Glad For Some Rain This Coming Week, But.....

 ...will the areas with the forest fires here get any of that rain and if so, will the rains bring lightning to start more fires?  The situation in BC in the Okanagan Lakes area is horrendous with over 20,000 people evacuated and many homes and other structures already lost in the fastest growing forest fire that province has seen in recent decades.  They are in desperate need of sufficient rain to start putting out the fires, but not of the lightning that so often accompanies the rain storms.  There are other bad forest fire situations in BC, (and in many other provinces right now), so many in fact that the province has declared a state of emergency.  What does that mean in terms of receiving more assistance in corralling the fires and getting them put out? What does that mean in terms of taking care of the evacuees when some of the towns who opened their community centres and personal homes to those fleeing fires are now also under threat?  This is the most frightening summer ever for so many in our country as fires rage across every province to one degree or another.

I had a rather poor sleep last night.  The noise outside was worse than usual even for a Saturday overnight and there was no breeze at all.  People seemed to be coming and going from the parking lot throughout the night and at about 5am the same "bro's" who woke me up at about that time last Sunday morning were out rousting about loudly and in their usual State of High once again. hahaha They are quite the trio and apparently live somewhere in this complex.  Our next door neighbours were dropped off at home by their friends at about 3am, so it took awhile for the  youngest boy to settle down and stop screeching and bashing about.  Usually I can sleep through most of these things, other than the bro's, but last night I wasn't relaxed.  I read a book between 5am and 7am then fell asleep again until after 9am. It was glorious. There was no time to get to church at that point so after breakfast I went grocery shopping instead.  The store was quite busy but the shelves were newly and fully stocked, so I found everything we need to get us through the next few days before we go.  Wonderful!!  My husband also slept in so he began writing a long epistle to a friend who has been waiting for this email for a couple of weeks already.  It is nice he has this morning free now to do that.

This afternoon I will watch online the church service we missed. I will iron yesterday's laundry. Fortunately the only things that need ironing are a few things of my own that I am taking on the trip and it won't take long to complete the task.  

I am enjoying the cool temperatures and slightly overcast sky today.  The sunshine has been marvellous but knowing there is some rain on the way this week is relaxing. It means that as I race around town getting last minute preparations done for our trip I won't be overheating and feeling headachy and miserable. YAY! 

What The Heck Was Going On Around Here Today?

 Our own day was rather subdued.  My husband had a number of emails and short papers he had to finish up today and I did the laundry. Big whoop....However, these chores all needed to be done tout de suite, so it is all good. The weather was nicely warm all day, not much of a breeze, but most tolerable for temperature and the sun shone brightly.

Our complex as a whole though had a few issues going on this afternoon.  Kids from two different buildings in our court got into some kind of a scuffle and then both sets of parents got involved. The one set of parents who live closest to us actually called in other adult reinforcements! All of a sudden there were cars full of grown men and women arriving in the lot, filling up the parking spaces of other tenants. Just as this angry mob was about to descend on the offenders of the other family involved in the original fracas, three police cars manned by six officers arrived and put a stop to the melee before it had a chance to really begin.  Thank you Lord!!!  It seems that almost every day this week something or someone has caused an issue in our particular part of the complex. There are various repair men being called in to suite after suite every day, tensions have been high among the kids when they have been out playing, men from different suites who, to the best of our knowledge don't even know each other, have been outside arguing over what each parent lets their own kids get away with outside....today was a most blatant display of ridiculous anger and how quickly mob mentality over small issues can escalate. The police were here for the better part of an hour before all the "extra help" and even the involved adults from the suite nearest to us got in their cars and drove away. Those neighbours have not yet returned.  

Shortly after the police left, the children of two other families who had not been involved in fracas numero uno got into a huge fight outside our front door. The older boys put the run on the one boy's two younger brothers eventually, then one of the dads went slamming outside hollering at the older boys and physically dragging them back into their own suites. 

What a wild afternoon.  Other than a brief soccer game just before dinner between five boys and a couple of kids out in the back tooting on whistles and driving us all completely mad for an hour after dinner, there have been no kids outside tonight, no parents sitting out on their decks talking all evening.  You could shoot a cannon down the middle of the parking lot and or across both front and back lawns and not hit a solitary soul.  I am not happy about the reasons for that, but I have to admit I am thoroughly enjoying the unusual level of quiet this evening.  

I hope tomorrow is less frantic between the various kids and their parents.  Today was rather ugly so my husband and I remained indoors until things calmed down enough that we felt sufficiently safe outside to take out the garbage and compost to the bins.  

We talked about church tomorrow, took a look at the long list of things that need to be done around here and have chosen to remain at home instead.  The list of things my husband in particular has to achieve before we travel seems to be getting longer instead of shorter, so I helped him with a couple of things tonight.  The service will be available online by mid afternoon so we can watch it on YouTube once it is posted.

All the laundry for the trip is done and I will do some ironing tomorrow.  There have been a couple of serious changes of plans at our destination, so we have to change some of the clothing items we planned to take originally.  I will do another trial pack up with the new items at some point this week, so in that aspect of the trip I am starting all over again.  Always something, right? hahaha 

Waiting For Over Four Months For That Healing "CLICK"!

 I am most grateful that, after four months of constant pain and discomfort with the reawakening of an old knee injury several months ago, this morning at around 3am I rolled over in bed and heard the satisfying "CLICK" sound as my knee cap went back into place.  Oh dear Lord Jesus, long may it last this time!  If it stays in place it will make all the walking I have to do during our upcoming trip so much easier and less painful on a daily basis.  Oh, so happy for this little medical encouragement. Today I was pain free at last...ALL DAY LONG!!

Tonight I found out that an elderly friend of ours fell victim to a scammer that was on "ITS" way, (sorry but to me such scammers are some kind of sub-human creature), to her bank this afternoon to pick up three hundred and fifty thousand dollars from her account.  Thanking God her Financial Advisor was on top of things, realized what was going on and refused to release the money.  Please please pray for all the seniors you know who so easily could fall victim to such a scam as this.  They know how to get at the emotions and fears and inability for fast thinking of the elderly in particular. Our friend is not an unusual case unfortunately. 

We are so enjoying the cooler temperatures this week.  It is possible to go outside in the sunshine and not worry about fainting from over heating and dehydration!  What a treat!

Tonight we went over to a friend's house where our canoe is stored.  We took over four pots of mint that we have harvested sufficiently for our own needs over this coming winter and planted the mint around the the sides of the canoe storage for ground cover.  That mint is extremely hardy and will likely survive the winter just fine in the protected area where we planted it. If not, no big loss, but we have had good success in the past wintering over mint plants so here's hoping.  It makes the storage area look so much nicer.  It was fun wheeling the barrow about to haul fertilized black soil, plant pots and long handled spades.  My feet were filthy with black dirt when we got home, as were my hands and now I am all washed up and clean and that feels wonderful.  I did okay hobbling around with the wheelbarrow, so that was encouraging; still awkward with my gait, but still improving too. YAY!!

Tomorrow is the last call for doing the laundering of items specifically for our trip.  Once those things are worn they have to be set aside on the clothes racks for packing up.  I have so many other things to do next week now that are not trip related that my planned time for preparation then is being eaten up by other unexpected but necessary tasks. Never fails... 

Maman's Update

My friend has returned home after leaving her dear Maman in the capable hands of another sibling. Her reports are very positive and she is happy to share them with such faithful prayer warriors.

Maman continues to become stronger each day.  She is positive in outlook and is preparing for the TAVI team to get together to prepare for her aortic valve replacement sometime in the next few months. Fortunately that is not an emergency surgery that must be done immediately, so there will be time to get the proper TAVI team in place ahead of time.  For a woman who died twice in the ER when she initially arrived at the hospital she has come along way. As I told my friend, "An amazing woman has received an amazing piece of medical technology."  Thanks again for your prayers. When it is time for the aortic valve replacement I will be soliciting your prayers once again. Bless you all.

Today's Events Began Happening Before I Even Had A Chance To Ask.....Hahahahaha.....

I didn't sleep too badly last night. Lights out at 12:20am, awake for an hour of reading at 4:30am then a great sleep from 5:30am until 8:45am. I yawned and stretched for a minute and then the phone rang. It was a dear friend from another province, so I happily delayed getting breakfast and getting ready for my day so we could chat.  Then just as we were wrapping up our call a text message came in from out of town friends to let me know they were coming to our house and would be arriving in about 2 minutes.  I had to excuse myself from my phone call friend to run upstairs and throw on some clothes, barely making it down to the back door as they began knocking.  My husband was staggering about all through my phone call, trying to get ready for a morning meeting in his still sleepy state after he also slept in unexpectedly, but fortunately it was a breakfast meeting so he didn't have to try to make breakfast before he left.  Just as I got downstairs with day wear on, our friends arrived, exchanged greetings with my husband as he was leaving and then were very patient with me as I prepared my own breakfast along with their pot of tea.  What a crazy, delightful start to the day.

