TIME FLIES

I had no idea so much time flew by since the last post.  I love posting and there are times when I have things to say but I posted the day before and it is too soon.  Then there are times like now...a whole week goes by!  So unpredictable and inconsistent.  (shovel list)

Well another trip is in the works.  It isn't until the end of next September so both Monte and I should be able to shovel shekels into the travel account to cover the cost.  This one is a little more due to it being twenty days plus a flight home from Fort Lauderdale.

We planned to do three cruises before I cross the rainbow bridge.  This will be number three.  The first was Hawaii, the second one was Alaska and now it is the Panama Canal.

This trip also makes stops in Panama, Mexico, Columbia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, San Francisco. and Fort Lauderdale.  Not in that order.  And of course we transit the Panama Canal.

The only part I am NOT excited about is the flight home.  We fly to Toronto, two hour layover and then home.  I am not sure how I get seats that will accommodate Monte.  There is simply no way he fits into a regular seat on one of those planes.  I may get hold of the vacations to go guy and get him to get us a third seat.  They were only 250 us bucks.

We have been looking at rescue dogs.  There are lots of puppies or young dogs.  We want an old sedate dog that hates walks!  Hahahaha!!!!  I keep hearing about all these dogs needing to be adopted but they sure aren't here in Port!  And the other obstacle is I want a little lappy type dog (Leelooesque) and Monte wants a German shepherd (Parkeresque).  And neither of us are willing to meet in the middle and compromise! 

There seem to be lots of chihuahuas but I can't stand them.  They have bug eyes and they shake.  I don't like boxers or squash faced dogs like pugs, they look like Winston Churchill after he ran into a wall.  But then I think about what a sedentary household we are and start feeling sorry for any dog that enters our life.  When Wrangler was still able to walk we had Peter here who would take him out every day, all day long.  Eventually two things happened.  Wrangler couldn't walk up the stairs after a long walk and Peter left.  I have faith that the perfect dog that suits us both in every way will walk into our life eventually.  Remember that book The Secret?  All you had to do was wish for something hard enough and it would transpire.  Well maybe I will give that the old army try.  I will let you know how that works out!!!

I also want to consider Ange.  She has so very kindly offered to look after the dog when we would be gone.  I think there is a big difference between looking after a little fur ball and a giant needy dog.  I offered to pay her the same as I would a kennel, but some dogs need a huge amount of attention.  Should that end up being the case, kennel it would have to be.

Well enough silly rambling.  The clinic just phoned me to see why I haven't been in for my three month check up.  This doctor I have is pretty amazing.  I ended up with an extra three months of pills so I am not doing my A1c until they are all gone but I think I will go in and see her anyway.  She clearly has noticed my absence.  Normally that would piss me off but I like this doctor.

So I shall sign off now.  I hope this finds you all happy.  Take care.  TTYL

 

A SHOCKING EVENT IN OUR FAMILY

 I shall get to the event momentarily. First a catchup.  

After K&T left, Stan asked if I would like to join them for breakfast at Pescadories, known as Pesky's in our house.  I absolutely jumped on that invitation!!!  This is the second or third time I have gone with them.  I always get Stan to order for me, the same thing he gets.  I put a pic at the bottom!  But this time I couldn't eat it all.  I had to bring home a bunch and eat it later.

Over the last few years I would occasionally take a sleeping pill, or rather a quarter of one.  They are strong!  If I took a whole one I am pretty sure I would sleep for a week!

But a quarter of one knocks me out for basically 24 hours.  It kind of comes and goes.  I wake up, all groggy and swimmy in the head, then go back to sleep, for the 24 hours.  I love it.  But...if something happened and I had to perform the next day I would be up the creek!  Consequently, I plan pretty carefully.  I tell everyone I ain't cookin' that night and I will be comatose on my chair!  

