Once A "Biker" Always A Biker!

 I was standing at the ironing board a little while ago when the familiar drone of multiple motorcycle engines caught my ear.  I looked out the window just in time to see approximately 60 motorcycles passing by, riding two abreast, their riders wearing full patch.  Don't know what crew it is, wasn't able to see the name on the patches due to the angle of the window, but wow, it got my old heart racing to hear those bikes and see them going past. Sigh....old age is difficult for so many reasons, but you would think that by this stage of life I would forget the incredible joy and feeling of freedom that riding a bike can give.  Guess people never grow up about some things.  For me it is bikes, especially the old tricked out, chopped up Harleys that drove by this afternoon. Even the ape hangars on some of them looked appealing, hahaha. Such great memories they invoked for me. The rest of my ironing task passed quickly as I thought about the "good old days".

LIttle Cabin In The Woods......

 Slowly photos are trickling in from my husband's phone to my photo files and sometime this weekend my husband will open a Drop Box file so our son can send his own photos from our time away.  One small set of photos I do have already is from our trip upstate to the "cabin" north of Red Hook.  Not being a camper in any way, shape or form, this large luxury cabin was just my style and I am so grateful for our kids taking us there for 4 days. Have a lookee see:

How beautiful is this place, right?

The backyard pathway to the river and swimming holes.

Getting ready for our first bbq meal.

Our son the Grill Master!

Final salad preparations

The nearby Elizaville Diner...Exterior

View from the diner

The interior

Driving to the cabin.....

And to the diner.

Time to go back to the city.

Rest In Peace Brian

The church lost a treasured worship leader, singer and songwriter today in the death from cancer of Abbotsford's Brian Doerksen.  For the past forty years my husband and I have enjoyed singing Brian's worship songs in many different churches and it is an incredible loss to the Christian community.  Please pray for his wife and six children, two of which have severe special needs.  While we are grateful he is no longer ill and suffering, he leaves behind a family who needs him.

May he rest in peace and rise in glory...... 

My Life In Small Towns.....A "Photograph"

 The other night my husband read a story to me that depicted far too accurately my own life experiences with joining various types of women's groups in our many small town living experiences.  Being the newbie anywhere is not always the greatest experience, but it seems I had more than my share of "interesting" newcomer-to-the-group exchanges.

The story my husband read is "Book Club" by Stuart McLean and through his great good humour, he perfectly describes the experiences of Morley when she joins a local book club in her town.  In this case, I identify so closely with Morley's encounters with the rest of the book club members that is seems that SHE is ME!

Unfortunately the YouTube reading of the story has suddenly become unavailable, so I am unable to put in a link to it, BUT I do urge you women, if you have ever found yourselves newcomers who are somewhat out of sync with the rest of the members of a longstanding book club or other such group, find this story, (Part of the Vinyl Cafe Diaries collection), and read it or listen to it.  It is told with such humour but also with deadly accuracy.  

 

No Physio, Only A Little Snow And A Huge Gaggle Of Geese!

Unfortunately my knee began to throb as soon as I tried doing the physio exercises after lunch yesterday, so I was forced to give them up. By 3pm I put a tensor bandage around the knee, sighed a big sigh of acceptance about this newest injury, then called my GP and the blood lab to cancel my appointments with them today and tomorrow. I will try again next week. I suppose the 3km walk in the morning didn’t really help, but hey….a chance for a walk on a late November day with enough warmth and dry streets to make it enjoyable? On the prairies? I mean, I had to go for it, right? Of course right! As I walked along I was reviewing our happy phone conversation with our NYC kids the previous evening, so perhaps I was oblivious to my knee? Whatever….it feels a lot better after a good long sleep, but I am going to be gentle with the knee and keep it wrapped for one more day. I will start physio reps again tomorrow.  At least I was able to do the sitting exercises three times yesterday so physio wasn’t a total loss. Thank goodness….

So this morning I am looking out at a bit of snow swirling around and sticking to the passing cars, a heavy coating of slippery frost on the grass and our gaggle of geese who still seem somewhat confused about life in general. As I was walking home yesterday there were several hundred geese performing ever widening circles of test flights and I suspect they will finally be gone by today or tomorrow. I came across our band of merry goosies, still so tiny in comparison to the mature adults, ripping up any remaining blades of green grass on our front lawn, then watched them waddle between the buildings to get to the remains of our parking lot puddle but looking over their “shoulders” as they scurried past both sides of our porch, giving the home of the apparently dangerous red shovel a wide berth, hahaha. I only had to go outside and wave it in the air for a few seconds one time yesterday to keep them off the pathway to the car. Well, what can I say? Of such ridiculous and Non Event events is my retirement life made. 

My early mornings of late have been interesting in a weirdly healing way: for several mornings in a row now I have been remembering specific anger and/or hurt producing incidents throughout my life. Kind of strange, but it has been giving me the opportunity to review the situation, confess to God that rightly or wrongly it created an emotional crisis point for me, ask God for help to forgive me if I have not forgiven yet the other people involved in the situation, then ask for help for me to do that forgiving and for help to let the negative emotions go. I can almost feel those emotions flying out of my head. Days later I deliberately pull out those same bad memories for inspection and find they no longer trigger my emotions, they are just incidents that happened in my life and really have no bearing on anything of importance in my life now; most freeing and I am grateful to God for starting up this process.  

So, no plans now for the next two days. It feels good…..other than having to take another day off from most of my physio exercises. I think I may do some reading, there is a friend’s email from last night I  want to respond to thoughtfully and thoroughly, I may indulge in a half hour of computer gaming, I will take time to plan out and prepare decent meals as we have run out of my husband’s homemade soups and chilis, I will help my husband fill out his call for jury participation forms so he can get them to the Sheriff’s office today….it will be nice to stay home for a couple of days before the happily busy craziness begins again. 

A Do Nothing Sort Of Day!

