Luxuriating In The "Done-ness"!

 My house cleaning that I started on Monday is FINALLY finished.  While there is something good to be said about taking my time and not doing too much in a day, the idea of spreading full house cleaning over a span of 3 days is not very encouraging! I am drawing joy though from knowing that by taking my time and only doing housework for a half day each of those 3 days I did a thorough job that will last for awhile. After moving all the living room furniture to roll, turn and clean the 9'X13' carpet in the living room this morning I admit I am rather tired now.  

Fortunately I have no commitments out of the house this afternoon so I may take advantage of that to watch an old movie, The Lavender Hill Mob. Oh how I am enjoying the Silver Screen, Turner Classic Movies and One channels.  Some of those old movies are pretty corny and cliche, many certainly FAR from "woke", but it is relaxing not having to prepare my mind to hear a string of gross expletives in the scripts and to not have to brace my brain for a visual onslaught of gory violence.  Many of those old movies actually relied on well written dialogue, actual story lines/plots, subtlety and excellent acting!  Rather different in all those ways from too many of the movies of today; only my own opinion of course, but that is how I feel, so there ya' go.....

Tomorrow I am going for a haircut...oh bliss.  I love getting my hair cut. I love the busyness of the salon, the hilarious conversations with the stylist, the bright lights and glitter, nearly breaking my neck bending my head backwards over the sinks...the totality of the whole experience appeals to me.  It makes me feel more "citified" and less like a rural prairie-ite. 

My husband made a huge pot of his delicious celery soup yesterday and today he is making a giant casserole of beef stew.  He is a wonderful cook and I certainly enjoy the foods he prepares.  Our usual arrangement holds: he cooks and I do the clean up.  Fortunately he doesn't make the kind of huge mess our son makes when he is chef'ing, so it isn't so bad washing up afterwards.  

After waking up to fog and the remnants of freezing drizzle overnight, the sun has broken through, the fog has dissipated and the sky is a beautiful shade of light blue.  Apparently we are going to enjoy warmer, sunnier days for the next week or so. It means I will be able to get out and walk starting tomorrow.  This afternoon will be taken up by the return of the exterminators to check the traps they and we set and I am pleased that no mice have been trapped nor evidence of mousies seen around the house for the past week.  Thank you Lord!!!! 

Thirty Thousand Dollars In Fees Later….

 ….and our son’s card is good for ten years with the option to renew at that point if he doesn’t apply for citizenship. His wife has the same kind of card so that is most handy. I am figuring that after nearly ten years of past visas and renewals and appointments with immigration lawyers he has spent close to thirty thousand dollars to be able to live in a country where his career can thrive. Fortunately it is doing just that. 

I confess to being somewhat envious of him knowing from a fairly young age that he wanted to be an artist living in New York City. He has worked like a crazy person to make his dream come true. Doing his MFA upstate cemented his commitment to try to succeed there, and he never wavered in his attempts to hang in and keep trying no matter how difficult the first few years were.

Yes, I am a proud mama. It doesn’t matter how old the child, a mama is not afraid to admit she is proud of him. 

Two Huge Answers To Prayer!

 1. Nan finalized the sale of her house today! Lots of last minute glitches as seems usual in real estate dealings, but by late today everything solidified and the deal is done! Amen!

2.  Our son was notified last night that his card has been “Approved. Case Closed.” Our relief is now being overcome by excitement. Our son is so shocked by the speed at which he was notified that when he talked to us he still wasn’t sure how he felt, haha. It could still be several months before the card arrives in the mail but finally, after a year or more of stress and collecting various forms of documentation, he has been given a wonderful answer for his immediate future at least. 

Thanks everybody for your interest, concern and prayers for these two precious ones.

A Reminder Of Me Mum And Dad!

 When we were in Calgary last week we visited the two long term friends of my parents' who were present for our small time of remembrance just prior to our taking their ashes out to the mountains for burial. This photo was given to me when we visited this time, but since  I was not present for the Friends Event where this picture was taken and their friend couldn't remember the date, I assume it is sometime in the 1990's.  The visits and the photo have had me thinking often in this past few days about all the fun times our families had together.

My parents and I enjoyed many, many entertaining evenings in this particular home, where close friends, members of their 14 years long dinner club, lived for several decades.  When I was growing up I had fun in this house as the oldest of the up to five children present for birthday celebrations and dinner parties...good times and wonderful memories of my childhood.  In this photo both my parents are still fairly healthy, happy and up for having a grand time with their friends.

No Tear In My Beer, Just A Mouse In My House!!!!!! EEK!!!!!!!

 It has been over a year since we last had a mouse invade our premises, so I was very disappointed tonight as I was starting to wash dishes at my kitchen sink, turned around for a second and saw the brown furry streak of Mouse flying across the Kitchen and under the new fridge!  Sigh....  We are quite certain it entered this morning when my husband forgot to push the back door shut behind him when he took the compost out to the back deck.  Winter is imminent now, the exact time of year these wee nuisances are seeking indoor warmth for their winter accommodation.  

My husband was in the basement when I hollered the news of our little visitor to him, so he took the tray containing the last of our traps and bait down from a shelf and proceeded to load and place traps around the basement and upstairs in the kitchen and living room.  

Fortunately we found scant "evidence" of the mouse's presence anywhere visible and only a bit of same in the drawer of baking dishes under the stove. Those few things will be easy to disinfect tomorrow after the mouse has (hopefully) been caught in one of the traps.  

I sent in a Pest Request to our property management team who will find it in the morning and I suspect will not waste too much time coming over with more traps.  We are going grocery shopping in the morning, so will stop in at the office across the parking lot on the way out to confirm they got the request and let them know they are more than welcome to come in to set traps up in our absence.  

