A Positive Health Update

Thanks so much for your continuing prayers for Carol.  Here is the most positive news yet from her family:

Wow. I thought yesterday was a lot to say. Today we are sooooo delighted to share she has successfully been extubated. She is breathing on her own. She is answering questions with a whisper even! She so far seems quite clear minded.

So very many answered prayers!
She had another round of dialysis today. They may do another round tomorrow depending on her morning bloodwork.

So!
Please continue to pray for her mind to clear and for Gods peace to cover her as she begins to process the journey she has been on and has ahead.
Pray for her kidneys to pick up on their work. So that she doesn’t need another round tomorrow.
Pray over her heart. She had a rhythm anomaly. Pray it doesn’t return and her heart strengthens.
Continue to pray against infections and complications.

Thank you thank you thank you!

Winter Is Hanging On...In Other Words A Typical March For Us!

We had some heavy snow this morning that left us with our back deck covered in about 5cm of snow, which our neighbour shovelled off for us, after borrowing our shovel and push broom to do both his place and ours, then he shovelled a pathway out to our car as well.  He wanted to thank us for shovelling for his family when he was out of town working for a few weeks.  At least that is what we are assuming as he doesn't yet speak any English at all.  That is our prayer for him and for his family: that the English language will come easily enough to them not to have them frustrated all the time with communications struggles.  Mom is doing fairly well in a short period of time and the kids are learning at school, but Dad dad has not had the opportunities to be in English classes or to be surrounded by native English speakers since the family arrived here nearly three months ago.  Glad we have an excellent shovel and broom to share with them.

This afternoon's heavier traffic melted the snow on the streets, turning them to a slush covered mess and now, late in the afternoon we have more teensy snowflakes falling.  This system is to pass by tomorrow morning, so I hope we have seen the bulk of this system's snowfall.  

We received another encouraging update about Carol this afternoon from her family, so here is part of that information for you prayer warriors out there:

(Monday) Today’s update includes a lot!
The first time they were able to have her sitting up in a supported chair with the ventilator! It continues to be doing minimal work to support her own efforts of breathing.

Her lungs continue to be improving! The fungus that they found they believe is non-troublesome, but they are going to grow and test it as well.

Her kidneys have continued to not improve as hoped so they are doing dialysis today (currently probably actually as we speak!). Tomorrow they will reevaluate and possibly do a second round which they expect is all that she will need.

She is starting to show more alertness, which is so encouraging but we expect this to actually improve most after the dialysis.

Thank you all so much for being with us in this time. The prayers are being so effective and are so appreciated each one! 

My husband is having a nap this afternoon. Neither of us slept well last night and I can put my issue down to having ingested a full cup of caffeinated coffee at my friends' house yesterday afternoon. Duh....I have been saying with boring regularity that I am not going to do that again when I visit these dear friends, but I caved again yesterday because, dang it, the flavour of that coffee was just so GOOD!!!!  I am paying for it today: insufficient sleep, wired up emotions overnight and now I can hardly keep my eyes open long enough to post this blog entry!

Tomorrow my husband will participate in the annual Blessing of the Oils ceremony with the Bishop and all his colleagues. Their vials of healing oil will be duly blessed and consecrated for use over the coming year. He always enjoys that service, plus it is a chance to see colleagues from around the city and diocese that he rarely has a chance to connect with any more now that he is "fully retired" (yeah...like church ministers are ever that, right?).  I will use the time he is there to do another good round of physiotherapy like I did today and to get something decent cooked for us to have for dinner in the evening.  We have lived mostly on spaghetti sauce and curly noodles and left over beef tenderloin roast for the past few days and it will all be gone by tonight.  I also need to get moving on ironing my spring and summer clothes that I unpacked last week and are still lying around on the ironing board waiting to be dealt with. Somehow the last couple of spring snowfalls have dampened my enthusiasm at least somewhat for the task.

The Ascent Of Jesus, The Descent Of The Snow!

 I so enjoyed our church Easter choir concert this evening. Christ’s journey to the cross was well portrayed through music, song and narration. Then the exuberance of the music toward the end of the concert celebrating His resurrection….it was an exciting expression of the joy and hope given to us by the raising of Christ from the dead.

The inspiring concert was followed by the latest weather report: a large snow system is winging its way across the province from west to east, leaving us with about 10-15 cm of snow over the next 36 hours. Sigh…..what a miserable end to the month of March, but hardly unexpected on the prairies. Hahaha….ya’ gotta love it here, right? 

When It's Spring Time On The Prairies!

 We woke up this morning to a thick blanket of large snowflakes coming down...way more snow than the predicted "flurries".  There were about 3cm of snow that had melted off again by the time church was over just after noon.  The streets and some sidewalks are sloppy with water puddles and our back lawn is soggy, sodden and bog-like to walk on.  

We completed our series of study this morning on literature and poetry in the adult church class. This morning we read a story by Annie Dillard, "A Field of Silence".  Her descriptions of being alone on a farm one day, while sometimes being uniquely over the top as is her wont it seems, certainly encompassed my own feelings of loneliness, desolation and a need to see God in a new way when I spent my first time living (for six LONG weeks) on a farm back in 2001.  City girl that I was, it was very difficult to make the adjustment to the differences in sound, sight, distance and general culture so I found that her writing captured those desolate, confused feelings very well.  

We lunched at the Knotted Thistle afterwards.  I enjoyed very much their Celtic Plate....a huge no no for my diabetic carb count, so I did leave a portion of the massive mashed potato base, but thoroughly enjoyed its covering of sliced roast beef strips, peas, cabbage, gravy, "real" bacon bits, fried onions and gravy.  Any meal that consists so heavily of hot beef smothered in hot browned gravy is my kind of comfort food!!  We took our time and reviewed the church service and what all we had gleaned from the sermon today.  It was fun.

As soon as we got home I collected the spaghetti meal I made for our friends yesterday and delivered it to them. They decided I should stay for a good long visit over coffee and that was lovely.  I will be vibrating for the next three days from the strength of the coffee, but it tasted so darned good!  If it wasn't for needing to keep my caffeine levels so low due to osteoporosis, I could really get back into drinking good coffee again. 

Tonight we will watch the church choir Easter concert online.  Trying to get parking near the church on concert nights is a hassle and as the temperature will be well below zero again by then the now wet, puddley sidewalks will be a sea of ice I don't need to be walking on.  It is more fun at home because I already know a number of the choir pieces they are doing and I can sing along in my old croaky voice without disturbing or offending any of the concert goers, hahaha.   

Tomorrow it is back to the full physiotherapy routine and a start to getting my spring and summer clothes ironed and hung in the closet.   We are expecting about 5cm or thereabouts of snow between tonight and Tuesday morning, hopefully no more than that and most of it should melt off in a few days' time.  Spring on the prairies....the weather changes several times a day, snow falls and melts within a few hours or even minutes, the sun comes and goes over the course of each day, the clouds change from white to iron grey to white again, then disappear altogether for a day or two between snowfalls.  All this topsy turvey weather is a great omen that spring is actually going to happen this year. What a crazy start to the spring season....as always!

The latest update on Carol is thus:  all of the sedation drugs have been stopped and she was expected to wake up yesterday, but she didn't.  This afternoon she has begun responding to pain and other stimuli for the first time, so that is positive.  The nephrologist would like to avoid having to put her on dialysis for a few days to help pull the rest of the sedation meds from her kidneys and hopes they will bounce the drugs out on their own.  He will continue to monitor that situation for a day or two and then reassess.  Her family are feeling more positive about Carol's eventual recovery, but even if the final outcome is spectacular, it is still going to take a long time, lots of medical care and our prayers for her.  Thanks again from everyone for your prayers and concern. 

One Puddle Dried Up And Ready For Refilling!

