Playing With My BRAND NEW Refrigerator!

My husband just got into his beddy-bye for an afternoon nap after a very busy day of walking a few kilometres to doctor's appointments, cleaning hundreds of dead mosquitoes off our car after our Sunday trip out of town, (yes, the little turkeys are still hanging on, invading house and car, biting like crazy while we await a good hard overnight freeze to finish them off), hauling ice packs out of the old broken down fridge and helping haul it across the kitchen so our new one could be pushed into place.

Yup, we have a brand new, never before used by anyone fridge/freezer, so new the tapes were still in place to keep the veggie and cheese drawers and outside doors closed for transport.  WE ARE DELIGHTED!  

While it was having its initial hour of emptiness to cool down properly, we headed to Chuck's Roadhouse for a VERY late lunch...about 2:30pm.  (The food is good pub grub type food and their 11am to 5pm lunch menu features excellent prices for just the right sized portions of food....the Baja tacos and Cuban sandwich were delicious, although my husband said the fries could have been crispier! While we waited for our food we had a good look at the 2010 Harley Davidson bike on display....the front disc brakes were kind of new to us....fascinating to look at.)

As soon as we got home and checked that the cold level inside the fridge was correct I started removing all the frozen foods from the camper freezer so I could organize them properly. This new freezer compartment has a SHELF so it was much easier to arrange the foods and separate the meats from the breads and veggies while the small bags of frozen herbs and fruit fit easily into the two shelves in the door.  The main refrigerator unit is just slightly smaller than our old fridge, BUT the two inside the door shelves are twice as wide. They held what the old door shelves held, plus all the other condiments and jams and sauces that didn't fit in the door of the old fridge. So, plenty of space even with the cheese saver drawer tucked into the shelving in the centre of the unit.  A quick wipe off of the exterior to remove a bit of dust and another quick wipe inside the fridge before it got cold, then the joy of having a NEW REFRIGERATOR had me laughing and crying at the same time.  I do not remember the last time we had a brand new fridge in any of our previous rental homes and we started renting in 2001!!  Twenty-five years of well used fridges and freezers. What a blessing this new unit is. 

Yesterday I had a long distance chat with an Island friend who told me she knew "it was a long shot and an unlikely possibility" that we would get a brand new fridge in our dilapidated unit and I agreed with her.  Well Penn....the Lord answered your prayer for us with a resounding "YES!"  And here is how it happened:  when the office manager called this morning assure us that a refrigerator had been secured she explained to me why it had not shown up yesterday when we expected it.  Turns out there was indeed a used one sitting in the warehouse that she earmarked for us and it actually was delivered: to the WRONG UNIT!!!  Since there are tenants in this unit....who no doubt wondered upon returning from work last evening why there was a different refrigerator in their home, (and what happened to the food in their old one I have no idea).....the refrigerator wasn't able to be removed from there and then re-delivered to our place, SO since it had been the only used one in the warehouse, there was no other option but to order a brand new refrigerator from their usual supplier of such newness.  THAT Is how WE ended up with a brand new refrigerator.  Penn, thank you for encouraging me yesterday to feel free to at least ask God if it was possible to receive a new fridge, even if still being prepared to accept an older one.  I didn't truly believe you and I would see that kind of answer.  (I realize there are a couple of other friends and family who also told me they were  praying for a new unit and I thank you so much and hope this answer encourages you in your prayers as much as it did me in mine.)

Oh happy day!!  We have leftovers from last night's meal at DarBar thawing for a late dinner.  It has been a blessed day.  Tomorrow the blessings continue with coffee hour with my Thursday buddy and Friday we are having friends in for dinner.  That will be a lovely start to the Thanksgiving holiday weekend! 

The weather is supposed to be less than wonderful between here and southern Alberta on Sunday into Monday of the coming week but then things should dry out and warm up a bit for our quick trip west. 

 

Family Is The Best These Days!

 After being awake for a couple of hours in the night I finally fell asleep for three more hours and slept in a bit.  My plan was to down a bite of breakfast and then wash up some pots and pans and other things that have been in need of a refreshing cleanse for some time so we can use them for making stews and soups during the upcoming winter.

However, at 8:30am the phone rang.  It was our son. He wanted to report that he has his new art studio up and running and organized. His first painting in the new space has begun with a canvas all prepped and the hand drawn transfer of his latest sketch onto the canvas completed.  He sounded so joyful and excited.  He is meeting with his immigration attorney in a couple of weeks regarding his status application and will have an interview about it, along with his wife, later in October.  It is very important that he do well in the interview, so if you are the praying type, could you send up a prayer for him to be ready with ALL the necessary documentation and be at peace both now and during the interview.  His wife will also be interviewed and there will be many personal questions asked to ascertain the possibility of changing his legal status in his newly adopted country.  Oh dear Lord, help him not to be overly anxious. Amen!

By the time we finished the long conversation I only had time to eat and get dressed before it was time to head to the airport to pick up the same friends who picked us up there when we returned from our recent holiday.  As it turned out their plane had already landed by the time I got parked in the lot and the first few folks had debarked. Fortunately my friends were seated at the back of the plane and were among the last to depart. Whew!!  Made it on time!! Me AND the plane.

After stopping off at a restaurant so my hungry buddies, who had been up since midnight our time in order to catch an early flight from the "far east", could eat a very belated breakfast, I dropped them off and headed home.  I paid the rent for next month on my way back into the complex and intended to scrub down the abandoned pots and pans then.  

Nope!  hahaha  I was barely in the door when I received a series of text messages from an arts and crafts retailer on the east side of the city letting me know that an order for materials, recently placed by an out of town friend, had arrived for pick up.  Since I will be seeing that friend on Sunday when my husband performs a church service in her city, she had arranged with me to pick up her order this weekend.  I decided to put my shoes back on immediately and head out to the store to avoid the worst of the Friday afternoon traffic and am so glad I did.  Getting there was so easy, the traffic was still light and I was home well before the early weekend rush hour had a chance to start.  It was fun going to that store. Since I am not the crafty type, well at least not in that sense teehee, I enjoyed taking a quick gander around all the supplies for people who have creative talents that have escaped me.  It was a lot of fun.  

