For weeks, I have been afraid to leave the house. I have been unable to walk on neighbourhood sidewalks because I am afraid of falling on the ice that has formed in too many places. I have also been unable to drive my car because of deep snow, or ruts in the snow, or packed […]
I’ve been making hats. It’s a pastime I began a couple of years ago and I picked it up again this winter. When you arrive at the confluence of time, isolation, terrible weather, and a supply of random leftover yarn, that’s what you do. I’m not a great knitter or crocheter, but I can handle […]
Recently, my local community centre invited seniors to a drop-in. They wanted to find out what services this group of local people would like to see offered at the centre. The drop-in was to be between 1:00 and 4:00 PM on the Tuesday, so I made a note of it on my calendar. They said […]
Last week, I was idly looking for useful things to do when I opened the cupboard doors in my TV stand to see what I could clear out. (I’m experiencing a combination of Covid isolation and a late-life decluttering urge.) Inside the TV stand were some DVD’s that had been out of sight and out […]
These three books are all very different and each is set in a different country, but all three have an understanding of women’s lives and women’s sorrows. Sweetness In The Belly by Camilla Gibb This story begins in Morocco, travels to Ethiopia during Emperor Heile Selassie’s reign, and continues to the London of Margaret Thatcher’s […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
Now that the news is fairly humdrum compared to the last few years, the time I spend reading newspapers online has reduced considerably. I’m still mostly housebound because of Covid-19 and cold weather, so I have been looking for things to do. I finally finished making a child’s hat and scarf that I began about […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Today I have three books ready to give away and before I do that I thought I would write a short review of each of them. Where I live, the libraries are currently closed as are most retail stores, but thankfully Indigo (aka Coles, aka Chapters) bookstore is available online. I sometimes also get books […]
Just suppose for a moment that you want to find out the price of a new car. Not a loan for a car; just a car, outright. But, when you ask, the dealership does not give you a dollar amount. Instead, they ask you first to tell them how much money you have saved, how […]
Parts of me keep leaking out. Nothing terribly embarrassing, exactly, but leakage nonetheless. One of the things that I have been revealing inadvertently is my California connection. You might think this would show itself as a penchant for surfing or a lack of winter clothing or, oh I don’t know, maybe a fondness for marijuana. […]
I felt guilty yesterday because I watched from my car as a woman tried to walk across an icy parking lot, and I smiled. Well, to tell the truth, I actually laughed. Yes, I am a cruel unfeeling human. But, between you and me, it was really quite funny. Edmonton has had at least three […]
Yesterday, I visited a local cannabis dispensary in order to buy some CBD cream because cold weather has made the joints in my fingers very stiff and a little painful. I have osteoarthritis in my hands and it has become progressively more of a nuisance over the years. So, when I heard that someone I […]
The process for finding and meeting a psychologist isn’t hard, but when you are depressed it seems like a pathway strewn with obstacles. At each roadblock, it is easy to just give up. Having overcome some of those setbacks, I would strongly encourage anyone who is feeling unusually despondent to stick with it. With the […]
I don’t go to the grocery store very often these days, but when I do, I like to be able to get into my car when I leave. Today, someone parked so close to my car it is a wonder they didn’t rip off the side mirror. Admittedly, my car, the green one, was parked […]
Covid-19 has given us all a new experiment in living. We are all (or most of us) trying to maintain social distances, wear masks, and wash our hands for twenty seconds. As the weeks and months have passed, we have gotten better at this. We now automatically make more space when we pass people on […]
Snowbird of Paradise 