today its my birthday…

18 Thursday Apr 2013

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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…

16 Tuesday Apr 2013

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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…

snow…

16 Tuesday Apr 2013

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so, had in my mind that I would Google whether it has ever snowed here on April 18th… seemed like a simple thing, but I have now spent an hour trying to get the information…

found a nice chart on weatherspark.com but couldn’t copy it into the blog… anyway, it basically said that it should be way warmer than it is… nothing about snow, lol…

tomorrow is supposed to be sunny with a few clouds with the temperature going to plus 3 Celsius… let’s hope there is no snow…

flowers for the three birthday celebrants...

flowers for the three birthday celebrants…

I will be sixty-two… today at work we celebrated three birthdays… it is quite amazing to me that with only 12 people on staff, 3 of us have our birthdays in one week… there was singing, icing topped muffins and cute little flower arrangements for each of us…

my lovely birthday flowers...

my lovely birthday flowers…

later I went for a birthday lunch with another friend who shares an April birthday… it was very pleasant to spend time with them and enjoy lunch at Bistro Dansk in Wolseley…

at the end of the day on our way home we stopped by Rona for a few items for the office and I think I found a lounge chair for the deck so will have to go back in the next few days to pick that up…

missing my beloved… he always made my birthday a special event…

missed post…

15 Monday Apr 2013

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was talking with my daughter the other day and mentioned that I wasn’t feeling too great…

a few days later she texted me early in the morning because she couldn’t see a post on my blog for the previous evening and was worried that I might still be feeling poorly…

it does make me giggle a bit that she is using my blog to check on me… when I started I didn’t really have a plan to write something every day, but a friend commented on how she was using the blog as her Advent daily reading and so I tried to write each day… now it just seems like part of my routine…

not completely sure what the problem was… seemed to have something to do with the fact that I was using the desktop and my work computer to get the post written and up… and then I went back in and re-posted it a couple of times because it had a few little errors in it…

now I make sure that the posts go up before midnight so there is one each day… a couple of times I have worked late into the night and the post has gone up as the next day… I am trying not to do that anymore, lol…

lots of snow on the ground when I woke up...

lots of snow on the ground when I woke up…

this morning the ground was covered with snow again, and it snowed all day… beginning to wonder when spring will actually arrive…

snow stuck to the trees, was pretty, but needs to stop...

snow stuck to the trees, was pretty, but needs to stop…

up early…

14 Sunday Apr 2013

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still feeling some discomfort in my side/back which seems to get worse overnight… apparently sleeping is not really that good for me, lol…

this morning I got up at 5 and had a peace-filled hot tub which did help a bit…

heading off for breakfast with some great women with hopes that the walk there  would help with whatever it is that I have done to the silly thing…

along the way I came across a very sad Canada Goose that was hollering – because there was very little water, as the Assiniboine is still 95% frozen…

very little open water on the Assiniboine...

very little open water on the Assiniboine…

he yelled for the longest time while I was taking his picture as he wandered along the edge of the open water while his mate quietly stood waiting…

hollering goose, maybe the water was toooooooo cold...

hollering goose, maybe the water was toooooooo cold…

further down the river I could see more of them… they must be wondering whether they took a wrong turn on their way north because it doesn’t seem very spring-like around here…

the Duck Pond is closed to skating but there are no ducks on/in it yet, lol…

thin ice, although there is still plenty of snow...

thin ice, although there is still plenty of snow…

after a lovely time with my friends, I was picked up and ran a few errands with my daughter… then it was home for a steak and lobster dinner to celebrate my upcoming birthday…

my back is still grumpy, much like the goose but feeling slightly better as the day progresses… hope it smartens up soon…

reminiscing…

13 Saturday Apr 2013

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recently I had to work on the desktop computer because my laptop was being a bit fussy, and I spent some lovely moments checking out pictures…  the desktop shares pictures with the laptop but it doesn’t work the other way around… found some lovely ones of the garden and George… also reminded me of how long ago some things happened…

it always seems like it was just a couple of years ago that something took place, but when you check out the pictures you realize it might be that six or eight years have passed…

also spent some time going through photo albums and I took out a great one that Cyndi had made for us from our family trip to Courtenay… I realize that it was five years ago…

the top of Mount Washington was rather cool...

