Foggy Dew And Diet Cola...Which Is Worse??

We had an hour's drive out of town this morning to attend the installation of a new priest for one of our former congregations.  There is warm air aloft as a new, kinder sort of weather system tries to move in. That meant a bit of a slow drive along the highway in thick fog.  Why so many drivers of  cars around here drive through fog that impairs  visibility without using their tail lights is beyond us.  It was extremely dangerous in the thickest patches of fog when a car would pass us already going too fast, then disappear only 50-60 feet in front of us, becoming completely invisible to us.  All we could do was try to peer through the gloom and pray that no one ahead of us in our lane was either stopped or going so slowly that we had to try to get around them as they wouldn't be able to be seen until the last second.  Eek!  I am so very grateful my husband volunteered to drive while I played look out.  While it was still foggy on the way home early this afternoon, at least the fog was well above ground level and it was quite easy to see all the surrounding traffic.  Remnants of two, two vehicle accidents along the highway proved us right to have been cautious on the drive.

I have been experimenting with various sorts of food and drink over the past six weeks to try to pin down what is giving me a scratchy, phlegm filled throat every time I consume it.  Over this past week I have finally discovered a growing negative reaction to diet cola....the only drink other than water that I can have, for one medical reason and another.....so, I guess now if I eat out somewhere I will be drinking water only, the same as at home. Sigh....yes, I know diet colas have their own issues as far as being less than healthy to drink, but when I can't have tea or coffee or juice or hot chocolate and "flavoured" carbonated waters make me nauseous, I am kind of out of options for variety.  Dang it....oh well....it is really good to know what has been causing this ever since a few weeks before we went to NYC in August.  I only drink diet cola when we eat out, never at home, so at least I don't have a cupboard full of the stuff I would have to get rid of to avoid temptation or have to waste product.

The sky has been dreary now for almost a week.  I will be glad when the sunshine arrives a couple of days from now, along with warmer day time high temperatures. I don't care that as of tomorrow night the over night temperatures will be consistently below zero finally, as long as the predicted day time highs of between +6C and +10C happen.  Here's to a lifting of the fog and dark clouds for at least a few more days before serious winter weather occurs. 

A Day With No Out Of Home Commitments

Today is one of those rare days when I have no commitments away from 🏡 home and as usual it has meant waking up shortly after 4am all bright eyed, alert and ready for the day to begin. 😂 hahaha! So, also as is usual, I will likely be too tired to enjoy my day off from grocery shopping, bill paying, coffee partying, general errands, running about madly to medical appointments, house chores and church related activities. Oh well, it is good to know I can still get excited about a day of possible total relaxation. 

The past couple of days have been busy with laundry and ironing, running around town for various commitments and enjoying visits with friends. My coffee buddy and I met at the new Denny’s, which for all its small faults as it continues to work on getting organized and repairing the bathrooms, definitely has more comfortable seating for us “older gals” than our usual haunt at Creme.  Creme is rather more “gourmet” in its offerings though so we will not abandon the place, just trade off between the two locations. 

I could start cleaning house today and perhaps I will, but perhaps I won’t either. Having the choice of making my own plans feels like a luxury after a week with many appointments and necessary errands. 

I love days like this occasionally but am grateful most of my days are filled with activities, however plebeian they may be.

The snow has already melted, the temperature is set to rise a few degrees over the next few days and thus far predicted rain and snow amounts look to be relatively minor. November is nearly upon us, so that delights me. The lack of frozen rain thus far has been a treat….although I confess I would not object to a brief but violent snowstorm between 4pm and 9pm on Halloween night. No offence intended  to the kids wanting to dress up and go out for treats, but it is also a bad night for vandalism in our area so….

I am praying that a new contract proposition brought recently before members of the CUPE unionized health care workers will be accepted and ratified to prevent any more extended waits for upcoming surgeries and recovery physiotherapy protocols like my own. They have been working without a contract since  2023…not good!

My husband is meeting a friend for coffee this afternoon so I am wondering if I will choose to remain at home flopped out in front of the tv watching home renovation programmes or drop him off at the coffee bar and drive to a nearby mall for some window shopping. 🛒 Ahhhh, to have the choice feels good. A spontaneous sort of day is a treat as I am watching our calendar 📆 fill up ⬆️ once again with appointments for next week and the week after that.

I am going to enjoy my “little bit of this and a little bit of that” kind of day.

A Good News (We Think Anyway) Kind Of Day Thus Far!

This morning as I was brushing my teeth I began to wonder how much longer I should wait to hear from the surgeon's office about setting up a pre-op consultation.  I hate pestering the office manager about these things, but then I thought maybe I should just let her know we are back from our trip and she can now reach me on both phone numbers again once the schedule for November is being set up, but then I thought maybe I could wait a couple of more days, or even into next week just in case she called me as we had agreed upon originally....but THEN I was overwhelmed with a feeling that I should put my toothbrush down and make the call IMMEDIATELY!  It was such a strong feeling that I did just that.