What a lovely day!  The temperature at our place has reached almost +5C, so the snow from the other day has mostly all melted and the puddle that hugs our little trail out to the parking lot is pretty much dried up....JUST in time for the next round of spring snow starting tomorrow evening and scheduled to last for a couple of days.  The forecast begins with a 60% chance of snow flurries tomorrow overnight, followed by "Snow!" for the following day or two.  The above zero temperatures will dry up at least some of that snow by mid week, just in time for spring snowfall number three heading into the start of next weekend!  hahaha  At least we get a dry day or two between spring snowfalls.  I feel sorry for neighbours in the next building because instead of having short, brown, dead grass at the bottom of their porch stairs they have an ever spreading mud bath.  Perhaps it happened because of their kids and the kids next door to them playing soccer there all summer and autumn. That would be enough to kill a patch of grass that large. I don't know, but it is going to be wicked for them getting out to their car every time there is snowfall or rain. I don't know if the management here will care to do anything about it this summer or not.  At the bottom of our stairs there are four cement tiles, three of which have been slowly breaking up over the past two winters.  The one has a raised corner of jagged cement now and it is a trip hazard for us and for anyone who comes to our door.  Hopefully we can get them replaced, rather than just removed, or we will end up with the same muddy ground at the bottom of our stairs that our neighbours have at the bottom of theirs.  If all else fails we will go to the store ourselves and purchase super cheap cement tiles to replace them. Yes, yes, I know it is supposed to be the management company that does that, but we have lived here long enough now to know how it works around here.....or should I say, DOESN'T work around here? hahaha

I slept quite long and well last night after a few nights of being awake for a couple of hours somewhere between 2am and 7am. I finally figured out that I can no longer have my bedtime one carbohydrate bedtime snack.  After so many years things have changed in that regard, so it is time to obey the dictates of my body. No snack = uninterrupted sleep! Glad I figured that out fairly quickly.

This morning I spent about three hours making spaghetti sauce and the pasta noodles, then completing washing and putting away all the dishes, pots and utensils I managed to get dirty! Good grief...what a sloppy cook I was today!!  However the sauce is delicious and the newly purchased LONG'n'CURLY noodles are quite a treat...something different for a change.  I found them at the Italian deli. They are more substantial in thickness than spaghetti noodles, so take about 12 minutes to cook through properly to remain ever so slightly el dente.  Perfect!  I enjoyed having that for lunch so much that I am going to have the same meal for dinner tonight.  

My husband was informed this morning that a colleague is in hospital so he went there this afternoon.  Bee is awaiting a liver transplant and things are not going well right now. There are tubes and wires attached all over Bee and it is unclear whether or not it will be possible for Bee to go home as the wait for a transplant continues.  My husband also tried to locate Carol's family while he was there, but they were not around at the time and only they have permission to visit Carol.  He was able to pray for her quietly to himself as he left the hospital to drive home.  

I hope to get a goodly sized carton of noodles, sauce and a grated cheese topping over to the home of elderly friends tomorrow sometime after church.  The size of the batches is why it took me so many hours to prepare the meal.

It is nearly 5:30pm so I think I will go and stand on my deck in the late afternoon sunshine before I eat dinner.  The sun is still throwing warmth at me.  Lovely...... 

This Afternoon's Carol Update

Here is the information I just received.  Prayers are definitely helping Carol with her health disaster.  Thank you from the family and of course the prayers need to continue.  Bless you all!

Her lungs continued to improve, and the ventilator settings are becoming quite low! Perhaps later today they will try her on a setting where she has the job of breathing for herself, and they will be minimally supporting her. This is all dependent on her cognition, so that is one of the big factors presently. But as far as her lungs are concerned, they are definitely looking improved! Her poor cognition in that she is not responding other than to painful stimuli is related to her kidneys, being sluggish.

Because the fentanyl that they use to keep her sedated is off, she will slowly be waking up, but the medication itself is actually removed from the system via the kidneys so her sluggish kidneys are causing her arousal to take longer than perhaps normal. They often will give up to three days for this to happen now with this kidney situation. Her kidney function blood tests have plateaued so are no longer worsening, which is great news. We will be praying that they kick back into gear smoothly and no dialysis is needed.

She is still quite swollen and again is expected with cardiac and kidney being sub-optimal. 

They are increasing her stomach feeds so that is also indicative of improvements throughout as well. 

So basically, still not conscious, needing very little respiratory support, awaiting kidney and cardiac function to return to normal and with that will come her cognition as well. 

Continue to pray with us for kidneys, heart, mind, pray against hospital acquired infections and complications, continue to pray for her husband and all the family over this weekend ahead :-)

 

 

So, Guess What My Lunch Appetizer Was Today: A Temporary Crown!

 What a great morning!  I got to sleep in a bit, the sun was shining brightly, so even though the temperature outside was a chilly -18C, I felt pretty darned good.

My husband drove me to the dentist for 11am so that my dentist could take a look at the broken tooth and we could set up a date for a possible new crown.  After the photos and x-rays of the tooth were taken by  a most wonderfully fast and efficient hygienist, the dentist came in and asked me if I wanted her to just coat the whole mess in filling. I asked her for her assessment as to whether or not I should apply for a crown right away or wait for a few months and she advised me that the next step would definitely be a crown, but if that wasn't a possibility for insurance coverage she could try filling it and it could last for a few months that way.  I decided not to bother with the extra work and cost and time required to fill a break that would require a crown soon anyway, plus as I thought about it I realized that with the extra appointment today we have used up most of our annual dental coverage this year anyway, so I decided to just make an appointment to start on a new crown as soon as possible.  

As I suspected would happen, my dentist looked at her watch, checked the time the hygienist was to get off work for the morning and asked me if we could do the crown prep at that moment!  Yup, you betcha. What a relief not to have to nurse that broken tooth for the next two to three weeks until an appointment with my own dentist would become available.  An hour and ten minutes after I sat down in the dental chair I was on my way out again with a nicely fitted temporary crown in place.  YAY!!!!  I wasn't able to get an appointment for the next over two weeks, but was told that if there is a cancellation sometime prior to that date they will call and offer the time to me.  YAY~~what a great start to my day.

My husband patiently waited in the car out in the dentist office parking lot while I was having the work done. He enjoyed reading his book, listening to the radio and dozing in the warm sun coming in his driver side window.  The temperature outside began a fast climb into the near 0 degree range while he sat there, so he had a very nice time away from the phones at home.  He realized though that he had not eaten any breakfast of note so by the time I left the office it was just after noon and his tummy was starting to bother him considerably.  When he has tummy troubles he gets kind of picky about what he wants to eat so that he doesn't exacerbate the issue and he was craving Indian food.  My dentist is not that far from DarBar....it is on the same avenue in fact, so that is where we stopped for lunch.  Despite my frozen mouth I managed to eat about half of my lunch plate without dribbling food or gravy down my shirt front. hahaha  It's a miracle!!!!  hahaha  The rest of my meal is tucked away in our refrigerator for tonight's dinner or tomorrow's lunch.  We decided to call it an extra anniversary treat.  

This afternoon after I rest for another hour I am going to make a large batch of spaghetti sauce.  I have a couple of green peppers that are not in prime condition and some onions I want to use up so I can justify taking advantage of a sale on white onions at my neighbourhood grocery store. We have a few more garlic buds than we are going to be able to use up on other things in a reasonable amount of time, so this will be a nicely garlicky sauce.  I will cook up a carton's worth of spaghetti noodles as well because I have some senior friends with a need for some simple home cooking.  It is always fun to share meals with them.  

I have no further updates about Carol as yet, so we can only assume she continues to be sufficiently stable until or unless we hear otherwise.  Our whole church continues to be in shock at what has happened to this until recently healthy, Spain's Camino de Santiago Trail walker, long distance cyclist into her 70's...... I cannot imagine what her husband and children are going through right now....lots of prayers accompany her along her journey, that's for sure.

So, lovely people, if you get any kind of respiratory infection and it seems to be headed into your lungs, even a little bit, get medical assistance immediately!!!  This particular infection that is going around, at least on the prairies, is deadly and too many people have been dying from it since the new year began.  I had no idea how many until I got looking at news articles online....well over 100 people just in Alberta and Saskatchewan have died from this particular type of pneumonia because Sepsis sets in so quickly.  Scary stuff.... so GO TO THE DOCTOR IF YOU GET A BAD COLD THAT SEEMS TO BE HEADING SOUTHBOUND INTO YOUR LUNGS!! 

Quick Update On Carol

Carol is improving ever so slowly. Her heart is still weak and her kidneys are working too hard due to the amount of fluid intake required to begin dealing with the sepsis and dehydration. She is responding well to the antibiotics. Hopefully as her need for IV fluids decreases she will be able to be tubed to have food sent directly into her stomach.  No one knows when she may regain consciousness. It is going to be a long journey to whatever level of recovery she is able to achieve. We are grateful her husband, who had been away from home the afternoon Carol was hospitalized, arrived home in time to discover her on their bed not lucid and unable to respond, but still alive. We pray she can recover not only her physical abilities but her full mental capacity as well.  Thank you for continuing to pray.

