The cooking dilemma

I come from a huge family by today's standards.  There were 14 children (one died in infancy) so my mother had to cook us huge brood food each and every day.  She told me later in life that she didn't really enjoy cooking.. So I really feel for her dilemma..  I find it hard to come up with what to cook for me and my husband, who will eat anything I put in front of him, but I can't even imagine trying to cook for a whole brood of fussy kids.  I remember her telling us, when we were small, to "just try it" and would coax us to take a small taste, and if we didn't like it we could have some home-made bread or biscuits and molasses or peanut butter for supper instead.  She wasn't one to make each person something different, you either ate what was in front of you (if you didn't like it there were always others that would relieve you of your meal.. lol) or you just had a snack you made yourself.

Growing up we had a huge garden and raised a few chickens for eggs and meat when they got bigger. Mom was a stay at home mom and  when I was young in the early 1950's we didn't have electricity or an inside toilet.  My dad was a painter, both of the walls variety and painted on canvas in his spare time.  I remember watching by lamplight as he worked on one or the other of his paintings and he would put it to dry on the warming oven of the stove.

We never just went into the fridge to get something for a snack because it might be an ingredient for a meal for the whole family.  But whenever we had company mom and dad would always offer whoever was visiting a cup of tea and a meal.  We always had cookies and various deserts to eat at each meal.

As kids we always played outside no matter the time of year so we really worked up an appetite but we always seemed to have lots to eat.  I think love expanded the amount of food we had so everyone had lots.

Happy New Year!!! It's 2017

Well, Happy New Year, 2016 has been quite a year.  I'm one year older but none the wiser.  I turned quite a milestone last year.  I turned 65!  I can't believe I'm that old.  I don't feel a day over 45... really, I mean that, except of course when I feel ill, then I feel 100.   Hubby has turned 75 last year and that blows my mind.. I remember thinking that 50 was old, ancient even and now my kids are in their 40's.  Where has the time gone?  My mother-in-law turns 95 this Friday... I know that age is just a number and you are as old as you feel but wow.

Twin Steeds..

Well, here I sit, awaiting my pain meds to alternately relieve my pain and stop making me nauseous, a delicate balancing act.   I awoke yesterday morning with excruciating pain in my left shoulder.  Thinking it might just be that I slept on it wrong, I awaited the abatement of the pain to no avail.  So off to the emergency room to see a doctor.  Not a good way to spend a Sunday afternoon, rocking, holding my arm trying to ease the pain, counting down the minutes, then hours, until I got to see the doctor.  Turns out I have calcium buildup in my rotator cuff (not the first time, by the way).   So the doctor suggested I have a cortisone shot to which I replies, "Yes please, and NOW."  This brings to mind the thought I had a few years ago that I didn't want to have cortisone shots because they aren't good for you.  Also, she gave me a really strong pain killer which is something else I was strongly against in the past.   But as I was writhing in pain, I could have been told that drinking cat piss would have given me some relief and I would have said, pass me the straw.

I have a family member who is in chronic pain and is on a lot of pain meds.  I can remember sitting atop my twin steeds named High and Mighty, looking down my nose at my sibling and shaking my head at his weakness and thinking if only he could have some will power.  Well yesterday, I came crashing down to earth on my bad shoulder and got impaled with some shards of sympathy and understanding. Limping a mile in someone else's shoes is very humbling

hello *echo*echo*echo..... *echo

Wow, how the time has flown.  It doesn't take long for a year to go by when you're my age (and a year older tomorrow).  I don't know if I have any more followers but if I do, "Hi, long time no see". I don't blame you if you have long and ever ago moved on to greener pastures.  I hope your life is going well and that your health is fine.

We're finally getting some hot weather here on the east coast of Canada.  I don't mind the heat if the humidity wasn't so high.  There is a lot of humidity but no rain, or very little.  I think we're getting close to drought conditions.  

My health is not as great as it once was.  I have had to go on insulin recently and it has caused me to gain all of the weight back that I lost over the last 5 or so years and it's really depressing. I've also had the situation where 4 different kinds of drugs have caused me to have allergic reactions.  Two are anti-depressants (the irony is not lost on me), a diabetes medication and an antibiotic.  Now I'm scared to take ANYTHING new, even an anti-histamine which my doctor pointed out would be very rare and unusual for someone to be allergic to an anti-histamine considering what they are for.. but I won't put it past my body to be the one in a million.  