Despite the glorious sunshine today, I didn't get outside longer than it took to take the garbage to the bin across the parking lot.  Guess I overdid the exercising yesterday by adding an over 2km walk to a physio day.  Oh well, live and learn, right?  Still getting over my little medical issue from last weekend, completed the meds last night, but still didn't seem to be completely over things until just this evening....maybe I am okay now?  If not I will be first in line at the walk in clinic on Monday morning.  I will try to give myself one more day before I go seeking more help.  I just don't want to spend a second Sunday in a row at Urgent Care!!!!  

So, as a result of feeling so weak today, my poor leg was given a nearly complete rest.  I ironed for an hour this morning and made/helped my husband make the meals and did the dishes a few times....apart from that I sat at my computer, in front of the tv and on top of my bed quilt reading.  No more physio until Monday morning and maybe a good break is what I need. I find that on Mondays my leg responds very positively to physio but by the end of the week it is feeling pretty limp and unresponsive in comparison.  Little glimpses of progress though this week, so I am not discouraged.

My husband spend several hours today helping a friend by putting a brand new door onto her back yard shed.  Things went very well.  In payment, she is planting our herb pots into a sheltered garden bed space in her back yard so we can see what herbs may winter over under their blanket of snow until the spring.  Some of them are rather hearty, so there is a chance at least a few of them will survive. When we lived in Alberta our house had a fairly substantial overhang of the roof in the front of the house, there was a garden bed right below it and I remember one particularly bitter winter when I thought I saw something in the midst of the deep snow there, right about the first of March after a couple of days of warmer than usual sun.  I went over to have a look and lo and behold it was a basil plant poking its leaves through the snow!  I was overjoyed and the plant lasted right through until the following autumn, providing us with wonderful fresh flavour for sauces and gravies all summer long.

Looks like a couple of possibly miserable days to begin the new week....rain and possible snow mix, but by mid week the temperatures during the day appear to be aiming for double digits, mid teens!  YES!  

I have a lot to do over the next week or so to get ready to travel.  Hopefully I won't need to lose all of Monday sitting around in a walk in clinic trying to get some more help!  Praying so hard I am over the worst of this issue now.  There are library books to be returned to the university, travel funds to move from one bank to another, some more bills to pay, as well as an early rent payment for next month, complete the information sheet for our executors should anything happen to us, so they know where to find everything. if something were to happen to us and on and on it goes. Details drive me nuts, but actually that is a pretty small list of things to accomplish and I have quite a few days to succeed in doing so.  Now, how I am going to work in a proper housecleaning as well, plus all the physio....hmmmm....guess it is going to be a busy week!  And that is A-OK!! 

2.4 Kilometres And Counting!

 It has been a delightful day....well, as delightful as spending the morning at a funeral for a dearly beloved church oldster can be, but the funeral was so uplifting and held so many fascinating details of the dearly departed's life that even that was a delightful time.  The lunch and fellowship time afterward was lovely as well and we got to meet some of the extended family members.

Once my husband dropped me off at home and he left for his afternoon of canoeing, I decided I should take a bit longer of a walk since I finished my physio just before 9am and have the next 2 days off from it.   I decided to walk to the pharmacy a few blocks away to pick up a prescription of my husband's and load up on vitamin supplements we are getting low on.  I knew the distance was about 7 blocks to the pharmacy and I thought it would be no problem as I walked a good 8 blocks home from the hospital the other day, but as I was walking along I realized a fault in my logic:  the trip back from the hospital was one way and this walk would be a return trip, hahahaha.  The idea of getting a nice walk outside beside the trees in the park across the street was so exhilarating and left me feeling so heady, that I forgot I would also have to turn around and come back.  hahaha  Short version is that it is 1.2 km to the pharmacy, so that made my return trip 2.4 km!  YES!!!  I was not aching when I got home.  I forced myself to sit down for an hour and relax though and now I have been getting some household chores completed.  I praise God for giving me the idea that I should go in the first place and I felt very impressed upon that I must do this to help prepare for going to Vancouver.  What a relief to be able to start adding more and more distance to my walks....right in time for the first taste of winter cold and snow about 30 hours from now....sigh...'twas ever thus, right? hahaha Oh well....

Other cute things that happened today:  as I was walking home from the pharmacy a vehicle pulled into the bus lane beside me and the lady driver opened her window to talk to me. I assumed she was going to ask me for directions to somewhere, but what she actually said was, "I really LOVE your dress!!"  Huh?  Someone much younger than me loves my dress so much that she had to pull a vehicle over in heavy Friday afternoon traffic to tell me that?  Like, how sweet is that, right??  I was touched, tickled, thrilled that a complete stranger would bother to go to so much trouble to pay me a compliment on my taste in dresses!  hahaha  How very kind of her!  I am still glowing.  Her pre-teen son is likely still totally embarrassed!! hohoho!

The other cute thing happened when my husband pulled into a parking spot outside the church so we could attend the funeral.  Our minister's oldest son pulled in right behind us, got out, looked at the parking meters in absolute befuddlement and shrugged his shoulders in confusion.  It was obvious he had not thought about downtown parking meters when he drove into the area.  I asked him what was wrong and he confessed he had not even considered he would have to pay for parking as he always walks from his house to the church, but today he had to use the car as he was coming to the church from an earlier appointment.  As the musician for the service he was barely arriving in time to be prepared to play, but he decided he had better seek a parking space elsewhere since he had no money to pay a meter.  Knowing that he would have to park many blocks away to avoid meters, my husband and I told him we would pay his meter for a couple of hours so he wouldn't be late for the funeral.  He was so embarrassed to be so unaware, but finally agreed to letting us help him.  I told him what time the meter would expire so he could move the car or get money from his dad to extend the time after the funeral and away we all went into the church.  After the funeral there was a lovely luncheon and as my husband and I were finishing up our meal we realized the parking meters would expire in a few minutes. We looked around to see where the young man was sitting and sure enough, as we watched him getting another drink and sandwich, we knew he had no concept of the passing of time, had likely forgotten about the meter all over again and we had to chuckle.  We have a very soft spot in our hearts for this young man because, like our son, he is an artist and occasionally suffers from a bad case of artist brain, just as our son also did when he too was in his early 20's. hahahaha  We didn't want to embarrass him in front of his family and friends who surrounded him at the table, so we just slipped out the side door of the church to get to our own car and popped another hour's worth of time into his meter before we drove away.  Aaaah, such memories of our own son....hahaha. We laughed all the way home.  I am guessing when this fellow did return to his vehicle he would have had no idea we had paid another hour for him, likely didn't look at the meter at all and we can only hope it was less than an hour until he went back outside from the luncheon so that he didn't get a ticket after all.  We will remember this event for a long time and it will make us giggle every time we think of it.