Dang it!  We have been doing so well for not getting mice in here the past few years.  Tonight's discovery is most disappointing.

Apart from that bit of upset it has been quite a wonderful day!  The 3km walk yesterday was exhausting after losing a whole week of exercise during our AB driving trip, but today we got to reprise our route to the optometrist's office because the lenses in one of the two pair of new glasses my husband picked up yesterday had been incorrectly ground.  So back we went today to turn them back in and have the mistake corrected.  The tech is not allowed to change prescriptions to the lens grinders without input from the optometrist, but it "just happened" that she came wandering out of her exam room after her last patient just as the tech was wondering how long it would take for my husband to get another appointment to see her. He flagged her down and she immediately took care of my husband's new exam needs.  The glasses have been turned in and are on their way back to the company that ground the lenses in order to correct a rather serious mistake. YAY!  BY this time next week he should have them back again and working for him.  

The weather for our walk was so warm and NOT windy for once that we had to remove our coats and carry them while only about 3 blocks into the walk. Blue skies smiled on us as well.

We were an hour late leaving to get the glasses taken care of because just as we were about to leave our son called.  We had a great chat with him and we were able to pray together about his card approval.  It will be at least two weeks before he receives the letter of acceptance....or, please Lord NO....rejection of his application.  All we can do is pray and trust for the right outcome and he is calming down a little bit during this period of waiting, so that is a positive thing.

We didn't even look at the time when we left home, but on the way downtown my husband admitted he was feeling extremely hungry. I admitted that I was as well. Finally we checked the time and discovered it was well after 1pm after a very light breakfast for him and my own breakfast which I had eaten over 5 hours previously. No wonder we were famished.  By the time we got to a reasonably priced restaurant, thank you Fancy Fork for your lunch specials, and finished our meal it was after 2pm.  Yikes. So grateful we managed okay and that I wasn't crabby from low blood sugar between all the walking and the lateness of the hour.  Extremely grateful we eventually thought of checking the time as we walked along with our stomachs growling. Then tonight I got busy and forgot to eat dinner. My husband reminded me after 8pm that perhaps my blood sugar would appreciate a wee boost.

Had a nice email tonight from our son's wife and we may have a phone chat with her sometime soon as well.  What a treat that our family keep in touch with us regularly across a few thousand kilometres, (2598 to be more exact...or 1615 miles if you prefer), of geographical distance. 

Looks like a touch of winter weather will be upon us from late tomorrow afternoon until sometime into the next day....rain, possible thundershowers, below zero temps over night and some snow. Hopefully we are on the light side of the snow forecast. We are grateful we didn't expand the length our trip to AB like we originally hoped to into the rest of this week. A great swath of AB is forecast to receive anywhere from 20 to 50cm of snow tomorrow and the next day. Whew...may have dodged a bullet there....hopefully. Grateful our appointment to have show tires put on the car is this coming Monday!

A Good News (We Think Anyway) Kind Of Day Thus Far!

This morning as I was brushing my teeth I began to wonder how much longer I should wait to hear from the surgeon's office about setting up a pre-op consultation.  I hate pestering the office manager about these things, but then I thought maybe I should just let her know we are back from our trip and she can now reach me on both phone numbers again once the schedule for November is being set up, but then I thought maybe I could wait a couple of more days, or even into next week just in case she called me as we had agreed upon originally....but THEN I was overwhelmed with a feeling that I should put my toothbrush down and make the call IMMEDIATELY!  It was such a strong feeling that I did just that.

Sputtering toothpaste foam all over the phone as I dialed in, I managed to clear my mouth of toothpaste sufficiently to speak coherently when the office manager answered.  I explained who I was and that I was back in Regina so could now be reached on our landline as well as my mobile.  The manager told me she was glad I was back and that she could actually book my pre-op consult right then and there.  A few seconds later I was off the phone and now I am very excited that I have an appointment the second week of November!  YIPPEE!!!!  AND since all his afternoon appointments at the usual space in the cast clinic at the hospital are booked up until the end of the year, she has made an appointment for me to see him for an early morning appointment in his own office instead. Glory be and Hallelujah and Yippee and Wahoo and all other expressions of happy excitement.

Thank you friends and prayer partners who have been praying with me about this since this past summer. It is is delightful news. I am so grateful.

In other HOPEFULLY, POSSIBLY, EXPECTING IT TO BE good news:  our son had his final huge interview for his card this morning. The woman who interviewed him was very kind and told him she wants to approve his card for certain, BUT the one glitch...of course there is always one of those in bureaucratic dealings isn't there.....is that he has a special government issued permission to have overstayed the end of his last visa and required a special letter from his immigration lawyer confirming the validity of his current status in their country.  That he has, but now of course the supervisor of the interviewer has to see this documentation and give final approval. Sigh....there is always SOMETHING ELSE isn't there? So my stressed out son and his wife are once again sweating it out, with my son trying to trust God for the outcome but struggling because he is human like the rest of us and can't help wondering what God is really going to do.  

He is most grateful for our little band of prayer warriors in THIS country and Mama Bear here is equally grateful for all the support our family has received over the years from all of you. Bless you "real good"! 

 

 

Calgary’s Horrible Crash!

