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!!!! 

Catch Up Thanksgiving Dinner! Yum!!

Our church has a number of middle aged and older single women who love to get together a couple of times a year to celebrate festive seasons like Thanksgiving. They are an enthusiastic and fun bunch to spend time with. Occasionally a visiting male relative is invited to participate and at those times my husband and I are also included in the invitation so that the visiting man has a peer to chat with. Last night was one of those dinners but the visiting male relative baled at the last minute. My husband found himself to be the lone male presence at last night’s Thanksgiving dinner….a delayed celebration as a couple of the women had been travelling on the actual Thanksgiving weekend. My husband, being one of the original feminist supporters from way back in the 1970’s, gets along well in groups of women so he was undaunted finding himself in a group of a dozen women last night. 

I hadn’t realized how much I missed having a traditional turkey and ham Thanksgiving meal this year. At the time we were busy packing for our AB trip, making plans for get togethers there with friends and relatives; we didn’t even make it to church on Thanksgiving Sunday. 

So the turkey and baked ham were especially delicious last night. Instead of partaking of the sweet desserts I had a second helping of turkey, stuffing and gravy….oh my goodness, it was a delicious meal. Someone brought a hot potato salad that was fantastic. There was a casserole dish filled with my favourite old fashioned mix of buttered peas and carrots. Growing up that was THE standard veggie mix every Thanksgiving and Christmas, without fail, world without end, amen! 

The food was delicious, the fellowship sweet. Leftovers were sent home with anyone who wanted to take them and the remaining desserts were plated and labelled for use at coffee hour after church this morning. 

We arrived home late in the evening, checked the mouse traps and found no more mouse carcasses, so we are hopeful the traps will still be vacant this morning. Once the exterminator has arrived tomorrow we can get his help to move the fridge and food storage cupboard away from the walls so he can use his large vacuum to clean up the mouse droppings and then we can sanitize the floor underneath. New traps will be set and the exterminator will come back the following week to check things out. Maybe the end of this latest mouse infestation is in sight. 

Oh dear Lord, I just gotta ask,”Why oh why have we not been able to find a different place to move to yet?” We started looking again as soon as we got home from NYC, but the results of our search have not yielded an answer. Trying to weigh out the options for which new set of problems we are willing to take on in the places we can afford to rent is proving difficult. It is a trade off between continuing to cope with the problems here just because we are used to them and exchanging those problems for the new problems we have discovered when viewing alternative accommodations. Thus far moving will not solve the problem of having to park out of doors in the winter, nor of having an extra half 🛁 bath, nor of finding accommodation on one floor with either or both solutions to the parking and bathroom issues. Trades grade finishes do not offend us. Apartment living we can get used to. Well, we will keep praying and looking. I have even been willing to make a move right away, in the winter, before the next hip surgery, but…. Interesting times for us, that’s for sure.

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!

Such A Beautiful October Day!

The weather in Calgary this week has been absolutely gorgeous!  What a blessing for all of us who are visiting from across Canada for Aunty’s funeral and ongoing celebration of her life! This is the nicest mid October weather we have experienced in a number of years. Back home it has been rainy, windy and rather miserable according to the friend who is caring for our house while we are away. This is the second trip in a row where we have been experiencing glorious weather during heavy rainfall and wind at home. Yay! 

We enjoyed our shopping trip today, and had plenty of chances for long walks through the Inglewood shopping district as we picked up several orders of tea at Tea Traders, herbs and spices at Silk Road, two new outfits for me at Twitchin’ Threads, a book and brand new pair of gloves for my husband at a wonderfully clean and well organized thrift store and then a drive across the city for leather repair supplies at Tandy Leather. Now my husband can repair his favourite moccasins, so he is very happy…and so am I! 

We located our favourite old 1970’s pizza joint, used to be Karuso’s, but is now one of the SpotOn restaurants that inherited the Karuso family pizza recipes. So the pizza is just as good, my husband says. I opted for the far less carby, less fatty chicken pot pie and it was delicious! 

After a late afternoon rest we took a decently long walk through the neighbourhood around our hotel, discovering a lovely Indian restaurant: Hyderabad Biryani House. It is tucked away among an entire development of big box stores and light industrial businesses. My expectations were low, but the food was really, really tasty. My medium spiced Chana masala curry was spicy hot in my mouth and there were sautéed onions adding to the flavour. My husband’s chicken methi was so yummy with thick spiced gravy. Jeera rice and butter naan rounded out our meal. The portions were huge, (good thing we had the long walk back to the hotel afterwards!),  and we have enough leftovers in our refrigerator for another full meal each for lunch on Sunday. (Won’t be eating leftovers tomorrow because of a cousin’s lunch and then a special dinner with one of my husband’s lifelong friends and former mountain climbing buddy.) 

Received the wonderful news today that a dear friend who has been struggling with cancer for the past several years is now fully in remission. So grateful for this encouraging news! It is the best way to top off a very happy day!

