Poems From The The Big Veda c. 1500-1200 B.C.

 MAY THE WIND BLOW SWEETNESS

 

May the wind blow sweetness,

the rivers flow sweetness, the herbs grow sweetness,

for the Man of Truth!

 

Sweet be the night,

sweet the dawn,

sweet be the earth's fragrance, 

sweet Father Heaven!

 

May the tree afford us sweetness,

the sun shine sweetness,

our cows yield sweetness--

milk in plenty!

(translated by Raimundo Panikkar) 

 

HYMN TO NIGHT

So vast, our Goddess Night, she rises,

star-eyes gazing everywhere;

all her finery of dress displayed.

Space high and low she fills, Eternal Night,

her beauty driving out the dark.

Close on the heels of sister Day

she treads.  Let darkness run...

As you draw near, we turn for home

like birds that wing to nest.

Life everywhere retreats: man, beast

and bird. Even the soaring hawk

returns to seek out rest.

Night, shield us from the world and thief.

Throughout your hours let there be calm.

Pitch dark has brought a shroud for me.

Dawn, drive it, like my debts, away.

Child of Day, to you, as to a calf,

my hymn is offered. Receive it now

as paean to a conqueror.

(translated by Edwin Gerow and Peter Dent) 

 

 

 

 

Wedding Clothes.....Starting Over!

This morning I put on the dress I purchased for my son's and daughter in law's wedding reception and had another long look in the mirror.  My response to the apparition staring back at me from the mirror was somewhere between meh and blah.  Okay, so the feelings I have been having about that dress over the past couple of weeks since I purchased it do have some merit after all.  I will start the search again later this week or early next.  The dress is nice enough that I will wear it lots this summer....assuming we eventually get some actual summer weather at some point.....but it just isn't at all what I had in mind for the event.  I thought I could make it work, but no, I can't. My son told me the other day that it doesn't matter what anyone wears as long as they are comfortable in their clothes and I know I won't be comfortable in this dress at that celebration. The search continues......maybe a skirt and top??  When I start searching again I will add that possibility to my list.

My husband had a bit of a tummy reaction after eating some very tough green pepper skins as part of his salad last night at dinner.  I found myself unable to chew the skins properly and ended up spitting them out, but my husband gamely swallowed his and paid the price.  He is fine now after a couple of short naps today to get over the tummy stresses, but neither of us seems to have much energy on this overcast, chilly, rainy day.  

I know I am a bit tired after doing most all the housekeeping yesterday, but I am starting to rally mid afternoon. There is still time to wash down those bathroom fixtures after I finish this post....I engineered a small flood in there this morning when I was showering, (dropped the shower head and it went behind the shower curtains out into the centre of the room before I managed to corral it and reel it back inside the tub....duh), so the floor got a second washing today while I mopped the water up.  hahaha  Only I......hahaha.

I am reading the scriptures at church this coming Sunday, so that is always fun. Nice to have something to be responsible for at the service. I think the worst part of my husband's retirement for myself is that I feel so useless sitting in the church so many Sundays with nothing to contribute other than my ample butt in a pew.

Speaking of church services, we got kind of a shock yesterday.  A friend who attends the out of town church where my husband is sometimes asked to take a service in the absence of their priest contacted us yesterday to say she had a copy of their bulletin for a couple of Sundays from now because she will be the Scripture reader that week. She was so delighted to read that my husband is taking that service. Wha??? He IS?????  He was shocked to find that out as there was nothing noted on any of our calendars, but he did a deep dive into old emails and sure enough.  That particular date had been offered to him a couple of months ago and he had accepted it. hahaha  He has been so busy concentrating on two other services he is doing hither and yon over the next couple of months that he had completely forgotten about the one our friend reminded us of. hahaha  So, at this very minute he is polishing off his first sermon draft and getting the Readings for the day firmly established in his memory.  Thankful for our dear friend who is excited we are going to be coming to her church again and is responsible for him now remembering that. hahaha I hadn't remembered either. What a pair we are, eh?  

Tomorrow is Canada Day....it is going to be July 1st already.  June disappeared in a cloud of....I don't know what.  Where did it go? Did we do anything at all of significance?  The only things I remember about the entire month are my husband's trip to the mountains, my birthday weekend and seeing the surgeon for my one year hip surgery checkup.  Good grief....2026 is flying past me completely out of control!!  We rarely take in any of the Canada Day events here in our city as they are all so crowded with people. Tomorrow there is a good chance it will be raining for at least part of the day, so we are hoping the fireworks display that begins each Canada Day at sundown, will not be rained out!!!  So Happy Birthday once again Canada....just in case I don't get around to wishing you greetings tomorrow.  At this rate, should the grey skies and rain continue, I may not have the energy!!

Thankful For All The Energy We Both Seem To Have Today!

 I woke up after a very good sleep last night, feeling pretty healthy, but also feeling somewhat at loose ends.  I had no plans for today.  My husband had his weekly Zoom meeting with his scientist/philosopher/theologian friends early in the morning, but I just sat around reading a book wondering if I was motivated enough to so much as get dressed.  Just about 11am something finally clicked in my brain, I got cleaned up and dressed and before my 1pm lunch got all the dusting accomplished!  My husband was inspired to finally do a proper cleaning on his little library and his office, after finding no end of excuses not to over the past couple of weeks, YAY!! DONE!  After lunch HE inspired ME to keep working so now the kitchen, bathroom and entryway floors are washed. YES...a productive HOME day.  Tomorrow it will be time to vacuum...I may even do the bedroom and upstairs hallway this afternoon....and then the house cleaning is done for the week and I can move on to other chores like taking in the recycling and thrift store items.  My husband also sent an email to the kids today with some ideas for the spiritual component of their wedding reception they asked him to attend to, so he is waiting to hear back from them about those details.  

It feels good to have a productive day after waking up feeling so totally MEH!!! 

The weather has been very nice today thus far, but we are now gearing up for the next set of showers and/or thunderstorms between dinner and overnight.  The sun was shining in a bright blue sky until just after 3pm when the clouds once again began to form in all their depressing greyness.  We have been blessed though that even with last evening's teeming deluge of rain continuing over night, only a gallon of water was found in the collection system my husband invented for our leaking basement.  That water was poured into the plant pots on our deck so at least it will have some actual  use! Yay! 

Happy, Happy Weekend!

 It has been a fulfilling weekend despite the never ending rain and thunderstorms!  In the next seven days we have one day of forecast sunshine midway into the week, but more storms are forecast for that evening and then onward to another few days of rainfall.  At this rate, if this is the result of global warming, either our area will end up becoming a permanent icy wasteland or turn into a jungle habitat....rain, rain, rain, rain, rain and more rain!  What a miserable summer weatherwise.  Our weekly rainfall forecasts are very similar to those on the west coast, but our temperatures are a bit cooler and slightly less humid..so far anyway. I am already wondering what next summer will bring!

Yesterday was a wonderful day despite the weather:  we attended the diaconal ordination of two people my husband has been helping to mentor along their pathway to eventual fully ordained priesthood.  There was a good turnout of people at the service from the church that was sponsoring them, also quite a number of clergy from other parishes were robed up and in attendance, the Bishop gave an inspiring talk to both ordinands that the rest of us were fortunate enough to be able to hear. It was thrilling to receive the Eucharist Cup for the first time from one of the two new Reverends. The delicious snacks in the visiting room afterwards kept me from going into a coma after eating my breakfast far too late after sleeping in accidentally, then not having a proper lunch for, as it turned out, 8 hours!!  I so enjoy returning to this church to see old friends and get caught up.  We spent a long time visiting and snacking and enjoying the beaming faces of the two new deacons in our diocese.  What an edifying and encouraging time for us in our little diocese who have seen so many large drops in church congregational sizes, a dearth of acceptable clergy, financial restraints etc.  Now not only do we have these two very capable new ministers who will spend one year as deacons and then be fully priested, but there are several new hires coming into the diocese who are very capable and experienced priests already. AND they are younger with young families...YES!  As far as clergy hires go we are set up well for the future.

A small piece of cake and a couple of crackers and cheese doth not a late lunch make, so just after 4pm my husband and I found ourselves ensconced in a booth at a restaurant around the corner from the church munching ourselves silly on chicken wings, fries and mounds of cole slaw.  As soon as our massive meals arrived we took out our take out boxes we brought from home and put half of our meals into them for lunch today.  Getting two full meals out of the deal made the price even more reasonable than it already was.  The service was excellent yesterday and our waiter got into a philosophical discussion with my husband before we left to drive home, hahaha.  There is something about my husband's clergy collar that starts up theological and philosophical discussions with many of the restaurant servers we meet around here. hahaha What fun! There are some very bright minds out there "slinging hash" and attempting to create fulfilling futures for themselves.

