kinnigurl’s blog

My sister sent me this picture of my mom preening for the camera. I'm sure the grandkids had something to do with this, but I love it. My mom is super fun and young at heart and this captures her true spirit! Way to go Granny T!

This morning around 9 it finally quit snowing. We have been in the throes of a winter storm, our second one in two weeks. It snowed continuously for 22 hours and we got around 30 cm of snow (1 foot for you 'Mericans). BLAH. It may be pretty, but it is messing up my plans and I am not happy about it. tonight we were supposed to go to the Canuck VS Ducks hockey game, but there is no way in hell we can get there. Our van is deeply entrenched in snow and the alley is treacherous. No way I am taking a chance with Donna out there. We could take the bus, but at this point that is also not a very good option as I have heard that some of the bus stops are knee deep in snow and the buses are just stopping in the middle of the street. Kind of hard to unload the wheelchair. We will just have to forego the game and have made 2 other people very happy by giving them our tickets. Here are a few picture that I snapped on my new camera. I haven't actually been able to leave my deck/apartment yet, so photos are somewhat limiting, but they will give an idea as to how much snow we have, which is unusual for the west coast. I took a couple of shots of the railing with the different levels of snow from one day to the next. Still not totally used to my camera. It is going to take a while.

This is a photo of the bamboo plant on my deck from Saturday, Sunday and early this morning. It got a little more buried each day. I had to wade out on the deck after I took this picture and clean the snow off so it didn't break.

When the kids were little we lived in a place called Port Hardy on the very north tip of Vancouver Island, isolated and very beautiful. Our first Christmas, we decided to join the ranks of the locals and get out there and cut down our own Christmas tree. I was rather excited at the prospect of tree cutting as I had grown up in southern Alberta where there wasn’t a tree for miles, so going into the forest was a whole new experience for me. My husband, well he was just revved up being able to spark up his chain saw. The kids being only 2 and 4 just did what we told them with the enticement of hot chocolate with marshmallows when we got home.  Wish that were still true.

 

We hit the logging road in our 1964 Chevy truck, minus intact floor boards, on a bright, sunny Sunday on our first Christmas tree cutting expedition. Finding a good spot along the hydro lines, not that far from home, we decided it was a good place to look for a tree, either that or Neil had to pee, I’m not sure which came first. At any rate we all piled out dressed in our toques and heavy coats to get down to some serious tree cutting. Finding the perfect tree in the tree lot is daunting at best, but in the middle of the forest, not an easy task. The kids were busy picking up pine cones and tossing them at one another while Bill and I sized up the trees. Our criteria was stiff as we eliminated tree after tree. We had found a couple of reasonable candidates, which had been marked appropriately, when my eyes widened.  Our excitement mounted as we ticked off each of our specifications. I could see Bill’s fingers itching to crank up the chain saw.  We decided this was it and amongst yells of “tim…ber” saw our first, real forest tree fall to the ground.

 

After much grunting, hauling and dragging of our prize, we finally got loaded back into the truck and heading towards home with complaints of cold feet and empty tummies.  I fed and watered the kids while Bill squared off the bottom of the tree for the stand and dug out the decorations from under the house.  The kids waited anxiously in the living room, having already picked out the perfect location.  I went to the garage to see what was keeping my favorite lumber jack only to find him looking from tree to stand after discovering it would only hold about one-third of the base of our fresh cut pine.  I dispatched him to town after tossing “Rudolph” into the VCR to amuse the kids for another half-hour. 

 

Anticipating the problems of regular stands being much too miniature for local loggers, Home Hardware had a fine array of large stands that would hold our tree steady for the next couple of weeks.  The kids were happy to see daddy home with the new one and helped him steer the base through the ring and tighten the bolts to hold things nice and sturdy.  Running back inside, jumping up and down the wait seemed endless and Bill and I pushed and prodded flipping branches through the front door and on completion slowly tilted the tree upright near its spot by the fireplace. Heads tilted up, no words could pass our stretched necks. Mouths agape we all just stood and looked up, way up. The top of the tree was bent over about a foot and-a-half, which meant the tree was close to 27 feet tall. It had looked much smaller in the forest than it did in the middle of our living room. I am not sure who started but the first giggles were followed by laughter to full on belly laughs and tears rolling down our cheeks as we gazed at the gigantic tree in the middle of our house.

 

At this point I knew we would never have enough decorations to complete the project so once again Bill was dispatched to town while the kids and I made a batch of shortbread cookies waiting for his return. The rest of the decorating went without a hitch but I am pretty sure Home Hardware had to restock after our visit to the store.  It really was a beautiful tree and a memory not easily forgotten and one of the first of many forays into the bush for Christmas trees.  Not only did we not get a Charlie Brown tree that year, but we got a tree Paul Bunyan would have been mighty proud of. 

As you can see - we ended up having to cut about 2 feet off the bottom for stability, and so that it wouldn't hit the ceiling. It was a great tree!

As a"Merry Christmas to Me" present yesterday, Donna went over to the rehab hospital to get herself weighed and lo and behold she had gained another 3 pounds. She now weighs a whopping 74 pounds! This may not seem like much, but she has now gained 12% of her original weight, which is quite an accomplishment in 3 months. She was ecstatic and really is happy with her feeding tube. I can tell you, it certainly puts my mind at ease knowing that she is gaining instead of losing.

Now - if I could lose instead of gaining - life would be sweet. I am starting to feel better now on a higher dose of my meds, but these last 3 weeks without my caregiver have kicked my butt. I feel tired all the time and on the verge of hysteria more than 1/2 the time. I didn't realize how much the thyroid affected one's body. It especially does a number on the brain, which is why it is important to get LOTS of rest, exercise and take the proper medication.  I can feel things churning around in my head, but quite often can't get them out in a sentence. Short circuiting or something. I also type strange when I get tired...for example I may type something like this - thomesing and it takes me a second to figure out what is wrong. Not good in my line of work! Hopefully when the caregiver gets back to work full time and Christmas stuff settles down, I can get back to my baseline.

