LA VISITE!!!

Photo courtesy of Photobucket

Visitors.

I had forgotten that it is all part and parcel of caring for a sick relative – the number of people who wish to spend precious time with the invalid. My brother has many friends, and we have family spread all over the country. It was great to see his face light up when one of his best buddies showed up last Thursday. He stayed with the Bird until yesterday, and my bro was still smiling when he left. This weekend my younger brother from New Brunswick, hopefully with his family in tow, is expected to come for the holiday. If Bird’s strength is up to it, he’ll be having his first chemo treatment on Thursday, and we’re keeping our fingers crossed that he won’t be too sick to enjoy their company. He’ll be staying here, with the guests, and those are the moments when one is thankful for a roomy house! And no, I’m not going to mention housework... most of it is done with a lick and a promise anywaY.

The lease for the smaller office in the city has been signed. The move will be made whenever we find an hour to spare, unless we are fortunate enough to sub-let our present place before September. Financially it would be a boon, but adding that event to what is already taking place would be a hassle! I’ve been carrying documents home, which will permit me to work from the house except for the one day per week, when someone will stay with my bro as I do my 3 hour drive in and out to the city. Once again, because of my many absences and reduced staff, we’ve fallen behind. I’ve just accepted that playing catch up is the story of my life! I can’t count how often I take a deep breath and remind myself, “One day at a time!”

A bonus – Suzie is home!! She arrived Saturday from Detroit, and will be here for approximately two weeks. We spent a couple of hours chatting together on her first evening, and my, but it was good to hug that girl!! Even if we’ll only see each other off and on due to my heavy schedule (and hers - it being her hometown she is surrounded by family and friends during her stay), just having her around is good tonic.

That’s it for now, folks. Once again I want to thank everyone for their support. Bird asked me to say the same – he’s well aware that many are praying for him, and appreciates it. We both wish you a great day, and send you our biggest and grateful SMILES!

Luv from the Bush in Quebec.

A LAZY SUNDAY

Yesterday was a quiet day. I have to admit that I slept through most of the morning, having been awake from 2 to 6:30 AM; blogging, a little cleaning, reading, watching the sunrise. I finally fell back to sleep, leaving the doggies on guard duty outside. They were quiet, and my snooze lasted until 11:30. It feels like it’s a morning wasted when I crawl out of bed at that time, and I have to force myself to remember that sleep is important, no matter when it happens.

I ran into town for a few things – for some reason I had a craving for spaghetti sauce, and needed some ingredients to complete my mom’s recipe. While unloading my bags, the renovation dude came by, and we strolled around outside to look at what I needed done before summer’s end. My budget is severely limited at the moment; most of the work will be paid for by barter; he has need of the backhoe, so we negotiated a method of exchange. While this was going on, I heard my telephone ring, but I knew I wouldn’t get to it before the voice mail answered. Both times were long distance – the 3 rings – and I imagined it was Suzie calling to tell me she had made it safely home to Detroit. I was right for the one of the calls; Suzie rang again as I stepped back into the house. It had been a long drive – 11 hours on the road. There was a lot of traffic in Toronto, she told me, and near London, Ontario she ran into a storm much as we saw last week; heavy rain, hail, strong winds. She was obliged to pull into a rest center and wait it out. She had finally arrived, exhausted and very happy to be there.

The second call I had missed was my friend Karen, from Saskatoon. She and I don’t talk often but, when we do, it lasts for a couple of hours. Fortunately she has a long distance plan, so I rang her back, then she rang me back, and we chatted from about 6 to 10 PM, breaking off just long enough for my daughter to tell me that my grandson, Raphael, had won his soccer tournament. Needless to say, the spaghetti sauce never happened; it’s on tonight’s agenda, LOL.