Just after lunch hour today there was an horrendous crash not far to the northeast of our hotel. Eight vehicles were involved, including two city transit buses, one of which was propane fueled and it caught fire. Three people were killed, nineteen were injured and at least one of those nineteen may not survive. Details of what exactly happened are still sketchy, but apparently the disaster began when a bus collided with a small car and that began a series of crashes, the last one being into the rear of the parked bus that burst into flames. The main thoroughfare running past our hotel is an access road into where the accident occurred and I wondered why so many emergency vehicles, sirens blaring, were racing by early in the afternoon. It is a sad situation. I cannot imagine how many families of the dead and injured will be devastated by this crash. Sigh….😮‍💨 

In happier news, my husband arrived home late this afternoon, smiling and grinning, face reddened from the cold mountain air after the family hiking excursion at Heart Creek near Lac des Arcs. What a marvellous time they had. It was a particularly nice experience for the cousins who live in other parts of Canada where there are no mountains to climb. He is so happy. We celebrated with a lovely dinner at a cozy Italian restaurant. 

These days we find ourselves in bed reading by 9pm or even earlier, lights out before 10pm and we are generally sleeping well. Perhaps our Night Owl Days have finally come to an end? 

Family Funeral Reunions

The weather has been beautiful the past two days after Thanksgiving Monday’s rain, sleet and heavy snow flurries. The sun is shining. There is a stiff breeze, but not a very chilly one. Today when out walking a sweater is just barely needed. I love this weather in mid October! Long may it last. 

Today my husband was reunited with cousins and second cousins he has not seen for years as all were in attendance at their mother’s funeral this morning. It was a lovely service with professional singers and instrumentalists, some of whom are those same cousins. The songs they performed were in Auntie’s four known languages: German, English, Latin and Zulu. (A number of years living in Tanzania is responsible for that last one, German was her language of childhood, followed by English, with Latin being the predominant language of her beloved church until a few years ago.) She and her husband raised nine children in Whitehorse Yukon Territories in the 1960’s and ‘70’s. 

Tonight there is a family dinner at the home of one of the daughters so that will be a better venue for visiting than the noise carrying church hall where the post funeral lunch was held. Tomorrow there will be a family mountain hike, but I will forego the “pleasure” and take advantage of a day alone to read and blog and stay in my jammies all day. YES!

A funeral is a sad reason for getting together but it is lovely to have everyone together again, the last time being for a family wedding in our own city of residence! 

We have many weekend plans, hopefully a day on our own to do some tea leaf shopping at my husband’s favourite tea shop, another family meal and visiting with four sets of long term friends, none of whom we have seen in at least two years. Lots of happy days ahead! 

Canoeing In October On The Saskatchewan Prairies

While I spent today doing laundry and grocery shopping my husband and his friend decided, "Hang the lousy weather, we are going canoeing today!"  So, that is what they did.

It is the end of the canoeing season, past the end actually, with low temperatures arriving today and for the next several days, the wind was blowing from all directions as they paddled about on the narrow river south west of here, gloves and toques were a must, but they had the most wonderful few hours in the canoe looking at the fall colours.  I am happy for my husband who has struggled the past two summers and autumns to find someone willing to go for so much as a couple of hours of "lolly paddling" with him.  Today was a triumph, chilly weather and all:

 

My husband brought me an autumn "bouquet"! from the river bank. 

So "purty"!!

 

My Dear, Dear GP

Yesterday I received a call from my medical clinic that my GP wanted to see me about my x-ray results from x-rays of my hip that I had over two weeks ago.  Since the x-rays had already been sent to and received by my orthopaedic surgeon the day after they were taken, I wondered if my GP wanted to talk to me about the ever worsening arthritis in my sacroiliac joints. Did she see something worse in those x-rays than what I understood from reading the tech's interpretation of the x-ray in my online health account??  I wasn't worried particularly, but I was certainly curious.  hahahaha....Oooooh, my dear muddled GP.  Not surprisingly, at least to me, she wanted to see me to tell me that the worsening arthritis has reached the point where surgery on my other hip is likely necessary and she would forward the x-rays to my surgeon.  I giggled to myself...par for the course, this.  Before I could tell her that the surgeon already had them and I was awaiting a call for a pre-surgical consult, she suddenly said, "Oh....he already has them. They were forwarded automatically to him for some reason. Oh....the reason is that I had arranged for that to happen on your requisition form. Oh......".  She shook her head, looked very confused, asked me if there was anything else she could do for me, so I asked her what initial steps I should take to help slow down the arthritis at the base of my spine.....I knew already, but didn't want her to feel she had wasted her own appointment time on a very busy day in the clinic.  She told me the expected answers, I thanked her for calling me to come in, which made her look all the more confused, I said farewell and chuckled all the way home....6 blocks sans cane, I'll have you know.  hahahahaha SO CUTE IS THIS WOMAN!!!  She always figures things out eventually, but sometimes it takes time. hahaha.  Gotta love her.

In other health related news, it looks as though my husband's new statin is starting to give him headaches each morning, very similar to the ones he had with the last family of statins that he was finally taken off of a couple of months ago. Sigh....if that turns out to be the case after a bit more experimenting over the next two weeks, well, here we will go again!  Yikes!

This morning there was frost on the windshield of the car that required scraping, the temperature was +2C with a windchill of -7C. BRRRRRR...my first coat wearing expedition of the fall season...coat as in light parka! I got to the bank and picked up groceries before picking up my coffee buddy at 9:15am, we opted to go for coffee instead of sitting in the cold out in the park and we paid over seven dollars each for approximately 2/3 of a full cup of coffee in our "stay inside" mugs so next time I will ask for a take out cup, fielded several phone calls and enjoyed a quick drop in visit from a great friend immediately prior to lunch, did the doctor thang, got some chores done at home and took my husband out to DarBar for supper....HIS suggestion so I was certainly not going to refuse, then ended the day with two hours in a row of tv programmes.  It has been a good day.

Good To Be Together As A Family Once Again!

