Glad For Some Rain This Coming Week, But.....

 ...will the areas with the forest fires here get any of that rain and if so, will the rains bring lightning to start more fires?  The situation in BC in the Okanagan Lakes area is horrendous with over 20,000 people evacuated and many homes and other structures already lost in the fastest growing forest fire that province has seen in recent decades.  They are in desperate need of sufficient rain to start putting out the fires, but not of the lightning that so often accompanies the rain storms.  There are other bad forest fire situations in BC, (and in many other provinces right now), so many in fact that the province has declared a state of emergency.  What does that mean in terms of receiving more assistance in corralling the fires and getting them put out? What does that mean in terms of taking care of the evacuees when some of the towns who opened their community centres and personal homes to those fleeing fires are now also under threat?  This is the most frightening summer ever for so many in our country as fires rage across every province to one degree or another.

I had a rather poor sleep last night.  The noise outside was worse than usual even for a Saturday overnight and there was no breeze at all.  People seemed to be coming and going from the parking lot throughout the night and at about 5am the same "bro's" who woke me up at about that time last Sunday morning were out rousting about loudly and in their usual State of High once again. hahaha They are quite the trio and apparently live somewhere in this complex.  Our next door neighbours were dropped off at home by their friends at about 3am, so it took awhile for the  youngest boy to settle down and stop screeching and bashing about.  Usually I can sleep through most of these things, other than the bro's, but last night I wasn't relaxed.  I read a book between 5am and 7am then fell asleep again until after 9am. It was glorious. There was no time to get to church at that point so after breakfast I went grocery shopping instead.  The store was quite busy but the shelves were newly and fully stocked, so I found everything we need to get us through the next few days before we go.  Wonderful!!  My husband also slept in so he began writing a long epistle to a friend who has been waiting for this email for a couple of weeks already.  It is nice he has this morning free now to do that.

This afternoon I will watch online the church service we missed. I will iron yesterday's laundry. Fortunately the only things that need ironing are a few things of my own that I am taking on the trip and it won't take long to complete the task.  

I am enjoying the cool temperatures and slightly overcast sky today.  The sunshine has been marvellous but knowing there is some rain on the way this week is relaxing. It means that as I race around town getting last minute preparations done for our trip I won't be overheating and feeling headachy and miserable. YAY! 

Some Joyful Retail Therapy!

Today I felt like the town resident characters in the old animated movie "Gulliver's Travels".  In my head I was singing "It's a Hap-Hap-Happy Day" as my husband and I embarked on a day of long awaited retail therapy!

Yesterday we made a list of outstanding purchases that have been building up for the past three months or more but that we haven't had to mental or emotional OOOMPH to bother going out to shop for.  Let's face it, we are both still getting over this past winter's depression and it has taken a very long time to get interested in life again.  My surgery a year ago June took more out of me than I realized and it effected my husband too on top of his own resurgence of symptoms from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.  What a pair we have been for the past more than a year....talk about Old Grumpy Pants and The Missus.  I don't know if it is because we are planning to be away from here for awhile very soon, or just that we got so bored with being miserable that we finally smartened up, but this past week we have been feeling more and more in control of our lives and have been happier than we have been for quite some time now.  YAY!  Thank you Lord.

We spent the better part of today knocking the various items off our long list....clothing items, groceries, household items, medical assists.  We had a very inexpensive lunch out at Roots...all day breakfast for me and a chicken and brie burger for my husband. We were very surprised by the low price when our bill arrived at the table.  It was a nice treat after spending a few hundred dollars on our purchases.  Neither of us could believe how long we waited to pick up some of the household and medical items...how have we managed for so long without this stuff????  Tells you how out of it we have been that we kept putting these things off.

It was incredibly hot here today, but spending most of the day inside air conditioned stores and our car meant we survived the heat well.  I got all the windows and blinds and curtains closed and the window inserts installed by 8am, so we had very little serious buildup of heat inside our suite today.  Hopefully I can do as well tomorrow as we face yet another hot day.

Tonight, also after putting this chore off for the past six months or more, I went through all the income tax and investment folders from my parents' estates that I have been storing since Mom died early in 2022.  I had not realized I have been storing old tax files from as far back as 2015 for both of them.  Since I only have to keep the tax files from the year before each of them died, the year they died and the following year's tax forms and then only for 6 years, I have a new pile of "stuff" to be shredded and it is going to take several hours. That will keep me busy between other chores next week.  I have now been able to place the files I need to keep into my cabinet and the huge box that has been sitting under my desk, getting in the way of my foot placement, has now been removed to the basement!  YAY!  I haven't been able to face even looking at those files for the past couple of years.  I didn't want to see my parents' handwriting for some reason....kind of a silly side of grieving I suppose....but tonight I handled it well.  Enough time has passed that I can have visual reminders of their previous earthly existence without feeling overwhelmed by loss.

What a positive and uplifting day. Now, if I can just convince my newest mosquito bite to stop itching so that I can stop scratching it "down to the bone", I will have just as happy a night of sleep as I have had a happy day of shopping! 

The jury is still out on what we are going to do for church tomorrow.  We are in the process of making some changes in our lives and even church destination is presently up in the air for the rest of the summer and into the autumn. 

Flash BOOM, Flash BOO....Oh What A Night!!

 My new box fan worked wondrously well between when I turned it on at 11pm and shut if off again at 2am!  It is the identical model to the one that just stopped working after nearly four years of constant nightly use and this new one works as well as the old one did.  YAY!

I shut it off at 2am because of an incredible lighting and thunder storm.  We didn't get so much as a drop of rain unfortunately, but the flashing of the lightning through the open bedroom window woke me up and the crash of thunder after each flash, along with the gusting winds had me wondering if I should head to the basement to hide from a possible tornado. (Saskatchewan has had 34 tornadoes so far this summer.)  Flash'n'Crash carried on for about 40 minutes, after which time I fell fast asleep and forgot to put the fan back on.  Just as well because at about 3:30am the next round of lightning and thunder came through, less virulent than the first bout, but still enough to wake me up.  I fell asleep again so quickly that I wasn't able to rouse myself to put the fan back on, although I did leave all the windows open.  Without the fan running it is warmer inside our suite this morning than it was yesterday when the outside reached the current temperature of 24C on its way to somewhere between +33C and +35C.  Yuck!  Oh well, there is no snow and, more importantly for me, no ice to worry about falling on outside.