I don't sleep much.  No matter when I go to bed I always, always, wake up at three and that's it.  I may doze afterwards off and on but I don't go back to sleep.  But I have never needed much sleep, but eventually it catches up.  And that is when I plan a sleeping pill.  And then I am good to go for another couple of months!

Now for the shocking event.  I have a huge huge family on my dad's side.  Every five years we have a massive family reunion.  As a result we all know each other and are quite close.  There are about 30 plus first cousins and many many second and now third cousins.  

One of the cousins in Kelowna has a number of adult children and grandchildren.  One of his sons owns Adventure Trucks, he outfits trucks with tents on top of them etc...  They are quite amazing!!!

Someone who is an acquaintance of his, the son's, entered his business, shot him, set fire to the business and then shot himself.  At least that is what we know so far.  Jeez!!!  This is a god fearing family, good good people!  This just doesn't happen in families like that!  I guess the police are figuring it all out right now, as is the family.  Stan phoned Jack, the dad, and sent our love and condolences.  Man, Jack just lost his wife to stomach cancer recently.  Just an awful awful time for him and the family.

Well I guess I had best get on with my day.  There is one helluva stack of dirty dishes to load into a fully loaded dishwasher of clean dishes.  Sigh.  Plus I am hungry!  I don't remember eating much yesterday.  I shall post soon.  TTYL

'What nicer thing can you do for someone than make them breakfast?'  Anthony Bourdain

RANCHO OEVOS (SP?). AND THAT IS CORNBREAD, TOASTED ON THE PLATE!!!

LOOK OUT STAN!!!  SHE'S GOT HER EYE ON YOUR BREAKFAST!!!

SMILES PEOPLE!!!!!

 

FABULOUS WEEK...

Kevin just texted me to say he is home.  They left this morning early to get the ferry and get home in time for dinner.  And I miss them....so much.  The house is so quiet.  I so enjoyed the kids.  They have become, not by accident, truly fine people.  Their parents are probably the best parents I've known.  So concerned about their screen time, phone time and healthy eating.  But most of all they were truly the most consistent parents on the planet.  And that combination of raising them so carefully absolutely showed up in the children's characters.  One is 13 and the other 16.

Every night as soon as dinner was done, up they got and cleared the table, loaded the dishwasher, washed the pots and pans and put all the food away.  And there wasn't even one complaint or resistance.  I must say I was pretty impressed, and grateful!!!

Every evening we would play games and then Kevin and Tandy would go downstairs to their room around 8:30.  The kids would have to have lights off at 10:30 so we would watch cooking shows and visit and just spend time together.  I loved it.  I don't get to spend a lot of time with them so this time was very special.

On their last night Stan and Antonia came for dinner.  So it was a real true blue family night.  It was wonderful.  All you people out there that gather with members of your family, don't take it for granted and be really mindfully grateful.  

Well I am going to sign off now.  I am about to watch a tv show called 500 Days in the Wild.  A woman traversed the Trans Canada Trail and filmed it as she went.  It is an incredible story.  So I shall be back in a couple of days.  TTYL

'Becoming a grandmother is wonderful.  One moment you are just a mother.  The next you are all-wise and prehistoric.'  Pam Brown

I MADE THEM EGGS BENNY ONE MORNING....

DIALED IN

A VERY WISE GIRL!

MOM AND DAD

THIS DOLL HAS A BUTTON.  THE DOLL GIGGLES AND CRIES LIKE A REAL BABY.  CARA...STAN'S DOG, WENT NUTS!!!!  KIKI, KEVIN'S DOG TOTALLY IGNORED IT.

FATDAR POST 2

 Flying is a bitch if you aren't the standard 150 pounds.  Not only a bitch, but painful.  I noticed this morning my thighs have black and blue poke marks on them from bashing into the seat handles down the aisle of the plane on the way to our seats, right at the frigging back, thankyou.  I am not even nearly as big as some of the passengers and not that broad in the beam, very broad in other parts, but not in the beam.  I can't imagine the colour of their legs right now.

