True Canadians

We have been busy lately so I have not been blogging.  We have been doing funerals and helping a new friend find a suitable place to live.  

And in between we have been following the Olympics.  Some of our friends actually got up at 4 AM to see the last game of hockey against Sweden.  We just told every one to NOT tell us what happened and then we watched it after I got home from church. 

We have not had a lot of snow locally, but this weekend on Vancouver Island they were dumped on.  The grandchildren woke up to a winter wonderland and ran out to make snowballs in their bare feet and pajamas.  



TRUE CANADIANS.

  

We also both had a bout with gastro-intestinal upsets that kept us low for about 8 days all together.  Unusually, for me, I got it first and was just reviving when I had to baby Old Man Watching.  So many of our friends seem to be in Mexico.  That might be a better plan for next February.

Now I will catch up on your writings.

more winter

February is floating along.  It is the LONGEST month of the year in Canada.  Although last Monday was declared to be Family Day and it is a government holiday now too.  I don't know how I missed that as I do watch the news and listen to CBC radio. A long weekend in mid-February is a good thing in a cold country.

We had some gray days which I hate, when the clouds came half way down the mountain and hung there for most of a week.  I need to see blue skies and the horizon along the tops of the hills.  I can take the cold if the skies are blue.  
I did make a peach cobbler with some of the peaches I canned last summer.  They gave us a wish-taste of next summer.

But between the gastro flu that hung on for a week for both of us, and the cold, I didn't get out for much walking.  

A friend and I watched A Celtic Pilgrimage with John O'Donohue.  It was brilliant.  He was a former catholic priest and poet who led pilgimages to holy celtic sites in Ireland.  The whole thing was fascinating for me and my new friend from Dublin, Patricia.  It is worth watching if you can get the DVD.  

We have also been going up the mountain to work on the inter-church project of mosaic glass.  Actually some of the people who joined us to work claim to be agnostic.  We had good times working together and it was amazing how all the talk was spiritual.  I call this project "This is the Day That the Lord Hath Made".  The guiding artist just laughed when I started to sing.  Today the job was to install  them on either side of the hall entrance.  

It will be interesting to see how the congregation reacts as in the sanctuary the windows are all VERY traditional stained glass with metal fusings.  These are a little more abstract and the sun actually looks Aztec to me but is German influenced.  They are supposed to be consecrated tomorrow after the regular worship as the Bishop will be here to do our service.  Here is your sneak preview although I know some will hate it, most will be enthralled and I look forward to hearing from the A.A. groups that meet in the hall 4x a week at 8:00 at night to see if they like the privacy the new windows will give them.

             
                                                                                                                                                     

Can you see the figure in the opaline glass?  Marina had that chunk of glass for 25 years and didn't know when she would use it.  I saw an angel in it and she soon had it broken down to rebuild it in mosaics.  The glue is still wet.  It is glorious when the sun shines through it.  It will take a few weeks for the glue to set and then we will see this figure more clearly as its glass is more precious.  I don't think it is an angel.  Others did.  It could be one of the prophets or even St. Alban that the church is named for.  I think it is just a welcoming figure singing the hymn,  "Come In, Come In and Sit Down, You are a part of the Family."       

I am so happy with this artistic glass work.  It makes my heart sing and will be a blessing back into our little village.              

Looking after a B/B

Snow-shoeing is a good way to get out of the house in the Canadian winters.  We all look for ways to keep away the Northern Depression, called SAD or Seasonal Affective Disorder.  Another way is to go south.  It was - 20 C. here this morning, but the skies were blue.  The landlords have flown off to a church convention, in Las Vegas of all places.  Everybody smiles and goes WINK...WINK.  But Circus Circus hotel/casino gives good Conference deals for church gatherings.  Still it does seem strange to advertize that. 
 The temperature in Vegas today was   + 14 C.  so they may not have used the pool.           
              I am not sure I could sleep in this garish bedroom.  The landlords will probably think it is a hoot.  It looks like a bordello to me, but then prostitution is not a crime in Nevada. 
The rides could be fun.      


Now about that Church convention in Vegas called Living Stones....

It is a Living Stones Convention for any of you who may know about this study group.  Some of the groups are coming from Iowa and Northern Manitoba Indian Reserves and Washington State, northern California etc. in colder parts of North America,

so it was a central place to meet. That made plane fares more equitable.  The countryside there looks much like here in the summer.

this is our river

So we are looking after the B/B business and house for a few weeks.  We get half of the take for changing the beds, mopping and dusting and cleaning the bathroom.  This is a fall picture.