My husband and I both slept badly last night due to our brains fixating on a few issues we are dealing with and those thoughts kept going around and around and around.  I managed a little more than 4 hours of sleep and my husband got closer to six hours....4 too few for him as a rule....so I was the only one that toughed it out and went to church this morning. I figured perhaps being out and about might perk me up, and it did temporarily as I was able to sit with my coffee buddy who was also sans husband this morning, but as soon as I finished my lunch at home after church I was asleep in my recliner chair, tv blaring away for no reason at all, while my husband had a nap in his office. hahaha What a pair!  The thunder woke me up after an hour of sleep, so I staggered into the kitchen to wash some dishes and do a few more small chores.  As soon as I finish this post I am going to do a bit of reading but I am not sure I am going to get more than a few pages read before I doze out once again.  

We have few plans thus far for the coming week.  Not that we don't have plenty to do right here at home, so hopefully the lack of social commitments will make room for lots more downsizing around here. We have another load of "goodies" to take to the thrift stores and to recycling so once we get those things loaded into the car there will be that much more space for my husband to work in the basement as he continues his sorting and tossing out project.  He had also hoped to build the hangers necessary to attach our canoe and our friend's canoe to the side of her house at some point this week, but so far it looks like the ongoing rain is going to scotch that idea.  Maybe the week after???? 

I Hadn't Realized How Many Years It Has Been Since......

 ....we last lived and worked and ministered in a downtown core situation surrounded by people in desperate situations of mental illness, addiction, poverty and ongoing unemployment., until today at lunch time.

We spent the morning removing a large wooden work bench and table from the shed of a friend whose house is going up for sale next week and she has been good enough to store that table for us for the past several years.  After we dropped it off at its new home we decided we should take a short break and eat a bite of lunch before returning to remove our canoe and rehouse that as well.  

The closest place for two grubby, dusty "haulers" was a fast food joint, so we opted for a quick burger.  The restaurant is right on the edge of the neighbourhood known here as The  Hood and it is populated by many down and out people who are suffering from lack of emergency medical services and addictions counselling etc. etc. etc. and it is, quite frankly, a bit of a daunting area not that far from where we live.  Today while we were eating our burgers a fight over a drug deal gone sour erupted right at the entry door. Voices were raised, epithets filled the air and after a couple of minutes a physical fight ensued.  The restaurant has a security guard who is highly visible but the fight was too much for him to handle on his own. When it became evident that one of the participants was armed with what looked to me like a home made shiv, the police were called in.  Thankfully the situation was solved before we had to exit the restaurant because the scuffle was happening right in front of the borrowed car we had with us for hauling the table and canoe.  Whew!  It would have been very difficult to explain to the owners of the car what had happened to their vehicle if it had become part of the argument happening around it.  I have to confess that for the first time in as long as I can remember, I felt a little twinge of fear about the situation.  It has been decades since I have had that response while in a section of the city that suffers such problems. It was embarrassing to be honest.  When I remember the folks in Calgary and area we were privileged to deal with for so much of our married life, I realize how far away we have been from having that lifestyle surrounding us.  I hadn't really understood how much our lives have changed since those days.  Kind of rocked me back on my heels to be honest.  I need to monitor my responses more carefully when I am now faced with that sort of culture.  Man oh man......I shocked myself today and not in a good way.  

When it was time to return for the canoe, my husband decided to ask our Syrian neighbour Saleem to help him move it instead of having me trying to assist and dropping my end of the heavy old thing, as is my wont, when my husband is trying to get it up on top of the vehicle to tie it down.  Saleem was a wonderful helper....he and his wife Hafav are both younger than our son!  So, Saleem was very quick with his part of the loading process and before I knew it the men had delivered the canoe to its new home and returned the borrowed vehicle to its owners, so I got a text to come and pick them up much sooner than expected.  When they got back Saleem and Hafav had time to come over for tea and snacks, so we spent a wonderful hour with our translators on phones and iPads learning more about how they ended up here as refugees. Their tale brought big soppy tears to my eyes. They have suffered even more than we understood before.  Oh dear Lord, deliver them all from the trauma of wars in their home countries. Amen!  We so admire them for all they are doing to learn about Canadian life and culture and their fledgling attempts to speak English.  May they find their way as happily as is possible in such circumstances.  Some Canadians have never suffered the tragedy of war and we truly have no idea what that kind of suffering and fear is like. May the Lord preserve us from ever having to find out.....

So, everything is now removed from our friend's house before it is listed for sale. Those items have found new homes for the present and our friends have their vehicle back.  It has been a very productive day on several fronts.  I am realizing if our next door neighbours are forced to move to less expensive accommodation this summer how much we are going to miss having them living right beside us. 

And: now we are waiting for the next four days of rain to begin after having a mostly overcast, but at least a dry day today. 

Kudos To Tamarind South!

 We certainly enjoyed our dinner tonight at Tamarind's newer southern location.  The decor, or lack thereof, in this smaller restaurant nearly hidden from view near the end of a small off the beaten path strip mall, was not encouraging when we walked in to sit down at a nice sized booth, but the upholstery is still looking new and everything was very clean.  The food was a real treat: my chicken mughulai was slightly spicy with just enough coconut flavour in the gravy for my taste and there was a goodly amount of chicken pieces in the bowl.  Our friend's malabar chicken curry was absolutely delicious, not at all spicy as she had ordered a mild version and the curry sauce was thinner and well blended with spices. My husband ordered the balti lamb and it came with slices of green pepper and onion to add another layer to the slightly more spicy flavour.  All of us had an enormous amount of meat in our dishes, which is wonderful. It seems so often these days that with the price of food now the amount of meat has slowly been halved and the amount of gravy doubled at many of our Indian restaurants, so this was a great treat.  The curries and sauces had good depth of flavour....it seemed to us that they were actually more tasty than any of the dishes we have eaten previously at the original Tamarind location, but perhaps we need to go back there now and see if that is still the case.  We rounded out our meals with a large bowl of very tasty jeera rice and two large naan cut into three pieces each.  We all have enough leftovers for another full meal each tomorrow. YAY!  The prices are just as reasonable as DarBar over all and the flavours run in a not too far behind second place. 

We had a most delightful dinner with our friend as we listened to her stories of the past year, her first year of retirement that has seen her visiting all over North America and the Caribbean.  We were surprised to learn that she is not prepared to abandon Canada completely after all and is just debating with herself over whether to purchase a smaller house here or in some other part of Canada. Talking with her has given us new hope for a possible "one last adventure" before we get too old to do much more than sit around waiting for the end to come, hahaha. 

I am hoping and praying I can have a decent sleep tonight despite knowing I have to set my alarm for the morning.  Hopefully I can just forget about that relax into a good rest. 

So Far The Hailstones Have Been Small Here.....

 A few minutes ago a teeming deluge of water began falling from the sky....praying for our dear basement as this is quite the waterfall I am looking out at through the window by my desk.  We had some hail as well but fortunately there were fairly small pellets, only a half inch or less in diameter. Oh please Lord, let there not be any stones bigger than that. The other end of our city got hammered a week ago and the number of badly damaged cars was horrendous.  I am selfishly, I admit, asking for that kind of damage not to hit our end of the city because my own car, new to me so recently, is parked outside out of necessity and many of our neighbours have large fancy work vehicles with equipment for their jobs in the uncovered back boxes.  

The rain is starting to let up so I pray that will be the end of the "tropical" rainfall amount for tonight.  Gosh, this has been the weirdest spring and summer weather here in the past ten years or more. 

So Which Is It Then?????

Today I read two conflicting (?) reports by two different cities in two different provinces about how each of their individual current weather conditions create perfect breeding grounds for the nasty mosquitoes that make outdoor living in Canada in the summer....along with the hideous ticks of course.....itchy, annoying and potentially disease causing.

A report I read from Lethbridge Alberta told me that their rainy spring along with its WARM weather made for the perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes. In the same news feed was a similar article from our own city of Regina telling me that the rainy spring along with its COLD weather made for the perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes.  

So, which is it? AND does it really matter?  Apparently the air temperature has little effect on these little bloodsucking insects. As long as there is standing water anywhere at all in this country, we will continue to be plagued with the little monsters.  Yucko!!!  I am not encouraged that the number of mosquitoes this year, all across the west at least, has risen substantially over previous years. Oooooh, as someone who is well loved by mosquitoes I am not at all impressed. Swat! Slap! Squish!

