Well, hello my old friend.  It's been years since I've been in here.  Have you missed me?  Since we last met a lot has happened.  Our house went on fire and we got a new one built.  I got married.   I'm on a new medication called Ozempic so I managed to get my diabetes under control and lost 30 pounds.  I'm still a bit overweight at 150 and 5'1" but it's a lot better.  

I just turned 71 this year and have gotten seriously into cross stitching again.  The picture I started years ago with the two wolves I managed to save from the fire but have put it away because it takes a paper pattern and I'm now using a program called Pattern Keeper which makes it so much easier because you can keep track of your progress electronically.  I have oodles of patterns from a web site called Heaven and Earth Designs.  I'm presently in the progress of doing three mini patterns. one ornament and one full sized. I finished one ornament already.  

                                                                               

                        The full sized one is called Beach Comber's Bounty by Aimee Stewart. 

This one is called Mini Happily Ever After by Dona Gelsinger and it's going to be a wedding present for my granddaughter, Brittany.  I'm leaving to border off of the top and bottom.

This one is finished and it's called Ornament, My Christmas Wish by Dona Gelsinger.

The one is called Ornament Shih tzu for Christmas by Dona Gelsinger.

This one is Mini Footprints by Sandra Kuck.

And this one is called Mini Catfish by Annie Stegg.

That will be all for now.. I'll catch you up more later.

Another day

Another day, another year has passed.  Life goes on and life ends.  My sister C is in palliative care at the moment.  We are waiting for the fateful call.  They say that we all must die, there is no escaping it.  But when it's a sibling it hits pretty hard.  In the last few years we had become pretty close and now I have to let go.  She's the one sister from our huge brood that I have the most in common with.. from our interests to our personalities.  Cancer is a terrible, terrible disease and our family had been cancer free for so long but then when it started, it seemed to have it out for my family with a vengeance.  I have taken up a Ketogenic way of eating along with fasting and I'm hoping that it will hold off the demon for a few more years at least. 

I'm determined to enjoy life while I have it and have taken up my counted cross stitch wolves once again.  I heard a while back that if you have varied interests and crafts that are making you feel scattered and overwhelmed (raises hand)... that you should take one craft and determine to do it and it alone for one full year so that you can complete projects and perfect your craft.  Then after the year is up take another craft and so on.  So starting in July counted cross stitching is my craft of choice and my wolf project is my ongoing one that I have spent years saying to myself that I need to finish it and get it framed and hung.  So I'll keep you updated on how it is going as I go along and that will keep me interested in this blog (I hope).  Below is a photo taken just now of how far I've completed on the image, as you can see I'm almost half done after years of stitching.  The whole of the image area is stitched with no background showing through so it's a lot of stitching.  Below is the pattern book that has the pattern in it, as you can see, I have lots to go.

White Birch, a story by me

This is a story that I had written decades ago.  For the most part it's true.

WHITE BIRCH by Kathryn DesRoches


Kathryn DesRoches pulled her car to the side of the red road and sat for a moment to unwind. She had come to this spot since childhood, either accompanying her father, sisters, brothers or in later years she would bring her close friends or come alone.  It never failed to rejuvenate her.  This, her favourite spot, was a little harbor nestled along the north shore of Prince Edward Island, Canada.  It was called Savage Harbor because of the fierce battles fought along its shores by the French and English when Canada was young.  The blood-red colour of the sand along the shore line seemed to bear testament to these combats.

Contrary to its name, she found it peaceful, relaxing and frequently stated it was the only place she could truly breathe.  There were seldom others along its mile or so of shore line but in recent years cottages have sprung up along its far bank and “Lots for Sale” signs dotted the opposite side of the road from where she had parked.  The realization that the days of blessed isolation walking these shores were numbered brought regret.  She heard the playful voices of children drift across the expanse of calm water to accent her point.  But she was determined to enjoy it as long as it remained a balm to her spirit and she could push this knowledge to the back of her mind.