My husband woke up in time for us to arrive at the telephone store outlet just as they opened, so we were third in line to see an agent.  We came out of the store fifteen minutes later with our US phone plan set to kick into place the day we leave.  We are delighted.  Next week we will arrange the holding of our mail.  There will be banking to arrange the week before we leave, I need to update some info for our estate executor, figure out what we are going to do with our car while we are gone, etc. etc. etc.  BUT slowly we are picking off the arrangements that can be made this far in advance.  YAY! 

Once we arrived home I tackled a pile of papers that have been waiting to be shredded for the past few weeks.  Good to have that project cleaned up and out of the way. 

Now it it is lunch time.  Not sure what to do this afternoon. There are lots of little household chores needing doing, but where to start, what exactly is reasonable to tackle in this heat...hmmmm....we shall see what transpires this afternoon and evening.  We were able to pick up the live sumo highlights for Day 13 of the basho before we went out to the phone company, so that was fun to watch while we ate breakfast.  Day 14 should be live right around dinnertime tonight....so grateful that the Japanese broadcasting station NHK allows us to download the daily bouts online for each of the six tournaments throughout the year. 

Looking Forward To Another Partial Day Away Tomorrow!

Really happy to be getting away again tomorrow for at least part of the day.  My husband is conducting a service out of town and it is going to be another rather hot day, so the air conditioning in the car will be very nice. Don't know if there is air conditioning in the church we are attending, but the ceilings are so high in that old, lovely brick building that I don't think we will be sweltering in the service.   Now that we have had a full day away, we are more eager to flap our tattered old wings and take off for a few more adventures than we have been having over the last year or so.  

I am going to have to pester my husband to come and assist me in figuring out what happened to all my fonts that I downloaded for use in this blog.  A couple of days ago all that would download from my list of fonts were the names as usual, but the actual fonts disappeared.  Every font name is written in this default font like you see in this post.  I am tired of fiddling about with it trying to get them to come back in reality and not just in the list of names! It is a small inconvenience, but I would like to know what happened. Did I accidentally press a key on my keyboard that removed them?  Is it a glitch with my computer?  Sigh....

A friend from another province is scheduled to phone me on Monday. We haven't talked for weeks and weeks, so I am really looking forward to her call. She is considering a move out of her current town of residence and I am excited to hear how she is progressing with her research and decisions...an in province move but to a different town, a cross country move?  I am hoping to glean some of her energy so that this autumn I can attack our own hoped for moving possibilities once again. 

Once A Calgarian Always A Calgarian I Guess......

 After promising myself I would NOT subject myself to the stress of watching the Stampede Parade this morning and upsetting myself over the lousy tv coverage...admittedly live parade coverage is one of the most difficult tasks for any tv announcer, but please CTV did we really have to spend so much time on ridiculous interviews with parade watchers and stupid meanless questions from the obviously untrained interviewers?  Seriously??? Was that necessary?....of course I could not resist turning on my tv to see the parade. Duh?  Why do I do it?  Every year despite my own over the top criticisms of the coverage?  I do it because I was born and raised in Calgary.  I will do it until I am no longer able to watch television.  My husband, (himself a former broadcaster), always joins me,  against HIS better judgement and we watch it together, sharing not only criticisms but also the hundreds of happy memories we have of our times spent living in Calgary and watching the parade live every year...me the native Calgarian and my husband a Calgary transplant.  The parade brings back to us memories of the Calgary of my youth and his college age years, an old version of a Calgary that no longer exists of course, but one to which we still have the fondest of memories...of our families and our friends that we had there over several decades before we moved out of Alberta completely. Now all our family members that we enjoyed there have all died, apart from a cousin and her husband and one of her kids and family.  There is one family friend who was there when my father brought me home from the hospital as a newborn, but those are the last remnants of our lives there.  I think the happy nostalgia is why we put ourselves through the parade coverage every July.  I doubt I will watch the chuckwagon races this year.  They have been cleaned up for safety, smart, smart I know, but the thrilling danger of the races has been taken away and I don't find them all that fascinating now.  Hopefully there will be a tribute at tonight's first races to the recently deceased Tommy Glass, chuckwagon driver and race horse breeder extraordinaire!  

This week one of our own city's wonderful brew pubs reopened after being closed for two weeks due to a major flood that ruined the lower half of their establishment after an aging connecting pipe from the newly installed front street water/sewer system into their establishment failed and cracked.  The front street was part of a renewal of that area of the city and part of the process was relocating the water main shut off valve to the pub.  When the old pipe broke and water began flooding in the staff immediately contacted the city to have the water valve shut off....AND it took three HOURS for that to happen. Why?  Because, apparently when that valve was moved, no one in the city waterworks department seemed to have a clue as to where it has been relocated!  It took them nearly 3 hours to find the thing.  Good grief!!!  That poor pub. They have lost SO much business in the past two weeks.  I do hope they can recover as many losses as possible, both in the physical building and financially! 

I am chuckling today over the first of this coming year's new Harmonized Sales Tax Rebate that arrived in my bank this morning.  (I think it has been renamed the Canada Grocery Rebate or something similar.)  We all received a one time "Extra Payment" a few weeks ago and I received a whopping $42.  Today I found out what my quarterly payments will be between now and next July:  an even more thrilling $38!  I am not sure I can handle that giant rebate, hahahaha.  Actually I am not complaining!  It means our overall income has risen considerably since the years when we were receiving nearly three $300 per quarter. We are grateful to God for this change in rebate because it indicates we have invested wisely the past few years. Our need for the larger rebates has finally been reduced substantially. The years of saving we did after my husband left his business and became an employee again while we continued to scrimp and save has paid off.  Thank you Lord.  Amen! 