SLOOOOOOOWWWWLY Goes the Refrigerator Replacement, Hohoho!!

 In honour of the Cherry Cream Soda font I MUST use pink for this post!!

The saga of getting another fridge continues.  By 1pm today we realized we likely were not going to hear from the refrigeration technician, so my husband hiked across the parking lot to the office to ask what was going on.  As we suspected, the employee from the management company struggled with his English comprehension and didn't understand why we still had food in the refrigerator portion of the unit if it wasn't working, didn't realize that my husband was NOT telling him that unit was still working and didn't understand why there was over twenty dollars worth of ice slabs in plastic bins in there keeping the food sufficiently cold as to keep it all from being wasted.  He apparently told the tech that our fridge was still working so there was no rush on the order.  Sigh....why are we not surprised. Even the staff for whom English IS their first language don't seem to comprehend what we are telling them a good deal of the time. hahaha

So the office staff worker called the warehouse to see if there are any fridges in stock that are in working order. She finally got a response around 4:30pm and the response is there is a fridge and the tech will try to get it to us sometime tomorrow.  In the meantime we had to purchase another ten dollars worth of ice ($31 and counting...) after dinner tonight to get our food through safely until tomorrow until hopefully at least noon. The office staff worker begins her shift at 10:30am and will call to let us know, if she can find out that is, when the tech and the fridge will be arriving.

Unfortunately my husband has an eye appointment at 11am and will be leaving at 10:30am to be there on time. So, he will have to leave me to deal with this call, or with the tech should he arrive before or without said call. Tomorrow will mark my third day in a row of having to stay home all day waiting for assistance with the fridge.  Sigh.....I was really looking forward to going to his appointment with my husband so I could look longingly at all the expensive eye glass frames while he is in with the doctor and start thinking about what kind of frame I want to purchase after my own annual eye examination later this fall.  After accidentally sitting on my present very delicate frames that I've had only one year, they were so bent and took so much work for the frame techs to straighten out, it is unlikely I will be able to put new lenses into them safely ever again.  At present one of the original lenses is remaining in place "just kinda barely", so....guess it will be an expensive experience since I only get coverage for frames once every two years and then only if my prescription changes, which I suspect it may this time. Whatever....eyes are so important, so they are worth spending money on.

Tonight we had a wonderful time.  We met a now retired former colleague of my husband's and she treated us to a meal at DarBar.  Yum, yum! I decided to have a simpler meal tonight so ordered off the appetizer list: a chana curry with fried bread....basically a fluffy puffed up pillow of thin bread dough that was able to be dipped into their home made tamarind sauce...to die for....and then one of the best green salads I have ever had there, plus a helping of raita.  Gosh, it was a full meal even without eating both rounds of fried bread.  It was unexpectedly delicious...not a great fan of chana as a rule...and I was not expecting that amount of food from the Appetizer list. WOW!  I will order that again.

The conversation was wonderful and contrary to the last time we saw our friend, her face is smoothed of all the "worry wrinkles" from her last position in her career, she has lost weight; she looked so happy after her first year of retirement. She was cheerful and talkative.  Gosh, it was a wonderful time together.  We all look forward to getting together once again.  ( have been trying to think about what else it was that was different about her this time and it just struck me that this is the first time I have seen her without her clergy collar. She was completely clad in "civilian dress" and I can't believe how different she looks.  Incredible.)

Although it is well before 11pm I am more tired than usual tonight so am going to get to bed right away.  I think the stress over the mix up with the fridge has gotten to me, plus being stuck inside for 3 days in a row has precluded going for any long walks, so I am craving exercise.  Maybe tomorrow after the ruddy fridge arrives?  Stay tuned to the never ending saga of refrigeration!  

Is It Possible To Be Completely Annoyed And Completely Grateful At The Same Time About The Same Situation?

That is how I feel tonight: I was hoping, after sending a maintenance request into management about our refrigerator starting to pack it in, that the thing would last until Monday when all the crew are back at work, but nope, the refrigeration system gave a little whine and a squeal and died late this afternoon. Everything in there began to thaw quickly. Sigh… So, I am annoyed! 

I am also grateful: back on the spring my husband purchased a  camping refrigerator/freezer. I didn’t begrudge him because although I suspected he would rarely use the unit and he spent several hundred dollars on it, he rarely purchases treats for himself. Wow….did that little unit ever save our bacon tonight; and our sausages and our chicken and our 10 pound turkey and our beef! (and our bread and bagged veggies and fruit packs and cheeses and herbs) 

We have cold packs and the salvageable ice cubes packed around the milk and eggs in the dead refrigerator and we can only hope the fridge items survive until Monday, since we are gone all day tomorrow and won’t be able to check on them. Guess the good thing about that is that once breakfast is over we won’t be opening the fridge door and letting the cold escape for the rest of the day. 

These things are indeed sent to try us! 

