Scaaaaaaaary!!!

Well, we're coming up on Hallowe'en and if you want something scary, go looking to buy yourself a pair of jeans.  I did that yesterday.

When I was younger, buying jeans was something I did to enhance my wardrobe and flatter my figure....I bought flared, straight or skinny jeans that worked with my height and the fashion of the day.  There is nothing out there now that meets any one of those for me, so I bought some blah jeans that weren't too tight, too long or too sleazy, but it was tough to find them.

The ones I ended up with had a huge floppy cardboard letting the world know the size I would be  wearing, and that they were size X, Short and washed to look like I'd had a run in with a bleach-carrier.  There are other jeans out there, with sizes that allow you to match the length of your legs and the width of your waist and they're soft, with thread the same colour as the pants, but damn, they're expensive.  And by the way, "distressed", although it describes me, is also a key to the higher price.

Actually, I had forgotten that I have one really great pair of jeans. They actually fit me and are comfortable, but they got paint on them so I bought a rhinestone star patch for them and for some reason I've put them away for the season, and now I'm ashamed I've been so grumpy.

A Journey into the Depths of Nostalgia

Every once in a while I have a day, or part of one, where my legs are on strike.  I can walk but can't really control my direction.  I had one yesterday and chose to stay in bed...pillows behind my back, TV remote close by and an almost-finished book.  It looked like it was going to be a good day.  And in a strange way it was.

David brought up a couple of boxes from our locker, left them on the bed with a grin and a message that I could either attack those boxes, full of photos, or just leave them there.

I chose to open the boxes.

As I knew they would be, the photos, not looked at since we moved here 10 years ago, were immediate pulls on my heart-strings. I didn't let that stop me, even though I should have known better. 

Photos of family, of friends, of visits and trips, of many Valentine's Days and gifts under Christmas trees, of weddings and post-funeral meetings, of my kids with their kids and a surprising number of people and places I couldn't recall.

I cried.  I waited for Dave to go downstairs again before I actually really cried. But I also laughed and told myself off for wearing something I had loved at the time, and noticed that I'm thinner now than I was in my 40s and 50s.

Partway through the action, Dave came in to see how I was doing on the decision-making.  "Decision-making?" I said.  "What do you want to keep, and what should go?" Dave explained.

I'm still laughing.

Did I say I hate Google Photo?

Tonight I was thinking about writing a blog, and working it around a photo.  Over the last couple of weeks we have had out-of-town family visiting us and have taken photos galore, both of them and our local family.

So I just now spent a half-hour or so looking at photos, videos and work of mine which includes many lovely things covered over by one or more of my fingers, some video I'd taken which kept zooming between Robyn and Maddy doing gymnastic feats and strange blurry glances of my feet, my fingers again and the buttons on my jacket. Luckily, there were also a few photos taken by David of the 3 sisters while we were up in the beautiful countryside just north of us in Québec.

None of these will be in this blog, thanks to Google Photos which I hate with such vigour that my teeth are only two-thirds of what they were last summer.  I did manage to acquire two photos, one at the covered bridge in Gatineau and another at the Inn we stayed in that same day.

left to right: Mary, me, Dave

left to right: Mary, Kathy, me

And, the last thing I have to say about this is that I am going to have to get tutored somehow, if I can stop cursing first so that a tutor will deal with the real me.

What I mean by "Still in Wonderland"

We've been in our condo apartment for 10 years now, and we continue to feel incredibly lucky to be here.  While the building itself is not beautiful, we are located in a wonderful area. Because the site belongs to the National Capital Commission, the land must be 40% green, and it gives us a stream on one side of the building, the National Firefighters' Memorial with its beautiful walls and peaceful garden on another side, and a charming indigenous-themed park on another.  Our apartment is on the ground floor and we have a nice little patio where I often sit with a book and a glass of  wine.

Last month I was talking to a friend who wondered if we felt safe, being on the ground floor and I hastened to say that I had never given any thought to our safety and really enjoyed the freedom that it gives me.

This morning, while I was sitting in the living room with my coffee and a book, someone knocked on our patio door, someone I didn't know and whose pajama pants and bare chest made me think he might have been someone from our building whom I ought to have recognized. I went to the door and realized as soon as he started talking to me that I was wrong about that. Long story short, we gave him coffee and toast and David sat outside talking with him while I called the City to get advice on what our next steps should be, since he didn't appear to want to leave. Two very gentle policemen strolled over from the street, had a little chat with him and walked him over to their car.

Wonderland it still is.

I can't help it; the music made me do it

"Hamilton" is an American Musical, a sung- and -rapped-through musical about the life of the American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton.

About a year ago, after hearing my older grandchildren were totally taken by the musical, I bought two DVDs of it, one for them and one for me. Like them, I played it constantly, although for me, it was just for a day and I really, really liked it.  I know very little about American history, and as many of us have, I've figured that if I need to know anything about anything, Google is there. The music surprised me by being catchy and funny, and suddenly made politicians a little more human than I'd allowed them to be in my head.

After my time on Facebook today, I think we need a new musical...let's call it "Ford" and just go bezack.

I do not have authority to use this photo but I can't believe he cares.

.

As it should be

Over the last few days, I have been a searcher.  That's because I'm also a person who loses or misplaces things.

I was really giving myself a hard time about my inability to track things down, but now that I think about it, I can see real advantages to that.  While I was looking for specific things I couldn't find, I came across things I hadn't seen in ages.

Imagine opening a box and seeing the necklaces Dave and I had bought each other when we were first exploring who we were as a couple; finding a book that I had promised myself would be a diary for the rest of my life, and which lasted for 7 straight days; reading a wonderful letter from my mom in which she gave me, at my request, her thoughts about how our newly-blended family was working out; finding a medal I'd earned at school for a ridiculous how-did-I-ever-do-it general excellence in my last year; picking up a small sweet black cotton Chinese shoe,the other one of  which was mysteriously lost before Emily got to wear them.

More stuff: letters and handmade birthday, Easter and Christmas cards from our kids and grand kids, photos I'd put aside to later frame them which just sat there unframed but beautiful, a long braid of my hair, probably cut when I was about 9.

It doesn't mean I don't want to be able to find the things I was looking for in the first place, but this has really given me a great deal of both joy and sadness.  As it should be.

How I pushed myself into hell

It's not every day that I wish I could restart from the moment my feet hit the floor.  Today, July 20th 2018, started at midnight by my deciding to watch a movie that I knew was going to end sometime around 3:30 am.  It was The Candidate with Robert Redford.

I didn't know that at 3:00 a.m. my connection to Netflix is cut off for a while so that things Netflix and other services are totally up-to-date by 3:08.  This meant that I missed the end of the movie and had to go to IMDB  to find out if Robert Redford became a senator.  By then I didn't much care but it seemed the appropriate thing to do.

I slept in a bit this morning but that was not a bad thing in itself.  It's just that any longer and the plastic container underneath the kitchen sink would have leaked all over the under-the-sink shelves and all the weird and possibly useless things we keep there.

Why was water leaking?  I fear that it might have been because I had used the sink to clean earth off the succulent plants that I intended to make more attractive by moving to a big beautiful copper bowl I'd half-filled with new stones I'd bought (I know, I should have searched for them near the house).

No matter what caused it, water makings its way to the shelves under the sink is not a good thing.

I wonder what I'm going to be able to eat for lunch....I've blocked off my cupboards but luckily I seem to have lost my appetite.

And this is what the copper bowl looks like now.