One thing I look forward to, once I am retired, is getting back to home cooking. Pots of stews and soups, trays of buns and breads, roasts and the like. I am so excited about getting back to ‘real’ cooking, that every now and again I have to go for a trial run when I have an extra day off. Today is one of those days.
The only problem is, when I was last into home cooking, I was feeding my three teenagers (and their twelve closest friends at the best of times). I dice and slice, pour and stir into a pot that should hold the perfect amount of soup. Then I add a bit of this and a bit of that and I have to move up to a bigger pot.
This happens two or three times, until I have a cupboard full of pots to wash, my husband says “I told you your pot was too small”, and we have enough soup to feed a small crowd.
I can’t imagine how this happens – every time. I’m talking one onion, a couple of shallots, two carrots, a parsnip, a stalk of celery, a bit of cabbage, one small steak and one cup of barley. Mix them together with a couple of litres of broth and poof, we have gallons of soup to deal with.
I don’t have any proof but I am pretty sure Dan is sneaking into the kitchen and slipping things into the pot when I am not looking. 🤷
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in Canada. We are celebrating tonight, as my husband is working five straight twelve hour shifts. Friday, Saturday and Sunday days (so he will be home tonight by six) and then Monday night and Tuesday night. He is a good man and I am definitely thankful for him.
I am grateful that we live in a country that is relatively safe (except for the sudden sinkhole situation this summer) and generally peaceful (except during an election which unfortunately is now the case).
I am grateful for my home and yard. I realize that although it is rather humble, it is far more than what many have.
I’m kidding. Our house isn’t quite that humble. That is Grandpa’s garden shed and the playhouse he built for the grandkids. That isn’t even our patio. Grandpa got carried away with the monster pool last year so it had to move to the patio and we had to improvise for our patio set.
I am grateful for my career that is winding down, my boss, my co-workers, clients and suppliers. It has been challenging and frustrating and a lot of fun over the years.
We all know which one is the ‘real’ boss.
I am grateful for the parents who raised me, the siblings I grew up with, the family I raised and of course the grandchildren they are raising. I am grateful for our little dog, Kat.
Most of all, this year I am grateful for the life I have been given. I am grateful for the challenges, the blessings and the beauty of my life. This year, after sixty four years, I am at peace with whatever life hands me and I truly feel I have the strength, the wisdom and the sense of humor to fully appreciate my life.
This month our youngest grandson is celebrating his first birthday. Being the frugal, practical Grandma that I am, I volunteered to buy him his first winter boots for this auspicious occasion. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Cason needed a birthday present, he has a home filled with toys and cute outfits and lots of other grandparents to buy him more of the fun stuff, so boots were the perfect gift for Grandma and Grandpa D to provide.
In case you haven’t bought any baby boots lately, they are not the easiest thing to come by. Size 4 baby boots are particularly hard to come by. After two dedicated shopping trips I broke down and bought him a pair in size five. (I am not that dedicated when it comes to shopping) They are the tiniest, lightest boots I have ever seen. Mom is just going to have to work those wiggly little feet into an extra pair of socks until they grow a bit. It’s not like winter will be over anytime soon. He’s got a good seven months before he will be venturing out in sneakers
It remains to be seen how practical the size five boots turn out to be, but Grandma definitely fell off the frugal end of the spectrum. I am not one to splurge on footwear. I myself have a pair of sneakers, white heels, black heels, winter boots, summer boots and a pair of sandals. Combined they cost me as much as Cason’s boots. 🙄
Practical or pricey as they may be, I can’t wait until the end of the month when we head off to celebrate Cason’s birthday. Nine grandchildren in, there is one thing I am certain of. Whether Cason is as excited as I am about the his new boots, he is for sure going to love the box they came in.
Living in Canada, I have never felt that being a girl or woman was a handicap. There seemed to be positives and negatives regardless of gender and there were extenuating circumstances regardless.
Through personal experiences over the years and with communication barriers removed by advanced technology , I have come to see my naivety on this subject. I have come to see the brutality towards girls and women around the world. I have also come to recognize the more subtle, systematic abuse of our gender. The challenges that girls face are real and they must be addressed. Many of them are unconcionable in this day and age and all of them are harmful to females and to society as a whole.