When I got into my teeny tiny seat, always in the middle because Bill HAS to have the aisle seat, I grab my seatbelt and pray to God it goes around the part of me that IS really broad.  Most of the time it does but on tiny asian airlines, they don't.  So in pure humiliation you have to ask for an extension.  Thank god this time it fit and I didn't have to.  Now when I say fit I mean I got it done up.  But for 24 hours following the flight I had a seat belt dent in my lap and I could barely feel my legs.  Getting up to go to the loo is not something to look forward to.  Nowadays they insist you keep your seat belt on the whole ten hours and its HARD to do up.  Once clicked in you don't like to disturb the  placement of the belt.  It may not go back there, the one spot you can cinch it tight enough to click it.

Now Bill, his beam isn't that broad nor is his stomach, but his shoulders are ridiculous.  This is why he insists on having the aisle, he can hang over.  But even at that he still hangs over into my seat about 1/3 of the way.  And this is just plain self indulgent on his part, because he doesn't do that when he sits beside strangers.  Meanwhile I am sucking in every inch I can to keep from spreading into the poor hapless passenger in our window seat.  He has already been traumatized when he saw us coming down the aisle aiming straight for him..and so he should.  If he needs to wiz, it will be a good ten minute wait whilst we heave ourselves out of ours to let him out.   No stepping over us as other nimble window passengers are doing in other rows.

Now its time for the safety schpiel.  First of all, the exit doors are about 16 inches across.  Now I haven't measured myself in years but I am pretty sure I am bigger than 16 inches...I had a tumour in me once that was bigger than that and IT went hidden for months.  So I know I am NOT going to fit through that door should the time come.  And if the captain yells BRACE BRACE, the safety card picture shows a passenger bent right down with her head on her knees and hands clasped over the back of her head.  Are you kidding?  What?  Even if I could get my head past the back seat of the seat in front of me I could NEVER get my head down to my knees.  My head hasn't been near my knees in YEARS!  Next came the life jacket demo.  The life jacket is under our seat and that means I am sunk right there.  If something falls on the floor whilst flying, it stays there until the flight is over.  A fat person cannot pick up stuff below their belt line.  Their stomach stops them so no life jacket here.  What are we going to do?  Say to my fellow seat mate, as the plane is filling with water, "Excuse me a minute while I heave myself up out of this seat and turn around and bend over and get my life jacket that is probably not going to fit and if it does I won't be able to move my fat chins enough to grab the little plastic thingy to blow it up."

After a wee while, dinner service starts.  This entails lowering the lap table from the seat in front.  I drop the table and it smacks the top of my stomach around the bra line and stops.  Okay.  You can't eat lunch off a tray that is at a sloping slant that would scare a skier.  So you suck it in as far as you can, take your hand and shove in your stomach so the tray can drop.  Its still on a slant but usable.  Along comes your tray of food.  So open and unwrap, kind of feeling for the stuff closest to you because you cant see it under your gut.  Now, to eat you have to pick the containers of whatever up and hold them at chin level, one by one, leaving the really hot one to last.  Its so annoying.

Now its time to read, or so I think.  I need to turn the light on.  Of course the light switch is on the handle, which of course I can't see, its too far back and under too much personage.  So I lift the handle and straaaaaaiiiiiiiiin and twist and spot the switch briefly and jab!  After a few misses and accidentally calling the stewardess, I give up.  Having done this before I already have my ipad at the ready in the seat pocket in front of me and I don't really need the light.  I haul it out, turn it on, rest it on the still lowered tray when WHAM!!  With no freaking warning whatsover the guy in the seat in front of me slams his seat back, crunches the ipad into my gut and damn near smacks my nose with the top of his seat. You see, what ever can't spread sideways in these seats, goes forward.  The fatter you are the less room there is between you and the seat in front.  Now, with his seat in the recline position,  I can't even hold my ipad properly to read, there simply isn't room.  So yet again I battle the arm of the seat and get it up and find my seat button and slowly push my seat back to make room.  Usually this is fine but now and then you get a real asshole that pushes on the seat and won't let it go back.  (I have learned to call the stewardess and tell her the seat is broken and could she help me put it back...usually works)  