My husband is out canoeing for likely the last time this season.  We are to get our first dose of winter chill and wind and sleet and freezing rain and snow late Saturday evening and into Sunday.  Not looking forward to it, but by Monday and Tuesday the day time high temperatures should melt whatever bit of ice is covering everything outside....trusting that will be the case. Perhaps, assuming I am right about the melt, there will be time for a few more walks in the outdoors before the winter ice and snow arrive in full.  Here's hoping!

Another Friend Is Gone....Sigh.....

 A dear dear friend just contacted us to let us know that her husband, who has been in hospital for some time, passed away yesterday afternoon.  Please pray for Krissy as she adjusts to the loss of her beloved Scotty.  Thank you so much.  So grateful to God that there are family members fairly close to her to assist her with the legalities accompanying the death of a spouse.  My husband and I are very sad indeed to lose this faithful friend.  At one point Scotty was trying to purchase a condo in their town for us to come and live in when things were not going well with our circumstances at the time.  He and Krissy didn't sell their last house, they gave it away to a family in desperate need of a home to call their own.  They are not wealthy people at all.  That is the kind of people they are.  Even now, in the midst of her own grief, Krissy has decided to make contact with a disabled and financially down and out fellow in her town who may need Scotty's electric wheel chair...she doesn't even know the fellow, just has seen him struggling often to make his way around the streets.  May God bless both of them for their generosity, for their love of helping people in the midst of their own ongoing and extreme health issues over the years.  Thank you for your prayers for Krissy.  

Can't believe we have already lost Scotty. May he rest in peace and rise in glory. Amen!

Perfect Weather For Tax Completion Day!!

We woke up to about 3cm of fresh snow this morning and it has continued to fall ever since, with a current buildup of closer to 5cm and counting!  Friends from AB sent us a photo of their back deck and acreage grounds this morning and they have twice as much snow today as we do thus far.  This weather is no surprise as spring weather from the BC mountains through to the eastern edge of the prairies in Manitoba is always unstable and unpredictable and crazy and frustrating and interesting.  For myself it means putting on a light parka and winter boots when I take our tax forms to the mail later this afternoon, hahaha.  

I had the most odd "deja Vu" experience at church on Sunday morning.  My husband is always amazed by how lacking in nostalgic recall I am, how I so rarely think of experiences in the past....to the point that when friends from other places we have lived get in touch with me I have to dredge my memory sometimes to its depth to recall what it was like living in that particular town or city.  Looking forward makes me much happier than looking backward for whatever reason.

Anyway, before church began on Sunday morning one of the more senior members of the church asked me if I could go to the choir room and request a piece of music for her so that she could participate in the "flash mob" Hallelujah Chorus event that closes out the Easter service each year.  Away I went, up a long flight of stairs to the choir loft, through the doors into the choir rehearsal halls and rooms to locate the choir and the requested music.  As I stepped into the rehearsal room to ask for the music a flood of happy memories and emotions, from my own years of being able to accompany, direct and sing in choirs, assailed me. As I returned down that same long flight of steps to give the music to my friend, I could envision myself heading to the sanctuary piano instead and starting to play the prelude music.  It was so odd, so overwhelming, so deeply meaningful in a way that is difficult to explain.  The best I can do is that the experience served to remind and encourage me that I actually did have a professional life at one point, was able to make some sort of contribution to the musical education of my students and enjoyed the camaraderie particular to musical groups....it was a happy experience to have that flashback to some of the old and positive events in my past.  The feeling has remained with me, although of course it is far less intense now, a couple of days later.  I am glad it happened for whatever reason.

We had some spectacular Easter dinners this past weekend!  We enjoyed a giant chicken and all the stuffing, potatoes, veggies and salad we could manage to eat on Sunday evening.  My husband loaded his plate with cranberry sauce and I enjoyed my dietary cheat with a slice of lemon Easter cake covered in frosting and coconut sprinkles and teensy candy coated chocolate eggs.  (I admit I had two of the eggs AND one that was the same size my husband snagged for me during the children's Easter egg hunt after church in the morning! Bless him!) We met our friend's son and his wife and delightful 16 month old daughter. That is one bright little girl and I had a blast after dinner teaching her how to say "watch" after she spotted the one I wear on my wrist. It is shiny and she was fascinated by it. Once she had the "W" sound down, she sat and ran and played and kept saying the word "watch" over and over so she would remember it.  Cutie pie!  Her parents of course do not wear watches because they are young Digital Age'ers with smartphones. haha

After church earlier that morning, assuming we were going home because one of the reasons my husband insisted the previous evening that we go out for burgers was because he didn't want to have to go out for lunch after church, I was shocked when my husband drove us directly to Darbar for Indian food! hahahaha  What the heck??  Well, although I reminded him that it had been his own idea for us NOT to go out for lunch after church, he was not to be dissuaded, so we enjoyed yet another wonderful meal there. What can I say??  Other than YUMMY! HAPPY SURPRISE!!

Later that same evening we received an invitation from other friends to go to their house for dinner last night!  Wow...another great visit and wonderful, wonderful food...more chicken, which we love, a different type of stuffing and veggies and salad, more cranberry sauce for my husband and a home made blueberry pie for dessert....HOW BLESSED WERE WE THIS EASTER WEEKEND????  Amazing. We feel completely spoiled and can't wait to have all these people back over to our house in the next few weeks before my surgery! So, how can we not be foodies when we continue to be presented with these amazing meals prepared by our friends?? Right??

Well, my husband is ready now for us to complete the government copies of our income tax forms and then I will get them mailed away.  SO thrilled they are finally completed for another year!