It’s 7pm And….

 …..the sun has not yet dropped below the horizon. I love this time of year.

Cold today; gorgeous, swirling, huge snowflakes fell all afternoon. The world is white again, with a bit of brown slush on the main streets. Looks like the long term forecast is for many days with sunshine and highs just a degree or two above zero….not thrilling, but better than the bitter cold deep in the winter. April and Easter are both arriving soon….a happier time of year.

Got some physio done this morning, Bible study was this afternoon and tonight we will relax with a few tv shows. 

My husband had a happy birthday yesterday….74 years old. Unbelievable! Soon I will be 72! How did we become older so quickly? 

We made no specific plans for celebrating our 49th anniversary today, too cold and snowy and my husband has been so busy teaching over the past while that he is tired out today. So, we enjoyed his home made apple and peach kuken for breakfast and a delicious “lupper” at Birmingham’s in the late afternoon. Good enough. We enjoyed our little celebration.

It has been a good day….nothing spectacular, just a quiet personal celebration for and with just the two of us. We like it that way.

Tomorrow morning I have an appointment with the dentist to make a plan for repairing my broken tooth…..maybe tomorrow will be a little bit less happy?  Hahaha!

More Small Improvements With Physiotherapy! YAY!

Just so the prayer warriors know, I have no more major updates on Carol at the moment, but her vital signs were stabilizing yesterday and she is fully rehydrated, but was still on full life support at last update yesterday afternoon.  By last night all her children arrived from across the Canada and the USA, so our hope is that their presence will somehow be helpful to her in possibly regaining consciousness.  So grateful that God hears our prayers. We are not helpless to help Carol because we can petition our heavenly father on her behalf. Whatever the outcome we know her husband and children have strong faith and will accept courage from the Lord as they face this painful family trial.

My morning exercises have been bringing some level of encouragement to me as I slog along doing my physiotherapy.  Over the past week I have finally reached the stage of being able to fully weight bear for up to 13 seconds, multiple times per session, on the operated hip.  Almost half way to my goal of 30 consecutive seconds without having to grab a chair for support.  I still have over two months to reach the goal before I see the surgeon. The other bit of encouragement is that when I do my lying side abductions, this week instead of feeling each separate muscle group in my hip and upper leg area contracting to support the lifted leg, they have started tightening cohesively as one unit to give me the strength to hold the leg up the required five seconds and getting more control of lowering my leg back down without it crashing as soon as it gets up in the air.  This morning when my husband did the assisted abductions, where he lifts that leg higher than I can on my own, counts to five and releases it, for the first two of ten lifts I was able to hold it up in the air for the full five seconds before lowering it under my own power.  The other 8 lifts resulted in my leg crashing back down with no control, but that is okay. Until this morning I couldn't hold it up there for even one repetition!!  So, little by little, the discipline is paying off.  This has been one of the most encouraging mornings of physio in some weeks.  Stage one done, now it is time to get ready for our afternoon Bible study, after which I will complete stage two of my routine.  Thanks again to those of you who have indicated you have been praying for my recovery this past 10 months.  Bless your hearts....I am getting there. Don't give up on me....I refuse to give up on myself at this point, although it would be so very easy to just pack it in and tell myself to forget it, it is too much work for too slow a return.  God is helping me to overcome that temptation. Hallelujah!  Thanks for your help and encouragement everyone.

Urgent Prayers Needed For A Church Friend...Thank You Prayer Warriors....

We received an urgent prayer request for Carol this morning:  she was admitted to hospital last evening, diagnosed with double pneumonia, dehydration and Sepsis.  As of today she is on full life support and it is not looking very positive.  Please pray for her, her husband Em and their children and grandchildren.  She is not elderly and is a long distance walker, not at all ailing healthwise, so has been in great condition over all until this hit her a few days ago via a cold and serious sinus infection.  Thank you for praying.  The whole family is in shock, understandably.

One New Toothy On The Way!

Lunch was an interesting meal today:  on my last mouthful of food a tooth broke!  haha Thank goodness I felt that hard piece of tooth in my mouth before I either swallowed it or crunched down on it and broke other teeth!!  Thank you Lord!

It is a tooth that has been threatening to crumble for the past two years, rebuilt by a previous dentist several decades ago, the second last of my old amalgam fillings.  I don't think there are any pins in this one to hold it together as it isn't a molar and if there were any pins in it they would be obvious right now. Fortunately it isn't painful and likely won't be if I am careful to only eat soft foods for the next couple of days until I see the dentist. Thrilled I can be squeezed in this week with my own dentist!! She is working on limited hours each week since becoming a new mom recently.  I am so grateful to have a truly excellent dentist!  What a blessing.  

Here's to a few pain free days, to being careful what I eat and how I chew my food!!

Nearly Over At Last!

 I have had a glorious morning running around town doing errands and treating myself to four new books from Indigo.  I decided that since our wedding anniversary is coming up one of these fine days and we have no plans whatsoever as to what to do to celebrate 49 years of wedded-ness, I would buy myself a handful of newbies and hang the cost.  The one I am most looking forward to reading is "Summers in Squids Tickle: A Newfoundland Odyssey" by Robert Finch.  How that relates to our anniversary is that my husband also spent a few summers in Newfoundland on volunteer work projects with a charity called Operation Beaver and being in Newfoundland provided him with some of the happiest summers of his young adult life.  To my husband:  happy upcoming anniversary!  (What we are going to do for his birthday, the day prior to the anniversary, is also anyone's guess at this point.  He has been too busy to think about either event and I am plum out of ideas after all these years together.  Perhaps if we put our heads together when he gets some time later this week we can come up with something more original than eating dinner out, hahaha.)

I am pleased that as I drove around the city doing my errands I was able to avoid driving through any puddles.  Only the heavy dirt and dust particles blowing past on the strong gales of wind coated the exterior of the car, but it still looks pretty clean and nice after its washing yesterday.  We found some streets to drive on last night when we went to care group that were puddle and pot hole free, so that also kept the car looking good by the time we arrived home.  If we can just get through the next three days of dropping temperatures and highly possible snow flurries and freezing rain, the weather will take an uptick toward spring by the weekend...lookin' good by then. YAY!

This afternoon I think I will work in a physio routine after doing a bit of ironing...hmmmm....maybe best to do the exercising before the ironing so I don't use length of ironing time as an excuse to let the physio go.  Yup...that is the best plan.  More physio tomorrow, then a day off while we have various meetings both in the morning and afternoon. Back to physio on Friday...it is all good. 

I am doing all my outside walking without my cane now that the ice is pretty well gone.  As I go along I have to watch my posture and discipline myself to stand as straight as possible instead of caving in to the weak hip tendon and muscles as doing so causes me to have quite a lean. It isn't necessary and is a lazy, bad habit I want to avoid!  There is a cane in the car at all times just in case I get too tired to hold my back straight on my own.  While the walks around the sidewalks are not usually more than a couple of blocks, at least I can also stand now as well while walking in the retail stores and waiting in line at the cashier tills.  Progress to be sure.  Now, I just have to convince my tired mind and body that I will be able to handle the other hip replacement surgery later this year....I WILL be able, I WILL be able, I WILL be able to handle it. Amen!!!   Unfortunately my "good" hip that has never been operated on, thank the Lord, is starting to ache while doing physio on the operated hip, so I know I will not be able to avoid that second hip surgery. Sigh... Well, old age happens and bodies break down....one day closer to heaven is my motto these days and I find that thought no end of comforting.

Feeling And Looking More Like Spring Is On The Way...Oh Happy Day!

 Today is certainly an early spring type of day: sunshine with scattered clouds in the blue sky, a bit of a breeze and the typical early spring combo of wet 'n' soggy grass and curb lanes with dry, dry tree branches and the shattered remains of last autumn's fallen leaves kicking up dust every time they are disturbed.  We washed our car this morning, thankfully as it was completely covered in dried mud, but the dust blowing in the air on the way home meant my husband had to take a spray bottle of water and a roll of paper towels out to our parking lot when we got home so he could finish the job.  It is wonderful to see him so involved in keeping the new vehicle looking clean and tidy.  The floor mats were barely dirty, but he gave them a good cleaning as well. I LOVE it when my husband is feeling well enough to care about those kinds of details.  As his his wont, he left a toonie on the ledge of the car wash coin/choice panel for the next person in line to use.  He is a good man. 