I just keep telling myself that it is all worth it because so many of the northern Alberta and Saskatchewan forest fire hubs are also getting a lot of rain thus far this summer, helping keep the surge of large fires in check.

Today I finally tackled some small chores I have been putting off because I have found the thought of doing them more stressful than those chores warranted.  I checked finally to see if our last credit card payment went though after my first attempt to pay in person at the bank and if Amazon did indeed refund the card for non-delivery of an item we ordered for the kids.  Everything was tickety boo.  So, why was I stressed over something so simple?  Easy: I have experienced so many mistakes by the bank and credit card company in the past few months that I hold my breath just looking up my account online.  Aaargh!!  I printed off paper copies of our flight and accommodation reservation for our upcoming trip.  We have run into some minor issues in the past when trying to use my husband's phone to bring up email confirmations in our own airports and across the border, so this time I am fully prepared with the information we may need and can whip it out of my suitcase in its bright red plastic folder if required. hohoho!! Gotcha' downed internet issues, this time I gotcha'!!

The bathroom walls needed a washing down and I should have done it two weeks ago, but was feeling so punky with my sore sinuses and ear infection that it seemed like far too much work to be bothered with. So, I did that today!  There is still cigarette smoke residue trickling out of the overhead fan system from the last tenants before us who smoked, as well as the various smoking neighbours next door since the smoke rises up into the ceiling fans for distribution throughout the open shared attic space.  All the bathrooms in the suites here have the tobacco residues streaking the walls unless the walls get washed down regularly.  I have never washed bathroom walls as often as I have since we moved in here.  

Tonight we are meeting up with a newly retired colleague of my husband's. She is selling her house and returning to live in her native Caribbean country. We are happy for her and she is very excited to leave the drabness of the prairies and our unique prairie culture behind her.  I don't blame her.....hmmm....I wonder if she knows of any rental units in her home country that would be interested in having some elderly Canadians rent the space for a few years....hmmmmm.....hahahaha. Yes, yes, unlikely and not sure my husband would go for the idea, but I can dream right?  A former parishioner of ours who was widowed over ten years ago started travelling solo to the Caribbean a few years ago and is now remarried to a local fellow there. She is very, very happy and we are happy for her.  Let's see how I feel about such a move: Caribbean--Regina; Caribbean--Regina; Caribbean--Regina....hmmmm...people who know me will know exactly how I would feel about such a move, teehee. We are going for Indian food tonight.  It will be yummy and we are excited to be able to have one last visit with our friend before she leaves in a couple of weeks' time.

Tomorrow I am picking up my coffee buddy and we are going to a coffee bar for our visit.  It has been several weeks since we last did that so I am looking forward to it.  Tomorrow was originally forecast for warm and dry, but I see now that there is a 40% chance of rain again.  No surprise there, right? hahaha At the moment the thunder is booming here, but it has arrived two hours after our last bit of drizzly rain and at the moment there is nary a drop falling from the sky.  Interesting weather, that's for sure. 

Could My Thought Process Possibly Be LESS Creative??? Nope, I Don't Think So! Duh........

 I have been putting off cleaning out the vegetable crisper drawer in my refrigerator for almost a week now because it is always such a chore to clean such a small compartment.  This afternoon I knew it was time to stop putting it off.  Yuck!!  Little bits of vegetable detritus and possible liquid stains from who knows what are what I thought I saw in there and was dreading having to spend the time and energy involved on cleaning it all out, as well as removing the drawer and cleaning the bits of food crumbs and stuck on liquid from spills that have happened in the past few weeks that would be all over the ledge the drawer sits on.  Yuck again.

Today, being particularly tired and the air here being particularly muggy, I was dreading it even more.  I had a great visit with my walking partner this morning, even though the rain showers kept us from doing any actual walking out of doors, I got my ironing finished, made a decent lunch, got all the dishes done....but now it was time to tackle the crisper. No more flimsy excuses!!

When I pulled out the drawer and looked at the bottom ledge where the drawer sits, it appeared that most of the little crumbs were loose and there was no evidence of any hardened puddles of spilt milk or juice anywhere.  As I pondered how on earth I was going to manage to get down low enough to wipe those crumbs out with a wet cloth, due to my aching, mobilization compromised hips, the lights FINALLY went on...after HOW MANY years????  Feeling so stupid for all the hours previously spent with wet cloths sometimes doing little more than pushing the crumbs about before accidentally whisking them out of the fridge and onto the kitchen floor, when I COULD have simply put the crevice tool attachment on the vacuum cleaner to remove them....well, again with the DUH!!!  So that is what I did. In about 5 seconds all the crumbs under the drawer were vacuumed up and since there were no hardened puddles of anything to gum up a wet cloth, that part of the task was done.  So, I emptied the vegetables in the crisper drawer, checked the veggie "crumbs" in there and proceeded to vacuum those out as well. There were a few crumblies stuck onto the bottom of the drawer that I was able to wipe out with a wet cloth in about 5 seconds, gave the drawer a good drying with a clean cloth, put the veggies back in the drawer and replaced it in the fridge.  In less than 5 minutes the whole task was completed.  WHY O WHY have I never once thought of doing the crisper cleaning this way??  At my age, how could I have so thoroughly missed this possibility as a better, less physically demanding way to clean that part of the refrigerator????  I also realized that the yard stick I have hanging on the side of the fridge is a great length for attaching a wet/dry cloth to the end of it to push it around on the ledge the drawer sits on if there are any removable stains from spilled liquids.  I think I have just been so used to doing things the exact same way for the past five or six decades that it hasn't dawned on me to quit griping about how hard it is on my body to have to crouch or bend over to clean certain things and find a better way.  Aiii yiii....talk about silly, right???

We received an email from our daughter in law this morning regarding spending a few days upstate with her and our son when we are visiting them later this summer.  She is booking a family friend's beautiful cabin for three nights near Germantown, about a 2 or so hour drive out of the city.  Her brother is loaning her his car so we can make the trip.  We will stop in Beacon, about half way along the route, to see the Dia Beacon art museum and enjoy their current large display of paintings by Saskatchewan's very own Agnes Martin.  This is very exciting. Our "kids" are eager to escape the heat of the city with a short trip to the more rural area surrounding this beautiful cabin with a screened in porch, beautiful bbq pad and right next to some lovely hiking trails.  It is their "thank you for coming all this way" gift to us before the wedding reception rolls around. How grateful we are to be able to enjoy the beauty of an area of the state that only my husband has seen before. It will all be completely new to me.  I am SO excited!  Our daughter in law has been talking about spending a few days out of the city ever since the idea of us going down for the wedding reception was floated a couple of months ago and she is getting her wish. Bless her for setting this up for the 4 of us.  It is going to be so much fun.  We are so grateful as well to have a few days away from the intense summer heat. So many happy times to look forward to after two very physically difficult  years for both my husband and myself.  We are blessed.

 

Beautiful Summer Colors Abound In Our Complex!

No, the colours of summer around here are not from the few pots of blooming flowers on our and some of the neighbours' back decks, but from the colourful clothing some of the immigrant women are wearing.  The African and Caribbean women are dressed in brilliant yellows and greens and reds, while the Muslim woman are wearing less brilliantly coloured hijabs, but still in beautiful shades of light maroon and deep blues.  

One of our African neighbours is on her back porch, washing her kids' clothes in a Tweety Bird yellow plastic pail that exactly matches the yellow in her head wrapping and of the flower pattern on her black skirt.  So lovely....her deck railings and covered in tiny baby blue, neon green and pale yellow items belonging to her youngest son, 4 year old Jonson.  We suspect that either the dryer in their unit doesn't work well or she has decided she cannot afford the electricity it costs to run. She is a resourceful woman: took some job training and got some kind of job, has sublet the basement to another younger couple who also assist her in baby sitting the five kids when they are off work and no longer has to receive food from the immigrant food service providers here in the city.  She is an amazing woman accomplishing all of this in the 18 months they have lived in our complex.  I admire her stamina and her resourcefulness.  We are praying with her kids that their dad will be able to get to Canada very soon. It has been nearly 2 years since he had to return to his home country to sort out some extended family issues and was refused re-entry to Canada.  