One of the most special things about staying in manhattan on our holiday was being able to walk the 22 blocks to our son's place.  We were able to spend more time with him and his wife than we dared to hope for and he certainly knocked himself out to visit us in our apartment as well.  It was incredible and we are very happy things went so well.

The proud papa!

  

On The Grounds At The Cloisters

If you're happy and you know it Mama, grin like an idjit!

An Unexpectedly Marvellous Day!

 I use the word "unexpected" because when we first woke up this morning the day seemed destined to be less than satisfactory for both of us.  The sky was losing an overnight fog, the clouds were grey, it was cold and my husband admitted to me that he simply wasn't up to walking to church and back in a chilly wind because he had not slept well during the night.  He had a foot cramp that wouldn't go away, he ran out of water from his bottle beside the bed, he had dreams that kept waking him....it as quite a tale of woe and I felt badly for him as I have been the victim of many a sleepless night, but it is rare for him.  He was as "white as a sheet", but insisted on going to the adult Sunday school class as it was going to be the introduction to a series of which he has a class to teach in a couple of weeks.  He felt so lousy he couldn't even eat breakfast so barely managed to force down a very small banana and half cup of tea to prevent him from passing out.  

As I suspected and hoped would happen, the class material and the socialization restored his good humour and he decided that we could stay for church after all.  I am glad we did because we were warmly welcomed back by quite a number of people who hadn't known we were on holidays, but wondered why we weren't there. That was a nice surprise.  

I assumed that as soon as the service ended we would be on our way home to get my husband some lunch, but shucky darn if he wasn't feeling extremely hungry and preferred lunch out at Fancy Fork instead, despite it being a longer wait for the meal to arrive in front of him.  He even looked about the congregation for someone to issue a spontaneous invitation to join us, although that didn't pan out this time.  Our meal was delicious and not expensive.  My husband had the 3 paper thin crepes stuffed with chicken and mushrooms and sliced onions, covered in a yummy pesto sauce and the plate had a large number of hash browns as well. He was delighted.  I ordered the Greek Bowl: a base of hash browns with fresh spinach leaves, sliced chicken, cubes of feta cheese and blackened red and green peppers and tomato slices.  It included a side dish of a delicious take on Hollandaise sauce. on  My meal was equally yummy.  We took our time, relaxed, chatted. For the first hour we were the only customers in the place and usually it is teeming with people. Don't know if a special event in the city took the customers away, but we certainly got specialized service as a result.  The server even managed to change the music line up on their Spotify system at our hopeful request. hahaha  We were able to change the twang, twang a deedilang country music to some more classical pieces.  Cool!!

We arrived home early in the afternoon, my husband was feeling much better but had a short nap while downloading Day 6 of the current Sumo Basho from NHK Broadcasting Network.  After we watched that I headed upstairs to start part 2 of my huge pile of ironing.  Half way through my husband called to me that company had arrived.

It was our former next door neighbour who had come to pick up her post-move mail...my beloved Afaf!!!  She and her family are very, very happy to be living in their new digs...twice the size of the place they were crammed into next door to us and they are saving nine hundred dollars a month in rent. The federal portion of their refugee status has now ended and they are living on provincial social services until Salim is able to find work. The kids love their new school and the two youngest are able to walk as the school is so close to their residence.  The oldest boy entered high school this year and is getting at least 3 hours a day of English instruction, as are his two younger siblings.  Afaf's English classes are paying off.  She has improved leaps and bounds since the spring. The great news is that after searching for months for a decent car, a friend from Edmonton found them exactly what they are looking for and delivered it to them a few days ago. Salim passed his driver's test and once the car is insured on Monday afternoon he will bring it by to show us.  Getting the license and now the car has kick started Salim mentally after a wretched year of fighting with the emotional trauma of having to flee for their lives a year ago from Lebanon.  He not only passed his driver's test, he is now signed up for English lessons starting in one week's time at the same school his wife has been attending.  We are thrilled for them and thrilled that they want to keep in touch at least somewhat.  

While we were visiting with Afaf, there was another knock at the door. It was the mother of "our little trouble maker", come to tell us that they too are moving out today....the last of our Syrian connections here in the complex.  After eleven years in Canada spent scrimping and saving, they have been able to purchase their first Canadian home in another part of the city, a brand new house in a brand new housing development.  How happy we are for them, but we are going to miss their boys and their constant invitations to play football and soccer. hahaha  (You haven't lived until you have seen moi attempting to keep up with those kids and their sports! hahaha BUT they continue to ask both of us to play with them, so what the heck, right? If nothing else I am able to give all of them a good case of the giggles with my fumbling attempts!)

I also finished my ironing after the break for visiting.

So, it has been a wonderful day after all.  Good things.

I also heard from our daughter in law as she was on her way to the Kol Nidrei service at Synagogue for Yom Kippur.  That was a special treat. We had an email from her aunt today as well and an email from our son to let us know he has an interview about his next set of green card requirements in a few weeks' time, so we are surely praying hard about that.  He is enjoying his new painting studio and is keeping busy at work as well.

What a marvellous day it has been after a rocky start.  

Tomorrow morning my walking partner and I are going to actually go for a real walk, for the first time in about a year and a half or so and I am so looking forward to that.  Rain, rain, stay away!!! Come again another day.  For today the weather has warmed up nicely and the threat of possible rain has ended.  We DID get a bit of a walk in as we walked a few blocks to the restaurant and back....a total of 10 blocks without my cane!  YAY!!! A new first....thank you NYC for all the enforced walking.

Good thing tomorrow is going to be great as well because the next morning is our next dental cleaning and annual check up. Blecch!!  However, I have a haircut that afternoon to look forward to.  I have to somehow work a thorough housecleaning into our schedule because we are having another couple over for dinner the following evening...and then it will be time to see my coffee buddy again. This week is going to fly by, all going to plan. Here's hoping!