Tonight we meet with our small group and we are very much looking forward to that.  Meeting with a small group with members all significantly younger than ourselves is such a blessing to us and they seem to welcome us completely into the fold.  Thank you Lord for them all.

I have decided that tomorrow morning, now that the ice has pretty much melted, after I do some banking I will head over to the Chapters/Indigo and look for a couple of brand new books. It has been a thought for awhile, but the path from the parking area I prefer over to the store has been terribly dangerous for me with its constant ice cover.  Now it will be safer and I can just go on my own and relax, take my time and browse all over the store before making my choices.  Aaaaaahhhhh.....a couple of new books that MAY actually have some substance to them for a change.  Maybe a biography as well??  I am so looking forward to getting out on my own and enjoying not having to be in a rush.  This spring, much like last year, I am going to try very hard to find one reason or more to go out of the suite each day or at least every second day.  It will keep me from becoming lazy and unmotivated about leaving the house after being stuck inside for so much of the winter.  I need to pep myself up.

One thing that will inspire me will be bringing up the totes from the basement that contain my spring and summer clothes.  I am finding already that my winter sweaters are too hot, even though the daytime highs have been mostly only in the single plus digits the past few days. However, the 14 day forecast shows only one day in the next two weeks forecast to be at all below zero, so it is time to get out the totes, the ironing board and start to making the between seasons switch out.  That is always a fun time. It really cheers me up to discover the "new" wardrobe I had forgotten about over the winter months.

So Glad The Plan Came Together!

 Apparently the thick snow that fell last evening here in the city was also falling in our destination point of this morning and we weren't the only ones praying for the freezing drizzle to go and fall somewhere else.  Everything for our travels this morning worked out well.  The sun was already shining by the time we left and the heavy semis on the highways had melted any residual ice and snow on the road. The only ice we saw was in little patches here and there in the shoulders in a few locations along our route.  It was a perfect "not actually spring yet" drive there and back.  The service went very well and I was pleased for my husband that the resident theologians were so impressed by his sermon. YAY HUSBAND!  I was particularly proud of him this morning.  All his research and writing paid off.  

We had lunch with friends afterwards....a long talk and sharing of concerns and prayer requests.  We don't see these folk all that often so it was extra special to be able to be there for them today.

The rest of the day back at home was relaxing, some tv and reading, a nap, a light supper and once the next door neighbours settled down around 11pm my husband fell asleep quite quickly.  Now it is my turn.  I am scrambling to finish reading a book lent to me by a friend and needing to be  returned.  Since I am still a bit wound up by the busyness of the day it is going to be well after midnight before I fall asleep.  That is okay. Tomorrow's activities are not strenuous: physio and a couple of light errands while my husband enjoys a morning discussion group online.  The weather is looking stable for a day or two before we get more snow, so that is a treat.   

 

 

Thick Snowflakes Falling…….Thickly!!

 I am truly unimpressed by the present evening snowfall! The curtain of snow in our neighbourhood is so thick I can barely see the buildings across the street. Freezing drizzle is expected overnight, so all we can do is ask God to give us wisdom in the morning if there is any doubt about being able to travel at least somewhat safely on the highway. This new vehicle has only the All Season Tires instead of the studs that are on the Honda. This is not the predicted snow flurry activity, it is a full on winter snowfall. Dang it! Well, no doubt the Lord will make our decision clear to us in the morning…..

My day was not a total waste! Yay! Slow moving as I am today, six loads of laundry are done, folded, and either put away, or hanging up to be ironed. Felt good to make use of my Saturday while my husband was teaching all day.

The winner of the March sumo basho was determined on day 14, but I will still enjoy watching the final day of the tournament once NHK  in Japan has it online and ready for download. Kirishima won his third Emperor’s Cup and I am happy for him, but feeling badly for my favourite Yokozuna, Hoshoryu, who has yet to win a basho since his promotion to his present rank. The last winner and presumed possible winner once again following his promotion to Ozeki, Aonishiki, shockingly ended up with fewer wins than losses for the first time and, after looking as though he might finally have a chance of winning, after coming in second time after time in the past, but having a strong showing on his first week, Takayaso fell apart in week two and failed in the end to come close. My favourite sumo wrestler, Midorifuji, had a heart attack…aged 24? ….prior to the tournament. He of course had to withdraw and I suspect his career could be over. Poor young man…. Crowd favourite and Osaka home town boy, Ura, did poorly as well. There is going to be a huge shakeup in the rankings I expect after so many of the strongest wrestlers did not meet their usual standard at this basho….known as the Stormy Spring Tournament. This year it was indeed! I am already looking forward to the next tourney in May.

The Happy Messiness Of Early Spring

 March is a’happenin’! 

After a bitterly cold beginning, followed by excessive warmth and melting from a west coast Pineapple Express, we woke up this morning to the first day of temperatures dropping again, fog and freezing mist, some area highways partially covered in ice and a 60% chance of more freezing drizzle and snow flurries between now and noon tomorrow. Of course tomorrow morning, while it is still below zero is when we have to be out on the highway out of town for my husband to do a guest preaching gig, haha. ‘Twas ever thus in early spring on the prairies! 

Our first pair of resident geese returned already a week ago so we are awakening earlier than we prefer most mornings due to their constant squawking. As the ice on the back yard melted over the past week the ground covering remains of last autumn’s goose poop droppings were exposed….wow, very bad this time around as both the autumn quick freeze up and last week’s equally quick melt did not give those droppings time to decompose over the winter. What a ghastly mess as there are so many little poopy piles on the lawn and they are too soggy to scoop up.  Once again these conditions are what the kids are out playing in….absolutely sickening!  If you have ever lived in an area where there are hundreds of geese in close proximity you will understand the impossibility of keeping ahead of the droppings and the lack of manpower available to the maintenance staff at a large complex to remove thousands of droppings each day from the huge swaths of green lawn: goose food. Our place is a smorgasbord for goose feasting!

So, another two or three weeks of mist, puddles, ugly brown and then slowly, hopefully by mid April, the spring season will begin in earnest….although it will more likely be the first week in May before the weather stabilizes. 

Sooooo my prayer request is that we will be able to travel safely tomorrow. The church is prepared to roll with it if it isn't safe for us to attend, but we have been so looking forward to a complete change of scene that it will be disappointing if my husband has to cancel. 

Have a happy weekend everyone!

Fun And Games Next Door

 We are getting a taste of what summer is going to be like when the kids next door are out of school, because today they have a day off school and the noise coming through the walls is incredible!!  We are concerned about the 7 year old (approximately) boy, the youngest.  He doesn't talk as much as he just screams and sometimes he is running up and down the stairs and hallways at 2am.  Our prayer is that this behaviour is not a result of trauma caused by his family having to flee the middle east conflicts to a situation in Canada that was so bad the family only lasted five months there before coming here to Regina.  We also pray that if he does have some kind of disability that he can get the help he needs here.  The parents are excellent from what we can tell and we never hear a peep from the other two kids. Perhaps the youngest will outgrow this particular phase??  Anyway, we are praying for him.

We went out to DarBar for dinner last evening, a kind of celebration that my husband's health has been so manageable during this past two weeks of intensity in teaching and preaching...three more days and this group of sessions will be over.  We discovered that we can ask for low salt meals there!  YIPPEE!!!  Our doctors have been telling us it is time to cut back more on the salt again, so we have not been going for Indian food that much.  When we found out last night that they will gladly cook our dishes with less salt we were delighted, tested it out and sure enough....no reactions this time that would indicate we have eaten too much sodium.  Many thanks to their cooks for this!!  