Sputtering toothpaste foam all over the phone as I dialed in, I managed to clear my mouth of toothpaste sufficiently to speak coherently when the office manager answered.  I explained who I was and that I was back in Regina so could now be reached on our landline as well as my mobile.  The manager told me she was glad I was back and that she could actually book my pre-op consult right then and there.  A few seconds later I was off the phone and now I am very excited that I have an appointment the second week of November!  YIPPEE!!!!  AND since all his afternoon appointments at the usual space in the cast clinic at the hospital are booked up until the end of the year, she has made an appointment for me to see him for an early morning appointment in his own office instead. Glory be and Hallelujah and Yippee and Wahoo and all other expressions of happy excitement.

Thank you friends and prayer partners who have been praying with me about this since this past summer. It is is delightful news. I am so grateful.

In other HOPEFULLY, POSSIBLY, EXPECTING IT TO BE good news:  our son had his final huge interview for his card this morning. The woman who interviewed him was very kind and told him she wants to approve his card for certain, BUT the one glitch...of course there is always one of those in bureaucratic dealings isn't there.....is that he has a special government issued permission to have overstayed the end of his last visa and required a special letter from his immigration lawyer confirming the validity of his current status in their country.  That he has, but now of course the supervisor of the interviewer has to see this documentation and give final approval. Sigh....there is always SOMETHING ELSE isn't there? So my stressed out son and his wife are once again sweating it out, with my son trying to trust God for the outcome but struggling because he is human like the rest of us and can't help wondering what God is really going to do.  

He is most grateful for our little band of prayer warriors in THIS country and Mama Bear here is equally grateful for all the support our family has received over the years from all of you. Bless you "real good"! 

 

 

Yes, I DO Know It Seems Like An Unneccessary Fuss Over A Refrigerator!

However, people who have known me for the better part of my adult life understand exactly why a cheap fridge, economy model, no added extras, is a thrill for me; why simply having a shelf to divide the freezer compartment in two is a huge deal.  When you have lived in as many dumps, dives, tenements and church manses, (which are sometimes interchangeable with the first 3 types of housing listed) as we have over the past 50 years, a refrigerator that arrives with the packing tape still wrapped around the doors, a refrigerator that is new and clean and has never before been used by anyone other than myself is an amazing blessing indeed.

We have lived in places with carpets so old they were not only fraying at the edges, but had huge spots of rust, animal defecation stains and open holes in the centre of them.  We have had stoves that only had one out of four burners that worked, ovens that allowed us to play the "let's guess what temperature I am actually set at" game, dishwashers that didn't have access to sufficient water pressure to clean the dishes and had to be abandoned, mouse infestations, cockroach infestations, moth infestations, buckling linoleum, holes in the walls, broken kitchen cabinet doors and handles, chronically leaking pipes, rusted out sinks, stained cracked toilets, torn curtains, shattered window blinds, broken windows and tub faucets, torn siding and roof shingles, missing eavestroughs, counter tops that were so stained that no amount of bleach or scrubbing would clean them properly, furnace ducts filled with all manner of things people had dropped down into them in, those things catching and hanging onto huge batts of dust, dangerously broken wooden steps and decking, rusted out clothes washers and a dryer that gave us electric shocks upon using due to electrical insulation problems in the house, and my favourite of all....a connecting passageway between a manse and our church that had a giant hole in the roof where the rain fell through in such huge gushing torrents and the snow formed such deep drifts under that hole that we had to wear our coats, hoods up,and boots to race through the passageway between the buildings, (even a shovel needed to be used on occasion to clear the way), if we had some good reason not to take the long way around the outside of both buildings. Most all of these places were considered acceptable accommodation for us either due to chronic illness induced financial issues making rent next to impossible to come up with for any better sort of accommodation, or "in the name of ministry", which made those places a lot easier to take.

This list is NOT a complaints list, we made the best of each place and we did have a break for a few years after we built our own house before illness struck again. We are quite good at making the best of such situations and have become fairly skillful at it, thankfully. This post is simply a statement of facts to explain why I am so apparently unreasonably ecstatic with yesterday's delivery to our kitchen. 

Yeah....a brand new fridge, no matter how basic it may be, IS a huge thrill for me and I don't mind admitting it. I am DELIGHTED to have it and am grateful, grateful, grateful!!  I know most of you who have known me over the past few decades totally understand. And may the rest of you never, Lord willing, experience reasons of your own to understand.  Amen!