Cook Cook Cook Cook Some More!

 It is a very busy day and I need to sit down for a few minutes before I start making lunch.  Was up at a decent time for breakfast today, got ready and started the prep for our company who are coming for dinner tonight.  I find cooking very frustrating and difficult because my creativity sometimes deserts me, or I discover I can't get the ingredients I need for what I was hoping to make.  Today I am dealing with some special dietary needs: corn product intolerance, lactose intolerance and diabetes.  Oh joy, hahahaha.  However, I was able to substitute olive oil for butter in my veggie dish and change my wonderfully forgiving Poor Man's Pudding recipe to remove both of the dairy products and replace them with other things.  Whew!! The fresh raspberries in the pudding will cover a multitude of culinary "sins", hopefully. I will know in about 45 minutes when it comes out of the oven.  The potato salad turned out great, so that is a bonus.  I have discovered that tossing in a quarter cup of either dill pickle or sweet pickle juice into the mix adds wonderful flavour to it and I had fresh dill to chop into it as well.  

I finally discovered why, after decades of frustration, the hard boiled eggs are always so hard for me to get the shells off of without gouging the egg.  I have been letting them get too cold before shelling.  Today I was in a hurry so poured off the boiling water, dowsed them in very cold water for only about five minutes, then peeled them. The shells came off wonderfully well, leaving a smooth egg behind, no gouges. Why was I unaware of this prior to today?  hahaha  Okay, so cooking is not my gift. I admit it. It is a good thing I grew up on the prairies and am living there again right now because my simple supper of panko chicken, potato salad and a fresh veggie mix with a dessert will be acceptable.  I may even go Full Prairie and put out a plate with a stack of bread slices on it, hahahaha.  You don't get any more prairie meal than a stack of bread on a plate.  

Now it is time to make lunch, re-tidy and shine up the bathroom and get the table set for tonight.  Having another couple over for dinner seems to take several days of preparation....guess I am my mother's daughter after all, but hopefully I can NOT spend half my day crying because my house isn't going to be clean enough nor the food delicious enough to suit me.  Please Lord, spare me that! Amen!  Poor Mom. We had company at least once most weeks and she went through agony every single time.  I felt so badly for her and don't want to repeat that part of her personality in myself as I get older. She truly suffered from severe performance anxiety and as hard as my father tried, he was unable to help rid her of that inherited family tendency.  Spare me O Lord, thank you.

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!

Finally Got To Jackson Hole….

 …..the Manhattan location burger restaurant, not Wyoming! 

After a lazy morning, (after a great catch up sleep), we skipped breakfast so we could walk a few blocks to Jackson Hole restaurant to try their famous burgers. We decided to arrive as soon as they opened at 11am as the place is notoriously crowded there by noon and today was no exception by the looks of things when we left just prior to that time.

So…..nobody other than a heavy duty construction worker or sumo wrestler, (or my unbreakfasted starving husband, poor guy), needs a ten ounce burger! hahaha I knew they were large so ordered mine sans bun, and replaced the copious amount of fries with what turned out to be a copious amount of onion rings, so I ended up leaving a fair amount of food on my plate. Felt badly wasting it, but medium cooked burgers tend to be crumbly and don’t save over very well. And have you ever tried to re-crisp an onion ring? Yikes! 

I have finally accepted that most restaurants here do not season their burgers with much more than a dash of salt, so while the cook on my burger was perfect, I got more flavour from the yummy toppings than the burger itself….again! I give up. These topping were delicious and I ate all of them: decent slice of cheese, not the usual “American cheese”, which is nothing more than uncoloured edible oil product like the old Kraft cheese slices, a goodly amount of combined chopped tomato, dark green lettuce, dill pickle and bacon, topped with a huge pile of crispy fried onion strips. I could have eaten a whole bowl of that plus some onion rings and skipped the meat altogether, hahaha. Guess I prefer our smaller, overly salted Canadian burgers and I definitely prefer Canadian pizzas. 🍕 American pizzas, particularly the thin crust versions usually, with a few exceptions like Rocky’s, tend to be horrible. Little schmears of tomato or pesto sauce with bits of barely recognizable chopped up toppings and a sprinkling of cheese. Blecch! We tried a slice from Spoton Pizza last night, but preferred the considerably tastier Rocky’s slices…more topping, less sodium.

I am grateful that tonight we will enjoy a Rosh Hashanah dinner with our daughter-in-law’s family. I am happy that I found a gift bag and tissue wrap at Duane Reade pharmacy down the street so our hostess gifts of honey, apples and pomegranates are ready to go.

I was bemoaning the fact that we are leaving in a couple of days, but my husband reminded me that the September sumo tournament starts the night before our flight, so at least we will have something fun to watch on tv for a half hour each day while we recover from this trip. Watching sumo will keep our minds off the surrounding prairie landscape just a wee bit.

Remember The Crazy Intense Struggle I Had To Find A Wedding Reception Dress But The Reception Was Cancelled?