When we arrived home the back lawn was covered with all the children who live in our part of the complex.  Although there are still puddles on the ground and the far too many remains of last autumn's goose poop "infestation", the kids were out hollering and running and playing games, one small dog joining them and projecting his cute little wet self onto everyone...including me as I navigated my way on the least soggy, messing parts of the lawn to my back porch.  I have never seen such a happy little puppy who is so incredibly eager for anyone in his line of sight to be his friend. hahaha  I had just gone into the house, when I noticed out the window that one of the boys from our building...maybe ten years old?...had stepped backward onto one of the remaining icy patches below our kitchen window, then fallen down quite hard.  He jumped up just as I jumped for the door to go out and see if he was okay so I thought he had likely run back home, but when I opened the door and ran outside, there he was standing still beside our porch, just waiting to see if I would come out to check on him. hahaha  "I'm okay, I'm okay." he said to me, big grin on his face.  Then he hollered to one of the other boys who lives in his suite: "She came out to see if I was okay!" He was so proud that someone had come to check on his welfare.  SOOOOO adorable.  We have another day or two of fairly warm temperatures, but we have at this point a 60% chance of flurries and possible freezing rain overnight Saturday into Sunday...not the news we need to hear as we have to travel out of town on Sunday morning fairly early. Sigh...'twas ever thus, right? haha

My husband is running errands without me this morning.  I want to call an out of town friend and do some physio instead of sitting in the car for an hour while he runs in and out of various businesses.  One of his chores today is to pick up the palm fronds for the out of town church where he is preaching on the weekend.  It will save one of their members a two hour round trip journey to pick them up and we live rather close to the business that purchases the fronts for Palm Sunday for most of the churches in our area.  Hopefully we can keep them cool enough in the basement that they will be in good condition for storage at that church until Palm Sunday on March 29th.

All It Takes Is A Phone Call From "The Son" To Make Us Cheery Around Here!

 It  has been a good day today!  The sun is shining, the air is warm and knowing we have another three or four days of this to enjoy before temperatures return to seasonal is enough to make us both very happy indeed!  Sadly it is to come to an end the night prior to an out of town trip we are taking on Sunday, BUT possibly there still won't be any snow or freezing rain to force us to change our plans.

I got all the vacuuming done today, floors washed, everything I wasn't able to complete yesterday is now finished up.  That also makes me extremely happy.

A few minutes ago our son called and that is always a good thing for boosting our spirits!  He is doing well apart from an ongoing sinus issue that has plagued him since December.  Like his father he is learning to cope, to keep working every day and not change his plans just because he has severe sinus headaches verging on migraine status day after day.  Personally I would never be strong enough to push through something like that, even for one day.  Wow....these men of mine are a tough pair.  Our son is in the middle of updating his health care coverage and wow, the cost is going to be a big drain on his monthly income, but it has to be done.  He is nearly finished with income tax, thanks to a new accountant that seems very knowledgeable about people who are citizens of one country living and working on visas in another country and how that effects the tax situation. So grateful for this man.  Final application for the green card have been sent, all information has been accepted thus far and so it will be another six months to a year of waiting for the actual approval and physical card, but after all the prayer that has gone into this process, particularly as to whether or not it should even have been a plan in the first place, things are moving in that direction, so we will all run with that and assume it is the right path for the present.  Our daughter in law has been fighting a very painful medical condition for the past six months or more, but FINALLY, after many weeks of physiotherapy, the pain is gone and now we pray it doesn't ever return.  It is incredible how physiotherapy can help SO MANY chronic issues to improve or resolve themselves completely.  Thank you Lord for all the good news our son shared with us today and now we pray you will help him discover the source of the ongoing and extremely painful sinus issue.  His most recent x-ray showed no tumours or large polyps, so that is a relief. He is going to start masking at work and in his art studio, and running a filter in the apartment to see if he can start weeding out some possible dust/chemical related sources for this condition.  Thank you to those who have been praying for him over the years....he SO appreciates it and hopes you will pray once again as he faces all this sinus pain.

Since all my housework is done for awhile I am going to treat myself and go with my husband to his class on Forgiveness and Reconciliation tonight.  This is the fourth of his five classes through the season of Lent...can't believe he will be done a week from today.  He is teaching and preaching three times this weekend and then hopefully he will be able to take a good long break.  He has a birthday and we have an anniversary next week, so it would be nice if for once we could spend those times together instead of in church doing something.  Not that we mind being in church, but it has been uncanny how year after year, with only a few exceptions in the past 

For My Fellow Winnie The Pooh Fans

This week our son has been installing some new lighting at the New York City Public Library main branch which holds a number of marvellous artifacts such as Charles Dickens' writing desk AND some of the original Pooh story dolls that inspired the writings of A. A. Milne.  

Behold:

 Cool, eh?? 

Feelin' Sparkly Inside And Out!

Going to the dentist is one of the most relaxing events of my life each year.  Cleanings, fillings, crowns, whatever have you, I relish the almost completely pain free procedures that, when I was a kid and even a young adult, scared me witless because of the pain involved despite having anaesthetics.  Advances in dentistry have permitted me to relax in the past fifteen years more than I ever could in younger days.  This morning my husband and I were both finished with our cleanings in just over a half hour, so that is a testimony to the idea that cleanings every six months are a wonderful idea. After a rough start due to having to miss many consecutive years of dental work, even cleanings, we are now at the point where it is a quick and easy procedure.  So happy we can go together every six months.  Today in the cubicle next to me I could overhear my own dentist working on a filling for a small girl, maybe 5 years old?  The wee one was terrified and could hardly be persuaded to open her mouth, but my dentist is particularly gifted with frightened children and before long the wee one stopped her crying, opened her mouth "like a roaring lion", had her work completed quickly and had a big smile on her face when it was all over....I know she did because she had to walk right past me on the way out and wow, no more tears or fears. 

Now it is time to get going on the housework so that our suite is also as sparkly as an old rundown disaster of a place can get with a couple of half days of cleaning.  Our young missionary friends are coming over about 48 hours from now and since we see them but rarely due to their international work and travels, we would like to honour their presence with, at the very least, a clean and tidy place to visit.  So grateful they can come to see us so we can discuss providing a bit more financial support for them in the year to come.  It has been awhile since we have supported specific missionaries regularly, but we are past due with these two, one of which we have known since she was still in the womb.

The sun is shining, the temperature has taken a huge hike and the ice rink on the back lawn is now a lake with slippery ice on the bottom of it.  Guess my husband will have to go wading out to the car in the morning when it is a bit more frozen over again, then move the car to a side street to park for a couple of days until either the rest of the ice melts and the lake dries up or we get more snow to cover it up again.  Aaaaah, this has been the most bizarre winter season in a long time....world wide it seems.

A happy and blessed St. Patrick's Day to one and all!  May you and all your friends experience The Luck Of The Irish in the coming days!  🍀🍀🍀 

Bye Bye To Our Beloved Honda

 Yesterday we completed the sale of our 2011 Honda CRV. It wasn’t as emotional as it could have been after ten years of good service for us because we can still borrow it for the occasional canoe trip this summer, but still it felt kind of odd to see it driving away with our good friend at the wheel. 🛞 Now we pray that it gives our buyers many years of great service! We all went out for dinner at Bonzzini’s to celebrate the transaction, so that was lots of fun. 

We are experiencing a couple of days of bitter cold before the arrival of a Pineapple Express that is set to hit the west coast. Parts of the western USA are going to be hit with extremely high temperatures and the residual effects will stretch all the way east to our little corner of Saskatchewan. If it lasts for at least four days it will go a long way to melting the ice buildup here. That would be a treat! 

Another poetry class this morning at church. Then the service, followed by some kind of lunch….think we will come home today to eat as we were out last evening and will be out again tomorrow evening. We have all the required meat and vegetables for making a large pot of stew, so that will be a good afternoon project for us! 

Crazy busy week coming up. Hopefully our energy levels will remain high until everything is completed.

Where Is The Time Going???

The time is flying past me this week.  Every day seems to have had us out and about for one thing and another, or else someone has been here visiting.  It has all been very good.  

After being in the repair shop for ten days, we got the call yesterday to come and pick up our Honda.  It is now sporting a new radio system that also means, since all the electronics are channelled through that radio system, all the other little "broken" systems are up and working properly again. The buyers of the vehicle will be able to charge their cell phones and play music on their phone playlists with no difficulty now.  We had a new battery put in as the one in it when we took it to the shop is at least seven years old and could fail.  Tomorrow afternoon we will meet the buyer over at the provincial insurers' and make the hand off to the Honda's happy new owner.  YAY!!!!  

My husband had the first opportunity today to get the Honda out on the highway for a short trip west.  It performed beautifully, so he is a happy man. He had a meeting with some Anglican postulants about their ongoing ordination process and it was a very good meeting over a huge breakfast.   I stayed home.  I didn't sleep very well or very long overnight and felt like I had weights on my eyelids when my husband left at 7:30am to get on the road.  Fortunately the huge snowfall and blowing winds from the previous day, which resulted in many highway closures, had resolved by the time this morning's travels occurred.  He had dry roads and some sunshine to accompany him along the way. Me....I went back to bed for half the morning!!

