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Category: Family

July 11, 2022July 11, 2022Snowbird of Paradise

Moving Day W(h)ine

White wine has helped to soften the rough edges of moving from Edmonton, Alberta to Nanaimo, British Columbia. It was one heck of a two-day journey. Actually to be fair, the scenery was magnificent, and the vehicles (a U-Haul truck and my aging car) performed brilliantly. The trouble we had was entirely down to Rogers […]

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June 26, 2022June 26, 2022Snowbird of Paradise

Let Me Move You

We thought Roe v Wade was fixed in stone, but we were wrong. Clearly, it was only pencilled in. Today, though, I discovered something that does seem to be eternally fixed, and I doubt that even the US Supreme Court can change it. The Google logo and search bar are deliberately placed just slightly above […]

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June 17, 2022July 3, 2022Snowbird of Paradise

Is The Master Home?

Today, I went through a time warp. I was reminded of an event about fifty years ago and was suddenly thrust into a subservient role that did not sit well with me. To an outsider, it might not have seemed like much at all. I had hired a plumber to come to the house and […]

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June 3, 2022June 16, 2022Snowbird of Paradise

Amazon Made Me Their Enemy

Any time that anyone mistreats, cheats, or defrauds one of my children, my momma bear claws come out. This week, Amazon turned me into a bear. My eldest son recently finished writing a novel. The work took over two years to complete and was created in the middle of the night on weekdays and during […]

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April 17, 2022Snowbird of Paradise

Shameless Promotion

This is a shameless promotion for my eldest son’s novel, coming out in a few weeks. More to follow.

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April 16, 2022April 15, 2022Snowbird of Paradise

Contentment vs Happiness

When I was chatting with one of my singularly remarkable sisters who has recently become single, she said something that captured my attention. Normally, declarations that come with hesitations make me cautious, or even suspicious, but this one was instructive. After I asked her how she was feeling, she said: “I’m feeling hap. . . […]

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April 6, 2022April 5, 2022Snowbird of Paradise

Being at The Crossroads of Change

A couple of days ago, I told my eldest son that I wanted to thank him for being so supportive of his wife’s success. She recently had some good career news, and we were enjoying a celebratory dinner. My son said it was a “no brainer” to compliment her accomplishment, and I pointed out that […]

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March 29, 2022March 28, 2022Snowbird of Paradise

Tying Up Loose Ends

I am working on a crocheted blanket which will have one hundred and twenty-eight motifs joined together when it is finished. The pattern is stretching my capabilities a little, but so far I have been able to figure it out. Today I realized that, while I enjoy making each motif, I don’t much like the […]

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January 20, 2022January 20, 2022Snowbird of Paradise

Optimistic Migrations and Unpredictable Outcomes

These two books about migrations within America and to America have given me a lot to think about. They go beneath the surface and find both heartwarming and unsettling consequences. The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson Between 1915 and 1970 six million Black Americans fled the South for cities in the North and […]

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January 5, 2022Snowbird of Paradise

Who Wants to Know?

If you use Facebook at all, you will have seen some random questions occasionally. You have also, probably, answered a few of them. I once answered the question about how far I live from my birthplace, and the one about how many grandparents I can name. Mostly, though, I have resisted the temptation. These questions […]

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November 21, 2021Snowbird of Paradise

Bad News Fatigue

Is there such a thing as empathy burnout? If so, that is what I am feeling. All my get-up-and-go got up and went. For the last couple of months, I have received one piece of bad news after another. People I know and love have died, are dying, cannot get the surgery they need, or […]

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September 18, 2021Snowbird of Paradise

Finite Funds And Energy

How do you plan for the next decade or two of your life when you are 72? I want to make the best use of my time, energy, health, and money with the awareness that all of those things will decline. The two people in my life whose advice I value the most, my sons, […]

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June 23, 2021June 23, 2021Snowbird of Paradise

Imagining Resistance

For some time now, years actually, I have failed to recover my pleasure in drawing and painting. I have all the gear, but I am not using any of it. My spare room houses brushes for oil painting, watercolour, and acrylics. It has blank canvases of various sizes, sketch pads, watercolour paper blocks, and palette […]

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May 26, 2021May 26, 2021Snowbird of Paradise

That Person Who Was In That Thing

This morning, somewhere between sleeping and being awake, I was trying to remember Dolly Parton’s name. I could see her in my mind’s eye, but I couldn’t recall her name. I knew the shape of her first name and that it had two syllables and that it probably ended in “y”, but I couldn’t remember […]

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May 2, 2021May 3, 2021Snowbird of Paradise

When Propaganda Migrates Internationally

This week my eldest son said he had been harassed by someone in the street. He was happily walking along, minding his own business, when a man started taunting him. He asked if my son was sick, if he wasn’t feeling well. He wanted to know what his problem was, and why he was wearing […]

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April 16, 2021April 21, 2021Snowbird of Paradise

Lessons from Canvases

In one corner of my living room is an easel holding a blank canvas. It has been there for a couple of weeks. I keep meaning to get out my paints and brushes to actually create something on it, but my lack of imagination holds me back. I have no idea what I want to […]

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April 11, 2021Snowbird of Paradise

More Love For Nurse Nan

Today I was delighted to hear from the doll collector who now has my old doll, Nurse Nan. I had written about the doll in a previous blog post and explained how I came to donate her to a local doll collectors’ club. After she had been picked up from my home, Nurse Nan was […]

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April 9, 2021April 9, 2021Snowbird of Paradise

My Covid Year

It has been quite a year, hasn’t it? We have all adjusted to new truths, new living situations, and new restrictions. As I look back on my year, and as I try to stay hopeful, I want to review what has changed in my life and how my life has changed me. I do this […]

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March 15, 2021March 16, 2021Snowbird of Paradise

Nurse Nan And Her Wardrobe

After a suitable interlude, I have resumed my memorabilia winnowing. A few months ago I sorted through and discarded about nine boxes of miscellaneous documents. Most recently, I abandoned an attempt to sort out “The Box” and my eldest son relieved me of it in its entirety. You might have thought this would have cured […]

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March 5, 2021Snowbird of Paradise

The Box Is History

It’s gone. That box that I have talked out in a couple of blog posts (here and here) and that I have been packing around for fifteen years, is finally gone. I opened it up, looked superficially at the contents, and decided there was too much to sort through. Inside the box were three big […]

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