What A Blessed Evening!

 Tonight was “just what the doctor ordered” for us both! Thank you Lord! 

My husband’s young cousin and her boyfriend dropped over and we took a walk together around a tree lined neighbourhood in the lovely evening weather. What a beautiful end of summer night. Then we came back to our place for a visit. We shared a taste of the home made sour cherry mead our guests presented us with, then my husband baked the tastiest German peach kukken (kuchen, cucken, cuken, cookin’?? I need to find out how to spell that word!!!) he has made to date and we ate the entire pan’s worth!! We washed it down with strong black tea. We went out to our little herb garden and filled several large bags with part of the remainder of our herbs. We have dried as many as we need for ourselves and it is time to give the rest away, then get the pots emptied and stored for winter before our upcoming trip. By the time they left, on foot, for their two kilometre walk home, we had also loaded them down with the whole pot of remaining marjoram and a pot full of roses! Oh, and two large books about the Crusades and medieval weaponry! We all had a grand time and my husband and I are delighted these young people want to spend time with us! Now we are staying up way too late because we need to gear down from the excitement of having company and all the laughter we shared with them tonight. We are getting to old to have such fun! Haha!

Thank You Anti-Vaxxers For This 4th Wave of Coronavirus!

 I am angry this morning.  I feel justified in my anger today because the deliberate ignorance of others is now affecting sensible folk.  A friend who was unwittingly exposed recently at an event where she later discovered herself to be one of the only double vaccinated people present in a large group of anti-vaxxers....long story....now is struggling with a mild case of Coronavirus.  Several of the other people, completely unvaccinated, are also VERY ill with the virus and two of them are now in ICU.  

I use the term "deliberate ignorance" because there are many factual research essays, articles and scientific journals that can be researched to learn about the vaccines, but too many people are reading articles by Lord knows who on social media sites and believing every oddball, scientifically unsubstantiated blurb out there and there are hundreds if not thousands of them floating around on the internet.  I suppose it is less time consuming and mentally strenuous not to bother doing actual research and just grab onto whatever wierd conspiracy theory that makes you comfortable with the position you have chosen to have in regard to vaccinations.  Thank God your parents didn't have the same problems accepting your childhood vaccinations so you haven't already died from polio or tetanus.  There was no long term research for those either when they were first given.

Thank you anti-vaxxers that because of the growing number of Coronavirus cases among your numbers, it appears I may be unable to assist my mother with doctors' appointments and other necessary errands I was supposed to be doing with her next week as the possibility of a 4th wave lockdown at her facility is now looming.  As you tie up ICU beds and add more stress to an already overly stressed medical system here on the prairies, those of us who have been following the mandates to protect ourselves and OTHERS (remember the concept of "OTHERS"???) are being penalized because of your refusal to listen to reason.  (No, it is not an inability in most cases, it is a deliberate refusal.)  Friends who have already been waiting for surgeries to relieve them of ongoing pain and illness, waiting for a couple of years already in some cases, have had their wait times extended once again because all available medical staff are once again being rerouted into Covid Care.  A lady I attended church with yesterday has been waiting the usual two years for hip and knee replacements and now has been told she will have to wait another 5-7 months because of this. She is now so crippled up she can hardly walk and her back and hips have become twisted. Even after surgery now, she will not have the outcome she should have and it is because of the extended wait.

If anti-vaxxers want to put themselves at risk of extreme illness or even death then that is their choice, but unfortunately that choice affects the rest of society and that is what makes me angry.  I see people I know suffering because others didn't care enough about people other than themselves and their own fear that the government is controlling us through health mandates to get vaccinated and do what they could do to protect all of us, including themselves.  

 

 I can't apologize for this rant. I am fed up to the back teeth by people who are so self-centered that they care not one whit about the rest of the population.

Just Another "Sacred Sunday", That's My Fun Day.....

 I do enjoy Sunday's like this one! The weather is what I consider to be perfect: sunshine, an afternoon temperature of about +21C, NO discernable breeze, not even the threat of rain.....yup, a perfect kind of day despite being awake since 2:50am.  (Nope, don't know why.)