I came home and FINALLY got the pot clean up done, then realized I was kind of tired....not exhausted and miserable tired, but tired because of happy busyness all week long.  The wind by this time was gusting to over 60km so I decided I would add that factor into being tired and go to visit my hospitalized friend tomorrow instead.  I admit to putting on the tv and falling asleep less than five minutes later. I slept for over half an hour, tv blaring....sorry neighbours who apparently are home all day every day....and felt much better for having napped for a while.  Not too much longer it was time for dinner and I was so grateful for the large pot of chili my husband cooked up yesterday.  

I cleaned up the kitchen after dinner and am now relaxing with this blog post. I plan to go to bed early...like perhaps by 9pm....and read myself to sleep.  Tomorrow in the morning I need to drive across town before noon to have our drinking water bottles filled, then plan the best time in the early afternoon to go and visit my friend in hospital.The day will likely fly by and then it will be time to head off to our out of town church service early the next morning.  

Gosh this has been a great week!

Me feeling dwarfed in Grand Central Station!!

 

He has a sale for it, but it is hard for my son to give this one up !  Wish I could afford to buy it myself.

 Welcome to "our" neighbourhood in Manhattan

Cruisin' down the river on a Sunday afternoon..... 

The Good Kind Of Tired!

You know the kind: it’s the kind that happens after a day of hard work and productivity. I lazed around a bit this morning, only making breakfast and washing dishes after before heading to my dental appointment. That went well and as soon as I got home I got ready to go for a haircut that I badly needed. 

I decided to walk the five blocks to the salon without my cane because of the encouragement I got from walking cane-less about the same distance for lunch after church on Sunday. Today it was beautiful weather and I enjoyed staggering along under the clear blue sky, comfortable +22C degrees, and well past the worst of the end of summer surge of wasps. As I walked, limped, hobbled along I realized my main issue in walking farther than I have been without my cane is mental nervousness rather than only slight physical discomfort. I am terrified of tripping, falling, running out of energy to get where I am going with no cane to support me, so I need to keep slowly expanding the distance I can go sans cane. My breathing is not relaxed like it is when I have that extra support, I am unnecessarily tense all over, so these factors combined to make me feel exhausted by the time I got home.

However there was no time to rest, as my body was screaming for the lunch I had no time to eat between appointments. I threw a tuna salad together, gulped it down too quickly due to hunger, then started cleaning the three downstairs rooms to be ready for tomorrow night’s company. There was a lot to deep clean, floors to wash,  I had to move all the living room furniture so I could roll up and wrestle the 9 foot by 13 foot carpet and get it turned end for end, then vacuum and move all the furniture back into place. Yes, I could have asked my husband to help me, and he was less than impressed that I didn’t, but he was forcing himself to push through extreme tiredness and a reaction to his own dental work this morning to deep clean his little library and his office. No way was I going to add lifting furniture and hauling that carpet around to his list. We managed to make dinner and clean up afterward then relaxed with the most recent broadcast of the current Sumo Basho. 

I was about to head upstairs to get ready for bed well before 7:30pm because my tail feathers were definitely dragging, but the phone rang right about then. It was the dear friends who picked us up at the airport when we got home from New York. They are currently out of the province themselves, are flying back in a couple of days, their previously arranged ride home from the airport had fallen through, so we arranged for me to go and collect them when they arrive,  yay! I love picking people up at the airport! Maybe I will be able to take them grocery shopping before taking them home. They did that for us and it was wonderful! 

Yup, a tiring day in all the best ways! Tomorrow I cook!

And….

It is nearly time to return home. Tomorrow is our last day of holidays. Saying goodbye to our in-law family after the Rosh Hashanah dinner last night was much more difficult than I imagined. Who knows when we may see them again? 

My husband had so much fun discussing Torah and the interpretations of the writings of various philosophers and theologians with the young cousin who teaches at Yale and the visiting young family friend who is very knowledgeable about Jewish beliefs and practises of various sects. He had a wonderful time. We both did. We feasted well, special rabbinical permission was granted for our son to blow the shofar even though it was Shabbat…it was a fun gathering.

Today we woke up feeling rather out of sorts from too much food, too much excitement and social stimulation and too much sadness about leaving on Monday. We forced our limp dishrag selves over to the Townhouse Diner for a final late morning breakfast and kibbutzing around with the staff, wandered from there over to Grand Central to top up the OMNY transportation cards our kids lent to us, and drifted home again in kind of a daze. 

We set up our online declaration forms for re-entering Canada and I will get the items together that each of us will be carrying, along with the receipts, and make our declaration first thing tomorrow morning of what we are bringing back. Most of the books we bought will remain here with our son, who is going to leaf through them before he ships them back to us. There are too many to squeeze into the luggage. The concierge here has booked our taxi for Monday morning at 5am.

Most of the rest of the day was spent reading and napping and my husband worked on a diocesan newspaper article that is due shortly after we get back. We opted out of running out to Roosevelt Island and taking the overhead tram car back to Manhattan because it seemed it would take more energy than we would be able to muster. So, that is one of the things on our “To Do Next Time” list. We still hope there will be a next time and we realize staying in the future for less than a month will not be a great idea. We are spoiled now! Roosevelt Island is the site of an old smallpox hospital and besides that tourist attraction there is a beautiful park and there are apparently good restaurant s and views of the water. That trip, the Guggenheim and the Museum of the Moving Image are high on our priority list, along with another trip to the area around the town of Beacon upstate. Here’s hoping for another long stay here in the not too distant future.

It has been wonderful to be “somewhere else” where thoughts and questions about my possible next hip surgery have not needed to be thought about, where there has been comfort in knowing there is no point in thinking about that, about the battle we will face with Canada Post for not holding our mail despite the exorbitant amount of money we paid for that service, about upcoming preaching and teaching gigs for my husband, about the arrival of frost and fall back home when it is still so lovely here, etc., etc., etc. Those thoughts began to intrude when we woke up this morning and kind of zapped our remaining energy. 