And remember also the racing around our fair home city I did to locate a brooch for the first dress I bought and then changed my mind about when I found the side panelled black dress pants to wear instead?

So here is how that whole fiasco has turned out: I left the pants at home in Regina because they were too bulky for my carry on and too dressy for anything else we would be doing here on our holiday, the dress I did bring and have worn four times, discovering in the process that it doesn’t look as good on me as I hoped it did, isn’t a style I like as much as I thought it did when I purchased it in desperation, my husband who pays no attention to my clothes telling me after I wore it out for sushi dinner last night that he doesn’t care for it on me and my son’s unusual complete lack of any comment at all about the dress, landed that dress and the brooch I purchased to wear with it in a recyclable bag this morning and now they reside in a thrift store ten blocks from our apartment! Buh Bye…….👋 

The thrift store on 3rd Ave and E 29th Street was our first stop along our daily walk. (4 miles today) After depositing my wee bag of goodies there we headed west along E29th up Lexington to stop #2, lunch at Anjappar Indian restaurant, South Indian cuisine, for chicken curry, rice, chicken tikka masala and garlic naan. The prices were too high because of the location, but oh yummy, the food was excellent and the service wonderful for such an unassuming looking establishment.

From there we walked a couple of more blocks south across Park Avenue to Madison Avenue to Madison Square Park, taking photos of the nearby golden spired New York Life Insurance and the landmark Flatiron buildings. Photos will follow when we get home. The park had so many big arbutus and other trees, a dog park, lots of benches lining the paths that were filled with business people eating their lunches, a company setting up large screens and speakers to livestream part of the U.S. Open competition and a beautiful fountain in the centre of a large pool where people have been tossing loose change. Our useless small change joined the rest of the pennies, dimes and nickels already in residence under the shimmering water.

We walked most of the way back straight down Madison Avenue past Fendi and Versace and Issey Miyake and other designer stores. Jammed in between between some of these upscale clothing establishments we stumbled across elderly Madison Avenue Baptist Church, looking a tad lost in the midst of the overpowering retail ridiculousness. Hahaha….

As we wandered up Madison Avenue we came across one of Amazon’s Whole Foods stores. We have been looking all over Midtown and downtown for a pomegranate to take to our Rosh Hashanah dinner hostess on Friday night, with zero success. We had been wondering if we would have to take the long subway ride to crowded Zabar’s for a pomegranate to include with the rest of our typical Rosh Hashanah gifts of honey and apples, but today came across an outlet of Amazon’s Whole Food serendipitously and there were the elusive pomegranates: only a half dozen remaining in the bin, but all in good condition. What an unexpected blessing. Now we feel prepared to greet our dinner hostess.

So it is 3:30pm, we are having a bit of a rest, we have leftover curry and tikka masala for dinner tonight, but I know we will be craving another little walk after dinner, so we may walk back up to the library and sit in the park for half an hour.

It is one of the hotter, more humid days we have experienced since we arrived, so we have both air conditioners running in the suite and are lazing around in our jammies. How very lovely! 

To think: when we arrived here nearly a month ago I could barely walk the five blocks to Trader Joe’s and back carting a small bag of groceries and now I can walk 22 consecutive blocks before feeling the need to sit down. I LOVE 💕 NYC!

Day Of That Wet Dishrag Kind Of Feeling!

Yesterday turned out to be a tad overstimulating for both of us, so we had trouble falling asleep in the wee hours of this morning. I slept for just short of 6.5 hours, but my husband slept for a solid 9.5 hours. He woke up at 9:15am. Now it is 11:15am and he has gone to bed for a nap. 😴 I am zapped out on the living room sofa, fighting to keep my own eyes open, haha.

I managed to wait to eat breakfast until 10am despite waking up at 6:45am, yay! I wanted to wait for my husband to wake up with no prompting from me. Since we decided already last night that we need a break from our same old, same old daily breakfast menu here at home, I was determined to be able to wait this morning for a walk to Townhouse diner for eggs Benedict florentine. Oooh, so glad I held out. There was SO much wilted fresh spinach that it was worth the wait. Yum! My husband enjoyed his eggs and turkey sausage sandwich with a goodly portion of my hash browns to pad out his already generous meal. We were sated and found ourselves dragging along for the five block return walk. 

When we got home we sat down and stared at each other vacantly for a few minutes, then our son texted us the location of the sushi restaurant they are taking us to this evening. So, we sat and perused today’s menu items so we wouldn’t have to take too long to make our menu choices. Since I can’t possibly eat the amount of rice in most of the sushi platters I have opted for two appetizers: chicken karage and tempura sweet potatoes. 🍠 They will both be small amounts so then I can have a dessert of a small scoop of green tea iced cream! Yum! The food should be excellent at this Michelin starred restaurant, but the biggest draw tonight is being with our kids!

I am yawning myself silly while writing this post. Gotta go and lie down!

