New Fun And Games For Moi!

 My dear husband spent several hours of his day yesterday taking off games from my computer. I played and mostly completed all of them, so no point in having them any more. Then he downloaded 20 "new" games....as in they are actually ancient and now freebie games...but to me they are new and the now old fashioned graphics are just fine with me.  Mostly they are all derivatives of games of Mah Jongg, so they are the sort of mindless games that amuse me when I don't have the strength to think about much. Strategy games I don't play any more.  I don't feel well and want to have fun without having to think.  Sad, but true these days.  I have tried the first levels of several of the games and they all fit the bill. It will take me 5 years to complete them as I play games on and off over periods of months, so my husband is safe from having to spend any more time downloading games for me for a very long time. 

We decided yesterday that we would try to do one housework job each day until we are better so that the dust and carpet lint don't do us right in.  Today we managed to do the upstairs flooring and remove the dust from a few pieces of the furniture.  I will finish up my portion of the dusting after lunch. At this rate it is going to take us a whole week to clean the house at all properly and then it will be time to start again, but at least we are getting a start on it. Doing two loads of laundry yesterday put me right to sleep afterward and I am feeling zonked from running the vaccuum so my friends who warned me how tired I might remain, even when nearly free of the other symptoms, have turned out to be right and I am glad they warned me ahead of time.

One upside for me in regard to the present Canada Post strike is that it appears I will not have to send out any Christmas cards this year.  Yay!  I don't really mind the expense or the time consumed preparing a letter, addressing envelopes etc., but what on earth could I put in a letter this year that would be at all uplifting or interesting?  We packed boxes, then didn't move.  We didn't get our new car.  We got COVID.  Whoopee!  So, I won't mind at all if this is a card-free Christmas season.  Baa Humbug?  No, not really, just being practical.  If people want to be bored out of their minds with my annual "news" they can read my blog posts.  

I think I will test again on Monday or Tuesday and see where I am at with the COVID.  My symptoms are nearly gone today, just the tiredness and occasional cough remain. The sinuses seem to have dried out now and are not causing any more grief.  Here's hoping for a negative result.

48 hours from now the weather is supposed to be substantially warmer for at least a week!  Warmth putting us up to 0 degrees and slightly above will definitely mean more snow, but I will take the snow in exchange for no more -27C for awhile.

Entering The Next Stage Of Healing….At Last!!

 I am encouraged today! This morning I discovered the inflammation in my sinuses had decreased significantly and for the first time in nearly two weeks I was able to get rid of some of the phlegm in there. Yippee!! I haven’t coughed since sometime yesterday! Whoo Hoo!  My husband is also coughing less and his fuzzy brain is clearing. His tastebuds are starting to come back slowly, yay!!

So today it becomes more important than ever to stay warm and relaxed so we don’t relapse. For me this stage is crucial any time I have had a viral infection. Don’t go outside in the cold, keep resting and don’t strain my energy by overdoing! 

There is hope after all! hahaha

Happy American Thanksgiving To You!

It is delightfully sunny, cold, but not much wind, so to me this is a rather stellar winter day.  Not being able to get out to run errands just yet makes the sunshine an even more special joy. From the upstairs windows I have a clear view of the blue sky and its few scattered clouds.  It is nearly 4pm and in about an hour the sun will be half way to set, so I want to sit here at my desk, bathed in sunshine so I can enjoy it while it lasts.  My husband is having his late afternoon nap and all is quiet here at home.

We received a delightful phone call from our son and his partner in NYC this afternoon.  They are so worried that we still have COVID symptoms.  Once we are better we won't hear from them so often, I am sure, but wow, it has been quite amazing the amount of time they have spent checking in on us.  Very sweet indeed.....  It has been raining most of the day in their fair city, so the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade was looking a tad soggy when I caught a glimpse of it while channel surfing this morning.  What a whoop de doo that parade is every year.  If I was in the small child to pre-teen stage I would love being there.  I found the commentary interesting.  The two women and fellow doing it were very good, as parade commentators go, but oh my....the entire scripted part of their performance was advertising the various movies, tv shows represented by the floats, as well as the upcoming record deals of the live performers and on and on...an incredible amount of advertising throughout the parade as well as the usual retail commercials in between every float it seemed like.  It was rather tiresome to me the viewer so between that and my general lack of interest in parades of any kind, I only watched for about ten minutes.  Our "kids" are going to Aunty's place for dinner with other family and friends tonight, so yesterday was what I have learned is the usual cooking frenzy prior to big celebratory meals at Aunty's house.  I am so happy our son is connected to and accepted by a good family there.

My huge accomplishment today was ironing the clothes I washed last Sunday!  Took me long enough eh?  But it felt good to be well enough to do something useful today.  Admittedly it is because lunch was provided by friends....the leftovers of the delicious beef vegetable soup and baking powder biscuits they delivered last evening.  Not having to prepare lunch gave me the energy for the ironing and there wasn't that much to iron anyway.  

Let's see...what else have I accomplished today?  Oh yes....after many tries and using up all but my last two lives in an old computer game, I finally completed the middle part of the final level in the whole game.  If I am fortunate enough to think and move the pieces around on the board more quickly for this next round I may just complete the entire game.  It is the last one not yet completed of a number of games my husband downloaded for me a couple of years ago.  I play computer games in "fits and spurts" as my mother used to say.  They sit completely ignored for months and then one day I decide I am too tired of reading and tv and crossword puzzles and away I go with computer games. Yesterday and today have been two of those days.  Maybe I will try and complete the current round tomorrow...and maybe I will try again in the new year...who knows?

Guess it is time to put some thought into what to prepare for dinner tonight.  There was quite a lot of delicious, chunky beef in the leftover soup we ate at lunch, so perhaps we can go more vegetarian for dinner. I want to dry fry my favourite leftovers: mashed potatoes, purple cabbage with onions and apples, and a scoop of corn niblets. Add just a touch of butter and freshly ground pepper when they come out of the pan and YUMMY! Oh stop gagging Thomas, just stop gagging!! I can hear you from here! hahahaha

Aaaaaaand, Less Than 48 Hours Later.....

 My hard fought snow shovelling battle is almost lost as fresh, fluffy white snow has nearly filled the path in once again.  I did manage to find my way along the remains of it earlier this morning so I could get my rent into the office, but certainly did need the ice pick on the end of my cane to navigate the pathway and then snail pace my way across the parking lot to the rental office drop box.  

I was disappointed to wake up at 5:30am with the realization that I wasn't going to go back to sleep, so I flipped open my iPad and lo and behold immediately found the live coverage of the World Junior Diving Competition in Rio de Janiero.  The granddaughter of some friends of ours is one of the competitors and the live feed came on just as she was about to make her first dive.  She had 40 competitors from around the world, but managed to do extremely well.  Truly it is an international competition with North Americans, Europeans, Asians....just an incredible field of talented young people.  To see a young Canadian do so well in such a tough sport in a very tough field of competitors was a wonderful experience.  

No change for the better in my husband's or my symptoms today. On the bright side, no change means no change for the worse either!! Some of our prayer warriors are dropping off wonderful soup and sourdough biscuits tonight and we couldn't be more thankful.  We have a lot of very caring friends and you really do find out just how very many when an illness strikes. The number of people praying for us is phenomenal.