Oh well…..we still have tomorrow to enjoy! Our kids are having us over to their place to make pancakes and share old family photos and stories. Aunty will join us and bring her own stories of flight from Czechoslovakia during the Second World War and subsequently living in Israel and Canada and the U.S. It will be a happy day despite having to  say goodbye. 

Full And Happy Days Here In Midtown!

Yesterday was a nearly perfect day. The previous day’s rain ended so the temperature was comfortably warm and the skies only slightly cloudy. We slept in once again, then in the late morning wended our way over to the Morgan Library and Art Collection, originally founded by J.P. Morgan, who our son refers to as a “robber baron”. After seeing some of the artifacts in the collection I am guessing there may be some truth to the description. Besides thousands of antique books, the art collection is amazing: the personal seals of many Egyptian and middle eastern VIPs dating back into the early hundreds BC., as well as the most fascinating collection of ancient gold and silver brooches and standing hat brooches I have ever seen. Among other bits and pieces is a hand drawn, signed, pencil score by composer Gian Carlo Menotti.  We spent far longer there than planned. It was fascinating. 

On the way back we stopped for lunch at 2nd Avenue Deli where I ate a fantastically tasty hot brisket sandwich. It was, in typical deli fashion, stuffed with layers of brisket about 5cm thick. I confess that, other than a bit of bread crust, I ate the whole thing! The side of slaw and the two styles of dill pickles mostly went into a takeout box and my husband finished those up for breakfast this morning. 

Before we came home we went to Trader Joe’s for a carton of carbonated water and a couple of other items. The 5 or 6 block walk there and then back again carrying a few bags of groceries does not seem so onerous now that we have been out walking every day but one since we came here. Slowly our strength is returning after many months if enforced inactivity in SK between weather, general health and surgical recovery issues. We are loving it here. All my ongoing skin issues have cleared up for the first time in a couple of years, likely due to the humidity, and we have so much energy. It is nearly unbelievable how much more energy we both have. 

Shortly after arriving back to the suite it was time to get ready to go to the in-law family Shabbat dinner, where we would finally get to meet the rest of our daughter-in-law’s family. What a great time was had by all. We met father, uncle, brother and family as well as a cousin we already knew. The Shabbat blessings on the bread and wine were carried out in Hebrew by our daughter-in-law and her uncle with the English translation given by her cousin. Her two year old nephew added life to the party, the food was spectacular yet simple: challah bread, top quality Georgian red wine, salmon, roast chicken, tabouleh salad and mixed fresh fruit and tomato salad. Normally there would not be a cake, but we were also celebrating the cousin’s birthday so there was carrot cake and a scrumptious plum and cardamom cake. After my giant lunch at the deli I was able to keep my appetite well under control, thankfully. There were yummy appetizers before dinner but I was careful to have only a couple of bites of caraway bread with chicken liver pate and a Czechoslovakian cheese spread, two olives and a tiny mushroom tartlet. Yay me! Hahaha

We are heading to our son’s home early this afternoon for a bagel brunch. Our daughter-in-law’s father, brother and family will also be there for a final visit before they fly back to their own homes in Toronto and San Diego. What a treat it has been meeting them. 

Tomorrow we hope to attend what appears to be a somewhat thriving and vibrant Episcopal church a few blocks from here. The 11am service utilizes the pipe organ and full choir, so I think that is the one we will attend, since the 8:30am service utilizes only the organ and I cannot visualize our happily laid back selves being awake and ready to go quite that early in the morning, haha. 

Monday we need to put together a full day away. The city utility company has chosen that day to shut off the hot water and AC for a full 24 hour inspection of some kind. Losing the AC is no hardship as we find keeping all the windows open at all times just as effective. Our windows are well shaded by other tall buildings leaving us perpetually in the shade. So the suite is somewhat dark and gloomy, but always comfortably cool. We will still be able to boil water on the gas stove as far as we know, so as long as we actually still have running water we will be fine. The hot water should be back on at 6am Tuesday….fun and games!

What The Heck Was Going On Around Here Today?

 Our own day was rather subdued.  My husband had a number of emails and short papers he had to finish up today and I did the laundry. Big whoop....However, these chores all needed to be done tout de suite, so it is all good. The weather was nicely warm all day, not much of a breeze, but most tolerable for temperature and the sun shone brightly.

Our complex as a whole though had a few issues going on this afternoon.  Kids from two different buildings in our court got into some kind of a scuffle and then both sets of parents got involved. The one set of parents who live closest to us actually called in other adult reinforcements! All of a sudden there were cars full of grown men and women arriving in the lot, filling up the parking spaces of other tenants. Just as this angry mob was about to descend on the offenders of the other family involved in the original fracas, three police cars manned by six officers arrived and put a stop to the melee before it had a chance to really begin.  Thank you Lord!!!  It seems that almost every day this week something or someone has caused an issue in our particular part of the complex. There are various repair men being called in to suite after suite every day, tensions have been high among the kids when they have been out playing, men from different suites who, to the best of our knowledge don't even know each other, have been outside arguing over what each parent lets their own kids get away with outside....today was a most blatant display of ridiculous anger and how quickly mob mentality over small issues can escalate. The police were here for the better part of an hour before all the "extra help" and even the involved adults from the suite nearest to us got in their cars and drove away. Those neighbours have not yet returned.  

Shortly after the police left, the children of two other families who had not been involved in fracas numero uno got into a huge fight outside our front door. The older boys put the run on the one boy's two younger brothers eventually, then one of the dads went slamming outside hollering at the older boys and physically dragging them back into their own suites. 

