Living In A Construction Zone This Week….Interesting Stuff!

 The building beside us has had significant water and sewer issues and at 7am today the big machinery from the underground sewer repair company arrived out in the parking lot.  The lawn was soon covered in bobcats and pumping trucks with huge hoses, myriad tradesmen and 3/4 ton trucks. They dug a small hole through the back lawn to access the sewer pipes. By 8am there was a huge hole in the lawn because when the pump hose was rigged under the ground through the smaller hole a major obstruction was encountered. So a cage was brought in to lower some of the workers into the newly dug underground pit. They hauled out some heavy pipes and hauled some new pipe pieces into the gaping hole. By 4pm they were all gone again, workers and trucks and heavy equipment, leaving behind a lawn still covered in yellow and orange flags marking the underground power service locations and two bobcats for decoration.  I assume that means they will return tomorrow to complete the huge task.  Tonight our next door neighbours' youngest boy went outside and managed to tug open the door of one of the bobcats, but wasn't able to hoist himself into the cab, thank goodness. So instead he proceeded to pull out all the orange and yellow flags and bend their metal stems in half. Then he threw them into the pile of gravel in the parking lot. Sigh....  I decided that I should at least say something to him, even if his English is almost non-existent because I was afraid he was going to poke an eye out with the sharp end of the metal pieces he was bending.  I don't know for sure if he understood my words, but he seemed to grasp that I thought he shouldn't be moving and bending the flags. So, bless his heart, he brought them back from the gravel pit, straightened out all the stems as best he could and put every single one of those fifteen flags back where it belonged.  Incredible!  Bless his little pea pickin' heart.  I clapped and smiled at him and told him he is a good boy...and now I pray that will eventually be true in his life. hahaha  He is one wild child, that's for sure, but I don't think he has malicious intent. I think he is just a normal, curious and unaware of possible consequences of his actions, little boy.  My own son was maddeningly curious at that age as well....about 5 years old.  We lost a lot of nice household items while he explored his curiosity, so I think that is all that is going on with Achmed.  My husband and I are getting used to being our court's Nana and Papa to keep the kids from hurting themselves and destroying all the buildings and cars around us with their various sharp metal sticks, hard rubber balls, fist fights and general typical lack of awareness of their immediate surroundings such as when they stand directly behind vehicles in the parking lot that are attempting to back up. hahaha.  Poor kids often get no attention from anyone at home so they run wild around here until all hours of the night. This summer however I am not taking on the role of going out after 1am to ask them to be quiet so that the rest of the complex can get some sleep.  This summer it is going to have to be someone else's turn. I am going to purchase better quality ear plugs, keep my floor fan running all night and let the kids have at it.  If we are the only people their wee hours of the morning antics cause problems for, well, so be it and we will just suffer through it as best we can. This summer our Nana and Papa duties will end at 11pm! hahaha

Had coffee with my friend this morning. The coffee bar was packed out but we got the last available table. When we left there were two other people waiting to grab it, so we hustled out of there as soon as we realized people were waiting for a place to sit.  If it is warmer next week perhaps we will be able to sit outside in a little courtyard space that has some very uncomfortable metal chairs, BUT that is usually wide open for us....likely due to those same uncomfortable metal chairs!!

This afternoon my newly relaxed and commitment free husband slept for 4 hours straight and woke up feeling better than he has in a long time.  Other than his now usual 6am possible episode starting up that needs food immediately to mitigate it, he has gotten through the day with no issues. Even after he woke up from 4 hours of sleep lying flat on his back, he had no stomach problems at all and ate a decent dinner tonight.  While he was dozing I did my physio and some cooking for a friend I am visiting tomorrow.  

It has been a good day. Isn't it amazing what some sunshine and a beginning of the warmer spring daytime temperatures can accomplish for our mental state around here??? YAY! 

Completed, Paid, Sent.....DONE!!!!!! HALLELUJAH!!

The annual tax debacle hath been completed.  We have returned from the post office and are taking ourselves off soon to Silvia's for Italian food.  Our table is reserved and I am so excited for my husband that all his work has been finished at last.  I will be in touch before the end of this year with the tax accountant we want to use next tax season and set up an appointment several weeks prior to the tax deadline.

Thus endeth the saga for this year.  Amen!!!!! 

Big Improvement!

 My husband is working feverishly to complete good copies of the taxes right now.  My eyes are so bad this morning that it is faster for him to just copy mine out for me.  What a great guy!  We will be heading to the post office right after he is done and send them whatever method will get everything to the CRA the fastest.

This morning he heard from the person who is apparently now our financial advisor at the bank that messed up our T-5 so badly.  In less than 5 minutes she had everything sorted out and my husband was able to carry on.  Is it possible that after over 4 years of dealing with the former well meaning, lovely personality but not too bright FA we actually have someone once again there who knows what they are doing???  WOW!  The burden has finally lifted.  Thank you friends and loving family who have prayed for us to get out  heads out of the fog and figure this out.  My head is still in the fog, but your prayers got a "YES" answer for my husband, bless him!  

It is overcast today but starting to warm up nicely.  I think when we go to the PO I can wear a nice cardigan sweater instead of a full coat.  I already have my outfit for church on Sunday picked out based on the beautiful weather forecast for that day, first actual spring outfit this season.....and a second choice just in case, haha.  I can tell I am starting to perk up emotionally and mentally since the actual arrival of some spring weather and since changing my physio schedule to a less exhausting push every time.  I am seeing my husband slowly cresting the apex of these stomach episodes and beginning to get a little bit better. Once the taxes are mailed in I suspect he may have a couple of rough days again because the stress will have lifted, but since it is expected it won't upset us unduly.

So here I sit, concerned about taxes and banks and my husband's health issues the past couple of weeks, to the point of nearly incoherence some days while around the world other people are being bombed, murdered, driven out of their countries, having their children kidnapped, dying of all manner of horrific diseases, starving, etc. etc. etc. (fill in name of tragedy here....)

I have been so very privileged in my life.  My mild OCD is getting worse as I get older and I am obsessing about tax details and bank issues as if they are the most frightening and dangerous things that could ever happen.  I plan to focus more on how my stresses fit into the stresses of other people in the world....people who are TRULY suffering and see if I can get better control over the worries that started plaguing me about the time I took over my mom's estate executrix duties and have not let up very much.  I say that I trust God with everything, but on the other hand in my humanness I don't always get a grip on my emotional responses to stress.  So, somewhere in there is a better balance between the spiritual ideal and the physical, temporal reality that I need to discover.

When A Situation Reaches Ludicrous Speed, All You Can Do Is Laugh, Right? Of Course Right!

In my husband's attempts to straighten out a mistake one of our banks made on already submitted information to the CRA, he had to wait nearly 3 weeks to get a phone call appointment with our financial advisor and that call appointment was this morning. hahahaha  I HAVE to start laughing right away to deal with the craziness.  Well, news flash: he discovered that our financial advisor there is no longer our financial advisor, nor  financial advisor to anyone else. He has been removed from the role and has been demoted. SO he told my husband that for the past few months we have actually had a new financial advisor and her name is......!  He has left a message for her to call my husband, but there is no guarantee he will hear from her before Thursday, the absolutely last day that taxes can be submitted.  hahahaha  This is not the first time this has happened to us at this bank and is one of the reasons I pulled all my own RRIF's, TSFA's and what have you out of there a couple of years ago.  I guess if my husband doesn't hear from the new FA by late this afternoon he is just going to have to go ahead and muddle along with the CRA info he has, incorrect or not, and get things submitted on time. hahahahaha 

In other news: I have been waiting for a text from our dental office regarding paying the amount for my crown that is not covered by our dental plan.  I have been waiting for a few weeks now.  I did get a notice last week as to how much the insurance company was going to contribute to the cost of the crown, but what I didn't know until this morning is that they, instead of sending that amount directly to the dental office....direct billing is what we have always done there....they deposited the amount covered into MY bank account the other day.  Hahahahahahaha again, right? hahahahaha.....  So, I called the dental office and spoke to the employee there who has to deal with these crazy dental plan folk and she was so grateful that I let her know!!  She said this is not the first time this particular company has pulled that stunt, and if I had not called her it would have taken several weeks to several months for her to be calling them more than a few times trying to straighten it out before the dental office received their payment.  Usually the clients don't bother to call, assuming the dental office and the insurance company have worked this out themselves.  HAH!  I however have dealt with this insurance company for many years and am on to a lot of their tricks, so I knew I had to call the dental office. Thank goodness.  My crown is now paid for, the dental office has been paid, the insurance company is not going to be hounded for weeks by calls from the dental office and everyone is more or less happy at this point. hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah....sigh.

