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Tag Archives: big girl pants

blustery…

16 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by sulis303 in Uncategorized

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big girl pants, blustery, hot tub, moon beams, shovelled sidewalk, wind

this morning my ride couldn’t get into the city and I was lucky to be able to get a lift with another colleague… gave me a bit of extra time before getting picked up so I put on the big girl pants and went out in my heavy parka and shovelled the sidewalk and steps…

from the house it didn’t look that bad out but when I got there it was very windy… the snow wasn’t wet, but from all the blowing it had packed down and was quite difficult to pick up and move… could have made a great igloo…

shovelling done...

shovelling done…

got the job done and came inside and sat down and waited for my breathing to settle down… it was good to get it cleaned because I had a box of soup and dumplings to take in for Souper Thursday, lol…

I don’t think the dumpling experiment went very well, although everyone said they were good… just weren’t their usual fluffy selves…

have just come in from a lovely hot tub sitting in the moon beams… haven’t been out at this time of the evening for a very long time and it was great to be able to enjoy the moon shine…

chicken soup…

15 Wednesday Jan 2014

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big girl pants, Canadian Living slideshow, chicken soup, colds, dumplings, George, home made biscuits, Mom's dumpling recipe, Souper Thursday, stave off colds

just finished the chicken soup for tomorrow’s Souper Thursday…

started it last night after doing some research into the best foods to help stave off/recover from colds… chicken soup was at the top of the list…

feels like almost everyone I know either has a cold or knows someone who does… this particular variety seems to last quite some time, so I thought a little chicken soup would be helpful all around…

last night I made the broth, simmering a whole chicken with carrots, celery, onion and bay leaves… then I separated the meat from the chicken…

tonight I added the vegetables and barley and simmered that… George loved barley in his soup, so that is an homage to him…

then I tried an experiment… I cooked small dumplings and have set them aside and will try warming them up in the microwave tomorrow… I have often warmed up leftover soup and dumplings in the microwave the next day so am hopeful this will work, lol…

doing some searching, I discovered that people sometimes use ready-to-cook biscuits and drop them into the broth in the crock pot for the last hour or so before the soup is ready… sounded interesting, but I really wanted to use my Mom’s Dumpling recipe so decided to try the warming in the microwave technique… will see what happens tomorrow…

dumplings for tomorrow's soup...

dumplings for tomorrow’s soup…

just a few weeks ago was talking with someone about how delicious dumplings are, which also made me think I should give this a try…

found a great slideshow on the Canadian Living site about ten foods to eat to help beat colds and flu… also found information that sugar is very bad for you when you have a cold, sigh…

stay well…

bendy busses…

14 Tuesday Jan 2014

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bendy busses, big girl pants, email, front page, newspaper, special moments, synchronicity, text

just looked up and saw a picture of George and I in Cyndi and Ron’s house in Courtenay… we had a lovely visit on that trip…

made me laugh because I was just thinking about bendy busses… and Cyndi…

I rarely read the newspaper, although it sits right at my desk every day… for some reason this morning I looked over the front page and saw this…

bendy busses coming here...

bendy busses coming here…

the first time I saw one of these busses was in 2000 when Cyndi and I were in Chicago for a church event about Families… she saw the busses and went a little bit crazy about them…

so this morning, I took a quick picture of the front page and emailed it to her… one doesn’t text in the morning because that might wake her up, but emailing is okay…

she responded within a few minutes saying she was actually riding on a bendy bus in Ottawa as she read my email…

I still haven’t ridden on one… maybe they will run along Portage and I can take one home one night in the spring, when the weather is nice…

synchronicity is an amazing thing…

made me smile for quite a while after, and even as I write this I have a smile on my face… one of those special moments…

holy moments…

13 Monday Jan 2014

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big girl pants, Boston Pizza, great customer service, holy moments, hot tub, Lynne Russell, Mary Hoffman, midst of the holy, nature, take the time, Three Wise Women

ordered a spicy perogy pizza and Caesar salad from Boston Pizza for my group tonight, as I was on for food… when I called the young woman was very helpful and didn’t try to get me to order more than we really needed… she was spot on and everyone enjoyed the pizza…

we then checked-in and read a wonderful book titled: Three Wise Women by Mary Hoffman, with pictures by Lynne Russell…

Three Wise Women...

