Monthly Archives: May 2018

Memoir Monday – The Princess

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I was dragging along the aisles of the grocery store, holding Daddy’s hand while my mother consulted her shopping list and piled items from the shelves into the metal shopping cart. As any ten-year-old girl would be, I was bored and anxious to get home to dinner. Then the line of items along a shelf high above the groceries caught my attention. There sat toys! There were big trucks and toy drums, building blocks and dolls. Dolls! That’s when I saw her and my eyes popped! There she stood, taller than all of the others, that princess doll.  Her shoulder-length hair was a dark blond and set in a Paige-boy style. The sparkling “silver” tiara on her head completed the royal look presented by the dark blue satin gown, trimmed with white lace. Her blue eyes shone from her perfect rosy face. All I could do was stop and stare. I knew I had to have her.

But, although Mom and Dad looked toward where I was pointing, they didn’t seem to share my excitement and my pleas to buy her went unheeded. It was just a few weeks before Christmas and Mom’s thoughts were on getting the Christmas baking ingredients and the week’s meal supplies. They may have told me too that they couldn’t afford to buy her then. Or possibly they’d suggested I put her on my list to Santa. I’m sure I dreamed about her that night.

The weeks passed and soon it was Christmas morning.  I wasn’t allowed to go downstairs until the rest of my family was up. Since my three siblings were teenagers who’d rather sleep longer, I had to be content with dumping out the contents of my stocking that hung on my bedroom door knob. When I was finally allowed to creep down the steep stairs to the living room, my eyes lit up in disbelief. There in front of the Christmas tree stood my princess! That was all I needed. I ran to examine her. She was even more beautiful up close than she’d been up on that shelf.  I looked at the little pearl earrings on her earlobes, and the triple strand pearl choker necklace around her neck. Her nicely shaped feet fit perfectly into the silver plastic high-heeled slippers. That was the best Christmas ever!

I didn’t play much with that doll. I was almost getting to an age that I was more interested in playing games and reading books and playing outdoors than playing with dolls.  But I loved to look at her where she sat on my bed. She held that spot as I grew up, married and had daughters of my own. My father-in-law, an antique dealer, once offered me $100 for her, but I turned him down. A number of years later, when her dress had faded to a dull purple and the elastic of her necklace had rotted and broken, like my marriage, and I needed the cash, I made her a new dress and regretfully sold her on eBay for far less.

Unfortunately, I can’t find any pictures of her.

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Warkworth Lilac Festival

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After a busy week, today we finally got out to do some touristy things. It was a beautiful day to visit the Opening Day of the Annual Warkworth Lilac Festival, just a twenty-minute drive from our home.

In this little artsy town, there is a beautiful trail, aptly named Millennium Lilac Trail, along the meandering Mill Creek. Over a number of years many varieties of lilacs have been planted by local groups such as the Girl Guides, and sponsored by many local businesses. Volunteers will give group tours with explanations of the age and types of lilacs you will see. The Lilac Festival lasts for 30 days, but during the Opening Weekend there are many events and the whole town gets involved.

From the entrance to trail off of Main Street, it is a bit of a wander before you’ll see many lilacs, but Mill Creek provides a very peaceful introduction.

 

 

Unfortunately, some beaver decided that lilac wood might be a good addition to their home.

 

 

 

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Many Beautiful Colours of Lilacs

A Victoria Tea was offered in a decorated Gazebo, a nice break from the heat

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While a harpist and a flute player entertained.

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Vendor tents offered items from books, to jewelry and wood products.

 

Bees were busy collecting pollen for lilac honey

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In 2017 the Festival was winner of a Canada 150 Garden Experience Award.

Back on Main Street the shops and restaurants were all open and decorated.

We shared a table at lunch with some people from Oshawa and Deb from Campbellford.

There was a Photo Contest on the porch of one of the Victorian homes, and a Lilac Flower Arrangement contest for visitors to cast their votes.

 

A couple entertained us with music outside the ice cream parlour. We had to indulge.

 

Memoir Monday – Remembering Days of Lily-of-the-Valley, Pea Pods and Coal

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If, like many bloggers, you have been journaling for a very long time, do you ever wish you could have started much earlier? Like when you were a child?

I’ve been trying to work on my Memoirs. I’d like to start at the beginning, but all I have are old, black and white photographs to spur my memory of those times. Sometimes it’s a long reach back. It’s hard to remember the details, and the pictures often don’t show what I need.

This week two things have brought back some memories of my childhood home – the Lily-of-the-Valley that are coming up nicely in our flower beds here at the condo, and the news from the US that the President is determined to bring back coal production.

