DAYS OF WINE AND HUMMINGBIRDS

When you’re retired every day is wide open.  Every morning is a fresh new decision on what to do with your time. 

Gone are the solid, regimented, industrious days of gainful employment.  No longer am I safe within the boundaries of a prescribed schedule, meeting deadlines and commitments for a paycheck, working for ‘the man’. 

Ah! Those were the days!  It’s so much easier now that my main reason for being is to decide what to make for supper.

I wonder, how does one retire from making supper?  (asking for a friend)

But I’ll leave that quandary for another day.

Meanwhile, back here in the middle of March, my decision-making processes must be applied to what to do with today’s sunshine.  We all know about March’s lion and lamb.  We also know how untrustworthy this is.  Sure, we began with a lamb but what does that prove?  It’s just something to talk about while dithering about whether if it’s safe to exchange winter snow boots for spring rubber boots yet.  Like, how many times do you really want to haul them up and down the basement stairs until Mother Nature tires of her game? 

What’s that you say?  Just leave them all spread all over the porch floor until Easter, just in case?  With the boot dryer plugged in at the ready?  Besides, the resulting chaos is great cover for the inch deep layer of mud all over the floor.  Win/win, for sure.  I’ll do it!  That will take care of the porch until the end of April.

What about the rest of the house?  While I’m pondering my next move I pick up my vacuum cleaner hose to hunt down the morning’s collection of little stripey flies and fugitive maple bugs.  Their Zombie Awakening is one of the clearest indications of spring so far as they stumble out of their winter hidey holes to test my insect hunting skills.  They will disappear about the time mosquitoes begin the show up.

My insect hunt has taken me to my windows.  They were so clean last fall; they are so not clean now.  I am not prepared to do anything about this today, but hey … my window policeman isn’t home this afternoon … an hour or so of fresh air couldn’t hurt anything …  

And the fresh window air will nicely complement the freshly aired bedding I washed and hung out on the line this morning.  That was one of my very first decisions today; bedtime is going to smell like heaven tonight.

As always I have a list of things I need to do – I better confess to the jobs I am avoiding:

·         Dog poop patrol … for the obvious reasons.  There’s fresh snow on it at the moment thank goodness!

·         Take down the last of the Christmas decorations and put them away.  Some of them are still frozen in the ground so, awe gee, can’t do anything about that!

So I find myself back on my deck, surveying my kingdom.  This is where all my best decisions are made … like what flowers to plant this year, where to put them, and who to share them with.  It just doesn’t get any better than this.

I have marigolds and zinnias already sprouted, dahlias to bring out of cold storage, and over 100 tulips and daffodils ready to make spring 2025 special.  The Internet promises me that hummingbirds have already started North.  What more could I ask for?

Oh yeah, that making supper forever until I die thing …

 

 

I’M PLANTING SOME FLOWERS

There is a meme that surfaces on Facebook occasionally that I feel is particularly, poignantly perfect for the times we find ourselves in this spring.

There are multiple versions of this meme but they all have two people talking.  One asks “Aren’t you worried about what the future will bring?” and the other replies “I think it will bring flowers.” to which the first person responds “Oh really, why is that?”

 “Because I am planting flowers.”

In his farewell address in 1989 President Ronald Regan spoke of the United States of America as “A tall, proud, shining city built on rocks, stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity.” His words being inspired from a bible verse Matthew 5:14.

These are lofty words but they came at a time in history where the men and women whose leadership got us through WW11 and who realized that peace isn’t just the absence of war but rather ‘the presence of justice, of law, of order – in short, of government’ and had put into place NATO and The United Nations to ensure the safety and freedom that we in the western world have taken for granted for 80 years.  It hasn’t always been perfect but it beat the heck out of what is happening now.  We watch in horror as all of Regan’s high ideals crumple like a house of cards at the hands of a man who wants to make it into the history books.  No doubt he will – if anyone is left to print or read them.

But, enough about that.  Sorry about being so dark.  Let me get back to planting flowers.

