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….

A Second Career As A Cabbie?

 I have been pondering our driving trip to the upstate cabin, but focusing on the last part of the drive home: from Yonkers, north of the Bronx,  through the city to our suite in midtown Manhattan at sunset. As fascinated as I was by some of the buildings we passed, I was even more fascinated by my son’s driving skills in the heavy traffic. Although he doesn’t have to drive very often these days he has developed the aggression needed to keep moving through the many traffic jams and merge lanes. This entire trip I feel like there has been time to get to know our son all over again. The country boy is all NYC now and it suits him well. 

We have enjoyed visiting the various museums and libraries where he has been responsible for lighting feature exhibitions and marvelling at what is involved in highlighting each work of art in each display. The volume of required electricians and lift equipment to get to the high ceilings for the purpose of installing myriad lights is staggering. Every light, from large spotlights to the teensiest of pot lights must be angled “just so” to keep shadows from blocking each and every piece. Things I have never thought about before and taken for granted at museums and galleries….who knew? 

I have finally had the opportunity to learn more of the history of our daughter-in-law’s family history. Before, during and after the Second World War the entire family had been driven out of half the countries of Europe….Russia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary….and fled to Israel, Kazakhstan, Canada….incredibly sad, terrifying, ultimately stories of overcoming and surviving incredible odds. It is a privilege to know more of their history and suffering. 

This trip has been a learning experience for me, an amazing one thus far and since we are here for two more weeks there is a lot of learning left to do.

The Benefits Of Getting Lost!

 We managed to find our way yesterday around the bus and subway systems to meet Aunty J for a tasty lunch at L’Ami Pierre….tasty Caesar salad and baguette chicken and brie sandwiches. We arrived a few minutes before she did, so sat on a bench outside people watching. The noon hour brought out hordes of younger up and coming business men dressed nearly identically in shirts of white or pale blue and dark navy suit pants and jackets, brown shoes. I guess individuality in suit and shirt colour is not encouraged here. It was most interesting watching this blue suited army. The women tended more toward blacks and greys, their feet shod in dark coloured flats with at least some variety of styles.

After lunch we headed to the Museum of Modern Art where we enjoyed looking at the small exhibition of older Diego Rivera sketches and coloured drawings and paintings. Many of his works paid tribute of course to Frida Kahlo, fellow artist and romantic partner. I had forgotten that she died at the age of 47. The humour Rivera injected into his small drawings about man vs the machine was amusing while still making his point. One large painting paid tribute to those who overthrew dictator Diaz during the 1910 Mexican revolution. Apparently it lasted until 1917 and it took another three years for the country to stabilize. After the Rivera exhibition we stopped at an expansive exhibition of works by Marcel DuChamps. I had seen most of his newer paintings and modern sculptures such as his “Fountain” urinal collection, but what I had not seen before were his earlier published cartoons. They are hilarious! After we saw these two exhibits we sat for an hour outside in the lovely sculpture garden sipping proper iced tea (cold tea with ice cubes, no sugar) and chatting. It was a lovely afternoon.

At 4:30pm as we were leaving the MoMA my husband told me we were within walking distance of Barnes and Noble in case I wanted to pick up a couple of books to take to the cabin this weekend. It would save us having to get up early this morning to race off to the Strand bookshop. Seemed like a good idea at the time, so we confidently headed to 5th Avenue. 

Here we made our first mistake. My husband, the intrepid mountaineer path finder was looking at the street map on his phone and for some reason became directionally challenged. Instead of walking toward the Barnes and Noble outlet we were ten blocks away from starting point before he realized we were walking in the opposite direction! Groan…..we were going to have to retrace the same ten blocks, then start our hike to Barnes and Noble all over again. Nooooo….after two hours of walking, sauntering and standing at MoMA my hips were already tired. Oh well….

There were some lovely surprises though due to our misdirection. We came upon St. Thomas Church which my husband has been hoping to view since his first trip to NYC in 2018, we passed by the famous Plaza Hotel, fronted by gorgeous Pulitzer Fountain, the huge bronzed statue of General Sherman, and lo and behold, a street-side pop up from Strand Bookshop! Oh wow, how cool! Right there in plain sight was the Emily Wilson translation of the Odyssey that J recommended only an hour earlier. I snapped it up! Finding the Strand street side meant we wouldn’t have to go to Barnes and Noble, so could retrace the ten block error and head to the subway station to catch the train that would take us home.

