find a rental where I will not be dealing with left over dog and cat hair and dander that leave me struggling with my asthma, so the Lord is being asked on a regular basis to find us the miracle home we are going to need if we are staying here in this city.

This dear puppy next door was found by our neighbour's family many miles outside the city, abandoned and freezing in a snowbank.  Poor wee thing.  His tiny frozen paws are recovering and he is going to be just fine, but what a horrible start to life.  Grateful he was found and rescued. Attempts to locate an owner came to nought and perhaps that is a good thing by the sound of the situation.

How I would love NOT having asthma and be able to be one of those doggy or kitty people so I too could have a pet...or pets...even better......

Shopping For The Same Items Twice In One Morning!

 What a crazy morning! hahahaha  I deliberately got up early for breakfast so I could get to my neighbourhood YIG grocery store and get home to accomplish some chores here during the remainder of the morning.  I got to the store before 9am and spent about 40 minutes taking my time and filling up my cart.  Then I walked to the cash registers to pay for my groceries.  

Big surprise: NO cashiers on staff!  There was one poor beleaguered woman staffer explaining to the fair number of early morning shoppers that the manager wants the customers to learn how to use the self-checkouts, so no more early morning cashiers....Bull Fargles....said manager wants to save money by not hiring another cashier for that shift!  How stupid does he think we are?  (I am not at this point blaming Loblaws for forcing this decision on him because other  YIG's here in town do have early morning cashiers and I know that because a few minutes ago I checked it out.)

So, the purpose of this dear lone woman standing at the self-checkout machines was to assist the customers in their learning process and to fix errors, but mostly she was fielding upset customers and I felt badly for her. It wasn't her fault there were no other cashiers on the tills.  

I wandered around the store for a couple of more minutes, feeling upset, myself, that even with the much higher prices at YIG over the large RC Superstores, I still was expected to scan my own groceries as well as pack them and not receive a staff discount for doing so.  What to do....after a few minutes of wandering, undecided, up and down the aisles I decided that in the interest of time I would allow myself to be drawn in this once, suck it up and use the self-checkout machine.  Feeling like a spineless jellyfish I approached the machine with my full cart, whipped out my PC points card to scan, pressed the START icon on the screen and when it told me to scan my card I tried to do that....seriously I did. I know how and where to scan the card as I have used those machines before.  Unfortunately an ERROR message flashed up onto the screeh and the red light on the post beside me lit up to let the one woman on staff know I needed assistance.  No one came. I looked around and finally located her at one of the cash registers assisting a very disabled man who would not have been able to use the self-checkout. He was shaking with what appeared to be Parkinson's Disease and was barely able to stand long enough for her to run his purchases through the till.  He had a large order and was hurrying as best as he was able because the HandiBus was on its way to pick him up and he had to get his order back into the cart and manage to get himself outside. He was upset too and getting louder and louder in expressing his concern about being late for the bus pickup. God bless that woman for helping him, but she wasn't going to be available to assist me for some time.  I decided it wasn't worth the likely nearly 5 minute wait for her to be free to help me, pushed my cart to one side still filled with groceries, retrieved my packing bags from the bottom of the cart and exited the store. Sigh.....I left a note on the cart addressed to the manager to tell him why I left and not to blame the one woman he had on who was working so hard to enforce his policy and still help out people who needed her. I also told him I will no longer be shopping at his store because of not having a choice of how to pay for my groceries.  

So, feeling ticked off but resigned, I got back in my vehicle and drove a few km over to the nearest PC Superstore and restocked my cart with the same items I left sitting in the YIG.  What a waste of my time and energy.  Fortunately everything I needed was also available at this store and most things were substantially lower in price, so that was a nice bonus for standing my ground at the YIG and refusing after all to purchase an order using a self-checkout.

I am praying for that dear YIG employee as I imagine she has had a rotten shift today.  Other customers were berating her as if it was her fault there were no cashiers available.  As word gets out I am wondering if the store will lose more customers than me.  Just now when I went online to change my "preferred location" store from YIG to the nearest RC, I noticed that on the online "real time" graph the number of customers in the YIG store was apparently far fewer than usual for the time of day.  Maybe if it is because of the situation I discovered this morning the manager will get the hint.