A bright, warm day awaits us, finally, as we prepare to run a few errands once again. Being retired means we don't have to race madly about for hours all in one day each week, we can space out the errands around more fun things to do! 

 

 

Wedding Clothes.....Starting Over!

This morning I put on the dress I purchased for my son's and daughter in law's wedding reception and had another long look in the mirror.  My response to the apparition staring back at me from the mirror was somewhere between meh and blah.  Okay, so the feelings I have been having about that dress over the past couple of weeks since I purchased it do have some merit after all.  I will start the search again later this week or early next.  The dress is nice enough that I will wear it lots this summer....assuming we eventually get some actual summer weather at some point.....but it just isn't at all what I had in mind for the event.  I thought I could make it work, but no, I can't. My son told me the other day that it doesn't matter what anyone wears as long as they are comfortable in their clothes and I know I won't be comfortable in this dress at that celebration. The search continues......maybe a skirt and top??  When I start searching again I will add that possibility to my list.

My husband had a bit of a tummy reaction after eating some very tough green pepper skins as part of his salad last night at dinner.  I found myself unable to chew the skins properly and ended up spitting them out, but my husband gamely swallowed his and paid the price.  He is fine now after a couple of short naps today to get over the tummy stresses, but neither of us seems to have much energy on this overcast, chilly, rainy day.  

I know I am a bit tired after doing most all the housekeeping yesterday, but I am starting to rally mid afternoon. There is still time to wash down those bathroom fixtures after I finish this post....I engineered a small flood in there this morning when I was showering, (dropped the shower head and it went behind the shower curtains out into the centre of the room before I managed to corral it and reel it back inside the tub....duh), so the floor got a second washing today while I mopped the water up.  hahaha  Only I......hahaha.

I am reading the scriptures at church this coming Sunday, so that is always fun. Nice to have something to be responsible for at the service. I think the worst part of my husband's retirement for myself is that I feel so useless sitting in the church so many Sundays with nothing to contribute other than my ample butt in a pew.

Speaking of church services, we got kind of a shock yesterday.  A friend who attends the out of town church where my husband is sometimes asked to take a service in the absence of their priest contacted us yesterday to say she had a copy of their bulletin for a couple of Sundays from now because she will be the Scripture reader that week. She was so delighted to read that my husband is taking that service. Wha??? He IS?????  He was shocked to find that out as there was nothing noted on any of our calendars, but he did a deep dive into old emails and sure enough.  That particular date had been offered to him a couple of months ago and he had accepted it. hahaha  He has been so busy concentrating on two other services he is doing hither and yon over the next couple of months that he had completely forgotten about the one our friend reminded us of. hahaha  So, at this very minute he is polishing off his first sermon draft and getting the Readings for the day firmly established in his memory.  Thankful for our dear friend who is excited we are going to be coming to her church again and is responsible for him now remembering that. hahaha I hadn't remembered either. What a pair we are, eh?  

Tomorrow is Canada Day....it is going to be July 1st already.  June disappeared in a cloud of....I don't know what.  Where did it go? Did we do anything at all of significance?  The only things I remember about the entire month are my husband's trip to the mountains, my birthday weekend and seeing the surgeon for my one year hip surgery checkup.  Good grief....2026 is flying past me completely out of control!!  We rarely take in any of the Canada Day events here in our city as they are all so crowded with people. Tomorrow there is a good chance it will be raining for at least part of the day, so we are hoping the fireworks display that begins each Canada Day at sundown, will not be rained out!!!  So Happy Birthday once again Canada....just in case I don't get around to wishing you greetings tomorrow.  At this rate, should the grey skies and rain continue, I may not have the energy!!

He Said It Best!

 The amount of reminiscing my husband and I have been doing lately is a double edged sword of memories of my life not that many years ago and my life now.  Oh my goodness how things have changed....

Charles Baudelaire sums up my feelings about the past and present very well: 

"How little remains of the man I once was, save the memory of him!  But remembering is only a new form of suffering."

From La Fanfarlo

If you knew me "before" you will understand what I am saying and if not, take a closer look at the quote and analyze where your own life has taken you over the years. How do YOU feel about the changes; in your circumstances and in yourself?

 

Please Lord, We Don't REALLY Need Any More Indications That We Need To Move Out Of Here....

....we've been trying again really hard to find a new place to live over the past couple of weeks, really we have!!  This morning I had a bad reaction to the strong tobacco our hookah pipe smoking next door neighbour inadvertently sends into our suite a couple of times a day.  It is so much better when he and his two buddies from our complex sit outside around a tiny table and smoke the hookah, but the past couple of days it has been too cold and rainy. Yikes!  I woke up coughing and phlegmy at 5am and haven't slept since, despite giving it a good try again mid morning.  My sweet husband could smell it as well and although he doesn't have the respiratory reactions I do, he certainly sympathizes greatly with me and he took me out to Beak's for a giant chicken sandwich....nice to be able to use the coupon book we bought a few weeks ago for a substantial discount.  YAY!!  As is usual the headache that was threatening to hit me once I got out of the smoke....typical reaction that I feel worse for a while once I get away from the irritant.....soon dissipated and we had a really nice lunch and visit together.  

So we are at a bit of a loss as to what to do now.  Obviously there is insufficient time to move out of here before our trip in August but perhaps something will open up after the trip but before my next hip surgery?  That means we will still be living in Regina until after the surgery and do we have the energy to move twice if something more appealing elsewhere shows up unexpectedly after that?  Hmmmm.....our sense of adventure has been slowly picking up again after a years' long absence, so who knows?  We feel today like the turning point in this agonizing process of trying to move is on its way, so we are encouraged to put aside the temptation to depression about our situation and look forward in anticipation to the future.  After over two years of stagnation we finally feel like there will be changes coming sometime in the next few months.  Even if that turns out not to be, at least for now we are feeling that sense of "happiness and hope" that has escaped us over the past year or more. YAY!  Oooh, what is coming next?  It could be something wonderful as it often has been before.