Good news: the pensions came in on time today so our rent is paid.  As far as today's news, that's about as good as it gets folks! hahaha....

MORE GOOD NEWS:  I am really enjoying doing physio steadily now, 6 days a week, but only half of the full roster of exercises each time.  If I can get each session done in the mornings I am no longer too exhausted to do other housework and shopping and go for walks in the afternoons. I am also not as tempted to "cheat" on how I am doing each exercise, so each rep is getting more attention to detail. As I have had more healing of late I am free to make that adjustment, yay!

The weather is warming up now and that is also good news.  I was able to walk over to the office to pay rent this morning with just a light sweater on over my shirt. The sun is shining today, more of the latest snowfall has melted, leaving only a few small piles of snow in the more shaded areas around our deck and under the trees in the park across the street.  Maybe, just maybe Spring is finally in the beginning stages of its arrival.  Dare we hope??? 

Looks like my coffee buddy and I will be able to get together this week after having to miss last week's chit chat once again due to weather issues.  At the end of the week I am going to spend a full afternoon with another friend with disabilities who is filling up her time friends during her couple of days alone while her husband has to be out of town.  It is always a fun time as we have so much to talk about and we enjoy sharing a coffee, snack, books and magazines when we get together.  Looking forward to these small social events this week...nice to have some celebrations after taxes are done.  My husband may be up to going out for chicken dinner once he has that stress over and done with.  He has been a bit better once again the past two days, needing only some carbonated water to settle his stomach between 5am and 6am instead of also needing a snack.  Then he can last until about 8am to have his breakfast.  Slowly he is improving, but we still haven't figured out what the dietary culprit is this time.  It may take weeks yet, but we will continue to write his food journal each day, and also research and experiment with his diet.  There is always some particular food that he can no longer tolerate, it is just a matter if figuring out what it is and sometimes, even with the diet diary, it is very difficult to pin down.  Onward and upward and we will continue seeking.

Had a really nice chat with our son yesterday.  He was getting ready for the annual fundraising gala last night that his wife organizes for her theatre company. It is a huge affair and this is only her second or third year of being in charge of all the details, but apparently it went well according to a text she sent me this morning.  Thrilled for her.  Our son had a studio visit the other night with the organizer of the Esther III art fair he has some works in next month. Fortunately she liked what she saw, so he is preparing to ship the works to the venue in the next few days.  Our "kids" are having their first year wedding anniversary later this week and have happy plans for a special dinner out.  They are prepared now to nail down a date toward the end of the summer/early autumn to rent the venue they want for this very much delayed celebration.  We get such a mental boost hearing about their busy and generally happy lives.

Well, time for lunch.  I was up so early this morning that I am going to be eating before noon today and that will leave me free to grocery shop this afternoon if I feel like it.   Aaaah, a joy of retirement: setting my own shopping schedules up each week! hahaha

Cold On The Outside, Warm On the Inside! YAY!

 It has been a very happy Sunday thus far.  My husband had not even a hint of any stomach issues before he ate breakfast and we headed off to church this morning. He did well teaching his class and he enjoyed the church service.  For the first time in a number of weeks, he was happy to hang around afterwards and chat with quite a number of people. Mrs. Social Butterfly here just loved that!!  I managed to stumble through the Scripture readings in the church service....quite hilarious and I will share another time what a bozo I was today....and then after a promising start weather wise to the day, (sunny and not very breezy), we left the church building to discover a very cold wind blowing and another grey sky awaiting. I didn't even wear a coat to church this morning, just a longer sleeved top, BUT no matter, we still walked to the library outlet a block from the church to pick up a book my husband had on hold. I was so pleased that my new, better way of walking resulted not only in less limp, but also didn't make the big thigh muscles on the front of my operated leg ache like they did the other day walking to the area community library box. YAY!

We walked back to the car and drove down the street to DarBar for lunch.  It had been nearly six hours for us both since breakfast, but my husband's beginnings of a tummy attack began only about one minute before the food arrived, so he ate well and the attack had no chance to get a hold.  YAY AGAIN!

He was exhausted when we got home,  but he usually is after teaching a lesson....he has done SO well today with his health. I am so very grateful and pleased for him 

He had a wee nap in the car while I went next to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription....that I called in last Wednesday and that no one could find. hahaha  The pharmacist finally got fed up with the amount of time it was taking....nearly 20 minutes and still no sign of it even though it showed up on the computer as "filled", so he refilled it and apologized that someone had misfiled it, but he wasn't prepared to go through all of the over 500 filled prescriptions to find it. hahaha  It is SUCH a busy pharmacy. I am very grateful to him for doing that...it made life easier for us all. hahaha

We finally got my tired husband home for his nap, but as we were coming up our back stairs, one of the neighbourhood kids....Bully Boy no less...appeared from somewhere and said, "Are you rich?"  Huh???  We assured him that we most certainly are not and got no further conversation from him.  My husband pursued it and asked him why he wanted to know that, so he confessed he is trying to sell coupon books put together by local businesses as a fundraiser for his school....he is, as we discovered, in Grade 3. He had just been told by another neighbour that they couldn't buy one of his books because they are not rich. hahaha Hence his question to us. Being suckers for helping kids with school fundraisers over the years in every town we have lived in, we asked if he had one of the books for us to look at. He took off at the speed of light back to his own unit to get the book for us to see.  As it turned out there are quite a few coupons we will be able to use between now and the fall, so we filled out the sales form and handed over the $30, knowing that we will enjoy using the coupons, that we are helping out a neighbour kid who is going to have a very difficult time selling coupon books for that price in our complex filled with immigrants who are barely able to pay rent each month, PLUS we want to get to know Bully Boy to see if we can create a good relationship with him in case we have to intervene in future when he is beating up other kids just below our back porch! hahaha Perhaps we can meet his parents eventually.  We now know that his name is Mohammad, so we don't have to call him Bully Boy any more.  He is more of a fellow human now that we know his name and less of a caricature of the typical bully.  Great transaction all around.  Now...have we opened the flood gates to every school represented in our complex that is having a spring fundraiser??? Word will get out that we purchased this book, just you wait and see, hahaha.  No worries...as long as we don't get multiple kids all from one family wanting to make sales, I think we will be able to cope with the costs of helping at least some of the kids out with their fundraising. hahaha  We shall see how many more kids approach us over the next month.

We arrived home to a message from our son, hoping to chat after not having a chance to contact us over the past couple of weeks, but by the time we found the message he was off having studio visits to show off some of his works to whoever.  At least he is wanting to chat and he will call us back at some point in the next week hopefully. He is just completing and preparing to transport a couple of works to the Esther 3 Art Fair....a much smaller fair than he is used to, but it was far less pressure getting a couple of works ready than it would have been to prepare 5-7 works for the larger fair going on at the same time in NYC. He has shown in that one before and done well, but he has been too busy with work and with making decisions on changing his artistic style, that he was grateful to opt for the smaller fair this year.  It is all good.

I think I am going to go now, while my husband is having a decent nap, and play an old computer game, Fishdom 3.  If I ever get lonely I can always play this game where the cartoon fish "talk" to me in between rounds.  It is a very cute game for old codgers like me who don't want to be too intellectually or strategically challenged. hahaha  

A blessed Sunday to you all.   

Another Small Step Of Encouraging Healing!

 A couple of weeks ago my physio responses seemed to have plateaued, which was a bit upsetting, but this past few days I unexpectedly started to experience a bit of muscle response from the badly damaged glutes. They have not been numb, or sore, or had any sensations at all since the surgery and suddenly it was like they announced their return. Within a day or two of that I found I could fully weight bear on that leg for 20 of my required 30 seconds, without even having to flap my arms around lime a frantic chicken to stay balanced on that operated leg without any other support. Wow! I am delighted and so happy I didn’t give up on my regular weekly physio routine. As the feelings are returning I am now able to lie on that side in bed at night, the side I always slept on previously, so I have slept so very well the past few nights. Oh how very grateful I am that despite the tendon not fully healing, the glutes are finally healing more and my walking stance is again improving, I am resigned to limping my way through life now, but if the limp can be less pronounced, what a blessing it will be. God bless physiotherapy! As I have been learning over the years: never give up trying! 