 

Continuing To Wait On The Weather Each Day

On Thursdays I get up at 6:45am for a 7am breakfast.  That way my blood sugar is ready for the little snack my coffee buddy and I have at 9:45am over at Creme each week.  I followed my usual pattern this week, excited that no freezing rain had fallen overnight and only the occasional swirl of flurries was happening outside.  For only the second time in the past six weeks or so, going for our weekly coffee visit was not going to be hampered by bad weather!  Wrongo!!  Just after 8am my friend called to say she was worried that the freezing rain or heavy snow could begin while we were at the coffee bar and that would make getting home miserable for us both, so could we please try again next week and cancel today's venture out.  Sigh.... As I agreed to let our visit go once again, I got thinking about the fact that she lives on the top floor of a building on the farthest west side of the city, a building that looks out over farmers' fields that extend for miles and miles and that gives her the most amazing view of the sky and the weather that is headed right for us.  Hmmmm....she likely had a point that bad weather looked as though it could hit us at any moment and I realized it would not be a very relaxed visit if we had to peer out the windows at the coffee bar every few minutes to see if it was raining or storming.  

Turned out we could have gone out quite safely, but I was happy to accommodate my friend's concerns, as well as be grateful that for once it wasn't me who was cancelling our plans! The freezing rain never did make an appearance, although it could still arrive overnight and into the early morning tomorrow....don't care as we aren't going anywhere out of this house until Sunday morning as far as I know.  My husband and I did make it to our discussion group this afternoon and the worst weather condition we encountered was a pattern of extreme gales that nearly blew me over as I edged gingerly along our melting ice "road" out across the back lawn to the parking lot. hahaha The wind speed and noisy howling has become worse as this evening has progressed so perhaps we will still experience the remains of the storm that has been wreaking a bit of travel havoc to the north and west of us.

Since my plans for the morning were scuttled, I had time to do some outstanding chores, including getting a start on ironing my spring and summer clothes and packing a few more "dead of winter" items into the storage bins. I weeded out a couple of items from the first two spring bins, seeing that this year they no longer of interest to me...they are both SO OLD. Time to retire them. They are still in decent condition so they are in a bag to take to the thrift store next time we head in that direction. They will be like new to someone else who will enjoy wearing them.

There is a beautiful looking eggplant in my veggie crisper so I think I will cook that up tomorrow. I want to use up the rest of my winter white onions and some tomato sauce I made quite some time ago that is taking up shelf space in our food storage cabinets. Perhaps I will go online and find a recipe for East Indian Began Bharta. We have quite a few Indian spices and herbs so perhaps that will be an even better idea since I love that dish so much.  I am looking forward to this next two days to do a serious amount of ironing, some vegetable cooking and relaxing at home with no committments in advance.  If any social interaction arises spontaneously that will be wonderful as well.  

We received a card in the mail today from my husband's young cousin and her husband letting us know they have moved and giving us their new address.  I did a double take when I saw the address and went online to check the location of their new condo...sure enough, they are living in the same building we lived in the first year of my husband's seminary training in Calgary.  The building has been completely renovated and looks very good in the online photos. Oh my goodness...seeing that place reminded me of so many memories as I lived from the ages of 10 to 19 only four blocks away from there.  (Interestingly, this cousin's first apartment was only four blocks away from the house where I spent the first ten years of my life!)  Getting online it was so interesting to see how the whole neighbourhood has changed, (and in some cases surprisingly not changed at all), since our initial seminary days. What a hoot. If we get to Calgary in the summer we are invited to visit cousin and her husband.  At least their place will not be difficult for us to find! hahaha 

Tomorrow I will get my husband to take a photo of the gorgeous blooms starting to appear on the Christmas cactus my walking partner gave me for Christmas. My husband also took photos today of a couple of cartoon works we have from our son, back in the days before he was a fine arts graduate.  He is doing a talk to some university art students in Philadelphia soon and is supposed to tell his story of how he went from being a cartoonist to being a successful abstract artist, so that will be a lot of fun for him and hopefully for the students. Wish I could hear that talk!  It might answer some of MY questions too about why he took the direction in life he took for his art career.

A Little Restaurant Server Nostalgia......

For some reason my husband and I have been feeling rather nostalgic lately and have been talking about our many memories of various accommodations and towns that we have lived in, as well as some crazy experiences we have had over the past 50 years together.

After church today, while driving around seeking a restaurant where we could enjoy lunch, we came upon the Red Lobster and that started a whole new batch of old memories for us to enjoy, so we just had to stop in there for a meal.

Hahahaha....my own personal memories of Red Lobster as a franchise are from years ago when the first Red Lobster restaurant opened in Calgary....the early 1980's.   My mother, always a seafood fan and Calgary not being known for its plethora of seafood restaurants in those days, adored the place.  

Dad wasn't quite as enthused, but he enjoyed making my mother happy, plus he loved the baking powder style biscuits delivered to each table at a time when most other restaurants delivered tall glasses filled with dry breadsticks and pats of nearly frozen butter that were impossible to spread on anything at all, let alone the circular surface of a breadstick.  Aiii yiiii....trying to convince a sufficient amount of icy cold, hard butter to stick to any part of a slippery, round, usually dried out breadstick was an exercise in frustration every time, but it did give us something to do while waiting for the rest of our food to arrive at the table!  As was typical of my father, who could be incredibly charming to the ladies when he needed to be, he managed one day to wheedle a copy of the "secret" recipe for Red Lobster biscuits from one of the regular waitresses, (as "servers" were called in those days prior to gender based political correctness, just like when we used to use the word "secretaries" rather than "office managers" in a recent attempt to make our older generation of employed women feel guilty for being proud in those days for having the distinction of a work title that specifically indicated they were intelligent career females), and I think the dear woman lived in fear for the rest of her career there that Dad would let it slip to someone that she had done that for him and put her job in jeopardy. Oh my.....Dad never did of course, despite his predilection for making sure he told other people everything he knew about anything and everything, hahaha.

As we sat and ate our meal today, reminiscing as well about how the quality of the food and food preparation, as one of the first chain seafood restaurants we ever ate at, seemed to be better in "the olden days", haha, we remembered my parents with great fondness.  