We are days away (again) from Trump’s threats of tariffs.  Will his fear of crashing the stock market make him back off again?  Who knows?  Is it really the tariffs he wants, or the turmoil and uncertainty that he likes most?  Regardless, we have to prepare for … well, we don’t really know, do we?  How will this affect our lives?  How deep with the economic pain go?  We will hurt, but the experts say so will the Americans.  How this affects regular people, no matter which side of the border they are on concerns him not at all.

At his first threat we Canadians felt powerless, but then someone came up with some ‘flower seeds’ to plant.  His tariffs are all about money, it’s the only thing he is interested in … so let us speak in the only language he understands – dollars.

His threat of tariffs and the insult of making us his 51^st state has galvanized Canadians into the most thorough anti-American shoppers ever to wield a shopping cart.  It’s so ironic that in past Free Trade negotiations it was the USA who insisted on country-of-origin labeling; now the very thing that is making identifying what we don’t want to buy so much easier.  Not that it’s all straight forward, ‘Made in Canada’ is not the same thing as ‘product of Canada’ but there are websites and Facebook pages set up to help you understand what you are buying and advice on where to find what you need.  Don’t think for a moment that you can’t make a difference, those big companies watch their market share and down is not a direction they want to see.  Canadians are known for our ‘nice-ness’ but read the history books – we are not to be messed with.

The world order tipped yesterday, spilling out the security we have enjoyed for so long and allowed evil and greed for power to seep in.  All is not lost, there are still good people in the right places to make a difference, but as we head into this year there is lots to worry about.

Personally, I’m going to plant flowers.  It won’t change the big picture, but at least there will be flowers.

 

SNOW DAY

My early morning routine always begins with a big mug of coffee and a scroll through Facebook on my phone.  It’s not as comprehensive as an actual newspaper, and a person has to be careful about what they are going to believe, but it’s the best that I have.

But on Wednesday morning, before I even got as far as Facebook, I discovered a message from Australia.  It was a screenshot, actually, an announcement of cancelled classes and campus shutdown for the college in Coquitlam, BC where grandson Shae is going to school.  His Canadian born father (no doubt relaxing by their backyard pool and maybe enjoying a mango off their own tree) was the one who sent it, along with his comment “Shae just got his first Snow Day!” 

It gave me a chuckle too: snow days are pretty rare occurrences for Australians.  I had seen the news coverage of the winter mess Vancouver was getting and wondered how the boy from Down Under was enjoying BC’s version of winter.  He’s a pretty happy-go-lucky guy and adapted well to the ten days he and his Aussie girlfriend spent here over Christmas holidays.  I think she struggled a bit more with the intense cold.  There is no way to prepare first timers for what to expect at 40 below zero. 

I’m sure the question “Why would anyone choose to live here?” went through their heads.  Truth to be told, it goes through ours too from time to time.  When the air hurts your face and drawing breath in freezes your nostrils shut, it really does make you wonder what you’re doing here.

But, then again, it’s not so bad.  If our ancestors managed to survive in sod shacks, burn buffalo chips for fuel, haul wood by horse teams from the Moose Mountains, and do it all without wifi! surely to goodness, we can weather a few months of, shall we say, a hostile environment.

And, those of us who live here know that winter isn’t boring.  It has many faces. 

Today is a beautiful day: even though it’s minus 15, the sunshine is strong enough to melt smaller patches of loose snow on our south-facing deck; our dog is out there soaking in its warmth.  The sky is a dazzling blue. 

Also, yesterday’s new snow is sifting along the ground from west to east, polishing roads out in the open but in the shelter of our yard the wind and the snow are collaborating to form banks and drifts only to reshape them again and again as the breeze changes directions.  Today’s windspeed is minor so the banks are staying soft and fluffy, but should Mother Nature take a notion to turn it up, we will be treated to spectacular snow sculptures.  She does fantastic work blowing snow through trees at 90kph.