A very young me in front of our family home

A very young me in front of our family home

This is the only picture I can find that shows anything of the two-story white clapboard,  house with  black trim, where I grew up. In the background behind me, you can see part of a long verandah. It stretched across three-quarters of one side of the house and around the corner to the front door.

The verandah brought a few memories together.

The Lily-of-the-Valley

In a flower bed that bordered the side length of the verandah, my mother had planted Lily-of-the-Valley. One summer day when they were in full bloom, a bored young me thought it would be fun to climb up onto the verandah railing and jump off to the ground. I don’t know if I was unaware of the work Mom had put into planting the garden, or if I thought I could jump over it.

Lily-of-the-Valley

Lily-of-the-Valley

As I climbed up for the second time, my mother tore through the side door.

“Judy! Get down off of there!”

“But I just want to jump!” I replied.

Needless to say, she was not impressed, especially when she saw the flatten patch of  the green and white perennials.

Pea Pods

Mom picked up a large wooden basket full of green peas still in the pods, and a bowl of from the cupboard.

“Come with me. You can help me shell these peas,” she said, as she nudged me out to the verandah.

We sat side-by-side in the wooden porch chairs, the basket between us, the bowl in her lap and she showed me how to snap open the pod and carefully scrape the peas into the bowl. I don’t remember how long we sat there; I don’t remember any conversation, although being an inquisitive child I’m sure I had lots of questions for her.

Funny, I never liked cooked peas when I was a kid, but I swear I can hear her scolding me for eating more of these peas than I was putting into the bowl!

The Coal

At the front of the house, a heavy trap door in the wooden verandah floor provided access into the basement. I remember a day when a big truck arrived, and a man removed a section of the verandah railing, opened the trap door and set up a chute from the back of the truck to inside the door. I saw him shoveling chunks of black coal onto the chute. I watched it slide down through a cloud of black dust, and disappear below the floor, until my mother hauled me back indoors, out of harms way.

When the delivery man had finished his job, replacing the verandah panel and closing the trap door, I was outside again, watching my mother scrubbing the blackened walls and floor of the verandah with a mop and large bucket of soapy water.

Once winter winds began to howl, my dad would shovel the coal from the basement bin into the coal-fired furnace to provide his family with warmth through the long, cold winter.

Looking Back – Our first Cross-country trip to British Columbia, through the US

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Because we’ve not been traveling since our return from Arizona more than a month ago, I thought it would be fun to revisit our very first cross country trip to British Columbia in 2006. I did do a little blogging about it at the time, on a site that no longer exists. The only purpose of my blogging then was to keep family and friends informed of our progress.

That trip was quite different from the ones we have taken since. Our first “motor home” was an old (1973 I think) high top Chevy camper van. It had a fold-down table with bench seats that could be converted, with great difficulty, into a narrow “double” bed at night, and a small kitchen with overhead cupboards that I hit my head on every time I prepared a meal. There was a two burner propane stove and a finicky mini-fridge. We removed the port-a-potty and used that room for clothing storage. There was no shower; no bathroom sink; no furnace. We had to depend upon public restrooms and campgrounds for personal care and laundry, but we ate many meals in that little camper.

How the Adventure Began

The purpose of our trip was to attend the graduation of my one daughter from the Kootenay School of Arts in Nelson, and the wedding of my second daughter, in Vancouver. We pulled a trailer containing our Yamaha Venture motorcycle to use for transportation once we reached British Columbia.

We left Peterborough at 8:15 in the morning on April 13th and headed west, then north towards Elliot Lake, where we would spend our first night with friends, in the comfort of their apartment. By 11:00 it was time for a pit stop. We saw a sign for gas off to our right.  Thinking we’d use the washroom there, we took the exit.  This is what we found!

Gas looks cheap!
Like the open air concept!

It seemed the operating gas station was many kilometers further, so we decided to continue down the highway. A few kilometers outside Parry Sound, we found an information center with washrooms and picnic tables.  After a 45 min. break, we were on the road again.

In Espanola we filled up the gas tank at 106.9 per litre, for a grand total of $104.01 Yikes! That’s why the next day we would cross the border into the US.

By 4:00 we were in Elliot Lake.

Heading for the Bridge
Looking down on Michigan

The next morning we crossed into Michigan at Sault St. Marie and drove until 9:00 pm (Wisconsin time, 10:00 our time).  We had planned to stop earlier but were unable to find a campground that was open.  We thought we had it planned out with the KOA sites, but it turned out the ones they had listed were 30 or 40 miles away from the highway we’d chosen!  Private ones weren’t open yet.  There weren’t any convenience centres along the way either. When my bladder was about to burst, we finally found a motel and campground in Brule Wisconsin.  The campground wasn’t actually open yet, but they let us park and use the electricity for only $10.  The showers and washrooms were closed, so we had to make do with what we had in the camper.  I sure was wishing we’d kept that port-a-potty! The temperature plummeted during the night and I vowed to purchase an electric heater before the next night arrived.