My husband did very well yesterday until after dinner, when he had a mild episode, but he realized he had bolted his meal, inhaling rather than properly masticating his food because he was in a big hurry. It is nearly 6am now and he just let me know he is fine, has not required first breakfast and has fallen back asleep. Hopefully he will sleep for the next two hours until he has to get up at 8am. I am praying he can eat his usual breakfast without any issues because he is teaching a class at 9:30am. After church he hopes to return to DarBar for lunch because Indian food makes his tummy feel so good. I am reading the Scriptures today so I appreciate having something to do.

It is still cold and miserable here at -11C overnight last night, a chance of more flurries today and more chilly winds. This week is forecast to start warming up and be drier, but who knows what the following week will bring. Some of our new immigrant neighbours who have fled war in their home countries are asking, “What fresh hell is this??” after arriving during the worst of our winter weather and now suffering though their first delayed prairie spring.  Poor souls. I hope we get sufficiently decent summer and autumn weather to encourage them. 

On the warmer, drier days last week things began to heat up outside as the dozens of kids on our complex finally had a chance to play outside. Our United Nations of children get along well all together, but there was some drama the other evening. One of the younger, newest boys, about age six or seven is a bit of a bully, the first we have had in several years. He attacks the other boys sometimes, wrestling, punching and kicking until some of the older boys put him in his place. The other evening he started whacking people with two strips of metal and one of the kids he hit was our youngest next door neighbour boy. So, our neighbour pulled himself away from his attacker, ran home and returned to the fray bearing a large butcher knife, aaaaaargh! My husband saw him approach the bully, brandishing the knife, and was about to run out to try to prevent imminent bloodshed, when the 12 year old sister of our tiny knife wielder realized her little brother had a knife poised to slash the bully. She was able to grab it away from him, tuck it under her rather massive hijab shawl and sneak it back home,  while her brother and the bully settled their differences with a brief wrestling match that sent both of them back to respective homes in tears. Whew! Major crisis averted. My husband and I have appointed ourselves unofficial guardians of the back lawn brawls for when the parents aren’t aware of what their kids are up to. Hopefully whatever is driving Bully Boy to make his random attacks on other unsuspecting kids will get resolved. I feel for him as he is the angriest little fellow we have ever seen in here so there has to be an underlying reason. Poor kid…I hope this week’s events are not a preview of what is to come throughout this coming spring (Is it coming?) and summer.

Hmmmmmm….6:15am. The alarm is set for 7am. Is it worth trying to sleep a bit more before I have to get up to eat and get ready for church? 

My Incredible Husband Has Taken Over The Taxes!!

 I am blessed beyond measure this afternoon.  My husband took one look at me trying to figure out how or even if a particular tax credit applies to me, saw the stress on my face and has now taken over doing all the rest of the tax forms for us both.  This is almost a miracle because of his health holding up today to do all this work, research, straightening out of things, printing off worksheets and such to fill out by hand as it is easier for both of us to not have a computer screen ruining our eyes day after day....my dry eye just can't take doing much more than a half hour of screen time at a time with a couple of hours of break in between, so no online filing after all.  When my husband has the rough copies completed, hopefully by this evening, I will put the numbers in my good copy, write up a cheque for what I am going to owe and get it mailed away on Monday.  Last year of doing our taxes on our own.  Things have changed too much, both for our finances and in terms of new things in the annual tax forms. Done, over and out for this woman!!!  I am done talkin' bout it, bloggin' bout it, thinkin' bout it!  Amen!!!  For those of you who have been asking and praying for our sanity during this process and for my husband's health to hold up through this otherwise possibly not so complicated event, yes, I will quickly blog to let you know when they have been mailed.

It is cold today and getting colder as the afternoon wears on. The snow that was melting in the sun on our deck and front porch earlier this afternoon is now frozen back into an icy coating that is dangerous to try to walk on.  The wind gusts are kind of strong at times so the snow is blowing straight across the back lawn from south to north. It looks like someone has taken a thick paintbrush of white paint and dragged a line of it between the ground and about a foot upward....just a solid white line of blowing snow right across the back yard. Talk about a late spring.  

Not sure how much the weather is playing into my inability to understand my tax forms, but I was kind of worried earlier today. Apparently the loss of ability with numbers is one of the first signs of dementia, BUT as my husband kindly pointed out, it isn't the numbers or the adding and multiplying of them that are hindering me, it is understanding exactly where they are to go on some of the not quite so well explained forms.  I remember when my parents had to start taking their taxes to an accountant each year. It was like it was the end of the world for them to have to admit they were struggling to understand the "new ways" of the time and now I understand exactly how they felt.

Tomorrow morning there is a women's breakfast at our church. I think I will go as a good friend is talking about her experiences walking the Camino in Italy....or is it Portugal?  It was some time ago now and I forget, so I am looking forward to hearing of her adventures. She was supposed to be sharing the speaking time with our wonderful Carol who has also done a Camino walk or two in recent years, but of course Carol is not yet strong enough to even attend, let alone speak to the group.  After lunch my husband will go for a wee drive around with me to pick up a prescription and also a book he has had on reserve at the public library that has become available.  He needs to finish final preparations for the adult class he is teaching at church on Sunday morning and is feeling more confident now that he has some useful protocols in place for keeping his tummy issues at bay. He won't be so stressed about having that commitment to fulfill.  YAY!

I am reading the Scriptures at church on Sunday: excerpts from the first Chapter of Isaiah, Psalm 103 and Matthew 18. (the parable of the unforgiving servant, which always grabs my attention and makes me think about how I am treating people in my own life)  It is always nice to have something to do at church during the service so I feel less generally useless there.  So grateful and honoured to be included in anything they want to throw my way.....being a newbie on their seniors' residences  board is another way I can feel useful for one term at least.  Waiting for more information from the board chairman before our first meeting together coming up in several week's time. 

I think this evening I am going to rest up with a book I am reading about three generations of women in China.  There is a ton of interesting history there from the years prior to the Communist party formation, the previous Kuomintang leadership,  the invasion by Japan....and how these various events effected the author's family members living there at that time.  I am finding the history incredibly interesting. The book is called "Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China" and it was written by Jung Chang.  The print is small and I can only read for about an hour a day....or right before falling asleep at night, so it is slow going, but at least that way I remember more of the details.

Okay, my eyes have had enough screen for now.  Hope all of you have a truly wonderful weekend and that the weather, wherever you are right now is warm and wonderful. 

Starting All Over Again!

 I woke up with a start this morning as it dawned on me that another mistake has been made with our taxes. I crawled out of bed, went though the documents and realized something was not right with the ones from a particular bank my husband is still using but that I have extricated myself from due to the number of errors they have made over the years. Short version is that today we will be starting our taxes over again from the beginning. Sigh….maybe this is the year my husband will follow me out of there? Oh well, for this year we will just be paying a bit more tax than we thought we were going to be paying at day’s end yesterday. No wonder, when we were trying to do our taxes online, nothing was jiving and thank goodness we gave that up without actually e-filing! Whew! Well, at least I feel less stupid now that I discover none of the mess I thought I had made yesterday was actually my fault! I was dealing with incorrect information. 

And now I await the look on my husband’s face when he wakes up to this news! Oh dear…..hahaha….

Tax Time....Takin' A Short Break! Again!!

 Oooh my head is spinning after spending the last few hours doing taxes.  I am so poor at the details and this morning I made a few stupid mistakes that took me longer than it should have to figure out.  Things went along well until a few minutes ago when I found myself owing federal taxes in a ridiculous amount that cannot possibly be correct. Dang it. I was doing so well, cruising along without a hitch since just after lunch.  I think I have added somewhere where I should have subtracted, but my dry eye is so bad after staring at the forms for so long today, that my husband told me to go and do something else for awhile until he has progressed a bit farther with his own tax forms, at which point he will go over mine from page 1 to try to discover what I have done wrong this time. Shoot....I thought I was doing so well.  THE BRIGHT SIDE of this is that he has finally agreed with me that next year we will simply hire an accountant and let that person worry about it.  It is worth the money at this point and we need to stop being so cheap!!!  My husband's refund always more than covers however many hundred dollars the accountant will cost.  Even being dirt poor years ago and running a business on the verge of bankruptcy at that time, a horrendously stressful and frightening time, made our taxes very easy to do compared to having more stable income and investments now. I miss the straightforwardness of tax times during those otherwise horrible days, hahahaha.  (How on earth can near bankruptcy be the other side's "greener grass"? Right??)