Over Christmas Jack Frost put on a fairyland display of fog and rime frost, decorating every surface with dazzling, white crystals.  As I drove home with one of our Australian guests on her first day in Saskatchewan I asked what she thought of what she was seeing.  Of course, I was expecting her answer to be an echo of my opinion of its beauty, but with her fresh eyes and unique perspective, her reply was even more profound.  After a moment of quiet thought she said “I feel like I’m in a black and white movie.” 

She is from a place where the sky and the sea are always blue, the grass is always green, and there is never a time when something isn’t in vibrant bloom.  She must have felt she had been abducted to an alien world.

It’s February now, the worst of winter’s darkness is behind us.  With each morning it’s a little bit brighter.  This is Canada so the snow days might be done for this school year, or we might be just getting started.  I’ll let you know at the end of March.  Better make that April.  Can’t really rule out May either …

Thank goodness we have wifi.

 

 

 

 WHAT I DID ON MY CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY

For some time now I’ve been thinking we should downsize our Shaw Direct package.  We don’t watch even a third of what we are subscribed to and it’s not cheap.  Surely to goodness there is a better deal for the farmer and his wife.

As much as this was a good idea in the abstract, it was not to be taken lightly.  First I needed input from the primary tv watcher. There was no way I wanted to hear any whining about me cancelling his favorite shows.  I requested a list from him.  And then I requested it again.  The third time did the trick.

Maybe I sounded a little more insistent this last time.  Due to charges on my credit card (that I did not make!) I cancelled it and ordered a new one.  I then went to my online Shaw account and recorded the new card’s number following their prompts.  I considered the deal done until I got the next e-bill and the latest payment had not gone through.  I checked it out and the new number showed at ‘pay method’ so I chalked it up to bad timing and that this would take of itself by the next bill.  I was wrong, it did not.

Strange how you can pay too high a price for tv one month at a time and let it slide, but when you get a bill for three months together, the wastefulness hits a nerve.  Something needed to be done and I required that list from the farmer to begin.  For sure my third request was more demanding.

During my what’s-up-with-my-bill excursions into MY SHAW DIRECT account the website told me how easy they were to work with – like, if they repeated it often enough it would somehow be true.  The only things that are easy to do is signing up for additional services.  Or maybe to change your address; I don’t know I didn’t try that one.  But, if you want to figure out what’s wrong with nonpayment on your account, or want to realign your package to suit two old people – well, navigating that journey requires guidance. 

By a human. 

In an on-going conversation. 

Until all the problems have been resolved. 

If anyone of you who have gone looking to Shaw for this you just sat back in your chairs, snorted coffee out your noses, and said “Good luck with that!”

Beginning with the mystical, magical, all-powerful 4 digit code you need to talk to someone when you call the help number plastered all over their website.  They take you all through who-you-are and what-are-you-looking-for menu and then ask for this code that you know nothing about.  I’ve become very savvy about writing down everything when I talk to these companies and I have no record of any such 4 digit code!  I rechecked these notes and tried again thinking there must be another option, or at least a way to acquire a 4 digit code.  I ran into the same dead end every time.  You can’t pass this door without a code; you cant get a code unless you pass this door.  I quit for the day.

My ire was reawakened the next day when I received a phone call saying that if I didn’t do something about my bill they were going to unplug my tv, or some such threat.  It was just a recording of course, no human to help straighten things out.  No hint as to what my 4 digit code might be either, strangely enough.

Off to my account page again!  On the very same page as this huge amount owed is the proof that I have given them the new credit card number.  Why can’t they just use it to pay the bill?  Under that though, is where you are invited to give them another credit card number.  I’m not about to do that, but let’s just see what’s going on behind the scene?  Would you believe that they haven’t changed the card at all?  Even though the top page has the new number, their records are still clinging to the past.  I paid one month’s worth to see if it would go through and quit for the day.

That was only one problem solved though.  Back to the drawing board on how to downsize our tv plan.  Back to their website for some more frustration.  They offer different size deals with different personal choice options.  This is hardly helpful if a person doesn’t know what they already have.  On top of that, they offer networks and we customers understand channels; it’s like we’re not even speaking the same language.  That is, if we were even talking, which of course we’re not … because, you know, the 4 digit code thing.