Well, it is now time to iron my own colourful summer clothing that I washed a couple of days ago.  Ironing is most relaxing and I quite enjoy it.  It is the kind of task that gives instant reward: wrinkles to no wrinkles in a matter of a few minutes and, unlike dusting and vacuuming whose results last anywhere from a matter of only hours, to a couple of days at most,  the results of ironing last for days or even weeks before the clothing is worn and becomes wrinkled again.

Good to have the blue sky and sunshine today.  There are some possible thunderheads forming now, mid afternoon and there is a possibility of more rain and thunder tonight, but who knows?  All I know is that our basement didn't flood in yesterday's deluge! (And my husband is feeling so much better today after I prayed for him last evening.  He isn't 100% back on his feet after what we think was an extreme food sensitivity reaction that seems to be forming now when he eats his favourite bread, but what a difference between him being nearly immobilized from headache last night and only a slight tummy gurgling today.)  

Thank you Lord! It is a good day!

He Said It Best!

 The amount of reminiscing my husband and I have been doing lately is a double edged sword of memories of my life not that many years ago and my life now.  Oh my goodness how things have changed....

Charles Baudelaire sums up my feelings about the past and present very well: 

"How little remains of the man I once was, save the memory of him!  But remembering is only a new form of suffering."

From La Fanfarlo

If you knew me "before" you will understand what I am saying and if not, take a closer look at the quote and analyze where your own life has taken you over the years. How do YOU feel about the changes; in your circumstances and in yourself?

 

The Rain Came Down And The Floods Came Up

Did you go to Sunday School as a kid and sing the little ditty about the wise man who built his house upon the rock as opposed to the foolish man who built his house upon the sand, so when the rains came down and the floods came up the wise man's house stayed standing and the foolish man's house floated away? (for those of you wondering what on earth I am talking about, the wise man represented those who built their faith on Jesus the Solid Rock and the foolish man represented those who ignored God's laws and rejected Jesus and went their own way and lived to regret it.)  When the rains came teeming down this morning for several hours, we were concerned that we would be in the same position as the foolish man and that the floods would "come up" into our basement once again.  There was a break in the rain for a couple of hours while we were in church, but now it is pouring once again, so although thus far we have not had any leakage in the basement that my husband's convoluted arrangements of plastic piping and connections to the drain in the basement floor have not been able to handle, we are going to have to keep an eye on it over the next two days of predicted rain.  I have to say that at least the 103 geese currently feeding on our lovely green back lawn are happy to see the new puddles in our parking lot where they can come and drink after a feast of new grass shoots.  My husband and I will definitely be dancing the Poop Scoopin' Boogie back and forth to the car for the next few days until the sun comes up and dries out the goose droppings so we can shovel them up and get rid of them.  Sigh....how can such beautiful birds leave so much destruction behind them? 

We received our formal wedding invitation online this afternoon for our son's and daughter in law's wedding reception celebration in August.  They did such a good job with it, clear instructions on how to respond, how to let them know if the responder is coming to both the reception dinner and the Shabbat dinner at auntie's the night before, or just one of the celebrations, whether there are food allergies and other dietary restrictions to be considered, full addresses for both venues, and an easy to use page for sending wedding gifts.  Their shared computer and creative skills worked well together for this invitation.  There is one family who cannot remotely afford to attend...my son's "other family" from Vancouver.  How I wish, for a wedding gift specifically for my son, I could afford to pay for them to come to NYC for a few days and join in the celebration.  Their inability to attend is about his biggest disappointment in regard to the whole celebration, although he was expecting it.  Sigh...

Our son got another blow last night when we received word that his other "Alberta family" from growing up years lost the patriarch of the family somewhat unexpectedly a few days ago....a very rare form of blood cancer....just one of many cancers he had suffered after 37 years of firefighting in the town where our son grew up.  This family is so special to us all: they adopted our son every summer for at least two weeks or more to take him along on their family holiday in the Shuswap, camping right at the lake.  They took him every summer for about ten years and gave him the time of his life. We could never go away in the summers, partly due to financial restraints and partly because when my husband was well enough to work on his construction projects, summer was prime time for jobs.  I don't know what our family would have done without the kindness of this family who lived right down the street from us while our kids grew up together. Our boys were great buddies all through school even though they attended different schools, the parents were kind but strict and had strong moral values that aligned with ours....it was an amazing relationship for our son's growing up years. They are a wonderful, hard working, stoic family who had many trials of their own to deal with over the years.  May dearest "uncle" to our son rest in peace and rise in glory.

My husband read the scriptures at church today. hahahaha  He did well of course, as a retired priest, but he made one little boo boo at the end after he finished the Gospel reading.  Instead of saying what was written in the bulletin to signify the readings had come to an end, he automatically, as a retired Anglican priest, said, "The Gospel of Christ" and in the Anglican church the response is, "Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ."  The Baptist congregation of course was completely thrown by the fact that he said something so different than the sentence and response they are used to, so there was a confused silence from all of them while the three of us in the church with Anglican backgrounds automatically responded, "Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ" into the soundless vacuum.  hahahahaha  My poor husband instantly realized what had happened so he rather shame facedly returned to his place in the pews. hahaha  No one will remember...these Baptists are good like that....but I had a good laugh at my husband's expense.  He is tired today after a poor sleep last night and I suspect that is why he messed up just a wee bit. hahaha 

My husband was delighted to receive a phone call from our son this afternoon in honour of Father's Day.  Although he would have thought nothing of it if that call had not come, I could see he was pleased to be remembered.  My husband went around this morning greeting the congregation members with "Happy Solstice!"  A few of them were not thrilled to be reminded that after today the number of daylight hours will begin to shorten as we start the slow slide back to the winter season. Spring is over....such as it was around here...and summer began three weeks ago....huh?  We haven't even had a true spring yet, as shown up in our flagging tomato plants and patchy pots of flowers on the back deck.  

I am looking forward to the vegetable portion of our dinner tonight: friends at church brought us a bag of beautiful fresh asparagus from their family farm.  It looks luscious and I can't wait to steam it tonight and cover it in melted butter. Yum, yum.  (And no, for those of you who always ask, we did not go out for lunch after church today. It being Father's Day and us not having a reservation anywhere since we can't justify the cost of all the restaurant brunches by the small amount we can each eat, it wasn't worth trying.) 

 

The Usual Working Around the House Saturday!

 Gosh, but I find Saturdays difficult!  It seems to be a really great day for my husband to work on sermons and articles he is writing, but I nearly lose my mind every Saturday.  Yes, I could get out and shop or look about at some little art galleries, but Saturday is the day working folk and school children are off and so of course it gets rather crowded at most venues and restaurants.  With it being Father's Day weekend, some places are even more crowded than usual today from what I can gather.

So today I did the laundry. hahaha Happy Saturday!!  Good to get it done and I can iron tomorrow or Monday afternoon.  Great to get the exercise going up and down the two flights of stairs as well, although that second hip is giving me grief over it.  Dang it, but I really am going to have to get a prescription for Naproxin to get me through our US trip this summer. Oh well...I was on it for hip number 1 the last time we visited our kids there.

Our kids wrote to us today about the possibility of spending 3 nights in upstate New York with them the first week of our holiday. They know how much we are NOT going to pay for three nights of cabin accommodation there when we have already paid for our apartment in the city, BUT they want to cover that cost.  It is a beautiful cabin with a lovely outdoor barbeque area, which greatly appeals to our BBQ King son and our daughter in law has been talking about this sort of possibility ever since we told them back the end of April that we were coming for a whole month.  The cost of the cabin they want to rent for 3 days made us gasp, so we told them if they truly want to pay for that, okay, their choice, BUT we are paying for the food, train transportation and event entry fees.  Just waiting to hear back from them as to whether or not this is going to happen.  I know they both want to get out of the beastly hot city for a few days and I can't blame them as I too would love that!  Guess we shall see what their decision is. They are nothing if not full of interesting ideas!!