Okay, okay....I am supposed to be taking a half hour break on my taxes to rest my eyes and here I am burning them out some more with my computer screen, hahaha.  They do actually feel better now that there is more distance between them and what I am looking at. When I do taxes I tend to hunch over the table where I am working and put my face about three inches away from the paperwork. Why, you ask? I have no earthly idea to be honest.  When I eat meals at that same table I don't hunch over and put my face three inches away from the plates of food, so why.....???  Silly me!

This day has thrown me for another loop as well.  We are having more winter...MORE BLASTED WINTER WEATHER. It began last evening with our first thunderstorm of the spring (????) season.  It was the weirdest thing to hear thunder and splashes of rain drops on the windows and roof only a day or so after the last big snow melt during our two or three warm days. This morning I woke up to wind dried streets but the temperature was beginning to drop.  I checked the forecast and there it was: a yellow zone wind warning and a forecast of rain turning to snow before noon.  Yup, that is exactly what happened.  Brrrr and hold onto your hat and put on your ice walking cleats if you need to go outside.  We have a about 5cm of snow accumulated on the lawns, and a sheen of thin ice under the snowy back decks and sidewalks, BUT apparently the snowfall forecast for west and north of here is for anywhere from 30 to 50cm by tomorrow afternoon!!!!!  Unreal!!!!  According to the weather map our city is on the edge of this large system so hopefully we won't get much more snow than we have already, but who knows? Right?  God knows I realize, but he isn't saying.....

My husband is doing so much better with his health today!  He got about 9 hours of sleep, with a 6am snack break prior to his last couple of hours of shut eye; no real issue at 6am, more of a preventative measure that seems to have worked.  He hasn't even needed a nap this afternoon despite being so focused on all this tax nonsense.  I am pleased for him, so very pleased and hoping this improvement in his health lasts into tomorrow and the weekend as well. 

We are rejoicing with all you prayer warriors over Carol's return home.  We will try to go and visit her next week when things have settled down here in our own home. Even the medical staff are calling it a miracle of survival.  So thrilled for her family.  They are so grateful for being drenched in your prayers. 

Okay, back to work.  I might as well go and sit with my husband while he works on discovering my tax form mistake.  Surely I have made one somewhere along the line....surely....I couldn't possibly have to pay the sizable amount presently written on my forms with my own hand.....could I??????  I am so finished with doing our own taxes just to save money....time to end that silliness.

 

Final Update On Carol...Hallelujah for God's Grace To Her!

 Final health update! It’s hard to believe this time has come!!!
Thursday April 22nd

It is so amazing to say that Carol is home!!!
Recovering her strength but able to do much of her daily care by herself!

So! Her mind: She is still intrigued &amazed as she hears our memories/experiences of her “gap” days. March 25-31 are all fuzzy or gone for her (mercifully). Otherwise no gaps that we can tell.

Her lungs remain great. Her kidneys also have no lingering sign of injury.

Her heart is healing. Going well so far. She has gone from 30% cardiac capacity (in ICU) to over 65% and continuing to improve. They noted two episodes of Afib while in ICU so they put her on 5 new meds for this. This is new for her and likely a bit disheartening and unnerving but the meds are for a set time to finish the healing and then reevaluate. I mentioned to her I’m guessing some of her friends have Afib without her even knowing .
A bit of residual swelling to her ankles but she continues to elevate and walk short stints to help that.
Her strength continues to recover. Likely slower than she would like but in His timing. She is doing her homework here and has even gotten the appropriate walker upgrade to be able to handle the sidewalks once this white stuff is all gone for good. Her OT brain is still sharp as a tack

What a journey. From home sick, ambulance ride, emerg, ICU March 24-April 2 then medical ward until April 20when she was discharged to home.
And here we are.
We can’t get over how thankful we all are for your prayers. There have been such incredible miracles. Such protection. Such love. We have all seen God in such beautiful and powerful ways.

She is still happy for visits. Albeit she does tire easy so nothing too long. But as the days go by even a pick up for an outing here or there or for for tea or lunch . Send her a text or call for a chat!
Their fridge and freezer has been blessed to popping
Thank you for loving her so well.

Grey Skies But Glorious Warmth!!! YAY!!!!

 Time to take a break between copying off tax forms, doing a full physio routine, getting some necessary small chores done around the house this morning while my husband recovered from a slight tummy upset, and getting a 4 block round trip cane-less walk in right after lunch to take advantage of the warm day before the rain arrives later tonight.  The rest of today and all day tomorrow are going to be super busy, so I am going to use this little blog to force me to take a break this afternoon for a few minutes.

My husband did really well last night compared to the nights of the past several weeks.  He followed his bedtime dietary protocol again and slept for 8 hours in a row before waking up around 6am with the start of an episode. (his longest consecutive sleep before starting the protocols was 4.5 hours, he worked it up to 6 within a couple of days of adding in the larger bedtime and middle of the night snacks and the dietary enzymes, so he is headed in the right direction). Quickly down to the kitchen he went for a bit more of a snack, but he ate less than he should have and after sleeping for another 90 minutes afterwards, woke up at 8am with the start of daily episode number two.  Fortunately he knew what to do and his tummy was just fine again about thirty minutes later. Of course he is tired out as usual, BUT he has pushed through with me to get our tax forms printed off and we have begun the annual tax process.  

The icing on the Yukky Cake of attempting to do our taxes online over the past couple of days is that now he is getting all manner of texting spam on his phone from fake CRA sites and we did make a direct tie in to one of the tax programme sites we tried to use.  SO, back to the drawing board this morning and we now have our tax forms printed off and started by hand.  We are both taking this short break before doing a bit more and then hopefully finishing them up by tomorrow afternoon so we can pop them into the mail before week's end.

As horrific looking as the dark grey clouds in the sky are and how brutal the howling winds are at the moment, supposedly we are going to remain well above zero overnight, so the rain, even if it is heavy, should not be freezing as it comes down. The temperature will start to drop in the afternoon, the rain will then turn to snow and we may be iced in once again by Friday after having minus temperatures overnight Thursday, but I am not going to care much if that is the case.  There is nothing we need to go out for at that point as far as we know.

Weeeeellllll....back to the taxes!  Will be so glad when our tax forms are completed.  If my husband was feeling better we would be done in another couple of hours, but.....at least the CRA security code arrived nearly a week earlier than I expected so we could get started. That has been a blessing.  

Oh....more kind of cool, if itsy bitsy news here:  I watched the postman circling through the complex dropping off mail again today and of course there was nothing for us.  My monthly utility bills were truly missing into someone else's mailbox and whoever it was didn't bring them over to our box.  HOWEVER, all of a sudden I saw the postman sprinting back across the complex lots and he arrived at my door with all three utility bills. They had indeed been delivered some days ago to another unit and today the person who had received them turned them back over to the postman.  He very kindly ran all the way over to our place with them.  Kudos to this wonderful man who went above and beyond because technically he is supposed to return them to the post office to be destroyed.  He didn't do that and I am so very grateful.  I was able to confirm with the actual paper bill that the amounts I paid on the phone the other day were correct.  Whew....in the end the receiver of my mail turned out to be a good egg and did the right thing, then the postman was so very kind.  

It has been a productive and happy day pretty much this far. OKAY, back to work! 

A Better Day All Around Today!!

 Today was a pretty good day after quite a few stressful weeks of daily concern over my husband's health. Today was his third day of following the dietary and rest protocols he came up with, as well as the second day of taking a digestive enzyme that may also be helpful.  His biologist/scientist sister suggested a few years ago that it is very possible he is lacking in a digestive enzyme and that is causing at least some of the recurring stomach issues.  Time to check that out and see if she was right.  He was also able to find a brand of caprylic acid that doesn't contain cloves, so that also seems to help his tummy settle.  We shall see how the rest of the week goes, but today he fended off a possible 4am attack with his snack and went back to sleep after for a few hours, ate lightly at breakfast and then did some computer work, we had lunch together and watched the news, then we went for a nice walk in the sunny, +22C (!!!) weather...out among the neighbourhood trees with NO MORE snow around their bases.  I only lasted about 4 blocks before my thigh muscles started to ache and my husband was exhausted, so we came home again at that point, but the fresh air did us good. (AND he had no other tummy attacks today) In fact it got so warm in our place by late afternoon that we had the joy of opening the upstairs windows for the first time since last October to cool things down for sleeping tonight!  I can see that the best thing to help the last of my post surgical recovery at this point is to get outside and walk as far as I can as often as I can. I need the outdoor space to practise lengthening my stride over longer distances. YES! AND I will get another chance to do that again tomorrow afternoon...before we get more rain and snow flurries and cold temperatures starting tomorrow evening and lasting into Friday. The chilly temperatures will last even longer than the rain and flurries. Dang it!!