Now I’m Tired

Although it is only 3pm, we are home and exhausted. It is good exhaustion though, brought about by the intensity of the day’s project. 

We weren’t exactly rushing after we got up this morning but still found ourselves at Grand Central Station before 10:30am. The ride on the 5 Train Express took less than 15 minutes before reaching the Battery Park station where we disembarked. We took our time wandering around beautiful Battery Park, enjoying the shade giving trees on this warm day, as well as the remains of the hydrangea blooms. We loved watching the water and gazing across at the Statue of Liberty, the ferry boats filled with tourists heading over to Ellis Island and various small boats towing wake-boarders behind them. The bright sunshine lit up the water and sent glitters of light dancing on top of the wake. Gorgeous!

We wandered about the farthest south end of Battery Park past Fort Clinton before discovering the pathways that would take us to the entrance of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, aka the Holocaust museum. What an incredible place. The whole history of the beginnings of antisemitism (just after 1000AD),to the rise of the Nazis and subsequent Holocaust. It was fascinating and sickening, both, to see pre-war photos of many prosperous middle class Jewish families, most of whom were exterminated during WW2. There were many articles on display that were collected from the over 1800 killing sites scattered around Eastern Europe before the concentration camps were established: prayer books, blankets, prayer shawls, socks, tattered dresses, shoes, dolls etc. The panels explaining the historical events were well written but very general. Specific names of well known antisemites that could be inflammatory to other religious or cultural groups who have tended to whitewash their antisemitic but otherwise heroes, such as Martin Luther, were not specifically mentioned. None of the actual films of the gas chambers or firing squads and their immediate aftermath of bodies were shown, but I have seen those films and I believe every non-Jew of adult age who has no family history of recent cultural, or religious violence to deal with should have to see them to understand what true cruelty looks like. There were a number of televised interviews with Holocaust survivors that were touching and brought tears to my eyes. 

These displays took up the first two floors of the museum. On the third floor there is a large exhibition detailing the Danish resistance movement and how the Danish government was allowed autonomy by the Nazis for the first few years of the war because they saw the Danes as being on a similar level of superiority to their own people. So, the Danes welcomed thousands of fleeing Jews into their country and gave them full rights like the Danish citizens had. Despite the huge number of Nazi soldiers on the Danish streets the Jews moved about fairly easily. Once the Nazis realized what was happening in Denmark they made a plan to quickly round up all the Jews and deport them to a concentration camp, but word of the plan leaked out so thousands of Jews were able to be smuggled out to Sweden and safety. Incredible! By the time we were finished we were “plum tuckered out”! 

We sat in the museum cafe for a while to eat lunch and rest. My husband loved his huge bowl of split pea soup while I munched on a black bread sandwich filled with tuna/egg salad and dressed with lettuce leaves and purple tomato slices. For dessert we each crunched down one of the popular and very sweet black and white cookies, but they were small so….yum! 

Our original plan was to head across the street to a museum dedicated to American indigenous peoples but that will have to wait until next week. We have a couple of days that are not yet filled with other activities. 

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.

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….

Oh Frick!

 We received a nice surprise this morning! Our son had the morning off so he wondered if he could accompany us to the Frick Museum. Of course we said he could. Since he is extremely familiar with the collection, having worked there several times in the last couple of years lighting various exhibitions, he knew exactly which salons we would enjoy the most. What a joy to see works by Rembrandt and Turner, Veronese, Goya, Hals…..the list goes on. It was a delight for all of us to see our favourite painting: Saint Francis in Ecstasy (Saint Francis in the Desert) by Giovanni Bellini! It was painted around 1475-1480. The painting contains a fair amount of symbolism that my husband enjoys. It was amazing to see the actual painting!! There are rooms filled with oriental porcelain and small bronzes, as well as some incredible medieval works from between the 13th and 15th centuries. The colours of the medieval works are still vibrant: reds and oranges in the Italian works and blues and green favoured by the German painters.

Unfortunately the pigments used by artists in the time of Rembrandt, as well as the use of so much linseed oil, are blackening. Details in many of the paintings of that era are disappearing, fading away to black. The fading colours are called Fugitive Pigments and it is a shame their green, blue and brown vibrancy does not last forever the way the bright medieval pigments seem to. Grateful we saw some of these famous works before the remaining background details blacken into obscurity.