I am no expert on this subject, but I do believe that we all need to do our part to promote respect, safety and support for all girls and women around the world. For my part, I recommend all who have not already done so, to start by reading “The Moment of Lift” by Melinda Gates. She is an expert on this subject and her book is eloquent and moving.
World Day of Girls is a day worth noting. The many critical issues facing girls around the world are worth recognizing, discussing and working to remediate. The girls today are to become the women of tomorrow. We need to do our part to ensure that they will be educated, healthy and strong.
Today is World Mental Health Day. I have long felt that quality of life is as important, or more so, than length of life. As such, I feel mental health is as important as physical well-being.
I cannot imagine that there is anyone who does not, or has not, at some point suffered from some form of mental illness. I do not know why there has ever been stygma associated with mental illness or why our society has such a problem understanding the need for mental health care.
My biggest struggle with mental well being has always been anxiety issues. I realize my issues are not as traumatic as many others, such as schizophrenia or anorexia or any number of serious conditions that others deal with on a daily basis. The problem is, to compare it to physical conditions, a broken toe may not be close to battling cancer, but it is still a problem. When you suffer from an anxiety attack when you are driving to work, it is a big problem. When you have to deal with anxiety, regardless of what routine or extraordinary task you are doing, it is a real problem – it makes everything so much harder than it should be.
Over the years I have tackled my anxiety issues in a number of ways and I have come a long way. I know everyone is different and what works for one does not necessarily help another, but here are some things that have worked for me:
1) Seeing a professional counselor. I have seen three different counselors during three different life crises. The first one was a great help. One trick he taught me was to focus on something mentally challenging when my stress level was out of control. That helped a lot. The other two counselors were worth the time to see but mostly because they gave me a safe place to talk through stuff I was going through.
3) Writing daily positive affirmations. The written word is so powerful for me. I pick new affirmations to start every new year but I always include my favourite by Louise Haye. “I am at peace with my own feelings. I am safe where I am. I create my own security. I love and approve of myself. “
2) Self help books. I generally find there is some helpful bit in every self help book but my favourites have been – every book be Wayne Dyer, every book by Louise Haye, Alter Ego by Todd Herman (specifically for vanishing my inner demons – great chapter) and From Panic to Power by Lucinda Bassett (this one helped me get over my anxiety attacks behind the wheel – huge help)
4) Positive pillow talk. When I struggle, I give myself pep talks as I am falling asleep. I quit smoking years ago, using this method. I also find it helps me get to sleep quickly, so that helps me feel better in the morning.
5) Confronting my fears. My first memory has always been one of absolute terror. As a small tot, my Mother would take my sister and I for a walk which included crossing a swinging bridge that terrified me. That my older sister loved to jump and run on it to make it swing harder did not help. A couple of years ago, my husband took me ‘home’ to cross my bridge from hell. Fortunately, the bridge had been rebuilt and was much more solid than it had been and my sister was hundreds of miles away. I crossed the bridge a couple of times – absolutely fearless! I still have the memory, and the sister, but that day did wonders for my confidence going forward😉
If you or any of your loved ones struggle with mental health issues, keep working on it, keep helping others who struggle. You will never do anything more important in your life.
My husband and I share our home with our Cavalier. That’s a toy spaniel and like most spaniels, she has her quirks.
I’ve been told that dogs cannot watch television. No one has told, Kat. She will watch anything on television, although often it is half heartedly, until she sees a dog. Sometimes it doesn’t even have to be a dog. Any animal vaguely resembling a dog gets her attention.
Kat’s favourite television show is Mountain Men. There is one guy with a pack of hunting dogs. (I don’t know his name – I don’t really watch the show. I watch Kat watch the show) Anyway, my favourite part is when those dogs tree a mountain cat. Kat is there! She comes flying off the couch, crouches under the television and goes full on hunting dog. It’s like some kind of virtual reality for a spoiled little lap dog who is terrified of snowflakes in real life. Once the situation is under control, Kat swaggers back to her pillows on the couch and settles down until the pack needs her again.