Friends Make The World Go 'Round!

 It has been another encouraging day today.  I was kind of groggy again this morning, as usual, after my early morning meds, but by noon the fog was clearing, helped in no small part by a great visit with my walking partner....who brought me another of my favourite succulent plants. If it thrives as much as the one I currently have, growing in leaps and bounds in the sunniest window of the house, I am going to have a full forest of them!  How exciting....a green plant it is turning out to be nearly impossible to kill!  Thus far at least anyway, haha.

I had a little time for a rest after the visit and also enjoyed a phone call from a friend in BC, as well as from a very special cousin in AB. 

Then a friend from out of town dropped by for lunch. She brought a fabulous broccoli quiche, mixed greens with red pepper and tomato slices salad, a fabulous sesame oil dressing, cheese and crackers, home made fruit and nut cookies and a fruit salad. Good grief, it was an absolute feast!  We had a great visit as well and after she left I needed a nap!!

My husband sent a lovely photo of his hiking buddy from the shoulder of Mt. Yamnuska. They were relaxing there just after lunch today. The weather had cleared off after they had to hurry to  beat the rain out of Grotto Canyon yesterday, so today it was a perfect day for a mountain hike.  I know how excited my husband was to get at least part way up a mountain this trip because it wasn't looking possible when they first arrived. So thrilled for him. For him to not only feel like taking photos, but to stop right there on the trail and email it to me tells me just how happy he was.  YAY! Mountain mission accomplished.

It has been a quiet evening....a couple of emails to answer, some bills to sort out, a couple of tv programmes to watch. Now it is just after 10pm and I need to go to sleep already!  Hopefully I can stay awake long enough to read at least a few pages of the latest novel I found:  "Good People" by Patmeena Sabit. I am only about 50 pages into it and wondering how the mystery it is presenting is going to be resolved. Something has happened to some of the subjects in the narrative based on the statements of other characters, but thus far the reader has no idea what and it seems like it could be something dire.  So far it is an interesting read. 

Off to the orthopaedic surgeon tomorrow...who knows what, if anything, is going to come out of this one year check up, as well as in regard to the deterioration in the other hip....another mystery! 

What New Drama Is Taking Place In Our Housing Courtyard???

 Every evening since the last snow melted a couple of weeks ago the back lawns have been filled with children every day after school and into the evenings, whole gangs of them playing and arguing, laughing and fighting and generally just being kids as they navigate each other's cultural norms and language barriers. It is quite a fascinating thing to watch.  Last night however something must have happened that I have no clue about.  I noticed the kids coming home from the school buses in the late afternoon, straggling along as usual after a week of classes.  All of them apparently went home and have still not re-emerged.  Last evening there wasn't even one child playing outside of the approximately 30 regulars, no "strangers" to our back lawn, no newcomers, nada, nil, no one, nobody at all. I know all the families were at home because all their vehicles were in their assigned parking spots and as the sun went down lights came on in all of their suites, but there was no sign of a child, only the occasional adult crossing the parking lot or lawns...it was downright eerie!  To cool off as the sun was sinking I sat out on our back porch for about an hour, which is why I was so aware of the absence of the kids and it was intensely weird to be surrounded by so much silence from the human beings. I could actually hear the few birds in the place chirping and the siding on the buildings cracking and banging as it cooled down toward the end of the daylight hours.  This morning it is the same thing outside. It is on the way to 11am and nary a child has emerged from their abodes to play in the cooler, less breezy air than we had the past 2 days.  The scheduled thunderstorms have not yet arrived, the ground is dry, the conditions for playing outside are perfect and yet....again no children are outside.  Wow....what do they know that I don't??? Should I be nervous about what is going on around here????    hahaha

Good Reminder To Us All!

 

Well….At Least The Overnight Snow Melted By 8:30am. Yay!

We woke up at 7am to nearly 3mm of snow covering the lawn, sidewalks and car windshields. Blecch! No wonder the furnace came on several times during the night.  Thankfully it didn’t last long, but brrrrrr, it was so cold all morning. This afternoon the sun is shining and it is nearly +12C, but the breeze is still wintery. No wonder….late tonight the heavy rain is forecast to move into our area with possibly up to 50mm by tomorrow evening, but hopefully we won’t get quite that much all at once. A friend from Calgary texted us just after 9am to let us know the snow was tumbling down there as well.

We shivered our way over to a couple of grocery stores then on to our tomato growing friend’s house to pick up our plant. Not only was their small greenhouse locked up tight against the snowy cold but they had also wrapped the whole place in heavy blankets overnight to protect the plants. As a result of this lousy weather I now have a large plant pot wedged into my teeny tiny dining room! hahaha cleaning in there next week will be a whole new experience of trying to get myself twisted up enough to get the dust cloth onto the china cabinets and the vacuum hose and attachments crammed around the base of the pot. Aiiii yiiiii….

We picked up an extra, smaller tomato plant for our next door neighbour. We noticed they eat a lot of tomatoes, so if they would like to grow their own, we will give it to them once it is large enough to go out on the deck in better weather. 

So it has been a relatively productive day….plants collected, groceries purchased and at least shopping provided me with a bit of a walk. Sadly I will have to forego my walk to church in the morning if our rainy forecast is at all accurate. However, this poor excuse for spring will have to change for the better eventually…won’t it?????

Doing Thursday’s And Friday’s Chores Tomorrow…Bad Storm Forecast….