I find it so fascinating that in the USA many large stores, such as WalMarts and Targets are removing the self-check out option....a combination of too much theft and angry customers resulting over time in a drop in sales and profits apparently.  Of course Canada will likely be a few years behind in figuring it out...

Walking Downstairs In The Light!

A small joy this time of year is the euphoria I feel when I get up in the morning and head downstairs to the kitchen. For the past four months I have been walking down the stairs in the dark. The winter sun has been nowhere to be seen and, depending on my time of arising, has not arisen for a couple of hours, as late as 9am. It is a depressing feeling after the first couple of weeks. 

As of a few days ago I realized how much lighter the morning skies are now. I don’t need to flip on the light switch at the top of the stairs any more to see my way down to the kitchen. It amazes me how that small change in the time of the sunrise effects my Start To The Day mood! 

A couple of days ago I was quite cheery in the early morning light, slipping and sliding in my vehicle as I drove my friend and I to our favourite coffee hangout instead of clutching the steering wheel and cursing the ice. While I can’t say I have enjoyed overcoming my fear of icy falls while inching my way across the back yard ice to get to the car, at least I have succeeded in conquering the fear sufficiently to make the trek: trembling and fearful, but managing to do it, using my cane with its ice pick bottom and being oh so careful about foot placement. I only allowed myself to remain trapped inside for one day. Yay!! 

Our afternoon fellowship group went well this week. Our usual leader asked another fellow to take over teaching for a few weeks so he is doing a series on The Mission of God from Genesis to Revelation. We had fun yesterday discussing things like, “What is mission?”, and “What is God’s mission?”.  Over the next six sessions we will talk about individual mission, the Church’s mission, and look for missional themes that appear throughout scripture. It is fun for me to be in a group of such theologically educated, experienced pastor and missionary folk. I learn a ton every meeting.

Well, it is time to get dressed and pick up a few groceries for the weekend before the Friday shoppers are out in full force. It is overcast and windy today, but the wind is blowing in nice warmth that will melt some more of the ice. Yay!!

Temporarily Trapped In My Own Home!! Yikes!

 Although it is a few degrees above zero this afternoon, the sun has not appeared much today, so the warmth of those early spring rays has not melted the ice that formed on the back lawn after yesterday's sunny melt.  Grrrrrrr.....and now we have the remains of a light rainfall after lunch sitting on top of that already slippery ice; ergo, I cannot go out to the car because I WILL fall down in those conditions.

Perhaps it is just as well. Being forced to stay home today means that I am getting at least a half of my weekly housework done.  All the dusting and tidying is complete and I am about to go and clean the bathroom fixtures. Tomorrow I can vaccum the carpets and wash the linoleum.  

Today's housework was a lot more fun and went a lot more quickly than usual.  It is because I have packed sufficient items that there was less dusting and when I go to vaccum tomorrow there are more open spaces on the floors that the power head will fit into easily.  There will be less bending and twisting and painful fiddling about. YES!!!!  It just may be that some of the things I have already packed, under the assumption that I should keep them, will just quietly disappear in the course of the move and I won't have to clean them or even think about them ever again.....one never knows.....nyaaa haa haa......

Winning the Housing Lottery Down South!

We just had a long phone conversation with our son and he is walking  on air today!  About three years ago he and his partner received an application form for the New York City Home Lottery for people who have lower incomes and need rental assistance. The programme has been running for decades and is a heck of a deal for those people chosen to take advantage of it.  Our son applied and was told it could be a three year wait before his ticket even got drawn for consideration.  Exactly three years later his ticket was drawn and now, less than three months later there is a lease to be signed by the end of this week, move in day is 30 days after that!  The "kids" are definitely going to sign that lease after seeing the amazing suite they are being offered!!