 This is a summer one.

Yesterday morning Old Man made home-made multi-grain bread toast they left for us to use, with farm fresh eggs delivered every Wednesday.  

We love those tasty eggs and get some for ourselves too each week.  He poached the eggs.  They really taste so much better than store-bought eggs.  I also put out the landlady's home-made granola and jams and a good commercial yogurt.  We also devoured some fresh pineapple and banana etc. fruit in a dish with yogurt.  They have their own blend of coffee brewed for the business part of the B/B.  Let me know if you will be passing by here and I will give you more details on the delights of this area.  Of course at this time of the year the last guests, who stayed a few days, were gone all day to go into the hills to cross-country ski.

I caught a 48 hour stomach upset that did a better intestinal cleanse than any health food store dosing package could try to match.  It had been going around, so I guess I am not invincible.  At least the aches are over now even if the intestines are still rumbling.  The rumbling keeps moving further south, so I am assuming that this is a good sign.  I should be more like myself tomorrow.  However having to slow down has allowed me to finish a book that I was given for Christmas and was having trouble finding the time for finishing the last pages.  What a remarkable young woman.  She makes me feel insignificant.   I actually went back and read from the picture inserts, over again. I am not sure I understand this culture but she is their Super-Woman Defender.       
                                           
So I thank you, wee sweet, lovely Malala, for being you.  I admire you for telling your truth.
       

February...are you sure?

I realized on Saturday that I needed to pay the rent and fill in a new calendar with important things to remember.  Didn't we just get back from our Christmas trip?  I also decided to paint the bulletin board in

'little red wagon red' on the outside of the laundry room door to follow the flow of colours in the kitchen of the suite.  It was an old beaten-up place that needed refreshing.  

I keep a calendar there to refer to when doing boring things like ironing and folding clothes. This suite has a yellow and red kitchen theme that I would have never chosen for myself but am growing to love it.  The painting of 3 suns by a local artist, was already here and I grew to like it especially on grey winter days.

Rent-A-Daughter didn't like the cheap apple-patterned curtains I found at the dime store, so she ordered me some online that are more tasteful.  They should arrive this week.  The dishwasher should be installed soon too.  I also have a calendar in my bedroom and one in the e-mail on my computer.  And still I forget things.  I wonder sometimes how I could have taught early school for 30 years where I had to follow a precise plan for every 15-30 minute lesson of the day, and I didn't get off track.  Little children need to be constantly on the move so lessons need to be short and with movement.  Now I am older I guess, and not so aware of clock-watching.  

I needed to gather up some things to send for grandson, Nolan's, birthday to mail to him on Monday.  I always send another donation to his Education Fund Savings Plan but like to send a card with some gold chocolate coins and maybe a maze-puzzles book or stickers.

 He loves to get mail addressed to Master Nolan -------.  Included was a little blue book called "Why You Are So Awesome" which had 50 pages I had to write in.  His mom sent it to me as he has been a little down due to two boys who are bullying him with put downs.  The school is on top of it but it still happens, so his mom sent this little book for me to send him to boost his spirits.  It costs more these days to mail those things than to buy them.  Sigh.  I search for the lightest and smallest things to buy but ......  Soon he will be a teenager and cash will work fine.  I tried gift cards but then the mother has to take them shopping, so that isn't always the most unselfish thing to send even if it gets ME off the hook.  

Last Thursday I went up the mountain to the workshop to help with choosing pieces for the last panel of the mosaics for our community church.  
#3 is glued and ready for grouting but I was the only helper there to do the sky for #4.  I think it has too much yellow.  

We will fix it tomorrow when more folk are there to give some input.  Here is where we are so far.  The pieces aren't glued in yet so it will be easy to adjust.  There is an angel or a welcoming figure or a prophet or Moses in the white at the bottom.  We are not sure but there is an amorphous being in the glass pattern that we decided to keep.  Maybe when more worker's heads show up tomorrow we will figure it out.  It is in beautiful, pale opalescent pieces of glass.  It is all a fascinating project.  It has a life of its own that keeps telling us what to do.  Weird, I know.   It is hard to tell, below, as it is all sitting on white paper patterns where the artist drew blow-ups of what her vision was.   Tomorrow should be my last day of working on it and we hope to have it installed for the Bishop's blessing on February 16.