Along that part of the route I realized how exhausted I was getting, but walking along beside the south end of Central Park was a gorgeous visual distraction. Until……hey, wait a minute…to get to the subway we should have turned away from the park at the exact point of having retraced our ten block mistake! Wha? My sheepish husband rechecked the route on his map and realized he had made the same mistake in orientating us to the route on the map. This time we were “only” six blocks out of harmony, but oooh my, such long blocks! Another retracing of our steps to our original starting point, we covered the four block walk to the subway, finally arriving to catch an immediate train as I was about to collapse from exhaustion. (Please note, I was also very ill with the respiratory reaction to sleeping with the AC on overnight three nights in a row.) I must have looked pretty ill by then because two women on the rush hour jammed train cleared seats for me to sit down. Fortunately when we disembarked we were only three blocks from home. I staggered into our suite, dropping my cane into the middle of the living room floor and collapsed on the sofa. By this time it was over six hours since I had eaten and after so much exercise my blood sugar was too low. My sweetly penitent husband, feeling humiliated by his route mistakes, made me a sandwich, forfeited his last slice of Japanese green tea cake roll to me and pampered me like crazy. The poor guy was so upset, I felt badly for him. There were so many nice surprises by us taking incorrect routes that there was no reason to be upset.

We were both in bed with the lights out by 8:45pm and we didn’t get up and going until 7:30 this morning. It is about 10:30 am now and I have made a trip to the nearest pharmacy a couple of blocks away for a small jar of my favourite respiratory healer: Vick’s VapoRub, at my husband’s insistence. Now I am at home resting while he makes a long loop to a few organic markets and  a computer store for a new mouse. He forgot to bring his and that is why we had so much trouble completing our government forms. Using the little roll pad on the laptop was frustrating and slow. It is nice to now be familiar enough with our neighbourhood to each be able to get out on our own. 

This morning our son is picking up the car from an in-law that we are borrowing for our trip to the cabin tomorrow. Once he finds a place to park it near his home he will come here for lunch and an afternoon visit. We may go to the Morgan, or I will send the guys on their own. I want to be as healed as possible before we go upstate tomorrow.

Yesterday was the hottest day yet at only +31C and today is a lovely +27C, with rain possible tonight and tomorrow. Love this weather. It is cooler than usual for August in NYC, but perfect for us.

Done With Forms….Hallelujah!

 Yesterday afternoon we struggled for the last time with filling out our required Customs and Immigration forms for online submission. They have been sent at last and a confirmation/registration number received. By the time we were done my husband had a stomach ache, but we did it! My husband did all of the research to complete his own form and then we tackled mine. Finally we are done, done, done and with my mobile phone issues now solved as well….again thanks to my husband’s ability to go online and research solutions, I no longer have Google Play chirping at me all night with unwanted messages! I woke up this morning and switched off the Do Not Disturb to find only one message waiting. Yippee! Clear All Notifications is a marvellous step to be able to take! 

Our son surprised us with an unexpected drop in visit after work last night. We walked across the street for Chinese food. It was quite decent….not spectacular but decent, tasty and piping hot. We spent a happy evening together. Our son is very excited that for a whole month we are neighbours. How lovely! We are excited as well. Although our vacation has only begun I am already realizing how difficult it will be to return home when it is over.

Another Loss For Our Family

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

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

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

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

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

I Wish I Could Share A Photo Of This!

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

A Lovely Evening!

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

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

Sometimes A Little Complaining Goes A Long Way....Sad That Complaining Is Occasionally Necessary Isn't It?

 My husband just received a phone call from the bank where we have had SO much grief over the past few years.  It was to set up an appointment for him next week.  Seems that since I sent in a poor review to a questionnaire that bank sent out a few weeks ago asking how we find their service to be for us, some things have changed!  YAY!  My review was not scathing, but it was negative enough to warrant an in person chat with me a couple of days after it was received.  I explained in more detail what the issues have been and oh my goodness.....all of a sudden we have a new financial advisor there, after not hearing from the one we thought we had for nearly three years, we are getting calls about things we should have been contacted about many times over the past 3 years and heard absolutely zero about. Suddenly the new FA wants to review what we have left in that bank that has not been moved to another institution, wants to give us information we have been needing for more than four years that due to us not having it messed me up badly with the CRA last year that it took hours of phone calls and repayments of sales tax rebates I had received that year to fix the mess.