Three Wise Women…

 

we talked about the holy moments in our lives and how we are constantly searching for them…

made me think of how I am trying to live my life these days… being in each moment and taking the time to feel/see what is actually taking place…

we talked about those special conversations that accidentally happen, that you might not even consider as something important… but if you spend a moment you realize that you are in the midst of the holy…

for me it is often nature that helps me find those moments… yesterday morning in the quiet of the hot tub, as the birds flew past chirping like it was spring… the bunny spotted in the garden… the heaps and heaps of beautiful snow, lol…

what amazing women these are and how special the time that we spend together… talk about holy moments…

struggles…

11 Saturday Jan 2014

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big girl pants, blessed, blink of an eye, dear friend, life changes, remember, struggles

thinking about how life changes in the blink of an eye…

interesting as I had been thinking of my dear friend Ellen earlier today as I watched hours of skating on television… she lived next door but was as much family as any…

remember...

remember…

I still remember how she would take the girls when they were babies… they always wanted attention when we were sitting down to eat, whether is was 4:30 or 7… they just knew… she would come and take them over to her house quite often so that we could eat our dinner in peace… for a number of years she and her husband would have dinner with us one night a week and then babysit while we went off to our bowling league… when the girls got older she made them each a cookbook with her special recipes…

we both loved skating and would call one another when something was on to be sure the other didn’t miss it… George was very happy when we got a second television so that he wasn’t stuck watching, lol…

a number of people I know have been struggling with family health issues over the last month or so and it has reminded me of how lucky I am to just have a cold…

I have a warm home – well, now that the furnace people came again this morning and fixed whatever wasn’t quite right from yesterday’s job… I can manage financially and I have my health… I have my kids, friends and colleagues…

truly I am blessed… sending healing thoughts to those who continue to struggle…

headache…

08 Wednesday Jan 2014

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big girl pants, Christmas stocking, cold bag on my head, headache, orange and strawberry smoothie

made it through the day…

felt a bit better around 9:30 thanks to an orange and strawberry smoothie…

by about one was starting to feel poorly again… as the afternoon progressed my head started to ache…

since getting home I have eaten a little bit, slept a little bit and now I am laying down with a cold bag on my head that was in my Christmas stocking…

hope it feels better soon…

 

20140108-194019.jpg

brrrrrrr…

06 Monday Jan 2014

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big girl pants, brrrrrrr, cleaned filter, cleared vents, FaceTime, George, sick with a cold, sleep the cold off, temperature 56F, thermostat batteries

today, about 2:30 a cold kicked in and I felt miserable… but it was only an hour and a half until work was done for the day so I sniffled, snuffled, drank water and blew my nose frequently as the time went by…

as we rode home I was dreaming about how I was going to climb into bed and sleep this silly cold off…

walked in the door, took off my coat and went right to the thermostat with my boots on because it was cold.. yes it was… 56 degrees Fahrenheit… put my coat back on and went to check the vents outside to be sure they weren’t covered with snow… there was no snow below them, but one of them had snow in it, so I used a stick and unplugged it…

came back into the house, but the furnace still wasn’t pumping out warm air… called my son-in-law and he suggested I clean out the filter to see if that was a problem too… so then I had to move the small freezer away from the furnace so that I could open the spot where the filter goes… small freezer seems like a misnomer considering how heavy it was… we FaceTimed and he showed me what to do… my oh my, it was dirty, sigh…apparently George cleaned that out now and again and I haven’t thought about it at all…

put a call in to the furnace people to see what else I should do… by the time they called back the temperature had risen about two degrees so the man I spoke with suggested they come out tomorrow as possibly the thermostat, which is wired in, might need new batteries… batteries, who knew it had batteries in it, yikes…

I warmed up some of last night’s leftovers in the oven, leaving the door open, climbed onto my bed with blankets on me, ate, had some hot tea and then a nap…

now, more than five hours later, the temperature has finally reached 70, which I think is about 68 or 69 in the rest of the house… I am going to climb into my bed and hope I feel better by morning, and that the temperature doesn’t go down again…

as I’ve been sitting here the moon has tracked across the top of the living room window… this is odd as it is usually at the back of the house…

moon through the window...

moon through the window at the top of the picture…

moon tonight...

moon tonight, from the open doorway…

those big girl pants can be a bit of a pain, lol…

the tree…

05 Sunday Jan 2014

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big girl pants, climb through snow, deep snow, freezing cold, no hot tubbing, Norfolk pine, shovelling, snow, snowblower, tree, window is gaping hole

took the decorations off the tree and moved it so that I could see out the window again…

Norfolk pine in its new home...