January in our little Canadian Village

January has been relatively mild this year but too many days are overcast.  I prefer more cold if I can have sunshine and blue skies for my daily walks.  I have driven up the mountain three times now to work on the mosaic windows that a new artsy parishioner and her husband want to install in the sad looking blank spaces at the entrance to the church hall.  They live on a hill above the Thompson River Valley and look down on miles of cattle fields.  The cattle and sheep have all been herded down this way from their summer ranges to be fed for the winter.  Some of the spring birthings have started.  

They are developing this property as a elders' retreat.  They hope to offer dancercize, yoga, sweat lodge times, hiking, dune buggy rides, spiritual renewal spaces, walks, and art projects etc.  Or you can stay in a suite and escape from the world.   It was probably the worst day of the year to take pictures but you can see the vista is of pristine hills and mesas from the driveway.  My friend Germaine loves to do mosaics so came to help.  The long uphill driveway was icy the first day so we left my pickup at the bottom of the hill and walked up.  Behind her is one of the suites.

The lady of the house is well known in British Columbia for her glass works.  This is their front door area. 

And then below is the dining room area.

Marina spent 15 years on a Reserve, married to a First Nations man in the United States where she became very involved with their spiritual practices and the healing powers of sweat lodge ceremonies, which is much like a sauna with prayer times involved.  All the world's Wisdom Traditions will be honoured here, although both Marina and Dan are committed Christians.  Their bigger world view is refreshing to me. They certainly are NOT zenophobic. 

Marina's first vision of a project for us was to enhance the 4 blank windows at the entrance to our church hall.  She planned a series that I call "This is the Day That the Lord Hath Made" as that ditty/bible verse keeps running through my mind.  

#1 is night time. 

 #2 is the morning with a Peace Dove descending on our village or on Jerusalem or ????    Is that the Dead Sea down there?  The River of Life (the teachings of Jesus) is running through the middle of each panel.

Of course they don't show well here as we just opened the door to see the effect of light from behind and were very impressed.

My friend Germaine who is a cradle RC, and another friend Gerda who is a cradle Lutheran, and anybody from our community is welcome to work on this project which is meant to delight the eyes of anyone living or visiting in the community. 

Germaine and I were working on the big sun which had influences from the art of Hundertwassers who is German. But the sun area looks Aztec to me.  

I was trying to put a bit of rosey pink and purple into the sunset.  The two completed panels are leaning against the wall but of course have no sun filtering through them so aren't as effective.

We went up the hill to the workshop again today and finished panel #3.  Hopefully #4 will be done this week so they can be installed for parishioners to see on Sunday.  But if not this week then maybe next will be good enough.

I am booked to help on the last two Fridays of the month at the Soup's On from 11:00 to 1:00.  The really hungry people hang around outside before the doors even open.  This should not happen in this day and age.  

It is by donation or not, as one can afford to pay.  Our pod was called the Mixed Blessings Group this week and we had a lovely new helper, Patricia, from Dublin, who cut up and served desserts.  

When you look at the mixed crowd it is hard to tell who the wealthier ones are, but I know most of them and they are good giving people.  Some are Christians and some are undecided and some are Agnostics but if they are willing to work for a few hours we will gladly accept the help. 

 This lady brings her husband out of extended care in his wheelchair, every Friday for an outing.  She also made the crazy big Cat in the Hat style topper, and a skirt from a sweater she found in the Thrift Shop.  People can be clever to help keep warm in our Candian cold.

Our Rent-a-Daughter came for a visit for a few days.  She went to work on the mosaic windows and then walked back to town for her 5 km. of exercise.  She also went to church with me on Sunday and had 6 hard questions for me afterwards.

Is it really January?

We are home from our trip to the other side of Canada.  We are coping well now that we have unpacked our suitcases and become settled again....  We had lost a month of rental due to cleaning that needed to be done and advertising for a new renter when we finally came home. It seemed like we spent two weeks at the house cleaning and repairing and showing it to potential buyers and renters.  I used locally posted ads and Kijiji which is like Craig's List. Here is a summer picture, but of course the house is under snow right now.

Our house was rented again and the renter, again, said he wants to buy it.  But this time we decided to keep the FOR SALE sign on the fence and keep advertising it for ourselves.   Last time we took it off the market for a year.  So the new renter agreed to that, and asked that he have first counter-offer over from a potential buyer over the next 3 months.  We agreed.  In the meantime I am sleeping better as the couple that are renting don't have children or pets.  We also got the old oak desk taken apart and ready to go to a nephew's log house on a ranch at Nanton Alberta.  We are also sending him the credenza/liquor cabinet as he has a big house and not a lot of furniture.   