There is however, a little chat bubble in the corner offering ‘help’.  I click on it, fill in my who-are-you and how-can-I-help info … and get asked for my 4 digit code.  Of course.  Who didn’t see that coming?  While I sat there contemplating my previous worst customer service experience ever a message popped up saying the ‘helpers’ didn’t work weekends anyway.  Of course.  I quit for the day.

On my next non-weekend day I tried again.  This time, before they closed me down for not having a 4 digit code I filled that blank in with a message stating I didn’t have one.  I didn’t think this was going to help but be darned if I didn’t get a message that I was 69^th in the waiting queue.  I don’t know if I was supposed to celebrate that I had actually made it to a queue, or not.  Mostly I was amazed that one actually existed.  But, at #69 I wasn’t even tempted; I quit for the day.

Randomly, on different days, I would go through the motions:  #62.  #71.  #74.

And then, yesterday at 10:03 miraculously I was given #21.  I poured myself a coffee and settled in for the long haul.  This was going to be my day.

I texted with friends.  I straightened up my desk.  I did a puzzle on my iPad.  I played several games on my phone.  I told the farmer to make his own dinner.  I did another puzzle.  The number continued downward.  11 and 5 took a long time, 10-9-8-7 and 4-3 went fast, no doubt they either gave up or died of old age. 

Finally at 1:13 I was asked what my problem was.  Talk about a loaded question, but I know what it feels like to be yelled at for something I have no control over, I thanked her for her attention to my problems and slowly but surely we unravelled all of the frustration I had built up over the past month and a half.  I am now the owner of a much smaller tv package, I understand how it works, and my payment method has been verified.

I have also been granted my very own personal 4 digit code! 

It's been quite the journey.  As well, I subscribed to Netflix over the holidays, it took the farmer just over a week to discover binge watching.  As for myself, the reason I want tv is for the news and lately I can either watch that or sleep through the night, but not both.  Maybe I should have let them unplug our tv, after all.

But I do have my 4 digit code.

 

 

COOKING WITH A HANDICAP

Most people wouldn’t figure baking as an athletic activity but the Christmas goody-making season in this house has likely been responsible for wearing off more calories in steps and stair climbing than in creating them in the first place.  Throw in the aggravation of discovering – YET AGAIN! – that the oven had decided to call it a day before its work was done and you have a peek into my December.  It’s been a (half-baked) slice.

I guess I should have seen this coming.  For a couple years now (or more, I have no concept of time) my oven had taken to informing me that it didn’t have certain functions.  Just out of the blue when I went to use it I would be informed on it’s little message screen that it didn’t have the ‘bake’ feature.  Or the ‘broil’ feature.  Or the ‘convection’ or ‘self-clean’ features.  Being as these things are why I have an oven I found this very annoying.  It graciously offered me its clock feature and was happy to let me turn on the oven light, but other than that it would not obey my commands.  This is very frustrating when you have a batch of buns ready to bake.

The first time it happened there was a lot of button punching, a certain amount of off-color language, and a short time trying to decide which friend would be most likely to offer me their oven for half the buns before I remembered a time-honored, never fail computer that fix might work.  There had been a power outage not too long before and maybe this was a computer brain-fart problem.  Sure enough, a trip downstairs to the breaker box, a flip off and then back on, and I was back in business.  The buns were saved and I did a little victory dance because I had thought of this on my own.  A repairman’s milage and wages would have cost in the $200.00 range.  Yay me!

Time went on and many more things were baked and roasted and broiled.  Every-once-in-a-while my oven would try to play this trick again, stubbornly insisting it didn’t have the regular heating features that I bought it for.  It always happened after a power outage so I recognised where the defiant attitude was coming from and I knew how to get it back on track.  We carried on.