Oh my goodness, the sun is trying very hard right now to peep through the grey clouds!  It hasn't totally succeeded yet, but wow, how marvellous to see any lightening of the skies at this chilly time of year!!

Still Positive....Rats!!

 It has been 9 days since we first tested ourselves for COVID and as expected we both tested positive again today.  Guess we will wait another week and test again if the coughing and stuffy noses are finally cleared up.  Will we ever be able to go out by ourselves to run errands ever again??? hahahaha Of course we will but some days it seems unlikely we will ever get out of this suite for more than shovelling the path to the car we can't take anywhere. hahaha  As I have been researching the most recent variants, it seems that we likely have the KP.2 variant, also know as Covid FLirT.  My husband had every single symptom for his whole first week and I had only about four of them. The vaccination we had was for KP.3 but was able to mitigate our symptoms according to the administering pharmacist.  Thank goodness for THAT!!! I know I still have some sinus issues, but overall I have had a much easier time of it than my husband has.  Now his CFS has also kicked in due to the strain on his immune system, so it could be months before he feels well again even if the Covid departs in another week or two.  I feel terrible for him because I know what he goes through with CFS and he was doing so fantastically well with it for several months, probably the best he has done in years, until he got hit with that sneaky Covid virus.  Praying like mad that feeling lousy ever minute of every day doesn't have to become a way of life for him again and he can get his health back within the next month or so.  From my mouth to God's ears.....Amen! 

I don't think the grey skies and snow cover and leafless, dead looking trees are helping our moods much.  The car is plugged in, although I have shut off the power fuse inside the house....guess we cleaned the vehicle off yesterday and plugged it in with hopes that it will be sooner rather than later that we can head out across the city once again.  I wonder how many more times I will have to carve out a pathway to the car with a shovel before it will actually serve some use to us.  

One nice thing about being stuck indoors is not having any stress regarding deadlines.  No social stress, that's for sure. My husband did just fine during the original Covid closures and he is doing fine in that respect now.  He has a newspaper article due by tonight but that isn't a firm deadline because the editor knows how ill he has been and granted him a couple of more days to sent it in.  He has an online commitment the first weekend of December as part of his posting to the pre and post ordination mentoring committee and just before Christmas he has one sermon to deliver at church.  Hardly strenuous, but he is working on these things for a little while each day between naps and meals.  I am proud of him for not panicking about these few commitments, just plugging away as he feels able.  God bless him.  

Emails and blog posts and phone calls are keeping me in the social loop at least a bit, so that is very nice.  A gift assortment from a friend out of province has provided me with another book to read as soon as I complete the one I am reading presently.  There are a few old shows cropping up on tv that I am enjoying occasionally. So, I am doing fine too.  The muscle relaxants are still working for my hip pain and I have decided not to be concerned about what comes after I can't use those any more until the situation arises.  Therefore, I am sleeping well most nights.  

Life's a beach!  No, seriously!  It is.  No one is dropping bombs on me, I am not starving, our home has not been flooded out, we have Covid not E-Coli, our kids are happy and healthy and doing well.  It is all good.

An Hour Of Winter Normalcy Today! YAY!

 I had a marvellous morning!  Although it was -22C after I finished my breakfast, there was hardly a breeze outside, so I suited up like a chubby cartoon penguin and waddled outside with the shovel to begin the arduous process of shovelling a path out to our car.  It took 3 sessions to clear a shovel bucket wide path of snow.  Of the approximately 60 foot distance I accomplished a whole 5 feet in the first go before I pooped out completely.  hahaha  Second attempt an hour and a half later got me another nearly 40 feet and the third attempt after lunch got me the rest of the way to the car. By then I was feeling quite good, so I also pried the iced over car doors open and turned the key in the ingnition to see if it would start after sitting unused for 10 days, the last three of which have been desperately cold and the car was not plugged in.  The motor groaned and moaned for a few seconds, but then it caught and VRRRRRROOOOOOM....away it went.  YAY!  I turned the heat, fan and rear window defroster on and sat for about ten minutes inside the car resting while the ice on the windows melted sufficiently to pull the windshield wiper blades up and wipe the water from the melted ice off of them.  The bit of rest gave me the energy to pull some of the snowdrift out from behind the car and also more icy snow that was built up in a thick drift encasing all the tires.  Tomorrow morning when (in the hope that I test negative) I can get out to pick up two things we are in desperate need of.  I have cabin fever so badly it is pathetic. I mean, I lasted for nearly 18 straight months indoors during the initial COVID outbreak and survived just fine so.....what the heck??!! The two things I need involve no contact pick up, so it shouldn't be a problem and I won't have to worry about infecting anyone. Plus I have a brand new mask to try out!  I never before have so looked forward to a short drive across the city after a major snowstorm has destroyed the driving conditons! hahahahaha

We watched the November Sumo Tournament final  bouts this morning as soon as they became available for download from NHK Broadcasting.  As disappointed as I was for the loser of that final bout, Hoshoryu who wanted his second Emperor's Cup so badly, I was equally thrilled for the winner, Kotozakura to win his first cup in his 9 years of competition.  At the next Basho in January, if he does very well, he will be up for promotion to Yokozuna. Perhaps if he can fulfill that dream then the present and only Yokozuna, Terunofuji will feel he can retire and deal with his many serious health issues.  All the best sumo wrestlers!  I do look forward to the next Basho.

It is coming up to 4:40pm now and the sun is halfway down to the horizon already.  Welcome to almost December when the short number of daylight hours is the most depressing to me. December and January both....terribly cold weather and darkness to both begin and end each day for me....that is assuming I am awake each day earlier than I was this morning: 9am!!  Good grief the good sleeps of the last couple of nights are taking a toll on my wanted number of hours to boogie about during the day! hahaha  Okay, okay, between COVID and the icy outdoors and my deteriorating hip, "boogie" is a comparative term, I agree. hohohoho!!

We Got A Lot Of Snow This Week.....Yup, Yup, Yup......

With the amount of snow we have and the now howling winds piling it up in even deeper piles all over the place, on top of what will now be overnight lows colder than -20C, winter is officially upon us:

Winter 2024/2025 Voila!!

We are supposed to be driving to a small community on the Saskatchewan/Manitoba border six days from now to attend an ordination for a person my husband has been partly responsible for mentoring, but between our health and now the condition of the highways we will not be able to go.  I don't know if I am only disappointed or also slightly relieved as even on the nicest looking days of winter with dry highways, the weather can turn unexpectedly nasty so quickly.  We have had our share of such trips and are not up for another.  

My husband's recovery has plateau'd for the past couple of days. I hope and pray he feels noticeably better tomorrow because he is feeling quite discouraged today. Once again I find myself marginally better than the day before and if I am careful not to overdo, (in which case perhaps you should skip the next paragraph....), I think I will continue to recover well.

Today I hauled myself through knee high snow across the back yard from our deck to the parking lot so I could broom off the huge snowcap covering our car.  It seemed to take forever. The deep snow nearly toppled me a couple of times heading to the car and the sudden onset of gale force winds on the way back across the yard after I was done forced me to use the broom as a cane to get me back to the house.  Fortunately I stayed upright but wow, I am so tired. Looking at the piles of snow already behind our car and on each side of it, it is going to take us all day to get it dug out when we are finally healthy enough to do so. The main parking lot area has been ploughed, but the ploughs can't risk getting too close behind the vehicles in case they collide. Thankfully we won't need to go anywhere for awhile and certainly not before we test negative for Covid....hopefully in a few days?  I am ever so grateful that the muscle relaxants are working to the point where I can haul myself outside for a brief time of sweeping or shovelling with much less pain than I was having previously.  I detest taking meds long term, but sometimes a person doesn't have much choice.