After a delightful couple of hours there admiring the paintings and the lovely fountain featured in the inner courtyard, it was time for lunch. Even though our son has often worked at the Frick he has never eaten a restaurant meal in this most exclusive and expensive area of the entire city. So, he contacted his wife’s aunt who lives in a penthouse only blocks away from the Frick. She suggested the Leo Cafe at the nearby Asia Society Museum. Tucked away at 725 Park Avenue we nearly missed the unassuming looking building. The cafe there was perfect for us: clean, quiet due to a small number of customers, and a short but comprehensive menu. My son had a flank steak sandwich on ciabatta bread with spicy chips,  my husband enjoyed a salmon bowl with a large piece of salmon on a bed of quinoa and assorted cold vegetables, while I had a chicken salad: six large slices of chicken on a bed of shredded curly cabbage, mixed greens, dried shiitake mushrooms, green onions, diced fresh pears and a large amount of slivered papaya. Oh wow, we really enjoyed the clean restaurant, attentive staff, muted sunlight, surrounding greenery, small number of customers and most delicious foods at an incredibly reasonable price. The quiet ambiance was conducive to family visiting before our son had to get back to his studio to continue packing for the move that will now happen early next week….giving us an unexpectedly free day tomorrow to do something on our own that neither of the kids would enjoy. Maybe a ferry ride over to  Staten Island for the day? Could be raining by late afternoon so if we can get ourselves moving in the morning we could get to the Island in time for lunch at Blue, then home before the rain falls. Think I will suggest that to my husband. 

On our way home this afternoon we stopped in at a museum only a block from home: American Kennel Club’s Museum of the Dog. We knew nothing about it and had low expectations, but it was the most fun we have had at such a cute place in ever so long. The walls on the ground floor are set up like a portrait gallery for dogs of any and all breeds. Some of the artists are gifted at realistically capturing the various expressions on their poochy subjects’ faces and the fluid motions of their muscles when walking or running.  There was a large ceramics collection, antique dog collars and leashes,  an interactive video where you can play at being a professional dog trainer, interactive dog recognition and breed histories challenges, a wall covered in drawings and paragraphs about their own dogs written by elementary school children, amazing full sized bronzes and heavy ceramics of several breeds…two full sized ceramic replicas of Dalmatian spotted Great Danes immediately caught my attention. On the top of the three floors of exhibits was an art contest: 20 works of art and photography created by local dog lovers. We were each given a ballot when we paid the entry fee and chose our most favourite from among the twenty. That was fun. I loved a small bronze of a dog carrying a large stick in its jaws, running toward someone with the obvious intent of wanting to play Fetch! It was titled, “Favourite Stick”. My husband voted for a black and white headshot of a rescue bulldog cuddling up head to head with its new owner and it was captioned, “You Chose Me!”  We each took a self photo that was then matched to what breed of dog each of us most resembled. I have done this before several times over the years, in various places. As always I was matched with a bulldog, but my husband turned his head just as his photo was being taken, so he matched with a bulldog as well and I didn’t feel so badly, hahaha. The biggest joy for me was discovering oversized AKC tee shirts for sale in the gift shop! Now I have the extra item of sleepwear I have been needing for the rest of the trip! YES!  👏 

In a couple of hours it will be time for dinner. I would like to return to the sushi shop we went to last week, but am guessing my tired husband will prefer to remain here and finish up the last tomato 🍅 and remaining strips of skinny bacon 🥓 for sandwiches. We shall see whose views win out tonight! Hohoho!

We have finally opened all the windows to try to rid this suite of the disgusting deodorizer that has been making me ill since we arrived. Tonight I will try sleeping on the living room sofa with all three windows open and see if it helps rid me of the overnight congestion. Here’s hoping….

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.

Fun With Phones!

My husband had a struggle yesterday getting my mobile phone set up to keep a copy of my I-94 available for quick download in case I ever need to present it. The struggle lasted all morning and then into the late night hours when the Google Play he was forced to put onto my phone in order to get Firefox in order to get Document File in order to get the I-94 “in the hole in the bottom of the sea”, started sending out message after message at 11pm before I had my phone shut off for the night. We couldn’t get the Incoming Text notification volume turned down for some reason but finally succeeded after freaking out about the tenants right around us possibly being awakened by the noise. What a nightmare! My phone then needed charging so I couldn’t shut it off overnight, but we finally got the Do Not Disturb to work. We were so tired when the first 25 notifications started arriving that we were completely bamboozled by how to make it stop! As soon as we get home I will have my phone scrubbed, purged of the whole works and return to my usual Phone Calls And Texts Only format. What an hilarious time we are having here with our technology, hahaha…

We did get out for the afternoon to explore our immediate neighbourhood a bit more. Completed our list of small purchases needed for food and kitchen comforts, found another discount grocery, a nice Japanese grocery and a great hardware store. 

We ate lunch at an Italian restaurant as the deli we wanted to go to still had a lineup at our late lunch time of 2pm. The Italian place wasn’t fantastic but it was packed with regulars who know every cook and server so the atmosphere was relaxed and fun. There was enough food to feed four people so we skipped cooking dinner last night and traded leftovers. I ate the last couple of slices of my husband’s chicken parm pizza…his so called personal sized pizza was 12 inches…and he finished up my giant plate of veal parmigiana and mountain of spaghetti. The spaghetti sauce was quite bland, but each table had a shaker of mixed Italian herbs to use “to taste”. We were rather liberal with our use of it and here at home my husband shook some Tabasco onto the remains to spice it up a bit more. The huge side salad that came with my meal was delicious and we both enjoyed sharing it. Today it is back to cooking for ourselves. 