 Looks like my morning coffee time on Thursday with my friend is going to end up being cancelled again if the weather forecast tonight holds true. Good grief....we both just laughed and laughed when we read tonight's weather warning.  The fact that it was issued more than 24 hours in advance of this particular storm system coming in from the west tells me there is a very good chance the storm is actually going to happen and is, as reported, going to be a pretty bad one with gale force winds starting tomorrow evening at about 50km to 70km and cresting throughout Thursday with gusty periods of 110km.  Along with wind serious enough that we have been warned it could cause everything from prolonged power outages to roof, tree and vehicle damage, (so high sided vehicles like semis and RV/trailer units are already being warned to consider staying off the highways all together for a couple of days),  we may receive between  20mm and 40mm of rain in a less than 24 hour period.  Sigh....well, climate change or whatever is fuelling these unusual weather patterns in North America, is showing itself finally in our own area of the world this spring and summer.  Tonight my husband went outside after dinner and shovelled a fair amount of black dirt from the pile in the parking lot. He filled in the space all along one side of our suite where the dry soil has pulled away from the building as there tends to be leaks there when the wind tosses large amounts of rain in that crack.  He also checked to make sure the two huge slabs of lumber we have in our basement are still there so that we can pull them over the deep window wells on the other side of the building.  If they begin to fill with water, that water finds all manner of little cracks in the foundation to flood our basement with.  I am glad I thought to purchase a new mop for our kitchen floor when we were at Princess Auto yesterday, so the old one could go to the basement, along with the old pail, in case we have to do some serious mopping up in the next few days.  Although my husband has done a masterful job sealing the foundation cracks, when driving rain in vast amounts hits us, there are always undiscovered cracks just waiting to welcome the excess water pouring down the sides of the building and through the small gaps in the basement window sills.  Oh Lord, deliver us all from damage. Thank you, bless you Father and Amen.

I was able to do six loads of laundry today while my husband spent his afternoon with his hiking buddy planning their trip to the mountains of Alberta in June. They got their routes planned, but will have to check for bear incident related closures right before they leave as there have been so many closures after multiple bear attacks already this spring.  They have their food and accommodation and equipment needs looked after, so it is an exciting time for them. Unfortunately his friend's wife who had planned to spend time with me has been called out of town to work during that exact time, so I will have to be certain I actually make plans for myself, to see some friends, or it will be a very long and boring time for me. Thanking God I have our vehicle to use while he is gone. 

 My husband had some inside work he wanted to do in our basement this evening, after shovelling dirt and, with the help of another new neighbour fellow, sweeping up the mess in the parking lot some of the kids made tossing dirt and gravel around from the piles sitting out there,  but when the African children from the next building, whose bicycles he repaired last summer, realized he was out there they descended on him en masse!  He had three of them out there explaining this year's issues with their poor old bicycles.  Fortunately the new parts we put on them last year held up, but padlocks were lost on some of the bikes, the combination lock combinations to open those types of locks long forgotten over the winter.  So, he spent the evening pumping up tires, sawing old combination locks off and then locating the brand new locking system he bought for himself some years ago and never used.  It is the kind they can wrap around all of the bikes at once and then secure them to their back deck.  He put the key on a long red ribbon that the oldest girl put around her neck, showed her how to make it all work and she thanked him profusely. It is the most lovely thing to be told, "God bless you." by a 13 year old immigrant girl who has never had the material items we are so used to. Her gratitude is deeply felt and very sincere.    

After the initial repairs, when my husband went back inside to locate the new locking system, dear little bully Mohammad decided to attack one of the smaller African boys, not realizing I was standing right there watching.  I used my best school teacher voice to tell him to cut it out, which shocked him into at least temporary submission. hahaha  Then the oldest boy from next door to us decided he was going to ride one of the African kid's bikes and snatched it away from her. She said that no, he wasn't allowed to ride it any more because he and his  younger brother have been stealing the African kids' bikes right off their deck and their mom has already had to go and speak to the other mom to get the bikes back.  Apparently no consequences of any consideration were handed out by the little thieves' mom. Our neighbour boy grabbed it back from her and said he was going to ride it and as far as he was concerned it was his bike now. So, the old school teacher said she thought not, actually.  Apparently my stern tone got through so he released the bike.  I helped the kids get their bikes back to their place just as my husband reappeared with the wonderful locking system.   Hopefully the drama will end soon or it is going to be a loud, brutal, thieving, bloody nosed summer around here for the first time since we moved in over 11 years ago.  The kids causing the problems are all from the same country, have all fled to and from refugee camps at about the same time, have all experienced horrors beyond my imagination and have had to fight with other refugee kids over every possible little broken toy or rusty bike that made its way into their camp.  It is going to take some time for them to settle down, if they ever do.  I feel for them.  They have had rotten lives already and they are already only aged 8-13.  All of their dads suffer from varying degrees of PTSD and other mental health issues. The African kids haven't seen their dad in 3 years.  A problem in his family caused him to return to Africa to help solve the issue and when he tried to return he had visa issues, so he is still trying to return to Canada.  His daughter is afraid he will have forgotten all of his English and she has not spoken Swahili much since she started school here three years ago, so that is a stress for her.  Oh these kids...what they have been through in their short lives. My husband and I have decided that our "ministry" to these kids, if we want to call it that, is to simply be a presence this summer. My husband purchased a nice lawn chair so he can sit out on the back deck and read late in the afternoon when the kids get home from school and will really enjoy spending some mornings out there in the summer before it gets too hot.  The kids seem to love it when we are out there talking to them and praising their soccer and bike riding prowess, at least temporarily submitting to our admonishments to treat each other more kindly....there are some talented little fellows in this complex when it comes to playing soccer, bully Mohammad being the star. Wow, that kid is talented...so smart and articulate too. I really hope he can eventually get a handle on his behaviour.

Haircut tomorrow!  I can hardly wait!  Then a run to the water refill store to get all our water jugs refilled instead of waiting until Friday....not certain where I am going to put the last gallon's worth as I don't have quite enough containers free to take it, but I will work something out.  We have a library book due on Friday and have renewed it twice already so it has to go back even though we aren't quite finished reading it, but it is an older book that doesn't have a waiting list, so likely we can take it out again next week.  Not waiting until Friday, just in case the storm actually arrives.  

It has been lovely sitting here beside the wide open windows while the suite cools down for the night. It is nearly 11pm and I haven't had to close them yet.  I spent the day doing laundry so the heat built up a bit upstairs.  It has been so many months since we could open the windows that I am unwilling to shut them so I can go to bed and sleep.  Guess it is that time though. Sleep well tonight all.   