After our walk and a short recovery rest time, we started our income taxes at long last. My code got here yesterday, so we got set up to do everything online once I finished setting up my tax account and checking to see that the government has the same income documents that I do.  We found a couple of online tax programmes with auto tax abilities that we tried using and in both cases things started out well.....until we came to the programme accessing our CRA accounts and loading up the pension and other income sources.  In both cases a pension income of over fourteen thousand dollars appeared on my husband's tax page from some pension plan that my husband is not, and has never been, a part of!  Fortunately this mistaken pension income is not recorded on the CRA website under his account, but what kind of glitch is this???  So even when we tried using the programmes' sites where we record the numbers ourselves, we kept getting this weird pension glitch.  Tomorrow I think, in the interest of time since the deadline for filing is fast approaching, we will just download and print the tax forms we need, fill them out by hand as always and get them mailed in this week.  At least we were able to crack into our CRA accounts okay, hahaha, for once. We were able to check all the income records they have for us and compare their documents to the ones we received in the mail from the various banks and pension companies. I think we can finish everything up and get everything sent in before the end of this week, Lord and my husband's health willing!  YAY!!  It is all good.

Dissa And Datta:

 While my husband didn’t have any big tummy episodes yesterday, for which we are both grateful, his stomach was slightly irritated all day so now he will begin journaling symptoms each time he adds a food and drink back into his currently rather barren list of agreeable menu items. He has been living on yogurt, prunes, chicken, peanut butter, carbonated water and the occasional pancake with raspberries for the past three weeks. My tea granny husband has not had a cup of tea in about two weeks now, so soon he will try adding in each variety a few days apart to see if any of those are bothering him. It is always like looking for a needle in a haystack but eventually we discover the culprit and permanently eliminate it from his diet. At this point we are both exhausted from this latest round. I was so tired last night that my own stomach was upset so neither myself nor my exhausted husband made it out to the music recitals last night we had been so excited about attending. Sigh…..

On the positive front: my husband was well enough to attend his weekly Zoom meeting and also managed to overcome the CFS exhaustion long enough to come out grocery shopping with me after lunch. We got to three stores so I got lots of non-cane walking done and he survived the trip, even did the driving. Bless him.

Also, my CRA code finally arrived in the mail…well, actually it ended up in our neighbour’s mailbox and she kindly delivered it to me. (Whose mailbox ALL my utility bills ended up in this month I have no idea, but whoever received them has not brought them to me, so I will be busy on the phone this morning getting the amounts due….I am so fed up with Canada Post for more reasons than this.)

I got my physio done yesterday and plan to do another round today.  I enjoyed getting out to do so much walking yesterday. We park in the farthest away spots from the entrances to the grocery stores to give me a few extra steps. The sunshine was a huge blessing and seeing the snow from the last storm melting away so quickly made me happy….more flurries on the way, but they shouldn’t last too many days on the ground. 

Well, we shall see what today brings, but I have resigned myself to sticking close to home for a few more weeks until my husband is better again….at least as “better” as he ever is with this wretched CFS. My own upset last night was likely from the stress of subconsciously worrying about him. My prayer today is that he can rally long enough this week and next to work with me on figuring out the doing of our taxes online before the looming deadline passes us by.

Cautiously Optimistic!

 My husband had a better health day yesterday after implementing some dietary protocols and taking naps when needed. Overall it was his best day in over a week, hallelujah! 

His new routine is eating a small bowl of yogurt, a couple of tablespoons of peanut butter and a small glass of carbonated water when he awakes with the rumblings of an episode starting….usually between 4am and 4:30am. Shortly after ingesting his middle of the night snack he falls peacefully asleep for another three hours. As soon as he wakes up for the day he has a bagel with melted cheese and another glass of carbonated water and gets active right away. Mid morning is a short nap. A light lunch is followed an hour later by another short nap. After dinner at about 6pm he relaxes with tv or computer research, gets into bed shortly after 9pm with a peanut butter sandwich and is asleep by 10pm. Strictly enforced snack and sleep times seem to be helping. Yesterday he was able to attend the adult class at church plus the worship service, then home for a twenty minute snooze before we went for lunch at a friend’s house and an hour of watching sports on tv there. As soon as we got home he had another short nap, followed by tv time, dinner and some work on his adult class presentation for next Sunday morning. We kept the day calm and he obeyed the daily protocols that are working for him at the moment, so we pray and hope for another decent day today.  He is hoping to participate in his regular Monday morning Zoom meeting and assist me in picking up a few grocery items, but we shall see….

Every day is an adventure around here……

Carol’s Update!

 Fantastic news: Carol has been cleared to return home early next week! A rehab interim facility will not be necessary after all because of her diligence with physiotherapy and normal test results for her heart and lungs, the restoration of her cognitive abilities and her level of mobility. Thank you prayers warriors and thank you God for granting Carol her healing. Wonderful news!

Bouncing Back! Aiiii Yiiiii.....

 So, 90 minutes after it started my husband's episode passed and he is bounding about the place quite happily.  I wonder why it is that some medical issues that bother us in childhood disappear as we hit our teen and adult years, then return in our elder years.  My husband started having these types of stomach issues when he was about 4 or 5 years old and they disappeared by the time he was a preteen. Sometimes he could trace oats as the culprit, but removing them from his diet didn't clear the problem completely.  He remained free of all such attacks until he was in his late 60's when they began all over again and only sometimes involve specific foods.  This time however we can't seem to track any particular offender, so he is keeping a daily food intake diary and recording his reactions to each thing he ingests.  Here we go again.  Last time we  discovered that now pears and beets are no-no's and presently cucumbers, plus bananas at bedtime seem to be adding to his discomfort this time around, but he has eliminated that starch and others at bed time with only minor improvements to the condition over all.  Well we will keep at it until we discover if there are any other foods that have filled his food sensitivity bucket to overflowing.

I am happy to have been able to go out in the raging wind and drifting snow a little while ago to find some grocery items we know he can still eat without any reaction.  Wow, no one would ever know that between our next door neighbour and my husband a good 8 inches of snow were shovelled off our decks and back yard paths to the cars yesterday afternoon.  Between more flurries this morning and the strong winds those decks and pathways are all blown in again.  Probably not worth shovelling until a bit later when the flurries have stopped for some time.  The wind will just fill in the gaps with pre-fallen snow again.

My it was good to have the automatic start to melt the sheen of ice off the windshield of the car before I got out there.  I had a suspicion it was something we would enjoy having and now that we do, my suspicions have proven to be correct. 

All things considered, the day and my husband are definitely improving and soon it will be time to watch our local girl try for her second attempt to qualify for the diving competition finals.  I do wish her very well indeed.  It is daunting to come back into international competition after being out for so many months with an injury.  

Not The Most Encouraging Start To The Day!

Woke up this morning to more snow coming down and a revised forecast for snow continuing into tomorrow morning….a whole extra day of flurries over what was originally predicted. It is -10C and no major warmup predicted until the middle of next week. Poop! Oh well…

My husband fell asleep last night before he got his snack eaten so this morning, after getting up at 8am following a refreshingly long and undisturbed sleep, he got hit with a major episode half way through his breakfast. He is currently lying shirtless, tummy down on the cement basement floor to get cool enough for the attack to subside. After over an hour since it started it seems to be subsiding. There is little to be done about any of this apart from riding things out and being more careful to balance before bed snacks and next morning breakfasts. 

To get a bit of an emotional break I decided to watch a local diver participating in an international diving competition. Wellllll….she did unusually poorly and did not get past the preliminary round. It is her first competition in several months after being out with an injury and she came in third last. Fortunately she will be able to compete in the repechage round this afternoon….the second chance round to still possibly qualify for a spot in this weekend’s finals. Poor girl; not an encouraging start to her re-entry to these brutal competitions. 

Hopefully the day will only get better from here. I will keep my weekly physio schedule and unless I unexpectedly bomb out with it, I should feel far more encouraged after exercising. 

Some days are like that….right?

How Very Odd it is….