Trying To Get Ready To Go Home

 I have reached the point where I am content to spend our last few days here doing very little: some quiet hours in the apartment sorting out our personal packing, collecting for return the various kitchen utensils and foodstuffs the kids lent us to make our kitchen more useable, spending time trying to finish a book of crossword puzzles so I don’t feel obligated to take it home with me, having a few more discussions about our future, checking out a couple of more restaurants at lunchtime, trying to decide what bits of elderly wisdom to leave with the kids before we say goodbye on Sunday, watching our phone and email notifications closely in case the airline makes changes to our flights….little drips and drabs of “things” that should be done this weekend.  

Our son is already planning events for our next visit and he hopes that will be early next spring or later next September when so many off Broadway  theatres are not on summer hiatus. He wants to take us to the Guggenheim and try to get another weekend upstate to enjoy that beautiful area more. He wants to find us a less expensive accommodation with a more well equipped kitchen than this one so we can stay for another month, hahaha. 😂 Our son has lots of plans for us, so I really hope there is a way these plans can come about as I look at another likely hip surgery, a hopeful move out of our current accommodation and who knows what else over the next few months. Well, whatever happens in reality, it is good to have dreams to inspire us to keep moving forward.

Impressions Of The Day

After the worst sleep last night I have had in months I no more felt like going out this morning than I did in jumping off the Empire State Building six blocks away from us. However I forced myself to eat breakfast and get ready for the day. I staggered along the three blocks to Grand Central Station with my husband, collapsed on a slippery plastic seat on the 6 train a couple of minutes later and from there the day was a happy blur of sights and sounds, but tonight I have no stamina left to record the events chronologically in much detail. At Union Station deep below Times Square we transferred to Q train and began the long journey deep into the borough of Brooklyn: flashing past underground stations, flying over Manhattan Bridge, water and boats and the Statue of Liberty glinting in the morning sunshine, descending back underground for half an hour before the train disgorged us onto a narrow pedestrian walkway, mostly deserted of other passengers, with a long walk to the Exit….it reminded us of the deserted, terrifyingly narrow pedestrian train platforms in rural Japan. I was still staggering about trying to clear my fuzzy, exhausted brain but I noticed right away the buildings being only three or four storeys high, the sidewalks far less crowded than in Manhattan, a general welcoming grubbiness and a few trees scattered here and there. We walked for several blocks into this neighbourhood so deep into Brooklyn we were close to Coney Island, and located the reason for this long trip on public transportation: Eichlers! It is a retail store for all things Jewish, a much larger, brighter, more well stocked store than the little hole in the wall shops tucked away on the side streets in Williamsburg where we have done our Jewish accoutrements shopping in the past. The bright lights hurt my eyes as I gazed at rows and rows of books written in Hebrew, music recordings and a huge section dedicated to teaching young children the faith. While I was having visual overload my husband was purchasing a new  prayer shawl and it is some beautiful. He has been looking for a way to revitalize his Daily Office, (Anglican clergy daily prayers) and if this gorgeous, full body enveloping tallit doesn’t accomplish that I don’t know what will! 

By the time he led me out of the bright lights of Eichlers I was about to lose consciousness, but he got me onto a transit bus a block away. We travelled almost to the Coney Island connector bus before getting off this bus, crossing the street and boarding another of the plushy, more expensive express buses to take us miles and miles across the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway back to Manhattan. As we flew along the expressway I admit I dozed off for a few minutes and when I came to I was gazing across the water at the Statue of Liberty for the umpteenth time this week. I flopped my tired self off that bus back beside the Bowling Green subway station, beside the Jewish Holocaust Museum, expecting to hop on the subway to immediately go home and go back to bed, but somehow found myself being propelled several blocks farther south along the sidewalk back to the waterfront, past the Staten Island Ferry terminal with its plethora of security guards with sniffer dogs, around to the eastern boardwalk to Pier 11 where my husband gleefully produced two tickets to ride the ferry all around that arm of the East River, eventually docking back at the terminal only a few blocks from home. The trip is a blur of choppy waves, seemingly interminable stops, being forced to sit down topside by a lovely couple from Chicago who were determined I would be better off sitting in a hard chair facing the opposite direction to where we were heading the whole trip, instead of standing comfortably at the rail enjoying the view and keeping my tummy from jumping, who talked incessantly even though all I could hear through the gale force wind was, “Mwaamp, mwaamp, mwaamp” as I tried to keep my heaving, seasick tummy in check. My husband, still standing happily at the rail taking phone photos of the Manhattan, Williamsburg and Green Point skylines, had no idea even at this point, four hours after leaving  home, that I had not overcome my morning stupor was grinning and hollering, “Surprise honey! A ferry ride! Isn’t this great?” Hahaha. He was having the happiest morning ever and who was I to disillusion him? After 45 minutes out on the choppy water we finally docked at home. Getting off the boat and out of the wind….but thank God we’d been sitting outside on the top deck instead of inside on the lower deck where I would have been very ill indeed….I started feeling a bit better; enough better that when my husband took us for lunch at Townhouse Diner I was able to ingest a sandwich and keep it down. No wonder I had been dizzy and ill on the ferry: besides being sleepless most of the previous night, it was at that point six full hours since I had eaten breakfast! No wonder I was so woozy! Thankfully the sandwich helped me feel considerably better. I will never confess to my happy husband, thrilled by both his new tallit and his ferry ride surprise for me, just how wretched and miserable I was feeling from the moment we left home today. He is such a sweetheart and wasn’t able to return upstate to see the Motorcycle Museum or take a trip over to Roosevelt Island, which he was very accepting of, despite how badly he wished to do both things. As far as he is concerned I had as wonderful a day today as he did and once we finally arrived home and had a nice visit with our son I was feeling a lot better. As groggy and fuzzy as my head was today, I managed just fine and I love my husband's attempts to make me extra happy. 😊 Bless him! 