In the beginning the trip to the breaker box took longer, but with practise I could do it in half the usual time.  There was no need to look for which breaker it was on the panel, I knew it by heart.  It’s #19 and #21, left side, almost at the bottom; in this past month I’ve visited them so often we’re like best friends.

For the longest time it kept playing the same trick (again, I have no idea of how long this has been going on), but looking back I realize that the frequency of its ‘job actions’ had increased.  Still, I knew how to ‘fix’ it so I let my mis-guided confidence assure me I was in control. 

Meanwhile my oven plotted against me.

In the middle (literally) of baking Christmas tarts my oven came up with a new game.  I would give it my commands-  BAKE-350-START  - and away it would go, preheating just like it was supposed to; its little message center keeping me abreast of its accomplishments.  When it reached the desired temperature I would put my tarts in the oven, set the timer, and go about multitasking like women do.  At some private moment my oven would then say to itself “That’s enough for today.” and decide 250 was its new favorite temperature.  It wouldn’t inform me of this though.  Oh no! I would return when the timer buzzed to find a warm-ish oven and half-baked tarts.  With no time for this nonsense I used my old fix on this fresh problem and took on an unanticipated fitness program in the middle of my Christmas rush. 

It wasn’t all bad – there was very little guilt about extra butter tarts with the amount of flights of stairs I was doing.

2025 dawned clear and bright.  We barbequed steaks for supper (the barbeque isn’t computerized and does what it’s told) and early the next morning I called an appliance store.  I had thought we would fix the old one but when their records showed that this one was 11 years old we had a change of heart and ordered a new one instead.  It’s been ordered and should be here by midmonth.  I see a lot of crockpot meals in our future until then.

 I really should keep up with the exercise though.

 

                                                         MIRACLES

“There are only two ways to live your life.  One is as though nothing is a miracle.  The other is as though everything is a miracle.” 

So says a man named Albert Einstein.

On the face of it, especially with the use of the word “miracle”, one immediately connects this statement with the debate that pits people who believe in God against people who don’t.  This in turn gels the argument into a science vs. religion battle, and soon Mr. Einstein’s humble observation is lost in the clutter of 21^st Century conventional wisdom sound bites that either tell us there is a God or strives to prove there isn’t.

While everyone is wrangling with this totally irrelevant matter, miracles continue to happen.

Take for instance, snowflakes.  On the one hand there is nothing special about them.  This is Canada; we get snow.  The Weather Network is forecasting another storm coming our way today to refresh our dazzling white landscape for the holidays.  The thing is, even though the snowflakes that fall will number in the billions of trillions, no two of them will be exactly the same.  How can it be that water can crystalize in so many shapes and sizes?  For those with no sense of wonder, snow is just a nuisance to endure.  For those who are open to wonder and awe, the uniqueness of each individual flake transforms the mundane into the miraculous.    

We can use words like “wondrous” to describe the beauty that surrounds us, or we can mutter and curse as we shovel our sidewalks and driveways.

It matters not if you attribute miracles to God, a super being who allegedly put the universe together in seven days just a few thousand years ago, or if you subscribe to the scientific theory that this inconceivably vast universe evolved one tiny increment at a time over billions of years arranging for us to arrive at this time and place we enjoy today by pure happenstance.  Both of these scenarios seem preposterous to me, but make no mistake, they would both require miracles to have happened, either way.

It isn’t just Einstein’s words that are important in this case; it’s the fact that they come from him, a man famous for the scientific work he accomplished to discover, define, and then describe the laws of physics that tie our universe together.  His is one of the most celebrated of all scientific minds in modern times telling us that religion had no exclusivity in the field of miracles for him.  He understood that science merely gave him a language with which to explain how things like the miracle of gravity worked.

More than once in my life I’ve had to ponder the special miracle that is life.  From the first breath we draw when we find ourselves cold and separate from our mother for the first time, to the last wisp of air to leave our used-up body; what drives that whole engine?  Or, more to the point, what turns the engine on?  And what happens to make it shut off? 