Life is rarely boring, is it? And that's a wonderful thing even when some of the details are less than wonderful.

To Brighten Your Stormy Day!

 My friend who still had pansies blooming in her outdoor flower pots this past week, sent me this lovely photo taken the day before our first storm to cheer me up...pansies are my favourite flower and purple pansies are the best.  Maybe this photo will gladden your heart as much as it did mine!

Pansy blooming in mid-November in Regina!

And now our second snow storm has arrived.  The snow started around 4:30pm and by 9am I had over three inches of fresh snow to shovel off the back porch in hopes that it will be at least a bit easier to open the back door in the morning. However, I am guessing there will be enough snow to make that nearly impossible, particularly if the wind gets blowing overnight.  The idea of having to haul myself out the front door onto the more protected little porch there and slogging with my shovel through the deep snowdrifts around the building to the back porch to clear snow away from the back door is less than thrilling but, joy of joys, I have Covid so have nowhere to go anyway, sooooo the snowdrift busting on foot can wait until I am feeling well and testing negative again.....YIPPEE!!  In this weather there are certain happinesses associated with being stuck at home! Right? Of course right!

A Small Dose Of Fresh Air!

 After both of us having a nice, mostly cough free night with 8 hours of sleep, we are feeling on the road to being human again.  My husband still has less relief from his Covid symptoms than I do at this point, but he was determined to break out of the suite for the minute and a half required to transport our garbage bags to the outdoor bin across the parking lot.  The temperature is cold, although hardly bitter, so he put on his marvellously warm Canadian Armed Forces parka, two pair of socks and mitts and even toques, then his boots and away he went.  I noticed he took his time coming back and even took another minute to sweep as much loose snow from the last snowstorm off our car before he rather grudgingly returned indoors.  He knew better than to exert the energy required to remove the thick ice deposited on the windows. The poor guy has felt so caged for the past week. I get it.  I took a moment to step outside onto the deck in my warm Mark's Comfy Robe and a pair of boots so that I could also experience just a small taste of frosty, fresh air.  It felt GOOOOOOD!!  

Then I came inside for a warm shower and fresh clothes. Today I had the oomph to put a bit of product on my hair and blow it dry after not bothering this past week to do anything with it after washing it. That is encouraging to me.

We both made the bed properly for the first time in several days and my husband spent some time working on a newspaper article he needs to turn in by next Tuesday.

Apparently we are both making a bit of progress toward getting over this virus' attack.  YAY!  This afternoon, if I ever get to eating my lunch at nearly 2pm, I am going to wash one load of my clothes and then by tomorrow I am going to start some mild physio exercises to try to keep my hip and leg muscles from atrophying any further while I await phase 2 of the process for getting hip replacements.  I am appalled by how quickly I am losing muscle mass despite the amount of walking and going up and down stairs I was able to maintain until fairly recently.  Time to get going on restoring it to make surgical recovery easier later on.  

So, enough about that!!  Last night I had the most cheery phone call with some super close friends.  One has been selected for a new position in her workplace and she is quite jazzed about that. She starts soon and I am delighted for her.  Another was recently diagnosed with cancer at a beginning stage, but has been able to secure a surgery date already for just before Christmas....a near miracle in this city with the disasterous loss of so many oncologists here recently.  It was good to get some good news for a change from struggling friends.  Another out of town friend emailed to say that a long and torturous renovation project on her and her husband's new home is pretty  much done and they moved in a couple of days ago. They both have some health issues that preclude any heavy lifting on their part, so many of their friends arrived to help them unpack after the movers delivered their things.  They are a pair in need of some support due to their health issues and their friends, particularly from their church, have so gladly stepped up to help them.  After a previously dismal experience of living in the same town they are in now, moving away for  few years and then having to return, I am very very pleased they are having such a positive experience this time around. Thank you God.

AND, the most joyous event of all was receiving a phone call from our son and his partner just because they have been worried about us and wondering if we are getting any more healthy than the last time we talked.  They are a caring pair and are learning so much about how to make more outward expressions of their love for people since their own love for each other has grown over the past few years. It was a lovely way for us to end our evening, but I admit we were then both too excited to fall asleep at a decent time. hahaha  Parents, eh?  Yeesh.....haha

Now we are just awaiting the big snowstorm on the way from Montana via Alberta.  Over less than 24 hours it is predicted the storm will move from western AB right across all of SK to the Manitoba border!  That means super wind....yikes...so happy we can just remain at home for a few more days until we test negative for Covid and start being able to get out at least long enough to accomplish necessary chores, although it will be longer than that before we start socializing again and when we do, we will be masking for the rest of the winter.  Such is life! No more lackadaisical approaches to staying healthy for the rest of this winter!! Amen!

 

And Then There's The 5 Hour Sleep! HAHAHA!!!

 I was so hoping for another LOOOOONG sleep again last night, but it wasn't meant to be.  I slept from 11pm until 1am then sat up staring at the walls until 4am, when finally I fell asleep again until just after 7am.  My poor husband didn't fare much better.  In times past when we have had respiratory illnesses that sudden sleepless night part way through has often meant our immune systems have kicked back into high gear and are fighting for our bodies and that appears to have been the case last night. While both of us are still feeling somewhat wretched overall, the various individual symptoms have made the most progess toward going away than they have thus far.  Now we pray we can just remain calm, not do too much around here and keep ourselves from becoming so overly exhausted that we end up relapsing.....oooh, so difficult for us both. Lying around is not what either of us enjoys, but it is necessary in this case.  

After a bit more snow overnight and a grey, ugly looking sky this morning, now, just after 1pm, the sun is showing up in patches between the cloud formations.  It is lovely to see that brightness...so uplifting for mind and soul.  Bring on the sunshine despite the very cold temperatures.....c'mon sunshine...stay with us!!

Oh I am so looking forward to getting well and getting out of this suite!

And now off to heat up some of that delicious veggie soup we received yesterday.  Tonight we will make hamburgers because the buns our friends also brought are still fresh and crying to be used on burgers. Since my husband's ability to taste has returned and the metallic tang has left him, he is very excited about a burger for dinner tonight.  The remains of the chicken and pasta will be for lunch tomorrow as I have some pasta sauce in the freezer.  We have been revelling in this unexpected treat. 

This afternoon I am going to have a hot shower and then wrap up in my winter duvet and try to have a nap to make up for last night's short and frustrating sleep(lessness).

How Healing Is An 11 Hour Sleep???

Today is the first day in the past three or four that neither my husband or myself was tempted to pray to ask God to just take us and get it over with. Neither of us has felt so miserably miserable in many a year.  However, today we are not quite so miserable and any improvement is notable to us.

We both slept for over 11 hours last night. I don't remember the last time I had my beside light turned off before 9pm, but I had no trouble flopping into bed with a miserably stuffed set of drippy sinuses, a fever, sore kidneys and other aches and pains.  AND the deep, raspy cough that frustrated me all day long and well into the night. Don't forget my last cold or illness of any kind was in 2019, so this Covid bout seems horrendous to me even though many other friends and family have had far worse symptoms than I have had. 