We happened to have an excellent server today and she admitted that she loves her job. She is no "spring chicken" and told us her history of being a server, how much she balked at the idea originally, over twenty years ago and how much she changed her mind once she got started in the industry. She thought my admission that I lasted exactly four hours as a server back in the 1970's was hysterically funny, but she also seemed to feel quite sorry for me that I hadn't taken to serving as a career.

Talking to her got us started on remembering other interesting servers we have enountered at various restaurants over the years:

We remembered Teresa from a family based restaurant in Olds Alberta. The restaurant is long gone and Teresa is retired now, but she was one of the best servers we have ever had.  She had been a server for decades at other local restaurants before we had the pleasure of making her acquaintance. She was taciturn, had no idea what a smile was, which was a bit daunting until we got to know her, but wow was she ever efficient, quick on her feet, never got an order wrong and made every table of guests feel like she was there to serve only them and that it was her absolute duty to be certain they had the best food experience possible.  

Next on our list was a Greek woman whose family owned a Greek style restaurant when we lived in Moose Jaw. Her name remained unpronouncable to us both for the several years she served us meals, but when we found an obituary for her recently we were both very sad.  She was another one who had a taciturn personality...no, wait....taciturn is far too Warm and Cozy a description. She was downright blunt in her speech, not helped by the fact that English was neither her first nor her prefered language! When I first met her I remember quaking in fear of her, hahaha.  My husband never gave up on his attempts to tempt her into giving him a smile or a laugh, but it seemed  waste of his time for the first few years we frequented the restaurant. Then one day, whatever he said caused her to crack a teeny, tiny smirk!  He was overjoyed and even moreso in all our subsequent visits when she would boot whoever our server was at the time and take over our table.  That one small smirk was all he ever got from her usual plethora of frowns, downcast eyes, and apparent grunts of frustration about life in general, but he has never forgotten her as she made such a production for the rest of our years there out of the fact that we were HER customers and would allow no one else to look after us.  God bless her and may she rest in peace.

We remembered Gina, part owner and first class server at a very, very interesting Italian restaurant hidden away in a partially industrial area of north east Calgary.  How anyone other than people who worked in the surrounding buildings ever found the place was always a bit of a mystery to us, but I suppose that like us they discovered it by the word of mouth reports from other friends or family who knew of its existence.  It was never advertised publicly in any way. This was in the 1990's.  My husband's sister and her friend discovered it one evening when they were lost in the area, not really looking for or expecting to find a restaurant open and thriving amongst the office and industrial buildings that closed every day at 5pm.  Deciding to take a chance when they saw its glowing little "OPEN" sign, they went in and discovered what may have been the best Italian food in the entire city.  Gina was amazing, hilarious, somewhat intrusive perhaps, but larger than life people are always amazing to talk to.  Gina would size up each table of guests and before they had a chance to even glance at the limited menu options she would be telling them how she viewed each person and what she KNEW that person would want to order.  hahaha  I was quite taken aback the first time we were there and she approached our table, knowing she had never seen us there before and determined to impart her unique ability to read people as she told us what we MUST order that night.  In subsequent visits we barely got a glance at the printed menus before she descended upon us and told us that "I will have the chef prepare a very special dish for you tonight", before whisking the menus out of our trembling hands.  Gina always did have that effect on me. As soon as I saw her coming our way I would start to shake with just the slighted touch of fear, lest I say something that was construed to be a disagreement with her assessment of what we should be eating at that time!  Over the next few years we took a great liking to her and when the restaurant finally closed down as the industrial and residential neighbourhoods around it underwent drastic changes, it was a sad goodbye. The food truly was amazing and no matter what Gina chose for us to eat, we could never say it wasn't wonderful and just what we actually did want, even though we hadn't known that when we sat down.

Another Alberta server we remembered with great love and fondness was Elizabeth, a 22 year old cancer patient who was determined to work as hard as ever in between her heavy duty chemo treatments. She was an excellent server even on the days when she was grinding her teeth together and biting her lip due to the physical pain she was experiencing most of the time.  She was declared to be in remission within a year of her treatments, but less than two years later the cancer returned and she passed away eight months later.  It broke our hearts. She hadn't quite reached her 25th birthday when her funeral took place.  

From my childhood of course I remembered the servers at the old National Bakery close to downtown Calgary where, as a three and four year old, my grandfather would take me every morning for a "one and one, sis" before hauling me off to work with him.....that meant one coffee for him and one gingerale for me.  I never had the heart to tell him that I detested gingerale, but dutifully drank my morning "pick me up"  from Monday through Friday for many many months. hahaha  My grandfather was not what you would call a flirt, by any stretch of the imagination. He was a straight laced, lower class Irish tradesman, but he knew how to show respect for every person who was serving him either in restaurants or in supply stores, or wherever he happened to be.  He was my first real encounter with a true feminist, although of course that word, if it even existed in those days, would have meant nothing to a small child like me.  I worshipped that man and I find it interesting that my husband is a most ardent feminist as well.

I remembered today a server my family truly enjoyed the one time we found ourselves stranded in Salmon Arm at the old Greyhound Bus Lines terminal restaurant.  It was early in the morning on a Sunday, a cloud burst in the area had drenched our tent in a local campground and caused the bathrooms there to overflow.  In fact we woke up early due to the booming thunder, to discover our sleeping bags and air mattresses were floating on top of the water that had seeped inside our tent!!  There was SO MUCH RAIN!  The restaurant at the terminal was huge, every table was filled to capacity and the rain had prevented all but one of the serving staff from getting to work.  That one server took over the entire space and managed to fly around the place at light speed, making sure that everyone got what they had ordered, constanting intoning, "Sorry youse had to wait so long for your food", and setting our teacups and coffee mugs down with a flourish that reminded us of a card sharp dealing out a new hand around a poker table.  The elegant flourish and the use of "youse" in her vocabulary seemed an incongruous matchup.  Dad talked about dear Tillie for years afterward.  He hadn't met anyone like that ever before I suspect.  He wasn't really into having meals in bus depot cafes!!