The suite is in a large complex in East Manhattan....a perfect area for them to live as it brings them much closer to all the places they work at and enjoy than where they presently live in Sunnyside.  It has two bedrooms and two bathrooms and is at least twice the size of their current apartment.  Talk about hitting the lottery jackpot!  In their new place they will have office space and more room to spread out their books and art pieces.....this is so exciting!  With rent control enforced on the lottery homes, the annual rent hike is next to nothing and they are starting out at a lower rent than they currently pay.  The complex was originally built about a hundred years ago for military housing, for officers in particular, hence the large apartments and the lovely surrounding grounds.  They will spend less time on trains and buses late at night and that is a huge relief for them both.  Looking at comps in the same area, their new suite would normally be renting for close to seven thousand dollars a month and they will be paying about twenty-four hundred!!!  Incredible, isn't it?  We are over the moon for them!  Talk about an incredible answer to prayer.

Our son has disciplined himself to maintain his daily work to rest ratio, despite the short time frame left to complete the paintings for his next show. As a result he is far more relaxed, less frantic, less worried, his health is slowly improving.  He is learning a more "what will be will be and it is in God's hands" mentality that we are thrilled about.  This past weekend he was asked to give his testimony at his fellowship group and that was a big step for him. The encouragement he received then, plus the affirmation he has received from the group right from the start is transforming him in wonderful ways.  Many unhappy and hurtful memories of growing up in the church are being healed for him and we are so grateful to these people and to God.  Amen!

So, just when we thought today couldn't get any better, we receive this wonderful news. Thank the Lord!

"Substitutionary Atonement....Oops, I Mean Digestion!"

 There are times when it is fantastic to be "second choice", the last minute substitution!  Yesterday was one of those days:  friends at church came up to us before the service and invited us to come to their house for lunch afterward. Then they explained that the couple originally invited were ill and had to cancel earlier that morning.  How lovely for US that out of the entire congregation present at church it was US our friends chose to replace their original guests.  We were delighted!  We are extremely sorry the originally invited guests were unwell.  We are extremely happy we got to fill in for them! hohoho!!  Our lunch began with a glass of delicious chardonnay, followed by a beet borscht and home made, thinly sliced rye bread with cold chunks of butter, then a green salad and a leek/feta quiche that was to die for!  For dessert there was apple/cranberry pie featuring dollops of brown sugar crumble and whipping cream on top.  Oh my goodness, what a feast! Talk about being in foodie heaven....thank you Lord for our good fortune and please heal our ill friends quickly so they too will have their chance to enjoy our friend's amazing culinary skills.  Amen!

When we got home, we were so full of food we could hardly stand up, so we collapsed on the living room chairs and watched two episodes of DCI: BANKS, season 3.  Two more episodes to go and we will be ready for season 4. Don't know why we are enjoying binge watching this particular series, but it will be disappointing when we finally reach the end of the available seasons from the local video library!  Then we need to revive a few seasons of Unforgotten and Annika.

Today has been a productive day....my favourite kind as you know.  My husband had a long sleep in, awakening at 10am, well rested and ready to roll. So we loaded up all the bottles and cans and milk cartons etc., along with two boxes of thrift store items and away we went just before noon.  If we could have fit the rest of the thrift store boxes into the car we would have cleared even more out of the basement today.  

Originally my husband was supposed to be meeting a colleague for lunch, but the colleague had to cancel for another meeting, so my wonderful husband decided he and I should go out for lunch instead. Agave was rather crowded for a normally slow Monday, but we arrived ahead of most of the other patrons and were able to sit in a very comfortable, quiet space to enjoy the chicken quesadillas, fries and caesar salad. Their lunch menu prices average $14-$15 per entree and all of them include one or two sides. Talk about an inexpensive lunch: under $40 for our food, taxes and tip.  YES!  That MAY explain some of the crowding.  The way the piped ceiling is put together there, along with some fabric draping over the booths, the noise is diffused very nicely, so we were barely conscious of the other voices around us....very nice indeed.  We received enough money from the Bottle Depot returns to pay for lunch...bonus!!