This morning I felt the fever break and that has held steady for most of the day, just starting up again now, a little after 5pm.  After yesterday's bout of intense fever heat bathing my entire self, it was good to have a break from it today.  My husband is also a bit better today.  He managed to make his own breakfast this morning, waiting for me to get up and moving, and then dear friends from church dropped off a huge carton of chicken vegetable soup with noodles and chicken, buns and cheese.  That is making the rest of today's meals super easy to get. Now that the leftovers we have been living on for the past five days are about gone, the addition of that soup and buns is just fabulous.  We can wait another couple of days before we have to cook something again ourselves.  We have lots of food, just haven't had the energy to cook much of it.  Another friend dropped off home made bread and the most interesting orange marmalade I have ever eaten....did I already share this?  The marmalade had a few small peppercorns and acai berries in it and wow, it is the most delicious marmalade I have ever eaten.  We feel so very spoiled with food deliveries, multiple emails and calls to check up on us....it is incredibly humbling.  We are so thankful for friends.

My walking partner also came down with COVID this week.  She is not well at all and I wish I could relieve her of the stupid virus.  This is the last thing she needs in her very busy family and work life.  Praying for her fer shur!

Please and thank you for your prayers for Nan as she adjusts to the loss of Cee. To me she is coping remarkably well despite the deeply intense grief, but I know her husband is present in her mind every minute of the day, so it makes life difficult to cope with sometimes.  So many memories everywhere she looks, everywhere she goes around town.  She is like me....her husband has been her soul mate and losing him is unbearable in many ways.

I am glad I forced myself to do two loads of laundry yesterday, fresh sheets and jammies are always a good thing to have, but even just those six trips up and down a couple of flights of stairs was too much for me. Within an hour after the last load I didn't even have the strength to carry the last basket up to the bedroom, so my sweet husband dragged it up for me. Bless him as he wasn't feeling much better than I was.  

I am looking forward to my cough subsiding even more tomorrow as it hopefully will, but we are both learning that recovering from this virus is not a straight line from illness to healing, not like colds and 'flu's.  Interesting times.....

The OTHER Big C Has Finally Arrived At Our House, Sigh.....

We have tested positive for Covid....drat!  However, it is our first time having this virus in the more than four years since its arrival in the world, so we can't complain too much, right?  Our son is one of the few people left that we know who has not had it yet.  It is just our turn.  We relaxed our vigilance immediately after receiving our boost vaccination a couple of weeks ago and, like the rest of the people around here, we have relaxed our stringent adherence to mask wearing in large public gatherings, have not been sanitizing our hands quite as obsessively as we were, so......we set ourselves up to become ill.  

My husband's symptoms at the moment are far worse than mine with the bad sore throat and headache along with the horrific coughing.  Personally I am quite "content" to only deal with sore, stuffy sinuses and a bad cough.  His food tastes yukky to him and my taste buds are still working pretty well.  Oh, I feel so badly for him.  He doesn't deal well with being ill, after over 35 years of dealing with CFS, and Covid virus seems to attack people with underlying immune conditions rather severely.  I am surprised that with my diabetes I am not nearly as ill as he is....yet, anyway.

So, all you Covid survivors out there, my hat is off to you for dealing with it, living through it and my prayer is that none of you have ended up with long Covid.  Apparently it is imperative, according to some doctors, to avoid returning to normal exercise, even long walks, and other energy sapping activities for a number of weeks after testing negative again.  Don't know how true that is, but I think we will adhere to that once we are feeling better, just in case.

It is great to see the sunshine and blue skies today after our big snow and ice storm, but the wind is still very strong and has blown in our back deck again. Twice I have been standing in the open doorway pushing the snow back with the shovel, just to be able to get the door open at all.  I am going to have to "suit up" again and shovel the entire deck, but am not looking forward to it.  The wind is still blowing from the north and swirling the already fallen snow from the drifts on the ground back across our deck.  So, I think I will be out there at least twice today clearing more 8 inch piles of the white stuff.  I can't do the steps so I pray they don't detach from the porch from the weight of the snow.  Aaaaah, winter.....  I feel for friends on Vancouver Island who are likely under a power outage from high winds and rain.  Apparently on the mainland Stanley Park is closed as the roads through the area are covered in downed trees and the hotel we stayed at earlier this year is under threat of some flooding.  Wow....all I have to worry about is clearing a few inches of blowing snow...I am actually most blessed! Amen!!

Our Prairie Weather Is A Skilled Quick Change Artist!!

Well, the weather has pulled its usual stunt transitioning from late autumn to total winter within a day.  Here is the overnight transition in photos:

Beautiful late afternoon sunset

First Thing This Morning!

Shovelling the deck before breakfast so it doesn't pull right off the building.

DONE!  Brrrrr!!!!

And Inside The House The Greenery Encourages The Hope Of Spring!

 

I confess I did not shovel off the steps or a path to the car.  To do the steps was too dangerous as they were so ice covered and I was afraid I would fall without my cane for support.  Since my husband is so ill he was unable to come outside to assist me, but he was able to stand for a few seconds in the doorway with his parka and mitts and toque on to take the photos.  Since I am showing the first real signs of the same illness he is dealing with there was no point in shovelling off the steps or a pathway to the car because we won't be going anywhere for a loooong time!  If you are living in a stormy winter wonderland as well, please stay safe and warm and stay off the highways if at all possible. 

Oh Wow!! Winter Has Finally Hit Saskatchewan!!

 As predicted, a large storm system is hovering over most of our province, east, north, and south of the Number One highway at Swift Current. Apart from a strip along the Alberta border and a few spots very far north, every highway in this province is reporting itself to be either partially or completely covered in freezing rain, slush and snow. As the snowfall thickens, the temperature continues to drop and the wind speed rises I am guessing most of Saskatchewan’s highways will be completely shut down by morning. 

If ever there was a perfect week for us to be stuck at home fighting colds and ‘flu it is this one. Yippee!! We are certainly not going to be tempted to leave home before we are completely healed, that’s for sure! 

Interesting Answer To A Question........

 

My philosphical husband at past job interviews....sigh.....

Henry Rollins Captured My Own Feelings

We have moved so many times in the past 25 years that I am feeling rather rootless and disconnected as life marches on.  Losing most of our family members and many close friends in the areas we lived longer term prior to beginning all the years of moving is not helping me feel an ongoing sense of connectedness to any place I can truly call "HOME".  The writing below by Henry Rollins sums up my feelings well:

"Someday, I would like to go home. The exact location of this place, I don't know, but someday I would like to go. There would be a pleasing feeling of familiarity and a sense of welcome in everything I saw. People would greet me warmly. They would remind me of the length of my absence and the thousands of miles I had travelled in those restless years, but mostly, they would tell me that I had been missed, and that things were better now I had returned.  Autumn would come to this place of welcome, this place I would know to be home.  Autumn would come and the air would grow cool, dry and magic, as it does that time of the year.

At night, I would walk the streets but not feel lonely, for these are the streets of my home town.  These are the streets that I had thought about while far away, and now I was back, and all was as it should be. The trees and the falling leaves would welcome me. I would look up at the moon, and remember seeing it in countries all over the world as I had restlessly journeyed for decades, never remembering it looking the same as when viewed from my home town."  --Henry Rollins

Yes, I would love to have a place to return to that would be home in my heart, but such a place at this time does not exist....the most obvious city of choice still stands but the former beauty and most all the friends and family are now gone.  It will be interesting to see how my longing for home eventually turns out. It makes me think of Jim Reeves old gospel hymn "This World Is Not My Home".