We are supposed to get snow today, which is rather puzzling if you ask me. Last night we were out and about around 7ish and it was still 8C outside and downright balmy. Now today they are telling us it is going to be -6 with snow? WTF??? It's raining at the moment, so we'll see if it materializes.

On that note, I am off to get some work done before I go and get my hair cut this morning and mail the rest of my parcels. I am hopefully going to Costco sometime this weekend to pick up a new camera that has been funded by my sister and her family. Could I be more excited??? I don't think so! Hopefully there will be a whole new batch of photos to share in the New Year! *quivers excitedly*.

I am totally excited!!! Yesterday in the mail I received the book I had made for my mom for Christmas and it is more than I could have hoped for. I decided that I would put all my best photos into a book and give them to my mom for Christmas, as she doesn't have wall space to hang photos, and it was too hard for me to pick just 1 or 2 that she would have liked. So I tried out Shutterfly and it is so EASY to create a photo book, I am not sure why I haven't done it before. The finished product is so professional with a cover photo, spine title, back cover photo, and all the photos are printed on heavy, glossy black paper. Absolutely fantastic! I hope she is as excited about it as I am. After Christmas when I have extra $ I am going to order one for myself.

I have 1 week to get all my Christmas shopping done. Thanks the gods for internet shopping! What would I do without it?

Kinni - speaking of politics?? Yes - it has come to THAT! I swear our government has literally gone off the deep end. This week our opposition has decided to form a coalition and toss the Prime Minister out on his proverbial ear! In other words we are having a bloodless coup! (How else would Canadians do things? I think they even said please and thank you). Now, I am not a Conservative and did not vote in Harper. However, I was perfectly happy that we had a strong opposition to keep things going in the right direction. Not down the crazy path! Conservatives need to be in power in times of economic crisis - either that or call back Paul Martin to balance the budget. Unfortunately that isn't going to happen. Seriously - this is embarrassing as a nation. However as Donna pointed out, nobody really cares about Canada anyway, and nobody has probably even noticed. Michelle Jean, the Governor General now has to make the decision as to whether Harper can suspend parliament and try to hold the wolves at bay (cowards way out) or let this coalition take over. The coalition leader is Stephan Dion, who bless his little heart, is a lovely man who cannot speak English (well understandable English), but he just stepped down as the leader of the Liberal Party after his PM loss and will only be the leader of the Liberals until their leadership convention, whenever the hell that is. So what does this mean??? I have no friggin' idea! It's just a complete cluster fuck as far as I'm concerned and we need strong leaders right now, which we are obviously not going to get. My solution - Marc Emery for PM, and we can all smoke pot until we don't give a rats ass any more!

Okay - off the political rant, which is SO not like me. But...well enough said.

I have been happily spending some extra time on Facebook these last weeks and have reconnected with many people from my distant past! Such fun catching up with old friends. I have been in touch with a few people I went to school with from Grades 1-12 and haven't seen since 1972. It's funny how none of us have changed that much and sort of just picked up where we left off. There is the distinct possibility of meeting up with a few people and reconnecting in person, which will just be a blast. Looking forward to THAT!

May, Donna's caregiver, was in a car accident 3 weeks ago and injured her back, making it impossible for her to care for Donna in her usual way. So aside from getting reading for Christmas before I start my other job on Dec 15, working full-time, running errands, and running my nonstop Bed and Breakfast, I now have to do all of Donna's care stuff as well. My work has suffered, I am stressed and I can feel my Hashimoto's starting to kick in again. I hope for all our sakes that May is able to come back to work soon. She is a single mom with 3 children and needs her income as much as I need her to come to work. Fingers crossed she can return next week. I think Donna is getting sick of my bitching as well. Don't blame her.

On that note, I had better get back to work and I will try to up date more frequently.

Namaste my friends.

Ok - so here are the long-awaited photos of Reaper, which I was supposed to add long ago! Due to my short-term memory loss I totally forgot until I was gently reminded to post them. This episode of Reaper was filmed about 10 steps away from my apartment, which was pretty cool. They have filmed a few things in the area, which Donna and I have managed to catch. We missed most of the outside filming this day, due to our slowness in getting organized, but I did manage to grab a couple of photos before they wrapped up for the day.

This weekend is Canadian Thanksgiving. We enjoy family time, turkey and the last throws of nice weather before the rain sets in. I am going to be putting my turkey in the oven shortly and look forward to spending the day with my children. It's a small group - but we enjoy it.

I took this photo the other day on my walkabout and thought it looked very thanksgivingy...

We didn't get to see as much of the filming of Reaper as we wanted to, but we still did get to see one scene. I have some pictures, which I will post as soon as I download them. Unfortunately I didn't get to see the "devil", but we did get to see Sam's scene being filmed, which was coolish.

I just got a phone call from the college and I have been booked for two huge blocks of time from Dec 15 to February 20. Basically, I will be teaching two entire chunks of the course all on my own, so won't just be sitting around doing nothing. This is such awesome news! I am really excited! I also have 4 half days booked in October and November, with the promise of more to come. This is just so perfect and couldn't have come at a better time. I am extremely broke at the moment, my rent has just been raised, so the extra income will be perfect!

The deck is coming along, and is almost finished! The flooring is all laid and the railing half done. At least now I can put my furniture back under the covered area. Pictures will follow.

Just had to share my good news!

Peace out!