Another factor in the incredible volume of traffic on the streets....on a Monday no less....may be the incredible weather!  Yesterday and today the high temperature was/is +6C!!! Snow is melting, puddles are forming, icy patches and turning to slush......our car, like all others on the streets today....is completely covered in mud and muck. But it is to be just as warm again tomorrow and almost as warm for a couple of days after that, so I think we will just allow the car to remain filthy until the daytime highs go back to slightly below zero by the weekend and then wash the poor, sad looking machine.  I went out today with just a long sleeved sweater over my sleeveless shirt....SO FANTASTIC to be able to do that!  With the slush in the back yard on the way to the parking lot turning our pathway into a small lake, unfortunately I still have to wear boots to and from the vehicle, but I can change my footwear inside the car and not be saddled with heavy boots for running errands on the nice, dry sidewalks and nearly dry retail parking lots!  YAY!! Today has been a fabulous day thus far!  Yesterday was phenomenal too....AND we don't have any hard and fast committments for another couple of days.  YIPPEE!

Cee….Diagnosis

 Pneumonia….sigh…..not his first go round with it. Thanks for your prayers. 😊🙏🏻

Prayers For Cee....Again....Dang It!!!

I received an email from Nan this afternoon to report that although her shoulder pain is somewhat better today, Cee had a tough night with some kind of respiratory infection and illness, so is in the hospital again getting help, hopefully, with some meds etc.  Sigh...they are having a horrible time you guys and so appreciate your continuing prayers for them.  I feel so badly for them as the struggles seem to go on and on. Those of you who have been through similar seemingly never ending times of medical issues one after the other have certainly been relating to these problems.  All your prayers are helping Cee and Nan to feel the comfort of knowing even complete strangers are supporting them through caring concern and prayers, and they thank you.

I am very grateful that the weather here has begun to warm up!!  Today has been quite lovely...chilly but the snow is melting on the streets where the traffic is heavy enough and the icy finish on the snow covering our pathway to our car in the lot is soft enough for me to get proper traction instead of leaving me slipping and sliding dangerously.  I am so grateful for that.  Looks like a nice week upcoming in terms of temperature hovering just above zero during the day and warm enough at night that we don't have to plug the vehicle in.  YAY!

Yesterday my husband wanted to check the air pressure in the car tires, so he opened the glove compartment for his pressure gauge only to find wads of chewed up tissues and a chewed up hand towel he was storing in there for use when cleaning up little spills etc. inside the car.  Another mouse seemed to have made its appearance......oh no, not again.  We were rather shocked to find this cozy little nest because there was NO sign of mouse activity anywhere else in the vehicle. There was not one bit of shredded tissue on the floor or seats, there was no evidence of tissues being pulled out of the box at all, there were no little droppings anywhere, not even inside the nesting area.  However, my husband dragged the utility vacuum out through the snow, along with a bottle of bleach and some cleaning rags, cleaned out the entire car, disposed of the nest, sprayed bleach all over everything and set two traps.  After lunch today I had to use the car, checked the traps and found nary a mouse caught in either of them and no fresh evidence of nesting activity.  My husband got thinking about that glove compartment and began to realize that he had not actually looked into it since our last mouse encounter, had not checked it between when he cleaned it out that first time and when he caught the original mouse in the trap. So, it is quite possible this latest nest was actually put into place during that time frame, making it more likely that we didn't actually have a second mouse in the car at all.  Well, if nothing else, our car had been cleaned again within an inch of its interior life, whether or not it was necessary and that is not a bad thing.

I had a good day of visiting today.  One friend picked me up for lunch and we went to the nearest Original Joe's.  It wasn't crowded, the music was not booming, the service was excellent and we had a nice meal.  We ordered the chicken caesar salads and discovered they now use full strips of bacon instead of little bitty bits scattered here and there.  The bacon strips were properly cooked, no icky slimy partially uncooked fat to deal with and the croutons were fresh, rather than tooth breaking like they are at some other restaurants around this town.  For dessert we had the brownie...sans the iced cream....and it was a nice finishing touch to a salad lunch.  One thing I like about OJ's salads is that they are not slathered in gooey dressing....there is just enough to know there is dressing, but the lettuce and croutons are not soggy and disgusting. YES!!