SLOOOOOOOWWWWLY Goes the Refrigerator Replacement, Hohoho!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Dear, Dear GP

Yesterday I received a call from my medical clinic that my GP wanted to see me about my x-ray results from x-rays of my hip that I had over two weeks ago.  Since the x-rays had already been sent to and received by my orthopaedic surgeon the day after they were taken, I wondered if my GP wanted to talk to me about the ever worsening arthritis in my sacroiliac joints. Did she see something worse in those x-rays than what I understood from reading the tech's interpretation of the x-ray in my online health account??  I wasn't worried particularly, but I was certainly curious.  hahahaha....Oooooh, my dear muddled GP.  Not surprisingly, at least to me, she wanted to see me to tell me that the worsening arthritis has reached the point where surgery on my other hip is likely necessary and she would forward the x-rays to my surgeon.  I giggled to myself...par for the course, this.  Before I could tell her that the surgeon already had them and I was awaiting a call for a pre-surgical consult, she suddenly said, "Oh....he already has them. They were forwarded automatically to him for some reason. Oh....the reason is that I had arranged for that to happen on your requisition form. Oh......".  She shook her head, looked very confused, asked me if there was anything else she could do for me, so I asked her what initial steps I should take to help slow down the arthritis at the base of my spine.....I knew already, but didn't want her to feel she had wasted her own appointment time on a very busy day in the clinic.  She told me the expected answers, I thanked her for calling me to come in, which made her look all the more confused, I said farewell and chuckled all the way home....6 blocks sans cane, I'll have you know.  hahahahaha SO CUTE IS THIS WOMAN!!!  She always figures things out eventually, but sometimes it takes time. hahaha.  Gotta love her.

In other health related news, it looks as though my husband's new statin is starting to give him headaches each morning, very similar to the ones he had with the last family of statins that he was finally taken off of a couple of months ago. Sigh....if that turns out to be the case after a bit more experimenting over the next two weeks, well, here we will go again!  Yikes!

This morning there was frost on the windshield of the car that required scraping, the temperature was +2C with a windchill of -7C. BRRRRRR...my first coat wearing expedition of the fall season...coat as in light parka! I got to the bank and picked up groceries before picking up my coffee buddy at 9:15am, we opted to go for coffee instead of sitting in the cold out in the park and we paid over seven dollars each for approximately 2/3 of a full cup of coffee in our "stay inside" mugs so next time I will ask for a take out cup, fielded several phone calls and enjoyed a quick drop in visit from a great friend immediately prior to lunch, did the doctor thang, got some chores done at home and took my husband out to DarBar for supper....HIS suggestion so I was certainly not going to refuse, then ended the day with two hours in a row of tv programmes.  It has been a good day.

Sleep Cycles

 Here I am awake at 2:45am, my mind racing on about a meeting I recently attended that was unsatisfactory on every level. Unfortunately this is not the best time of day to be trying to come up with solutions to the problems arising from that meeting so I will take some time to think happy thoughts instead while waiting for drowsiness to come over me once again. 

It has been a happily busy week of walking, housework, walking, cooking, walking, having two sets of company and walking both with and without my cane accompanying me. I MAY just be able to handle the recovery period after my upcoming second hip surgery after all. 

I am happy that I will have my consultation with the surgeon sometime in the next six weeks or so. After reading my x-ray 🩻 report I realize I am going to have to accept the necessity of having the other hip replaced.

Over the past week I have been rehearsing some of the many incredible answers to prayer I (we) have received over the past forty years and feeling a confidence in God’s working in and on my life that had gradually over the past number of years.  The short Bible study my friend sent me has been reawakening my spirit. I (we) have been freed to make a few decisions in regard to our church connection.  The past week of meditation, prayer and spiritual conversation with several friends has been like coming out from under a dark cloud. Not sure what exactly has been causing my spirit to droop over the past few years so badly! My joyful expectation of seeing God at work every day is being restored.

The weather this week has been spectacular! It has been comfortably warm, the wind has not been gale force, despite the sudden yellowing, then dead browning, of the tree leaves near our place there are still a few plants blooming with leaves still green and even a smattering of flowers persist here and there in the parks and in peoples’ gardens. Both our tomato plants are continuing to produce fruit! It seems we were away during the worst of the end of summer wasp season. Even standing in the grocery store parking lot the other afternoon bagging my groceries with the car trunk open, only two wasps arrived to inspect my produce and only showed mild curiosity as to what all I was putting into my carry bags. I have only been buzzed once when dropping household garbage into the disposal bin out in our parking lot and then only by a lone wasp, not an entire hostile mob. Trust me, this is a big deal! For the first summer in eleven years we have not had wasp nests near our back door or under the deck. What a blessing! 

My surety that I will be able to have my surgery by this winter sometime and that after that we will finally find a place to move is growing. 