What a wild afternoon.  Other than a brief soccer game just before dinner between five boys and a couple of kids out in the back tooting on whistles and driving us all completely mad for an hour after dinner, there have been no kids outside tonight, no parents sitting out on their decks talking all evening.  You could shoot a cannon down the middle of the parking lot and or across both front and back lawns and not hit a solitary soul.  I am not happy about the reasons for that, but I have to admit I am thoroughly enjoying the unusual level of quiet this evening.  

I hope tomorrow is less frantic between the various kids and their parents.  Today was rather ugly so my husband and I remained indoors until things calmed down enough that we felt sufficiently safe outside to take out the garbage and compost to the bins.  

We talked about church tomorrow, took a look at the long list of things that need to be done around here and have chosen to remain at home instead.  The list of things my husband in particular has to achieve before we travel seems to be getting longer instead of shorter, so I helped him with a couple of things tonight.  The service will be available online by mid afternoon so we can watch it on YouTube once it is posted.

All the laundry for the trip is done and I will do some ironing tomorrow.  There have been a couple of serious changes of plans at our destination, so we have to change some of the clothing items we planned to take originally.  I will do another trial pack up with the new items at some point this week, so in that aspect of the trip I am starting all over again.  Always something, right? hahaha 

The Days Are Flying Past Too Quickly It Seems!

Sorry folks that I won’t have any more interesting fonts here until I have time to go back through previous posts to discover which link I included in one of them that has a setting which overrides my Google font settings so I can change that post and sort out the fonts again. Always something….

It seems July is disappearing on me already! I am still adjusting to the loss of the month of June and it is nearly August! I haven’t even been doing much of mesmerizing interest, yet the days are flying by. Saturday….did we even have Saturday last weekend? How did we spend the day? 

Sunday was a happy day. My husband preached and presided at our favourite out of town church, so I was able to sit with dear friends. After church a meeting turned into a wonderful lunch get together. I love conducting spiritual “business” over a good meal! Yum!

Wonderfully warm, but not overly warm weather coupled with blue skies and a comfy breeze made for excellent driving conditions, which I very much appreciated since I did all the driving. My husband awakened at 6am with one of his delightful tummy disaster episodes, so we were both intensely grateful that it passed before we had to leave for the service!

Sunday evening we relaxed and indulged our entertainment needs with the latest episodes of “Patience” and “Grantchester”.  At 8pm my neighbour came over to ask if I could drive her family to the grocery store, so I enjoyed that brief outing. I think her husband was surprised to find himself relegated to the back seat with the children after I put his pregnant wife into the front passenger seat….welcome to Canada Saleem, teehee! I think he forgave me? My husband and I were still a bit hyper from the joy of the day out of town, so we both had to read ourselves to sleep. Late night arriving visitors next door woke us up again at 11:30pm and their joyful outdoor greetings and subsequent backyard soccer game kept us entertained until nearly 1:30am. Thankfully we could sleep in yesterday morning.

We are currently being blessed with two days of temperatures of about +24C before heading into another week of highs in the mid +30C’s. I took advantage of that yesterday to do all the laundry that accrued during the previous very hot week. This morning I am about to bake a fruit loaf and that will be the last of my oven use for awhile again.

We are currently awaiting the arrival of the building maintenance staff to perform the quarterly Changing Of The Furnace Filter, as well as the plumber who is scheduled to flush all the drains in our unit. Guess I should go and get the banana loaf made before our place is inundated with trades folk.

Oh, before I go, could you send up a prayer if you are so inclined for our neighbour Hafav who just lost one of the twins she was expecting and is struggling medically to retain the other twin to term? Thank you SO much.

A Bit Of A Change.....

 ....in the weather today!  At least temporarily this afternoon we are seeing some sunshine and blue sky poking through the clouds and it is glorious. The temperature is into the low +20'C's this afternoon. What a treat.  Possibly more rain and thunderstorms tonight, but not the certainty in the forecast for those events that we have had in previous days.  After going to bed at 1am once the noise of people and traffic from the fireworks display last night calmed down, it was very nice to wake up to lighter skies than I have seen the past few mornings.

It was a perfect day for running errands after my happy visit with my coffee buddy this morning.  We took another load of "basement items" to the thrift store, but the medium sized old steamer trunk was not acceptable after one of the supervisors there deemed it too large to deal with....hmmmm....sofas are not too large apparently, so not sure what the real reason was. No problem.  We drove down an alleyway in The Hood, located a number of homeless people living in a patch of long grass behind an abandoned house, opened the car to show them the trunk and one of the fellows was more than happy to balance it on his bicycle while he rode away to wherever he has his belongings stashed. He is thrilled to have something to store his belongings in to keep them drier on these rainy days....or maybe he is looking to sell it for some money so he can feed his addictions, but whatever.  It is out of our basement and will be useful to this man in some capacity.  Thank you Lord for hooking us up with him.  The other boxes that were accepted at the thrift store have left another fairly decent sized patch of basement floor free to do more sorting.  Although it is taking an exceeding long time for my husband to clear things out of there it IS happening this time, ACTUALLY HAPPENING, compared to every other move we have made around the country over the past over 20 years.  YAY!!  Now that my husband has started to recover from his latest round of tummy episodes and is no longer taking the statin that gave him severe headaches every day for over a year, he is starting to lose patience with all the things he has been storing in the basement. I am seeing items leaving our house that I never ever thought he would decide to get rid of.  Last weekend he hauled both of his precious canoe barrels to the home of a friend who is starting to take large groups of teenagers from his school on canoeing expeditions.  WOW, someone who not only can use them but was so excited and grateful to get the barrels that my husband was just glowing as he handed them over to their new owner.  YAY AGAIN!!!

We stumbled across a very low price for gasoline as we passed the reserve gas station on Albert and filled up for $1.49 per litre.  That is always exciting and particularly so today as the car was less than a quarter filled with gasoline when we started out on our errands today.