This is all good news....we hope. We shall see how things go at that appointment and in the future. 

In other news it has been another lovely warm day today.  There was a return of the rain and thunder last night overnight after a couple of gloriously dry days, but by morning the puddles were nearly dry already.  Unfortunately the thunder woke me up at 3am, but since the rain was tap, tap, tapping on the eaves and I love that sound, I got up and threw the bedroom window wide open so I could enjoy it. What's a bit of water on the windowsill after all, right?  I fell asleep again at about 5:30am and slept deeply for another two hours.  Then it was up for breakfast and a visit with my coffee buddy.

My coffee buddy and I have decided we are tired of paying big bucks for small cups of tea and coffee at the coffee bar nearest her place, so today we took a short drive around her new neighbourhood. Only two blocks away we discovered a fairly large park with not only playground equipment but several iron benches and a couple of wooden picnic tables to sit at. We sat outside at one of the tables in the glorious sunshine, chattering away like two old magpies and it was so much fun being out of the crowded coffee bar, away from all building construction noise and enjoying a couple of daycare groups who came to utilize the playground equipment.  Fortunately for us, despite the hot sunshine after more rain, we encountered only a couple of mosquitoes and one tiny brown spider that went racing across the brim of my friend's sunhat. We came away feeling energized, less broke, haha, and very pleased to have a new place to enjoy our weekly visits during the summer and autumn months. What a blessing to have only a couple of blocks to go for our time together. Next time I will try to find a visitor parking spot open at her apartment and we can walk to the park.  

This afternoon we ran errands, my husband and I.  He is rotating back onto a diet mostly of cooked vegetables, protein and unleavened bread to keep his CFS food sensitivities in check.  We now have a crisper filled with cabbages and purple turnips, radishes for his beloved potato salad, carrots and cauliflowers and a freezer full of frozen peas and Brussels Sprouts. I was able to purchase quite a few packages of free range ground turkey and chicken and some extra lean ground beef that is actually extra lean over at SaveOn Foods....the difference in the fat and transfat contents in those poultry packs and the ones with meat from farm fed/ big production farm birds is phenomenal. SO MUCH lower in the free range poultry.  

The horrific swollen glands (from the CFS) in the back of my husband's head are much better today and far less painful after being completely debilitating yesterday so he decided to take advantage of feeling considerably better to pick up his food items.  Tomorrow he has no out of the house commitments so he can rest again AND have a good long talk with our son and his wife when they call to confirm the plans for the spiritual portion of their wedding reception programme.  All I have to do tomorrow is return to the doctor for my osteoporosis meds injection and then I am done with all things medical for this week, yay!  I spent so much time in the waiting room earlier on that I think I could draw a diagram of very paint chip and black mark on the walls in there! hahaha  

We caved in and watched the chuckwagon races from the Calgary Stampede grounds all this week and even picked up some of the bull riding, kids' teams working to get one of their members on the backs of wild ponies, the womens' barrel races and free roping.....it has been a fun way to spend our evenings at home when my husband has been feeling lousy.  I am adjusting to having only 3 wagons per chuckwagon race but oh my....we very much miss the commentary from Tommy Glass who passed away, somewhat unexpectedly I believe, the week prior to the Stampede.  I can't imagine his son having to perform in those races the very next week, but he is doing his dad proud with his times and skills.  I know darned well I will also cave and watch the entire rodeo the afternoon of the last day to see the winners pick up their cheques and their gorgeous bronze castings of bucking broncs, bulls, cowboys and other ranching related scenes.  I am not really a big rural ranch scene fan, (although I have a great admiration for the hard work cowboys and ranchers have to do...very, very hard, dirty, physically taxing and often discouraging work), because I grew up in the city and, only knowing personally one rancher in my life,  have not had the opportunity to develop a lot of appreciation for that lifestyle and geographical scenery, but those bronzes take such artistry and skill to create. (How's that for a run on sentence, right???) They are lovely. So, I am learning that once a Calgarian who grew up loving the Stampede as a kid, always a Calgarian who still loves watching the Stampede events as an adult and is not ashamed to admit it.

We are about to embark on our own heatwave here on the prairies over the next three days at least. By Sunday we are forecast to reach +37C and overnight lows of a big +16C...not cool enough to help prior to the following day's heat. Church is going to be very difficult to sit through, but it will be a good break from our not air conditioned suite!! If it is only for three days before we get below +30C again we will survive. My husband will disappear for three days into the cool of the basement and I will have an opportunity upstairs to train for our trip to NYC during some of its hottest summer weather!!  There is good in almost everything, right?