I see my husband battling successfully through the medical issues that have being trying to reassert themselves after disappearing entirely during our vacation.  He has had a couple of poor nights of sleep and going to the dentist always upsets his system for a few days afterwards, but instead of despairing he has been going out walking and otherwise staying active despite feeling the old exhaustion physically.  He has been cleaning his office and library, walking out to do errands and making batches of 🌶️ chili when feeling his worst, so his worst is passing! How very encouraging for us both that our energy is staying high now that we are home again. 

We had two sets of company this week, both of which were delightful and encouraging, my husband organized an impromptu men’s breakfast with some of his buddies, today we are picking up friends from the airport and visiting a friend in hospital. So, we are keeping busier with social commitments and that is healthy for us both.

This coming weekend my husband is taking a church service out of town in a congregation who are always very welcoming, plus he has dropped one of his teaching commitments that was coming up soon and would have required a lot of research and writing. I am proud of him as I know he finds dropping any such commitments of his own volition difficult to do. 

Our son has been experiencing good things in the midst of a tumultuous time in his life, seeing God’s help in several different arenas so that encourages us all.

These small, often seemingly insignificant details of daily life are infusing my soul with encouragement this past few days. For that I am grateful.

Success!!

 I am most grateful to have finally been able to walk around the lake again this morning with my walking partner after a two year hip issue hiatus! It is only about 2.2 to 2.6 miles depending on which path we choose. Easy peasy now after my month of longer distance walks, so it is great news for me. As the operated leg continues to strengthen I will be in better condition to recover from the next surgery on the other hip, so I am thrilled. 

Once A "Biker" Always A Biker!

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

I Definitely Need This Study!

This morning a dear friend and sister in the Lord sent me a copy of a bible study she is working on by Steve Johnson titled, "30  Days to Coping with Delay".  It is about learning how to better handle life when it seems God is taking his sweet time and then some to answer prayers that seem to us in need of far more quick responses than what we are getting.

At first glance the study seemed simple enough; based on Abraham and Sarah praying for a child and the terribly long wait they had for Isaac's arrival.  However the first question based on Proverbs 13:12"...hope deferred makes the heart sick." caught my attention. The question is "How do you feel when hopes are delayed?"  

Confession time:  Ummmm....without even taking time to think much about it I had 5 words/phrases, boom, just like that! And ALL negative! Yikes! (frightened, hopeless, resigned to the worst possible outcome, undeserving of God's attention, confused as to whether or not I have been praying for the right kind of answer) In other words every response EXCEPT "trust" (in God's wisdom to answer correctly in HIS time).  WOW, how incredibly embarrassing is that after all the years I have been trying with varying degrees of success to be a disciple of Christ??!!!? After all the years of seeing God answer prayers at the last possible second, and perfectly, how could these be my instant first responses to the question?  Aiii yiiii....I have some work to do in my relationship with God, that's for sure.  I am most grateful to my friend for passing this study along to me.  Never too old to learn so that is a good thing! God is so incredibly patient and for that I am most grateful!!

Laughing At Comparison Distances

 I have been too busy running catch up errands and doing laundry to go specifically for walks since we arrived home, but today we walked up to the nearest hospital to visit a friend who was admitted in our absence.  Before we left on our trip a 16 block round trip walk was, if not physically, mentally beyond me.  Ohhhh, what a terrible chore to drag myself all that way over to the hospital AND walk all the way back again, hahahaha.  I realize today how much left over winter depression was playing into my refusal to consider walking a reasonable distance with any regularity here at home this past spring and early summer. Today the walk seemed incredibly short and the walking time passed quickly.  My husband and I walked over there, had a good long visit with our friend and walked home again in four minutes short of an hour.  Walking the 34 block round trip to and from Fairway Market in Manhattan, plus walking up and down the aisles accumulating groceries that then had to be carried all the way back to our suite was no issue...not even a sit down part way there or back was ever necessary.  Interesting I had to go all the way to NY state to get over my lingering depression, but wow, it has certainly made a difference to my attitude and hopefully continued fitness now that I am home again.  I am ever so grateful for the break away to get my mind back on a more positive path.  Oh please God, please may it last and carry me through the impending winter months.

An Incredibly Busy Day And It Has All Been REALLY GOOD!!!!

This has been a rather incredible first day home in over a month!  Our plans today were to sleep in...didn't happen because we were in bed so early last night, hahaha...then eat a leisurely breakfast....which we did just after 6am, so guess we are still on NYC time two hours ahead of here....then figure out how to spend our quiet day mostly at home recovering from the trip.  HAH! That is so NOT how things went, hahaha.