When my husband finally arrived home close to 1pm I had to hop into the car and race to the bank where we have had SO MANY issues and glitches and set up some financial "stuff" for our upcoming trip. This time there was only one glitch and THIS time I was actually prepared for it!  The teller was very experienced, has been at that branch for some time and was most helpful in straightening out the issue. Bless her!  Since I got home she has emailed me with some more information and has offered more help with something that may come up with our account while we are out of the country and is going to solve that possible problem for us.  The more unavoidable contact we have with this bank the more we are realizing it is only rarely the employees at the local branch who are making a mess of things, it is mostly the third party investment and credit card companies etc. that are screwing us over time after time.  Well,  we will be shut of that bank altogether once we get home.  We are done with it.  Hallelujah!!

We ran a few errands before I ate lunch at 3pm.   

Oh yay!!  We just received a dinner invitation to the home of friends this evening.  Curried chicken veggie pot pie!!  Our absolute favourite and these two women can COOK, yeah you betcha'!!  How wonderful. How blessed are we, right?  They get home late enough from work that I won't be eating that much too soon after my late lunch.  Ooh, I am so excited.

Wonder what I can cram into the next two and a half hours before we go out for dinner?  Who is going to call or show up next?  I LOVE days like this because I LOVE happy surprises like long distance phone calls and long distance company!  It is a good day today.  I COULD do the ironing, but it might be wiser to bury my nose in a book instead for an hour and leave the ironing as my tomorrow afternoon's chore. 

The Plumbers Come The Neighbours Go....Sigh......

 My afternoon was interesting but perhaps not in the best ways, hahaha.

Shortly after I posted the entry prior to this one the plumbers finally arrived.  I was expecting the professional plumbing firm hired by the property management company here, but what I got instead was the long term "head handyman" who has been here for at least 12 years and left his job as a restaurant cook to do small maintenance projects here because he wanted daytime work.  He is the MOST lovely, consistently happy man I have ever met in my life, but unfortunately has had little proper training in carpentry or plumbing by the powers that be here. By the time he left I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, but I have shed enough tears over this place in the past couple of years so I chose to see the humour in his attempt to solve our plumbing issues today.  Aiii yiiii....

He arrived with another fellow, a newer hire and that newer hire brought in a high step ladder and drill for the purpose of standing high enough to drill a hole in the kitchen ceiling where the leak had opened up so he could check the condition of the new connecting pipe that was put in there nearly 2 years ago and see if there were any other leaks from either our bathroom or our neighbours coming from places not causing issues before.  However, as he was setting up the ladder Mr. Happiness came downstairs from checking our bathtub situation to announce that setting up the ladder and drilling into the ceiling would not be necessary. He had located already, in less than a minute's time, the source of the leak.  Oh yay, I thought. Oh yay, my husband thought.

Weeeeeeeelllll, not so much.  His decision was that since the metal cover over the overflow valve was upside down, that is how the water got into the kitchen ceiling from my morning shower on The Day Of the Grand Leakage.  My husband explained to him six ways from Sunday that the overflow valve cover was upside down when we moved in over 11 years ago and had never once caused leaks in the past.  However, Mr.  Happiness suddenly took on the alias of Mr. Deafness and completely ignored what my husband was telling him. He insisted he had found the source of the problem, scraped off the more than 11 years old caulking around the cover, pulled it off, reinstalled it right side up and instead of installing a new screw in the place where one has been missing since before we moved in here, he filled that hole with caulking as well. Then he caulked around the entire cover, effectively sealing off the access holes, now underneath where they belong, so that no water will ever be able to get into the overflow pipe even though it is now right side up. My husband stood there watching him in complete disbelief for the first minute of this operation, then realized that this kind of incompetence is par for the course now and has been at various times throughout the last 11 years.  He didn't even try to stop the fellow as he gunned the caulking everywhere it didn't belong, just stood aside, thanked Mr. Happiness for his attention to our plight and we waved him out the back door along with his head shaking apprentice, who obviously also realized what was going on but also was powerless to stop the fiasco from continuing.  My defeated husband simply said goodbye and good luck to Mr. Happiness and his apprentice and assured him that if we experienced any more leaks we would send in another work order.  After the men left my husband and I looked at each other, shrugged and put the catch basin back on top of the cupboards under the now cracked and stained ceiling and will leave a note for our house sitter to check for water every time she comes into our place while we are away. There isn't anything else we can do at this point.  So be it.  That is the way it goes around here every so often.

Shortly after the "plumbers" left the next door neighbour appeared at our back door asking for my husband to come over for tea and to meet his Syrian refugee sponsor, now friend.  The three men had a marvellous visit together but my husband came home with the bad news I have kind of been expecting.  Our beloved refugee neighbours are moving out while we are away.  With another baby soon to come, the lack of space in their unit and the ever rising cost of rent in there, they have been accepted for a low cost government suite with more bedrooms and bathrooms and for over seven hundred dollars a month less than their current rent, which would have been going up again at the end of this year.  I feel so sad to lose them.  I know that between the language barrier, the age difference and just the way life goes for a busy family of soon to be 6, it is unlikely we will be able to keep in touch with them.  She was the key to my being able to spend time with the other Middle Eastern Muslim women in our complex and I understand that once she is gone there won't be any continuation of those relationships either.  My neighbour was the "glue" that included me in that community and I am not close enough to the others who live in other parts of the complex to continue in relationship together. So, that is that.  It was really good while it lasted. So what next will be my next question after our holiday.

On a personal "issue" level, it is likely that for the third time since moving in here we will be arriving home from a vacation to find new neighbours on the other side of the wall.  We are already praying for good, quiet neighbours, but there is always the chance of arriving home to a disastrous situation, like 2 out of the 3 have been in the past. We are already praying hard for God's help in either finding us the kind of neighbours we are hoping for, or else giving us extreme patience and ability to cope if we come home to less than stellar tenants next door.  Since we will be coming home in September, I am wondering if we wouldn't be wise to just take a risk, put in our notice here for the end of October and if we can't find a decent and affordable place to live by then, just put everything in storage and take a hotel for a month while we continue to look.  Sounds impractical I know as well as expensive, but it may take something very drastic like that to get us moved into a better place. We have learned that short notice sometimes is the catalyst to a move out of a bad situation that has been dragging on for so long as to appear to be hopeless for finding a solution to it. Then we step out in faith and BAM an answer appears within a few weeks.  We will see what happens when we get home but for now we have determined to simply pray and not worry too much.  (All the more reason to accept a ride from a dear friend who has offered to pick us up at 3:30am on our departure day and deliver us to the airport, so we can leave our car in the parking lot to save our parking space.  We have learned that once a new next door tenant thinks that there is no one parked in our space that tenant tends to use it liberally in our absence and it is often VERY difficult to retrain them to stay out of our spot when we return.  Our house checker upper will be able to monitor what is happening with the car so we are not afraid to leave it in place.)

So, my emotions had a rather tentative afternoon.  My husband was tired after a busy day doing carpentry, struggling with language barriers, not getting enough sleep last night, subsequently having no patience for sitting around here making dinner with me, so we went out for salads and buns.  It was nice.  We drive a fairly long way now to a restaurant far removed from where we live and any other places we have been to eat in the past few years.  It is like having a mini holiday just going for that little drive into a newer area of the city where we don't know anyone.  It is difficult to describe, but the fact that we find a fifteen minute drive to the outskirts of town to have a mini "holiday" away from our familiar haunts is a bit telling as to our need for change, isn't it? haha

I do hope and pray all goes well tomorrow for our errands.  I have had enough disappointment for one day....well, only one afternoon....and the disappointments were not devastating....so really, I think now that I have confessed them in this post I will not think about them again overly much. Confession IS good for the soul!  AAAND, thank you for "listening"!

Why O Why Did I Bother To Ask???? Hahahaha....

We were "up 'n' at 'em" by 8am today; breakfasted and dressed and ready to go by 9am.  We wanted to get to our nearest post office branch before it got busy and we were successful in that.  It took just over five minutes to arrange for our mail to be held while we are away and then we were on our way home again.  