There is no way do you dare go to sleep.  At this point you are sucking in and holding your not Bill side arm over and to keep it there your other hand is holding it, and pushing against Bill and trying to stay there...just so the poor guy by the window isn't going through what I am going through with Bill on the other side.  If you go to sleep all that personage relaxes and spreads...right over into the poor guy's seat.  So I stay awake, sucking it in and listening to Bill snore.

Eventually though, one of us will have to go to the loo.  As soon as Bill heaves himself over the arm of the seat, totally crashing and banging the seat in front of him, pissing off that passenger, a blessed waft of cool air slides in.  Ahhhhh, it is unbearably hot in the middle.  Out I hop, its not too hard for me for some reason, and off we go to line up.  You get really close and personal with everyone that is getting past you to go back to their seats.  It does mean leaning right over the top of whoever is unfortunate enough to be sitting right there.  Finally its your turn.  Right.  This is fun.  Already the seat and floor are wet, thank you men who don't know how to pee and clean up after themselves.  No matter how you slice it, you are going to get wet, in stuff I don't even want to think about.  And when you finally manoeuvre around and sit, you are literally wall to wall ass.  Try doing things you need to do when you cannot move your legs or arms.  Huhhh!!!  Not cool.

Ten hours later we deplane.  Bill is all rested and happy and I am cranky as hell and he doesn't get it!  When our travelling days are finally over, I won't be missing the flying part of it!!   TTYL

REVISITING. FATDAR PART ONE

I hope it's okay but I came across two emails I wrote once on a trip when the wifi wouldn't load the blog.  They made me laugh.  So  this being a busy week with company I thought I would do two posts of them.  They are about being fat.  

A lovely person reading my emails suggested I write a book.  But I just don't have the two things necessary for that.  One is attention span and the other is self discipline.  Both are vital.  But what I can do is jot down things as they come to me. You have read a few of those over the last couple of years!  So seeing as how this has nothing to do with travel, please feel free to skip the  emails called Fat Lady Chronicles.  When I get home I will not be emailing and will be back to blogging it all so you won’t be getting any more annoying emails.

One of my daughters approached me recently to kind of kindly upbraid me for always "putting my self down for being fat and talking about it too much".  She is right.  So I gave it some serious thought and came to a conclusion.  That conclusion is that I don't think I am going to be fat forever (although I wonder sometimes).  And right now, the difficulties that a fat person encounters is kind of amazing in this still skinny world.  There are skills a fat person develops that skinny people just don't have.  And I am really curious how its going to be different when I lose that 150 pounds.  Kind of like an experiment.  So in the meantime, instead of lamenting my ordeal, I am going to experience and record!

The first thing I think I will talk about is FAT RADAR.  Fatdar I call it.  Fatdar is something that one develops when they pass from pleasingly plump to "Can I get through there?" 

 Right now I am sitting up in the buffet area.  As per usual Bill and I managed to get a table for two right by the window.  A great table but as I sit here I am seeing that to get from this table to the food area I must maneuver through a number of tables and chairs with people in them.  So my fatdar  instantly kicks in.  Can I squeeze through there?  or maybe if I go that way I can squeeze through there...or...I will watch and wait until that one gets up and I should be able to squeeze through that way, but then if they come back before I do I won't be able to get back to my table.  And round and round and round the fatdar goes.

Another difficulty we large people encounter quite frequently is in public bathrooms.  When I tipped from large to huge I started using the handicapped loo.  Its bigger, has handles and paper you can reach.  One day I popped into a handicapped stall and was in there for, like, nano seconds.  I am the fastest loo user on the planet.  As I sat there doing whatever for the full ten seconds it took, I saw movement under the loo door.  Silently, two visible wheels rolled into view in the strip of space under the door, and rattle rattle rattle.  A loud aggressive voice strongly and firmly asked “Is someone in there?  You better have a cane or wheelchair when you come out!”