After "fixing" a screw on my glasses the other day, resulting in my inadvertently bending the frame so much that the focal point of my glasses shifted and left me with double vision for the past 3 days, I decided I had best go to the vendor at my eye doctor's office and try to get them fixed. Fortunately for me, although they were not in great shape, they were better than I thought. The tech there was able to get them back into shape and my vision is restored.  However, she did show me exactly how badly I mangled them and advised that the next time I need a change of lens prescription I NOT try to have the new lenses put into these frames as they are too fragile now.  I have learned my lesson.  Leave the "turning of the screw", even though I do have the correct tools at home, to the professionals.  Wow, do I ever feel stupid.  I thought I was so smart taking care of that loose screw on my own, but in the process I made a huge mess of my delicate and expensive frames I have had for less than a year. Sigh.....hopefully when I have my annual eye examination in the autumn I will not have to get a change in prescription.  However, if I do I have decided I am going to ditch the graduated lenses, convenient as they are in many ways, because it takes so little for that central focal point to be moved due to dropping, bending, having any sort of accident with the frames and then my vision is kaput again.  I am going to ask my optometrist to take me back to a single lens for middle and longer distance and then have a pair of reading glasses.  Yes, it will be inconvenient, but I am realizing how much I have been struggling with these graduated lenses over the past 20 years, never seeing as sharply as I discovered about three years ago that I COULD when my optometrist forgot to put the close up part of my prescription onto the scrip for the techs. The mistake wasn't discovered until I had my new glasses for a week, was thrilled to be able to see more clearly and sharply than I had in years, but then realized I couldn't read any books up close. hahaha  I know how badly the vision issues of the last three days affected me because once things got sorted out again today, I became nauseous after wearing the repaired glasses for about an  hour.  It didn't last long as my eyes adjusted to being able to see more clearly again, but wow....I did a REAL NUMBER on those poor frames.

We picked up a few groceries before we came home....2 regular sized cloth tote bags...$160!  The cost of everything continues to rise and it is becoming more and more difficult to see any huge discount on the sale items.  Tomorrow we are supposed to get our first updated Grocery Assistance/GST,PST rebate from the government, but I am wondering if we will get any raise at all from the whole $49 per quarter we have been getting. I suspect not, hahaha.  Guess we will find out tomorrow.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Rain Came Down And The Floods Came Up

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Wiggle Waggle, Wiggle Waggle....All The Live long Day!!

 The large puddles in our parking lot that formed during recent rainy days has attracted quite a following of bum twitching geese and their babies...well, toddlers now....and so we are once again inundated with geese after a lovely slow start to the rise in population on our lawns.  Over here they are away from all the power walkers and their dogs in the park across the street and they don't have to lead the "children" down a steep bank to the lake to get drinking water.  We are prime real estate for these families, including one mom and pop who are herding 19 goslings around the place. Ooooh, the poop on the lawn is even worse right now than it was last summer when we had a regular adults only population of between 30 and 40 each day. I never thought I would miss our childless couples so much! hohoho!! The rain has made it impossible to scoop the poop up yet, so.....eeeewww....I have a lot of shovelling to do, maybe tomorrow afternoon. Not that the geese will be gone, but if I can clean it up every couple of days or so and the clean lawns last for an hour, that would be sufficient.

My husband was badly delayed getting away to his friend's place today after having to run me around for medical appointments and medication pickups, but he finally drove off late this afternoon....and returned less than 10 minutes later to get his sunglasses and hat that he left in MY vehicle. hahaha  Well, he should be more than half way to his destination now and there should be dinner awaiting him when he arrives. Then he and his buddy can spend the evening packing all their gear properly into the CRV and take off early tomorrow morning for their destination to the west.  This trip is easier than most because they will be staying at another friend's place...inside...so no need for tents and other equipment specific to outdoor camping.  Yay!

The first meds I took this morning hit me pretty hard.  I felt like I was moving under water and couldn't keep my eyes open for the next five hours, but the second, mid afternoon dosage hasn't bothered me that way at all. What a relief!  I expect I will feel kind of lousy again closer to bed time as these sorts of sinus/ear/respiratory infections tend to hit me that way. Tomorrow morning I will feel horrible again I am sure, but will sleep sitting up with my tv pillow behind my back so that I don't have sinus drainage into my ears as badly as I had last night when I slept flat on the bed.  I was feeling just at the edge of dizziness for part of the morning and am grateful beyond measure that I didn't cross that line after all.  I stood outside the clinic door from 7:30am until 8am waiting for it to open, much to my husband's horror, but being outside always clears my head...just standing in the fresh air, my rain hood up to protect my ears and a warm sweater under my coat, kept me upright long enough to get into the clinic and sink into a chair for the whole one minute before I was called into the exam room.  I am glad the zombie like drug reaction ended because I was afraid I was going to feel like that all day. Whew!

The kids next door are inside the unit screaming their heads off and their three friends are there with them bashing and banging around in their suite so loudly and continuously it sounds like they are going to come right through the walls.  It is the worst noise they have ever made but there is a reason for it: they are alone in the suite with no adults present. This morning the next door mom and dad were picked up by some friends to take dad to a walk in clinic or maybe the Urgent Care clinic because he is very ill apparently.  Six hours later they have yet to return. I have no trouble believing they have been waiting at Urgent Care for that long, or perhaps they had to take him into hospital for tests after his appointment and that will take forever. My husband watched him trying to walk to the car this morning. He was hunched over and obviously in severe pain and discomfort. So we have been praying for him today.  The parents of the other kids in the suite live close by so if the parents from next door don't show up soon I am hoping our neighbour kids will be fed and taken care of if this situation goes on for much longer.  In the meantime I can hardly think from all the pounding on the walls and in the stairwells and from the constant shrieking and hollering and screaming. hahaha I remember how I would  have felt being alone at home with my siblings and all our friends with no adults present. The kids range from age 4-14 so I bet they are having the time of their lives. I know I would have! hahaha

A Night's Grace And Then Our Part Of the Widespread Storm Arrived!