It has been a lovely warm day with only a bit of a breeze wafting through the tree tops.  Not great to be stuck in the house all day, but I have been enjoying the unusual quietness outside on the lawns.  Over the past week all the African kids have found other friends in a different area of the complex to play with, so they are gone over there right after school during the week and took off across the parking lot once again early this morning, not returning for more than a few minutes at lunch time.  Moh and his brother have barely been outside playing in the past week and it seems their family has had a serious falling out with our next door neighbours, so Moh and his brother are not playing with the two boys next door now.  The indigenous kids in our part of the complex have been packing up trucks and vans with camping gear, either heading out before school ends this coming Tuesday or getting ready to go as soon as they are free at that time.  They are too busy packing to play outside.  The other slightly older kids are heavily involved in baseball and soccer now and so by 8am every weekend day they and their parents are gone to practises and tournaments. Wow, it is so quiet around here lately it is downright eerie!! We miss the kids playing outside, yelling and kicking balls and riding bikes and fighting. haha

Our one truly beautiful day this week, today, is apparently a one off, unfortunately.  According to the forecast we have very heavy rain on the way tomorrow, followed by another two days of showers.  The poor tomatoes are so far behind I am not sure how much of a harvest we will get before we leave for our vacation this summer.  We assumed we could pick and freeze a fair crop and that we would have already picked a fair number of our wee cherry tomatoes, but nope.  There are only three tomatoes that formed nearly two weeks ago but are still dark green with not a hint of ripening. I noticed two more blossoms this morning....TWO!!  That will make a total of five tomatoes in the first three weeks of this month...that is assuming they fill out and ripen sufficiently to be eaten.  Sigh.... We need sunshine and heat for our plants now! The bonus of the rain in our province is that the forest fires are not starting and getting out of control because the rain in that area of the north has not had the accompanying lightning strikes....yet anyway.

We made a big decision yesterday to drop out of the one Bible study group we have been attending twice a month regularly for the past three years. There seem to be other things coming up for us this fall that will leave us unable to keep that commitment regularly.  That is disappointing on the one hand, but on the other hand it will be nice to have some new things to do. It will also leave us more time to invest in our small care group that began meeting some months ago and that has proven to be not only a good spiritual learning time, but also a time of deep and personal fellowship with a few folk who are significantly younger than we are and who help us restore our flagging energy levels. We don't meet nearly as often as the Bible study group does, but we enjoy everything from Bible studies to movie nights to group dinners....it is so much fun!  

My husband is doing the scripture readings at church tomorrow, so it is nice for him to have a service task that is super easy, much easier than teaching and preaching.  Next weekend we will be out of town to attend the ordination of two of the deaconal candidates he has been mentoring, so that will be really fun. AND it is on Saturday!  A GOOD Saturday for me for a change! hahaha

Well, if we survive the heavy rain that is supposed to fall tomorrow, it will be a nice relaxing Father's Day.  My husband is a great father!  Another of his many gifts!! 

Busy Times With The Neighbours, Etc.......

This week has flown past in a flurry of "busy". For someone who has spent the past two weeks fighting ear and sinus infections I seem to have had very little time, particularly this week, to just sit around and heal.  But it is okay because the antibiotics I am currently on, along with the nasal spray, seem to be doing the job sufficiently this time....so far at least.

Attending the annual Big Book Sale, a fundraiser for the seniors programme to promote life long learning at the U of R, has taken up a few hours of our time, both in donating a ton of my husband's books, (yay you, sweetie), and purchasing books, particularly for myself.  My husband picked up a handful of books that he has been wanting to read...but not keep....that haven't been available through his online library account and I found some novels to get me through the rest of the summer.  So we purchased 26 books and three record albums for $44! Not bad, not bad at all.  As I am still working through quite number of books I picked up at various community library boxes around the end of April, first of May, I should be reading well into the coming weeks.  All the books we purchased will be read and then funnelled into various community library boxes.

My husband had three mens' meetings this week, particularly enjoyable as they involved men visiting from out of town who have only been involved in the weekly Zoom meetings with my husband and his friends, but happened to be in Regina this week, so it was a joyful first in person meeting for the out of town participants with the rest of the local group.  I enjoyed my weekly visit with my coffee buddy and one of my husband's meetings this week was a breakfast meeting with her husband. They have become such good friends over the past 3 years...they are older like us and we have lots of mutual ideas and shared life experiences.

The most time this week has been tied up with the next door neighbours.  It has been really fun, but having to use translators is rather exhausting.  This weekend my husband is meeting with the husband next door to peruse Facebook Marketplace together, trying to eventually find a used car that is clean enough and in sufficiently good mechanical condition and that fits our neighbours' budget....could take some time, but we will do what we can to assist them.  I was invited to sit on a blanket out on the goose poopy back lawn one evening with the wife from next door and her most hilarious friend that she met while jogging around our complex one morning.  We drank tea, talked as much as we could via translator, worked on their English words for awhile and they assisted me in learning a whole 3 words in Arabic....3 nouns so I won't get confused. hahaha  

Another day, right around dinner time, a frantic sounding hammering on our back door roused me from the dinner table.  There was our neighbour with her oldest son, nearly in tears because their ride to the son's Grade 8 graduation at his school had not shown up and was not coming after all.  Freaked out driver MOI to the rescue. Trying to drive to a school I had no idea existed while glancing over as quickly as possible at the tiny screen on my neighbour's cell phone that showed the route, (There is a good reason it is illegal to look at cell phones while driving!!!!), was terrifying and the worst fear was that I would get completely lost along the way and the kid would miss his special ceremony.  Although I did manage to miss seeing the school on our first pass by because my neighbour has not yet figured out the difference between Left and Right while waving her hand in the air rather vaguely, I was able to get around the block for a second pass by and found the school at last.  As they were getting out of the car, in plenty of time to get to the ceremony after all I might add,  it hit me that they would need a ride home afterwards and none of us had any idea how long the ceremony would last.  Rather than wasting time putting my phone number into her mobile...because I was stopped in a no parking zone on a very narrow street with an impatient car unable to get past me from behind....she decided she would call her daughter and the daughter would come to our house and knock on the door to let me know it was time to pick her mom and brother up.  So, about 90 minutes later I was on my way back to the difficult to locate school...found it first go this time, managed to stop in the no parking zone once again while my passengers loaded in and with no other car behind me this time freaking out because I had stopped illegally. YAY!

When we got back my husband and I were invited to their back porch for tea....the first time our husbands would be sharing this social time with us. My husband had only just then heated up his left over DarBar food and was about to eat, so he apologized profusely for bringing his dinner with him and the four of us shared a lovely, happy time with lots of laughing due to odd translations from SIRI or "whoever" and it was great fun.  We finally got the budget from him for the car he wants to buy and we can only thank God for Facebook Marketplace possibilities because there is no way he is ever going to get anything remotely decent anywhere else for the price he is able to pay.  

We found out they got to Canada on a federal government refugee programme, so now we understand why they are not allowed to work at this point in time.  They are being financially subsidized by the government for a certain period of time, when their ability to work and take care of themselves here vs whether or not it will be safe for them to return to the Middle East will be reassessed.  They left their home in Syria about sixteen years ago due to war and settled for about the next fifteen years in southern Lebanon, but then war caught up with them there. All three kids are traumatized by the sound of army aircraft buzzing closely overhead and dropping bombs in towns near where they lived.  It explains some of the behaviours we have seen from the kids, their reluctance to talk, to even make eye contact on occasion, even though their English is improving now enough to carry on a short conversation.  They are completely freaked out and afraid to believe they are now safer than they were. They are used to working hard after school back in Lebanon and we watched some phone videos of the three of them, even the youngest, planting and harvesting the huge vegetable garden they had back home and working at cleaning inside their huge house...now they live in a teensy, overpriced, poorly maintained two bedroom townhouse with nothing to do after school but kick a ball around and try get along as best as they can with all the other kids of varying ethnicities and languages.  We learned that the one couple who tend to show up at odd times, unannounced, at their place and take them to various grocery stores and the food bank, are teaching them street rules and driving laws, finding them doctors etc., are their government assigned sponsors who are monitoring their use of their subsidies and helping them get their kids looked after for school enrolments etc. Our neighbours were supposed to come over here for tea a couple of afternoons ago but just as they were leaving for our place their sponsors showed up, again unexpectedly, so that was the end of that.  We are going to try again tomorrow to have them over for tea.  

Just before we left their place they gave us news that really upset me, although for VERY selfish reasons:  by the time we return home from our trip south in September, they very likely will be moved into far less expensive government housing.  When they told me what their rent is on their little old town house unit here, I was shocked to the core.  Our suite is far larger than theirs but even when our own rent goes up in August, we will only be paying twenty-nine dollars a month more than they are right now!!!  Highway robbery!!  We have been fortunate I think because we have not made any demands for the new flooring or for cabinet and appliance updates we have a right to ask for. It does keep our rent lower and since the whole place has to be remodelled once we move out, we are not asking for anything right now from the management company....in the (possibly once again mistaken) belief that God will help us move out of here sometime in the next year.  My selfish fear is that once again after only about 6 months with these neighbours we have come to love, we will be in tenterhooks about who is going to be living on the other side of the wall.  Sigh.....  Assuming they leave either just before or during the time we are out of the country, what on earth are we going to come home to for new neighbours?  The last two times new people moved into that suite while we were away, we came home to one horrific nightmare and one so so upset that at least got taken care of within a week or two.  Oh Lord, what next?  Are our neighbours at present going to end up in some old scuzzy bucket apartment that has even more neighbours on the other side of their walls making noise, or a building that has been badly maintained even more so than the buildings here at this complex? Sigh again...what is going to happen to these people Lord?  Do their kids really have to change schools for the third time in less than a year???  