I went with my husband to his church this morning so that I could help him drive if he needed it.  His CFS inspired ennui had reached a point where he was barely functional as we arrived at the church.  However, not unexpectedly, once he got in there, donned his clergy duds and strode to the front of the church to lead the service, he came alive as though someone had flipped an ON switch!  His voice was full of joy and teasing, his preaching inspired, and he took lots of time after the service to chat with his parishioners who he has not seen in the past five weeks due to his being on holidays.  I assumed he would crash out again once we drove away home, but his energy remained up and he was determined we were going to go out for lunch.  After discovering that most of his favourite hamburger haunts are closed on Sundays at lunchtime, he decided it was time to try Bushwakkers once again after about a 3 year moratorium on us going there because he didn't care for the food that much.  Well, he certainly enjoyed the food today.  He ordered their special "Steak Sandwich and a Pint".  The steak was a huge piece of decent quality beef, cooked to medium rare perfection and he loved the string fries...slightly salted, but mostly coated in paprika, which gave them a tasty flavour to go along with the steak.  I ordered a chicken caesar salad and it came with garlic toast....amazing....just like the "good old days" when being served a piece of garlic toast with a caesar salad was standard practise, none of today's need to order the toast ala carte, if the restaurant even has such a thing!  The chicken was plentiful and I had a choice of plain or blackened chicken.  I would have enjoyed the blackened chicken, but it is always SO SALTY that I knew my diabetic kidneys would never forgive me!  Plain was just wonderful thank you and the dressing was garlicky and not too thickly applied....it was a tasty treat.  Two thick slices of fresh lemon made my diet cola taste quite marvellous too.  I am so grateful my husband's church service starts at 10am because we made it back to the city in plenty of time to have most of our lunch consumed before the restaurant filled with football fans enjoying a meal and a few glasses of beer prior to today's game against the Winnipeg team.  The number of fans for the Roughriders and Blue Bombers entering the restaurant as we were leaving  was huge and there was good natured ribbing back and forth between the fans of the opposing teams.  I was remembering living in a town in Alberta years ago, where that kind of good natured rivalry often escalated into the exchanging of fists and nasty words with little provocation. I am grateful that so many sports fans here are generallly more laid back than some of their AB counterparts.

Once we got home my husband was able to complete the contacting of readers for his sister's upcoming funeral service and emailing them their parts to rehearse at home.  He has been on the go since before 8am, it is now on the way to 5pm and the exhaustion has only now caught up with him.  Hallelujah that he has lasted this long without feeling like he is going to collapse from being so tired.

I enjoyed watching MY church's morning service online this afternoon.  Some of my favourite scriptures from Psalm 150 and Habakkuk were read and preached on by our seniors' chaplain and she did a grand job. She reminded me of the charismatic preachers we used to listen to in the 1970's, making the scriptures so practical for daily living and being so enthusiastic about praising God in all circumstances. We even sang a couple of choruses from back in "the day" that I have always loved. I am so glad I got to enjoy both services today.  

It is nearly time to go and prepare dinner....this has been a wonderful, fast moving day after a day so slow going yesterday that I thought the boredom and ensuing depression would do me right in!  I was so depressed yesterday, so lacking in the kind of creative thought required to think of something useful to do, that I spend the ENTIRE afternoon reading a novel!!! It wasn't even a great novel!!  Aaaargh!  I am so happy that today I am more cheerful and had more interesting things to do and think about!

My husband pulled himself out of his stupor late yesterday afternoon and toddled off to a church wardens' meeting.  The man at whose house they met sent home items from his garden: a brilliantlly red tomato, two large green peppers and a perfectly shaped egg plant!  Who knew anyone could grow eggplants around here, but he had planted them in "Dutch pots" that held in the intense heat we had most of the summer and with his regular watering routine, he has been innundated with these incredible eggplants and peppers.  What a treat for us!

Tomorrow we have to start getting ready for our trip to Alberta.  With the return in some sectors to some of the previous pandemic requirements for masking, hand sanitizing and distancing, I am praying very hard that Mom's facility won't decide it is best to go into lock down before we ever arrive there!!!  From my mouth to God's ear!!

A "So Happy Together" Kind Of Day

 I love days like this one!  Despite feeling tough from his CFS and the constant headache it brings, my husband woke up this morning determined to accomplish a few things if I would be willing to help him.  Yup, no worries!  

So we got our hotels booked for the upcoming AB trip, talked to his brother in law about some of the funeral arrangements that need changing due to the huge COVID numbers there, got some tv programmes previously recorded onto a computer file as we have a friend who wants to watch them over at his house with my husband....he is an architect and my husband is a carpenter, so the NOVA programmes about restoring different buildings around the world are of interest to both of them.  I cleared ALL the storage shelves in the basement that are sitting in front of the foundation cracks most recently opened up due to the force of the wind driving huge rainfalls into each side of the building during consecutive storms and now my husband is mixing up the various compounds he needs to fill them up before we get more rain and wind. Fortunately it shouldn't be for awhile, but you never know around here at this time of year. The forecast can change within minutes it seems.

Tonight's dinner will be leftovers from earlier in the week. I have so many leftovers in the refrigerator that there is no room to squeeze so much as a thin slice of cheese into it!!!! So tonight we will feast on Japanese seafood soup, hotdogs with swiss chard relish, baked potatoes and carrots, as well as pasta with a spicy sausage and tomato-onion sauce.  I think that mix is sufficiently eclectic even for the two of us!