Best grocery find of the day: no sugar added Kind bars. Not available in Canada. Also they are very low fat, as in less than a third of the fat content of the ones we get at home that I can eat only occasionally. Wish I had room in my luggage and a heart to fill in declaration forms so I could bring a few boxes back with me.

When In Doubt Choose The Heat!

After a crazy busy day today my husband and I were zonked out by dinner time this evening.  We looked around at the leftover pot of delicious carrot-ginger soup my husband made that we'd had for lunch already as an appetizer to go with the perch, baked potato slices and brussels sprouts he had prepared for our entree, decided we couldn't face soup twice in one day and headed out to DarBar for dinner!  Oh so glad we did.  This time I ordered my coconut pepper chicken spiced "Indian medium".  I will definitely to that again next time. By the time I was spooning the leftovers into a takeout container my sinuses and inner ears and mouth were tingling happily from the heat, my tummy was comfy and at peace....it was marvellous.  A couple of spoonsful of jeera rice and some fish pakoras with green chutney and life was very good indeed. YUM!!!

My to do list has many things crossed off of it now and so tomorrow's and the next day's tasks seem less daunting.  I am waffling though on what outfits to leave out of my overly packed carry on bag.  I refuse to take under the plane luggage and I will be gone for more than thirty days, but as grateful as I am for the laundry facility in the rental building it is still a daunting task to be able to take enough clothes and still save two outfits for special occasions happening in the second half of the trip.  Aaaargh! Decisions, decisions.......I am hopeless and mostly I am afraid I will make the wrong decisions and regret it when it is too late to change my mind.

As I think of the victims of the Colombian earthquake and the BC forest fire evacuees, I feel pretty spoiled and even a tad guilty that choosing travel outfits is my biggest concern at the moment.....sigh...... 

Also, I have to apologize to family and friends that, while I will likely do some blogging while we are gone, there won't be any photos until we get home. Long story about the technology we will have available while we are away that I won't bore you with, but probably the best thing will be to write up the posts while we are there, while details are fresh in my mind, but wait to post until I can include any photos you might find interesting.  Also, don't cut me off from your newsy emails friends and family.  There will be time nearly every day when I will be eager to put my feet up and spend time with ya'll! I don't want to spend a whole month without any contact from you.

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!! 

A Day Away Keeps Depression At Bay!!

 Yesterday was a wonderful day out of town. Our friend whose father passed away earlier this year, (my husband performed the funeral and graveside interment), wanted to take a trip down memory lane, so he and his wife picked us up at noon, (after my wonderful weekly coffee visit with my Thursday buddy), and we headed south west to the farmlands near Avonlea.  My husband is somewhat familiar with the area because his father was born near there and his aunt farmed in that area for many decades, until she was nearly 98!

It was a wonderful day for a drive: warm but not sweltering hot, just enough breeze to scare off at least a few of the hordes of mosquitoes currently in charge of all things outdoors and good roads, both paved highways and gravelled side roads.  We saw some gorgeous fields of still blooming canola, their neon yellow blooms so bright as to be nearly headache inducing, but several weeks of unrelenting heavy rain has destroyed large swaths of crop in too many fields.

We started at our friend's family farm, now run by a nephew, who talked to us about the family history of the farmstead and how the land and crops have changed over the past fifty years or more.  We were able to check out his cattle barn and have a good look at this year's calves gamboling in the fields. Fortunately both our host family and ourselves took large containers of heavy duty mosquito repellent or we would have been forced back into the vehicle within seconds of getting out of it. WOW....heavy rains leaving standing water followed by several days of warmth and bright sunshine....perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes, but there are not enough dragon flies around at the moment to eat enough of them.  The back of our pant legs and long sleeved shirts turned black with bugs within seconds of stepping outside. It seemed the repellent was particularly effective because I received only one bite on a knuckle and it only itched for a couple of minutes.  Most of the four of us received a minimal number of bites so we are all grateful for that.

From there we headed into the town of Avonlea where we toured their extensive museum site.  At about the time we began moving between the buildings to see the various pioneer exhibits and community displays for the various sports teams and tributes to their downed world war soldiers, a fellow arrived to mow down all the grass around the buildings, unleashing a fresh army of mosquitoes, so we made our way quickly VERY quickly from building to building. We spent a long time there enjoying the displays and all the work that had been put into the planning of each room full of items.  Of course we particularly enjoyed a little old Anglican church that had been moved there from one of the many now non-existent hamlets in the area.   

About the time we were completing our tour of the museum, our host started contacting the two restaurants in the town in regard to us having our dinner there, only to discover both local restaurants closed before 5pm.  Drat!  We did find out that the nice little grocery store had pre-made sandwiches and wraps and they were open until 6pm, if we wanted to purchase those and eat them in the car.  For some reason this was not appealing to any of us, so our host contacted the next nearest town of Rouleau and discovered the old King George Hotel grill and bar would be open.  Whew!