You Would Think A Month Would Be Long Enough, Wouldn’t You?

We certainly assumed that after over four weeks here our son would be happy, relieved even, to see the back of us but that is not the case, so this afternoon he is ditching some other responsibilities to come for a visit as we leave in four days. He is feeling the geographical distance between us this visit and so are we. Fortunately we still have other plans in place to enjoy time with both he and his wife over the weekend. 

This morning will be a time to get up and going to Grand Central by 9am to catch the train to Brooklyn…a one hour trip under the East River, so my husband can get to the Judeica supply store for a new prayer shawl. The one he has presently is one he ordered from Israel years ago, that turned out to not be what he really wanted and is a little the worse for wear at this point. Then we will race back again to the subway so we can be here to have afternoon tea with our son. 

We cooked the last of our fresh meat and other “cookables” last night for dinner and will spend the rest of our lunch hours and a couple of dinner hours returning to favourite restaurants because we will likely never get to go to them again. 

Tomorrow morning we will train out to the Museum of the American Indian and then take the ferry back here in time to get ready for the family Rosh Hashanah meal. The following day the kids are busy so we will probably spend the day getting started packing up and getting our emotions prepared for saying goodbye after Sunday’s pancake breakfast my husband will prepare for us all at the kids’ apartment. 

Then Monday morning we need to be checking out and getting into a Yellow Cab by 5am to get to the airport for the trip back. Again the hassle of intense time limits to get through security and Customs in time to make our connecting flight in Toronto. I am praying and trusting God to work out those details once again in whatever way he sees fit. 

Mommy….it’s oooooooover…..big, heavy, emotional sigh 😮‍💨.

A Day Of Domesticity For Me

After another excellent church service this morning at Church Of The Incarnation, which our son joined us for, the men took off for the ferry over to Green Point where they enjoyed a Polish lunch, a Japanese tea tasting, watching part of a community baseball game and shopping at a hardware store for our son’s new Swiss Army knife, I headed over to Tipsy Shanghai for what will be my final feed of orange beef and fried green beans. Yum! 

I sauntered home afterward and did a huge load of clothes washing and ironing, finally got last night’s tea and snack dishes washed along with the breakfast dishes, watched our church service from home online, ate a simple supper here at home and walked to the grocery store for a batch of my favourite yogurt that should last me until we leave next week. It was a quiet and relaxed day for me with some walking but no deadlines to meet once church was over. After being on my feet so much last evening it was nice to have the energy to go up and down to the basement laundry room here, and I was on my own time schedule, accountable to no one. I arrived home tonight from the grocery store only steps ahead of my husband and we have had a relaxing evening chatting and watching a tv show together.

Tomorrow….Lord willing…..we meet our daughter-in-law’s aunt way up north west of here at the far end of Manhattan Island. The Cloisters is filled with all things medieval and is situated in lovely Fort Tryon Park. We are taking a long scenic bus ride, no transfers,  rather than fiddling about with two subway transfers and risking getting ourselves lost. Our plan is to arrive an hour before meeting up with Auntie and possibly our son, so we can enjoy the park for a while first. Hoping it works out ok. I’ll let you know……

A Magical Evening For Me!

I had a marvellous time with my son last evening: what I think of as the perfect New York City experience! 

It began earlier in the day when I was busy reading and not checking my email. For some reason my son sent an email rather than a text about reserving a table for a 5pm dinner at a lovely Vietnamese restaurant only a few blocks from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and I didn’t find it in time to still make a reservation before they were booked up. No problem, my son told me, he would take me to the Met for dinner: to the balcony above the main foyer where we would wait to be seated at tables with white linen cloths and served by uniformed wait staff from the limited but delicious menu, light classical music playing in the background by live musicians.  It would save us a fair amount of extra walking before even reaching the museum. 

Weeeeeeellll, we were in for a bit of a shock. Turns out things have changed, for the summer at least if not permanently.  The lovely scenario he described to me had been reduced in number of tables to less than half, wobbly plastic patio cafe tables with uncomfortable plastic chairs and instead of table service there was a cafeteria style lineup for a choice of a couple of salad options, bedraggled looking sushi packs and a few choices of baked goods. My son was appalled and desperately disappointed, but a quick search on his phone revealed only two other eating spaces within the museum and both no better than the one we were glaring at as we gawked around trying to find an open table in the over crowded space. In the end we had to stay if we wanted to eat dinner. My chicken Santa Fe salad was actually quite tasty and I am now a pro at eating large pieces of endive with chop sticks! Bonus! My son ate his not quite as delicious sushi and tried not to be so upset about the sad start to our evening together. 