I decided I would go to the bank and pay off our US credit card bill and redeposit the rest of our US cash, but had few other plans. Maybe I would stop at the store near the bank and pick up the yogurt I forgot to get yesterday...or not...whatever....  Before the bank opened I remembered that I was supposed to call the surgeon's office about my other hip surgery as soon as I got back and see if my surgeon came back to work this week and what the next steps are.  WOW, that started a whole day of action!  The office manager told me to hie myself to my GP as soon as possible for a requisition for new x-rays of my "used to be good" hip which has been complaining rather obviously after a whole month of very long and brisk walks. She told me that my surgeon is not coming back now until the middle of October...so the progression has been that he would come back the middle of March, then July, then September and now October. The line up to see this wonderful man, assuming he eventually actually returns, who will no longer be able to do nearly as many surgeries in a day as he was doing before going on medical leave is getting longer and longer of course,  BUT now he has taken on another doctor as his partner.  I do not know this second surgeon but I believe if he is now the partner of my surgeon he must have some skills.  Once the surgeon's office receives my x-rays I will be contacted to choose which of the two surgeons I want to meet with between the third week of October and into early November.  I am praying very hard about this decision because as much as I love my surgeon, I can't wait around for an extra long time just to see him if the other surgeon is going to be available sooner and will do the surgery sooner.  With the news that the new AI Data Centre being built just south east of our part of the city is going to actually be quadruple the size that was announced, (to the tune of a $50 billion investment), resulting in an influx of thousands of construction workers and over 500 permanent workers when it is completed, we know that will drive rents up and reduce greatly the number of rental residences.  Maybe "we gotta get outta this place" is what is going to have to happen. Maybe we are going to have to return to teeny tiny town living in order to have an affordable place. Maybe God will do something incredible either here in Regina to get us moved farther from the Data Centre, or find us a teeny tiny town not too far from the city, or somewhere else all together that we would never expect. Who knows, I just know I cannot wait around too many more months to get moved out of our current tenement post surgery or there will be nowhere left to go.  We cannot justify paying much more for this dump than we already are.  Our ministry within the complex is dwindling now as those we have been helping have been slowly moving on to government housing we don't qualify for or out of the city altogether.

OKAY, so back from the bunny trails to the actual story of what happened today.

As soon as I hung up from the surgeon's office I called my own GP to see if I could get an appointment for a requisition some time soon.  The office manager there asked me if this afternoon would be soon enough as two appointments had just opened up. TODAY?  Already?  You betcha buddy!!  I went right after lunch, (at DarBar to celebrate our safe and on time arrival home and to delay the start of having to cook for as long as financially possible), only waited a total of fifteen minutes to see my doctor and emerged quickly with the needed x-ray requisition. My doctor asked me why I was looking "so fresh" today so I told her where I had been. She agreed that NYC is a wonderful and busy place with many things to see and do...."Not like here!", she said at the end of that conversation, hahaha.  Yup, she gets it.

Off to the Imaging Clinic and within 10 minutes of arriving my x-rays were all finished and the papers signed to have them sent to my surgeon's office, where they should be available in two or three days.  Incredible!!  Bing, bang, boom, life is going full speed ahead already.

The pile of mail has been opened, sorted and dealt with since I got home from the x-ray appointment, joy has hit me because the utility bills for this month are showing a goodly amount of money left over from my pre-payments, so there will be little to pay on any of them next month either!  We have not met our new neighbour on the other side of the wall yet in person, but through a series of noise testing he has discovered how loud he can play his tv and music now that we have arrived home again. He seems to understand now the lack of soundproofing and has been most compliant. Hopefully we will bump into him soon casually outside and be able to welcome him to the fold.

One thing that certainly has been helping get readjusted has been my husband remembering to download the first couple of days of the September Sumo Tournament that began this past Sunday for our afternoon viewing pleasure.  Another thing was getting back behind the wheel of the car to drive to the bank.  The car started right up, first try, so the new battery definitely held up with the car sitting unmoved for four and a half weeks.  I had to stop and think where I was going today and how to get there as I have not thought about the car or driving since the day we left for NYC. hahaha  Our dining room table has an old towel covering it and on top of that towel are the many tomatoes our house sitter picked from our back deck plants before the first frost, along with some of her own larger tomatoes and a gorgeous looking cucumber.   One of the "basics" we got at the grocery store our "chauffeur" friends took us to after we landed was a package of precooked, lower sodium bacon, so tonight for dinner it will be bacon and fresh tomato sandwiches. Yummy!!!  Seeing all those tomatoes ripening up again this year makes for a better feeling about being "home".  The x-ray tech was happy to hear we had enjoyed our time in NYC, but of course although it is a great place to visit, we wouldn't want to live there. I told him that actually I would give my right arm to live there but my arm wouldn't raise enough money, haha!

It is now after 4pm, so since we ate lunch at 11:30am it is time already to be getting some of those tomatoes sliced and a couple of bacon strips heated up to make sandwiches on the nice fresh bread and bagels we purchased here yesterday.  