Please Stop Massacring Our National Anthem!!!!

 

I am cringing right now listening to a dear young woman, who actually does have a rather pretty voice, destroy our national anthem at the beginning of today’s Grey Cup game. Dear girl, our national anthem is not a lullaby. It does not require the use of a chamber orchestra, nor sliding notes, nor added trills, nor other ridiculous embellishments of any kind….trust me!! Please, please all you who sing the National Anthem at sporting and other events, just sing the blessed anthem the way it is written!! The rest of us are not there to listen to you put on a stage or recording worthy vocal performance, we are there for the actual event and expect our national anthem to be respected. I am tired of our National Anthem being so disrespected. It was written for Canadian audiences to honour our country and show our patriotism by all being able to sing it together….in unity as fellow Canadians. 

Stop messing with O Canada!

Just! Stop! It!

Mom Would Have Been 97 Years Old Today…..

Today is the anniversary of my mother’s birth. Had she lived she would have been 97 today.  Dad would have turned 98 this coming January. I try not to spend too much time thinking about the last couple of years of both their lives because things became so difficult for each of them, but lately I have been because we have been losing another round of friends through death, severe health crises and moving away to be closer to their families.  We are realizing how very alone one of us will be here if the other departs first; a terrifying thought. It isn’t that we would have no friends left, but the absence from our daily lives of any family at all is a daunting thought. Our only child lives thousands of kilometres away in another country and that is the extent of our close family.  If we didn’t have Jesus to depend on the worries regarding aging and our current city of residence would be overwhelming. Whew!! We are actually not so alone then after all! Hallelujah!!

I am grateful I can still manage the stairs in our place. I will be able to wait on my husband a bit today so he can stay in bed and nurse his cold stricken self!! He had a wretched night with very little sleep so won’t be up and about much today. Awwww, he is so stoic when he feels ill. Wish I could be like that instead of being a wimpy wingey sort. 

Colds Season Has Hit Us Too!

My poor dear husband has his first cold since January of 2020! I feel so badly for him as he lathers his nose and throat with Vicks VapoRub, drinks copious amounts of water, pops powdered vitamin C into his mouth and puts new boxes of tissues in every room in the house. His sinuses are plugged, his throat is sore, and he has chills. My last cold was sometime back in 2018, but I feel like I too am coming down with this cold…..of all infections my most miserable!! I would rather have a bad bout of gastroenteritis to be honest, because it only lasts a few days usually, unlike a cold that can drag on for weeks. My lungs are especially vulnerable to any kind of respiratory illness symptoms, so I am hoping like crazy my own cold symptoms will be mild. Please Lord, deliver my husband from this affliction. The current infections making the rounds these days are bad, I hear. Well, it is just our turn, that’s all, after years of being free of these things. Although we had our COVID boosters a few weeks ago, we also have a few test kits left that are not yet expired, so in another day or two my husband will test himself to be sure what he has is “just” a cold.

So, it is a very good thing that we accomplished so many errands over the last week and filled the house with groceries, as we could be stuck inside for quite some time. We will be watching church on Zoom tomorrow and cancelling our attendance at a church event or two mid week. How fortunate that we have no other scheduled appointments next week. Now I am thankful I forgot to phone the salon today for a haircut next week. Whew!! 

Well, a week or so of having to rest at home isn’t all bad. Today my husband cooked a huge pot of soup using broth and meat we stored in the freezer after our recent turkey dinner and I made an apple and coconut pudding to give my husband a dessert treat as a way of saying how sorry I am that he has a cold. 

This too shall pass. I am beyond grateful that this will be my first cold in six YEARS!!!! 

I Think My Husband MAY Be Onto Something!! HAHAHA!!

 My husband and I have been wondering how on earth our presently re-elected provincial premiere, Mr. Moe, could have managed to get himself back into office for a 5th straight term and my husband figured out the answer:

It was the undecided voters that did it!  They looked down the list of candidates and went "Eenie, Meenie, Miney...... ......Hmmmm.......Okay, MOE!!" haha

I am wiped out physically after such a busy week and am VERY grateful I have no stressful committments already set up for the rest of the weekend.  Spontaneous committments that arise of course I am always thrilled by and suddenly feel, in such circumstances, much less exhausted and ready to go have more fun!  Yup!!  I have a great deal of gratitude that my muscle relaxants, coupled with deep breathing exercises, are working sufficiently well thus far to keep the pain at a low level that only makes me a little bit crabby....most of the time....often...sometimes....ask my husband how I am doing with that, hohoho....

This morning we completed our huge grocery shop.  Nearly one thousand dollars later we will only be buying dairy and produce each week for a very long time to come. I think I am in "winter nesting" mode. All the food storage and household supply cabinets and shelves and refrigerator and freezer are crammed full. YAY!!! I LOVE IT!! It makes me feel safe and secure during the storms of winter when getting to a grocery store for any sort of major purchasing is a chore I can't face with any joy. Happy winter cooking to us!

Tonight my husband decided he was craving root vegetables after all the shopping we did.  He prepared and roasted an oven full of onions, cauliflower, parsnips, turnips, potatoes, squash and delicately herb'd sausages, so we feasted well.  Then we sat and watched a couple of tv shows.  Now it is 10pm and we are both too tired to stay awake much longer.

Oh, I must say that our dinner at The Keg last evening with friends was rather fun.  It is SO dark in there that I wonder what sort of culinary disasters they are hiding!!  None of us were able to read the menu properly under the very dim sconce light at our tableside, so my husband whipped out a magnifying glass with a small light on it for our friends to look at the wine menu and choose something to drink. Then we all took turns reading the menus.  My husband and I thought it was all quite hilarious, along with our larger than life server who, despite being a bit of a blatherskite, did take excellent care of us all evening.  My food was average, but the standout item on my plate of prime rib, (oooh yeah...way too much fat, even for prime rib), with twice roasted stuffed potato and green beans with beets, was....drum roll please......the BEETS!!  I am so NOT a fan of beets prepared in any way at all....boiled, oven roasted, mashed, harvard, borscht'd, they are all yukky to me.  However, last evening the beets were so well prepared and so delicious I could hardly believe it.  I ate all of mine....and my husband's as well!  (Never before have I been grateful for his beet allergy!)  

So last night wrapped up our week of feasting away from home.  I think we were taken out for dinner and met up with friends for lunch at SIX different restaurants in as many days....aiiii yiiiii....crazy.  Unreal....and it never gets old for me, unfortunately.  I am sure my tummy is totally rejoicing in the plain prairie fare it was able to be filled with this evening at dinner.  I didn't even put any butter or mayonnaise or anything else on my veggies.  Roasted vegetables taste so fantastic that I don't even need salt or pepper on them.  I grew up on boiled vegetables and no wonder I refused to eat veggies for the first 30 or more years of my life. I had no idea they could be cooked properly in the oven! hahaha Okay, so I admit I am not a cook.

Looking forward to maybe sleeping in tomorrow morning.  I don't have to set the alarm for once and I don't have to rush off anywhere.  So happy.......AND still no snow!! All the shopping and socializing was completed in the still mostly dry weather. G-R-A-T-E-F-U-L!