BUT the evening took a huge upswing from there when we began our tour of the Japanese pottery exhibition. It was AMAZING! We learned that the earliest Japanese potters were already embracing the acceptance, love and joy in the imperfections of the finished products. (Wabi-sabi), as well as the slightly more modern technique of repairing broken pottery with gold gilt (kintsugi) that actually draws more attention to the repaired seams and looks incredibly beautiful. Interspersed with the Japanese ceramics were occasional modern day pieces and at one point in the ten rooms devoted to the exhibit we turned a corner and came across a spectacular eternity fountain crafted by the famous Japanese American Isamo Noguchi, a noted sculptor, landscape and design artist. My son spent a small fortune a few years ago on one of his large, rice paper covered hanging lamps. It is gorgeous. The variety of pot and plate styles, sake and tea cups etc. in the collection is extensive. Some of the pottery from the Edo Era (1603-1868, under the rule of the sho-guns, also known as the 250 years of peace) and Meiji Restoration (beginning 1868, the end of military rule by the shogunate) were in pristine condition. We spent over an hour just in that exhibition. There were also several ancient kimonos worn by Japanese monks hundreds of years ago. The colours have retained their vibrancy. My son told me that the natural fabrics and dyes still being used in those days keeps both fabric and colours well preserved if the garment is treated well. He also told me it is easier sometimes to find more such well preserved garments from ancient eras than it is to find and collect clothing made from the 1950’s through to around the mid 1970’s because of the experiments being done at that time: fabrics of newly invented man made fibres where experimental chemical components were used so the fibres and dyes were often eaten and destroyed in a matter of a few years by those very chemicals. Who knew!? Well, likely most people other than myself I am guessing, hahaha. 

On our way to see some of the Old Masters, where we mostly looked at a handful of my son’s particular favourite religious works by Boots, Caravaggio and Raphael among others, always a huge treat, one of my favourites being Supper At Emmaus by Caravaggio, we detoured through the musical instruments exhibit. Oh wow! Instruments through the centuries from around the world! My son took photos of clavichords and ornately decorated keyboards from the Edwardian Era, giant pre-tubas, all manner of incredible music making instruments the likes of which I have never seen before and could never imagine. He will send the photos to me when we get home for my photo post that I don’t have the tech along with me to do as I go along posting from day to day. 

After nearlythree consecutive hours on our feet we decided to call it a night. Our eyes and brains were maxed out! Oh, by the way, the best time to go to the Met and beat the huge crowds is to go on Friday and Saturday evenings after 5pm, when most of the tourists are leaving to get their dinners. After my first trip to the Met in  2018 I swore I would never return, it was that crowded. This visit was a wonderful treat. By the time we were done we needed to sit down and rest, so we went outside through the front doors and perched ourselves on the granite bench facing the street. By this time it was dark, the fountain was arcing and spraying plumes of cooling water into the warm night air, we could see twinkling city lights all around us and there was a sax musician playing mellow tunes on the sidewalk below us. It was a most magical night for me, the kind of night where I wanted to lift my arms skyward, spread them wide and shout, “THIS is New York City!!” 

We sat for about twenty minutes, then got a text from my son’s wife letting us know she and my husband had just completed their dinner at a nice Indian restaurant in Kips Bay, so we all decided to wend our way back to our apartment for tea and Japanese snacks. It took my son and I awhile to walk back to our subway entrance, and then walk several blocks back to our place from Grand Central Station, but my husband and daughter-in-law stopped at several shops along their walking route home, so we arrived within a few minutes of each other. The kids stayed with us for a good long visit before packing it in for the night. What a special evening!

More “Touristing” Today!

What a lovely day we are having! This morning we walked a few blocks west to Bryant Park and sat for half an hour at a little cafe table under the trees while we waited for our son to arrive for a tour of the NYC Public Library museum collection right beside the park on 5th Avenue. I have never seen as much marble in one place as I saw in this building: floors, walls, ceilings and so beautifully carved with pillars and inlays, and a long series of low rise marble steps up to the second floor. The old wooden ceiling in the main exhibition hall is also beautifully carved. Lovely!

Wow! What an eclectic display of interesting “stuff”! Large glass cases display everything from a hand written copy of the U.S. Constitution to Agnes de Mille’s dancing shoes to a gorgeous and giant book of bird illustrations by Audubon to Charles Dickens’s writing desk to the original Winnie the Pooh doll that inspired the writings of A.A.Milne to the elongated conducting batons used by Arturo Toscanini to historical relics from the American Revolution to capes and other artifacts from both the original and modern day abolitionists The Wide Awakes to what I think is the most important exhibition of all in these modern times: a history of American abolitionist and protest movements from the 1800’s to the present day. So many movements, so little progress in too many ways. There is even a banner designed by Christopher Gadsden from the anti-colonial movement of 1775. It features a timber rattlesnake on a yellow background and on it is printed, “don’t step on me”. In other words if Britain was going to be heavy handed with their colonies the colonists would fight back. Apparently it is now used by modern movements to promote personal liberties such as gun rights. There were posters and lapel pins from movements I remember best: the Black Panthers, the Equal Rights Amendment and AIDS Funding. Considering what is currently going on in North America I personally consider this smaller side room exhibit to be as important as the original Constitution documents. My son set up the lighting for most of the exhibits so I learned a tremendous amount about lumens, light bulbs and fixtures, etc. and it was more fascinating than I thought it would be! 

After our enlightening two hours there it was time for lunch so we walked back closer to our place to the Sofra Grill. We hadn’t yet had any Mediterranean style food and this place had good reviews. The reviews are correct. We started with an order of baba ganoush with yummy poppy seed bread for dipping,  we ate fabulous lamb “pizzas”, chicken gyro wraps stuffed with meat, sautéed onions, sliced pickles, arugula and tomatoes and cucumber slices, beef gyro, rice and pickled beet salad. What a fantastic meal for a most reasonable price of under one hundred dollars for the three of us, taxes and hefty tip included. After lunch our son came back to our place for a cup of tea and a long visit. He left eventually to go home for his bike and carry basket because today is his weekly pick up of freshly picked farm vegetables from Farmer Ted. 

My husband is napping at the moment but once he wakes up we will go to the grocery in the next block for some more of our favourite spritzers. We purchased a 6 pack yesterday and there is one left! Hahaha Gotta get this brand while we can because it is not available in Canada. Time for a quiet evening at home and a very light, late dinner.