Sometime this morning as I was rearranging cartons in the refrigerator, I must have bumped the little knob that tells the fridge and freezer how cold they are supposed to be. Sigh....a few moments ago my husband found a puddle on the floor in front of the refrigator and discovered water dripping from under the freezer door.  Wow....good thing he discovered it when he did. The bread and cheese in the freezer are nearly completely thawed and the meat would have been the next victim by the feel of the packages.  The little temperature knob had been spun all the way around to 0, instead of sitting at the proper temperature setting.  Aiiii yiiiiiii.....I haven't been in the kitchen since lunch time, so by the time I might have found the problem all the meat in the freezer would have been too thawed to re-freeze! Thank you Lord for my husband's sharp eyes this afternoon!!

Yes, it has been a good day of doing things together, even discovering what could have been a serious problem and getting it solved!!

Remebering My Sister In Law

 This is how I will always remember her: dressed up with a glass of nice wine in her hand, enjoying herself and her husband and family.  Miss you sister in law, very much!

Feeling A Tad Frantic Right Now!

 I am trying to reach my son in NYC, but having no success. Sigh......  His last big push at work after a summer of overtime was yesterday, a long day that ended at some point after the storms from Hurricane Ida slammed into New York State. I am watching the videos of New York’s subway system flooding last night, the sections of the system he would have used to get home. In the videos water is pouring over top of the subway cars and gushing onto the platforms in the stations. First responders were rescuing people from out of the train cars. Eight people in my son’s area drowned in the basements of their homes. Several other people drowned and n their cars. New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware are also suffering from flooding. What a disaster! 

——————————————Later:

Just heard from our son and he and his girlfriend are fine. Thank God! Fortunately for him, he was so late getting off work that his subway line had already shut down. He didn’t know how to get home, so he sat outside on a raised restaurant patio eating a chicken sandwich while he watched the storm going on all around him. Eventually he found a taxi driver who figured out a route to get him home safely, but it was a harried trip. Today he is relaxing at home appreciating the sunshine that broke through the clouds at last. 

So many more places and people to pray for in view of this latest global warning/hurricane disaster. Despite decades of talking about how to repair infrastructures and plan in advance for handling environmental disasters we are still woefully unprepared. 

Missed It By THAT Much!

 Sigh.....we had to go out yesterday afternoon to deliver some food to a friend and we had a wonderful time, but I missed the fact that my husband had worn his outdoor vest into their home, so when he came away without it, I didn't realize it. Sigh again......

At about 10pm he went to retrieve his cell phone and wallet from his vest pocket. He didn't find the cell phone.  He didn't find the wallet.  He didn't even find the pocket because the vest had been left at our friends' house, hanging on their coat tree.  They obviously  haven't noticed it there because we have not heard from them.

It is nearly 11am and I don't dare call them until well after 11am because they both sleep away most of the morning before getting up for brunch.  So, I am filling time blogging and emailing until it is safe to let them know I need to come over to retrieve the vest and all its contents that my husband needs to live his daily life and do his daily work. Today is technically his first day back on the job after holidays and he hasn't been able to check his work emails or phone calls due to the missing phone.  Sigh, sigh, sigh, sigh, sigh.....it isn't like me to not notice what he wears or carries into someone else's home or business and it certainly isn't like me to forget to ask him before leaving that home or business if he has every item that he arrived with.  Aaaaargh!!!  Missed it by that much!  That much lack of attention to detail, that is.  Oh well.....hopefully he hasn't missed anything terribly important on his email and phone messages.  Not an auspicious return to the job.

My husband is suffering right now from the worst chronic fatigue symptoms he has had in several years.  He was pretty ill when he left his office job nearly three years ago, but he is even worse now than he was then.  He is suffering so much distress over his sister's death and is not one to let his emotions out, so everything stays internalized and he doesn't cope very well. Raymond can cry and talk to people about his grief and he is very sincere in his expressions, while my poor husband keeps everything bottled up and suffers long term.  I realize my husband wasn't totally over his original burnout after the office job before he began back in parish ministry, but we needed to have an income, so what else was he supposed to do?  I certainly didn't get hired for any jobs at the time.  So, here we go again.  I am guessing the first improvements he sees in his health will be after the funeral, so I do pray I am right about that for both our sakes.

I had a nice morning, driving through the rain to the eye clinic to have my glasses refitted and tightened up.  So glad I didn't wait until after our next trip away.  The headache I have been fighting for over a week from not having the progressive lenses lined up properly for my eyes was gone in less than a half hour after the frames were refitted. Amazing!  This afternoon I am having my hair cut and I am really looking forward to it!!    Improved vision and a new haircut....what lovely ways to cope with an overcast, rainy, depressing day. YAY!