I am happy that one day this week my husband was able to go into the office and talk to the fellow there who is currently in the position my husband used to have there. The poor fellow is trying to get things organized and set up as quickly as possible, but he has run into a little thing he is NOT at all used to and that thing is the laid back "Saskatchewan Culture"!  My husband remembers his own very long time frame getting used to the cultural changes, so he was very empathetic and able to reassure the man that in time he WILL adjust and will be able to work quite happily within this cultural context.  He has lived all his life in big cities in the USA and overseas, so our little diocese is quite a shock to his system.  Poor guy...it is going to take some time to get used to, let alone enjoy, the laid back attitudes here, but I think in time he will come to appreciate much of the outworking of that kind of attitude.  I certainly have....now it is just the weather that frustrates me so badly.

Tomorrow morning I am going to attend the ladies' breakfast at church.  A good friend is giving a talk about her life and although I already know most of her story, it will be grand to hear it again. God has certainly led her and her family through some deep waters, and still is, so it will be encouraging to be reminded of how she has experienced his faithfulness over the past few decades.  Looking forward to it.

We had the most wonderful phone call conversation this afternoon with our daughter in law!  She phoned to give us the fabulous news that her green card has been approved and that she will have it in hand in the next 30-60 days!  It has been a difficult, long, frustrating, sometimes frightening dance with government bureaucracy that has finally come to a happy end.  The other good news is that our son's application should be approved as well in the next six to twelve months.  Unfortunately it means he cannot travel out of the country for that length of time, BUT we can always go there....mind you considering the skyrocketing cost of air fares, perhaps none of us will be going anywhere for some months to come!  (My husband filled our new car with gasoline just before 7:30am today for the price of $1.50 a litre, but by mid morning the price had risen to $1.63.   Good thing we have no immediate travel plans out of province!)  

So, a good week of friends, studying, short trips out of town and for running errands, having the old car ready to sell tomorrow.  The predicted weather is REALLY crazy over the next few days.  The temperatures have been more or less seasonal this past week, but by tomorrow night it is going to drop from our current overnight lows of about -14C or better to -21C for a couple of nights!  THEN by early next week the daytime highs will be between +3C and +12C or thereabout.  Nutsy cuckoo!!!  ALTHOUGH I do love the idea of plus double digit days as the ice will melt quickly.  Guess my husband will be swimming across the back lawn to retrieve our car on those days and driving around to the front street to pick me up....or we will just find a reasonable street parking spot not too far away so we can avoid the back lawn altogether until all the ice and water are gone.  Oh thank you God, spring is on the way. Yes, there will be spring storms here and there until the end of April, but the snow that comes then never lasts more than 2 or 3 days at most before it melts again.  Thank you Lord, we have survived another winter! Amen!! 

I am taking three days off of physio exercising for the sake of my newly ruptured rib tendon. I can still hear that POP ringing in my ears when it gave way 5 nights ago.  Fortunately it is in about the best spot to bother me the least possible and now that I have such a comfortable position to sleep in I am not suffering that much with it.  By the time I am done with some of the contortions required for my physio though it really bothers me, plus I have had some good progress with full weight bearing in the past two weeks, so I don't think taking the full weekend off will bother me that much. Mentally I need the break as well. It has been a difficult realization that the top of the tendon in my operated hip is not likely to come back to life sufficiently to prevent my limping ....a minor disability though. It is all good.  I am used to the idea now after struggling with it for a couple of days a few weeks ago.  

Have a happy weekend everyone. 

Cane-less Walking....Weeeeeelllll, At Least I'm Trying.......

 I decided the other day that when I can be outside walking where there is no scary, dangerous ice, I will walk sans cane.  There is a fine line between leaving the unnecessary dependence on the cane behind and developing bad walking habits by leaving the cane behind too soon.  So, today was a test!

With my former physiotherapist's voice speaking loudly in my head reminding me of the required form, I managed to get across three huge parking lots and back, three grocery stores and a restaurant, leaving my cane in the car.  The restaurant was the final stop and when I came out of there my poor old operated leg had had enough, so I was limping quite badly across their long and narrow parking lot after we ate.  My ability to obey my therapist's voice telling me to "Stand up straight and STOP LEANING TO THE SIDE!!!!", was completely shot and I literally stagger-stepped back to the car.  However, I am very, very happy to have succeeded for the most part up until that point. Today was the longest walk I have taken without a cane since July of 2024!  YAY ME!!  That was my "physio" for today.  Tomorrow is a physio day and I think that as I am able to spend more time outside taking longer walks without the cane and interspersing those days with proper physio exercises, the hip will continue to gain strength!  That is my hope and prayer anyway.

Great visit earlier this morning with my walking partner. She is a huge encouragement to me in many areas of my life. She is a spiritual sister, intensely practical and organized, I can tell her anything and she doesn't bat so much as an eyelash regardless of the topic....I am so grateful to have her in my life. She also shares many things with me and we have great talks and "problem solving" sessions.  My friends, along with my husband and son are my biggest blessings.  

From My Prayer Request List Of The Other Day....

 For those of you friends and family who have been praying for the Arab Theological Baptist Seminary in Lebanon, here is their latest prayer request update:

Pray With Us for Lebanon & the Middle East - CBM - Canadian Baptist Ministries 

Thank you for your continued prayers for them.  You can check out their Facebook page to get more "daily details" if the Lord has led you to be a prayer warrior for them.

Blessings from them to you! 

How Did I Manage To Do This AGAIN????? NOOOOOOO.........!!!!

 I am a total idiot!!  Tonight we were visiting friends at their home and I dropped a napkin over the side of the sofa I was sitting on.  Instead of smartly standing up moving around to the side of the sofa, bending down and picking up the napkin I, with nary a forethought of possible consequences, leaned over the top of the rather high arm of the sofa to pick it up.  Weeeeeellllll....at that rather awkward angle with the long stretch of my arm to reach the napkin, I of course immediately felt the pop and the quick stab of pain that accompanies a ruptured rib ligament!  AGAIN with the ruptured body part!!!  I can't believe I did it AGAIN!!!!!  The most recent ruptured rib ligament was on the same side and that happened only a few months ago, so it has only been truly healed for the past couple of weeks, so no wonder I re-injured it!  I reserve the right to berate myself and call myself stupid because that was indeed a stupid, stupid move to make.

The rupture is on the side I sleep on, my non-operated side, but I won't be able to lie on it tonight, that is for sure.  Pressure on my upper back is also very uncomfortable and I can't sleep lying on my front, so how I am going to sleep tonight is currently a bit of a mystery since I can't lie yet on the operated leg.  Coughing is the most pain inducing activity.  It doesn't hurt that much otherwise though, fortunately, unless I accidentally zig when I should zag.

I am incredibly bored with this whole "ruptured this that and the other thing" scenario and can only pray I can pay better attention from now on to any movement that could cause ruptures and sprains.

Dang it....I am not impressed with myself.  The last rib rupture was from the amount of weight I was putting on my cane with that hand and arm while still dependent on it to be able to walk.  Now I use it only as a possible balance stick in case I slip on the ice and don't put any weight on it when walking, so I guess I thought I would be safe from any more ligament issues...NOT THE CASE!

Well, thanks for helping me process my own stupidity and carelessness and I will just have to pay attention once again to what causes distress to this ligament and what is a safe way to sit, stand and move about.  Guess I have my own full attention now and trust I will not make this mistake again in the future.  Grrrrrrrrr....... 

 

Dear Weather: MAKE UP YOUR COTTON PICKIN' Mind Already!!!!

 Gosh, what a day outside!  The temperature rose overnight to just above zero, so there was enough snow and topical ice melt that my husband had to slosh his way out to the car early this morning and drive it around from the lot to our front street so I could go along for the ride to church.  It was far too dangerous for me to try to cross the puddles and remaining ice ridges on the back yard going out to the car lot.  The sidewalks around our place were bare and only a bit wet in places.  The sun never did shine today through the thick grey clouds, but the temperature rose to +6C so there was some melting action, but a chilly wind cut down on any major melting of the remaining snow and ice.  Now at 5:30pm there are tiny snowflakes drifting around, we may get some freezing rain once again and we are on our way to an overnight low of -9C to -11C depending on what weather website I check. Brrrrrrr.....freeeeeeeeeeze.....will it ever be safe for me to go outside to walk by myself???