The plumbers are supposed to come today to suss out our leakage issues but we knew they likely wouldn't get here until later in the day. So at nearly 3pm we are still waiting, but that is just fine.  It is highly likely they got held up on another job, so if they don't get here today they will be here tomorrow and one of us should be home most all day to explain the problem to them.  Who knows when arrangements will be made for the issue to actually be repaired, right?  We know from our years in construction how the best laid plans in the trades can come apart within seconds, leaving the next customer waiting longer than arranged for originally. That is just how it goes sometimes.

Once we arrived home from the post office my husband headed over to our friends' house to complete the building of canoe racks for their and our canoes, so I stupidly asked myself, "Hmmm, I wasn't expecting to be done with the post office this early so what shall I do for the rest of today?"  Dumb, dumb, dumb.....I barely got the question asked when things began to happen.  I realized it was time to put a load of my husband's clothes into the laundry and some of it needed stain spray...that man never remembers to put on his chef's sized apron when he is stir frying with hot, spattering oil.....and I wanted to get that finished before the plumbers might arrive and have to turn off the main water valve.  Just got that in when my next door neighbour arrived with a giant tote bag filled with more bags of rice and rolled oats that, when added to what she has already brought us since the end of June, could combine to feed a lumber camp crew for an entire summer.  In the top of the bag were two large bunches of carrots and a giant head of broccoli, both veggies needing immediate attention.  So, I spent the next hour cutting off carrot tops and peeling and bagging them for my husband to make soup out of, perhaps tomorrow.  Then I chopped the heavy, tough stem off the head of broccoli, removed a section for our dinner tonight then cut the rest of it into somewhat smaller pieces, blanched the whole works, cooled all the pieces and bagged them for the freezer.  Originally I had hoped to have the freezer and most of the refrigerator free of any food items before we left town, but that isn't going to happen, so all we can do is pray our refrigerator, poor ancient scratched stained ugly old thing that it is, doesn't break down while we are gone. So thankful our friend is checking in several times a week to water plants and check things like basement flooding and dead refrigerators. God bless her!!  

After lunch I got the load of clothes dried and sorted, but I think I will wait and iron them tomorrow.  For some reason our lunch preparations resulted in more than the usual amount of dirty dishes, so I spent a fair bit of time tidying up the kitchen and washing plates and glasses and bowls and pots and and and and....

Now as I write this I am waiting for my son to call in regard to some mutual banking arrangements we need to make together in regard to our trip.  Those arrangements will dictate how I spend the rest of the next ten days in preparing to go. 

Tomorrow morning if I am looking at a chunk of free time after I iron the laundry I washed today I think I will just keep my questions about further chores for the day to myself!  Hohoho!!! I certainly can't whine today about not getting enough exercise.  I have lost count of how many times I have been up and down both flights of stairs and how long I spent standing in the kitchen doing various chores.  

That part is ALL good!!!  My hip muscles on the operated leg are finally beginning to strengthen up to cover up the fact that the tendon has not returned to full operation.  YAY!  I thought I was done with all of the healing and restoration process, but no!  That 18 month time frame for complete or nearly complete healing is still in effect for me for the next 5 months apparently. I am delighted and relieved as I see the limp finally beginning to lessen even when I am walking farther than usual without my cane.  Thank you God.

Thankful For A Chilly Day!!

Today was a very enjoyable day weather-wise!  Overnight a cold front blew in and when I woke up this morning I was wrapped up tightly in my duvet and there was a very chilly breeze blowing through from all the open windows. The sky was darkly clouded and remained overcast for most of the day.  The daytime high was only +17C. What a welcome break from our very warm July.  The rest of this week isn't supposed to become much warmer than about +25C and it is going to cool down to around +7C for several nights. Yippee!  I am grateful and delighted...elated even...to have a time out from hot weather, particularly as I expect the weather where we are headed later this month to be extremely humid and scorching hot!  

This morning we hauled out all the possibilities for clothes for the trip and did a preliminary packing up.  I have pulled two outfits I thought I was going to take and opted for my newest favourite summer dress instead.  I wore the dress to church  yesterday and decided it is more useful than the other two outfits put together.  It is difficult to know how much to pack for a whole month because, although there is laundry access at the apartment, it isn't in the suite and I don't know how many other guests will be jockeying for laundry time. We want to take a good ten days worth of clothes with us.  I also removed several pair of socks because they are just so bulky and are easy enough to wash out by hand in the kitchen sink in the evenings. Even with the high humidity each pair should be dry within a couple of days hanging over the bathroom the shower rod. My husband went through all his shirts and pants and made some tough decisions as well.  I am so happy we decided to do this preliminary pack.  It is causing us to be more realistic about our choices.  If the city we are going to wasn't so dirty I would be wearing my sandals most days, but for walking on the streets there it is safer to wear socks and walking shoes regardless of my outfit of the day.  I am becoming more excited now about the trip after feeling very unsure until very recently that I was up to the task of early morning airport arrivals, jockeying for overhead rack space, hauling my cane with me through security, lining up for boarding, fretting about possible flight delays and line ups at Customs and Immigration....on and on and on....I am not a relaxed flyer.  I enjoy the actual flying part, but the rest of the possible disasters awaiting do not thrill me.  

Now that this long weekend holiday is coming to an end, the other details for preparation to travel will begin.  All I can do is pray that the banking part of the pre-expedition goes well and that there are no more glitches with the bank we are forced to deal with for this trip.  Praying for mercy, that is all we can do.

 

Another Loss For Our Family

We arrived home after church this morning to the sad news that my husband's last remaining aunt passed away this morning. She was the youngest in my father in law's family of 11 siblings and is the last to pass on to better things.  She and her husband had incredible ministry and social outreach for several decades in Africa. We always called her a force to be reckoned with, which she was, but it was a force for good everywhere she went.  She was organized, forward thinking and very, very kind.  Uncle passed away a very few years ago and now we have lost our last Auntie as well.  We are very sad to lose her but happy to know she is no longer suffering the physical pains and mental indignities of old age in the midst of her 90's. My husband is very sad to lose her.  She and Uncle hired him several times when he was still in construction to build various projects at their home in the Okanagan.  During their last trip to Africa a few years ago they offered us the job of house sitting for them as we were "between residences" at the time and we were touched and delighted.  It was a mutually beneficial arrangement for our last summer before my husband went to seminary.  The house was filled with beautiful African artifacts and their wooden floors were inlaid with gorgeous patterns made of African wood that they brought back with them after one of their many sojourns there.  It was like living in a foreign palace.  It was a house of healing for us after a very rough time in our lives.

Dear dear Auntie...may she rest in peace and rise in glory! 

Church went well this morning. My husband's sermon based on the parable of the manager who hired workers one day at various times of the day, but paid them all the same exact wage, certainly had us thinking about "fairness" vs "justice" and why we have that built in mechanism that makes us quick to address things we see as being unfair in this world....how it is a good mechanism that is based on our creation in the image of a just God, but often poorly utilized due to our issues with greed and envy. He was delighted that one of his non-believing friends came to hear him preach and stayed to have a visit over an outdoor lemonade in front of the church when the service ended. Afterwards we went to the Fancy Fork and enjoyed our lunches: 4 item customer's choice egg plate breakfast for him, (he chose 2 scrambled eggs, asparagus, three strips of bacon and hash browns, plus he was given a hefty slice of watermelon as a bonus), and a very filling beef dip with a side of ginger carrot soup pour moi.  My husband ate most of my Italian bun so I could keep my carbs down and I pulled the beef slices and onions and Swiss cheese out of the bun and onto my plate where I could pour the delicious pan drippings au jus over it.  It was delicious!!  The prices were very good as well.  Our food and drinks came to just over forty dollars!  What I like about their breakfast and lunch menus is that there is such a broad range of prices.  

Now my husband is napping and I am going to try to complete a silly computer game I have been working on in my spare time over the past few weeks...another of my mouldy oldies from way in the past that today's game players would find incredibly boring, but is perfect for this old gal. 

The weather is delightful today now that most of the smoke has blown away.  While the temperature is still a bit high, there is a stiff breeze blowing so even this early in the afternoon we can have all the windows open on both sides of the house to stay cool. Wonderful!! 

Maman Is One Tough Cookie!