"The Rain Is Raining All Around.....

 ......it falls on hill and tree,

It rains on the umbrellas here,

And on the ships at sea."

--RAIN by Robert Louis Stevenson

It is raining this morning, constantly and steadily....there is a fair amount of water accumulating on the street outside our house right now.  Apparently it will be raining until about 5pm, but fortunately the temperature will not drop below 0  until around 11pm-12am.  Praying and hoping this forecast is true because we are going out for a late dinner with friends tonight and by the time we get our meal and have an extended visit the time will be ticking on toward 10pm I am sure.  I don't want my husband having to skate alone across the parking lot at the restaurant to get the car so he can pick the rest of us up at the door to keep US from falling down on the ice.  Thank you once again God that we and our friends seem to be able to be blessed by the timing of various rain and snow showers as we travel about the city.

Yesterday was a very productive day, in nice warm weather with lots of sunshine and only a bit of a wind blowing us about.  My husband had a meeting early in the morning, then we got into line at the nearest polling station to vote in our civic election.  As expected the mayoral candidate we voted for did not get in, not even close, and the city councillor we voted for came second in our ward, so didn't get in either.  That was a bit of a discouragement, but not truly unexpected of course.  What was cheering is that there was a far, far better turnout at the polls than at the previous civic election.  YAY!!!  We waited and waited and waited in what was not a particularly long line up at the polling station, partly because the electronic vote counter wasn't working properly, partly because one of the pollsters didn't seem to know how to operate the computer programme to confirm the voter registrations and partly because we just happened to have the misfortune of being in line behind a whole group of people who had to change their contact information to remain eligible to cast their ballot.  Sigh....well, my hip and GOOD leg got a nearly one hour workout anyway and today I am none the worse for wear.  Going to the pharmacy for a prescription next helped make up for the poll lineup because, most unusually, there was not one person ahead of me in the PICK UP line. Wow!  I don't think that has happened to me at that particular pharmacy more than a couple of times in the past nearly ten years!!  YAY!!  

Off next to the Wholesale Club for apples and potatoes....nearly two hundred and fifteen dollars later we left with half our grocery list purchased and we decided to go next to the east side Superstore to purchase the rest of the items on the list.   However, by this time it was well past my lunch time, so we stopped in at Birmingham's east for dill pickle soup and chicken dishes....weeeeeeelllll, the service was spectacular as always and the meals very tasty indeed, but there seemed to be a problem with our order and we waited over half an hour for it. When it finally came our chicken had the texture of soft rubber. The server confirmed it was not water chilled, so our conclusion is that whatever the kitchen problem was resulted in the chef not cooking the chicken long enough to separate the fibres in the meat properly.  Rather than go through another long wait, we were too hungry to send it back, but the waitress decided to talk to the manager when he returned from his break. Hopefully she did, because we really enjoy Birmingham's east and are looking forward to our next visit, but that rubbery chicken has to be addressed.  We don't want to lose a favourite place to eat because of some kind of issue with chicken!! hahaha

By the time we got our lunch and finished eating, we realized we were far too tired to head out to the Superstore and deal with mid afternoon crowds of shoppers.  So, we opted to try again on Friday morning....hopefully we wake up in time to go at a reasonable hour because Saturday is the worst time to shop retail of any kind due to overcrowding, plus a fairly substantial snowfall is forecast for the day.  It will be a grand day to stay home and do home chores instead of gadding about.

We had a couple of hours of downtime at home instead and then by 5:30pm we were headed to the church to celebrate with a friend who was throwing himself a birthday party.  He and his wife and child are all big gamers, so we arrived to find a full counter of board games of all kinds.  It was a nice mixture of church friends and gamers and how wonderful to be surrounded by younger strangers who are so interesting. Their reasons for being so into gaming are varied and fascinating.  It was an honour to be invited to the party. Our host spent several days cooking three different meat fillings for tacos: beef, pork and chicken; preparing veggies to add into the tacos, grating cheese, putting out bowls of salsa.....it was absolutely delicious!  Unfortunately we had to leave prior to the serving of the dessert....a fantastic tres leches cake.....because we had to get up to the pub to hear other friends' band playing for the first time there.  Due to my mixing up the dates of the two events, we had to squeeze in both in the same night.  However, it is likely just as well. The church chairs are unbearable for my sore hip to sit on for more than about 45 minutes, so after nearly twice that long I was done in.  I was happy to discover the pub chairs are much more comfy.  16 people from the church were part of the welcoming crowd at Bushwakkers and everyone else in the pub seemed to enjoy the evening's entertainment as much as we did.  

After such a busy day, I was pretty hyped up by the time we got home at 9:30pm.  It was impossible to fall asleep, so I climbed into bed and read a book until 1am.  My husband was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow and I envied him that.  I was out like the proverbial light when my alarm rang at 7am to get me into the shower and fed so I could meet another friend for coffee at 9:30am.  (You know, I have discovered that presently the best way to deal with this hip pain is to keep going "hell bent for election", just ignoring the pain until I can't go/take it any more.)

Coffee hour with my friend was good, as it is every time we get together to chat over a cuppa of one kind and another.  Now it is time for a late lunch, hopefully a chat on the phone with my financial advisor this afternoon, then some more rest before our dinner out tonight. At the moment it looks like we have no plans between noon tomorrow and Sunday morning church and we are both aware that a day off the racing about is likely what we need this weekend. Drat!  I so prefer being on the go......

The Artist And The Playwright

 We are delighted that our soon to be daughter in law ("soon" being a relative term) has had the opportunity to produce a major production in NYC recently.  She is a producer for the Elevator Repair Service Theater Company and the production, GATZ, is a nearly 8 hour performance piece including 2 intermissions and a 90 minute dinner hour.  It is a complete rendering of The Great Gatsby and oh, how we would have loved to fly south to see it.  Oh well....  The play has been performed before, but this is its closing month of performances, so we will not get to see it.  It has been fun though learning about it.  Last night we received a lovely photo from outside the theatre, taken for the opening night.  We have no immediate extended family left to enjoy these things with us, so will share here the photo with you dear friends. 

So, I DID Try To Fix The First Line Of The Previous Post.....

 .......but even though the first line of the poem in the entry below this one did show up as being in the same font and colour as the rest of the poem here on my pre-posting page, it refused to maintain that font and colour once I hit "Publish".  My apologies to readers and to the poet himself.  I tried twice to fix it and had no success.  Not the first time this has happened where what I was looking at when I published a post was not the same font or colour or size as what actually posted. Grrrrr......

Apart from that little glitch I was unable to fix up successfully very early this morning, the rest of the day has been good.  The laundry I began yesterday afternoon before being called to the home of a friend for tea and blueberry scones was completed this morning and now I am staring at a rather frightening amount of ironing that must be done this week.  That's what I get for waiting for two weeks without doing any laundry, but my hip was so terribly painful last week that I couldn't face going up and down two flights of stairs for each load.  On the weekend my hip was absolutely fantastic compared to the previous week, but this afternoon the inflammation and painful muscle spasms have begun again.  Well, I am MOST thankful for two full days of nearly painfree existence! Hallelujah for those two days and may there soon be a few more of them.  