Afterward I headed over to another friend's place, bearing a couple of casseroles I made to help her out as she is experiencing some health issues right now.  It was fun cooking them early this morning.  It is so marvelous to feel so much better these days and actually WANT to get up and prepare food or do other chores first thing after breakfast. I am really enjoying this newfound energy!

Now it is nearly dinner time....I have a bit of leftover casserole that wouldn't fit in the cartons for my friend, so my husband and I will share those leftovers for dinner.  YUM!!

Update

Well, thank you all for praying!! Nan finally saw a doctor and had an x-ray, and fortunately nothing is broken. She is going to be sore for awhile, but should be okay in time. Although she had to spend several hours in the ER, she did get home just in time to care for Cee’s needs. Thankfully she was able to phone and check him a few times while she was gone and he managed ok, hallelujah! It was a scary day for them both!! I am asking God to help find Nan someone she can call on who is capable of assisting Cee if anything else comes along in the future that causes her to be gone, so that Cee doesn’t have to be alone too long. As a former health care worker, Nan is capable of dealing with Cee’s mobility issues, whereas most of the rest of her friends are like me: willing to help, but not qualified to take on the task. You are all wonderfully caring and amazing prayer warriors. 

Prayers Please For Nan and Cee

 I just heard from Nan. She is in Emergency at her local hospital after a fall last evening that left her with a badly wrenched shoulder. She cannot drive so a friend took her in. Fortunately she was able to get Cee into his chair before she left. As of right now she has been triaged and is waiting for an exam room. There are no walk ins available today. The only doctors for that are at the ER. In the meantime Cee is at home alone on his chair and may need assistance before she gets home. Thank you for praying. I will update as able.

The Source Of Our New Energy Levels?

This morning my husband and I were both up and moving before 7am and have felt wonderful all morning.  My husband has been working on his next sermon, I left to do chores around town at 8:30am and am now waiting for my iron to heat up so I can get that job done.  

I think we are starting to understand where all this energy is coming from and why we are no longer floundering around this suite feeling exhausted and unmotivated, sleeping during the day and way too long overnight sometimes:  all this wonderful energy and motivation began about four days ago, about a week after my husband replaced the cracked seal under the toilet and cleaned up all the mold.  The odor that sometimes threatened to flatten me with nausea and "almost but not quite dizziness" early in the mornings and later in the evenings is gone....sewer gas we are assuming as we look back on what has been going on in that bathroom the past three months and based on what my husband knows about reactions to mild but ongoing sewer gas exposure from his days in the trades.  We have been clearing out some more "stuff" from the basement and getting ready to load more things into the car for the recycling and thrift stores next week when it will be significantly warmer than it has been this week. We are looking more seriously now at available rentals so we don't have to wait too many more months to get out of here.  Our reports to the management about the ongoing sewer issues in here have fallen on deaf ears, so we know not to expect more help.  We are on our own it seems, but we don't care any more.  Time to go!   Your continued prayers for us to find the right place for our next move is sincerely appreciated. Thank you so much friends and family.

Carrying Right Along!

 My husband is out cross-country skiing this afternoon.  He meets up with a friend who is about the same age, but in FAR better physical condition than my husband because he skis and swims nearly every day all winter long.  HOWEVER, he is infinitely patient with my husband.  My poor guy wants to badly to get in shape again, but not badly enough to put in the time for exercise that he needs. Sigh....I suspect that as his new relaxed attitude toward retirement continues to take effect, he will get with the programme before too much longer.  He has made a few false starts over the winter, doing only a day or two of his exercise routine before allowing himself to be pulled back to the computer screen and the joy of resesarching and writing papers and articles all the live-long day.  hahaha  Ah well....