 Today, 93 year old Maman is going home! She will be able to have the valve replacement in a few months, so that is great news. Maman is a journalist and along with being able to walk and eat properly again, she has also begun writing up the details of her brush with death.  My friend is amazed by how well she is doing and is grateful for such positively answered prayers.  I am very happy for all of them. ⛪️

We had our first lower atmosphere forest fire smoke overnight, so this morning my eyelids are swollen and my lungs feel irritated. What a blessing that we made it through June and July with only a few overnight hours of higher altitude smoke that didn’t even rate a Smoke Warning from the weather forecasters. The sun this morning is a giant, flaming orange red ball, similar to the sunrise suns we used to see in Tokyo on a typical smoggy morning. I was so exhausted overnight that only once was I vaguely aware of smelling smoke and I was so groggy I couldn’t wake up sufficiently to get up and close the windows. What a trade off: breathing in poisonous particulate matter with the windows open or sweltering, sweating, headaching heat. Happy summer night to you too! 😉

I haven’t been able to force myself to get up and check the leaking spot in the kitchen ceiling. My husband is preaching at our own church this morning so he hasn’t the luxury to staying home to babysit that dripping crack and I have no intention of missing his sermon, so hopefully the large catch basin we have on top of the cupboards will hold however many more drips drip! 💧 

And....Now We've Sprung A Leak!!!! Aaaargh!!!

 This day just gets better and better!  NOT! hahahahahahahahahahahaha...the number of ha's denotes my current level of hysteria,hahahaha!

I had a shower at about 11am. After doing a bit of grocery shopping I came home to prepare a late lunch due to the late start of our day.  After lunch I was washing dishes when my husband noticed there were some drips of water on the outside of one of the cupboard doors.  He opened the door and saw a few more drops of water on the inside of the door, along the edge of the shelves and inside a few of the dishes closest to those edges. Wah???  He then looked up, waaaaaay up, (thank you CBC and the Friendly Giant children's show from long ago), and there, inside the 2 year old patching square from a plumbing problem that was fixed more than 2 years ago, was a lovely little crack with drops of water forming slowly and equally slowly dripping down onto the open cupboard top below. From there the water was coming over the edge of that top and making its way slowly, drip by drip, down the cupboard doors and onto the counter behind the toaster oven. It is all wiped up now, towels are down on top of the cupboards to absorb whatever water continues to drip out of the ceiling, all the dishes have been moved off the cupboard top and out of the cabinets and those in contact with the dripping water thoroughly washed. The maintenance request has been submitted and accepted by whoever accepts those things so...now we wait until whenever. 

BIG FAT SIGH!!!  Here we go again.  NOW what part of the ancient plumbing has failed?  

There was no water anywhere to be found on the bathroom floor, or around the toilet or under the bathroom sink....although when I was checking the cabinet under that sink and my hand made contact with the bottom of the sink, large shards of rust came off in my hands and fell into the box of cleaning products I store there.  BIGGER FATTER SIGH!!! Guess when the maintenance workers arrive on Tuesday...of course this is a long weekend with no one on duty between now and Tuesday to deal with anything other than dire emergencies, so we won't be able to bath or shower from now until whenever the maintenance plumber arrives...I will have to show him the bathroom sink and request a replacement.  Then what new issue is that going to create?  Oh Lord....why oh why will you not bring us a new place to live yet?  I am discouraged today on the one hand, on the other hand I am accepting the fact that once again we have reached "Ludicrous Speed", (thank you Spaceballs script writers), and that is just how life is right now. hahahahahahahaha!

Well, as the saying goes, "It never rains but it pours!"  Oops, I hope in this case the saying is not prophetic!!! hahahahahahahahaha! 

Maman's Continuing Health Journey Update

 I have another update in regard to Maman's recovery.  She is still in hospital after all because it has been discovered that she requires a new aortic valve.  While there is no huge rush for the surgery itself, she will need to have an angiogram to ensure the valve will be able to be installed through a vein in the groin.  If the angiogram shows otherwise she could be in need of open heart surgery.  Her angiogram should happen next Tuesday.  Hopefully it will be possible to insert the new valve using the usual method and once that is established she will likely be sent home to await the surgery.  So, more to pray about, but overall things are so much more positive than they appeared they would be, particularly after her actually dying for a bit before the temporary pace maker was put in. Whew....Thanks for praying for her and for her family.  It is very much appreciated.

It is another very warm day here, the forecast is for +32C; not the hottest we have had, but today there isn't a hint of a breeze anywhere near our area of the city, so even though it is currently only +25C it feels too hot to be comfortable outside.  I had to drive to the nearest grocery store instead of taking my intended walk due to a late start to my now overly warm day. I DID manage to fall asleep again after the 5:30am "Fight Club" on the front lawn and I slept for over 90 minutes.  It was worth getting a late start on the day just to feel better for the rest of the day.

My husband is meeting a friend for coffee this afternoon so I think I will tackle the needed executor's package updates.  I never want to go away without all that information being immediately available to one of our executors.  I learned from my parents' well organized banking and other financial records how important it is to have all the required information ready for the executor, as well as a list of where to start and in what order to do things like getting death certificates, adding up the monies in accounts and investments to take to the lawyer for access to the wills and to find out if probate will be necessary.  There are so many steps and each time something is attempted out of order it slows everything else down sometimes by several weeks.  Mom and Dad made things very smooth going for me in terms of available information that I needed. The financial institutions were the main hold up as probation was completed sooner than expected and caught them unawares.  I learned so much so we want to make everything as easy as possible for any executors when it is our turn to go. 

A Rough Morning!

The day is not off to the best start: I am not sure if it is because our local fair is underway and the city is filled with out of town visitors, more opportunities to drink and carouse, or if the heat is finally getting to people in a negative way, but it has been a wild night on the streets outside our place: motorcyclists popping wheelies and hollering as they raced down the street outside the bedroom window,  residents from one of the units near us having shrieking screaming meltdowns while outside on their phones, our neighbours next door receiving late night company whose tiny tots thumped and banged and hollered and bashed about until nearly 3am, crows cawing at top volume pretty much all night very unusually, groups of ear splitting muffler-less cars back firing incessantly while street racing, people waiting for the last transit bus just after midnight laughing and talking very loudly indeed for twenty minutes until the bus arrived and a few minutes ago four young adult fellows in matching tee shirts and pants, higher than kites on something or other, decided to have a fist fight on the front lawn followed by a loud and blubbering repentance: “Oh bro, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. Oh, forgive me bro, I love you bro! Waaaah, waaaaah, waaaah….I’m soooooorrrrryyyyy…waaaaaaaaaahhhhhh….”  (Said injured bro was not badly injured enough to prevent him from staggering to his feet, clutching his attacker in a sloppy bear hug and noisily gulping out no end of curse laden forgiveness.)

Sigh….even my white noise machine was unable to cover the noise sufficiently to allow me to sleep through the hollering and traffic noise and fighting. It is now just after 5:30am and I have had less than four consecutive hours of sleep, but the fair ends tomorrow some time so if I can just get through whatever antics go down tonight, things should settle down again.

I am starting to feel like I am living in a combination zoo and three ring circus. As many people my age complain, “I’m getting too old for this  #*%@!!!”!

At least this is supposed to be the final day of heat for a while. There is that! 

I Wish I Could Share A Photo Of This!

 My husband is currently sitting on his plastic lawn chair on the back porch.  At his feet are a clutch of tiny Arabic speaking refugee boys and they are talking a blue streak in Arabic, English attempts and lisps while helping my husband pull weeds from our herb and tomato pots, touching and smelling leaves and flowers and enjoying life in the shade on the porch. They are each eating one of our almost ripened cherry tomatoes in the midst of all their blather.  My husband, who always wanted more children but was stoic when that didn't turn out to be possible and who has no grandchildren, is loving every minute of this. hahaha  He is so very patient and quiet spoken with the boys, admonishing them in no uncertain terms when they kick their soccer balls against the side of our suite and put holes and cracks in the siding, but also making sure they know he cares about them and is not angry and freaked out by their All Boy behaviour. hahaha  Watching these antics and overhearing his conversations with them gives me great joy.  I can't post a photo because I don't have permission to put pictures of the boys online of course, but just imagine, those of you who know us, what a kick my husband is getting from these interactions with the wee fellows.

Positive Update On Maman!

 This morning I received the report that Maman was able to have a permanent pacemaker maker installed yesterday and she has done incredibly well in her initial recovery. In fact she may be released in the next day or two. My friend is thrilled by these results and thanks you all profusely for praying. God must have intervened because the situation was dire, with these positive results not really expected. My friend and her husband will be staying with Maman at her home while she completes her recovery there. My friend is a wonderful daughter!

Thanks everyone and thank you God!

Why We Can Still Cope With Living Here

 As I gaze out the windows, front and back, at the sea of goose poo covering lawns and sidewalks from the three groups of between 20 and 30 geese each who hang around here all day, it is so easy to become disgusted by the mess, sickened by watching the kids running through the poo to play soccer and sometimes physically upset by fighting a rising tide of vomit in my throat that my life has come to this.