 ….sitting at my desk and swivelling my head to the right where I am looking at the rack of summer clothes recently salvaged from the basement, then swivelling my head to the left to look out the window and look at nearly eight inches of snow cover on the ground! Where the wind has swirled in under the eaves and across the porches of the various suites there are between ten inches and a foot of snow blown up on top of the plethora of bbq grills belonging to our neighbours! Our high of -7C was reached already before 8am and we are slowly dropping to -10C. What a difference a day makes during a prairie spring. 

On the opposite end of the weather spectrum our kids in New York are experiencing an “abnormal anomaly” of heat today. They are forecast for a possible 32F, only one degree lower than the last record set for this day of 33F in 2002. Yikes….to be honest, after being in NYC for a couple of days of 30F back in 2018, I will take our weekend snowfall over  their one day heatwave any time! 

My husband is starting to get a grip on his health issues again since his bout yesterday morning so we are hoping he has reached the turnaround point. He obediently ate his protein snack at bedtime and prepared a light breakfast for himself as soon as he woke up at 8am. His stomach did not have a chance get too empty and upset itself. He ate lunch at a decent time and felt well and happy enough to go out this afternoon to have tea with a friend, while I enjoyed being alone long enough to do a decent physio workout. 🏋️ I am getting twinges of feeling back around the cut tendon, so that is hopeful. Yup, still a long way to go, but the end goal is creeping ever closer. Where there is muscle and nerve response there is hope! 

How QUICKLY Things Change With CFS Attacks!!

 I did indeed end up going out alone to do my part of the shopping expedition my husband planned to join me for this morning, before he woke up between 4am and 5am so very ill.  While I was gone he slept for another nearly 4 hours, didn't even know I left the house and when he woke up it was like sunshine after the rain.  Again with the sudden about face after an episode comes to an end.  I am so grateful the rest of the day has been quite wonderful! (For both of us!)

He decided that since he had been craving greasy fried chicken for the past few days we would go to Beaks for a late lunch.  He certainly got his wish: HUGE portions of everything fatty and greasy and he loved every bite. (When I had an ulcer decades ago the only thing I could eat without becoming ill for most of the first six months was good old greasy KFC!) Yup, all that grease does indeed make the chicken taste fantastic.  hahaha  Giant bowls of gravy and cole slaw. his big plate of fries and a double portion of dill mayo made his world go round. He did bring half of it home.  I had a smaller portion so ate all of mine, but if I had any extra carbs, those and the fat got a good walking off right after lunch because he wanted to go to the liquidation store, Bianca Amors, to pick up a couple of cheap items.  We deliberately walked down every aisle for the exercise. Hopefully it did help with the wearing off of lunch. hahaha

Then he announced that, since I had two large bags of books in the car I finished reading over the past few months, we should stop by a neighbourhood filled with community library boxes.  I was able to drop off all 25 books and brought 24 new to me editions home to keep me busy with bedtime reading for the next couple of months or more.

The sun is still shining in defiance of the Special Weather Report for another QUICK change overnight that will usher in the freezing rain and likely between 10cm and 20cm of snow by sometime on Friday when it is predicted to end and give us a nice warm weekend. Aiii yiiiii....I can't keep up with all these fast turnarounds! A high of a dry and breeze +15C today and then a high of -6C or colder tomorrow....NOOOOOO!!!  Oh well...

Guess I Spoke Too Soon!

 It is currently 5:30am and we have been up for about an hour already. My husband is having an even worse tummy issue than he had on Saturday, after not having a snack at bedtime for the second night in a row. Having an empty tummy for too many consecutive hours is one of the triggers for these episodes. He has started a daily food diary…again, sigh….to figure out what he can no longer eat…again, sigh…. Over the past two rounds of these episodes he had to cut pears and beets from his diet and now it seems that cucumbers are the latest food needing to be eliminated. His CFS has always had a strong component of food sensitivities and the addition of the problem with the intestinal valve adds to the misery. Add in stress factors that disturb his overall digestion and my poor husband is not a happy camper. 

He has just crawled into bed to rest, read and eat the snack I made for him….please Lord, let it help his stomach to be calm so he can go back to sleep. I am guessing our shopping trip today will be a solo trip for me while my husband rests. He is supposed to be teaching an adult class on Sunday morning. Why he took that on at the end of the last round of teaching when he was already experiencing the first signs of impending health issues I don’t know, but I had better find a way to help him between now and Sunday. His next gig isn’t until the end of May, but I may suggest he let it go. There are others who can take it for him.

Thanks to those of you who are praying for my husband’s health. He and I appreciate the caring support very much.

Another Excellent Update From Caro's Family

  On this glorious, sort of warm, sunny skies with forming white thunderhead clouds kind of day, I am delighted to have another report about Carol's progress.  Her family is thrilled and you prayer warriors have certainly made a difference to her recovery.  Here is the latest:

So far as Carol and I can tell there are no deficits or lasting injury to her brain. She is as sharp as I’ve ever known her and likely ready to get her word game streak back up and running.

Her heart tests are all showing no damage and no lingering weakness! What a relief and huge answered prayer!

Her persistent cough is also gone! I’m delighted about this one!

No news (good news) about the kidneys.

Now for the muscles. She had the weekend and today off of formal/attended physio therapy. However, as we know that doesn’t mean she took those days off. In fact she has excelled at the “homework” her PT gave on Friday and is stretching even hose goals! Also she is noting improved finger strength. Previously her fingers were not strong enough to do her routine inhaler. Today they were!!!!
She is up to the bathroom without assist (except a watchful eye from the nurse)!!! Her goal tomorrow is to be able to brush her teeth standing without leaning! Such great incredible progress.

Tuesday we hope she will be seen by Physio again and given the clearance to walk with watchful assist of family and/or friends.

She is awaiting word on rehab placement. It may be as far away as 150km. In that case she will instead look more into home health options. Especially as she is improving so quickly.

Oh how effective this groups prayers have been. 

I am hoping Carol can get into a rehab facility MUCH closer than 150km away, if her improvements continue at this rate of speed with no unexpected set backs.  So grateful her physiotherapy is helping her so much each and every day!

My husband began his day with a tummy episode threatening, partly because he fell asleep last evening without his usual small snack. He woke up too early....6:30am....because the tummy ache was threatening to hit him pretty hard.  BUT he had a small bowl of yogurt and some water, then decided to go back to bed. He slept for another nearly 90 minutes and woke up just in time to pick up his friend for a men's breakfast meeting.  He looked absolutely horrible when he left and I had a feeling he MAY arrive home in someone else's car before being gone more than a half hour, but he not only survived the meeting, he was able to stop at the wood shop afterwards and pick up his soldering gun for a small home repair he wants to do this week. Whew...he dodged a bullet again today after a kind of miserable weekend, particularly on the Saturday....yikes.  So grateful this latest round of attacks seems to be lessening and I pray he will soon be back to as full health as he ever is capable of being.

Our daughter in law must have arrived home safely last evening as we haven't heard anything yet and if she had not arrived our son would have been calling us. So happy she seems to have had a good week away.  Our son has to balance his home life, job and finalizing a couple of art works for the Esther 3 art fair in May. What a busy pair. I am guessing our daughter in law may not have had today off  from her usual full time job today, but it would be wonderful if she had the day to regroup and rest a bit.

Day two of this week's physiotherapy went as well as Day one did yesterday.  I am hoping to get Day three and four done prior to the weekend as I would really like to take two days off in a row.  Walking more correctly now is helping my full weight bearing balance exercises and vice versa.  It has been a good week thus far for small bits of progress once again.  It is most disappointing that the tendon on the operated leg will likely never fully heal due to the amount of damage it sustained previously, but as long as I can fully weight bear soon for the full required 30 seconds, I will consider myself sufficiently healed.  The "hitch in my getalong" is far less pronounced since I started rolling my foot forward properly when walking without my cane. Praise the Lord for that! 

Finally did the ironing that has been sitting draped over my husband's favourite reading chair in his little library room for the past few days.  It doesn't usually take me this long to get ironing completed after doing a day of laundry, but wow, for some reason there seemed to be so many other things to do each day that I didn't get to it until now.  Oh well....

It is a beautiful day here and I am going to enjoy every moment of the good weather before we will apparently be hit with quite a bit of freezing rain overnight tomorrow, turning to snowfall the following morning.  Sigh....SPRING, WHERE THE HECK ARE YA'???