Other than her television fetish, Kat is a fairly normal little dog. She loves to go for walks, as long as there is zero rain or snow. She will only do her business as we are crossing a road. Yes, our dog is a traffic stopper. My favourite part of that is stopping to pick up her poop while hoping I don’t get hit by a bus.
Kat loves to eat. As much as she loves meat, she prefers vegetables. She loves eating miniature tomatoes and beans off the plants in the summer. She used to eat jalapenos and Hungarian peppers until the summer we planted ghost peppers in the pepper patch.
Of course, like most dogs, Kat loves to share our bed. Actually she likes our pillows and isn’t terribly fond of sharing them with us.
For all her quirks, Kat is a pretty good little dog. She’s a good size for a small house or apartment. I don’t see us ever getting another pure bred pup, as they all seem to be a bit high maintenance and neurotic, but if you are looking to share your house with a small pure bred, Cavaliers are pretty entertaining and sweet.💖
Today is a double anniversary for me. 43 years ago, I got married. Weddings and marriages are supposed to be rated on the positive scale of life. That one wasn’t. By the time I got to my wedding day, I knew I should run. I didn’t.
Today is the 24th anniversary of my divorce. That should be a negative, but it wasn’t. I am proud that I got out. I am proud that I took myself and my three teenagers, my dog and my plant out of a really bad situation. I am proud that I worked my butt off, kept a roof over our heads and food in the cupboards, and decent clothes in our closets. I am proud that I worked my way up from a worn out sedan to a cool reliable, turbo-charged convertible. I am proud that I took my kids on memorable holidays, spent time with them, and gave them the home they deserved – even if it was only for a few years.
Today my kids are on their own, living their own lives and raising their own beautiful families. I am happily married to a good man. He is caring and kind and funny. We have a good life, a new dog and lots of plants.
My divorce was a good thing. The best thing I ever did. There really isn’t a good way to celebrate a divorce. People think you are bitter or angry or awful, if you ever mention it, no matter how good it was. So I don’t.
I do celebrate my first marriage and my divorce every year on October 8th. I don’t make a big deal out of it, no party or anything. I just go for a walk, stomp the hell out of a few flowers, feel good about myself and grateful for the life I have. 😊
295 more days until I retire. Most of the time I am good with that. My work has been interesting, gratifying,and challenging but I am ready for a change and a rest. Especially on weeks like this, I am so ready!
I grew up in a small family business. I know how to work and I know how to serve. I was raised to respect and appreciate our customers. I was not told to respect and appreciate our customers, I was taught by example. My parents were honorable, intelligent people who believed in providing value for the products and services they sold. They treated their customers with respect and appreciation because they had genuine respect and appreciation for their customers .
I have been fortunate, working in the construction industry, that those I worked for have shared my work ethic and integrity. For the most part, I have been very fortunate to have the opportunity to work with co-workers, suppliers and support industries who took pride in value, quality and service.
Unfortunately, despite everyone’s best intentions, there are times when things go wrong. In this day and age, one small input error on a computer screen can cause major problems. That I can work with. What I cannot work with, are those times when things go terribly wrong and no one is concerned with making them right. What I cannot handle are those times when people would prefer to pretend there is no problem or that the priority is finding someone to blame for the problem, rather than just acknowledging there is a problem and focusing on making things right.
That was what I dealt with this week – and what I seem to be dealing with more and more frequently. I have gotten to point where I am exhausted. I am exhausted from making excuses for the inexcusable. I am exhausted from sending urgent messages to a supplier regarding yet another bungled order, only to be left hanging without so much as a simple response that they have seen my message and are working on correcting the current issue. I am exhausted from calling and leaving voice messages, when I know that there will be no call back. I am exhausted from having to call a client, who was depending on me to provide answers, and telling them that I have no answers to give.
Communication has never been easier. With desktop computers, laptops, tablets and smart phones, a response is always a click or a call away. And yet too often, the response is no response at all – especially when there is a critical issue to deal with. That to me is beyond sad, and says so much about our current, big business culture.
Many feel that these huge, technically driven corporations are a sign of progress. Personally, I do not see how showing a lack of respect and appreciation for others is a sign of progress for any part of our society. To me, it is not a sign of good business.