Well, I need to get to bed now and stop fretting about the neighbours.  They are so easy to love and so easy to want to help. If they move I hope they end up living close to even more people who are able to assist them as they try to deal with all the trauma they have experienced in the past year or more.  

Tomorrow is my last day of antibiotics, so hopefully there will be no more ear infections. I have not one commitment for the entire day, so I can sleep in and do laundry at my own pace. Looking forward to it. 

PS I have decided to add a new label called Stress because there has been so much of that in our lives lately with more to come!   

Doctor Eagle Eyed Fleagle!!

Yesterday I was able to access the final report from the fill in surgeon I saw earlier this month at my one year THRA checkup. It proved this young woman had a lot more going for her than I realized! 

I did not of course see her when I was in the outer waiting room and she was occupied with another patient, out of sight, when I arrived in my examination cubicle. Hoping I could hide the fact that I was still using a cane, (why I felt this need to be deceptive I am not sure….some kind of childhood issue with authority that leaves me feeling like a kid sent to the principal’s office for using a cane I “should” no longer need?), I saw a great space along the back wall of the cubicle to stash it pretty much out of sight. From the time I entered the clinic to the time I left I had the cane draped over my arm and was not using it to walk. 

As the surgeon bebopped into and back out of my cubicle during our ten seconds of interaction she made no mention of the cane and neither did I. Stupidly I thought I had gotten away with not admitting I still need it for walking farther than a few blocks.

As it happens, no I did not. 

The final sentence on the post appointment report was, “The patient still walks with a cane.” 

Sigh….turns out the surgeon, who appeared to me to be about twelve years old, does indeed have the sharp eyes of the very young. 

I tried. I failed. 

My Dear Husband: Only In The '70's!!

 For some reason my husband and I started reminiscing over dinner this evening. He reminded me of a series of incidents that happened to him one summer in 1973...things that would NEVER happen in this day and age!

My old hippie husband had been out on Vancouver Island visiting his parents and on the earliest morning ferry back to the mainland as he began his trip back to Alberta he was approached by a young woman who asked him if he had a valid driver's license. When he told her he did she asked him if he would agree to drive her car off the ferry when it got to Vancouver because she was driving without a license and was very afraid of being stopped by the city police when she arrived.  He agreed and ended up taking a tour through half of the city before they arrived at her destination.  After he got her back to her home he had to get himself back to the main highway to start hitchhiking his way back to Calgary where he was living at the time.

Things went pretty well as far as getting rides until he got to Kamloops.  No one was picking up hitchhikers there that afternoon for some reason.  After standing about on the highway with his thumb out for over three hours, he noticed a fairly large piece of cardboard in the median ditch beside him. He retrieved it, found a marker pen in his backpack and proceeded to write "I'm harmless!!" on the cardboard.  As the cars continued driving past him he held the sign up and waved it about.  Still no one stopped. After nearly another hour of standing about he noticed the advertising car from the local radio station driving past.  A few minutes later it went past again going the other direction.  About fifteen minutes after the car made it second pass by, a car with a family inside stopped and offered my husband his long awaited ride for the next portion of his journey.  He was so pleased that finally someone had stopped but the family confessed the only reason they picked him up was because the fellow driving the radio station car had announced my husband's presence on the highway and pleaded for someone to stop and pick him up.  hahaha  The family drove him as far as Golden, but then were heading south and couldn't take him any farther east.  By this time it was getting very late in the afternoon and there were four other hitchhikers already standing in the prime pick up spot.  Hitchhiking etiquette dictates that the hitchers wait their turn so that the people waiting the longest amount of time get picked up first.  One car stopped and picked up one of the other hitchers, but by then the sun was starting to set...what to do?  My husband discussed the situation with the three remaining hitchers and they decided to find a super cheap motel room and split the cost to stay overnight.  In the freewheeling '70's hitchhking was not only a usual form of transportation for many young people, so was staying overnight with groups of complete strangers in whatever town you found yourself stranded for the night!  

The next morning everyone who spent the night at the motel easily caught rides to continue the trip east, my husband gratefully among them. He and the other "last in line" fellow from the previous day were picked up by the same fellow and away they went.  Things went fine for the first few miles, but when the got to Field BC there was a line of police cars stopping all the east bound traffic.  Apparently someone had robbed a jewellery store back west in  in Penticton BC the previous evening and the RCMP had information that the thief was travelling east bound that very morning.  The man driving my husband and the other hiker was able to produce the proper paperwork for his vehicle ownership and his driver's license, but when he admitted his two passengers were hitchhikers he had picked up in Golden, both my husband and the other hitcher were unceremoniously  hauled out of the vehicle by the RCMP and driven by them to the police station in Banff Alberta, some distance up the road from Field.  Fortunately my husband had no criminal record and no jewellery was found in his baggage. The details of his story checked out and he was released, but the other poor fellow did have a criminal record, so was going to be held for some time to be fully questioned and checked out.  As my husband was about to leave the police station one of the RCMP officers called him back. He asked my husband if he was on his way to Calgary and my husband said he was.  "Well...", said the officer, "do you have a valid driver's license?"  My husband did and turned it over to have it verified.  When the officer returned with the license he then told my husband that in the other waiting room were two young teenagers who had driven out to Banff from Calgary and picked up for speeding.  Then it was discovered neither of them had a driver's license and were under age to get one.  The officer has just contacted the parents of the kid who was driving the family car and the father agreed that if my husband was willing, he would give permission for my husband to drive the car and kids back to the city. So, that is what happened!  The kids and car were delivered safely home and my husband took a city transit bus from their house to his own residence at the other end of the city.

Can you even remotely imagine any of these scenarios happening today??? Can you imagine a young man allowing himself to be talked into driving a car from a ferry across a large city by a young woman he had never seen before in his life and not be worrying he was being scammed or set up for a robbery or worse?  Can you imagine a family with young children picking up a grubby old hippie from the side of the road because he had a sign that said he was harmless?  AND based on a radio broadcast by another person who also didn't know my husband at all??  Can you picture a police officer actually calling a father of under aged teenagers to enquire if a completely strange man who looked like an addict would be granted dad's permission to drive the kids home in the family car from out of town to the city 90 minutes away????  SO not going to happen!!! 

How things have changed, eh???  Aaaah, those were indeed The Days My Friend!! hahaha

So Glad I DID Quit Monkeying Around And Went To The Doctor!

 After some rain overnight the moisture stopped moisture-ing and the sun burst forth from behind the clouds for most of today. How very lovely. The wind was more of a light breeze and the temperature was a bearable and enjoyable low plus 20C's.  Aaaaah....a true taste of spring today.  Unfortunately our city may get hit with heavy rain and more hail tonight into tomorrow. Dang it!!  All I can do is pray and hope for the best: that the hail will miss us completely this time.  The big storm system is starting off in Alberta this afternoon and heading this way. Wow...what a weird spring season.

I felt somewhat better again when I woke up this morning, but as has become usual in the past few days, by noon I  was aware of the sinus issues and just a slight inflammation inside my ear.  So glad I called the doctor for an appointment. She checked me over and decided that the first batch of meds nearly 2 weeks ago started to clear an infection but not completely because then the symptoms returned immediately after I finished the meds, with mid day fevers occurring after being outside. So I am on a different, faster acting antibiotic for the infection, along with what has been in the past my most effective nasal spray.  I expect the antibiotic will wallop me for a day or two, but it is a short term dosage so I will be done with it by the weekend after being instructed to begin with a double dose today.  Surely the combination of the two meds will help clear any residual infection and calm the sinus inflammation. I don't want to spend my entire summer battling sinus and other respiratory issues, that's for sure. My husband and I were looking last night at a slew of medical appointments we have coming up in the next six weeks and were reminded of that old senior citizen joke:  "You know, people who are retired do a lot of travelling; a LOT of travelling! They travel from one doctor's appointment to the next!"  Sadly funny, but also sadly true.  Sigh....