Then there were the teenaged servers at the Chestnut Cafe in northern Minnesota where we stopped for breakfast one morning after a miserable experience in a motel the previous night.  We were hungry, exhausted from lack of sleep and eager to get to the Canadian border farther west, so we could go home to Canada...just south of Kenora Ontario I believe.... after over a month on the road for our honeymoon.  The head chef apparently announced that he was quitting shortly after the restaurant opened that morning, the other cook left in solidarity with the chef and that left four teenaged greenhorn server girls to run the whole place.  Although there were only a few other customers beside ourselves  those poor girls were having a terrible time.  As we sat awaiting our very simple order of bacon, eggs and toast, we could overhear their panicked conversations coming through the swinging doors into the kitchen.  "How do you know when the toast is done?"  "Oh no, I burnt the eggs!", "Do any of you know how to make oatmeal?????"  hahahaha Oh, those poor, dear girls were so flustered, completely incompetent to handle the disaster the resigning cooking staff had left them with and they were certainly doing their best to attend to the needs of those of us innocents who had arrived with the assumption that a bit of breakfast would soon have us on the road again. hahaha  If we remember correctly, the arrival of our meals went something like this:  my water, my husband's toast, my bacon, my husband's pot of tea, my husband's scrambled eggs, my toast, my orange juice, my poached egg....and there were LONG gaps of time between each delivery to our table.  We had to remind the girls that we could use some butter and jam for the toast, but by the time those items arrived our toast was too cold to spread butter onto, so we just used a bit of jam to choke down the burnt, crumbly and now very cold burnt black bits. hahaha  It was quite an experience. I don't know if the town of Canyon even exists any more, but personaly I had never seen anything like this place....although I have seen many a similar town in the years since then and they are still just as unbelievable to me if I am being honest.  hahaha

No doubt there are other experience with servers that I am forgetting now, but these are some of the most memorable. Some of them have appeared in previous posts, but it has been fun thinking about them again today. I suppose if a person lives long enough it is possible to collect all manner of interesting memories about the craziest things and people.  Thanks for sharing some of my memories with me.

We are enjoying the above zero high temperature today.  Of course tomorrow all the water on the sidewalks and streets from snow melt will be frozen until mid day, so we have reached that time of year when it is the most dangerous for me to walk anywhere out of doors, but oh, what a relief from the bitter cold.  I always find ways around the dangerous ice and will again this year, Lord willing.

 

 

"I Gotta Walk!!!

I don't remember if I have used that "title" for a post previously, but it certainly applies to me today!  It is a quote from a teeny tiny person who was one of a set of triplets born to good friends years ago and the wee one had a serious issue with the formation of the legs, leading to great difficulty in walking for the first few years of life.  How many times did we hear that child, constantly working on walking say, "I GOTTA WALK!!?  And you know what, it eventually happened. The teensy person now has a wife and children and is all grown up. 

This afternoon I was sitting at my desk watching the online funeral of a dear friend and I realized that warmth and sunlight were streaming in through the window beside me.  It caused me to long for a chance to go walking before the terribly cold temperatures reassert themselves next week.  As soon as the funeral ended I put on my coat and boots, grabbed my cane and went outside to take advantage of all the snow being melted off the front sidewalk.  After not being able to do more than a block or two round trip last fall and not getting any sort of proper walk since the winter snow arrived, I was concerned I wouldn't get very far.  Praise the Lord I walked a four block round trip with only minimal pain.  As I walked along the first couple of blocks I realized I wasn't extending my stride with my "bad hip" the way I would if I was walking normally, so I forced myself to consciously extend that limb for the last two blocks.  It wasn't long before I realized the longer stride made that hip feel like it was pulling apart along the old fracture line.  It wasn't actually pulling apart of course, but it is good get some kind of idea how far I may be able to walk using a reduced length of stride and how short a distance I may be stuck walking if I continue to try to walk normally.  Obviously my couple of weeks of physiotherapy exercises, simple as they are, have started strengthening the muscles around the degenerating hip bones.  I do realize though that if I was not taking generous amounts of anti-inflammatories, I would barely be able to walk at all. Sigh.....HOWEVER, I am encouraged to continue having a short walk each day of this warmer, "melt-ier" week.  

After I returned home, watching the relief on my husband's face as I came up the front walk and saw him watching for me in hopes I hadn't fallen down somewhere out of his sight, we watched the finale of the January Sumo Tournament that occurred last night in Tokyo.  My most favourite Ozeki of all, Hoshoryu, won the Emporer's Cup.  What a delightful outcome to a most exciting honbasho.

Now I must go and make our dinner before my husband awakens from his nap.  Tomorrow evening a friend is coming over for dinner and that meal I do have planned in advance, but tonight's dinner hour kind of snuck up on me. Since my husband is asleep, perhaps he will not notice that I am late with our meal????  teehee

Happy Memories Of Japan

 Friends of ours are currently visiting Japan.  They sent photos that evoked memories for me.  Here are a few of them from the Kyoto and Osaka areas:

 

Forest of "Big Bamboo"!

 The best food in the world, bar none!

Fascinating buildings!

Why can't OUR buildings be this creative and colourful, right?

My husband would enjoy one more trip to Japan, particularly a return to Tokyo, but I doubt it will ever happen.  Personally, I would like to preserve my memories from the last trip there, nearly a year of learning about and enjoying the culture!  It is the farthest I have ever been away from Canada and it was such a perfect time in my life to be out of the country...I don't want the changes that have happened since we got home to be in my face, spoiling the memories. 

I am sitting at my desk listening to the wind howling, knowing there is supposed to be a fair amount of blowing snow overnight....will the snow arrive or not?  Don't really care if it does.  I need to visit a friend in the hospital tomorrow before the deep freeze hits us tomorrow evening and lasts for about five days.  Then it is to warm up again to almost above zero temperatures. What a crazy winter.  I am not sure we are going to enjoy our trek to church on Sunday with the forecast temperature of -31C overnight and who knows what for a windchill factor. Hmmmm...we shall see how it goes. I suppose I will be attending as my husband has to be there for a class.  Each week is bringing us closer to spring and I am grateful for that.

