Category Archives: loss

harbinger…

31 Sunday Dec 2023

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on Thursday the blue screen of death showed up on the laptop…

apparently on Monday, when the camera kept failing during our video call, it was a harbinger of the computer’s end of life…

I spent quite a bit of time on Friday morning searching for the sales slip from January 2nd, 2020, when I purchased it in Ottawa, without success… I did find the record in my credit card statements, but after contacting Best Buy, discovered there was no extended warranty…

did some research and went to Best Buy… had a plan to purchase the same computer, but an updated version…

in the end I found a slightly higher quality machine and was happy they actually had it in the store… after consulting with my two computer geeks, brought it home and we spent time in the afternoon getting it filled with all “the stuff” I need…

the old machine fit beautifully into the box the new one came in, and will take a trip to my son-in-law to see if he is able to save anything on it…

I had some fun in the evening doing some personalization and making it my own, lol…

it will be interesting to see what I forgot I needed, lol…

37…

13 Wednesday Dec 2023

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the furnace has been misbehaving for nearly six weeks…

it started when my Nest app advised that the furnace had been off a number of times over a few weeks starting early in November and suggested I be in touch with a technician… this had never happened before…

I contacted the usual company and they said as long as it was working they couldn’t tell what was wrong… they booked me for an annual maintenance appointment which wasn’t until December…

since the beginning of December I have listened to the furnace starting and stopping close together, a sound which was certainly new… different from previous problems when it had stopped due to snow plugging the vents…

when the technician came for the annual checkup they advised that the furnace needed to be replaced… apparently it is 37 years old… it was working fine while they were here although it was doing a bit of the on-and-off business…

I called another company for a second opinion and on Friday they agreed that it needed to be replaced before too long…

Saturday when I got up, the temperature was 14.5° Celsius and it took hours for it to even start raising the temperature in the house… I was worried it had finally stopped;-(… eventually it made it to 17° C… Sunday it stayed around that temperature…

Monday it was down to 16° C and was quite chilly, lol… I called and a new install was scheduled for Wednesday…

Tuesday, it was 14.5°C when I got up… I raised the dial on the thermometer to 32° and it took a very long time to start to warm up…

then it got too hot, but I was afraid to lower the temperature in case it stopped working again… eventually I lowered it to 22 before bed…

Wednesday morning it was down to 17°C…

it has been a very stressful time, I have to say…

foray…

06 Wednesday Dec 2023

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back at it in the garage… our last foray out there, a few weeks ago, involved dumping everything onto the floor to be sorted…

this time we went through and put items back up in the rafters that seemed like good things to keep… I let a lot go, although I know many people who might have wanted some of the bits, lol…

then we put the excess lumber (from the fence build) up there… it had been under a tarp along the edge of the driveway since June when the fence was finished…

everything else on the floor was loaded into the back of the truck and driven away…

there were still a number of items on the floor that needed to find homes…

we “finished” in the garage late Sunday afternoon…

the floor was finally cleared and vacuumed and there was a lot of dust from the wet-vac, lol…

the bench got slightly rearranged as we still need more work done there, lol… and then Indi made it into the space…

woohoo;-)…

viper…

04 Monday Dec 2023

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tonight we had supper with my son-in-law in Ottawa… earlier today my daughter, on vacation in Europe, texted me that she’d had a burger for her lunch, in memory of her dad;-)…

we tried a new app called Viper, and it worked great… think I will use it again…

burgers were had by all… ours came from one of my beloved’s favourite burger places… and we even shared a chocolate milkshake here… it was delicious…

birthdays often seem hard, but coming together to share a meal is a lovely tradition to remember him…

and it is always such a delight when the technology works, lol…

day-to-day…

02 Saturday Dec 2023

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yesterday, WordPress sent me congratulations on my blog, which turned eleven…

since then I have posted 4031 blogs, which is slightly over one per day…

the blog began 271 days after I lost my beloved, and many of the first ones covered the complications of moving forward as a widow… a lonely business…

sometimes I have deep thoughts, although most of the time they are just about what is happening around me and in my day-to-day life…

it is still fun to think of something to write about…

eleven years…

air…

28 Tuesday Nov 2023

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as the holiday season approaches, I’ve been thinking about friends who are going through difficult times…

seems the air is filled with illness… many are dealing with infections and some, even more serious stuff…

feeling like I should be doing more to support them, but not sure how to do that other than sending thoughts and prayers their way…

it also feels like it is becoming less safe away from the house, and I am moving back into hermit-ville…

father…

19 Sunday Nov 2023

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I don’t always remember, but first thing yesterday I realized it would have been my dad’s birthday…

my father was a special person and although he’s been gone a very long time, I still miss him…

a bit later in the day his picture came up in my Facebook memories…

this photo was taken not too long before his death…

WREN…

11 Saturday Nov 2023

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I’ve been thinking of my mom a lot in the last few days…

she spent the last months of her life at Princess Elizabeth Hospital, in the final stages of esophageal cancer…

I was blessed with the time to be able to spend those final days with her…

they were hard but so important…

she was a WREN during WWII, a survivor of mental illness, a caregiver for her husband, a poet, a proud Legion and Army and Navy member, and a participant in the organizing of the Women’s War Memorial by the Legislature…

she was strong, but it took me many years to really understand that;-)…

story…

07 Tuesday Nov 2023

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we got our poppies a week ago and I put the buttons on them so they won’t get lost… I’ve been wearing mine daily, even though I don’t go out much, lol…

I’d seen something on social media about scanning your poppy to read a story about a veteran;-)…

Sunday morning I came across a link that took me to a story about a fallen soldier once I scanned my poppy…

I tried it on another poppy and got another story…

here is the link so that you can scan yours;-)…

poppy stories

what a wonderful use of technology;-)…

ghost…

05 Sunday Nov 2023

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on November 1st I took down the ghost from the front step… it was difficult, because the sheet had frozen into the step, lol…

then I took the poppy bird feeder that I received as a Christmas gift and tied it to the rail… this was a process, because it was cold and my fingers kept trying to stick to the metal, lol…

looks pretty good, right;-)…