Tomorrow is grocery shopping day and we will do a few other short errands as well.  With no other commitments (yet) we should be able to sleep in and take our sweet time getting things done.  If we can both sleep as well tonight as we both did last night, tomorrow should be a very relaxing and productive day....as long as we don't have to spend it lined up at SGI filing a hail damage claim for our car.....eek....I can't wait until the June hail season passes. 

Lovin That Sunshine!

 Although I could happily do without the howling winds today, it was marvellous running errands late this morning in the blessed sunshine!  The warmth of the sun's rays are so welcome and so soothing for the soul and body.

It has been a very good day indeed in productive and fun ways.  I wasn't feeling terrific by the time we went errand running before lunch, even though I had a solid just short of 7 hour sleep last night and originally awakened feeling quite healthy, but after getting some banking done with no hassles for once and driving around to various library branches while my husband picked up books he had been waiting for, I was feeling pretty cheery and relatively healthy again.  (I did make a doctor's appointment for tomorrow afternoon to see if I can get some nasal allergy spray to get a handle on the inflammation in my sinuses. Happily, our neighbour has not smoked his hookah for the past two days so I have had a break from worrying about the horrendous odour taking even more toll on my respiratory system.)

We found ourselves parked near the downtown library branch round about the time we needed to eat a late lunch, so we toddled into the Western Pizza across the street from where the car was parked. We had low expectations, but our meal was a slight bit better than meals we have had at their other locations around the city.  WP is kind of a last choice spot, but we were parked, our parking pass was already filled out for an hour's worth of parking and, well, why not since WP was right there. I had the smashed dill pickle burger with a Caesar salad.  The salad was pretty much not very Caesar salad-like, but it was tasty enough. My burger was delicious with two smaller sized smash burger patties, lettuce, cheese, tomato and red onions on a very nice small bun with a brushed butter top crust.  My husband's pizza was very tasty although he found the sauce to be an odd combo of "sweet and sour" for lack of a better description. I noticed that he still ate half of it, plus all my croutons and part of my salad, hahaha. He will have the rest of it for dinner tonight. I am so stuffed from lunch that I will have a couple of slices of ancient grains bread with melted cheese and a glass of water for dinner!  That will be more than sufficient!!  The bonus for us eating at this restaurant is that we arrived at 12:45pm and they close the table service at 1:15pm when they revert to take out and delivery only.  We were allowed to still order anything we wanted and stay seated as long as we wanted. The only thing we had to do differently was to pre-pay for our meal.  No problem, happy to do so.  Lunch was just over $40 including the sales taxes, we were delighted.  The restaurant was seating only ourselves, so we felt quite relaxed and happy with no noise to interrupt our chat with each other.  We will try that same arrival time again some time just to have that kind of alone time in a public restaurant.  hahaha

The sun is still shining as I write this post just after 5pm. I can't believe how a few hours of sunlight makes me feel better over all.  I would be almost as happy without it today though because my husband booked our flights to NYC at long last.  Yup, expensive compared to other years, BUT nearly eight hundred dollars cheaper for the basic fare than the same flights were charging three weeks ago when we first looked at the possibilities. Even with paying extra for our seat choices, we are still all in at five hundred dollars less than that original base price, so we are content.  Hallelujah. So now the prayers begin that we won't be delayed leaving and miss our connection to NYC from Toronto on flight day!  I have already explained to my OCD that God is in control and if we do get delayed for some reason that is on Him and no need to get all in a twist about it. Things will work out.

Here's hoping for more good weather tomorrow.  My husband is going out for breakfast with a buddy, so that will be fun for him.   We started out this week with only one commitment on the calendar and now there is only one day free....but I think we will have to do our grocery shopping and other away from home errands that day, so...... it should be a good week! I have a haircut scheduled, coffee with my friend and other happy events planned. We will not be bored, that's for sure!

Time To Quit Monkeying Around!

 I felt kind of lackadaisical this morning about making a doctor's appointment about my sinuses. Waking up feeling so much better meant I was procrastinating again, as I often do with "iffy" respiratory conditions. Then a little while ago I got a text from my coffee buddy asking me if I had made that appointment, so I decided to take it as a sign I should.  I am going to see my own doctor tomorrow afternoon. YAY!  Since it seems this issue with my sinuses is allergy based I am definitely going to need help this summer keeping the inflammation at bay.  Thank you coffee buddy.  You gave me the nudge I needed to get off my duff and git 'er done!  As a result my husband has also gotten himself in gear and made two medical appointments he also should have made for himself a couple of weeks ago.  There have been so many details accruing regarding our trip this summer, along with a myriad of other attention grabbers and stressors that the easiest things to leave out have been the making of medical appointments, but no more.

The sky is blue with large white cloud formations forming to the west. To the east it is cloudy, opaque grey, so who knows if we will get more rain today?  One never knows around here, hahaha.

Off to pay some bills while I am feeling well enough to go out for awhile. I expect that will knock the starch out of me for the rest of today as it is also fairly warm outside. 

Not Healthy Again After All....Drat!!

Weeeeelll, I managed a great sleep last night after feeling the previous evening like my ear just may be showing signs of ongoing infection, but after that good sleep I felt quite fine so after breakfast we got dressed and headed off to church.

I made it easily through the first hour of the adult learning class but about ten or fifteen minutes into the service afterwards I stood up to sing and nearly fainted.  My head was becoming fuzzier and fuzzier, usually for me a precursor for blacking out from some kind of illness, generally sinus related.  Fortunately my husband realized what was happening and led me out while the rest of the congregation was still on its feet and singing lustily as it was an old favourite hymn.  Not many people noticed our departure, so I wasn't completely embarrassed and making a scene.  Whew!!

We got home and I spent an hour lying on the bed dozing. By 12:30pm my upper sinuses were very clogged and my head has been full feeling  and achy ever since. Dang it!  Guess I will call the doctor's office first thing in the morning and set up an appointment with my own physician who has seen me through these allergy based sinus/ear infections in times past.  I am fairly certain it is a reaction to the hookah pipe tobacco next door. Sigh.....  If I can get some spray for my sinuses to control the allergy on days when it is too cold to open the windows to eliminate the fumes and odour, I will be okay this summer.  As I suspected at the time the meds I got from the walk in clinic were not quite strong enough to clear the infection OR else they didn't do much apart from specifically helping my ear because the sinus aspect is allergy and not bacterial in nature.  

Thankfully the first part of this week doesn't contain very many commitments for me apart from a trip to a couple of banks tomorrow that I absolutely must make happen. 

Today is a lovely day.....at last. All the windows are open, the sun is bright but not overly hot, the breeze is not very strong...most enjoyable, even sitting here at my computer.  These are the days I live for when the winter snows and ice buildups are finally gone and the rain gives us a break for a day or two or three. 

Please Lord, We Don't REALLY Need Any More Indications That We Need To Move Out Of Here....

....we've been trying again really hard to find a new place to live over the past couple of weeks, really we have!!  This morning I had a bad reaction to the strong tobacco our hookah pipe smoking next door neighbour inadvertently sends into our suite a couple of times a day.  It is so much better when he and his two buddies from our complex sit outside around a tiny table and smoke the hookah, but the past couple of days it has been too cold and rainy. Yikes!  I woke up coughing and phlegmy at 5am and haven't slept since, despite giving it a good try again mid morning.  My sweet husband could smell it as well and although he doesn't have the respiratory reactions I do, he certainly sympathizes greatly with me and he took me out to Beak's for a giant chicken sandwich....nice to be able to use the coupon book we bought a few weeks ago for a substantial discount.  YAY!!  As is usual the headache that was threatening to hit me once I got out of the smoke....typical reaction that I feel worse for a while once I get away from the irritant.....soon dissipated and we had a really nice lunch and visit together.  

So we are at a bit of a loss as to what to do now.  Obviously there is insufficient time to move out of here before our trip in August but perhaps something will open up after the trip but before my next hip surgery?  That means we will still be living in Regina until after the surgery and do we have the energy to move twice if something more appealing elsewhere shows up unexpectedly after that?  Hmmmm.....our sense of adventure has been slowly picking up again after a years' long absence, so who knows?  We feel today like the turning point in this agonizing process of trying to move is on its way, so we are encouraged to put aside the temptation to depression about our situation and look forward in anticipation to the future.  After over two years of stagnation we finally feel like there will be changes coming sometime in the next few months.  Even if that turns out not to be, at least for now we are feeling that sense of "happiness and hope" that has escaped us over the past year or more. YAY!  Oooh, what is coming next?  It could be something wonderful as it often has been before.