 

 

Maintenance Physio Only

 I have decided it is time to drop my daily physio exercising and begin twice a week maintenance physio. There has been zero improvement in two of the range of motion exercises in over a month now, so I have accepted that the tendon is too damaged to fully heal and get on with living my life. In the past three days I have walked longer distances without my cane and am seeing improvement with my walking gait, so I am replacing the constant physiotherapy exercises with paying closer attention to foot placement and stance. This change of routine is giving me great peace and a bonus is that the soreness from the three previously ruptured tendons is abating due to not being exacerbated by the constant exercise. So, after nearly 11 months of workouts, what will be will be. Life is good.

My first board meeting for the non-profit went well last night: good, caring, intelligent, informed people. It was a positive experience. 

We received some much needed rain last evening and there are more showers forecast in the coming days. What a relief, but we need SO much moisture to start edging away from drought conditions. 

We ran a bunch of errands yesterday morning and found ourselves near a favourite pub at lunchtime, a pub that has coupons in our recently purchased coupon book from Mohammad as part of his school’s fundraiser. The saving from that coupon alone was half the cost of the coupon book. Another meal there on a second coupon and we will have been repaid full cost, yay! 

We are still sorting out details for the New York trip later this summer. Still waiting to hear from the bank employee who messed up our American credit card purchase limit. If we don’t hear anything today we will have to contact her tomorrow I suppose. No expectations of any resolve in our favour. Sigh. 

As my husband’s health continues to improve once again, the sense of dread I have been nursing in my subconscious is beginning to lift. This afternoon he and his buddy will be discussing the details of their mountain hiking trip in June. Now that he feels almost himself again he is becoming more excited about the trip. Looks as if it is actually going to happen now. Yay! He has booked the use of our former Honda CRV for the trip so I will have our car while he is away. So grateful as that has rarely been the case while he has been enjoying hiking and canoeing over the past few years. 

I am looking forward to achieving a few household chores this morning, depending on interruptions. Last week was ludicrous: I had a tight schedule created for myself to get these chores underway and hopefully completed in two days. So, guess which two days I was inundated with unexpected calls from friends needing a shoulder, prayers, advice, comfort? You guessed it…hahaha…figures. So often that is the pattern around here. It is hilarious how many times it happens. I am though, so very grateful to be retired and therefore more often than not available to talk and pray with dear friends. It is a privilege. The work will always be there waiting to be done and for me life is about people. Most of these same people have been there for me as well when I have needed a shoulder, prayers, advice and comfort. 

I think I will get up and eat breakfast this morning a little earlier than usual. I really do have to get this work done around here.

Big Improvement!

 My husband is working feverishly to complete good copies of the taxes right now.  My eyes are so bad this morning that it is faster for him to just copy mine out for me.  What a great guy!  We will be heading to the post office right after he is done and send them whatever method will get everything to the CRA the fastest.

This morning he heard from the person who is apparently now our financial advisor at the bank that messed up our T-5 so badly.  In less than 5 minutes she had everything sorted out and my husband was able to carry on.  Is it possible that after over 4 years of dealing with the former well meaning, lovely personality but not too bright FA we actually have someone once again there who knows what they are doing???  WOW!  The burden has finally lifted.  Thank you friends and loving family who have prayed for us to get out  heads out of the fog and figure this out.  My head is still in the fog, but your prayers got a "YES" answer for my husband, bless him!  

It is overcast today but starting to warm up nicely.  I think when we go to the PO I can wear a nice cardigan sweater instead of a full coat.  I already have my outfit for church on Sunday picked out based on the beautiful weather forecast for that day, first actual spring outfit this season.....and a second choice just in case, haha.  I can tell I am starting to perk up emotionally and mentally since the actual arrival of some spring weather and since changing my physio schedule to a less exhausting push every time.  I am seeing my husband slowly cresting the apex of these stomach episodes and beginning to get a little bit better. Once the taxes are mailed in I suspect he may have a couple of rough days again because the stress will have lifted, but since it is expected it won't upset us unduly.

So here I sit, concerned about taxes and banks and my husband's health issues the past couple of weeks, to the point of nearly incoherence some days while around the world other people are being bombed, murdered, driven out of their countries, having their children kidnapped, dying of all manner of horrific diseases, starving, etc. etc. etc. (fill in name of tragedy here....)

I have been so very privileged in my life.  My mild OCD is getting worse as I get older and I am obsessing about tax details and bank issues as if they are the most frightening and dangerous things that could ever happen.  I plan to focus more on how my stresses fit into the stresses of other people in the world....people who are TRULY suffering and see if I can get better control over the worries that started plaguing me about the time I took over my mom's estate executrix duties and have not let up very much.  I say that I trust God with everything, but on the other hand in my humanness I don't always get a grip on my emotional responses to stress.  So, somewhere in there is a better balance between the spiritual ideal and the physical, temporal reality that I need to discover.

Another Small Step Of Encouraging Healing!

 A couple of weeks ago my physio responses seemed to have plateaued, which was a bit upsetting, but this past few days I unexpectedly started to experience a bit of muscle response from the badly damaged glutes. They have not been numb, or sore, or had any sensations at all since the surgery and suddenly it was like they announced their return. Within a day or two of that I found I could fully weight bear on that leg for 20 of my required 30 seconds, without even having to flap my arms around lime a frantic chicken to stay balanced on that operated leg without any other support. Wow! I am delighted and so happy I didn’t give up on my regular weekly physio routine. As the feelings are returning I am now able to lie on that side in bed at night, the side I always slept on previously, so I have slept so very well the past few nights. Oh how very grateful I am that despite the tendon not fully healing, the glutes are finally healing more and my walking stance is again improving, I am resigned to limping my way through life now, but if the limp can be less pronounced, what a blessing it will be. God bless physiotherapy! As I have been learning over the years: never give up trying! 

