Warmth! Give Me Warmth

It is November and a month and a day till Christmas!  Winter officially arrived in Halifax last night.  It snowed!  Yuck! 
Its time to make a crockpot full of soup of veggies and barley, get a nice fresh bagette and get warm.  So thats what we had for supper tonight.  YUMM!!  Harold wants to have soup and grilled cheese tomorrow and pot roast on Sunday.  We are going to have chili, lots of homemade soups and other comfort meals for the next few months.
Winter is a time when I like to nest and crochet, catch up on my reading, go for walks, outside on nice days and in the building when its not.
Christmas time is fun and busy, but not like it was when the kids were all at home.  We had a tree, some more like a Charlie Brown tree all beautiful.  I baked a lot, made Christmas ornaments, went to Christmas concerts and worried about gifts for the children.  It usually turned out to be the best Christmas - ever!  lol 
We will have a quiet Christmas this year but there will be parties, concerts and I might go to The Wizard of Oz at the local little theatre, The Neptune.  Nothing terribly exciting, but thats OK when you are living life as a senior! 

My Home Is Not Where My Heart Is

I love living with the best husband in the world in this lovely, historic city.  My whole heart is not here, however.  It is in Medicine Hat, Alberta, with my son, Phil and his wife, Liz and their chidren, Keith, 18 and Emily, 11.  It is also in Victoria, BC with my daughter, Sara, her husband Peter and their 2 girls, Sonja, 2 and Haven, 7 months.  Then there is another part of my heart in Burnaby, BC with my best friend in the world, Barbara.  She and I met through some church friends who were sure that we would like each other immediately.  Well!!  My friends picked her for church and she complained all the way to church that her husband and children refused to get up and get ready for church.  Then on the way home she criticized the pastor saying that his sermon was boring, blah, blah, blah!  LOL  When I got home I thought, friends with that woman,  I do not think so!!  Well, a few weeks later she showed up at an apartment that we had just moved into.  She came to ask if my son, Kevin, could spend the night with  her son, Matthew and ended up staying for over an hour, helping me unpack  AND we talked and I realised that she was really not very happy with her life.  We became friends and our children were friends, too.  We had our ups and downs.  I have no right to tell her life story but I will say that after she divorced her first husband she had stumbles and growth and now I would say that the woman I first knew is gone and she is more confident, happier and is a woman I am PROUD to call my sister-friend!  Love you, Barb!

Dreams and What Ifs...

I think I have always been a dreamer, but I have never really been the worrier that I am now.  I was quite badly hurt in the accident with my scooter.  My shoulder was smashed  and had to be replaced.  With therapy,I know that it is better than a month ago and a month from now, I will be even better.  My dreams are not far fetched, just kind of not possible the way our finances are at the moment.  I would LOVE to move back to BC but have enough money to come back here now and then.  We do not have the money to make the trip at all.  I have never seen my youngest grandchildren, Sonja and Haven and I missed so much of my older grandchildrens lives.  I cannot bring those years back, but I could get to know them now.  My other dreams are affordable but almost as impossible as the other.  I NEED to lose about 100 lbs. and as I find it hard to walk any distance and find yoga hard on my joints, I cannot see how I ca do it.  I AM hoping to start swimming but again it is about finances.  Bathing suits for heavy women start at about $80.  I need a winter coat more than I need a bathing suit.  Enough complaining!!
What are my what ifs...What if we do not have enough  money to live.  What if one of us gets very ill.  What if I cannot lose this weight.  What if...what if...what if.  I think I will stick to my dreams, they are more calming than my what ifs.  :-)

We Will Remember...

November 11th!  Standing at the cenotaph, often in the snow, holding my dad by the hand and watching the tears roll down his face.  I was always aware that we had to remember the sacrifice of thousand of young Canadians who never came home and the thousands who came home physically and emotionally scarred.  One that I knew was my Uncle Gordon who was captured by the Japanese in Dec. 1941.  He had nightmares for years and his health was never the same.  As a young adult I had the chance to go to Ottawa for the National Service and was impressed by the thousands of people there singing O Canada.  I was even even more impressed when the last post was played and those same thousands were so SILENT, it was like standing in a large forest and all I could hear was the wind blowing across the cenotaph. It was SO peaceful and spiritual.
Today Harold and I went to the Sailors Memorial for this years service.  It was moving but nature took over.  The memorial is set close to the shore in Point Pleasant Park, facing the Atlantic Ocean.  The tide was coming in and large waves were rolling with a big BOOM when they hit the beach.  It was an amazing background sound for the service. 
Every year on this day, I think of my Dad and my uncles and in my heart, I say thank you to each of them and tell them I miss them and always will.  I also pray for Canadians serving around the world, especially those in Afghanistan. We will remember them.