I should not complain.  In the area of west central Saskatchewan where we spent 5 years before moving to Regina they are having a terrible snowstorm that has resulted in miserable highway driving conditions and power outages all afternoon covering a wide swath of small towns and villages in the north west and along a narrow band all the way to the southern end of the province.  If they are getting such a storm t his afternoon...the area is between 4 and 5 hours to the west of us....what are we going to end up with by tomorrow morning???  We have car repair related errands that have to be run tomorrow and the following day and they will require me to do a fair amount of driving in the new car on my own....blecch! When it comes to driving on snow and ice I am becoming a terrible Winter Wimp!!!  The temperatures will not rise above zero again for a fair number of days and some of the overnight lows are predicted to be in the low minus double digits.  So dear weather:  are we having early spring or prolonged winter?  Make up your gosh darned mind!

Apart from the small stresses related to weather conditions it has been a great day! 

Our adult class on poetry this morning was very good! A local poet was our guest speaker and she shared her thoughts on poems by Robert Frost, George Herbert and Malcolm Guite, as well as one of her own recent works that focused on how God told her he still loves her after she made a glaring life error!  She was very vulnerable in the poem and very honest. She seems a most humble person.  We so enjoyed her presentation.  I am learning so much more about poetry in general...styles and forms and interpretation.  These classes will I think assist me as I continue to enjoy my giant sized tome of World Poetry. 

We enjoyed church even more than usual this morning  because we were participating with prayers and Scripture readings.  I am starting to realize that the thing I am struggling with the most, being a former pastor's wife with my husband being fully retired now and us not having our own parish, is being able to be super duper party pooper involved in the church services each week.  As my energy and mental acuity have begun improving overall the closer I get to a fuller recovery from last spring's surgery, I am realizing I am not quite as content as I have been to just sit in the pews like a lump every Sunday morning. Since we are unable to join the church in a recognized membership role, our abilities to assist are rather limited and I certainly accept that, but wow, it is really nice to be asked to do things once in awhile. It has been a LONG while for me, so I really had fun today. (and please don't suggest that I get involved in the after church coffee hour extravaganza, thanks anyway, because that never was my thing and is the one aspect of church community life I am beyond thrilled to have given up). The sermon was very good this morning, the minister talking about giving God our full attention, and there are some things I need to think about in my own walk with Him going forward.

My dear husband decided that since I worked very hard doing laundry yesterday...okay, yes, I over did it, but it felt SO GOOD to do so much other work along with the washing....that I was not to cook today.  After he promised I would not have to cook, he realized that he is suffering from a couple of nights of poor sleep and not up to cooking either, so we ended up going out to London Belle for lunch after church. hahaha  We both had a chicken burger with lots of lettuce, tomato and jalapeno pepper rounds and a side of tomato bisque soup....SO YUMMY!  There were very few other customers in the restaurant so we were free to talk about whatever we wanted to, relax and have the full attention of the heavily tattooed wait staff....my goodness there are some amazing tattoo artists around here.  The one girl's tattoos were incredibly well done and represented various places in North America where she has travelled.  Since we were one table of only two needing service, she had plenty of time to tell us the origin and meaning of many of her tattoos and it was most educational and fun. The large ring piercing in her nose was also very interesting and the metal, in the bright lights of the restaurant, picked up the carrot orange dye in her hair and flashed it around the room, so her whole face sparkled as she walked about.  I so enjoy chatting with the older teens and 20 somethings. Their culture is radically different from my own and it is always a good learning experience.  We got to chatting because she loved my dress motorcycle jacket.  It is perfect for this kind of "what the heck is going to happen next" kind of weather...warm and wind resistant and long enough to cover the extra long black dress sweater I was wearing over black and white pants today.

To force myself away from physiotherapy and more housework this afternoon I had a delightful time reading and playing video games on my computer while my husband alternately watched tv and napped.  It was a marvellous "old geezer" kind of afternoon.  Now it is nearly 6pm and for the sake of my blood sugar I suppose I am going to have to come up with a bit of light dinner for myself. My husband prefers to put his own catch as catch can meal together after our big lunch, so I will enjoy doing the same.....maybe some bread and hummus or crackers and cream cheese with green olives, or a slice of bread with melted cheese....something simple with a bit of fat for digestion and a large sized drink of water to wash it down and make me feel full for the rest of the evening.  Lately eating any kind of snack before bed, even a protein only with no carbs snack interferes with my sleep, so a "whatever is handy" kind of dinner with only two carb units and then nothing but a glass of water before bed helps with that issue.

So now we are waiting to see what tomorrow holds with the weather and our likely necessary car repair and tire pick up chores.  We are excited that our once a month evening small group is getting together tomorrow evening.  We are the oldsters in the group so we really look forward to spending a couple of hours with good friends who are fifteen to twenty years younger than we are, but who accept us as part of their spiritual and even social circles.  They are a fun bunch and we spend a lot of our time laughing. It is a great bunch of people. Then next morning my walking partner is coming for a visit. Looks like the weather will prevent us from taking even the walk around the complex I was hoping for, but we always have so much to talk about that the time will fly by and be over too soon.  Again, a much younger person who is willing to share her life with us and we have a lot of excellent conversation.

A Happy Conversation To Begin The Weekend!

 What a happy morning we are having!  We slept long and well, had a leisurely breakfast, got showered and dressed and then had a surprise visit on the phone with our son.  There is something about his presence, even at a distance, that bring us great peace.  Knowing he is well and happy gives us a great emotional boost as we begin another dreary weekend, weather wise. He is recovering from his busy work trip in Chicago this past week, is immersed in preparing income taxes and preparing the very last item needed to continue with his visa application. He has two paintings in the works for a small NYC art fair in May. His wife is somewhere upstate with a small theatre company doing a magazine interview with their playwright who also happens to be one of her local drama heroes, so she is also happy and enjoying life right now.

My husband is busy writing emails this morning and I am doing great huge loads of laundry, so I am getting lots of exercise going up and down all the stairs in this suite. It is good for me and no longer bothers the ruptured tendon in my foot to the degree it did a couple of weeks ago.  I was able to finish composing the prayers for church tomorrow, so I am very pleased about that.  Sometimes the inspiration doesn't seem to hit me until very close to presentation time and other times are like today. Sit, pray, think, write, print off and that's all folks.  Thank you Lord for the ideas AND for the much shorter length of the prayer than the last time I was doing this.  The congregation will also be grateful for that, I guarantee it, hahaha.

 

I Love Spontaneous Visits!

 Today began quite happily after a seven hour sleep! Yay! Breakfast was eaten early in the morning and it left me feeling so energetic that I did my tomorrow’s physiotherapy routine instead of taking my usual day off. (I decided to do all the laundry tomorrow to ensure sufficient exercise before my regular Sunday off from physio.)

My husband was going out with friends this afternoon and I wondered what I should do in his absence, but the wife of one of the guys solved my dilemma by inviting me over to her place for a mug of her delicious fresh ground Italian coffee and a visit. We had a great time and she sent me home with an older, beloved novel of hers…..perfect timing as I will soon be finished re-reading a trilogy of the “summer reading for the beach” variety. The loaner from my friend has much more depth to it! (Thankfully!!)

The slight warming of the outside temperature this afternoon melted most of the remaining snow and ice piled up along the major roadways, so all the cars around here are the same colour tonight: deep, muddy brown….yukko! Outdoors in this city, between our likely to come spring snow storms and the last freezing rain events, is truly ugly!!  The entire landscape consists of varying shades of soggy brown, and anything sitting stationary in the sun a dried out brown that tempts passersby to write “wash me” with their fingers on the splattered trunks and mucky windows of parked cars. We call pre-spring warm ups, like we are experiencing today and will be continuing over the weekend, “false spring”: a time when nature gets our hopes up that the snow and thick ice will soon be gone, only to slam us hard at least two or three more times with treacherous storms and cold temperatures.

So, Nature, it will be interesting to see what new weather tortures you will have in store for us next! As for me, I will simply relax, lose myself in the novels I mentioned and enjoy all my visits with friends this crazy month of March: spontaneous or otherwise! 