I am hoping like ten bears my husband will be well enough tomorrow before the weather turns rotten again to come out shopping for a few items with me.  I have GOT to find some brown and navy blue socks. The usual "cheapsy" retail stores are only carrying black, white and grey socks along with some horrific patterned ones, so maybe I will just be content to pay more for the colours I want that can't be found at the places I already looked.  

Not Everyone Recovers…..

As I await a new update on Carol’s recovery I just received word from another friend in the area about a father of two in his 40’s who became ill this past week with double pneumonia, very similar to what Carol experienced. Unlike Carol who is recovering well, this man was ambulance’d to hospital one evening and died the next morning. He leaves a grieving wife and children.  Could you send up a prayer for comfort and provision for them? Thanks!  I am aware of a fair number of people on the prairies dying from this particular type of pneumonia that begins as a heavy cold, heads into the lungs within a few days  and becomes septic very quickly. Please, please, if you come down with a cold that starts heading into your chest, go to the doctor right away for help.

Are You Also Appalled By The Cost Of Groceries??

 I just returned home from our closest "discount" grocery store with two bags, each filled about 2/3 with groceries...you know the type of bags, right? The usual regular sized cloth totes like you get at stores like Safeway?  Only two bags.....$110.43.  Only one item that I purchased, a medical item, was expensive at $22.99.  The other items were produce and some sale bread and a couple of canned items....$110.43.  Gosh....I am kind of sorry I looked at the receipt to be honest.  Are the rest of you finding it more and more demoralizing to purchase groceries?  This is the month I could have used the harmonized sales tax rebate that got all messed up by the CRA and that I am still waiting to receive.  Sigh....okay, enough whining and complaining! (for now...teehee...)

Although it is overcast with deep grey clouds that may be bringing rain overnight and into tomorrow, it isn't very chilly out and I enjoyed getting out to the post office and the store.  I didn't even take my cane in the car today because since my husband pointed out to me that part of my limping has been my own fault for not monitoring my foot placement properly,  the limp is far less pronounced and it isn't as difficult for me to cover distances.  YAY, I am so pleased.  

My husband felt well enough this morning both before and after breakfast to participate in his weekly theological and scientific discussion group after being quite certain he would have to miss it because of feeling rotten, but he didn't feel rotten.  Has the Indian food from yesterday successfully aided his recovery once again?  No headache today either, so that is wonderful.

Our son got a report from his boss today about the work he did for her in Florida last week and apparently he did well despite not having much of a clue as to what part of the job entailed.  He is like his father....he knew just enough to figure out the rest of it on his own.  I am happy for him.  His wife is now scheduled to return sometime today, so that is also very good news. She is a brave solo traveller and that gives ME forty fits. I think I have seen too many movies of young women getting in trouble driving long distances on their own...or maybe I am more stressed about the world situation in general than I realize.  Anyway, just glad she is on her way home. 

Such Sweet Hopes For Us Regarding Housing...But The Biggest Problem I Have Won't Necessarily Be Solved By Moving...Sigh....

Today various friends have told me how much they are praying for us to find a better quality place to live in.  One of the things motivating their prayers is that having neighbours on the other side of the wall has, in a few cases over the past 11 years, been a struggle.  The only issue these days with the neighbours next door is that their youngest boy thumps up and down the stairs at all hours of the day and night. Tonight they have company who also have a little boy about the same age and they are banging and crashing about on the stairs so much that they sound like they are coming right through the walls. Even putting my ear plugs in is not deadening the noise enough to sleep right now...at 11:10pm. My friends are concerned about such things because they know I have "bionic hearing" when I go to bed at night, particularly  when the outside noise has subsided for the overnight hours.  If the kids next door were still going to school during the weekdays they wouldn't be thumping about so late at night, but since they all stopped attending, for whatever reason, Sunday nights are like all the other nights and worse when these particular visitors come over and stay on into the wee hours of the morning.  I suspect that since no one is working and no kids are in school they feel free to live on Middle Eastern time. Sigh... I will be fine and eventually I will be tired enough to fall asleep, plus I have no commitments other than physiotherapy tomorrow.  So, all will be well.

Since some of my friends have been here when the stair thumping is going on during the day and they have heard it with their own ears, they are appalled to think that we have to listen to that late at night...that we have to listen to it at all. This is motivating quite a movement among them to pray us into a better, quieter place. God bless them richly for caring so much, BUT I think what I have not been able to communicate clearly is that no matter where I move I will likely experience noise related sleep issues.  Moving out of here is no guarantee I will not end up living close to someone who leaves their dog out all night, tethered and barking in their backyard. Someone in a nearby residence may be prone to playing very loud music until all hours of the early morning.  There may be neighbours who are truckers and leave their semi cabs running all night long in preparation for the next day's long haul.  There may be people with kids who make as much noise outside after I have gone to bed as the little guys next door are making inside right now.  There may be people having back yard bbq guests for half the night.  Etc. etc. etc. etc....let your imagination run wild.  

The problem is not with the noisemakers as much as it is with my low level OCD and my nighttime Super Hearing. Moving won't solve that.  Even living in the country wouldn't help.  My past experiences with that are that someone's cows are constantly mooing or their horses whinnying or the half tons are back firing coming home after midnight from a visit to town, or farmers are starting their farm machinery at 5am.  It isn't possible to get away from the noises, SO I am extremely grateful that God is helping me, answering my friends' prayers that I can learn to cope with the little peoples' nocturnal activities next door without it being my own anger and frustration that are keeping me awake as much as the noise.

I am super grateful for all the people praying we can move to a better place. There are other pertinent reasons why we are needing to move out of here as soon as it is possible, but the noise factor isn't all that relevant with me being the way I am. Don't stop praying friends, don't stop praying. Perhaps God is helping me deal with some of my mental health issues by keeping me right here for awhile longer. Ya' never know.....

PS my daughter in law will be flying home tomorrow and thus avoided the bad weather around Dallas today, so I am most relieved about that. There is another happy answer to prayer!

 

 

A Wee Bit Of Cultural Experience Next Week!

We are looking forward to enjoying a bit more of a classical music cultural experience next week.  Two fellows from our church are performing their final piano concerts for their Bachelor of Music degrees and we have been invited to attend.  The concerts are taking place in a proper concert venue here in the city that we have enjoyed being in for chamber music concerts in years past, rather than in the less beautiful university student concert spaces, so it will be an evening of excellent performances and classical music.  YAY, something to look forward to indeed.

My husband was able to eat breakfast this morning at exactly the right time to stave off another tummy attack and even managed to get to the early adult education class at the church, AND stay through the entire church service as well, despite being so tired.  After the service I assumed we would come home and he would eat more yogourt or pancakes or some other bland meal.  However, he said that as he was sitting in the church before the service he remembered that the last two times he has had bouts of this nature one of the main healers of his tummy was Indian food.  I have the same memory, so for lunch we went back to DarBar.  He had the mildest spicing possible in his meal, didn't overeat and at this point, nearly two hours later, his tummy is showing no signs of postprandial upset.  If he can survive another hour without any reactions, it should be safe to say he will be okay, at least until after dinner tonight.  He may finish his leftovers for dinner, or switch back to pancake blandness, but at least it seems he will finally have a full afternoon off from his tummy ache.   The adult class this morning was on the use of the Hebrew word "hesed" in both the Old and New Testaments.  Like most words translated from one language to another, the full meaning is not directly, fully translatable so it makes for interesting discussions about how it has been translated into English by the various biblical translators.  It often appears in our Bibles as "lovingkindess", a word that was coined by Myles Coverdale and included in his printed translation of the Bible, (1535),  slightly pre-dating the King JamesV ersion. (1611)

It is only going to about +8C this afternoon and by Thursday morning we may have more snow, but at least we will remain above zero for the next three or four days.  The sun is shining, the clouds are currently thin and the breeze isn't too strong.

Now I am signing off to spend some time in prayer for our daughter-in-law.  She is supposed to be going home today from Texas, but bad thunder storms and possible tornadoes are forecast in the area close to the Dallas airport so we are concerned about her travel possibilities.  Looks like she will be okay driving back to El Paso, but then it gets dicey for her if her flight to Dallas is badly delayed or cancelled due to weather....honestly, at this point it seems there is always some kind of issue lately with every flight that members of our family are booked into.  Praying hard for this dear girl!!!

Carol And I Are BOTH Improving Slowly But Surely!