 Although yesterday involved a fair amount of windy gusts blowing us about, no rain arrived and we slept all night with the windows open, barely a breeze happening.  My walking partner and I had a a lovely short walk in the morning and then I walked sans cane over to the hairdresser's and back after lunch with only a stiff breeze to contend with.  Around 7am today the real winds began, but still they were manageable.  No rain until mid afternoon. For the past two hours the house has been shaking, we have been forced to shut the windows to keep the rain out and the storm is definitely "ON", but we are no longer scheduled for that 20-40mm of rain, only about 10-15mm.  I continue to pray that the wind will continue to blow in directions NOT directing the rain into the weakest points in the foundation of our suite, but the mop and bucket, along with plenty of towels are all adorning our basement at the moment, just in case.  My husband is doing some work down there on purpose so he can keep an eye out for any water breaching the filler in the walls. I brought my husband's new lawn chair inside to keep it from blowing away in the present gales.  

SO thankful that the worst of the wind had not started by 8:30am because my coffee buddy decided the weather was good enough for her to keep our weekly visit after all.  At that point the sun was shining. She had a good drive over and we had such a wonderful visit.  By the time she left the sky was turning grey but the winds weren't much stronger than they were when she arrived so I know she got home safely.  

All the walking yesterday made me rather tired today, but I got through my first set of chores okay and was sitting about after lunch wondering if I hadn't better get going on the ironing from Tuesday's laundry when the phone rang.  It was a dear, dear friend I rarely see any more, so 90 minutes later when we hung up it was getting too late to start a major task. Since the power has been blinking a bit and threatening to go off, I decided ironing was a silly job to start.  Of course it could go off and scrap this post as well, but this risk is more FUN to take than ironing. haha

Last evening was quite a surprise and quite fascinating:  my neighbour's 12 year old daughter came to the back door around 7pm and motioned for me to come to her place.  Out on her back deck, sitting on carpets and cushions, were her mom, Mohammad's mom and another, slightly older woman also from Syria.  The three women met when they were all out walking separately through the complex and just ran into each other, got to sharing in their Arabic language and discovered all three are refugees from the same city in Syria.  So now my neighbour has two good friends here.  The reason I "had" to come over was to meet these women and after an hour together of sipping tea and trying to communicate together......them on the deck flooring and me balancing precariously on an overturned plastic pail with a pillow on top since there is no way I can get down on the ground at this point, they dropped the hint that perhaps I could start teaching them all some English. Mohammad's mom is the most skilled in English speaking and comprehension but the older woman is the most skilled in understandable gestures and she has an hilarious sense of humour.  Oh how much I wish she was already an English speaker so we could share some laughs of understanding together.  Compared to Arabic, English has facets that are much easier to say and to remember. ("In Canada, one man, one woman, two men, two women and a big crowd are all "YOU!"  In Arabic they are all different words....said with just a touch of pride, teehee.)    So now I am praying about whether or not I should offer them a class once a week or so.  One issue will be that their husbands want the families to speak Arabic at home....a decision that helps no one in the family adjust to living in Canada, even though their reasons are understandable. Such fear of losing their culture and language, but it is hindering their kids in school.  If the women I am teaching are not allowed to practise it at home in conversation then my efforts will be wasted and their frustration will continue to grow. With the cuts in ESL and other such courses in our dear province of late.....over 170 staff in those programmes have recently been cut and there are more layoffs pending.  There is literally no in person programme available for my ladies to attend here.  They have all tried online courses but were completely lost, thus gave that up. Sigh....  SO government folk: let's just continue opening the floodgates to let refugee families into our province and then not allow them to learn the language we speak here. Yup, makes a ton of sense, doesn't it?  Sigh....  The women were trying to teach me some Arabic words but the only one I can remember is the word for house because it sounds like a French word I know. hahaha  I am far more hopeless about learning Arabic than any of them will ever be about learning English.  At least as they continue to live here and keep trying to understand and speak a few words, they have hope of one day becoming sufficiently fluent. Ancient I however.....haha....hopeless!

So there is my conundrum and prayer request. Do I volunteer some time to attempt to help them with their English or do I just step away and let them figure it out on their own? I am under no obligation of course to take them on, but what would God like me most to do?  It would be conversational English only as I no longer have my materials from teaching adults in Japan and I am not prepared to make this a "final phase of life" calling. We shall see how things go next week and in the meantime I am praying hard for direction.  

I have one plan in place already for when my husband is away hiking next month: I am going out of town to church on the Sunday and going for lunch afterwards with a friend.  Really happy I will for sure, Lord and weather willing though of course, have a little time away myself! 

Bouncing Back! Aiiii Yiiiii.....

 So, 90 minutes after it started my husband's episode passed and he is bounding about the place quite happily.  I wonder why it is that some medical issues that bother us in childhood disappear as we hit our teen and adult years, then return in our elder years.  My husband started having these types of stomach issues when he was about 4 or 5 years old and they disappeared by the time he was a preteen. Sometimes he could trace oats as the culprit, but removing them from his diet didn't clear the problem completely.  He remained free of all such attacks until he was in his late 60's when they began all over again and only sometimes involve specific foods.  This time however we can't seem to track any particular offender, so he is keeping a daily food intake diary and recording his reactions to each thing he ingests.  Here we go again.  Last time we  discovered that now pears and beets are no-no's and presently cucumbers, plus bananas at bedtime seem to be adding to his discomfort this time around, but he has eliminated that starch and others at bed time with only minor improvements to the condition over all.  Well we will keep at it until we discover if there are any other foods that have filled his food sensitivity bucket to overflowing.

I am happy to have been able to go out in the raging wind and drifting snow a little while ago to find some grocery items we know he can still eat without any reaction.  Wow, no one would ever know that between our next door neighbour and my husband a good 8 inches of snow were shovelled off our decks and back yard paths to the cars yesterday afternoon.  Between more flurries this morning and the strong winds those decks and pathways are all blown in again.  Probably not worth shovelling until a bit later when the flurries have stopped for some time.  The wind will just fill in the gaps with pre-fallen snow again.

My it was good to have the automatic start to melt the sheen of ice off the windshield of the car before I got out there.  I had a suspicion it was something we would enjoy having and now that we do, my suspicions have proven to be correct. 

