21 Thursday Dec 2023
Posted in family, food, health, life, moments, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
big girl pants, blessed, dinner, family, grandson, grandsons, happy, moments, time, treat, visit, widow, wishlist
one of the items on my Christmas wishlist was a visit from my grandsons, so I was excited on Sunday to prep for their visit…
had fun setting the table all fancy for our dinner…
I haven’t seen them since the summer so this was a great treat…
it was fun to watch them open their Christmas presents after dinner…
thanks to the oldest for making this happen;-)…
06 Wednesday Dec 2023
Posted in business, family, life, loss, moments, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
big girl pants, blessed, cleanup, family, foray, garage, grandson, lumber, memories, moments, truck, widow, wood
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;-)…
01 Friday Dec 2023
Posted in business, family, food, health, life, moments, retirement, technology, Uncategorized
Tags
Advent, big girl pants, blessed, calendars, chocolate, family, grandson, memories, moments, nuts, Technology, treat, versions, widow
happy first day of Advent… it has always been a special time for me…
this year there are three different calendars for me…
the first is a digital version which comes via email every day with things to do or think about;-)… all focussed on chocolate, without any calories… this was the first one, which provides an opportunity to check items off over 25 days…
the second is on the wall in the living room and this year is filled with nuts and seeds and the odd bit of chocolate…
the third climbs the stairway… it is made up of twenty-four different sized boxes with items in them from the kids in Ottawa… last week a parcel arrived addressed to my grandson, who then filled each one… they look very cute on the stairs…
as I empty a box, I am breaking it down and stashing it at the top behind the last few… I don’t want to lose any of them…
every day is a treat;-)…
30 Thursday Nov 2023
Posted in business, family, life, moments, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
big girl pants, blessed, bungee, bungee cord, doorknob, family, garage, grandson, moments, neighbour, project, weather, widow
last spring the doorknob on the garage door seized up… the door hadn’t been closing properly for a long time as it had shifted… I’d been using a bungee cord to close it from the outside for ages, lol…
I had done research on how to remove the doorknob, but no matter what I did, couldn’t get it off the door…
eventually my neighbour came over and removed it although he had to hammer it off in the end, lol…
since then the bungee cord has been the way to keep the door closed…
I need a new door, but that didn’t make the project list this year, so I hadn’t done anything about fixing this…
last week we were at the hardware store, picked up a new doorknob, and on Monday while I was visiting with my friends, my grandson installed it…
woohoo…
16 Thursday Nov 2023
Posted in family, garden, life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
big girl pants, blessed, cover, deck, extra, family, garden, grandson, lawn furniture, moments, nature, tarp, tarpaulin, weather, widow
used the tarp from the extra wood to cover the lawn furniture on the back deck…
didn’t take long at all with two people…
it is a really large tarpaulin so we tucked all the excess under the legs…
08 Wednesday Nov 2023
Posted in family, health, life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
big girl pants, bird feeders, birds, blessed, grandson, health, ice, metal shovel, moments, nature, reach, seed, shovelling, snow, sore, weather, widow
it was overcast, but not too cold on Saturday, so I went out and was able to fill all the bird feeders…
even the one that I won’t be able to get to before too long, as the snow will make it difficult or impossible to reach, lol…
then I spent half an hour shovelling the driveway…
my grandson had done it awhile ago, but there were icy tire tracks on the slope so I broke them up and tossed the bits to the sides…
the next day my hamstrings and butt were a bit sore from all the bending as the metal shovel I was using was short, lol…
I will be happy when the tires get changed in a few weeks, but now the slope won’t be difficult to get up;-)…
04 Saturday Nov 2023
Posted in family, life, loss, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
beloved, big girl pants, blessed, clean-up, continues, family, garage, grandson, moments, never ending, ongoing, rafters, reorganize, stuff, tidy, treasures, weather, widow
we were back in the garage last weekend and spent an hour reorganizing…
we planned to spend another few hours to make enough space to get the car inside, particularly as we have tons of snow already…
we did spend another focussed time in the space… this time all of the stuff that was in the rafters came down to be sorted…
there is a ton of wood and other items on the floor now, in various piles… for garbage, giveaway, and a small pile to keep… but the space above is cleared out and ready for whatever needs to go back up there…
no room for the car just yet…
02 Thursday Nov 2023
Posted in business, family, life, loss, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
big girl pants, blessed, car, family, garage, grandson, hung, mess, moments, organized, sorting, tools, weather, widow
nearly a year ago, my eldest grandson and I began working away in the garage… he has a very organized mind…
a few weeks later, we cleaned out a spot and moved the shelves further along the wall…
the next time we worked in it, after purchasing additional hardware, we attached hooks and hung up a number of garden and winter tools… like items were gathered together and placed on the shelves… we came in when we started to get cold…
we spent another few hours another day working away in the space… more tools were hung on the other side of the space, the garbage bin was filled with broken, unusable items, two boxes were filled with giveaway items and the bench had much more space…
great strides were made each time we were in there and we were able to get the car in when it was home over the winter…
then we didn’t do anything more, because it got warm and the car didn’t need to live inside…
so, maybe it got filled up with other stuff, lol…
over the summer, it was great to be able to find tools without effort…
30 Monday Oct 2023
Posted in garden, life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
big girl pants, blessed, breaking, cold, fish, garden, goldfish, grandson, ice, moments, nature, plants, pond, pumps, snow, time, water, weather, widow, winter
Saturday, late in the afternoon, after breaking the ice on the pond, we caught twenty-one of the goldfish…
the pond water was filled with leaves and was rather brown and murky…
it was quite the job as, at one point, my grandson went into it barefoot with his pants rolled up to cut down the water lilies and grasses (I think it was about -12°C in the air)…
but that really helped catch a bunch of them that had been hiding under the lily leaves… they were moving slower in the cold, but still snuck out of the net… also, some of the catching was in the dark, lol…
then they sat in pails in the house for hours before getting moved into the three tanks…
we were careful to be sure to keep size and numbers similar in the tanks so that there is sufficient space for all of them…
we thought we had them all, but on Sunday we discovered five more, woohoo…
now, the pumps have been removed from the pond, and it is apparently going into the winter with water in it, lol…
27 Friday Oct 2023
Posted in business, family, garden, health, life, loss, moments, nature, Photography, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
adrenaline, appointment, beloved, big girl pants, blessed, dentist, family, garden, grandson, hidden, moments, nature, photos, pretty, ride, shovelling, snow, spare, taxi, trees, walk, weather, widow
this morning I got up early as I had a dentist appointment and my grandson was going to drive me down before he went to class…
it was dark and there was a lot of snow out there…
I put on a vest, dug out a hat and gloves, and made sure I had cash for the taxi…
it lightened up before we left and I went out to start cleaning off the car… there was easily six or seven inches of snow on it…
made it to my appointment, and when it was done walked to the Delta Hotel to get a taxi…
got a few nice photos of snow-covered trees on the short walk…
as I was riding along in the taxi, I realized that I didn’t have a house key😳…
thankfully, after my beloved died and I was on my own in the house, I put a spare key in the backyard for just such an occasion…
and, I was able to get through the snow and collect it, lol…
I unlocked the door and put the key back before shovelling the front sidewalk and steps and the back deck and hot tub area…
got that adrenaline going, in the taxi, and in the yard;-)…
herbiggirlpants 