Is it possible that I'm a bad dog mommy.  Our little Shinese (Shih-Tzu/Pekingese mix) is a pervert.  She, and I do mean SHE, loves to hump everything from the cat to all her stuffed toys.  If the dog and cat are in the other room and I hear the cat yowling you can be sure that Tinka has her in a head lock and is going at it with her (yes, the cat is a HER as well).  Too bad they don't have doggy psychiatrists.  

Clown Car

Every time I see a Smart car I think of a clown car in the circus.. how many clowns can you jam into it?  Well, only two clowns in this one.  We got a second car, a Smart ForTwo Passion (gas powered, 5 speed automatic).  It's a 2008 but only has 60,000 kilometers in excellent condition. It took a bit of getting used to but now we both love it.  Also gotta love how fuel efficient it is.

The one constant

In this ever-changing world of ours there is one thing that I can count on that makes my day feel "normal"... I hate housework... not a mamby-pamby dislike but a passionate hate!!!  I can always count on that feeling when I pick up a broom or a dish cloth.  Now, I blame it on the fact that the cyst in my spine makes it very uncomfortable for me to sweep (for some reason that particular activity causes me the most pain) but I don't know.. I think that pain is my body saying "F*ck this shit, let's sit down and put our feet up bitch."..

And since we have decided to put our house up on the market in the next year or so I realized that we are slobs, complete and utter slobs (animals included).  The real estate agent came to give us an idea what we needed to do to get the house ready and his suggestion that we "de-clutter" sent a shaft of terror right to my heart. Mind you, I got my bedroom done lickety-split because I moved the clutter from there to the room right next to it, the computer room where junk goes to die.  It doesn't help that hubby and I are both hoarders and the dog has a huge collection of stuffed toys that she has to drag, one by one, to the door whenever she needs to go and do her business.

I keep telling hubby that all the work he did on the house over the years and we finally have it the way we want it and now we're selling.  Doesn't make sense to me or my screwed up back.  It would be nice to release some of what I have been holding on to over the years but the whole moving thing is such a pain, literally and figuratively.  And I don't know how our yappy little dog will take to being around people all day, she was raised in the country where we very very seldom have company so she is very protective of her personal space.  Molly, the cat, on the other hand, is pretty laid back as cats tend to be and she could live anywhere.

Lesson Learned

I learned a lesson today that I should always have a video camera at the ready in case something surprising, cute, amazing or,
like this morning, something that is all of the above should happen.

This morning I took our dog, Tinka, for her usual walk and neglected to take my camera (I had a feeling I might regret it but didn't
go back for it because I wanted to be on my way.). We get to our neighbour's barn where they keep their horses and low and behold the
sweetest, tiniest little kitten came toddling out of the barn and over to Tinka. I know from having a cat of our own that Tinka loves
all cats although some don't like to be approached by her. So I let Tinka go over to the kitten to greet it but I kept a tight hold on
her leash in case I had to pull her away.

What happened next melted my heart and made me curse myself for not going back to get the above stated camera. The kitten was rubbing
on Tinka and pushed her face into Tinka's and Tinka was nuzzling, licking and generally pouring love all OVER that kitten. I thought
that we would have that tiny little ball of pure awesomeness following us home but she was busy eating when we left.
*note to self** never leave home without my camera!!

Self Blocking

Why is it that I always have such an active mind?  I'm always wanting to do or learn something different than what I'm doing.  Like right now I'm working on counted cross stitching of a complicated pair of wolves.  I know that it's going to take me a long time to finish and after picking it up again after Christmas this year I was able to finish one square (there are four large squares and four half sized blocks on one side of each square) .. I know it will take me as much as a year to finish so it's an on-going project but my wandering mind is wanting to do something else.  I was into beading, that has kind of went by the wayside, I did a bunch of knitting and that is by the wayside as well, and then I started using Blender to make a digital teddy bear and all of these were, I think, to take me away from my painting.. I think that the reason that I'm not sticking with one craft or art is that if I get really good I think that I will start getting commissions from people and that will make my art a job and will squash my creativity.  Ahhh the self blocking of the troubled mind.

The Sound of the Opposite of Silence

Why is it, that in day to day life, I find it hard to understand what most people are saying, but while watching TV I have to put it on mute when the commercials come on because the sound seems so blaring and unbearably loud?  Alternately, when the program comes on I have to blast the sound so that I can hear what people are saying? A riddle that is.