What a wonderful day of needed accomplishments. I am still kind of stunned by the series of appointments this afternoon that were so quickly set up after my call to the surgeon's office!  Wow...

Tomorrow I suppose we are going to have to do battle with Canada Post about them not holding our mail, despite all their email and snail mail assurances to the contrary before we left. Yesterday we got an email message from them saying it was our last day of mail holding and that all our mail would be delivered to our home post box today. hahahaha  All we got was the credit card bill that always comes on this date every month, because all the mail that was to have been held, showed up in our box several days each week as usual. HOLD SCHMOLD!!  Well, live and learn, even if we get our money back by some miracle, (which I highly doubt is possible), we will never attempt to use that service again. It is truly the only real blight on our homecoming. Everything else has been good, good, good!!! Hallelujah!  The friends who picked us up at the airport yesterday are on their way to the maritimes today and sent us "happy, smiley face" photos from Toronto from their also on time flight this morning.  Oh happy day!

Things I Have Learned Here This Trip!

I have learned that most patterned clothing for women is passe. Solid coloured items only…with the occasional exceptions being a tiny pattern on a 👚 blouse. Name brand sneakers or else sandals 🩴 are a must for those who walk around the streets. Good to know. I did fine on the footwear, not so well on the patters, which instantly pegged me as Tourist Trash, haha.

Two visits to any diner makes you a “regular” especially if you happen to be Jewish or Greek. Being a regular means warm greetings 🖖 and great service from the staff, along with happy banter back and forth. Three or more visits brings a nearly ecstatic reaction from the diner owners. 

Even in the higher scale neighbourhoods along the Upper East Side, streets like Lexington, Park and Madison Avenues, you will find the occasional addict and/or homeless person, covered in filth, passed out on the sidewalk or nodding out while slumped against a building. It is very sad.  

I learned that cars in the lane on the bus driver’s side of the bus lanes have to jostle over and cut across in front of the bus in order to make a right hand turn. If the bus suddenly surges forward at that same time, collisions between car and bus are narrowly avoided. Drivers are necessarily aggressive here so they don’t let the fact that the bus beside them has the same right and obligation to drive forward when the light turns green that they themselves do! Ergo, I have learned I do not want to sit in the very front bus seat watching the near disasters happen. I have learned the New York City Transit drivers do not receive the “danger pay” I believe they deserve!

I have learned I am capable of walking 5-6 miles per day several days in a row with no other negative side effect than a day of exhaustion following. 

I learned last evening that my son can play the shofar we ordered for him rather well. God bless all those childhood trumpet lessons.

I have learned that our new family of in-laws are voracious readers and especially enjoy fiction with detailed character studies, which I am not so jazzed about. While a certain amount of character development is of course necessary in order to make a fiction  story understandable and well written, am I wrong to be somewhat uncaring about the lifelong character of people who don’t actually exist? I mean, yes it is interesting to a point, but is it worth spending several weeks of book club discussing this?  For them yes, for me not so much. I learned to deal with the joy on their faces last night at dinner when they would ask me if I had read such and such a book….many of them older novels that are enjoying a modern day resurgence for unfathomable reasons….and I would say yes, only to have their faces fall when I admitted I remember very little about the characters in any of them, since it was 25 years ago or more, sigh….my husband and I will not fit in well with this bunch. He doesn’t read novels at all. I read mostly for relaxation so I generally forget details after so many intervening years. Ho hum…I cannot get that excited about people who aren’t real. That’s just me.

I have learned that the amount of online paperwork and number of new phone apps required to live here, that have forced us to get with it as far as our being so behind with the level of tech we need to be able to use, has been a blessing in disguise, that we actually are capable of learning how to fill out online forms and flash our phones with the best of them. Yay us! It will give us more confidence back at home too.

I have learned that despite my years of rural and small town living I am still pretty much a big city girl at heart.

Middle Of The Night Wakefulness!

 It is 5:30am and I have been awake for an hour after 4.5 hours of good sleep. It is only the third time since we arrived that I have pulled such a stunt: twice due to sinus issues and this time because I was not relaxed at bedtime. Our next door neighbour had a monster type movie blaring on the tv. 📺 It was too loud to ignore. A few nights ago the same neighbour had the tv blaring until 2am and I was, despite my best attempts not to, fuming last night. At 11:30pm the roaring of the monster 👿 abruptly stopped as the tv was shut off mid roar. Obviously the movie was not over. Did another tenant complain to the front of house personnel? As soon as I realized the silence next door was going to hold, I quickly closed my book, Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey which I am thoroughly enjoying, and fell fast asleep. Fortunately I don’t have to race around sightseeing today. I can catch up on my sleep later. 

