shhhhhhh…

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yesterday morning I took this picture of the front yard…

yesterday morning... no snow in the front yard...

yesterday morning… no snow in the front yard…

there is no s – n – o – w….   shhhh… don’t want the weather gods to hear… there is still snow around, but it is melting away every day…

here’s a shot I took on the 21st… just after the ground was covered in a light dusting of snow…

slight dusting of snow on April 21st...

slight dusting of snow on April 21st…

the last few nights as I’ve been sitting in the hot tub I have heard the geese flying overhead… finally the water is flowing in most of the rivers and creeks… I think they must be happy that the weather has improved…

geese with only a little open water...

geese with only a little open water a couple of weeks ago…

today, a number of colleagues went out without jackets on because, for the first time this year, the temperature was in the double digits…

maybe tomorrow I will be able to sit on the deck in the sun…

 

the pond…

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we’ve had ponds in the garden for 20 years…

our first one was a water bed liner in a frame right next to the house… in 2009 when we got the hot tub, we had to do away with that pond… we’ve built them in the back corner of the garden (the biggest one),  beside our garage (a recycled bathtub), and in the shade (now mostly sun) garden beside the house…

kidney shaped pond with a barrel...

kidney shaped pond with a barrel in the shade/sun garden…

I would usually come up with the idea and the two of us would discuss it, and then usually George did the heavy lifting…  he always went on about “my” ponds although he loved them… usually the first spring job was to clean them out, put the pumps back in and fill them with water… then whatever fish had survived in the condo would move on out to their real home… and in the fall they would move back to the condo…

fish moving to the winter condo...

fish moving to the winter condo…

the big pond has been leaking for a few years and we just couldn’t figure out where the problem was… last year I contacted a landscaping company to see about getting it fixed… they said they would replace it for me while I was in hospital so that I could recuperate beside it following my surgery… they never came but kept saying they were going to…

so, maybe a month ago, I emailed them and a second company that I found on line… once again they didn’t respond but I got a very quick response from B. Rocke Landscaping… he came out, looked at pictures, because there was still tons of snow in the garden, and arranged for a couple of drawings…

catching the fish with Grandpa...

catching the fish with Grandpa…

we met a few nights ago to make a final decision and I am anticipating a new pond in the garden by the end of June, all going well…

I feel that it is in homage to George and am very excited to see it take shape… we might even put a boulder with some type of memorial on it…

I can hardly wait…

eyes…

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been struggling with a persistent infection in my right eye… had it since before Christmas and have been taking antibiotics and a topical ointment and seeing an ophthalmologist 3 or 4 times during that period…

I had been thinking that I should get Crystal to go with me this morning, but then thought I would wear my big girl pants as he would likely only give me another prescription and send me off…

well, how wrong could I be… today, he did a little surgery on it, right in the office… his office is located in the Eye Clinic at Children’s Hospital and there are lots of very small people in his waiting room… my little eye infection is not such a big deal… although while he was working on me, it felt like a rather big deal… it was miserable for quite a while afterwards, but right now I really can’t feel any sensation in it at all…  I am trying to keep my hands away from my face, just to be sure, lol…

eye following surgery...

eye following surgery…

reminded me of George’s cataract surgery just before he died… it was his right eye as well… we went through quite the time with giving him the drops that he had to have in it 3 times a day… every single time I put them in, he would jump, lol… but his vision improved a hundredfold…

George's eye following cataract surgery...

George’s eye following cataract surgery…

amazing the things that our bodies go through…

 

little melt down…

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busy day at work…

came home, had pho for dinner and helped set up a Facebook page and the Facebook app on an iPhone… was lots of fun…

heard from my accountant that two documents were missing from my tax stuff so had to go upstairs to the computer room and search through many, many, pieces of paper… eventually found what was needed and then had to remember how to scan and send a document…

finally figured it out and then went into the area where the scans were kept and started reading the ones that my son-in-law had done of the cards we received when George died…  made me cry, but I couldn’t stop reading them…

one of the cards we received...

one of the cards we received…

eventually the phone rang and I was able to pull myself away from them…

i miss my beloved…

grandparents’ day…

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got the car back so that I could drive to the grade 2 class for Grandparents’ day… George and I had made it a couple of times before, but this will be my first year on my own as last year I didn’t hear about it in time to arrange to go…

put on the big girl pants so that I could figure out exactly where the school was… it is quite a distance from Crystal’s house but I think I got the directions fairly straight in my head… and then I printed out a Google map to get me there…

first thing the little guy said to me when he got here on Sunday was how much he was looking forward to the day…

found my way there, got into the classroom about a minute late and had a lovely time… after watching the kids work on a Smart Board calendar in French, we completed a survey about what it was like when we went to elementary school… there was at least one grandparent in the room who attended a one-room schoolhouse… after that we cut out pictures of things that we do together and pasted them onto a sheet of paper… we also added some words that described what the pictures were…

pictures that show what we do together...

pictures that show what we do together…

finally he read me a couple of French stories… then we went to McDonalds (along with about half of the grandparents and kids who had been at the school) for lunch, then back to school and work…

as we were driving back to the school from McDonalds we talked about how Grandpa would have enjoyed the day and how he wouldn’t have had any trouble finding the school or McDonalds…  we were both missing him…

another milestone…

the day…

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started out overcast…

slept off and on through the night sitting in the lounger that I bought yesterday… so spent a good portion of the morning and early afternoon watching tv and dozing in the chair… the good news is that it has helped my back…

very large snowflakes came down...

very large snowflakes came down…

was thinking about having a hot tub around 8 am but then huge snowflakes started to come down and more and more came down for a long time… about 3 it stopped and the sun came out…

deck covered AGAIN... although it did melt late in the afternoon...

deck covered AGAIN… although it did melt late in the afternoon…

went grocery shopping and came home to make dinner for the kids…

since then I have been watching the JUNOs in the lounger which Jeff took upstairs for me…

looking forward to a better sleep tonight and hopefully my back with be feeling much better tomorrow…

spring???