Again, there are pat answers given by the Church and argued against by the science community and I don’t disagree with either of them.  What I am talking about is maybe best described by saying that the sense of wonder I have over these two breaths (and everything that happens between them) is separate from both religion and science.  It’s something personal I feel between myself and this Universe/time/place that I inhabit.  There is no where that I don’t see miracles. 

There are only two ways to live your life: 

One is as though nothing is a miracle; the other is as if everything is.

I choose the latter.

 

TO DO …

If merely starting a list of things that need done got me anywhere, boy would I be ahead of the game.

If recording my intentions on paper accomplished anything, this place would be dazzling in its cleanliness.

If itemizing tasks to be done could inspire the magic Christmas elves to get busy, I could sit back, munch on poppycock, and just enjoy the show. 

Unfortunately, none of these things are happening.  Well, except for the munching on poppycock. 

I have several lists on the go.  I think the first one hit the paper it’s written on a month ago.  It’s still kicking around here somewhere.  It was kind of a long-range, non-specific thing.  More of a vague acknowledgement of long-term goals.  Things like create-extra-bedroom-in-office and de-scale shower stall, because we have guests coming for the holidays.  Mixed in with these big jobs, though, were little doable things like order some things from Amazon, figure out what’s up with the Coop bill, and make poppycock, to name a few.  It always feels good to be able to cross some things off your list so a few of the jobs have to be easy.

This first list was not very productive.  Sure enough, I took care of the easy-peasy ones, got the dopamine high from crossing them off (coupled with the sugar high from poppycock, it was a good day), and then stalled out in the real work department.

A week or so later, on a day warm enough to get my outdoor decorations up, I came in feeling quite accomplished, grabbed a pen to inscribe “get outdoor decorations up!” and briefly basked in the joy of crossing it off. 

This wasn’t added to the old list, though, I started a new one.  It was time to get serious.  This one also had “bake tarts”, “wash walls and clean light fixtures”, and obviously the office/bedroom thing and the shower stall thing had to be moved over to list #2 – those Christmas elves were holding out on me. 

List #3 came into being because I was heading to the city for an eye appointment and I planned to multi-task while I was there.  I don’t know who decided to cut off the world supply of mincemeat, but I’m not amused!  Yes there are tiny jars of quasi mincemeat at exorbitant prices, but it’s not the same! Forgive me my rant, I digress …

By this time the strike was on and my Amazon purchases were being held hostage by CUPW somewhere in the netherworld so #4 was a list of ideas on what to do about that.  Except for a few small things I have declared that Christmas 2024 shall be doled out in random spurts as things show up.  It will add an element of surprise to the season.

Meanwhile, I have managed to bake tarts (2/3rds already eaten), make 3 batches of cookies (3/4^ths eaten or given away), make a huge batch of nuts and bolts (just last night so they are mostly still here), and of course, two batches of poppycock (halfway through the second).  The office/bedroom and shower situation remain unresolved; darn those elves!

The list I penned this morning (on fresh paper with my favorite pen in my best handwriting, just like the first day of school!) has ‘write CtC column’ on it.  Isn’t that exciting?  Something I will be able to cross off right away!  But, as we are now in December and time is getting tight, it also has ‘decorate the tree’, ‘write Christmas letter’, ‘clean porch’ and ‘wash floors’ along with the ever-present office/bedroom and shower cleanse assignments.  Those not-so-magic Christmas elves are really starting to annoy me.

I must have a To Do list in every room by now.  The one I had on my desk must have been thrown out yesterday when I decided that I couldn’t concentrate on writing surrounded with so much clutter.  One of the items on it was ‘pay Sasktel bill’, which I went to do and had to search through the last three screens of emails to find the amount and account # which were also on that paper.  Not only did the task take me way more time than it should have, but I also have nowhere to cross it off.  The effort seems wasted somehow.

This column is done, though – check.  And my desk is 7/8ths clear – check.  And my new list (#6, I believe) starts out with ‘write Christmas email’.  Gotta get that done.

I’m truly disappointed with those elves …