Moving The Son!

 My husband had a good day yesterday helping our son get all his art supplies, shelving, half finished paintings and what have you from his old studio to his new larger one.  Two trips in a cube van completed the move.  At the new studio building there is a freight elevator and a huge cart for loading things from van to elevator, so that was a mercy.  Finally my son will have a studio large enough to be able to work on several paintings at a time, which will speed up production considerably.  YES!  It was a very humid day to be arranging items from inside a cube van, Tetrus style, so my husband was dehydrated and exhausted when he arrived home, but he was also very proud of bringing me home a surprise:  our son!  Our son was feeling well enough after the move, thanks to Sudafed I suspect, to come over for a good long visit, share some bacon and tomato sandwiches with us and have a good download about our visit with his wife's family over the weekend.  What an unexpected joy for me after spending my day doing laundry and ironing and banking and other necessary but not particularly exciting chores. I am grateful that I was able to contact our bank back in Canada to make a credit card payment for me on our US card and that the whole process took about five minutes or less to successfully complete.  I have the receipt....it is done....perhaps I will be more successful with this particular bank if I can do ALL my dealings with them from OUTSIDE of Canada?  hahaha

Our son wants to spend time alone with each of us, so he and his father are planning a day of travelling to various tea shops and bookstores.  My time with him will be spent during an evening this weekend at the Metropolitan Museum and having dinner together. He is going to come to our place and escort me there and back, which is so nice of him. He recognizes my incredible talent for becoming lost easily and frequently and it is a long way to the Met from where we are staying. Bless him!  I need to get online and decide which of the many display rooms at the Met I want to see.  My husband is museum'd out, so is happy to skip the Met this visit.  I cannot handle spending hours at a time in book stores and tea shops, so our son has chosen wisely what special thing to do with each of us. He knows us well, hahaha. 

Not sure what today will bring;  more sun and less rain than yesterday apparently, so maybe we can get out somewhere interesting by this afternoon. The humidity is high and that is generating thunderstorms in the late afternoons and evenings, but so far no localized flooding around here.  

I’ll Have A Plate Of Salt With A Side Of Burger 🍔 and Fries 🍟 Please!

 Around dinner time our son texted that he had completed his day of working from home due to his cold and was crawling directly into bed in order to conserve his flagging energy for moving his studio tomorrow since he has no choice but to have everything out of his old studio by noon. Thank the dear Lord my husband will be there to help him! Now I am praying 🙏🏻that my husband 👴🏻 will not catch our son’s cold! 🤧

We both felt kind of mogey this afternoon, (interpret mogey [hard G] in light of whatever word you use when you are feeling a tad tired, 🥱 somewhat unmotivated, and bordering on crabby 😠 because you are tired of sitting around reading but don’t have any idea what else you want to do), but eventually we decided to take a wander a few blocks east of our place to walk for a bit on the path beside the East River and try to locate the ferry terminal in case we want to take a short cruise up and down one of these fine days. It was lovely looking out across the river into Brooklyn and watching the NYC ferry delivering its rush hour passengers to various stopping places. If we want to sometime we could take the 8 minute ferry ride to Stuyvesant Cove terminal a few blocks east of our son’s apartment complex. We will try to accomplish that apart from the rush hour crowds. 

We were ravenous by this time so we stopped at a river side restaurant called Hole In The Wall. Contrary to the image that name conjures up for me, the interior was light and bright with a high ceiling that absorbs the music 🎶 playing over the sound system. There was a good mix of ages and styles among the customers and I FINALLY had a chance to see the elegant new fashions worn by the young up and coming professional crowd. They are what I think of when I think of New York fashion. Thus far most of the people we have seen don’t dress that much differently than ourselves to go out shopping 🛒 or dog walking or taking the kids to the park during the day…you know, not poorly dressed, but kind of schleppy. It was fun watching the older 20 somethings in their fancier dresses and heels, suits and ties, perfect makeup and hair. They remind me of myself and my colleagues from a few centuries ago when I had a career and money enough to look good all the time. I hope all these young people are enjoying and appreciating their good fortune. 

The menu at the restaurant consisted of a couple of pastas, two salads, four burger choices, a handful of appetizers and about six pages of drink choices, haha. My simple smash burger had more flavour in the beef than any burger I have had here to date and that is because it was also the saltiest burger I have had to date! Hahaha There were four rounds of sweet pickles on the burger…more salt. There were slightly sautéed and extra salty onion slices on the burger. The fries were perfectly cooked and completely covered in sea salt. Salt abounded in both our meals. Salt, salt, salt! The place is an Ode To Salt! Oh yes, my husband’s burger had two strips of SALTY bacon! (and the cook had heated them to crispy blackness in a microwave no less! hahaha 😂) 

Salt 🧂 🧂 🧂 Salt! And again I say SALT! 🧂 

We are currently back in our suite after a beautiful long walk home past the gorgeous gold domed St. Vartan Armenian Apostolic Cathedral and its beautiful gardens across the street from the building, pickle ball courts and a soccer field…trees! 🌳 Flowers! 💐 It was a lovely walk👩‍🦯 home. 

It was really fun to walk along the river path and see the ferries ⛴️ operating. A big tugboat passed by at one point pushing a huge rusting old scow. We have been only vaguely conscious of our proximity to the river until this afternoon. Must remedy that in the coming days! 

I apologize for these ever changing font sizes. Trying to correct them after the fact is too complicated and sometimes it doesn’t even happen until I press Publish…so please bear with me, thank you.  If it is bothering you go make yourself a margarita and SALT the rim! Hahaha….