Okay, now I am terrified.  Of a person in a wheel chair.  So I very quickly finish up and open the door.  And there she is, all half of her.  No legs, at least not that I could see.  And she starts giving me shit for using the handicapped stall.  So, nervously smiling and bobbing my head, I apologize…..over and over.  She won’t shut up already!!!!!  So finally I snapped.

“What the hell?”  I yell at her.  “This isn’t a handicap parking space, its a frigging bathroom stall!  Its a courtesy not a law! And you think just because I don’t have a cane or wheelchair I am not challenged?  WELL WATCH THIS LADY!”   I stomped into the stall next to the handicapped one and I proceeded to demonstrate how a fat broad has to actually sit on the john and spread the knees unnaturally wide to the hip cracking point to get into a normal stall and swing the door shut again.  Either that or stand on the damned toilet, especially in those stalls with giant toilet paper dispenser machines on the walls inhibiting knee spreadage.  She sort of sat there in a mouth hanging daze as she watched me go nuts then simply rolled into her stall and finally shut up.  So there.  My fatdar now seeks out wheelchairs and canes before using the challenged stall!  ttyl

WALMART....MOST UNFAIRLY MALIGNED CONGLOMERATE!!

This town would be totally hooped without Walmart.  There is no other store with low prices.  Oh, there are lots of small mom pop shops that we are forever being told to support.  Which I would if they had the stuff I want at equally low prices to Walmart.  But they don't.  There is a Canadian Tire...but there again, their prices are too high.  Especially with good ol' Wally right across the street from them.  I guess if I needed car parts I would go there.  But I don't.  I just need house parts and groceries.

Well I now get my groceries delivered.  The only downside to that is the forced tip we have to add on.  Door Dash does the delivering.  I am not against tipping but we are already paying a premium, well a Wally premium, on the groceries, I don't really want to add to it.  But something happened today that has made me even happier with Walmart.

Yesterday I made an order for a delivery today, at nine this morning.  It was an absolutely enormous order.  I will be indiscreet here and even say how much it was.  It was just under five hundred dollars.  It's all I need to feed six people for the next ten days. With an order that size which included some oddball stuff, vegan stuff, I expected some of the products to not be available.  It happens.  I then waddle across the alley to QF for the missing items.  So I needed to get it done today.  Oh I need to mention...Monte bought them for me.  Things are tight at the moment and he super stepped up!!!

Twelve paper bags of groceries were delivered  right on time.  I got the itemized order up on my phone and checked off things as I put a million things away.  And guess what?  Twenty items were not there.  I added it up and it was 72 bucks worth of stuff, missing.  What the hell?  (big time shovel list)

The next hour was involved with phone calls that didn't work, people that didn't understand blah blah blah.  I finally got a person that oversaw all the online delivery and curbside groceries and she was suitably upset by my dilemma.  We hung up with a promise from her to call me back.  Long story short and a few convos later and me reiterating the list to her over the phone, she made a final phone call.

She told me that she had rounded up all the items and bagged them and handed them off to the door dash people and they were on their way to me as we spoke.  But, and here is the amazing part, she told me that she had refunded me 75 bucks as a 'we are sorry for your trouble' and all the items were replaced....FOR FREE!!!!!!!  I was astounded!!!!  That 75 will cover my usual five dollar tips for a little while!  And I got everything...except vegetable broth and ribs.  I am happy!!!!

Well this is a fast post today.  My charger bit the dust and another doesn't come for a couple of days.  My lappy is dying as I type this.  So back in a few days!!!  TTYL

 

LOVE COMPANY, HATE THE PREP, BUT GLAD FOR IT

 I am a putoffski.  I can procrastinate anything.  And now here I am, sitting in a house of projects, all needing doing before the 23rd.  And both Monte and my backs are in really bad shape.  I think it may have something to do with our giant stomachs....although Monte argued against that one loud and long when I suggested it.