Denial

   I don't always go down the road into denial land, but when I do it's not a meandering short stroll, it's a headlong, full speed ahead rush. And it's not a day trip.. oh no, it's a multiple months' long journey.

  In October of last year I was at the Doctor's for my quarterly diabetes check up and was told my weight was up a bit as well as my A1C's.   So instead of putting on my big girl panties and making adjustments in my eating, etc,  I decided to get my big girl panties in a bunch and turned my back on reality and even sanity itself.  How can a relatively intelligent woman of 62 be so stupid and destructive you might ask?  Well it ain't easy but I persevered.  I went off of my diet, started eating all the wrong foods and was stupid enough to quit taking my Victoza injections.  Yeah, that stupid.  And the cherry on top is that since October I haven't been checking my blood sugars.

   Lucky for me I had the balls to keep my appointment, a few weeks ago, for my blood test and last week for my appointment.  The news wasn't good, I had gained around 5 pounds and my A1C's were bad, very bad.  Normal  blood sugars are usually between 5 and 7-8.  When I got home I checked mine, finally, and they were 16, later that day they were 17 and that night they were 20!!! I was panicked... This is serious business, not to be fooled with.  All the bread, sweets and candy were wrecking havoc with my blood sugars.

   I finally opened my eyes and am making the slow, painful journey back from the brink.  I have an appointment with the nurse from the Diabetes Association a week from Tuesday and I have started my injections again and am watching what I am eating.  I might have been stupid but a least  I didn't STAY stupid.  I'm getting some better reading, with a reading of 8.5 yesterday before supper and today I even had a 7.7 before lunch and an 8.3 after.  But now that my sugars are down so much I'm feeling like they are too low and have been feeling shaky and off.    Although I still have a ways to go I'm hoping that I didn't do any permanent damage to myself.

I have an appointment at the ophthalmologist on Monday so here's hoping that my eyes are ok.  God watches out for the insane and little children or so they say.



   

Cats.. gotta love'em

You gotta love cats.. how, when you move in for a snuggle, they make little chirping sounds in the back of their throats, and head butt you, then touch noses.  And when you go to walk away you notice, out of the corner of your eye, that they are cleaning every place on their body where your hands happened to touch them.

Enough is Never Enough

Enough is Never Enough

In this money driven world
Where happiness is supposed to come
From the accumulation of wealth, and instead
Feeds the insane hunger
Where enough is never enough.

Where the throw-away society
Strips our earth
And strips our very souls
Of the true wealth,
Our very humanity.

Where Government corruption
And Corporate greed
Drives the few
In their golden carriages
Over the many.
Where the streets are paved
With the poor.

Where enough is never enough.
Where the evil of money
Plummets us towards
The abyss of swirling destruction

Where slavery to the imaginary dollar
Drives us to an early grave
For what?

So that we can line the pockets
Of the rich, while our earth
Caves inward from the pollution?
From the oppression?
From the bone crushing debt?

The true insanity
Where the earth finally dies
And the person
With the biggest cars,
The biggest mansions
And the biggest bank account
Wins?

How can this be considered sane?
How can this be considered desirable?
Why are these people running our world?
Why aren't our voices being heard?
How did it get so out of whack?

How can we,
As a sane, caring people
Of this bountiful, beautiful
Wondrous earth
Pull ourselves upwards and
Back from the downward pull?
How can we reclaim
And reconnect with nature?

How can we disconnect
From what has become "normal"?
How can we take the blinders off
And truly see?

When will we pull back the curtain
And see money for what it really is?
A chain connected to the
Giant machine of oppression!

What would it feel like
To be free?
To have a world without money?
To respect the earth,
To let it heal itself
And continue to provide us
With what we need
Not what we want?

What would it feel like,
To feed the world easily
To return humanity
It's pride
It's joy
It's respect
It's love and light?

What would it be like,
To have a society
Where every man
Where every woman
Where every child
Feels like they belong?
Where they can contribute
To the betterment of all?
Where they count?

What would the world feel like
If the other is viewed as the insanity
And a free world would be considered
The norm?
How would that feel?

-Kathryn DesRoches

Some does and don'ts

After my first year of trying to grow vegetables I discovered the those hanging things are no good for growing tomatoes or strawberries.  Both did not do well at all.  I planted the strawberries in the ground so hopefully I will get some next summer off of those and I know that planting the tomato plants along the front of my house, which faces the south, produces the best crop for those.