Hmmmm...summer heat wave or winter ice....SUMMER HEAT WAVE all the way!!! hahahahaha 

Another Story Of My Husband's!

Something we saw this afternoon on tv reminded my husband of another story from his younger years.  He was about to begin his second year of college, around 1970 I believe, but came home to the farm late in the summer to hang out with his friends for a couple of weeks.  

For some reason....the drugs they MAY have been smoking PERHAPS....he and three of his friends decided to go duck hunting one day.  They collected their shot guns, hopped in one of the guy's '58 Pontiac and set out to find the birds they had noticed settling in various farmers' fields.  They drove through several fields of summer fallow, hoping the farmers who owned them would not notice the tire marks but they had to drive rather quickly to keep the car from sinking into the soft, damp ground.  Field after field yielded no ducks at all, so after a couple of hours they decided to forget the whole idea and return home.  Just as they hit the highway back to town one of the fellows spotted a huge population of ducks in a previously unexplored field. The problem was that the ducks were congregated at the far end of the field and obviously would spot the car sliding through the field, its skidding tires tossing great mounds of dirt as it came toward them. Hmmmm, what to do?  One of the guys had the "brilliant" idea that the driver should hit the gas pedal as hard as he could and rush the ducks so they wouldn't have time to react and fly away....hahaha, yeah right, as I said:  the drugs????.... All four of them decided this was a fabulous plan, the driver hit the gas pedal and away they started across the field.  Suddenly it dawned on someone in that car that it would be nearly impossible to hit a duck by shooting out an open car window. So, one of them maneuvered his way out of the open window of the front passenger side and miraculously managed to crawl out onto the hood of the car, clutching his rifle tightly under his arm while the car continued flying forward toward the gathering of ducks.  Of course the ducks saw them coming and scattered just as the friend on the hood managed to wobble to his feet, grab the radio aerial on top of the roof of the car for balance and tried to fire the shotgun one handed.  Can you get a picture in your mind of this craziness??  The shot of course went way wild as the ducks flew off into the distance. The bullet came near absolutely none of the birds.  Of course the guy on the hood of the car had to continue to hang on for dear life until the driver of the car managed to spin around 180 degrees, still at top speed, and get them back out of the field and onto the highway.  Somehow they all lived, the ducks lived and whoever had their fields churned up by the car tires likely could figure out within minutes at least a couple of the fellows who would have been involved in creating the damage. Everyone in the area knew my husband and his friends...thankfully everyone also had great senses of humour and forgave easily. Sigh.....can you imagine anyone getting away with a stunt like that nowadays?  At the time the attitude of the farmers whose fields were  involved was "Well, boys will be boys...."  No one was killed, including the ducks, so no real harm done. The fields could be smoothed out again easily enough with the tractor.  Aiii yiii!!  The Dukes of Hazzard....unsanitized for the real life version.  

 

Both Our Kids Are Trapped By Heat!

 Our daughter in law is currently in Toronto, just in time for the first major heatwave of the summer there. Our son is in New York City as the forecast heat dome showed initial edges today. By Saturday the Big Apple, along with much of the east coast, is predicted to reach a high of 115F, (46.1C) and such highs are to last for several days. We have alerted our son as he is not a news watcher as a rule so that he will be aware that he should not plan on riding his bike to his studio this weekend. I hope and pray our daughter in law doesn’t have to return to a country another ten to fifteen degrees hotter than the one she has been visiting! I wonder if the heat on July 4th in NYC will be responsible for cancelling the huge USA birthday celebrations there as flooding was responsible for cancelling many of our country’s birthday celebrations yesterday! Oh, how we hope and pray the weather will cool down at least a smidgen south of the border by the time we arrive later this summer! 

Parts of our province, in the central area, are currently under a red level tornado watch. There is another area just south under an orange level watch and we are currently under a yellow level watch, the lowest threat of the three. The rain and thunder of the past couple of hours here seem to have moved off slightly to the east, but a second round is forecast overnight. Even a yellow level storm can result in high winds, minor flooding and hail, so we are praying that a few power outages might be the worst effects experienced. 

What ridiculous weather all over the world as earth’s weather patterns continue to change. Hopefully humans and the rest of the earth’s animals and ecosystems can adapt quickly! 

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!