Plus now that I no longer own a truck, which in retrospect was maybe not such a great idea, there are no more dump runs.  And we have a stack  of flattened cardboard the size of my massive deck.  I have grown to utterly despise cardboard.  We also have a number of giant garbage bags full of...well, garbage.  Stinky awful garbage.  (shovel shovel shovel list). So, what do you do?  I am finally catching on.

I went to our local Facebook page and put out a call for a dump/recycling run for a hundred bucks.  Cheaper than owning a truck frankly.  Within ten minutes I had over ten responses.  The upside of living in a poor town.  Monday morning at 11am, a Kyle is coming to pick up all our cardboard and garbage bags.

And that means that not only do we have to get all the flattened cardboard, did I say a HUGE pile already?, down the rickety scary deck stairs and piled neatly in the carport, I also have to get several heavy garbage bags down there as well.

I would have the guy pack the crap down the stairs but with my luck the stairs would collapse when he was half way down.  I have a feeling my house insurance wouldn't cover the law suit.  I mean they won't cover a soaked bedroom from some unknown water source, why busted stairs and a paralyzed person?

And then I have to clean this house and get it ready for the housekeeper coming tomorrow at one.  I have discovered that if you put something somewhere that is convenient but not its final resting place, that something becomes two things, then five then ten then a heaving heap.  Well that is what I have in the dining room.  OMG!!! Containers of veg, containers of plastic containers, small boxes of general kitchen junk, two huge Rubbermaids full of xmas and Vancouver trip food (I mentioned these before and they are still there).  My poor dining room.  And now there is a giant snake in an even gianter aquarium box thingy.

When I agreed, and even looked forward, to having Smooch up here, I had no spacial idea of the size of that terrarium or whatever you call a glass box with a giant ball python in it.  It takes up the whole dang wall.  And my table has a broken leg.  If you move the table the wrong way it falls off.  And the two captains chairs for each end of the table each have one arm broken right off, and the cupboard doors and drawers on the buffet won't stay shut.  They slowly, when you aren't looking, creep open.  Frigging thing.  Bill, bless him, would have fixed all that with folded paper shims, if he were here.  I also need to hang that wall to wall, floor to ceiling cloth mural of the last supper.  If I can find it now.  (another giant shovel list)

I gotta admit I am feel a wee tad overwhelmed.  Monte is up and going to go get us breakfast at McD's and then we are going to gird our loins and go out to that deck and gitter done.  I know I will feel better when I get it all done today.  It's only 8:30 am.  I shall regroup at 8:30 pm and tell you how far I got today!

Well it isn't 8:30 pm, it is noon the next day, Monday.  I worked my butt off yesterday but still had a fair amount to do today.  I am sorely impeded by my stupid back.   I can go for about ten minutes then the pain sets in to the point I can't move.  So I impatiently sit until it subsides enough to get up and go another ten minutes.  So freaking shovel list annoying!!!!!  You have no idea!!!!!

But now here I sit, the house is as organized as possible, my bedroom is sparkling, Monte's bathroom is ready for the housekeeper, my deck is completely cleared of all garbage and cardboard.  My phone rings.  I answer.  The housekeeper isn't coming til tomorrow, something came up.  Really what can you do but laugh.  Such is life.  

Two things you will get very tired of seeing on this blog....pics of the mountain and pics of my living room when it's clean and the sun is shining in.  I love it.

Thats it for today.  Have a lovely four days until I am back.  TTYL

'A good procrastination should feel like you are inserting lots and lots of commas into the sentence of your life.'  Ze Frank

MY LITTLE PEOPLE

MY FLOWER FAMILY

GOOD THING I LIKE RED!