I used his time away with his men's group this morning to get going on the laundry. Now, at just after 2pm I am all finished and the "hang to dry" items will be ready to be ironed first thing tomorrow morning. I may actually do them right away this time instead of ignoring them like I did the last batch of ironing....bad me!!  I noticed after lunch that there has been a growing batch of black sock lint accummulating on the upstairs carpet from my husband's special no-itch socks, so I grabbed the vaccum a few minutes ago and took care of that mess as well.  Where all this energy is suddenly coming from I have no idea, but I'll take it...I'LL TAKE IT!!!!  Tomorrow morning I need to run a few errands so hopefully I will awaken in time to get going and get home again before the Friday afternoon boost in traffic begins.  I pray I can avoid coming across any more folks driving in both lanes at once like what happened yesterday.  NUTSO!!!  Then I have an empty Saturday looming at me....I detest Saturdays where I have no  plans to do anything fun or see friends, but my husband has some sermons to prepare and Saturday will be a good day for him to do that, so I won't complain.  I will try to start thinking ahead enough to pull something together for myself to do on the weekend.  Church on Sunday...that will be good.  Maybe I can plan to get on the phone tomorrow and find someone to go out for lunch with us after the service.  I need to start taking more initiative with social events now that the sadness and upset of having to return to Regina after our holiday has passed.

What Fresh Driving Hell Is This???

 I drove across the city this afternoon to have coffee with a friend and what a crazy drive!!!! In my less than half hour round trip drive, I came up behind no less the FIVE other drivers driving down the centre of the street, straddling both lanes going my direction. These incidents did not happen where the dotted lines on the road were completely obliterated by packed snow, they happened where the line dividing the lanes was completely visible and both lanes were sufficiently clear of snow to give drivers full access to both lanes. What the heck is going on??? I mentioned it to my coffee buddy and her eyes grew wide as she listened, then admitted she had recently come up behind other drivers with the same issue. The driving habits on this town have become so frightening that I am becoming increasingly nervous about driving here!!! Good grief!!! 

FINALLY, A Productive Morning!!!

 Okay, I admit I'm not dressed yet, I am still in my Mark's Comfy Robe, BUT I have actually accomplished a few outstanding tasks around here!  The depression and malaise that hit me upon returning from Vancouver seems to be completely lifted at last!

So, yeah....not dressed, BUT this morning I clawed the remaning meat off a cooked chicken and bagged the meat for the freezer, cooked a packet of ground turkey I was too lazy to cook last night, got the glass cleaner out and wiped down all the glass in the frames covering some of our hanging art work and photos, washed up the breakfast dishes and finally got out a carton to put some all purpose cleaner into, donned my cleaning gloves, grabbed a rag and a toothbrush and proceded to clean all the cupboard doors in the kitchen.  They were looking rather grubby and the softening of the paint on them has added to the "stickability" of various forms of grime over the past year.

It feels good now, as I sit here watching fluffy snowflakes drifting down, to know I finally got a few outstanding chores accomplished around here....what next I wonder?  Will this wonderful burst of energy and motivation continue?  Oh yes, please Lord!!

Yes, What He Said.....

 Music

Music, when soft voices die,

Vibrates in the memory-

Odors, when sweet violets sicken,

Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,

Are heaped for the beloved's bed;

And so thy thoughts, when thou are gone,

Love itself shall slumber on.

--Percy Bysshe Shelley

Don't Go Into the Library

 

The library is dangerous-

Don't go in. If you do

You know what will happen.

It's like a pet store or a bakery-

 

Every single time you'll come out of there

Holding something in your arms.

 

Those novels with their big eyes.

And those no-nonsense, all muscle

 

Greyhounds and Dobermans,

All non-fiction and business,

 

Cuddly when they're young,

But then the first page is turned.

 

The doughnut scent of it all, knowledge,

The aroma of coffee being made

 

In all those books, something for everyone,

The deli offerings of civilization itself.

 

The library is the book of books,

Its concrete and wood and glass covers

 

Keeping within them the very big,

Very long story of everything.

The library is dangerous, full

Of answers. If you go inside,

 

You may not come out

the same person who went in.

 

--Albert Rios

 

Aw Shucks!

 We decided not to brave the drive through the deep snow this morning to go to church, but watched the service online instead.  I am kind of happy that we did, but not because of the abundance of snow on the streets.