My husband did very well yesterday until after dinner, when he had a mild episode, but he realized he had bolted his meal, inhaling rather than properly masticating his food because he was in a big hurry. It is nearly 6am now and he just let me know he is fine, has not required first breakfast and has fallen back asleep. Hopefully he will sleep for the next two hours until he has to get up at 8am. I am praying he can eat his usual breakfast without any issues because he is teaching a class at 9:30am. After church he hopes to return to DarBar for lunch because Indian food makes his tummy feel so good. I am reading the Scriptures today so I appreciate having something to do.

It is still cold and miserable here at -11C overnight last night, a chance of more flurries today and more chilly winds. This week is forecast to start warming up and be drier, but who knows what the following week will bring. Some of our new immigrant neighbours who have fled war in their home countries are asking, “What fresh hell is this??” after arriving during the worst of our winter weather and now suffering though their first delayed prairie spring.  Poor souls. I hope we get sufficiently decent summer and autumn weather to encourage them. 

On the warmer, drier days last week things began to heat up outside as the dozens of kids on our complex finally had a chance to play outside. Our United Nations of children get along well all together, but there was some drama the other evening. One of the younger, newest boys, about age six or seven is a bit of a bully, the first we have had in several years. He attacks the other boys sometimes, wrestling, punching and kicking until some of the older boys put him in his place. The other evening he started whacking people with two strips of metal and one of the kids he hit was our youngest next door neighbour boy. So, our neighbour pulled himself away from his attacker, ran home and returned to the fray bearing a large butcher knife, aaaaaargh! My husband saw him approach the bully, brandishing the knife, and was about to run out to try to prevent imminent bloodshed, when the 12 year old sister of our tiny knife wielder realized her little brother had a knife poised to slash the bully. She was able to grab it away from him, tuck it under her rather massive hijab shawl and sneak it back home,  while her brother and the bully settled their differences with a brief wrestling match that sent both of them back to respective homes in tears. Whew! Major crisis averted. My husband and I have appointed ourselves unofficial guardians of the back lawn brawls for when the parents aren’t aware of what their kids are up to. Hopefully whatever is driving Bully Boy to make his random attacks on other unsuspecting kids will get resolved. I feel for him as he is the angriest little fellow we have ever seen in here so there has to be an underlying reason. Poor kid…I hope this week’s events are not a preview of what is to come throughout this coming spring (Is it coming?) and summer.

Hmmmmmm….6:15am. The alarm is set for 7am. Is it worth trying to sleep a bit more before I have to get up to eat and get ready for church? 

A Better Day All Around Today!!

 Today was a pretty good day after quite a few stressful weeks of daily concern over my husband's health. Today was his third day of following the dietary and rest protocols he came up with, as well as the second day of taking a digestive enzyme that may also be helpful.  His biologist/scientist sister suggested a few years ago that it is very possible he is lacking in a digestive enzyme and that is causing at least some of the recurring stomach issues.  Time to check that out and see if she was right.  He was also able to find a brand of caprylic acid that doesn't contain cloves, so that also seems to help his tummy settle.  We shall see how the rest of the week goes, but today he fended off a possible 4am attack with his snack and went back to sleep after for a few hours, ate lightly at breakfast and then did some computer work, we had lunch together and watched the news, then we went for a nice walk in the sunny, +22C (!!!) weather...out among the neighbourhood trees with NO MORE snow around their bases.  I only lasted about 4 blocks before my thigh muscles started to ache and my husband was exhausted, so we came home again at that point, but the fresh air did us good. (AND he had no other tummy attacks today) In fact it got so warm in our place by late afternoon that we had the joy of opening the upstairs windows for the first time since last October to cool things down for sleeping tonight!  I can see that the best thing to help the last of my post surgical recovery at this point is to get outside and walk as far as I can as often as I can. I need the outdoor space to practise lengthening my stride over longer distances. YES! AND I will get another chance to do that again tomorrow afternoon...before we get more rain and snow flurries and cold temperatures starting tomorrow evening and lasting into Friday. The chilly temperatures will last even longer than the rain and flurries. Dang it!!

After our walk and a short recovery rest time, we started our income taxes at long last. My code got here yesterday, so we got set up to do everything online once I finished setting up my tax account and checking to see that the government has the same income documents that I do.  We found a couple of online tax programmes with auto tax abilities that we tried using and in both cases things started out well.....until we came to the programme accessing our CRA accounts and loading up the pension and other income sources.  In both cases a pension income of over fourteen thousand dollars appeared on my husband's tax page from some pension plan that my husband is not, and has never been, a part of!  Fortunately this mistaken pension income is not recorded on the CRA website under his account, but what kind of glitch is this???  So even when we tried using the programmes' sites where we record the numbers ourselves, we kept getting this weird pension glitch.  Tomorrow I think, in the interest of time since the deadline for filing is fast approaching, we will just download and print the tax forms we need, fill them out by hand as always and get them mailed in this week.  At least we were able to crack into our CRA accounts okay, hahaha, for once. We were able to check all the income records they have for us and compare their documents to the ones we received in the mail from the various banks and pension companies. I think we can finish everything up and get everything sent in before the end of this week, Lord and my husband's health willing!  YAY!!  It is all good.

How QUICKLY Things Change With CFS Attacks!!

 I did indeed end up going out alone to do my part of the shopping expedition my husband planned to join me for this morning, before he woke up between 4am and 5am so very ill.  While I was gone he slept for another nearly 4 hours, didn't even know I left the house and when he woke up it was like sunshine after the rain.  Again with the sudden about face after an episode comes to an end.  I am so grateful the rest of the day has been quite wonderful! (For both of us!)