I think that I will plant lots of tomatoes next year and make sauce to freeze like I did this past summer. I froze them in individual containers so that I could defrost as needed.  I even did up a second batch with tomatoes my neighbour gave me from next door and they are also gone so I know that it will get used.

The strawberries didn't produce much this year but since it was the first year I didn't really expect too much but I bought lots of boxes and some rhubarb from a roadside vegetable stand and froze them so I have lots left to use over the cold winter months.

I'm not ashamed to admit it...

I'm not ashamed to admit that I have a girl-on-girl crush.  I absolutely love Jennifer Lawrence. ♥  I first saw her in the Hunger Games and since then have seen her in numerous talk shows and I'm in love with her.. sorry Ron.

Her sense of humor is off the chart.  She is so self-effacing and does not appear to be effected by her fame.  I would love to eventually see her in American Hustle because it looks like the part that plays off her natural personality.  And I read the Hunger Games books so I can't wait to see the second movie.

Big Brother

I think that Big Brother may now be watching me.. eeekkk!!  Yesterday I saw an ad on Facebook advertising a book on how to create a 4 foot x 4 foot garden to grow your own food for pennies efficiently.  And since I have actually been growing a few things such as Kale, Cucumber, Tomatoes and Strawberries I thought that this would be a great item to get for a measly $7.00 so I ordered it.  But it was only after I ordered the E-Book that I found out that this is a survivalist group that also tells you how to buy guns and how to make your own ammunition.. double eeekkk!!  Now I'm paranoid that the government will have me in their sights.  I promise that I'm a pacifist.  

My new greenhouse

The interior of our new pop-up greenhouse.

Hanging Strawberries.

Hanging tomatoes, they are not doing well but the ones in the greenhouse seem to be thriving.

Kale,  mmmm.

Various veggies, this was taken a couple of weeks ago, they are a lot bigger now.

So far so good with our new pop-up greenhouse.  I will soon be able to pick some of the vegetables like the kale and the lettuce which are doing great.  Some of the herbs are doing good as well but some leave a little to be desired.. lol.

Never say never.. about your dog.

I remember always saying that I never wanted a yappy dog.  The first dog we got was a miniature poodle and she was yappy but we got her at 7 years old and thought that it was the way she was raised before we got her...  Then along came Tinka, who we got as a tiny puppy and guess what, she's a yappy little girl as well.. so I guess it wasn't the previous owner's fault after all..

MMM... who said that food that is good for you can't taste good?

Nice full-bodied chili, salad and butternut squash.. mmmm. All from scratch.

Spring.. where art thou?

This is supposed to be spring.. well, I guess it is because my flowers are starting to bloom but brrr.. it's cold today.  Yesterday was a busy day for me, I decided I had better get my huge amount of  seeds started for when we get our hothouse and raised gardens started.  We got a seed starter kit that holds 72 of those little seed starter pods, etc. so I spent the afternoon planting seeds into them and finally got them done.  The hothouse was fairly cheap so I don't know if it will last past the season (it's a pop-up type and we are going to put it up soon).  I would love to do away with my  regular flower beds, especially the heart shaped one that is goes down into the ditch because it's so hard to weed it especially with my bad back.  But we'll see if I can talk Ron into it later.


These are my first flowers...

Home is All in Your Mind

They say that you can never go home again.  But I wonder if home ever was, or, if it's all in your mind.  I can't seem to get a clear overview of back then.  I remember snippets of my childhood... making mud pies on old pieces of broken dishes and decorating them with wild flowers. In my mind's eye they were the most beautiful things created.  And I guess they were because they combined natures flawless beauty with a child's imagination.  But, looking back, I wonder how my mother saw me that day as I came into the house covered in mud and smeared with dandelion sap?  My poor mother, I can't even imagine having 13 children to raise [14 if you count our brother Ralph who died as an infant].   The endless washing, cooking, cleaning she must have done.

I also recall climbing out of bed as a very young girl before anyone else and going to the garden my mother and father planted to watch the sun rise.  I can see clearly the dew on the leaves of the plants and a light mist that kissed the ground.  I don't know what possessed me to rise so early being that I wasn't a morning person.  It was the first and last time that I had done that.

I have wanted to plant a vegetable garden for a long time, perhaps to recapture that early morning stroll through dew kissed plants.  Who knows?