It is Communion Sunday and since the church reopened its doors post-COVID lockdown, instead of having the traditional Baptist communion with passing the plate of bread cubes or rice wafers, (followed by the heavy metal ring holding the communion glasses), up and down the rows of pews, we have been going in orderly fashion to the front of the sanctuary to receive the elements from the ministers or other persons assigned to deliver them to the congregants. Then, once the elements were in hand, we simply stepped to the side, consumed the elements, left our glasses in an empty tray and returned in orderly fashion to our seats.  

As of today, apparently, we have resumed the traditional Baptist Communion Liturgy of The Passing Patens.  Sigh....I confess I am very disappointed.  I AM happy for the people who have experienced communion in the Baptist fashion for decades, that they are able to once again enjoy the elements sans the long walk to the front and around the sanctuary back to their pews.  They are delighted and that is truly nice.  For myself and my husband though it means a return of having numerous other people breathing on and accidentally touching the elements that we are going to consume.  It means more hand to hand germ transmission from passing the actual plates and trays. It means that instead of spending the time in prayer and contemplation with the Lord while awaiting our turn to go forward for the Eucharist bread and wine, we have to keep our eyes open and be on high alert so we can be ready to grab those trays and plates from the person beside us, juggle them while we try to pick up a cube of bread or wafer and a slippery juice glass without dropping everything on the floor, then make sure the people beside us can manage to take the trays and plates without losing their grip during the transfer.  Hardly a relaxing time of basking in the Lord's presence while we celebrate the Last Supper together.  Also, it means we are subjected to not only the minister's prayer over the elements, but a separate prayer each over the bread and the juice, delivered by two of the deacons.  Once the congregation and choir have all received their elements, we have to sit there holding them in our sweaty hands while the deacons sitting at the front of the sanctuary return the trays and plates, then serve each other the elements before the rest of us can consume them. Apparently it is more meaningful to many people that we consume them all at the exact same moment.  Hmmmm.....isn't it only important to consume them during the communion time at some point during that specified part of the service?  Is the exact moment of consumption important?  Well, it is to many of the people there and I am not going to argue with them. They have been there longer than I have and have every right to enjoy the communion whatever way is best for them.  

I am not complaining about the return to the old ways, just feeling a tad disappointed.  I am already not a signed, sealed and delivered member of the church and likely never will be so I will keep my mouth shut and not tell a bunch of those people my own personal feelings. To avoid drawing attention to ourselves, it all just means that we likely will not attend church there on Communion Sundays any more, neither having to not partake of the elements, nor sitting near the back of the church so we can slip out relatively unnoticed at that point in the service....both of which WILL be noticed, commented on, asked about and trying to explain it never works well we have found in times past. With mhy husband being an Anglican priest, the assumption , based on past experiences there, would be that his personal spiritual beliefs are why we are not partaking any more and that would be wrong, but people believe what they want sometimes without bothering to ask. We all do that, right? Making assuptions about other peoples' actions?  Of course we do. I am just as guilty sometimes.

Hmmmm.....guess we will see how this works out over the coming months. Hopefully everyone will be very happy with this arrangement and hopefully no one will notice our once a month disappearing act. If it wasn't for all the questions and incorrect assumptions, we would simply sit through the Communion and just not partake, but if you attend a church of any kind you know that is not how it works. hahahahahahaha

We have a few inches of new snow, but there hasn't been much for blizzard conditions within the city limits. Our neighbour came over and shovelled off our back deck so we could get our back door open easily and tomorrow it will be our turn to do the same for her. We have a great arrangement going on here between us.  The snow has been falling since last night, but isn't building up too badly. With the cessation of the strongest winds overnight there are few large drifts, so that is a mercy.  It will be bitterly cold tomorrow, so we will dress warmly and each grab a shovel to take care of our neighbour's deck and to clear a  path to both her and our vehicles.  It will be wonderful exercise!!  The only exercise I got today was, oh for shame, FINALLY ironing the clothes I washed NINE days ago!!!!  Tomorrow or the next day I have to do laundry once again, so at least I finally completed last week's work! Aii yii...