the top of Mount Washington was rather cool…

it reminded me of the trip across the country with the kids, and meeting up with everyone else there…  George was slowly recovering from his heart failure and couldn’t drive out with us… the doctor advised that he needed to fly which would be less of a stress on his body…  Crystal and Jeff and the two boys drove out around the same time and we had a lovely time together and got to see all the special places around Courtenay…

fun time at Goose Spit...

fun time at Goose Spit…

we all loved Goose Spit and had a wiener roast on the beach together… that year, on our anniversary, we took the little boys for a walk along the Puntledge early in the morning so that all the grownups could sleep in a bit…

it was a wonderful time and we had an adventure when we took a wrong path and wandered down a tiny waterway that didn’t really go anywhere… we saw slugs and bugs, and I got a wonderful picture of George and the boys stretching their arms out to circle one of the very large trees…

George and the boys stretching to reach around the tree...

George and the boys stretching to reach around the tree…

wow, five years… amazing what things have happened in that time…  how my life has changed…

massages…

12 Friday Apr 2013

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sitting at the Massage Therapy Association of Manitoba AGM with one of my colleagues… we have chatted with numerous people, had a quick supper and are listening to awards and reports… we’ve tried out a number of lotions and will shortly be packing up and heading home…

this is particularly poignant as George was into massage therapy and loved to give massages… he looked into training but it never worked out…

many in our family miss his strong and healing hands…

looking forward to a quiet day tomorrow to recuperate from an extremely busy week… not just at work but out three evenings in a row… could be a record, lol…

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the limo…

11 Thursday Apr 2013

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a while ago I rented a limo for my guests, to bring them to our party and then take them home again…  I wasn’t really happy with the service and after speaking with a few people, wrote to the owner of the company… I wanted to wait till I heard back from him before writing about it, but he hasn’t responded…

in January I had arranged for a limo to take us to the airport for our family vacation to Mexico… there was a blizzard taking place so we ended up going to the airport in a van as there was some concern about getting there in the limo…  when they picked us up on our return from Mexico they had an SUV limo which was a lovely treat and made the boys very happy…

wonderful SUV limo that brought us home from the airport...

wonderful SUV limo that brought us home from the airport…

this time, the limo driver arrived for the first pick-up an hour early, requested a gratuity, even before he had picked anyone up, and then didn’t even open and close doors for them… it was very disappointing and I felt my guests had not had a very good experience…

now, the question will be, do I ever give them a call for another trip, or not…

visiting…

10 Wednesday Apr 2013

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crazy day at work, and then I put on the big girl pants and drove to the airport, parked, and met a friend who was arriving for a meeting at CCS, my former workplace…

she took me out for dinner at the Star Grill where we had a lovely meal, caught up on each other’s lives and shared lots of laughter…

we have only met face-to-face 3 or 4 times, but I worked with her by telephone on a volunteer committee for a number of years… during that time we had great meetings and learned a lot about websites…

DUCC website meeting...

DUCC website meeting…

it was wonderful to get together tonight and reminisce about the fun times we had… then I dropped her off at another friend’s home and returned here to find that WordPress is working on my laptop (shhhhhh)…

what a great evening…

past it…

09 Tuesday Apr 2013

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been talking with women who have had a loss of a partner in the last year… they are coming up to or just passed the “anniversary” of the death of their loved one…

it seems that for many of us, just getting through that day is tremendously stressful… I found that even the next day a great weight had been lifted off my shoulders… I hadn’t anticipated that at all…

another thing that we have noticed is that other people we are connected with are “past it”… it was a year ago and they have moved on with their lives… they were extremely supportive early on, but now their focus is on other things, and that’s okay… I realized myself that I had forgotten that someone’s partner had died nearly a year ago…

I know it’s been a year, but my focus is still on how my life changed in an instant… and it is a slow process to deal with that change, every morning, every night… I am moving forward, and doing a good job of it, I think, but my life is now irreversibly different than it was…

I think it is going to take years to completely settle in to my new life… without my beloved… which makes sense since I loved 42 years with him…

40 roses to celebrate 40 years...

40 roses to celebrate 40 years…

the words to We’ve Only Just Begun sung by Karen and Richard Carpenter (Songwriters: Roger S Nichols and Paul Williams) have been floating around in my head… just realized that song was at the top of the charts in 1970, the year we were married…