HOWEVER:  just being able to listen to the various woes of the kids who have begun hanging out on our deck and steps, helping out our neighbours wherever possible and therefore seeing at least some reason from God as to why we might still be living in this tenement is giving us some ability to hang on a bit longer.

Yesterday my husband finally had a reason to answer the request of the Syrian woman next door for him and I to bring her any sewing we needed doing.  He took over a pair of beautiful new black dress pants he wants to wear at our son's wedding reception. The legs needed hemming and he didn't want to do it on his sewing machine because he isn't sure how to use the hemming attachment.  Since sewing at home in Syria was our neighbour's regular source of income, he decided to let her try them.  WOW! She pinned up the hems for him and took the pants to her place.  About 30 minutes later she returned them, beautifully hand stitched and just the right length...absolutely perfect.  Thank you dear new friend. 

She refused to take any money for her work because she and her family want to do something tangible to thank us for all the things we have tried to help them with, plus she was most apologetic that she doesn't have an iron yet and we would have to iron the newly hemmed legs ourselves.  Since we had to go to Canadian Tire later in the day for some items, I picked her up a decent so-called "professional" iron...yeah, aren't they all now for good advertising....but I know it is a good brand.  There was a sale on ironing boards as well, so I added in one of those.  It wasn't a huge cost to help her out as she tries to take in more sewing in the coming weeks.  Once I convinced her that we didn't buy her the iron and board because my husband thought she was asking him to buy one for her when she apologized for not having such things yet and that they were outright gifts, she relaxed and thanked us profusely.  I also have a couple of items I would like fixed up a bit before our trip so will take them to her this weekend.  How marvellous to have a seamstress right on the other side of the adjoining wall!  It will be worth whatever subsequent repair costs turn out to be!

She told me something really sweet: when she told her youngest son, 8 years old, that she is expecting another baby she was expecting a negative reaction from him, BUT he threw his arms around her, hugged her and exulted that he would no longer be the youngest and littlest kid in the family. hahahaha  Love that story. 

Already An Update On Maman!

 Just in the past few minutes since I posted the request for prayer for Maman, I have received an update that her permanent pace maker surgery is likely going to be pushed up to tomorrow instead of Friday. The situation for her is very serious indeed.  Thank you for praying.

A Lovely Evening!

 After a lovely outdoor coffee time with my friend this morning....despite heavy rain very early in the morning, the mosquitoes barely bothered us at the park table we were sitting at because there was enough of a breeze to keep them at bay....I came home to the news that my husband had invited two of our closest friends to meet us for dinner tonight at a newly discovered and loved Indian restaurant.  The visit was fantastic and the food was as good as always, but the best part was that my husband had not only the idea, but the oomph to take the initiative to formulate and execute the plan!  He has been feeling so much more cheery over the past few days and has been making things happen most every day for the past nearly a week!  Amazing!  I am as grateful as he is that the funk he has been in for so long seems to be lifting.  Thank you Lord for this answer to prayer.

I am wondering if he will continue his journey to feeling even happier about life as we grow closer to our departure date.  He had the paper map of New York City out on the dining room table this morning, tracing out routes from our apartment to various museums and art galleries and restaurants and parks that we want to visit while we are there.  He nearly completed the blessings and prayers format for the wedding reception and will send those off tomorrow for editing and approval from our "kids".  Each morning he has been up and moving in good time to accomplish a lot during the day. All this is in spite of ongoing tummy issues as he now cannot eat Bell Peppers or peanuts/peanut butter.  The last go round we had with new deletions from his diet was about 3 years ago now when both beets and pears became no-no's.  It is most disturbing when things he has eaten all his life and truly enjoyed start joining the "DO NOT EAT ANYMORE EVER!" list, but that has been the way of things since 1985 when the whole CFS/dietary upsets thing started.  Every few years new items must be eliminated from his diet and a few items he has not eaten in a decade or more can then be added back in with no apparent bad effects.  Sigh....it is a constant merry-go-round trying to feed this man properly.  After over 40 years of this I am well used to it, but it never fails to hurt me as well as him each time we begin the process of discovery to find whatever new foods can no longer be tolerated. God bless him. He is stoic about it and never complains or feels particularly sorry for himself.  What an example HE is to wimpy whiny ME!!

Please Could You Send Up Prayers For My Friend's Maman?? Thank You, Thank You!

I have just received a request for prayer from my friend. Her mother was taken to hospital unexpectedly today with a heart issue, died temporarily while awaiting her temporary pace maker.  Now that she has that, please pray that she may be able to live until her permanent pace maker is put in on Friday....nearly two days from now.

Maman is a strong person having lived a beautiful technicolor life as a journalist of many years and is now in her early 90's.  She is a woman of vibrant spirit and her family needs and loves her very much.

My friend and her husband are leaving right away to drive many miles to the hospital where Maman will have her pacemaker surgery. Having lost my own mother a few years ago I know the fear of spending an hours long drive wondering what is going to greet you in the hospital room once you arrive.  Please pray for my friend's peace of mind.  Thank you SO much from my friend Jay.  

Language Most Foul!!

The air outside turned an interesting shade of "blue" yesterday afternoon when several middle school aged boys and girls arrived on the back lawn from another part of this complex.  I had never seen any of them before around here.  The boys were kicking a soccer ball around willy nilly, smashing it into porch railings and the sides of our building.  Their conversation was a series of highly refined curses and epithets that caught my attention through our open windows and drew me to have a peek outside.

Well, what a view: there were the non soccer playing girls, sitting around on our back deck and stairs chattering and calling out instructions to the boys who were playing "soccer" with their own made up rules, that seemed to change with every contact with the ball.  hahaha What on earth were they doing on OUR deck and OUR back lawn, we who have no children here and we whose back deck was not the only one sitting in the shaded area of the building?  

I decided to water our already over watered herb and tomato pots just to have an excuse to go outside onto my own back deck without the kids instantly assuming they were in trouble for being there uninvited. hahaha I needn't have worried about that. They were completely relaxed, greeted me quite happily, asked me about the plants I was watering and obviously had no idea that their presence might not be wanted or appreciated.  We chatted away about school and summer holidays, the boys temporarily putting aside their soccer game to join in the conversation.  After a while I started to feel like one of those people who comes home from her month long vacation to find complete strangers living in her house after it being sold illegally to the newbies through some kind of elaborate con.  Aiii yiiii......

My husband had been away for the afternoon and as I was chatting to the kids he drove up, got out of the car and stared at our child covered deck in complete bewilderment.  As he approached the back steps the kids kindly cleared a narrow pathway between them so he could get onto the deck.  He said hello to the kids, walked into the kitchen and shut the door, then stood at the door window and motioned for me to come inside as well.  "What on earth is going on? Who are all these kids?", he queried.  I told him quite honestly that I had no idea, just that I had heard a slew of curses being tossed about outside our windows, looked out and saw several bicycles sitting on the sheltered side of our deck and several unknown children enjoying our place to the fullest, helping themselves to a few cherry tomatoes, but not taking more than one or two each.  Our local "trouble maker" who actually lives in our court arrived at about that time to introduce himself to all these kids and asked them if he could play soccer with them. The boys told him he could if he brought them some water to drink, so, unusually obedient, he went home and returned with thermos glasses filled to the brim.  Then he was allowed to join them and they all had a great time. One of our own court pre-teen girls arrived to introduce herself to the new girls on the block and they seemed to get on famously, so then a couple of her younger siblings came over to join the ever growing mob on our teeny tiny deck.  

My husband and I just shrugged and left them to it, intervening only when one of the boys accidentally kicked the soccer ball into our tomato plants and broke off a branch.  At least he was apologetic, but my husband suggested they move their game into a different, equally shaded area farther away from the building...which they promptly did.  At some point they all went home for dinner and we didn't see them again.  The evidence of their presence was a legacy of thermal tumbler cups left on the deck because their deliverer has severe ADHD that affects his memory and I am sure when his parents asked where their cups were he no longer had any idea.  If I see him out and about later this afternoon I will remind him he should come to pick them up and take them home.

As it is getting to be about the time right now that all these kids showed up yesterday it will be interesting to see if they show up again today. Why our place?  Why us???  There was certainly no concept among them that they could be trespassing here, no idea that perhaps their presence was not wanted on our deck and that made me laugh so hard.  They were an eclectic bunch: Africans, Sri Lankans, Vietnamese, Dutch and Caucasian Canadians who were having a most wonderful summer day.  Aaaah, to return to those carefree days that I will remember from my own childhood....so much fun, so much relaxation, so much activity. So much obliviousness as to their, (OUR), location and possible trespassing.  I just had to be kind to these kids. How very well I remember those  good old summer holidays!! 