All things considered, the day and my husband are definitely improving and soon it will be time to watch our local girl try for her second attempt to qualify for the diving competition finals.  I do wish her very well indeed.  It is daunting to come back into international competition after being out for so many months with an injury.  

Carol And I Are BOTH Improving Slowly But Surely!

It has been a glorious, warm and sunny day today.  What a relief after ongoing snow and ice and fog for the past few days.  Okay, okay, tonight it is to rain again and be a bit colder for a day, but overall the spring is winning its struggle to get started around here.  How I appreciate the attempt!

After a relaxed morning of lingering over breakfast and reading a couple of more chapters together in our current shared book of choice, (Steve Saint's "The End Of The Spear"), we went over to the hospital to visit Carol.  I think it is one of the few times I have truly experienced seeing someone transition "from death to life" so quickly.  Only three weeks or so ago Carol was on the verge of death, comatose, her body fighting sepsis and her kidneys and heart and lungs on the verge of shutting down.  Today she is lucid, bright eyed, texting and emailing on her phone, eating well and doing her in bed physiotherapy each day while she waits for a bed in a short term rehabilitation facility.  We had a wonderful conversation, prayed together, shared mutual joy at her nearly miraculous healing and it was incredibly encouraging to my husband and I.  So proud of her for fighting through this disaster and starting to come out healed on the other side of it.  Now we pray for the rehab bed to come available to her sooner rather than later.

My husband and I parked our car a couple of blocks away from the hospital...not only to avoid having to pay for parking, haha, but to give me a chance to do a few blocks of walking outside without my cane.  I admit I felt kind of discouraged about the severity of the limp by the time we returned to the car. BUT my husband said to me, "You know, if you were under the care of the very first physiotherapist you ever had, no doubt he would have some kind of little trick to help you walk with less of a limp."  "Yup", I thought. "He likely would have some little trick fer shur!"  

After we got home I got thinking about what my husband said. I started walking around the living room and checking what I was doing with the foot on the operated leg. Sure enough, I discovered I have not been rotating the weight off of my heel and onto my toes when I am walking.  When I go to step forward with the non-operated leg, the toes on my operated leg are not receiving my weight in order for me to roll forward off those toes so that that leg pushes back at the hip while the non-operated foot reaches forward to take that new step.  Duh....how could I have missed that one little fact in the midst of all the physiotherapy I have been doing so faithfully???????  After dinner tonight I spent some time walking around the main floor of our suite, deliberately rolling my weight onto those toes and immediately my gait became, if not perfect, far more natural so that the limp was greatly reduced. Voila....a new strategy to work on to lose the limp.  Bless my dear husband for what he said. It certainly got my attention and seems that this new practise for walking technique is going to help me.  WOW  and YAY!! Since the top of that tendon is not functioning properly any more I have to stop assuming walking postures will return automatically.  I have to deliberately place my leg and feet in the proper walking positions and continue to do that consciously with every step until I have retrained the surrounding muscles to make it happen with less deliberate pre-thought on my part.

Early to church tomorrow as the adult early morning class is starting a six week series of teaching and discussion on various words used in the Bible that are not necessarily understood any more and that have passed out of popular usage.  I don't know what the topic is for tomorrow or who will be teaching it, but I do know my husband will be teaching next week on "purity".  Looking forward to this new class.

This afternoon's icing on the cake was a visit from a dear, dear friend....the one who bought our Honda a few weeks ago.  As I watched her pull up beside our car in the lot I had the funniest feeling watching what used to be our car being driven by someone else. hahaha  We had a great visit.  I so appreciated her dropping in because she has a schedule every weekend on her "days off" that would do me in even if I was twenty years younger!!  That woman can complete more tasks in one day than I can complete in two weeks or more. Incredible!

Enjoy the rest of the weekend everyone and if you have good weather already for spring, enjoy every second of it.  Thanks again for praying for Carol.  God has been very positive in his answers to these requests and everyone in her family is grateful.

Now, if my husband could just have his tummy troubles settle down....less intense episodes today, but two instead of only one.  I am certain these issues all tie in with his CFS, so we just have to discover what it is food-wise that may be setting off these episodes and he can no longer eat. When we finally figure that out we will have to take time to also figure out if this food is permanently off his diet list or if he can restore it to the menu once he recovers from these present attacks.....aaaah, never a dull moment around here with my husband's health issues. Since the CFS has been going on since 1986 I think we are both kind of used to it at this point.

Got Through It!

I am delighted that despite a nearly 2 hour wait to see the specialist today, my husband got through that wait and the appointment without rushing out ill before the appointment even happened. Thank you Lord!  About a half hour before we left to go to the clinic, I noticed my husband was turning pale again and he admitted he was starting to develop the initial  symptoms of the tummy attacks.  He drank a bottle of nearly freezing cold carbonated water as keeping cold seems to either heal these attacks or fend them off altogether if he can get the water down soon enough.  Yup, it did the trick, but we took another bottle of water and a freezer cold pack with us anyway. So grateful neither was needed.  

By the time the appointment was over my husband was feeling MUCH better and I am sure good news from the specialist, the best actually, was a large contributor to his change of both attitude and colour and symptoms.  He felt great, so we walked over to City Hall and purchased three packs of pre-paid downtown parking vouchers to try them out until we feel sufficiently ready to learn how to pay with our mobile phones.  hahaha  The vouchers are easy peasey to use. They are like lotto scratch tickets so I will have to carry coins in my wallet whenever I park downtown.  You simply scratch off the date, hour and minute of parking, and the year, detach the voucher and put it in the front window on the dashboard. If you think you are going to need the full two hours allowed you simply remove a second voucher, fill it in the same way and just move the time ahead by one hour then place it beside the first voucher on the dashboard.  It only takes a few seconds to do that.  City Hall has space for two or three cars to park for free for up to 15 minutes for people going inside to purchase the vouchers.  So, we now have 14 hours of pre-paid time left for downtown parking.