Highlights of the Next Few Days

April 15 – Easter Sunday, we spent on the road. The weather warmed up, so we postponed getting a heater. We parked for the night at the KOA in Bismark, North Dakota, where we indulged in hot showers before leaving the next morning.

April 16 – We took some time to take pictures of these huge metal sculptures along the highway in North Dakota, and visited Painted Canyon and the Badlands.

We were at the KOA in Billings, Montana by night fall. Later in the evening a thunder and rain storm blew through. It rained all night; the temperature dropped 10 degrees and the Weatherman predicted up to 14 inches of snow the next day!

April 17 – We left camp at 9:00 am. By 10:00 we were driving up the mountains in a blizzard, with no snow tires!

Fortunately, it didn’t last too long, but changed to rain off and on most of the day.  The van really struggled going up the hills. By the final fill up for the day Jim realized that the gas octane he’d been buying was way lower than ours at home.  When he used a higher octane at that fill, it made a world of difference.

After spending a couple of hours in a Walmart debating with an employee about an exchange or refund for a defective camera that Jim had purchased a few months ago, and looking for a heater (they had none), we set out again. We’d thought we’d make it to Nelson that day, but it wasn’t looking good.

We weren’t back on the road long before Jim thought there was a problem with the transmission.  He stopped at a gas station to check it and put in some transmission fluid.  Then it wouldn’t even start!  He checked the batteries and didn’t think it was that.  He thought it was the starter. He spent a half hour taking things apart to get at it and still couldn’t get it fixed.  He finally decided he needed a new starter.  Luckily there was an RV repair center right across the road so he walked over.  The guy came over with his big service truck and boosted the battery.  It was dead, but they discovered that the alternator belt was loose as well, which caused the battery to not charge.  The cost was nominal. I breathed a sigh of relief. We finally got back on our way and stopped at 7:00 pm for the night at the KOA in Missoula, Montana.

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Apr 18 – At 4:00 pm our van was parked outside my daughter’s apartment in Nelson, BC where it would stay for the next thirteen days while we attended the family events and travelled around BC on the bike.

It would be May 11th before our 10,000 kilometer trip would end, upon our arrival home.

Looking back now, I wonder how we survived nearly a month in such tight quarters without any major conflicts! Of course a year later we did another month-long trip to Canada’s East Coast, that time on the motorcycle all the way and tenting most of the time.

Memoir Monday – Traveling with New Technology

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These days flying paperless is as common to me as taking my own shopping bags to the grocery story. I now have many electronic devices that I can use, but it wasn’t that long ago that I did it for the first time. This is what I wrote about this adventure in 2012.

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Traveling with New Technology

I’ve made the trip from Toronto to Vancouver many times, but this time was different. This time I was determined to go “paperless” by using my newly acquired iPad to get me through the gate.

At the self-check-in kiosk, a quick scan of the code displayed on the iPad screen produced my printed baggage ticket. I needed no paper boarding pass. At the baggage counter the code was scanned from the iPad again, and I was given my boarding gate number. Boarding would start at 11:00, I was told.

I flashed my iPad Boarding Pass at the first stop on the way into the security area. The young man’s surprise was evident. “Look at you!” he said. I smiled, thinking “not bad for a grey-haired lady.”

At the security desk I handed over the iPad once more, but the technology was as new to the man receiving it as it was to me. We both held our breath and sighed in unison when the scan took.

I removed my shoes as requested, and walked through the scanner with no problem – so far so good. Now what gate was that? I retrieved my belongings, and quickly skimmed the overhead monitor until I saw a flight to Vancouver, leaving from Gate C26. Without confirming the flight number (I’d had only a few hours’ sleep and my brain often lets me down when I’m tired), I found a seat at Gate C26, the last one to the left. At 10:45 I made a final pit stop and sat back down to wait for the boarding call. On the board behind the desk I could see the flight to Vancouver listed. I squinted. It looked like flight 475, but I was too far away to make out the time. I looked at my Boarding Pass once more. When, at 11:10 I’d heard no mention made of the Vancouver flight, I figured a closer look at the board was warranted. “Flight 475 to Vancouver leaving at 1:00,” it read. What?! Suddenly my sleepy brain sprang to life. This wasn’t my flight!