I am delighted that the wonderful cleaning job in here yesterday sans deodorizer is making a positive difference to my asthma/sinus reaction. Yay! 😀 

You never know what is going to happen back at home in your absence, do you? Hahaha. Last night the woman who is looking after our house sent us photos of our back deck. Sitting on it were two huge green plastic bags she discovered to be filled with clothes AND along with them, the pièce de résistance: a tacky plug in heater/fireplace combo! She and my husband assumed it was stuff passed on to us from the recently moved out next door neighbours, but I know for a fact they never had one of those heater units and certainly didn’t have any clothing appropriate for us to wear. I suspect it was a donation for our African refugee friends in the building beside us whose address is only one number different from our own. Hopefully someone will figure that out in the next couple of weeks before it all gets stolen or maintenance tosses the unsightly mess away before we get back. Our dear friend was quite willing to just toss it all in the big disposal bin in the parking lot, but of course my dear husband who cannot bear to throw anything away sight unseen….unlike myself…wants it all to remain on the back deck for the next two weeks so he can personally examine each and every item. His obsession with his own Depression Complex he was raised with has been a huge hindrance in our lives, so I can only pray the stuff is gone by the time we go home. Sigh…..

So Why Is It…..

 …..I have only walked to church at home a couple of times this past spring and summer, a distance of 2.2km and it has seemed like too far to manage, but here I can easily walk to the kids’ apartment, a distance of 3.2km? If I rest at their place for an hour I can walk back again to the apt. Yes, it is tiring because I am so out of shape, but mentally it feels completely doable whereas at home the mere consideration of walking to church or downtown like I did pre-surgery seems too much to bear both mentally and physically. Was I so depressed at home that I was hindered from a proper level of activity? I am going to have to keep up this momentum after I get home! Please Lord, help me find the inspiration needed to start walking once again on those same, boring streets without copping out via some kind of flimsy excuse! Amen! 

Oh Frick!

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Benefits Of Getting Lost!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, Dang It! This Is Not Good…..

For some reason I forgot that I cannot sleep all night with the air conditioning blowing even slightly in the bedroom. That is why it was on all night for the first three nights of our vacation, and that is why I had to trundle a couple of blocks yesterday to Duane Reade Walgreens to get a camphor stick inhalant and an inhaler with very strong meds to start clearing my sinuses. Aiiii yiiiii….I am having a very bad reaction to the A/C. The medication in this OTC inhaler is much stronger than any of the permitted OTC inhalers I can purchase in Canada….thankfully. It is working well, but this morning my voice is gone and I am coughing. This is my typical A/C reaction….sigh. Constantly draining sinuses makes for a miserable time.

I don’t know how well our plans for today are going to work out but I will try to plough through them. I don’t feel ill, but not sure of the wisdom of pushing myself. It isn’t even 7am, so I have time to fully wake up and assess. Gosh, we are supposed to be heading upstate in a couple of days to the rental cabin….praying I can be well enough to go as the kids are footing the bill and I don’t want to be responsible for ruining everything. Would my praying family and friends be willing to pray with me about this? Thanks so much.

Why O Why Did I Bother To Ask???? Hahahaha....

We were "up 'n' at 'em" by 8am today; breakfasted and dressed and ready to go by 9am.  We wanted to get to our nearest post office branch before it got busy and we were successful in that.  It took just over five minutes to arrange for our mail to be held while we are away and then we were on our way home again.  

The plumbers are supposed to come today to suss out our leakage issues but we knew they likely wouldn't get here until later in the day. So at nearly 3pm we are still waiting, but that is just fine.  It is highly likely they got held up on another job, so if they don't get here today they will be here tomorrow and one of us should be home most all day to explain the problem to them.  Who knows when arrangements will be made for the issue to actually be repaired, right?  We know from our years in construction how the best laid plans in the trades can come apart within seconds, leaving the next customer waiting longer than arranged for originally. That is just how it goes sometimes.

Once we arrived home from the post office my husband headed over to our friends' house to complete the building of canoe racks for their and our canoes, so I stupidly asked myself, "Hmmm, I wasn't expecting to be done with the post office this early so what shall I do for the rest of today?"  Dumb, dumb, dumb.....I barely got the question asked when things began to happen.  I realized it was time to put a load of my husband's clothes into the laundry and some of it needed stain spray...that man never remembers to put on his chef's sized apron when he is stir frying with hot, spattering oil.....and I wanted to get that finished before the plumbers might arrive and have to turn off the main water valve.  Just got that in when my next door neighbour arrived with a giant tote bag filled with more bags of rice and rolled oats that, when added to what she has already brought us since the end of June, could combine to feed a lumber camp crew for an entire summer.  In the top of the bag were two large bunches of carrots and a giant head of broccoli, both veggies needing immediate attention.  So, I spent the next hour cutting off carrot tops and peeling and bagging them for my husband to make soup out of, perhaps tomorrow.  Then I chopped the heavy, tough stem off the head of broccoli, removed a section for our dinner tonight then cut the rest of it into somewhat smaller pieces, blanched the whole works, cooled all the pieces and bagged them for the freezer.  Originally I had hoped to have the freezer and most of the refrigerator free of any food items before we left town, but that isn't going to happen, so all we can do is pray our refrigerator, poor ancient scratched stained ugly old thing that it is, doesn't break down while we are gone. So thankful our friend is checking in several times a week to water plants and check things like basement flooding and dead refrigerators. God bless her!!  

