Tuesday 29 December 2015

Status Update (shallow version)

Here I am trying to post more often than last fall, and finding great pleasure in letting my fingers tell me what my brain sometimes hides away from me.

This is a Tuesday, and I have done nothing useful, nothing uplifting, nothing controversial and nothing I would be ashamed of, yet here I am, happy as a (enter your favourite happy thing here).

I would be happier if I could figure out how to make my laptop camera work, if I could trust the water running out of the tap and if I could ignore the very enticing Christmas treats Dave has put together.  How lucky am I?
Thanksgiving with from left, my sister's partner Bob, my sister Kathy, my sister Mary, me, my brothers, Pat, Sean and Doug

And my Dave
That's how lucky!!


Sunday 27 December 2015

Our Christmas Story

The crew who put dinner together on Christmas Eve, who ate dinner, who cleaned up after dinner and let the Aged Parents sleep in the next day.  No lamp marked FRAGILE  was even scratched in the making.
Back row, L to R: Merlin, Emily, Morgan, Pat
2nd row, Sarah, Maddy, Dave, Lorna
squished in front, Julia, Robyn, Emma




Friday 25 December 2015

Not a word about Christmas

For many years, probably since my 30s I thought I could never live in a house without a shower.


I find myself now among the few who couldn't live in a house without a bath---not necessarily a bath with jets, although I must admit I loved it when we had one---just a bath.  We now have a lovely large, comfortable bath with room to lean back and read, and if anyone ever decided to make a specially-fitted tray, a place for wine and a book.  

Today, after a few days of mysterious comings and goings of plumbers and supers, looking at 
the hidden parts of the water system, and reassuring us that with a few teensy glitches, we had ordinary water temperature and force, I ran my usual bath, loaded it up with goatsmilk bubbly stuff, got my e-reader, which is tiny and never in danger of leaving my hands, a glass of wine and some chili-flavoured chocolate.  

I prepared myself for a lovely half-hour and found instead a cold water bath with a beautiful bubbling surface that almost led me to jump in without checking.  Because we'd had a day and a half of hot, hot water in both the hot and the cold system, I decided to test it first.

Don't fool yourself into thinking that you can fix a mostly cold bath in a large tub, even if there is warmish water where the hot water usually lives.

Unhappily, yet mostly clean, 
Lorna




Sunday 20 December 2015

Zipppppp!!!!

Dave with Julia (r) and Emma 2012
This weekend, for the first time in a while, we had Julia and Emma staying with us.  It's amazing how little time it takes for kids to change and how long it takes for grandparents to notice that.

Years ago, I would have posted pictures of the two turning our living room into a bright blue fort with many of our treasures lined up on a rug to be "sold" back to us for ten cents.  We would have taken pictures of all of us together in bed with a bunch of stuffies, or shown our friends how cute it is when kids eat chocolate ice cream off a stick.

Now that Julia and Emma are 13 and 11, we're trying hard not to step on them as they're silently, and with earphones, lying on the floor where they used to make tents, watching phones and tablets, drawing anime characters (very well, but it's a solitary undertaking) and deciding which snack is appropriate for the present activity.

They're still charming and sweet, but until they start watching TVO or drinking wine, I fear we'll just be smiling in each other's company.

Thursday 17 December 2015

Yes, I do feel foolish

Why did no one ever tell me:

  • you can't wear a wide headband behind your ears to hold your hair back if you're wearing glasses
  • it's much easier to ignore technology than to throw your phone at the wall
  • your younger brother and your children will be drinking much nicer coffee than that which sits in your hippyish glass jar on the kitchen counter
  • the cost of 6 dollar store items equals the cost of a glass of wine at a nice bar, so you might want to rethink your silliness around Christmas stockings

Tuesday 15 December 2015

Wine 1, not 101

Oh. my. God.
I just read today that 1 glass of red wine is equal to 1 hour's gym time.  I immediately changed my wine schedule to a pre-dinner red and a dinner colour of my choice.

That sounds extravagant but once you know I am, by marriage , a wine-box consumer, it becomes easier to picture, given my pension.

Any damn day of the week I can choose Naked Grape Pinot Grigio or Naked Grape Shiraz (which to my children's shame, I pronounce Sheeeeraz).  I chose a Naked Grape red because Naked Grape is unoaked, and that makes the grabbing of a Naked Grape white almost too easy, and given that my real favourite white wine is Copper Moon Pinot Grigio, it all falls into place.  Nothing random in my wine schedule.

I wish that Barefoot Wine which is a wonderfully generous supporter of the LGBTQ community would put their wine in boxes. Surely I can't be the only member of the community who is the only wine drinker in the house.

For those of you who actually know anything about wine, please understand that I can't tell the difference between good wine and the various wines I become fond of for arcane reasons.  Don't reject me.  I have some other good qualities.



Monday 14 December 2015

Have I had an interesting few months?

Yes, especially if you consider "interesting" doesn't carry judgment about happiness, sadness, worth, deserving or overwhelming.  Some of the things, in random order, that have caused these interesting few months:

  • increased dizziness leading to more lurching while walking leading to less walking and no driving. (Or at least, only driving if I am confident dizziness is nowhere near me)
  • changes in the status of members of my family:wedding, separation, student to not-student, friendly to fiercely not
  • horrible interplay with anything resembling technology which caused me: to be listed on a page of women interested in hearing from single servicemen;to try out 4 different laptops; to have to give up wearing bangles as they interact with the keyboard; to lose access to my long-time blog, which sits there, readable, but inaccessible; to pocket-dial or text every member of my family sometimes in the middle of the night and to have bought a laptop whose camera is inaccessible to everyone who's tried to use it.
  • I've realized that I'm losing my french-speaking ability and have promised myself to take up reading in french to improve my vocabulary ( an unkept promise so far)
  • Facebook is barely interested in me, and mostly the feeling is mutual
  • I've lost my taste for berries, which makes eating yoghurt not the joy it once was, although every once in a while I mix it up with an exotic jam
  • I spent some time in Kitchener with a cat, a bird, several fish and a homey house right in the middle of the best weather of the summer and discovered the beautiful parks and walkways Kitchener has been keeping a secret
  • I'm growing my hair out.
That list is sort of pathetic, but pathetic or not, it captures my last few month pretty well.

I am looking forward to new months, full of good wine and chocolate, great books, outstanding music, happy visits and a new, possibly improved blogsite.