Learning To Love Someone Special

I raised my kids as a single mom and had no special man in my life since my youngest, Sara was little.  Then after observing single moms, who were friends, bring men into their childrens lives only to have the guys disappear and leave the kids sad and confused, I decided that I did not want my boys and Sara to have that confusion in their lives.  I took a vow before God that I would be celibate until I met a man that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.  Well I was surrounded by friends, male and female, but no single man ever made me feel that I wanted him around forever.  So I got on with my life, raising my children.  There were good times and bad, laughter and tears, frustration and joy.There were also great losses.  My two elder sons died and the pain of those losses in 1993 and 1998 was deep and lasting.  However, in September, 1993, I started college to study Library Information and Technology and graduated in 1996 near the top of my class.  Then job hunting went into high gear, but because I stayed home to raise the children, I had little experience.  I did find a job working in and mostly running a small home office and loved the work.  I catalogued my employers small library of books and CDs and videos, so I did use my training and improved my computer skills.  In the late summer of 1998, my employer gave me a computer and  two computer guys at my church looked it over, updated it and got me printer.  So I got on the web and started talking to people on a site called ICQ.  I made some online friends who still talk to me on Windows Messenger.  One funny, quirky guy from Halifax made me laugh every time we talked, which was soon daily.  Then in December 1999 I came to New Brunswick to spend the holidays with my parents and sister in Miramichi, in northern NB.  My quirky friend called me every day that I was there and at the end of each call, he told me that he loved me.  The night before I returned to BC he said that he loved me and I said that Ioved him, too.  Then I hung up and went to my room and thought I  DO love him.  NOW what!!  On Feb. 2, 2000, he asked me to marry him.  I was so shocked that I asked him if i could have some time to think about it.  After praying, talking to my closest friends and staying awake for most of the night, I called him back and said yes.  I had to talk to Philip and Sara, pack up the things that I wanted to keep, have a garage sale, say my good byes and get my train tickets.  On March 24th I left Vancouver and after 3 days with my family in NB, I arrived in Halifax on April 7, 2000.  Harold and I felt an instant connection but we decided to wait 2 years before we got married.  We got married on April 27, 2002 and are very happy together.  He is a kind, smart, funny, terrific man who takes great care of me and loves me with all of his heart.  I love him and always will for as long as God gives us.

Freedom

In May of this year I got a wonderful gift from my son, Philip.  It is a gorgeous, sparkly dark blue scooter. After the first trip around my neighbourhood, I called her Freedom.  She has taken me to the waterfront, where I people watched, watched beautiful cruise ships come in and out.  I made a new friend, who is a small town girl who is an incredible photographer, who takes beautiful photos of this beautiful province.  I got to go to Halifax Public Gardens and spent some quiet time in the centre of the city.  The Gardens was badly damaged in Hurricane Juan in September, 2005, but thanks to Maritime generosity, the Gardens are as beautiful as they ever were.  There are ponds where ducks and geese gather, flowers, fountaind and statuary everywhere.  There are concerts in the park every Sunday afternoon   all summer.  I went up Citadel Hill, where there is an old fort that is a museum, a gathering place and a tourist attraction.  My favourite place in the city is Point Pleasant Park.  It is about a mile from us and I  had been there several times before I got Freedom but on her I have explored every nook and  cranny of the park. It was badly damaged by Hurricane Juan, but after lots of clean up, nature is renewing itself.  I discovered fields of purple heather, beautiful wildflowers that I cannot name.  I fed squirrels and birds, watched eagles, ate my lunch, while watching people and boats of all sizes.  I could read, write and sometimes just sit and meditate.  I am sad that it is getting too cold to sit outside, but until the snow flies, I will go out as often as I can on dry days and still enjoy my Freedom.

Characters At The Manor II

I want to tell you about a couple of other characters who meant a great deal to us.  The first one had severe rhumatoid arthritis and she was a real character.  When Harold and I were planning our wedding, she helped us find a minister to marry us and she talked some of the women to help us decorate and get people to plan the refreshments for the reception.  About a week before the wedding, she called us and asked if we could come visit her for a little while.  She never went shopping and worried about what she could give us for a wedding gift.
When we got to her apartment, she handed Harold a box and told him to open it.  Inside there was a diamond ring, large diamond.   She told us that her husband gave it to her for their 40th anniversary and she wanted us to have it.  She called it a happy ring.  I nearly fainted because we had never planned to buy a ring.  I think that she was more excited on April 27, 2002, than we were.  We got married in the Manor, in the public lounge and everyone in the building was invited.  Thanks to this dear woman, our wedding and reception is still talked about as one of the best parties they ever had in this building.  I cherish this ring and I miss my friend all the time.
There was the lady who helped everyone she could.  She was a lay server in her Roman Catholic church.  She loved to cook for her four boys and often travelled to western Canada to see the two who lived out there.  Then she was diagnosed with cancer and only lived a few months.  We will never forget her.
There are many more but I am going to move on to other things and talk a little more about other things in the life of a senior.

Next: Freedom