A more careful check of my Boarding Pass revealed that my flight number was 465! I was at the wrong gate! I rushed to the monitor and saw that I was to be at C27, but where was that? The only thing that I could see beyond Gate C26 was a Tim Horton’s. Logic told me that C27 had to be past C26, so I started speed-walking in that direction, my over-night bag bouncing on its wheels behind me.

“Last call for boarding of flight 465 to Vancouver at gate C27,” blasted over the air. I ran, still not seeing my gate.

Finally, there appeared before me a large sign and arrow “C27.” Panic and embarrassment were replaced by relief when I rounded the corner and saw some other stragglers approaching the gate. I wasn’t the last to board.

I admit that if I had really been iPad savvy, I would have made a mental note of the gate number on my electronic Boarding Pass, before putting my iPad away, or looked more closely at the monitor. As for traveling with new technology, it’s amazing! Like anything new, it just takes practice.

Coping with the Unpredictability of Weather

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Is it just me, or do the rest of you think that weather has become much more unpredictable over the last five years or more?

If you’ve read my post in Memoirs, Seeking a Diagnosis, you will know that I suffer from chronic pain that has never been diagnosed as being caused by anything other than some “mild” arthritis. Maybe that’s the best diagnosis there is. Some studies say that wet, cold weather can make arthritis worse, and more and more I believe it. Most of the time I can deal with my pain and continue to function, but on my really bad days, when I can’t seem to finish any task, when my whole body hurts and my brain wants to shut down, a major change in the weather is involved.

During the past week, here in our community, we’ve gone from damp, rainy days to warm sunny ones, sometimes in the middle of the day. A week ago yesterday was one of those days. We had to drive my son to Toronto to catch his flight to Poland, where he is making his new home. The next day I was thankful that his flight was on Thursday and not Friday.

Friday morning was a sunny day with a little wind; by 3:00 pm the wind had accelerated so much that tree branches were taking out power lines, not only in our community, but in various locations throughout the province. Flights were cancelled in Toronto, which is 200 miles west of us, yet the nearest town to the east of us still had power. While we sat in a restaurant in that town, waiting for dinner, I watched the overhead traffic lights and signs swinging and bouncing precariously at the intersection.  Across the street a row of young cedar trees danced to the music of the wind, and discarded plastic bags and grocery fliers whirled through the air. I washed down two Advil with coffee to keep the pain in my shoulders under control. When we left the restaurant with the plan to purchase some battery operated candles, we saw that a street light had broken near its base and toppled over onto the sidewalk, narrowly missing a parked car. The store that we hoped would sell us the candles had just locked its doors and sent employees home.

Back at home I sat with my charged electric massager on my shoulders, while entertaining myself with games and puzzles on my iPad. The power came back on for half an hour, enticing me to turn on the washer and dryer to finish the laundry I’d started hours before. The last load of wash was done before the power went off again; the clothes in the dryer were still damp. By flashlight I hung them around the bathroom. We called it an early night, sure the power would be restored before morning. It wasn’t. The wind had died down and the sun was shining, but it was 3:00 in the afternoon before I could finish the laundry and make a meal.

Aftermath of first wind storm

Aftermath of first wind storm

Yesterday morning I awoke in major pain, the worst I’ve ever had. My head pounded, my shoulders felt like they carried a hundred pounds and none of my joints wanted to move. At first I thought it might be due to all of the pickle ball playing I’d done every day this week, but when I got up and opened the blinds I knew the cause. The sky was filled with heavy black clouds and it was already raining. As the winds picked up, so did my pain. The whole day was a write off for me. Shortly after the lights flickered at 4:30 I scurried to get some dinner cooked, knowing the power was going to fail us again. It did. We ate in the condo common room under the skylights and read until the sunlight disappeared. We used Jim’s phone data to watch a couple of TV shows on his iPad, and ate a snack by candle light before giving up and going to bed.

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The power came back on in the middle of the night. I know because the kitchen lights were shining into my eyes through the bedroom doorway. Today the sun is fully exposed, the winds are calm and my pain level is back to moderate.

I’m thankful that our power was restored in such a short time, unlike some areas of our country and others.

What are your thoughts on our unpredictable weather, and how does it affect you?

Setting Goals

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Today I’m beginning a blogging course through WordPress Blogging University with the purpose of increasing my audience and posting more regularly. My first assignment is to Set Three Goals. Here they are:

  1. Establish a new weekly theme and publish on the given day until the end of 2018, minimum. Memoir Mondays
  2. Publish at least one more post a week for the next six months.
  3. Spend one hour each week visiting my follower’s blogs, reading, and commenting from today until the end of June.