I enjoyed watching some short clips about Language today with my husband. It is a series of fifteen minute clips by Dr. John McWhorter as he talks about the history of various changes to the English language since the Old English and Middle English eras.  Today I learned that out of 6000 languages and dialects around the world today, Standard English and about four other languages in small areas of the world, are the only languages that do NOT accept/embrace double negatives.  Double negatives were the standard in Old and Middle English, apparently for the purpose of emphasis.  Some rather snobby and influential English folk back in the 18th century "decided" for the rest of us that changes were needed to English and double negatives became big bugaboos.  So, I won't apologize any more should double negatives appear in my posts....and they already have in a number of instances because, well, just because.  The rest of the world seems to think they are just quite fine, thank you very  much!   I also learned how in so many world languages where subtle and apparently unconscious changes happen over a few years' time, one of the first letters to be lost in pronunciation is the letter "R".  I didn't know that before either.  I am enjoying this series. My husband rented it from the public library and we are both enjoying it very much.  We saw several of them today....are there 24 episodes? 26?  I forget, but they are very, very well done.  There is incredibly interesting information presented often in a very witty manner.  Another of my favourite clips is about the use of plurals and gender appropriate nouns in various languages.  He included the Dinka language as part of his list of examples of how plurals are expressed and he talked about how there are an amazing number of languages that do not use plurals at all.  Fascinating stuff!!  Really, it is.

Two pieces of mail have come in recently to let us know about the cost of certain services going up in December.  Blah!!! We have decided to cancel one of them.  Our rent is set to go up another one hundred dollars a month in January and with my impending double hip surgeries we are tempted to sigh a one year lease again to avoid the next one hundred dollar a month rent increase in June.  It's not like we can move anywhere when I can hardly walk at all, let alone go looking at new accommodations or packing any more "stuff".  Without a lease landords in this province are allowed to raise rents every six months. So, we will have two rent increases since June 1 of this year.  If we stay for a third one we will be paying three hundred and forty dollars a month more by June 1 2025 than we were on May 31 of this year....criminal for this dump, but we were so sure we were moving out of it long before now....never, and I confess this with all humility, have I ever missed hearing God's direction in life as completely and embarrassingly as I have over what I thought was a nudge. (No, let me rephrase that: a gigantic push!!), to get packed and get ready to move elsewhere. Yup, missed TOTALLY!!  That has never before happened to me in any of our last 15 moves.  How I could be so wrong this time I will never know, but wow, was I ever.  hahahaha  Aiii yiiii....well, grin and bear it and carry on, right?  hahaha At least the winter is late getting started...there's something happy and postive around here!

AND the other POSITIVE EVENT coming up, in about 10 minutes actually, is on TV:  the November SUMO tournament hath begun!!! YIPPEE!!

To My Newly Grieving Friends...I Am So So Sorry For Your Loss.....

 

I share with you the agony of your grief,

The anguish of your heart finds echo in my own.

I know I cannot enter all you feel

Nor bear with you the burden of your pain;

I can but offer what my love does give:

The strength of caring,

The warmth of one who seeks to understand

The silent storm-swept barrenness of so great a loss.

This I do in quiet ways,

That on your lonely path

You may not walk alone.

~ Howard Thurman

 

Coming Down From Last Night's Party Extravaganza!

 Last night we had the most fun we have had in months, right here at home.  Today we are feeling less depressed than we have in a very long time because of last evening.

We invited four friends over for a turkey dinner. My husband has been eager to cook our tiny 13 pound turkey and I have been eager to get that bird out of my teeny refrigerator freezer, so we were both happy to see it in the oven roasting to golden skinned perfection. Having people over at all, let alone for a meal, is something we so rarely do for a number of reasons, but my husband was in the cooking mood all week, so....

He prepared glazed yams, delicious stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, while I did little beyond setting the table, a bit of housecleaning and getting the turkey ready for the roasting pan.  Using fresh herbs in the stuffing and on the turkey skin eliminated the need for any salt as the flavours were so wonderful. Fresh herbs....nothing else compares.  One friend added a fabulous broccoli salad to the dinner (broccloli florets in a mayo dressing, sunflower seeds, diced red onions and dried fruit mixed in. Another friend brought a mix of garden peas and carrots....an absolute MUST pairing with a turkey dinner....while another friend brought a sweet and fabulous dessert with chocolate ganache and whipped egg whites in a pressed cookie crust....yum, yum!!!!  We nearly made ourselves ill by eating so much, but it was a delicious meal with some friends we don't get to socialize with all that much.  My husband was able to move some of the packing boxes out of the dining room so we could squeeze an extra four people around the table, so we jammed ourselves into the space, laughed and chatted and told stories...the type of evening we used to thrive on before COVID and old age and a crumbling suite intervened.  We absolutely have to start having people in more often.  Most of the people we know are not completely offended by our horrific living quarters, so it is time to start reaching out more often. I certainly noticed that I was more relaxed than usual, therefore experiencing far less pain with my hip.  YES!!!

The hip is quite good today after quite a ghastly, painful week.  I felt something go crunch again and shift around so for however long the hip stays in this position until it shifts again, I will be happy as there is definitely less pain.  Time to be very careful about how exactly I move around so I can forestall the return of the worst pain for hopefully another day....at least?  

This morning I had a bit of a  sleep in because I was worn out from yesterday's fun...it must have been a successful evening because our guests didn't begin the migration to the coat closet until after 10pm...yay!!  Then I went downstairs and after breakfast tackled all the dishes left over from our feast. Usually my husband and I would do that clean up together, but he was so exhausted he was still asleep at 10am and I figured he had done SO much work cooking yesterday that the least I could do would be to take advantage of a more pain free morning and do the dishes myself.  I quite enjoyed puttering about running multiple sinksful of water so I could wash the entire bunch of dirty dishes and pots in one session.  Success!!

My other little health issue seems to be clearing up nicely, but all these medications are making me sleepy.  After lunch today I planned to attend a friend's art exhibition but I fell asleep in a living room chair and missed it completely. Sadly today was the last day.  Thankfully her art guild has several shows each year so it won't be too many more months until the next one.

Dear friends from church have asked to take us to The Keg for dinner one night next week.  That will be a real hoot.  We have not been there for years.  The last time was at least seven years ago, probably closer to eight, so we will see if anything has changed.  One of the last of the old time steak house restaurants....although Regina still has a number of them, far more than anywhere else I have lived in the past thirty years.  So many old fashioned steak houses, so little time....hahaha.

It is +12c at the moment...the last of the truly warm fall days. The sun is shining brilliantly and I should be outside in the sun, but with this being such a slow day for me I have only just barely crawled out of the shower and it is nearly 4pm!!!  Well, I will go outside right now and stand on the back porch for awhile. Next week the day time highs begin their rise to only the plus single digits and winter will be that much closer to coming to stay for a few months.

First The Provincial And Now The Civic!! I Have Voter Burn Out!!