My husband was ravenous (of course he was....the stress of the appointment was not only over, but he got good news), so he decided we should try out the vouchers immediately.  Fancy Fork was on the way home, so there we went to have our lunch....at 2:30pm!  Thankfully I had chosen to eat a very late breakfast this morning just in case we got held up at the doctor's office, so I was well within my six hour maximum window between meals by the time we ate at the restaurant.  I made the mistake of ordering the beef dip....I say it was a mistake because it was so blasted tasty I used the fact that the whole wheat buns the meat was on were too fresh and soft to last if I took half the sandwich home,  to justify eating the entire sandwich.  Well...."only" about 4-5 carb units all at one time.  (I brought the side of fries home with me for another day.)  I had to exercise when I got home to try to wear some of those carbs off before they raised my blood sugar too much.  hahaha  The beef was delicious, not much fat and I didn't come across any gristly bits, the garlic mayo was not too strong and the fresh very thinly sliced onion slices were a nice addition. There could have been a bit more au jus, but that is a minor technicality. It was the most delicious beef dip I personally have ever eaten.  My husband had a cheese burger sandwich, without the cheese since he never eats beef and dairy together, but he got a good amount of lettuce and tomato,  a bit of strip bacon and the very delicious Caesar salad...dressing on the side to cut down his fat intake due to the two strips of bacon on the burger.  So, we both cheated just a little and enjoyed every mouthful of our most reasonably priced mid afternoon lunch.  I was so relieved my husband was feeling better and able to eat so well after living on grilled cheese sandwiches and plain pancakes for week that I nearly cried into my plate!!

Despite the temperature rising to a balmy -3C this afternoon the wind was bitterly cold all day. So the inch or so of snow hasn't really melted anywhere that car of foot traffic hasn't turned it to icky slush.  Maybe tomorrow we will see more sunshine and less wintery snowfall.  Maybe...   

A Wonderful Surprise Gift Came In The Mail Today!

 I got quite a surprise when I checked our mail today!  A box came for me from my husband's cousin in Ontario. She and her husband used to live here and he was one of my husband's most beloved colleagues.  Inside the box was a most beautiful and wonderfully knit shawl in my favourite shade of grey!  Cousin had worked hard with tenacity and determination to learn how to knit in this style and I was the blessed recipient of her amazing efforts.  (She is talented at all things craft, garden and food/drink, and swordplay related, but knitting something like this has not been of interest to her....until now it seems.)  It is quite delightful to be getting unexpected gifts...first books from a Vancouver Island that arrived yesterday and then today this shawl.  Wow....incredible to be so thought of and gifted.  Thanks so much you two!!!  I am feeling special today.

When It's Spring Time On The Prairies!

 We woke up this morning to a thick blanket of large snowflakes coming down...way more snow than the predicted "flurries".  There were about 3cm of snow that had melted off again by the time church was over just after noon.  The streets and some sidewalks are sloppy with water puddles and our back lawn is soggy, sodden and bog-like to walk on.  

We completed our series of study this morning on literature and poetry in the adult church class. This morning we read a story by Annie Dillard, "A Field of Silence".  Her descriptions of being alone on a farm one day, while sometimes being uniquely over the top as is her wont it seems, certainly encompassed my own feelings of loneliness, desolation and a need to see God in a new way when I spent my first time living (for six LONG weeks) on a farm back in 2001.  City girl that I was, it was very difficult to make the adjustment to the differences in sound, sight, distance and general culture so I found that her writing captured those desolate, confused feelings very well.  

We lunched at the Knotted Thistle afterwards.  I enjoyed very much their Celtic Plate....a huge no no for my diabetic carb count, so I did leave a portion of the massive mashed potato base, but thoroughly enjoyed its covering of sliced roast beef strips, peas, cabbage, gravy, "real" bacon bits, fried onions and gravy.  Any meal that consists so heavily of hot beef smothered in hot browned gravy is my kind of comfort food!!  We took our time and reviewed the church service and what all we had gleaned from the sermon today.  It was fun.

As soon as we got home I collected the spaghetti meal I made for our friends yesterday and delivered it to them. They decided I should stay for a good long visit over coffee and that was lovely.  I will be vibrating for the next three days from the strength of the coffee, but it tasted so darned good!  If it wasn't for needing to keep my caffeine levels so low due to osteoporosis, I could really get back into drinking good coffee again. 

Tonight we will watch the church choir Easter concert online.  Trying to get parking near the church on concert nights is a hassle and as the temperature will be well below zero again by then the now wet, puddley sidewalks will be a sea of ice I don't need to be walking on.  It is more fun at home because I already know a number of the choir pieces they are doing and I can sing along in my old croaky voice without disturbing or offending any of the concert goers, hahaha.   

Tomorrow it is back to the full physiotherapy routine and a start to getting my spring and summer clothes ironed and hung in the closet.   We are expecting about 5cm or thereabouts of snow between tonight and Tuesday morning, hopefully no more than that and most of it should melt off in a few days' time.  Spring on the prairies....the weather changes several times a day, snow falls and melts within a few hours or even minutes, the sun comes and goes over the course of each day, the clouds change from white to iron grey to white again, then disappear altogether for a day or two between snowfalls.  All this topsy turvey weather is a great omen that spring is actually going to happen this year. What a crazy start to the spring season....as always!

The latest update on Carol is thus:  all of the sedation drugs have been stopped and she was expected to wake up yesterday, but she didn't.  This afternoon she has begun responding to pain and other stimuli for the first time, so that is positive.  The nephrologist would like to avoid having to put her on dialysis for a few days to help pull the rest of the sedation meds from her kidneys and hopes they will bounce the drugs out on their own.  He will continue to monitor that situation for a day or two and then reassess.  Her family are feeling more positive about Carol's eventual recovery, but even if the final outcome is spectacular, it is still going to take a long time, lots of medical care and our prayers for her.  Thanks again from everyone for your prayers and concern.