Neighbourhood Characters

Outside my bedroom window this morning…about 7:30am…is one of the neighbourhood folk: a man of indeterminate age, wearing grubby jeans and a nondescript hoodie…oh sorry, here in Saskatchewan it is called a bunny hug…..and pushing a large stolen (likely), black plastic, wheeled open disposal bin almost as long as the man is tall.  The wheels are clackety clacking along the ridges on the cement sidewalk panels…very loud in the stillness of the early morning air but not quite loud enough to drown out the confused, expletive filled rantings of this man’s never ending opioid induced hallucinations.  Around here you quickly learn to identify the types of highs so many people are experiencing as they are loitering around the nearby streets and in our parking lot. We live in the so called Transition Area of the city, which seems to mean the criminals, addicts, homeless and those living with extreme cases of various mental illnesses are slowly transitioning away from the downtown and drifting more into our area. There is a convenience store a few blocks down the street where it is a daily occurrence now to see someone lying on the ground in the store parking lot OD’ing or passed out from excessive alcohol consumption. I no longer walk to church by myself early on Sunday mornings. It is less safe than it was even two years ago and my age and use of a cane make me an obvious target for purse snatchers, grocery bag grabbers and those I could easily rile up by accidentally rousing them from their dopey slumber under the trees along my route. I miss that walk. It is a bit safer when my husband is with me, but neither of us feels as comfortable as we used to walking in the area outside of peak pedestrian traffic times.  We have pretty much abandoned the downtown area all together as to be walking on those streets and in the nearby parks is running a never ending gauntlet of requests from panhandlers who are becoming more and more aggressive. Some of the businesses we utilize have moved out of the downtown core to areas of the city that are safer for their staff members who were regularly being accosted as they left the downtown buildings after hours. 

So here we sit in the midst of the ever growing turmoil around us: the growing child violence and the expanding group of adults needing the professional help we are not trained to offer them.  Our ability to deal with our surroundings is declining with age. How much longer oh Lord? How much longer?

More Youth Violence In Our Court Tonight

 I am feeling ill this evening after a sad incident that happened near our place just after dinner.  A young couple in their 20's appeared at our back door asking if we had seen a boy between the ages of 8 and 10 anywhere near our place in the past few minutes. They described him and his outfit and when I asked them how long he had been missing, they told me he was not missing. They were seeking him because he had just deliberately killed one of the geese right in front of their unit.  Based on their physical description, I was relieved that it couldn't have been Moh, but I was left wondering about another of our young boys that does fit the description. I told them I hadn't seen anyone wearing that outfit because I hadn't. I hadn't seen any of the kids as I was sitting in the living room watching tv with my husband.  About a half hour later there was another knock on the door. It was the police asking us about the same incident.  We noticed that our place was the first one they came to and they asked a lot of questions about a neighbour near us.  We chatted for a minute but we were of little help to them and then they headed to the suite of the kid I was wondering about.  They were there for a few minutes, then talked to some of the other neighbours before driving away again.  Apparently they were unable to suss out the culprit. The young couple who had come to my door originally were accompanying the police in their own vehicle and apparently had seen the young boy take off for our part of the court after he killed the goose.  I am just ill about the incident.  I am even more ill as I consider who it is that I suspect may have done it.  Unfortunately I didn't see him at all so I don't know what he may have been wearing when he killed that goose.  I pray I am wrong, but that if I am not he will be found out.  It is a crime to kill the Canada geese because they are protected by an agreement between the American and Canadian federal governments, so that in itself is a serious enough offence, but that it was committed by a boy of that age is downright disturbing.  It is getting to the point around here that it will be the violence of the children that finally forces the issue of us moving out of this complex. It is all becoming too much for us to handle.  Please ask God to deliver the children here who are very disturbed, often because of life circumstances before they ever arrived in Canada that were traumatizing.  We are seeing more evidence of that all the time and it is frightening to think of where these children may end up.

There Is No Such Thing As Retirement For Ministers

 Our CRA account is going to have to wait once  again. Yuppers, it has happened again that my husband has been unexpectedly called away for the rest of the afternoon to provide Last Rites for an individual related to a family of indigenous neighbours from our building.  He is grateful they remembered he is an Anglican priest because the woman who died attended the Anglican church on her reserve, but they have been without a priest since their full time indigenous priest passed away unexpectedly some months ago.  So very grateful they thought of my husband. He grew up on reservation land and now has a very good relationship with the indigenous Anglican community in our area through his former position as Executive Archdeacon.  So glad we have a good relationship with this particular family of neighbours. They have been very kind to us.  

So,  my husband was gone in a flash and now I am going to figure out how best to balance out the rest of our mealtimes. We both slept in and ate a very late breakfast but I know I cannot wait to eat my lunch when he eventually gets home.   My husband has been "retired" from active daily ministry for the past three years or so, but fortunately that does leave him the opportunities on days like today to "jump" immediately if called upon.

Grey Skies In Winter, Grey Skies in Spring! WHAT THE HECK???!!!

It has been very nice to have all the rain showers we have had over the past week and more, but it would have been even nicer to have had some more sunshine between showers.  An hour or two scattered here and there throughout the past ten days or so has felt sadly insufficient, not only for us humans but also for our struggling tomato plants and herbs.  The tomatoes vines are stunted this year and the two or three tiny pieces of fruit on the one plant have not ripened at all in the past week since they appeared. I am afraid we may lose those teesy tomatoes to rot. The second plant wasn't huge when we got it and it hasn't grown much at all. Both plants are too spindly for this phase of the growing season. Glad the herbs are thriving much more and we have a fair crop of usable leaves and stems all ready. YAY!

I am discovering the joy of Ancient Grains bread that my neighbour shares with us on occasion.  For a strictly commercial brand...Dempster's....it is quite delicious.  Not being a great fan of the flavours of spelt and kamut they do blend together well with the other grains in this particular bread.  Yummy!  I have a loaf in the freezer that I am going to thaw today and enjoy!  It is a good kind of bread to intersperse with my Coop and Superstore Loaves of Alpine Grain breads.  

My husband is so refreshed after his trip to the mountains and his mind is clear, no headaches at all since going off his current statin meds. So on Monday he will call his doctor for a new med to be prescribed. He really does need the help as exercise and diet adjustments are not quite sufficient to keep his cholesterol count below scary range.  Inheriting that penchant for over producing cholesterol of the bad LDL kind, makes it that much harder to control without help.  At least he has tried to avoid meds, very seriously, but has had to admit defeat.  

Yesterday I got my courage together and called my orthopaedic surgeon's office manager.  I told her what happened at my appointment with the fill in doctor earlier this week and asked her the question I was leery to ask:  would I have to return to my GP to start the referral process all over again for the second hip?  The answer, to my huge relief, is NO! Hallelujah! His desire to do that hip is right there in his notes.  She will know sometime in August when and even whether my surgeon will be returning to work sometime in September after his extended medical leave. She has explained to me exactly what I need to do to see him as soon as possible after I return from my trip in August/September.  It will involve my GP ordering new x-rays of the other hip and getting them sent into the surgeon's office as soon as possible upon my return.  She also confirmed that should the  worst thing happen and the surgeon cannot return at all, there is indeed a contingency plan in place. YAY! The O.M. has been incredibly helpful and when this is over I must find the perfect card of thanks to send to her and to the surgeon.  It has turned into a very long haul between the length of recovery time for the hip revision arthroscopy and the eventual surgery on rapidly deteriorating hip number 2.  I am going to have to get a prescription for Naproxin again to get through my month long holiday this summer.  Drat!  My kidneys will be less than thrilled about that, but I already know there is no other way I will be able to cope with all the walking I am going to be doing on the trip.  Such is life, right?

So now that my husband is back and rested we are going to have to tackle our CRA account notices and track where they are with assessing our income tax forms sent in to them in April.  Oh please Lord, don't let me owe any more money to them because it is such a hassle ensuring the bank and the CRA employees actually get that money to the correct department, as I have sadly discovered in the past.   What a year it has been with this task!  Well, it can't be put off any longer. In the next hour or two we MUST get to it.  

After being awake in the middle of the night for a couple of hours,  for the fourth night in a row  last night, I finally got a solid four hours of post awake time sleep today. It was nearly 9:30am when I finally woke up. YAY!  My husband also slept in and we feel a lot more clear headed today, have more energy and are now up to dealing with that CRA account and other online "things" that have been amassing this week.  

Have  a happy weekend one and all!!