He decided that since he had been craving greasy fried chicken for the past few days we would go to Beaks for a late lunch.  He certainly got his wish: HUGE portions of everything fatty and greasy and he loved every bite. (When I had an ulcer decades ago the only thing I could eat without becoming ill for most of the first six months was good old greasy KFC!) Yup, all that grease does indeed make the chicken taste fantastic.  hahaha  Giant bowls of gravy and cole slaw. his big plate of fries and a double portion of dill mayo made his world go round. He did bring half of it home.  I had a smaller portion so ate all of mine, but if I had any extra carbs, those and the fat got a good walking off right after lunch because he wanted to go to the liquidation store, Bianca Amors, to pick up a couple of cheap items.  We deliberately walked down every aisle for the exercise. Hopefully it did help with the wearing off of lunch. hahaha

Then he announced that, since I had two large bags of books in the car I finished reading over the past few months, we should stop by a neighbourhood filled with community library boxes.  I was able to drop off all 25 books and brought 24 new to me editions home to keep me busy with bedtime reading for the next couple of months or more.

The sun is still shining in defiance of the Special Weather Report for another QUICK change overnight that will usher in the freezing rain and likely between 10cm and 20cm of snow by sometime on Friday when it is predicted to end and give us a nice warm weekend. Aiii yiiiii....I can't keep up with all these fast turnarounds! A high of a dry and breeze +15C today and then a high of -6C or colder tomorrow....NOOOOOO!!!  Oh well...

A Little More Understanding Can Equal A Lot More Patience!

Today we more formally met the husband of the lovely woman who lives next door.  He speaks zero English, but was thrilled when my husband greeted him with the usual Arabic Muslim greeting, so I think as he learns more English and we perfect our pantomiming in the meantime, we will be able to spend a bit more time interacting once the actual spring and summer weather make it easier to get together.  He may actually come outside more than once or twice a week after it warms up, hahaha.

Anyway, today we saw the family getting into a vehicle that belongs to a local organization that assists families who have difficulties with younger children who may have certain types of disabilities.  Putting this together with the slam banging around that often happens next door any time between 9pm and after midnight most nights, the sound of  "little boy" footfalls on the squeaky floors and  banging up and down the stairs along our adjoining wall is beginning to make sense now: there is an issue there that the little guy likely cannot help at the moment.  I began to suspect a week ago that it was more than something as simple as "purposefully bad behaviour" that had this child up roaming around in the wee hours so many nights each week.  Now that there is some confirmation of that, I find that my compassion for him and for the rest of his family has suddenly appeared and it won't be so difficult to sleep through the noise now that I realize there is an understandable basis for it.  The little guy was losing his mind earlier this evening smashing things on the basement steps and since I had our kitchen door to the basement open, I got the full force of the shrieking and stair bashing.  It is so great to have something specific to pray about for this child and his family.  I do hope they can get the assistance they need to deal with this issue in their home.  I wonder, as a refugee family, if the need to flee their homeland has negatively effected this little fellow.  Poor kid...what has he been through already at such a young age?   I have to get up early in the morning to go out for coffee with a friend, but instead of worrying about whether or not I will get any sleep tonight, I feel at peace and have a suspicion I may  just sleep rather well tonight. 

One Puddle Dried Up And Ready For Refilling!

What a lovely day!  The temperature at our place has reached almost +5C, so the snow from the other day has mostly all melted and the puddle that hugs our little trail out to the parking lot is pretty much dried up....JUST in time for the next round of spring snow starting tomorrow evening and scheduled to last for a couple of days.  The forecast begins with a 60% chance of snow flurries tomorrow overnight, followed by "Snow!" for the following day or two.  The above zero temperatures will dry up at least some of that snow by mid week, just in time for spring snowfall number three heading into the start of next weekend!  hahaha  At least we get a dry day or two between spring snowfalls.  I feel sorry for neighbours in the next building because instead of having short, brown, dead grass at the bottom of their porch stairs they have an ever spreading mud bath.  Perhaps it happened because of their kids and the kids next door to them playing soccer there all summer and autumn. That would be enough to kill a patch of grass that large. I don't know, but it is going to be wicked for them getting out to their car every time there is snowfall or rain. I don't know if the management here will care to do anything about it this summer or not.  At the bottom of our stairs there are four cement tiles, three of which have been slowly breaking up over the past two winters.  The one has a raised corner of jagged cement now and it is a trip hazard for us and for anyone who comes to our door.  Hopefully we can get them replaced, rather than just removed, or we will end up with the same muddy ground at the bottom of our stairs that our neighbours have at the bottom of theirs.  If all else fails we will go to the store ourselves and purchase super cheap cement tiles to replace them. Yes, yes, I know it is supposed to be the management company that does that, but we have lived here long enough now to know how it works around here.....or should I say, DOESN'T work around here? hahaha

I slept quite long and well last night after a few nights of being awake for a couple of hours somewhere between 2am and 7am. I finally figured out that I can no longer have my bedtime one carbohydrate bedtime snack.  After so many years things have changed in that regard, so it is time to obey the dictates of my body. No snack = uninterrupted sleep! Glad I figured that out fairly quickly.

This morning I spent about three hours making spaghetti sauce and the pasta noodles, then completing washing and putting away all the dishes, pots and utensils I managed to get dirty! Good grief...what a sloppy cook I was today!!  However the sauce is delicious and the newly purchased LONG'n'CURLY noodles are quite a treat...something different for a change.  I found them at the Italian deli. They are more substantial in thickness than spaghetti noodles, so take about 12 minutes to cook through properly to remain ever so slightly el dente.  Perfect!  I enjoyed having that for lunch so much that I am going to have the same meal for dinner tonight.  

My husband was informed this morning that a colleague is in hospital so he went there this afternoon.  Bee is awaiting a liver transplant and things are not going well right now. There are tubes and wires attached all over Bee and it is unclear whether or not it will be possible for Bee to go home as the wait for a transplant continues.  My husband also tried to locate Carol's family while he was there, but they were not around at the time and only they have permission to visit Carol.  He was able to pray for her quietly to himself as he left the hospital to drive home.  

I hope to get a goodly sized carton of noodles, sauce and a grated cheese topping over to the home of elderly friends tomorrow sometime after church.  The size of the batches is why it took me so many hours to prepare the meal.

It is nearly 5:30pm so I think I will go and stand on my deck in the late afternoon sunshine before I eat dinner.  The sun is still throwing warmth at me.  Lovely......