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went to Rona and got a new folding lounger for the deck outside the patio doors… been using a wooden rocker there but it just isn’t comfortable when I’m reading a book and want to put my feet up… this one will be great and I might even try sleeping in it tonight to see what that does for my back… the young woman at the Service desk knew who I was right away, which is becoming more unusual as staff change on a frequent basis… when I was in the store the other day, the person who was helping me in Hardware didn’t know who George was… felt kind of sad about that…

then we went for a pedicure… which was actually quite good for my back as I was sitting up for an hour, even if I was jerking my feet around as my toes were pampered… I have very sensitive feet, lol… Crystal and Cyndi get quite a kick out of the whole process…

purple toes...

purple toes…

just came in from a hot tub… while I was out there I could hear gaggles of geese flying over in the dark, although I couldn’t spot any of them… but certainly a sound that makes one think of Spring…

and, even more exciting… the solar light by the pond was flickering… which means that the snow is nearly gone by the pond, and the sun s getting strong enough to give it a charge…  sadly my dragonflies don’t seem to be lighting up…

dragonfly solar lights...

dragonfly solar lights…

maybe Spring is really on the way…

helping hands…

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my back is still a pain… been going on for a week now and the twisting and turning I do at night makes it very sore in the morning… by night time it is much better, but then I go to bed and irritate it all over again… it has been improving, very slowly, which is often what happens when you pull a muscle…

and then we went swimming on Tuesday, which may have put the recovery back a bit… if the car had been here this morning I think I would have gone to see the doctor because it felt miserable…

last week I didn’t put out the garbage and recycling because I didn’t think I could drag the bins over the snow to the lane so I really felt I had to do it this morning for today’s collection…

was on the way to the bins in the back yard when I heard my neighbour in the lane… he’s always asking if he can help me with anything, so I called him over and he took both bins and put them out for me…

was so thankful because they were sitting in a low spot where water had melted and then frozen so you had to wrench them to get them to start moving… and wrenching is just not a good thing to be doing these days…

tonight he brought the empty bins back into the yard which was also great… ever since I put the note on the garbage bin, it has been picked up without a problem… guess I should have done that a lot sooner…

garbage and recycling bins out while still light Thursday, February 21, 2013...

garbage and recycling bins out while still light Thursday, February 21, 2013…

I walked from the end of the street with my daisies in hand tonight and got a shot of the creek with water flowing in it… the snow is finally starting to melt away, yay…

water finally in Truro Creek...

water finally in Truro Creek…

 

 

today its my birthday…

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felt a little sorry for myself when I woke up at 5 this morning… after a short pity party I went back to sleep and at 6:15 felt more excited about the day…

had calls and singing from my kids and grandkids and lots of happy birthdays at the office… for our Souper Club a colleague made my favourite Thai soup and also picked up summer rolls… great group of people to enjoy a birthday lunch with…

a friend dropped by with a gorgeous cupcake, which I ate without taking one single picture, lol…

after work my daughter picked me up and we stopped at the mall and picked up a cute top for me with an orchid on it… then we headed to The Keg for dinner – steak and crab, very yummy… the place was nearly empty when we got there and the hostess couldn’t find a single booth for us to sit in as they were all reserved… when our wait person arrived and asked how we were I mentioned that I was disappointed that we weren’t in a booth… he checked and was able to find one (of the 20 or so that were empty) for us… the service and dinner were excellent and the wait person brought a piece of of Billy Miner pie to celebrate my birthday, which was much better than staff singing to you…

came home, had a nap, watched tv and talked with family across the country, shopped by phone with Cyndi and then spent some quality time in the hot tub…

I was looking at the stars and remembering how George could always spot the satellites going over… he had eagle eyes…  I don’t think I’ve seen a single one in the last year…

all day the tune today its my birthday has been running around in my head… I believe the new name for that is an ear worm… but I’m not sure I like that name, lol…

a beautiful potted plant that George bought me a few years ago...

a beautiful potted plant that George bought me a few years ago…

well, time for bed… and a new day in the new journey…

standing firm…

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not long ago I was in a situation where someone was questioning me about something and I didn’t go to the what did I do wrong place… I’ve talked with many women about this place, and how quick many of us are to go there… this has also been very beneficial, as previously I thought I was the only person who could get there in a nano second, and apparently others go there as well…

I remained calm, brought forward the appropriate information and stood my ground on the matter…

path is clear although there is still lots of snow...

path is clear…

not exactly sure how I got to that place… whether I was feeling particularly knowledgeable about the subject, whether I just didn’t care about the outcome, whether I was just too tired, or whether I had just arrived in the place where I knew what I knew and believed it…

it was quite liberating and I hope I can find that place again and again…

a little chilly on the toes this morning...

big girl pants influence???…

maybe it was the big girl pants influence, lol…