She wound up the car windows, jammed a baseball cap on her head to shield her eyes from the bright sun, scooped up her camera from the seat beside her and emerged into the light.  She was enveloped in the almost liquid  flow over her senses.  This place had a unique feel to it.  The smell of the ocean just beyond the neck of the harbor, the dance of sunlight on the face of the water and the myriad  sounds of insects and birds seemed to enter her psyche from every angle.  It was a sheltered harbor and even on days when the main shoreline was blustery it was always shielded here from the force of the gales.

Over the years she had taken roll after roll of film trying to capture the elusive spirit of this place but eventually realized it wasn’t possible to capture the mood in one photo because it was ever-changing.  She had walked its shores in every season, every weather condition and every type of light.  In doing so, came to the conclusion that it was like a living being.  You couldn’t take a photo of someone and state, “This is John, full and complete”.  This enlightenment encouraged her to separate some of her photos, enlarge them, frame them to display on her wall and title her “gallery” as The Many Moods of Savage Harbor.

Her father’s tales of MICMAC Indians inhabiting this area since time immortal and the occasional finding of an artifact such as an arrow head along with the large, faint circles of dark earth in a nearby plowed  field were teepees once stood, gave the area a feeling of permanence.

She stood by the car to draw peace into her, then set out on the walk she had taken as a ritual as far back as she could remember.  All the cares of the day, the hustle and bustle world of finance, worry and rushing fell away within a couple of minutes and she felt as one with nature.  The sun warmed  her skin and the gentle breeze seemed to whisper secrets of the past in her ear.

Occasionally stooping to examine an interesting rock or to stretch and breathe deeply, she hadn’t gone one hundred yards when a feeling of unease overcame her.  There was something not quite right but she couldn’t pinpoint it.  She looked around her, examining inch-by-inch the scene in front of her.  She observed the bright red row boat that was pulled up and tied to an old, sand filled tire.  She took in the sweep of the shore as it curved gently to the left where the water line came to within yards of the road and saw nothing out of order.  Then she turned to the right and examined the red, sandstone dotted, beach and the delicate wild rose bushes that topped the clay bank mixed with wild grass, scrub brush and multi-coloured wild flowers.  An eagle made slow circles high above her in the clear blue sky and it’s familiar high-pitched scream, as well as the sight of an ink-black crow perched in the branches of a massive oak were not the source of her unease.  Everything seemed in place and normal.

Looking straight ahead the origin of her discomfort revealed itself to her.  It was gone! She rushed to the spot where it once stood and fell to her knees to examine what remained of a large white birch.  The long fingers of root and the very bottom portion of the trunk endured, the balance of the tree washed away by the tide.  A feeling of shock seeped into her as she stared at the stump.

This birch, as much as anything, came to mean Savage Harbor to her.  It had stood on the bank, near the shoreline, when she was a small child and she would scamper up the crumbling earth to hug its trunk in delight.  Her father would tell of birch bark canoes and how its papery bark was excellent for starting a campfire.  Then, as the bank eroded over the years, she was amazed and respectful of how it drove its roots into the earth, holding precariously onto the edge of the small cliff.  Eventually, stretching its roots to allow it to remain at an odd angle while still holding on.

A very slow process had permitted the tree, over the decades, to arch out to form a U shape, roots into the side of the embankment and the tree forming a place to sit in the curve of the trunk partway up.  Then over the years the bottom U was touching the shore while the roots reached six feet up the bank to where the earth broke away each spring.

In the last couple of years this grotesque, but somehow beautiful warrior no longer produced leaves and a crack had formed at the base of the trunk.  It was only through sheer denial that she held the notion that it would always be here.  Now that denial was torn from her.

“It’s too soon!” she wanted to cry out while the echoes of these words remained in her mind’s eye from a time long ago at her father’s bedside.  As at that time, the grief would take time and life would never be quite the same.  Although still beautiful, this spot was changed forever.

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.