With my husband on a mission to clean and organize our garage, I am once again feeling the renovation bug. Living in a normal house, this wouldn’t be a huge deal. We don’t live in a ‘normal’ house. We live in the house my husband’s family lived in before he was born sixty years ago. Renovations in an older home are a big deal – a huge deal.
When I met my (second) husband, I was renting a duplex for my three teenagers and myself. After my sons graduated from school and moved out, Dan decided we should move into his house. Dan, my daughter and I, living in his house. The first couple of years we worked on the interior of the house to make it a bit homier – a bit of paint here, new sink taps there, some new flooring. We did things in manageable projects and worked as a team.
With the interior of the house coming together, we felt it was time to start working on the exterior. Nothing heroic, a little fresh paint on the window frames. This was when Dan decided to educate me on the real challenges of renovating an older home.
Apparently, one could not just paint the exterior window frames. First they had to be scraped and sanded. These were not normal windows. These were windows made up of a number of small, framed panels. I started with the living room window. Having broken several of those miserable little panels, we decided it would be easier to just replace the entire mess with a new picture window. Dan scraped and sanded the rest of the windows, saving me the aggravation of fighting with them and us the cost of replacing any more of them. Now they were ready to paint – or so I thought.
Dan decided that before we painted the window frames, we should paint the house. That made sense, as painting the house later would risk getting paint spills on the freshly painted windows. Now it was time to call in my son Mark, to help me tear all the eaves troughs off the house, as one does not paint an old house without replacing the eaves troughs.
I don’t remember why we had to cut down the twenty foot tree in the back yard, but it had to go. The stump is still there. Every summer it becomes host to a huge patch of mushrooms which we dig out only to have them magically re-appear. However, with the tree gone, we were ready to paint the house – as soon as Dan repaired a few cracks in the stucco and brushed any dried paint flakes off it.
Fortunately, by the time we had the house prepared and painted, the window frames painted and the new eave troughs installed, winter was well on it’s way. The new roof, garage and garden shed had to wait for another round of ambition that hit us a few years later.
There are a few projects we would still like to tackle. It would be nice to finally have that home gym in the garage. Would it really be worth it? That is questionable, but we will see how we are feeling after Dan finishes his cleaning and organizing.
One of the most pervasive messages of these times is the importance of living in the moment, cherishing today as the day that we can truly live. We know that obsessing over the past or worrying about the future is to be avoided at all costs as it is a waste of the precious time we have and a proven detriment to out mental health.
The only ones who seem to be totally tone deaf to this message are those who control the retail industry. It is September. In stores across the country there are shelves displaying the remnants of back to school sales, summer decor and beach toys. Meanwhile, seasonal display areas are filling up with Halloween Costumes, Thanksgiving decorations, Christmas wrappings and sparkling, inflatable lawn ornaments. Is rushing the seasons necessary? Is it good for us, our families, our society? Is it responsible marketing?
Years ago, we had time to live. We had spring days to splash in puddles or indulge in long walks to enjoy the annual rebirth of nature. We had long summer days to savour the sunshine and flowers and fresh vegetables. We had autumn days to jump in dried leaves with our tots and evenings to curl up with a good book. We had winters for watching pure white snow blanket the neighbourhood, snow men to build, toboggans to ride and hot chocolate and fresh homemade cookies to savour. Holidays and special events were few and far between – and they were special.
Now, we cannot get through one holiday without gearing up for the next big event, thanks to the retail industry. Adults and children alike are so burnt out by the time the actual holiday arrives, it is destined to be a stressful letdown.
For many, holidays are stressful at the best of times. Many are dealing with celebrating the 1st after the loss of a loved one, or the reminder of the loss of a loved one. For many parents and grandparents, holidays are a financial strain they can scarcely afford. For others, who grow up outside the Christian faith, Christian based holidays are a time to feel excluded, removed from their neighbours and co-workers. For the many children who struggle through our overcrowded school system, the sight of back to school sales in mid-July is cruel and traumatic.
Why do we as a society allow this perverse marketing? Why do our various levels of government, who have no problem mandating so much of our lives, not step up and place some restrictions on irresponsible retailers? Why does anyone need Christmas displays in September?
Seclusion 101 with AnneMarie 