Re: Em's Surgery

 I received word that Em's twice postponed surgery is now scheduled for March 24th.  Please, please pray it won't be postponed once again.  Thank you so much.  There are so many things in life that happen that we can't understand, but my prayer is that Em will discover something encouraging despite the unexpected and pain inducing wait times.

Thank you for praying! 

My Dinner Plans Were Decided By My Neighbours!

So....no plebeian pita pizza for me tonight after all.  I decided on the remains of my tuna salad with two carb units of rye flour sourdough bread.  Tasty enough and fairly light, but what to have for my third carb unit that was not banana loaf, not sugary dried fruit, not a fatty fruit and nut bar, not another chunk of bread....hmmmm.....

Well just as I finished my last bite of tuna and bread there was a loud knock on the front door.  It was our neighbour bearing yet another plate of food: more of the fantastic savoury rice along with a tomato based soup that also had green beans and onions in it....ooooh yummy....AND a cold thinly sliced veggie salad with crispy bean cracker bits and a lime juice dressing.  Oh my goodness.....again with the marvellous Syrian foods!!

So, my dessert was one carb unit of the above; a very tiny portion of course, but oh wow, it was a fantastic addition to my sad little tuna meal.  My neighbour is going to have to stop bringing me food as a thank you for that hand mixer at some point, so I hope she doesn't get carried away, BUT I have to say we have thoroughly enjoyed her cooking.  The extra rice is in the refrigerator for tomorrow. Now I have to figure out what wonderful protein and veggie dish I might come up with to eat with it....whatever it is it won't be nearly as tasty as what we ate tonight.  My husband was eating late and was ravenous, so he polished off everything but the very generous portion of rice.  Well, after seeing these past two gifts of food, we know the mixer we gave her is working well!  Yum....we are eternally grateful for the opportunity to taste some of the foods from Syria.  God please bless our neighbour. Thank you!  

Guess I Am THIIIIIIIIIIS Tired!

 Yup, I am severely tired. I just realized I was whining and whinging in my last post about being stuck at home for two days in a row when in fact I WAS out yesterday for a haircut and grocery shopping.....aiiii yiiiiii...I NEED TO SLEEP! hahahaha  If one day at home seems to drag so badly that I think it has been two days at home, well, I can only hope another nearly 8 hours of sleep tonight, just like last night, will fix my memory issue. hahaha

Shredded!!!

I feel as shredded mentally as the huge stack of papers I just finished shredding physically....wow, I feel like I have been run over by a semi rig today.  So does my husband!

Although we both slept long and well last night, we are still recovering from the lack of sleep the previous night.  It seems the sloggy, groggy, foggy feelings due to lack of rest hit us the day after, instead of the day of.  

However, the day was not a complete waste!  YAY!  I spent nearly two hours shredding old paperwork and then vacuuming up the mess I made when I didn't realize one edge of the bag I was emptying the shredded papers into had not covered the bin holding the shreds....sigh....well, it gave me something else to do this afternoon, hahaha.  

I got my physio done today and saw a bit more improvement in how many seconds I can stand now on the operated leg and my husband is seeing other signs of improvement in how badly I limp when I walk, so it has been an encouraging day today. Wow, only 9 months to be able to stand on that leg unassisted for a full 8 seconds, (hear the sarcasm along with a groan and a grimace). I know that sounds horrible, ridiculous even, but if I can hold it for 8 seconds now, maybe 3 months from now if I work hard I will be able to stand for the required 30 seconds.  Right?  Of course right! I can DO this!!!!

We discovered that some issues we have been having with our WiFi, particularly with getting my iPad back online after having to reset the whole system when it occasionally completely crashes, computers, iPads, tv system and all, SEEMS to be related to my husband's occasional use of his Ubuntu.  Each time he uses it, and that isn't very often, we have to reset the system and then all goes well with the PC's and the tv, but my iPad stubbornly refuses to reboot its WiFi connection, even tells me my password code for connecting to our WiFi site is incorrect...which is most certainly is not.  Shutting off the iPad, waiting for awhile before trying again to connect, does not fix the problem. Each time this has happened, including today, the iPad only comes back online after Ubuntu is shut down.....to us, not being computer wizards, this seems very strange, but at least we know what to do now when and if this hassle happens again: wait until the Ubuntu is shut down, reboot the WiFi connection and all will be well.  We hope that is the problem because it is easy to solve.  

Looking forward to church participation this coming Sunday. My husband is going to read the Scriptures and I am going to do the prayers.  I am wondering how much I need to write down ahead of time, do I even need to do that this time, or should I just wing it, charismatic style?  Maybe some crib notes so I don't miss some particular requests, but apart from that I think I may just wing it.  Spontaneous prayers from me are usually considerably shorter than when I start writing prayers down to read.  Why, I am not sure, but that is how it is most of the time. Perhaps I will give the congregation a break this Sunday and ask the Lord for the ideas to pray about as I go along.  Could be a complete disaster, right?  Well, I am in the mood for a challenge, so maybe.....I will let you know how it goes......

The past couple of days have been spent inside and I am getting rather antsy to get out of this suite.  We were supposed to be picking up our old vehicle's summer tires today but they haven't arrived yet from the storage facility and to be honest it is probably just as well we didn't have to go out.  This morning we awakened to an outside covering of ice pellets and a bit of snow. The ice pellets were easy to sweep off the deck first thing in the morning because they had the consistency of large grains of salt. However by this afternoon, even with only a slight warming of temperature, they melted just enough to run together into a big, tough mass of icy snow that would have been difficult to move with the shovel.  Very grateful we got our decks and steps cleaned off with the broom before that happened.  The weather forecast for this weekend has been revised and we will be receiving much colder temperatures than originally forecast. Yes, there will be a couple of days slightly above zero, but +3C is a far cry from the original +8C we were expecting.  Oh well, we are another day closer to spring.  

Now the decision regarding what to have for dinner: I ate the rest of my portion of the beef stew last evening so I know my husband is having his stew tonight.  So....should I finish the tuna salad I made at lunch time, or make a pita pizza, or make a veggie salad with some seed toast, or thaw some baked beans.....all kind of plebeian fare, but on this day of feeling mentally miserable and physically exhausted, these are the only sorts of things I feel up to preparing for myself....yawn........

 

Paying The Price For My Own Indiscretion! DUH!!!

 Last night I slept for a whole two hours, then was awake for 3 and a half hours, then slept again for one hour and ten minutes before my alarm woke me at 7am....actually, although it started chiming at 7am it took me until 7:03am to realize it was making sounds that meant I had to wake up and get going!  YAWN.....yawn.....yawn.....zzzzzzzzzz......

It is my own fault I slept so badly.  The delicious banana and walnut loaf I baked yesterday proved to be too tempting to resist and I ate a thick slice of it as a bedtime snack....DUH, DUH, and double DUH!!!!  After 15 years as a type 2 diabetic I know better than that!!! So, it serves me right that my kidneys did a major dumping out overnight and my mind was wide awake from 2:20am until 5:45am.  Falling asleep an hour before I had to get up to help my husband deliver vehicles for repairs was also a stupid move. I would have been farther ahead forcing myself to stay awake between 6am and 7am.  So, I blew it all the way around and am adjusting to spending the entire day in a stupor with teeny doze-outs every time I sit down somewhere.  May I remember this event and learn from it....learn from it?  I shouldn't need to relearn a lesson I have had pretty much been adhering to for the past 15 years.  Sigh....

I hope I don't fall asleep at the hair dresser's this afternoon when she is washing my hair in delightfully relaxing warm water!  I made a promise to myself that I will do better this year keeping my hair trimmed up more often.  As my hair changes texture due to aging, I need to remember how much more difficult it is for me to style it myself when it gets just a bit too long.  After the haircut I will go to the nearby grocery store and pick up a few items. Hopefully by the time I get home with those few bags it will be time to go with my husband to pick up the car that is at the auto electric repair venue.  We need it to pick up its summer tires from storage tomorrow.

It is looking like my usual Thursday morning coffee date is going to have to be cancelled for tomorrow. Tonight we have a forecast of snowfall, continuing into tomorrow with a high risk of more freezing drizzle. I don't want my friend out driving in that!!  Even if she can find a safe place to park, I don't want her trying to walk down a thinly iced sidewalk to get to our place. It is far too dangerous.  The forecast over the next week has been changed somewhat to reflect colder temperatures overall than we were expecting. Oh well, let's get the early spring snowfall out of the way so we can have a nice April and onward.