On the way to Rouleau, (where the Canadian comedy tv series, Corner Gas, was filmed years ago), we took a tour of Dunnet Lake Regional Park. Our host learned to swim in the river there when he was a kid, so he wanted to see what improvements had been made there over the years. What a beautiful little area!  There are lots of camping spaces and picnic tables, the lake and the dam, a beautifully appointed outdoor swimming pool and a large concession booth with not only drinks and shakes and iced cream but big meaty burgers and sides.  There were too many mosquitoes of course to make the idea of eating there at the picnic tables very exciting for us, so after our tour we headed the rest of the way to Rouleau.

The hotel didn't look particularly up and coming, but it was open so that was a huge plus!  We were pleasantly surprised by the yummy char grilled burgers and home prepared fries, plus the decor had some newly installed upholstery and the place was very clean....I would not recommend using the washrooms under any but the most dire of circumstances and perhaps not even then, but the kitchen was clean, the staff very helpful and the meal quite delicious.

From there we drove at somewhat breakneck speed back to Avonlea's museum parking lot to hook up with the guide for our tour of the small Badlands area only a few kilometres from the townsite.  

 

Our guide is an archaeology graduate and her enthusiasm for her job and for the badlands area made the little tour very interesting and exciting indeed.  We were amazed at the amount of plant diversity as we hiked along on the 3km round trip after parking our cars along the highway by the entrance. The field we walked through is virgin pasture land but we didn't see the cows, only a coyote that eyed us warily from a safe distance and lost interest in us quite quickly as it loped away.  The amount of cactus plants was fascinating to me.

 

The guide asked us if we would like to hike down to the bottom of the badlands to see some of the plants that only grow in that dry bottom area and nowhere else. I told everyone else to go ahead because I knew I could likely make it down to the bottom, but would never get back to the top in this lifetime, but by this time the sun was on the verge of setting and all of us were a bit tired, plus we found out that we couldn't take the little tour through the entrance to a couple of caves down there due to the heavy rains making the clay layer on the top of the hoodoos too unstable. No one wanted to risk being trapped in one of those caves if the hoodoo tops collapsed of course.  Anyway, cave or no cave, the view from the edge of the cactus lined top field was gorgeous and it was enough to make us all happy.  We walked back through the field to our car and headed for home after a wonderful day away.

"Tip toe through the cacti".......everybody sing along.....

We both slept very well last night once we "un-hyped" from our busy day out of town.

We both slept in a bit this morning, thankfully, and we both woke up feeling really good, really happy, really peaceful.  That seemed a tad unusual because we knew we had an appointment at the "Bank of Seemingly Never Ending Offences" just before noon.  

But...ya' know what?  It went spectacularly well!  My online survey answers from a month or more ago for that bank apparently caused something to click. Not only do we have a new advisor who apparently knows how to do the work she is paid to do, she was helpful, explained everything really well, answered our questions, apologized for the mess the previous FA had made of everything, helped us fix every issue AND sent a toe curling email to the third party institution that messed up our US credit card limit so badly back when we first applied for it.  She said she does a lot of this sort of thing and that she is sure when the people there see another email from her that they don't even want to open it. She very bluntly wrote to tell them the mistake was theirs and she expects them to fix it immediately and restore our the original credit limit they gave us before all the mess happened.  Will her email bring results...well, perhaps not, but for once we felt like someone with at least some authority has gone to bat for us!  Someone actually heard us and understands why we need this limit restored before we go away! So, all we can do now is pray and trust God for whatever the result turns out to be!  If we don't get that original credit limit back then we have to assume there is a good reason for it that we may or may not understand.  At least someone has really tried to help us.

My husband was so buoyed up by the appointment that he headed to the nearest restaurant to buy us lunch...kind of a celebratory lunch for the successful appointment there...for once...and also because it hit him suddenly that he never has taken me out for the special meal he promised me when he had to be absent for my birthday back in June, hahaha.  Lunch today was not particularly special in that sense, but it was a nice surprise and I am not sorry he feels just a tad guilty for forgetting my request for a meal at a particular restaurant some evening in honour my now long past birthday. I suspect that once he gets his out of town church commitments over with on Sunday he will be able to relax and enjoy an evening out more....at least more than he would have today after accidentally erasing the last day's worth of work on his sermon from the upstairs computer he was using as he attempted to save it for transfer to the basement computer where he can work in the cooler air.  Aaaah, the poor guy. I do feel really sorry for him, but he at least remembers well what he had written so I suspect it won't take him long to rewrite that portion.

It is hotter today than yesterday and we are hitting the +30C mark for the weekend, but then the temperatures will supposedly be more reasonable again next week.  +30C seems just fine after several days of nearly +40C so we are not complaining about the heat today!