Norfolk pine in its new home…

rather funny, because now it feels like there is a gaping hole and the window looks huge…

this tree ended up being filled with a garland of butterflies that Cyndi made, as well as a snowflake with my name stamped on it, and the leftover hearts which she had made as gifts for her friends…

all decorated...

all decorated…

today I gave one of those hearts to a dear friend who stopped by… haven’t seen her in a very long time so it was wonderful to have the opportunity to catch up… she had to climb through some serious snow to get into the house, lol…

footprints through the deep snow...

footprints through the deep snow…

while she was here, Crystal and the boys arrived and Crystal and Kyler shovelled in the freezing cold, while the little boys visited with us…

they got the snowblower going but it stopped after just one sweep of the driveway and so they had to hand shovel the rest… took them ages and they had to keep coming in to warm up…

snow blower quit after one sweep...

snowblower quit after one sweep…

the great news is that the driveway, sidewalk and back are clear and if needed I can take the car out…

shovellers at work...

shovellers at work…

hopefully it will be warm enough tomorrow so that I can go out and put chemicals in the hot tub… although, even I don’t plan to hot tub in these temperatures…

 

shadows…

04 Saturday Jan 2014

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big girl pants, bunny tracks, deep snow, hot tub, photography course, shadows, shadows in the snow, snow

a few years ago I took a photography course with a colleague… we had great fun as we would often go out for dinner before the class… she is an artist and it was wonderful to see what she would do with the homework projects…

shadow thrown from the gate which George made to look like the sun and its rays...

shadow thrown from the gate which George built to look like the sun and its rays…

one of the homework projects involved taking pictures of shadows… it was quite difficult as there wasn’t much sunshine that week… I remember arriving home on the only sunny day we had and rushing out to get a few shots… George and I went to the grocery store and I was taking some pictures of the beautiful fruit when a store representative came up and asked why I was taking pictures, yikes…

we also had fun driving around the Park to get some photos…

bunny tracks through the garden...

bunny tracks through the garden…

this afternoon I got a few great shots of some lovely shadows in the back yard…

shadows in the snow and you can see how high the snow is on the pergola by the garage...

you can see how high the snow is on the pergola by the garage…

there is still a lot of snow out there… it is quite beautiful but I am looking forward to my kids coming over tomorrow and getting some of it cleared away… can’t even get out to the hot tub, lol…

violets…

03 Friday Jan 2014

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African Violets, big girl pants, cope with winter, George, great pianist, maternal grandmother, memories, orchids, Violet May, violets

when I got back to work yesterday, after two weeks away, one of my African Violets was blooming its little heart out… was a bit surprised because it had lots of blooms on it when I left, so I thought it would be just about done…

violets...

violets…

 

it was lovely…

violets close up...

violets close up…

one of the ways I cope with winter is by having lots of flowering plants or cut flowers around to help keep me grounded… usually George would bring home orchids for me on a regular basis… I can’t get them re-bloom, but they last a long time and are so beautiful… the weather has been quite cold and miserable so I haven’t gone over to Rona to get any but think I will see if a friend will come with me so that the car will be warm and I can bring a couple home…

my grandma...

my grandma…

my maternal grandmother’s name was Violet… Violet May… she was an amazing woman… she had a rare calcium deficiency and had to take numerous pills to stay mobile, but she worked until she was well into her sixties… she was a very snappy dresser and had the most interesting hair… it was very short and she brushed it up from the sides… among other things she was a great pianist and I can remember sitting around in her living room singing songs with my family…

amazing what memories come up when looking at a flower, lol…

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beloved big girl pants birds blessed chocolate Christmas cold delicious dinner family fish flowers food friends fun garden George grandson happy health hibiscus hot tub light lunch memories moments morning glories nature orchid photos pictures plants pond purple rain remembering shopping sky snow sun sunshine supper Technology time treat trees walk water weather widow

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