 And so now we can settle in for the rest of the winter.  I am walking everyday for an hour around town and/or to shop.  Old Man Watching goes for a half hour walk for his Type 2 diabetes.  We really like our little retirement suite and hope the house in the next village 15 minutes away, sells soon so we can make this place our permanent living quarters until we are put in assisted-living quarters up by the hospital in Ashcroft Village.  I like to walk along the Thompson River under the bridge when the path isn't too icy.  I really worry about falling again as I still suffer from the stepstool fall last fall.

Today I went up the mountain to work with some other women and a few men on a mosaic glass window hanging.  The artist did this one as a prototype but the final ones are much less abstract.  

I forgot my camera.  I will go to help again on Thursday so hope to show you more then.  The project is getting very exciting and is very Christ-centered but also an attempt to brand the village as an art centre.  It was a joyous day for me even though I got stuck on their long icy driveway up the hill.  I had the pickup truck so thought I would be OK as there was still a lot of dirt showing on the lane.  Dan got me out and back down to the highway so I was fortunate and the walk to the house, up the hill was good for me.

Home again, home again, Jiggity Jig

Home Again.........Jiggity Jig........I am not sure what that chant from my childhood really means.  I have been feeling guilty about reading all your blogs and being a blog-slug myself on winter evenings.  So I will finish off with pictures that ended our Christmas holiday on the other side of North America and then go into some things for the beginning of 2014.  I am catching up AGAIN.  I don't know why it bothers me to get 3 weeks behind but it does. My son says I am 'anal'  but I don't know what that means. Maybe catching up is hard because I leave out some observations that were important to me.  I am listening to Ray Charles right now as he sings "It's Crying Time Again".  Maybe he is not a good choice for blogging about separating from family, AGAIN.  It may be another year or more until we see them again.  So I just switched to Enya.

Christmas morning was delightful for us to watch of course. Both girls wanted bean bag chairs for watching TV.  They take up a lot of the living room now.
Their Auntie Karen (home from teacher training at University and a week's holiday in New York City) stayed the night and helped with the Christmas Eve carol service and stocking the presents under the tree.Her boyfriend showed up the next day with the rest of the family for the turkey feast.  Our son was delighted to receive a range finder and camouflage gear for his bow hunting hobby.

On the last day we finished our third jigsaw of the holidays.   Jacklyn had the honour of adding the last piece that had been hiding under the sofa.  This one was the most difficult one we did over the holidays, due to all the different shades of white and gray.

It was callled "Following Santa's Footsteps".  

We left on the 27th knowing we would not be able to do family joys like this again for a few years, unless we win the lottery.  I had a hard time holding back the tears when we finally had to go.  We had also caught the youngest's cold.  Old Man Watching had it for 3 days before we flew out, so really wanted his own bed and space and quiet.  I started to feel it coming on the day we were leaving, so dosed myself with zinc lozenges.  That really seem to minimize the severity of any illness for me.  The two flight stop-overs going down in altitude and back up out of Winnipeg and Edmonton didn't help our ears at all, at all.  Ouch and ouch again.  

And here is the front yard with the Museum across the road, which is closed for the winter.  This is what we woke up to the next day after arriving back home on the west coast and driving inland for 6 hours.    But at least we were home.

The bad news was that our rent-to-buy fellow who had been in our house for a year and said he still was working on a down-payment at Halloween, left on New Years Eve as he bought a little house a few blocks away.  So we are back to square one and have to find another renter or preferably sell the cottage on the river.  

These nutcracker decorations disappeared from our front entrance a few days ago.  It truly means Christmas is over.

In our empty house/cottage for sale

we have a roll top desk that originally came from the Rand and Leopold Desk Co. in Burlington Iowa U.S.A.  Old Man's father picked it up at an auction after the war.  His mother, Eleanor, used it on the ranch, and then I have used it for 25 years also.  It is too big for our living quarters now.  I need to find a buyer.  It has secret compartments at the back of each drawer.  The roll top still works and the key locks it.  Come and get it, somebody please.  

Hello 2014.  I took some time to write 2014 on the top of my cheque books so that I won't forget over the next few months.  We so seldom use cheques these days.  The last time I went to order some they wanted $50 for a box of them.  So I guess when these run out that will be that, for paper transactions for me.  Another era disappears.  It makes me feel insecure to not be able to write a cheque in an emergency.