It has been a glorious, warm and sunny day today.  What a relief after ongoing snow and ice and fog for the past few days.  Okay, okay, tonight it is to rain again and be a bit colder for a day, but overall the spring is winning its struggle to get started around here.  How I appreciate the attempt!

After a relaxed morning of lingering over breakfast and reading a couple of more chapters together in our current shared book of choice, (Steve Saint's "The End Of The Spear"), we went over to the hospital to visit Carol.  I think it is one of the few times I have truly experienced seeing someone transition "from death to life" so quickly.  Only three weeks or so ago Carol was on the verge of death, comatose, her body fighting sepsis and her kidneys and heart and lungs on the verge of shutting down.  Today she is lucid, bright eyed, texting and emailing on her phone, eating well and doing her in bed physiotherapy each day while she waits for a bed in a short term rehabilitation facility.  We had a wonderful conversation, prayed together, shared mutual joy at her nearly miraculous healing and it was incredibly encouraging to my husband and I.  So proud of her for fighting through this disaster and starting to come out healed on the other side of it.  Now we pray for the rehab bed to come available to her sooner rather than later.

My husband and I parked our car a couple of blocks away from the hospital...not only to avoid having to pay for parking, haha, but to give me a chance to do a few blocks of walking outside without my cane.  I admit I felt kind of discouraged about the severity of the limp by the time we returned to the car. BUT my husband said to me, "You know, if you were under the care of the very first physiotherapist you ever had, no doubt he would have some kind of little trick to help you walk with less of a limp."  "Yup", I thought. "He likely would have some little trick fer shur!"  

After we got home I got thinking about what my husband said. I started walking around the living room and checking what I was doing with the foot on the operated leg. Sure enough, I discovered I have not been rotating the weight off of my heel and onto my toes when I am walking.  When I go to step forward with the non-operated leg, the toes on my operated leg are not receiving my weight in order for me to roll forward off those toes so that that leg pushes back at the hip while the non-operated foot reaches forward to take that new step.  Duh....how could I have missed that one little fact in the midst of all the physiotherapy I have been doing so faithfully???????  After dinner tonight I spent some time walking around the main floor of our suite, deliberately rolling my weight onto those toes and immediately my gait became, if not perfect, far more natural so that the limp was greatly reduced. Voila....a new strategy to work on to lose the limp.  Bless my dear husband for what he said. It certainly got my attention and seems that this new practise for walking technique is going to help me.  WOW  and YAY!! Since the top of that tendon is not functioning properly any more I have to stop assuming walking postures will return automatically.  I have to deliberately place my leg and feet in the proper walking positions and continue to do that consciously with every step until I have retrained the surrounding muscles to make it happen with less deliberate pre-thought on my part.

Early to church tomorrow as the adult early morning class is starting a six week series of teaching and discussion on various words used in the Bible that are not necessarily understood any more and that have passed out of popular usage.  I don't know what the topic is for tomorrow or who will be teaching it, but I do know my husband will be teaching next week on "purity".  Looking forward to this new class.

This afternoon's icing on the cake was a visit from a dear, dear friend....the one who bought our Honda a few weeks ago.  As I watched her pull up beside our car in the lot I had the funniest feeling watching what used to be our car being driven by someone else. hahaha  We had a great visit.  I so appreciated her dropping in because she has a schedule every weekend on her "days off" that would do me in even if I was twenty years younger!!  That woman can complete more tasks in one day than I can complete in two weeks or more. Incredible!

Enjoy the rest of the weekend everyone and if you have good weather already for spring, enjoy every second of it.  Thanks again for praying for Carol.  God has been very positive in his answers to these requests and everyone in her family is grateful.

Now, if my husband could just have his tummy troubles settle down....less intense episodes today, but two instead of only one.  I am certain these issues all tie in with his CFS, so we just have to discover what it is food-wise that may be setting off these episodes and he can no longer eat. When we finally figure that out we will have to take time to also figure out if this food is permanently off his diet list or if he can restore it to the menu once he recovers from these present attacks.....aaaah, never a dull moment around here with my husband's health issues. Since the CFS has been going on since 1986 I think we are both kind of used to it at this point.

Triple Threat!

Finally was able to complete task number 3 in regard to the CRA just before dinner this evening....and it only took an hour! hahaha  The hold up is that in order to have access to the account, for security you either have to apply for a special code to use each time you want access, which takes about 10 days to arrive in the mail, OR you can take a photo of a piece of ID and a selfie on your mobile phone and send that it for immediate access. Aiii yiiii....we tried and tried to use the photos method so we wouldn't have to wait ten days for access to our info to do our taxes online, as that would be pushing it for the time deadline, BUT, oh no, of course the photo method didn't work for us.  We couldn't seem to get the photos centred properly so after three attempts with the website refusing all three, we gave up and applied for the code to be sent...by email as apparently it could show up a couple of days sooner than snail mail.  (To be honest I don't actually trust the mail delivery service to get the info into my mail box within that 10 day timeline.)  The worst part about not having the photos accepted is that fiddling about with that method caused the website to time out all three times and we had to begin the process all over again from the beginning....ALTHOUGH that meant I got lots of practise using the ID's and passwords that FINALLY got accepted once my husband discovered the privacy settings on my computer were responsible for the passwords I created not being accepted.  hahaha  Oh dear Lord above, what would I do without my husband to help me do all things computer????  

So, even if it takes the full ten days to get my code, I will still have the better part of a week to get my taxes done and filed.  hahaha What a crazy day.  Glad it is over, to be honest!  

One Down, Two Down!! YAY!! One To Go!

 So, all is well now with my husband's ability to access his CRA account online and I had the most helpful chat with a very nice agent regarding my sales tax rebate re-payments!  Thank goodness I spent all that time on hold waiting to talk to him.  He discovered kind of a mess regarding my last re-payment, confirmed I do not owe the amount I was just billed for AND I will be receiving some money back because it turns out that because of the mix up the CRA now actually owes ME some money. hahaha  What a merry-go-round of an afternoon.  We are taking a break now, but in an hour, while all these tax type things are still floating around in our minds, we will set up MY online tax account. Next week will now be taxes week and FINALLY we feel prepared to start.

(Silver lining?: if this mess with my rebate repayments had not occurred we would still be dithering around putting off setting up my CRA account to get our taxes done.  After today we will have no excuse not to get them done by next week! The taxes brain fog hath cleared at last!)   

And The Taxes Go Round And Round....Aiiii Yiiiii....HaHa!

What an afternoon we are having here.  I feel like never checking the mailbox ever again after opening a letter today from the CRA in regard to the over payment by their department of my sales tax rebate last year.  

After spending nearly an hour locating the phone number that will actually connect me to the department I need to talk to at the tax department without having a personal identification number, I am now on hold....possibly for the best part of an hour to talk to an agent but I don't care.  Since the letter I got seems to indicate that the payment I made earlier this year was only partially accepted and the rest of it is now being re-billed....huh???....I want to get it straightened out today...particularly if I truly do owe them this amount of money again after all so that I don't have a payment arrears notification on my tax account.  

My husband spent the better part of an hour trying to get into his own tax account and kept getting error messages. Turns out one of his browser settings was to blame, but that took a while to discover. Thankfully he is now into his account and getting things sorted out so that once he helps me get an online tax account set up, at last, we can get our 2025 tax forms submitted.  

As I sit here waiting there is a lovely variety of classical music playing over my phone on the wait line.  Are you old enough to remember the days before there was lovely music playing while you were on hold on the phone and it was just either an odd kind of muted buzzing sound or completely dead air, so you never knew if you were truly still on hold or if the phone had glitched on their end and you weren't actually connected to them any more, but the line hadn't actually disconnected?  Remember those good old days? hahahaha  Oy, what good times every April, eh? hahahaha

Well, the music currently playing is familiar to me, so I am going to stop writing this post for now and hum along.  

(Two JOYS today are: a really encouraging physiotherapy session AND a day of mostly sunshine and warming temperatures with more warm days to come over the next week!  The silver linings...) 

Update For Carol

The latest update came in late last night. Carol is now medically stable, no more dialysis, the tube to the carotid artery has been removed so sleeping will be easier, more comfortable. However she is very weak between the full body slam of the illness and the subsequent weeks in bed. The medical team wants to have her moved to a short term rehab facility until she regains her strength. It is going to be a long, long road for the rest of her recovery, but after nearly losing her the family and friends are so very grateful for the hope of a full recovery. Thanks to all of you for your prayers.