After lunch I got the load of clothes dried and sorted, but I think I will wait and iron them tomorrow.  For some reason our lunch preparations resulted in more than the usual amount of dirty dishes, so I spent a fair bit of time tidying up the kitchen and washing plates and glasses and bowls and pots and and and and....

Now as I write this I am waiting for my son to call in regard to some mutual banking arrangements we need to make together in regard to our trip.  Those arrangements will dictate how I spend the rest of the next ten days in preparing to go. 

Tomorrow morning if I am looking at a chunk of free time after I iron the laundry I washed today I think I will just keep my questions about further chores for the day to myself!  Hohoho!!! I certainly can't whine today about not getting enough exercise.  I have lost count of how many times I have been up and down both flights of stairs and how long I spent standing in the kitchen doing various chores.  

That part is ALL good!!!  My hip muscles on the operated leg are finally beginning to strengthen up to cover up the fact that the tendon has not returned to full operation.  YAY!  I thought I was done with all of the healing and restoration process, but no!  That 18 month time frame for complete or nearly complete healing is still in effect for me for the next 5 months apparently. I am delighted and relieved as I see the limp finally beginning to lessen even when I am walking farther than usual without my cane.  Thank you God.

Surviving The Heat Thanks To Friends With A/C In Their House!

Last night was the first time this summer that I have removed all the covers from my bed and slept on top of the bottom sheet, thanking God for light summer overnight wear.  I will be doing the same thing tonight.  Today we got up to almost +34C, with not much of a breeze so it was like a sauna outside by mid afternoon.  Tomorrow the temperature is aiming for a high of about +37C and then slowly we will get back to more seasonal mid to upper +20C's.  Can't wait!!

I caught quite a magnificent break this afternoon. Two good friends contacted me and invited me to come to their house for the hottest part of the afternoon. Their house has wonderful A/C, so it was quite a treat!  An icy cold cola and a  fruit flavoured "frozen on a stick like a Creamsicle"  snack lowered my core temperature nicely.  I survived the afternoon well thanks to friends!!  God bless them for their invitation.  My husband was also invited but opted for a long nap in our basement instead after spending a few hours working on our kids' wedding reception programme.  

I must be finally getting into holiday mode because after I visited my friends this afternoon I stopped at the grocery store to pick up a couple of food items, noticed their rack containing travel sized shampoos and toothpastes and such was full of excellent product, so I picked up everything that I need to pack in my carry on for our upcoming trip. Tonight I hard copied all our flight and rental apartment information so I have it immediately at hand if required at US Customs and Immigration instead of having to fiddle about on mobile phones trying to find what we need amongst our email files.  I cleaned out my carry on bag yesterday and started making a few difficult decisions about what clothing items I am going to take with me.  It always takes me awhile to get my head around the details of preparing for a trip. Fortunately I have had a lot of lead time for this one. Final clothes shopping trip here will happen either at the end of next week if it cools down enough or the following week.  My second last haircut is scheduled for next week, I have the dates for refilling my necessary prescriptions all juggled around so I won't run out of them before we get home and I have decided not to take my vitamin supplements.  I can purchase a month's worth once we get there and use them up before we board the plane to come home.  I made a list of what else has to be done at the end of this month: setting up our American mobile phone plans, getting our health insurance figured out and paid for, arranging to have the post office hold our mail while we are gone, setting up arrangements with our local utility companies to pay our September bills in advance of the trip, and figuring out how much actual cash we need to carry with us.  I have been putting off even thinking about any of these things because I didn't have the mental or emotional energy available.  Now, my brain is starting to compute the details and I feel motivated to get with it and prepare. YAY! I think my sudden enthusiasm to do these things was triggered yesterday when I paid the bill for our flights and the hold deposit on the rental apartment.  Once that much money is actually invested it is far more motivating to carry through with the rest of the arrangements.

I have not seen many mosquitoes here since all the rain stopped and the heat began, but they have apparently seen me!!  At the moment I have four wrist bites, a back of the arm bite, a back of the leg bit and three bites on my shins that are currently sending me nuts with itching! Fortunately this kind of bad itching usually only lasts for about a day when I get these miserable bites. By tomorrow I will have angry red little welts, but the horrible itch that tempts me with the urge to scratch at them should be gone.