It Is Impossible To Drive While Eating Salmon Kawa!! (With Or Without Chopsticks!)

 Well....if it is just being eaten out of a box as a snack without any dip then it would be more possible, but I prefer mine warm out of the oven or fryer and dipped in light soy sauce.  That is how I ate it yesterday after church, sitting in my car in the highway rest stop closest to the town where we went to church yesterday, while my husband enjoyed a huge amount of various sorts of sushi!

We hadn't planned to go out of town for church, but after waking up and feeling restless and ready for another day of adventure away from home, we made a spontaneous decision to go out of town and attend the church where my husband preached the previous Sunday.  Aaaah....we feel so very at home there despite the number of new, younger people who have been attending there in the past few years after we moved out of that city.  It was fun for my husband to be there NOT having to preach or preside or even so much as read a Scripture.  We sat with a dear friend, relaxed, listened to a wonderful sermon by their present priest and it was marvellous.  So many people to visit with after the service even though there is no coffee hour during the summer months.  

We originally planned to just head home immediately after the service because my husband was so tired, but in order to head off a possible tummy episode he realized he had better eat something and eat it quickly.  So we ordered some Japanese food at a restaurant there that we enjoy, but soon realized it was too difficult to eat any of it while driving.  Sitting in our air conditioned vehicle enjoying our meal settled my husband's tummy and we arrived home very full, very happy and very satisfied with our decision to head to that church.

The rest of the day was spent napping and relaxing for me, my husband worked on his sermon for next Sunday at our own church and we enjoyed watching some PBS serials in the evening.  What a wonderful weekend we had together.

Today my husband is having a small medical preceedure done at the doctor's office, so not sure he is going to be up for much else today.  I spent the morning cooking up a pot of cabbage, carrots, turnips and cauliflower, as well as potatoes for a potato salad I just made the put into the fridge for later.  I washed all the new clothes we purchased on the weekend and have them hanging up in the library/den to dry so I don't have to run the clothes dryer on yet another hot day.  Now it is just after 10:30am and I will decide soon whether to spend the afternoon updating information for our executor's package or shredding some of my parents' old documents.  Aahhh...decisions, decisions, and both of SUCH immediate importance....hahahahahaha.

Some Joyful Retail Therapy!

Today I felt like the town resident characters in the old animated movie "Gulliver's Travels".  In my head I was singing "It's a Hap-Hap-Happy Day" as my husband and I embarked on a day of long awaited retail therapy!

Yesterday we made a list of outstanding purchases that have been building up for the past three months or more but that we haven't had to mental or emotional OOOMPH to bother going out to shop for.  Let's face it, we are both still getting over this past winter's depression and it has taken a very long time to get interested in life again.  My surgery a year ago June took more out of me than I realized and it effected my husband too on top of his own resurgence of symptoms from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.  What a pair we have been for the past more than a year....talk about Old Grumpy Pants and The Missus.  I don't know if it is because we are planning to be away from here for awhile very soon, or just that we got so bored with being miserable that we finally smartened up, but this past week we have been feeling more and more in control of our lives and have been happier than we have been for quite some time now.  YAY!  Thank you Lord.

We spent the better part of today knocking the various items off our long list....clothing items, groceries, household items, medical assists.  We had a very inexpensive lunch out at Roots...all day breakfast for me and a chicken and brie burger for my husband. We were very surprised by the low price when our bill arrived at the table.  It was a nice treat after spending a few hundred dollars on our purchases.  Neither of us could believe how long we waited to pick up some of the household and medical items...how have we managed for so long without this stuff????  Tells you how out of it we have been that we kept putting these things off.

It was incredibly hot here today, but spending most of the day inside air conditioned stores and our car meant we survived the heat well.  I got all the windows and blinds and curtains closed and the window inserts installed by 8am, so we had very little serious buildup of heat inside our suite today.  Hopefully I can do as well tomorrow as we face yet another hot day.

Tonight, also after putting this chore off for the past six months or more, I went through all the income tax and investment folders from my parents' estates that I have been storing since Mom died early in 2022.  I had not realized I have been storing old tax files from as far back as 2015 for both of them.  Since I only have to keep the tax files from the year before each of them died, the year they died and the following year's tax forms and then only for 6 years, I have a new pile of "stuff" to be shredded and it is going to take several hours. That will keep me busy between other chores next week.  I have now been able to place the files I need to keep into my cabinet and the huge box that has been sitting under my desk, getting in the way of my foot placement, has now been removed to the basement!  YAY!  I haven't been able to face even looking at those files for the past couple of years.  I didn't want to see my parents' handwriting for some reason....kind of a silly side of grieving I suppose....but tonight I handled it well.  Enough time has passed that I can have visual reminders of their previous earthly existence without feeling overwhelmed by loss.

What a positive and uplifting day. Now, if I can just convince my newest mosquito bite to stop itching so that I can stop scratching it "down to the bone", I will have just as happy a night of sleep as I have had a happy day of shopping! 

The jury is still out on what we are going to do for church tomorrow.  We are in the process of making some changes in our lives and even church destination is presently up in the air for the rest of the summer and into the autumn. 

Flash BOOM, Flash BOO....Oh What A Night!!

 My new box fan worked wondrously well between when I turned it on at 11pm and shut if off again at 2am!  It is the identical model to the one that just stopped working after nearly four years of constant nightly use and this new one works as well as the old one did.  YAY!

I shut it off at 2am because of an incredible lighting and thunder storm.  We didn't get so much as a drop of rain unfortunately, but the flashing of the lightning through the open bedroom window woke me up and the crash of thunder after each flash, along with the gusting winds had me wondering if I should head to the basement to hide from a possible tornado. (Saskatchewan has had 34 tornadoes so far this summer.)  Flash'n'Crash carried on for about 40 minutes, after which time I fell fast asleep and forgot to put the fan back on.  Just as well because at about 3:30am the next round of lightning and thunder came through, less virulent than the first bout, but still enough to wake me up.  I fell asleep again so quickly that I wasn't able to rouse myself to put the fan back on, although I did leave all the windows open.  Without the fan running it is warmer inside our suite this morning than it was yesterday when the outside reached the current temperature of 24C on its way to somewhere between +33C and +35C.  Yuck!  Oh well, there is no snow and, more importantly for me, no ice to worry about falling on outside.

My husband woke up in time for us to arrive at the telephone store outlet just as they opened, so we were third in line to see an agent.  We came out of the store fifteen minutes later with our US phone plan set to kick into place the day we leave.  We are delighted.  Next week we will arrange the holding of our mail.  There will be banking to arrange the week before we leave, I need to update some info for our estate executor, figure out what we are going to do with our car while we are gone, etc. etc. etc.  BUT slowly we are picking off the arrangements that can be made this far in advance.  YAY! 

Once we arrived home I tackled a pile of papers that have been waiting to be shredded for the past few weeks.  Good to have that project cleaned up and out of the way. 

Now it it is lunch time.  Not sure what to do this afternoon. There are lots of little household chores needing doing, but where to start, what exactly is reasonable to tackle in this heat...hmmmm....we shall see what transpires this afternoon and evening.  We were able to pick up the live sumo highlights for Day 13 of the basho before we went out to the phone company, so that was fun to watch while we ate breakfast.  Day 14 should be live right around dinnertime tonight....so grateful that the Japanese broadcasting station NHK allows us to download the daily bouts online for each of the six tournaments throughout the year. 

Red Welts, Itching And Over Heating BUT Still A Productive And Happy Day!!

Today turned out a bit differently than expected, but happily so!!  My husband woke up early enough to get over to our friend's place to work on part one of his outdoor carpentry project for over two hours before the temperature became too hot for him to work, so less than two more hours of work some morning between now and Monday will complete the project. He is delighted to find himself still able to repair fences and dig and spread quantities of dirt about to prepare a flat surface for the rest of the project he is building.  Kudos to him for continuing to enjoy doing woodworking and other projects to keep himself from spending every day in his own head pondering various philosophical and theological issues!  

We chatted briefly about the trip to the telephone company he originally planned for immediately upon his arrival home from the outdoor building project and decided that late in the morning, closer to noon, is the worst time to go and stand in line waiting to see an agent, particularly after my husband spent the earlier morning outside in the growing heat.  So, we waited until after lunch instead and drove to our travel insurance agent's office instead and purchased our travel/health insurance for our trip.  She had time to see us immediately, got the plan put together, I paid for it....about eight hundred dollars less than I was expecting, YES, and the entire process took less than a half hour.  Depending on what time my husband wakes up in the morning, we will likely do the telephone plan then or wait until immediately after his early morning doctor's appointment on Monday morning.  