I am once again somewhat confused as to who to vote for in our civic election next week.  It seems there is an historic number of people running for the position of Mayor and trying to track down actual platforms for some of them is intensely frustrating...mostly with those who have not yet had any political experience.  What is the best thing to do?  I do not want the present mayor and most of the present council to be returned to office, but with so many candidates for all positions, the votes are going to be split up in all directions.  There is an indigenous mayorality candidate I would like to vote for as she is one of the few who actually talks about doing a better job caring for the poor and homeless than the "bigger name" candidates with more political office experience and voter clout.  However, will a vote for her end up being inadvertently a vote for our present mayor??  The most likely opposition candidate to our mayor has lots of political experience, but reading the details of her platform the committments seem to still be infrastructure, bringing in big business and other economic issues....which are also important of course, but there is little mention made of helping the homeless and the addicted at a civic level.  So...what to do and of course there is always the temptation to wonder if it really matters at this point as things in the city are such a mess in so many ways.  Sigh....I will be happy when all this voting business is over for another couple of years. The older I get the less I understand what the best ways are to get more help for my community and my province.  Finding detailed platforms is next to impossible any more. There are so many idealistic, vague and impossible to enact statements floating around the campaign trails.  What to do....?? We are too close to the time when our democratic process may be taken away from "we the people", so I want to exercise my right to vote and to vote for the candidate of my own choosing.  It is getting more difficult to make those choices these days.

I read an interesting news item yesterday that surveys had been conducted in both Regina and Saskatoon a few weeks ago asking those chosen to participate in the survey  which issues are most important to them personally. Now, who these people are and how they were chosen is a mystery to me, but I do think the results are somewhat telling about the difference in focus between the two small prairie cities.  Here in Regina the main concerns centered around the economy, bringing in big business, fiscal responsibility and disclosure, etc.  Social issues such as homelessness, addiction, food availability, housing costs etc. were mostly down close to the bottom of the list.  Sasktoon was the opposite!  Social issues topped their list of pressing needs needing addressing.  The fiscal issues were far, far down the list.  I found that most interesting to discover the differences in thinking.  Why there is such a diversity in the importance of these issues between the two cities I don't know, but perhaps I would prefer living in Saskatoon after all? hahaha  Nope....I would still be on the prairies so....in some ways, six of one and half a dozen of the other. hahaha Forgive me fellow prairie-ites.  I always sound like I am most miserable here, but truly I have found my place and friends despite the geographical setting that does not speak to my heart.  It is all good now that I have come down from the highs of being in NYC and Vancouver earlier this year.  Truly it is.

Poem For A Time Of Loss and Grieving.....

For my several grieving friends, here is a beautiful poem, from another newly grieving friend that expresses the feelings of loss so very well:

Never Ending Date Night!

 Last night we had an hilarious time, due to a miscommunication between myself and a friend.  We thought we were going to a birthday party, so got all "gussied up" and away we went.  We arrived at the venue about ten minutes prior to the start time for the party, but the whole place was in darkness!  All the doors were locked, no lights were on...it was just wierd. So, I texted my friend, the organizer of the party and she texted back that the party is actually NEXT week. hahaha  I DID know that! I remembered immediately upon being reminded that the original verbal invite had included next week's date, but I got it mixed up somehow.  Aiii yiiii.....the card and gift can easily wait for another week to be given. 

So, here we were "all dressed up and nowhere to go"!  My husband climbed back into the car muttering about going home for some nice hot homemade celery soup as he was chilly, but I was miffed that he hadn't recognized that I had gotten dressed up for a change and I wasn't about to turn around immediately and to home again for SOUP of all things, no matter how delicious.  He said he wanted to go to the nearest restaurant then and in terms of restaurants we actually like, despite being surrounded by restaurants in the downtown, DarBar, far down the street, was actually the closest one.  Off we went, enjoyed a marvellous meal and I ate my part of the leftovers for breakfast this morning!!

Good thing I ate something so hearty because we got busy cleaning for a dinner we are putting on for friends tomorrow evening and by the time we were done there was no time for so much as a snack, let alone lunch, before we had to be at another friend's home for a gathering of buddies.  It wasn't until we arrived that I realized neither of us had eaten any lunch all all due to the time crunch.  So, I allowed myself a very small slice of lemon cheesecake at our friend's place to get me through. My husband followed suit.  

A couple of hours later we were on our way to the library to return some DVDs we have been watching....a couple of full seasons of an older British police drama, "Unforgotten".  The lack of food was starting to show itself in both of us, so we ducked into a Western Pizza near the library and had quite a nice little meal and visit together. Our "lupper" was finished well before 4:30pm!  The remains of the celery soup will be consumed later this evening as a healthy bedtime snack.  

Yup, two date nights in a row!!  It has been awhile since we have done something like that. It was fun.

Now I have to figure out how we are going to juggle the double booking for the REAL night of the birthday party as we already have a commitment that we can't change for that same night....Again with the forgetting when I told Birthday Friend we could attend the party.  If we work it just right we can participate to some degree in both things....Lord willing! Here's hoping.

Here is a delightful photo of my friend's "Copy Cat" for your viewing pleasure and a couple of chuckles. Cats do love boxes, that's for sure.

A True COPY cat!!

And Now For My Next Trick!! HOHOHO!!

 Woke up this morning with a raging bladder infection and an ice covered car, parking lot and back porch steps.  Gag!!!  However, my husband woke up just before 9am and was more than willing to take me on the icy streets to the walk in clinic. God bless him!!!!  I told him to go home to wait for my call for a ride home because I knew I would be stuck at the clinic for awhile waiting to see the walk in doctor and another even longer time while waiting for a prescription to be filled.  As a matter of course, he asked me if I had my phone with me and of course I left it sitting on my desk at home, so I asked him to leave me his phone and I could call him on the landline.  AND also "of course" he didn't have his phone with him either. So, off he went to get my phone and return to the clinic to give it to me....again with the fishtailing on the solidly icy streets. Sigh....he is the MOST patient man.  

A big joy for me: the walk in doctor for the day is my very own doctor!!  So, not only did I get a prescription filled out, I was able to ask her a question I had about the muscle relaxants I am taking for my hip issues. YAY!!  There was an hour wait for the prescription at the pharmacy, so rather than call my husband out AGAIN, to come pick me up, then bring me back to pick it up probably ten minutes after we arrived home, I just sat on a rather uncomfortable chair beside the pharmacy department.  As I sat there, legs crossed and hoping there would be no "sudden urges", I noticed that on a bunk end directly across from me were 8 packs of purse sized tissues that I have been trying to find for months!!  So, I grabbed two of the 8 packs and hobbled up to the cashier to pay for them.  That wasted five minutes of my time before returning to the pharmacy chairs.  YAY! hahaha  After wating for about 40 minutes in total I decided it was worth going back to the Pick Up counter to at least ask if my prescription was ready and it was!  The pharmacist had just brought it to the front for dispersal. YIPPEE!  As soon as I had it in my hot little hands, I called my husband and enjoyed standing outside in the warming air to wait for him. Standing was much more comfortable than spending one more minute in that chair!!  

Tonight we are supposed to be going to a birthday dinner for a good friend, but I am guessing I am going to have to send my husband there on his own.  It will be a large group of partyers, so he will have just as good a time without me. I have already cancelled my weekly coffee visit with my friend tomorrow morning.  We are having a small group of friends over for a turkey dinner on Friday evening, so I need to do some cleaning and preparing of the suite and today is not the day for that now. Sigh... 

So many things in life do not turn out the way we plan or hope for, but things do turn out eventually.

Nan sent me the most wonderfully accurate description of grieving and I am going to keep it in my heart because I know my reaction to losing my husband, should he depart ahead of me, will be very similar to hers.  The quote goes like this and I am sorry but I do not know who the author is:

"The presence of that absence is everywhere." 

If you have lost someone dear to you then you will totally vibe with that statement.  Grieving is a very individual affair, but I think the statement succinctly sums up the process for most people. Tough times....