My physiotherapy exercises are going not too badly, but o wow, am I ever sore after doing only 5 of them for 10 or less reps each (at least for now) only once a day while I am building up to 10 reps each session, three sessions a day.  At the rate I appear to be going, it is going to take me the entire month until I see the surgeon to get myself to complete the assigned exercise programme. Yikes...my muscles around the disintegrating hip are absolutely hooped!!  Owwweeee!!  However, I am keeping my eyes focused on the prize ahead...replacement surgeries!  YES!!!

Have a very happy weekend everyone.  I am going to enjoy mine with some household chores interspersed by watching the January SUMO tournament!  Yippee!!!  Grando Sumo!

 

 

More Blasts From The Past, Hahaha!!

 My husband downloaded a whole bunch more photos from the 1970's and 1980's into my photo files and some of them are hysterical. They are too funny not to share with ya'll, hahahahahahahaha....

I wasn't the greatest fan of Santa Clause, hence the stundo look!

Christmas 1966: cat's eye frames were all the rage....eeeuck!!!

Farmer Sue: at my aunt's farm in Saskatchewan in 1966....do I look rural enough??

Paternal grandparents and my dad in 1966...first night of tenting and almost the last!

Me 'n' Mom and my maternal grandparents 1968

My little cousin convinced me to ride her pony by myself...it didn't end well.....

At the Calgary Zoo Conservatory 1969  Paisley was SO big that year...eek!

A Summer Sunday Morning in 1970...no paisley at least.

1972: the Peak of the Knitted Poncho Era!! Aiii yiiii...

Me 'n' Mom on a mountain picnic...middle of the Bell Bottom Era

Dad lived for summer mountain picnics and Mom would pack a huge lunch!

Mom's and Dad's first trip to Hawaii in 1975

My Visiting Inlaws in 1978

Dad in full School Principal Mode in 1978

My Fam at New Years 1979

And now, you will all be pleased to know, my dinner is calling me and I must go and eat...you are released from the bondage of sharing my family memories, which seem to be assailing me from all sides this Christmas season.  I have left over Indian food awaiting me: chana, coconut pepper chicken, rice, veggie samosa, raita, salad, naan and mango rice pudding.  We went to DarBar for lunch after church today and half our lunch platter combos came home with us. YUM!!  Thanks for your patience all of you with my trip down memory lane.

Some Of My Favourite Old Paintings Of My Son's

 I just came across an old photo or two of my son's first forays into the wonderful world of contemporary abstract art...from the early 2000's I believe.  They were very popular and sold well.  I was unable to get one of them for us and it is one regret I have to not have one of these 3-D style paintings to round out my history of his changes of style through the years...the one gap on my walls. Things have certainly changed since those days!  Thought you might enjoy the patterns and colours.

Happy Choices Today!!! YAY!

 What a cool day we are having today....well, actually the weather is stifling hot again, but my husband and I are having a "cool" time of it anyway.

My walking partner was over for a good visit this morning.  Thanking God for her youth and joy in living, her interesting sharing about her life, her spiritual encouragement....she is a huge blessing to me.  

My next door neighbour stopped in as well this morning to get directions to a grocery store she wants to shop at as she is fairly new in town. She has been having some anxiety issues and is very stressed about living in this odd little complex, so I asked her if I can take her to lunch next week to give her a break. She is quite alone all day while her son is at work.  It would be nice to give her a change of scene and get to know her better.  Hopefully that will work out and she will feel less alone in here while her son is at work all day.

Our pastor called to ask me if I will read the Scriptures on Sunday, so I am looking forward to that.  We are reading the stories of King David and I have to say the preaching of those stories by various visiting summer preachers, as well as our own minister, have been very real and pointed and helpful...the Bible doesn't water down the issues of the various people whose stories it tells, therefore they are so relatable to every generation since the stories were recorded.  There has been no airy fairy pie in the sky white washing of David by any of our summer preachers...hallelujah!  Our minister this past Sunday even went so far as to remind us that sexual sin is not the only sin in the world and it is time we started being more forgiving toward and gentle with those who have fallen into its clutches. I was so happy that he could be so realistic.  

Then we headed out for some errands. One of those errands was to see if we could find a 9' by 12' area rug to put on top of our dreadful looking old living room carpet.  After the last professional cleaning we realized it no longer looks any different after the cleaning than it did before. It is just so old and damaged from likely more than 15 years worth of tenants.  We found just the right one at our first stop: a liquidation store of all places, Bianca Amors.  We only stopped there because we realized it is very close to where we had just run some other errands, so decided to look, not expecting to find anything at all, or at least nothing of a quality worth purchasing.  Wow, we were wrong!  There hanging on the wall was the perfect carpet for us.  It is an old fashioned pattern that suits our furniture very well. It was half the price of the ones we found online at the carpet stores and the quality is sufficiently high to last us for a number of years.  It will be able to move with us when we finally get around to that event.  

 

 

 My  husband realized as we left the store that one of our favourite little restaurants, which we rarely go to due to its location, was very close by. So we had lunch at Ginger Garlic.  SO DELICIOUS.  Last time we were there we felt disappointed because we ordered some dishes we thought we were familiar with, but it turned out this restaurant had a different take on them than we were expecting. The food was very good, but just wasn't what we wanted at the time.  Today we stayed away from those dishes, picked items we haven't ever had before and wow, it was marvellous. The service was fantastic too. A small bonus was that when I went to pay using the debit machine, the first tip option that popped up was 10% rather than the 18% so many of the other machines offer these days. Of course I tipped more than 10%, but it surely was nice to see that it was offered at all!  We enjoyed veggie samosas with such soft potatoes inside and the outside wrap not so deep fried that it was tooth breaking...bonus...the tamarind sauce was very good too.  My husband had a delicious chicken curry loaded with meat and sauce and I had the grilled fish sekwa that had a very thin chick pea batter around each piece.  It was a large serving for just being an appetizer.  The addition of a butter naan and the "on the house" appetizer of hot crusty potato strips rounded out our meal.  We very much enjoyed it and the prices are very, very reasonable.  We will go there again in the near future.