The joy for me this morning is that as my husband calculated how long he was going to need to complete the first part of his carpentry project, he realized that since we weren't going to have to rush off immediately afterwards to get in line for a telephone agent, I should call my coffee buddy and see if there was any chance if she could use her and her husband's car to come to our place so we could have our usual weekly chit chat.  SHE COULD, so SHE DID and it was a lovely surprise for us both to still be able to get together.  I am so grateful that my husband thought it through and presented the possibility to me and I am grateful to my buddy's husband that he was willing to give up whatever plans he had made for himself this morning that required his own use of the car so that his wife could visit with me.  

Just before we left for the trek to the travel insurance agent another friend called and asked if I could come to visit with her after our appointment.  YES, I COULD and I DID!  It was another excellent heart to heart visit that lasted well over two hours.  It was worth driving back home after that in rush hour traffic!  Still got some home chores done as soon as I arrived home.

Last night at about 3am the box fan, that  I use for white noise so that I can sleep through the traffic and other noises here during the night, gave up. Bearings whining and screeching were likely loud enough to wake the neighbours on the other side of the wall as well....wow....it was so terribly loud and horrific to listen to that I expected to see smoke and/or flames coming out of the fan.  No such distress, BUT I had to shut it off and unplug it and prepare it to go into the garbage today.  While I was out at my friend's this afternoon my husband got online and researched where in this town we could find an identical replacement, so as soon as I arrived home we headed out to Home Building Supplies and came home with exactly what I wanted: a clone of Fan Number One.  Plus it was on sale, so that was a bonus.  It is now hooked up, checked thoroughly to ensure it is working properly and I look forward to a stress free sleep tonight with it whirring efficiently in the background.

I seem to be getting more acclimated to the heat as this week rolls along.  The big blankets my husband has on rollers are up in the east facing windows so that the radiant heat from the morning sun doesn't cause the entire suite to overheat by 9am!  Tonight all the windows on both floors are wide open and although it will be a fairly warm night, there is just a slight bit of cooler breeze coming through. If the forest fire smoke is as high in the atmosphere as it has been the past two nights I won't have to close the windows before the usual closing time of 9am to keep the suite bearable for temperature as the day progresses.

My walking partner just returned from a life long dream trip to the UK and I can't wait to hear about her adventures there. She said she took thousands of photos and I hope she realizes I am going to want to arm chair travel and see every single one of them, hahahaha.  I believe her ancestors came from somewhere in the UK, as some of mine did, so I am really stoked to learn what she discovered about her ancestral roots.  It was most considerate of her to take part of the trip my husband and I were planning to take before our son decided we should come to NYC instead, hahaha.  She has covered that ground for us....God bless her!!

It will be another couple of degrees warmer tomorrow as we head for the weekly highest daytime temperature of +36C on Saturday....no change in forecast in sight as the low to mid range +30C temperatures are to extend well into next week.  Our idea this spring and summer of going out for walks at least 3 times a week got lost somewhere between the 3 weeks of extreme daily rainfall and the ensuing heat wave, so all I can do is refuse to use my cane every time we go anywhere and try to do as much necessary shopping as I can in large grocery stores and shopping malls.  My operated hip and the surrounding muscles are slowly strengthening despite the aborted longer walks outside attempts, so that is most encouraging.  However I am taking my cane on our trip next month "just in case". With the other hip starting to disintegrate now I am not sure how the trip will go if I don't have support available for the massive amount of walking we will be doing. 

Heat And Mosquitoes...Welcome To Prairie Summer!

My arms and legs are covered in small red welts aka mosquito bites after spending last evening out on my neighbour's back deck gorging on fresh fruit and visiting together while my husband drove her husband across the city to look at a vehicle he was thinking of purchasing.  I went out there prior to 8pm and by 9:15pm I had to call it a night and retreat back to the inside of my own home.  There is something positive to be said for the long gown and hijab my neighbour wears....she was barely bothered by the little blood suckers while I, with my bare arms and shins and ankles am suffering the itchy effects of all those bites!!  Owie, owie, OUCH!!! Itch, itch, itch, scratch, scratch, scratch......yikes!!! The local mosquitoes seem to be uneffected by Deep Woods Off, unlike the mosquitoes at the badlands the other day, who respected the bug repellent and minded their own business!!!  From an entire day there I came home with one bite...ONE bite!!! 

Today was a good day despite the temperature getting into the +30C's once again.  I was able to get out and purchase a couple of bags of groceries and tackle the ironing from Monday's laundry day.  I was able to get all but four items ironed and I will complete the other four after dinner tonight.  It was just too hot to continue the project until it was finished.  I actually remembered to thaw meat out for dinner tonight so I just have to think of something creative to use it for.   

My husband has finally tracked down the offending food that has had his tummy on the verge of another "episode" for the past three days: potatoes we were given a week ago, but which became very mushy when we cooked them and then the leftover cooked potatoes became downright slimy when refrigerated overnight.  No potato is supposed to retain that much moisture.  I didn't like the taste of them the first night we cooked them so didn't eat any more, but my dear husband who would rather risk making himself ill than wasting any food, tried frying up the leftovers for lunch yesterday despite already having an iffy tummy. Oh he really paid for that second helping.  He was kind of a mess for the rest of the day yesterday and still not completely back to health today.  This afternoon he is finally feeling that he is better again, just about twenty four hours after ingesting those potato leftovers that were so slimy he actually washed them off before he fried them.  He HAS to learn that if there is any doubt whatsoever about the condition of any food it is wiser to toss it out than end up making himself ill.  It is a hangover from growing up in abject poverty, but one I wish I had a "hair of the dog" to give him so he could get over this habit!  

I had to cancel my weekly coffee time with my friend tomorrow.  My husband needs the car earlier in the morning for a short carpentry project he has been putting off  and then we have to go to the phone company, so that is disappointing, but there is always next week.  At least we will accomplish a few more things tomorrow that have been outstanding for some time. 

Rest In Peace Brian

The church lost a treasured worship leader, singer and songwriter today in the death from cancer of Abbotsford's Brian Doerksen.  For the past forty years my husband and I have enjoyed singing Brian's worship songs in many different churches and it is an incredible loss to the Christian community.  Please pray for his wife and six children, two of which have severe special needs.  While we are grateful he is no longer ill and suffering, he leaves behind a family who needs him.

May he rest in peace and rise in glory...... 

The Days Are Flying Past Too Quickly It Seems!

Sorry folks that I won’t have any more interesting fonts here until I have time to go back through previous posts to discover which link I included in one of them that has a setting which overrides my Google font settings so I can change that post and sort out the fonts again. Always something….

It seems July is disappearing on me already! I am still adjusting to the loss of the month of June and it is nearly August! I haven’t even been doing much of mesmerizing interest, yet the days are flying by. Saturday….did we even have Saturday last weekend? How did we spend the day? 

Sunday was a happy day. My husband preached and presided at our favourite out of town church, so I was able to sit with dear friends. After church a meeting turned into a wonderful lunch get together. I love conducting spiritual “business” over a good meal! Yum!

Wonderfully warm, but not overly warm weather coupled with blue skies and a comfy breeze made for excellent driving conditions, which I very much appreciated since I did all the driving. My husband awakened at 6am with one of his delightful tummy disaster episodes, so we were both intensely grateful that it passed before we had to leave for the service!

Sunday evening we relaxed and indulged our entertainment needs with the latest episodes of “Patience” and “Grantchester”.  At 8pm my neighbour came over to ask if I could drive her family to the grocery store, so I enjoyed that brief outing. I think her husband was surprised to find himself relegated to the back seat with the children after I put his pregnant wife into the front passenger seat….welcome to Canada Saleem, teehee! I think he forgave me? My husband and I were still a bit hyper from the joy of the day out of town, so we both had to read ourselves to sleep. Late night arriving visitors next door woke us up again at 11:30pm and their joyful outdoor greetings and subsequent backyard soccer game kept us entertained until nearly 1:30am. Thankfully we could sleep in yesterday morning.

We are currently being blessed with two days of temperatures of about +24C before heading into another week of highs in the mid +30C’s. I took advantage of that yesterday to do all the laundry that accrued during the previous very hot week. This morning I am about to bake a fruit loaf and that will be the last of my oven use for awhile again.

We are currently awaiting the arrival of the building maintenance staff to perform the quarterly Changing Of The Furnace Filter, as well as the plumber who is scheduled to flush all the drains in our unit. Guess I should go and get the banana loaf made before our place is inundated with trades folk.

Oh, before I go, could you send up a prayer if you are so inclined for our neighbour Hafav who just lost one of the twins she was expecting and is struggling medically to retain the other twin to term? Thank you SO much.

Looking Forward To Another Partial Day Away Tomorrow!

Really happy to be getting away again tomorrow for at least part of the day.  My husband is conducting a service out of town and it is going to be another rather hot day, so the air conditioning in the car will be very nice. Don't know if there is air conditioning in the church we are attending, but the ceilings are so high in that old, lovely brick building that I don't think we will be sweltering in the service.   Now that we have had a full day away, we are more eager to flap our tattered old wings and take off for a few more adventures than we have been having over the last year or so.  

I am going to have to pester my husband to come and assist me in figuring out what happened to all my fonts that I downloaded for use in this blog.  A couple of days ago all that would download from my list of fonts were the names as usual, but the actual fonts disappeared.  Every font name is written in this default font like you see in this post.  I am tired of fiddling about with it trying to get them to come back in reality and not just in the list of names! It is a small inconvenience, but I would like to know what happened. Did I accidentally press a key on my keyboard that removed them?  Is it a glitch with my computer?  Sigh....

A friend from another province is scheduled to phone me on Monday. We haven't talked for weeks and weeks, so I am really looking forward to her call. She is considering a move out of her current town of residence and I am excited to hear how she is progressing with her research and decisions...an in province move but to a different town, a cross country move?  I am hoping to glean some of her energy so that this autumn I can attack our own hoped for moving possibilities once again. 

A Day Away Keeps Depression At Bay!!

 Yesterday was a wonderful day out of town. Our friend whose father passed away earlier this year, (my husband performed the funeral and graveside interment), wanted to take a trip down memory lane, so he and his wife picked us up at noon, (after my wonderful weekly coffee visit with my Thursday buddy), and we headed south west to the farmlands near Avonlea.  My husband is somewhat familiar with the area because his father was born near there and his aunt farmed in that area for many decades, until she was nearly 98!

It was a wonderful day for a drive: warm but not sweltering hot, just enough breeze to scare off at least a few of the hordes of mosquitoes currently in charge of all things outdoors and good roads, both paved highways and gravelled side roads.  We saw some gorgeous fields of still blooming canola, their neon yellow blooms so bright as to be nearly headache inducing, but several weeks of unrelenting heavy rain has destroyed large swaths of crop in too many fields.

We started at our friend's family farm, now run by a nephew, who talked to us about the family history of the farmstead and how the land and crops have changed over the past fifty years or more.  We were able to check out his cattle barn and have a good look at this year's calves gamboling in the fields. Fortunately both our host family and ourselves took large containers of heavy duty mosquito repellent or we would have been forced back into the vehicle within seconds of getting out of it. WOW....heavy rains leaving standing water followed by several days of warmth and bright sunshine....perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes, but there are not enough dragon flies around at the moment to eat enough of them.  The back of our pant legs and long sleeved shirts turned black with bugs within seconds of stepping outside. It seemed the repellent was particularly effective because I received only one bite on a knuckle and it only itched for a couple of minutes.  Most of the four of us received a minimal number of bites so we are all grateful for that.

From there we headed into the town of Avonlea where we toured their extensive museum site.  At about the time we began moving between the buildings to see the various pioneer exhibits and community displays for the various sports teams and tributes to their downed world war soldiers, a fellow arrived to mow down all the grass around the buildings, unleashing a fresh army of mosquitoes, so we made our way quickly VERY quickly from building to building. We spent a long time there enjoying the displays and all the work that had been put into the planning of each room full of items.  Of course we particularly enjoyed a little old Anglican church that had been moved there from one of the many now non-existent hamlets in the area.   

About the time we were completing our tour of the museum, our host started contacting the two restaurants in the town in regard to us having our dinner there, only to discover both local restaurants closed before 5pm.  Drat!  We did find out that the nice little grocery store had pre-made sandwiches and wraps and they were open until 6pm, if we wanted to purchase those and eat them in the car.  For some reason this was not appealing to any of us, so our host contacted the next nearest town of Rouleau and discovered the old King George Hotel grill and bar would be open.  Whew!

On the way to Rouleau, (where the Canadian comedy tv series, Corner Gas, was filmed years ago), we took a tour of Dunnet Lake Regional Park. Our host learned to swim in the river there when he was a kid, so he wanted to see what improvements had been made there over the years. What a beautiful little area!  There are lots of camping spaces and picnic tables, the lake and the dam, a beautifully appointed outdoor swimming pool and a large concession booth with not only drinks and shakes and iced cream but big meaty burgers and sides.  There were too many mosquitoes of course to make the idea of eating there at the picnic tables very exciting for us, so after our tour we headed the rest of the way to Rouleau.

The hotel didn't look particularly up and coming, but it was open so that was a huge plus!  We were pleasantly surprised by the yummy char grilled burgers and home prepared fries, plus the decor had some newly installed upholstery and the place was very clean....I would not recommend using the washrooms under any but the most dire of circumstances and perhaps not even then, but the kitchen was clean, the staff very helpful and the meal quite delicious.

From there we drove at somewhat breakneck speed back to Avonlea's museum parking lot to hook up with the guide for our tour of the small Badlands area only a few kilometres from the townsite.  

 

Our guide is an archaeology graduate and her enthusiasm for her job and for the badlands area made the little tour very interesting and exciting indeed.  We were amazed at the amount of plant diversity as we hiked along on the 3km round trip after parking our cars along the highway by the entrance. The field we walked through is virgin pasture land but we didn't see the cows, only a coyote that eyed us warily from a safe distance and lost interest in us quite quickly as it loped away.  The amount of cactus plants was fascinating to me.

 

The guide asked us if we would like to hike down to the bottom of the badlands to see some of the plants that only grow in that dry bottom area and nowhere else. I told everyone else to go ahead because I knew I could likely make it down to the bottom, but would never get back to the top in this lifetime, but by this time the sun was on the verge of setting and all of us were a bit tired, plus we found out that we couldn't take the little tour through the entrance to a couple of caves down there due to the heavy rains making the clay layer on the top of the hoodoos too unstable. No one wanted to risk being trapped in one of those caves if the hoodoo tops collapsed of course.  Anyway, cave or no cave, the view from the edge of the cactus lined top field was gorgeous and it was enough to make us all happy.  We walked back through the field to our car and headed for home after a wonderful day away.

"Tip toe through the cacti".......everybody sing along.....

We both slept very well last night once we "un-hyped" from our busy day out of town.

We both slept in a bit this morning, thankfully, and we both woke up feeling really good, really happy, really peaceful.  That seemed a tad unusual because we knew we had an appointment at the "Bank of Seemingly Never Ending Offences" just before noon.  

But...ya' know what?  It went spectacularly well!  My online survey answers from a month or more ago for that bank apparently caused something to click. Not only do we have a new advisor who apparently knows how to do the work she is paid to do, she was helpful, explained everything really well, answered our questions, apologized for the mess the previous FA had made of everything, helped us fix every issue AND sent a toe curling email to the third party institution that messed up our US credit card limit so badly back when we first applied for it.  She said she does a lot of this sort of thing and that she is sure when the people there see another email from her that they don't even want to open it. She very bluntly wrote to tell them the mistake was theirs and she expects them to fix it immediately and restore our the original credit limit they gave us before all the mess happened.  Will her email bring results...well, perhaps not, but for once we felt like someone with at least some authority has gone to bat for us!  Someone actually heard us and understands why we need this limit restored before we go away! So, all we can do now is pray and trust God for whatever the result turns out to be!  If we don't get that original credit limit back then we have to assume there is a good reason for it that we may or may not understand.  At least someone has really tried to help us.

My husband was so buoyed up by the appointment that he headed to the nearest restaurant to buy us lunch...kind of a celebratory lunch for the successful appointment there...for once...and also because it hit him suddenly that he never has taken me out for the special meal he promised me when he had to be absent for my birthday back in June, hahaha.  Lunch today was not particularly special in that sense, but it was a nice surprise and I am not sorry he feels just a tad guilty for forgetting my request for a meal at a particular restaurant some evening in honour my now long past birthday. I suspect that once he gets his out of town church commitments over with on Sunday he will be able to relax and enjoy an evening out more....at least more than he would have today after accidentally erasing the last day's worth of work on his sermon from the upstairs computer he was using as he attempted to save it for transfer to the basement computer where he can work in the cooler air.  Aaaah, the poor guy. I do feel really sorry for him, but he at least remembers well what he had written so I suspect it won't take him long to rewrite that portion.

It is hotter today than yesterday and we are hitting the +30C mark for the weekend, but then the temperatures will supposedly be more reasonable again next week.  +30C seems just fine after several days of nearly +40C so we are not complaining about the heat today!