The other thing that happened today is that my husband, as he was going through more of his "Designer Basement Collection" as I am calling it, discovered the original Venetian blinds that were on our dining room and kitchen windows hiding behind a big box.  Why we still have them we don't remember, but we do remember why we removed them and purchased new ones as soon as we moved in....during a 2 week cold snap of -40C in January!  We were ticked off about the overall lack of cleaning in our suite when we began moving in, we were disappointed to be living in a space half the size of what we were used to before we came to Regina, and after all the other cleaning we had to do to make the place habitable, the extra two weeks we gave the management company to do some MAJOR cleaning jobs that we were told would be done but weren't, the idea of having to put the blinds into the bathtub to wash them, then find a place warm enough to hang them to dry, was just more than we could take.  We were exhausted by the time we got in here and got settled, so we pulled down the old blinds and replaced them with new ones at our own expense....the ones that, over the past 3 summers of intense heat, have melted in the sun.  They are now useless, so tomorrow we are going to wash the old blinds and if they are remotely acceptable at that point, they will go back up for the time we remain in this suite.  Less expensive than replacing the current ones, plus new blinds are now a completely different style...at least they are in this city....and Venetian slats are rarely available apart from a few at one of the hardware chains. The few avaiable have wood patterned plastic slats....no....not so much....eek!  If we have to get those we will....the venetians let the least amount of light and heat is and can be peered through late at night when we hear possible criminal activity going on in our parking lot or out on the front lawns. We shall see what tomorrow brings.  We will be able to hang the the old blinds outside on the back porch railing to dry in the hot sun.

 It has been a good day.  The carpet is down, waiting for a few days to stretch and let us know what direction it is going to start "walking" across the surface of the carpet below. At that point my husband will use a few carpet tacks to hold it in place.  My whole attitude about this suite is lifting as I gaze at something clean and new on the main part of the downstairs floor.

Thanking God for a good day today.

Hmmmm....Kind Of A Crappy Birthday "Celebration" Coming Up!

 My husband and I decided to abandon our phone "watching" this morning and go for a walk together.  Fortunately my husband brought his mobile with him because half way through our walk it began chirping at him that he had a call waiting.  We are praising God that it was, at last, a call from the ultrasound clinic to let him know that his initial cancer testing will be in a few weeks'time:  right smack dab in the middle of the day on my 70th birthday!  

Not quite the celebration of that milestone that either of us was hoping for.........sigh.....HOWEVER, that is one less huge "waiting for the phone to ring" stress off our plate.  Also, we are happy that the chances of this test showing cancer are only 50/50 and my husband's doctor is hoping for confirmation of the benign issue that he thinks it is. So, all is not hopeless and scary yet, if it turns out to be that way at all.  Yup, my husband will take all the prayers you care to offer up for him and he thanks you with a great gratitude indeed.  In the meantime neither of us is panicked....yup, of course I was panicked for the first week after the discovery of a possible upsetting issue, but those of you who know me know panic is my initial reaction to any sort of remotely possible medical worry.  Just bein' myself about this, as usual.

So, our plans for that day will have to be completely changed now and I am quite fine with that. My husband's health is far more important than trying desperately to celebrate a depressingly high birthday number!

I am very happy that after several weeks of pain in my neck and across the top of one side of my shoulders, I made a quick twist of my neck last night to see something going past outside the window and as I did so I heard a nearly deafening "CRAAAAAAAACK!!!!!"  Whatever happened to my neck when I cranked my head around "rubbernecking", has eliminated most of the pain that I have been dealing with.  Today there is still a bit of tightness in the back of my neck, and I have started doing some physical therapy exercises to help with that, but compared to what I have been dealing with, this bit of residual pain is not a big deal.  Stress tends to settle in my shoulder and neck muscles anyway and we have had rather a lot of that building up again recently.  While I have ultimate peace that a suitable place will be found to move to over the next couple of months, if my husband is dealing with a very serious health issue, that is going to change all our plans considerably.  Wow....life is NEVER boring, is it???  hahaha

My husband, in the course of his sorting through decades of accummulated "stuff" in our basement, came across a large box of our son's school assignments, academic awards, art projects, baby book etc.  I had no idea we still had any of those things. I thought they had disappeared years ago.  We spent a lovely evening looking at everything, keeping one or two letters our son wrote to his dad when he was very young, and the rest of the things will be boxed up and sent to our son to deal with.  Now that our son has twice as much space in his current apartment than he has ever had before, he can deal with his own things and decide what he wants to do with them.  It was an emotional evening in some ways: joy at the memories of happy times with our son when he still lived at home, interspersed with horrible memories of the other circumstances in our lives during his school years.  Today we are both feeling physically exhausted, mentally tired and emotionally wrung out.  Hopefully our son will have some really fun memories when he looks at his old school achievements and photos!  I hope he is spared the other memories that are not so great of that time in his life.

Our walk this morning was lovely!  The temperature is not too warm or cold, the breeze is mild thus far today, only a vestige of forest fire smoke in the air, the trees are leafing out and there are a few tiny flower buds showing up in a few garden beds along the route we took.  I will walk to my hair appointment this afternoon as well, so two short walks today instead of one long one.

We had a lovely visit yesterday afternoon with some church friends.  Something my husband said about "love" in his sermon last Sunday captured their attention and they had some questions to ask about what "love" actually is and how it differs from "gratitude" and "doing what is right in God's eyes", etc.  It was a stimulating discussion with our friends asking questions I admit I have never once thought of before, so I am digging deep into my own ideas of what "love" is and trying to figure out what, if anything, I am missing about the whole concept.  We shared snacks and drinks and conversation for a couple of happy hours.  It was a good afternoon and a very good chance for my husband to take a break from his sermon preparation for this coming Sunday.

Tonight my husband has the next session in the class on the Book of Judges that he is taking from the diocesan school.  He certainly has been enjoying it.  He has three more classes after this one, taking him into June.  I am not sure if he will have to miss one of the final two sessions or not in order to go to NYC to see our son, but for now, he is getting a lot out of it.  It is being well taught by one of the seminary professors at Briercrest, so it is certainly a quality course.