It’s another beautiful day out there – the birds are trilling away, and the doggies already making the rounds, sniffing out whatever may have happened on their territory during the night. Because I never did get to see my associates as planned this weekend, I’m heading into the office now, intent on catching up to them before doing anything else at the office. I expect I’ll have to lay off most of my employees for the moment, and I’m NOT happy about it. If there is any way at all to avoid it, I’ll use it; but I need some answers from my associates before making the decision.

That’s it for now, folks. Hoping you have a good day, find lots of reasons to SMILE, and don’t forget to share it!

Luv from the Bush in Quebec

BOW'S HOUSE & SHOPPING WITH SUZIE

On Friday, my brother, Bird, and I went to visit Bow & Yoshiko. Their new house is situated on a residential street in old Longueil, surrounded with mature, beautiful trees. It’s a cozy little two-story place, with plenty of plants and flowers in the back yard, well fenced for privacy, and a swimming pool. A couple of Bow’s friends were there helping him to set things up. It was a nice afternoon with plenty of good natured teasing and laughing; reminiscent of days when my children were all still at home in our big, white house; where there always seemed to be a few friends around to keep things lively. I could tell my son was right in his element. He was grinning from ear to ear! Yoshiko was exhausted, with plenty of unpacking and installing to do yet. My daughter had already been there the day before and, whirlwind that she is, had the kitchen all set up before she left. Once that is done, the rest of the boxes can be emptied slowly, whenever Yo feels inclined, so she relaxed with us, enjoying the day and showing off her new home. We shared pizza and Mexican pie for supper, sitting outside, then Bird and I made our way back up north. After I let him off at his place, I came back to the bush and passed a quiet evening with the doggies. Saturday was already scheduled to spend time with Suzie, and I wanted an early night.

Suzie and I usually go shopping at least one day during our time together, whether we are here or in Detroit. It’s not one of my favourite pastimes, unless we’re in a furniture store, or a place like Stokes. There is, however, a Dollar Plus store in St-Jérôme where we make a regular stop. It’s huge, and things cost more than a dollar, but it has many interesting art objects, cards, household articles, etc. I picked up some wooden jigsaw puzzles to keep Bali amused when he comes to visit M’mère, and a drinking glass with a cover; those made especially for wobbling youngsters. Happily, the grandchildren are coming around to the house more often now, so I need to stock up on things like that again.

In less than two hours we had seen all we wanted to – there was NOTHING in the way of decent clothes anywhere we went – so we decided to have something to eat. We went to Nickels, sat out on the terrace, and I filled my face with giant shrimp Papillion…YUM! Mind you, I smelled like garlic for the rest of the day, but I had nobody to impress, so didn’t really give a damn!

We stopped back at the house to let the doggies go outside and run around some, and I showed Suzie the pictures my daughter had put on Facebook; she had caught our last tequila binge on camera, the little bugger, and we look terrible, but we’re able to laugh at ourselves, and did a lot of that, LOL! I drove her home and we sat and chatted for a good while, and I finally made it back to the bush around 3 AM. It was a lovely warm night, and I sat out on the gallery with the delighted doggies for a little while before going to bed. All in all, a great day, although I didn’t get around to any of the multitude of tasks waiting to be done. What the heck, it was one of my last days off, so I refuse to feel guilty! The work isn’t going anywhere, that’s for sure!

I’m planning to wash my truck this afternoon – it’s long overdue – and whatever else my foot will allow me to do. After all the walking yesterday, it’s swollen and a little painful. I don’t mind lazing. It’ll be back to the office tomorrow morning, and we need to apply all our efforts to keep things going after one of our bigger clients closed down last week, and another on the verge of going the same route shortly. Rock ‘N Roll!

Hope y’all are having a good weekend – loving this summer weather! Sending you a SMILE!

Luv from the Bush in Quebec

THE EVE OF ST-JEAN

For the past two days I haven’t been able to do much other than sleeping (in spurts of 3 to 4 hours, but deep sleeps), cleaning up in the house, and thinking. Adapting to change.

Oh, and still limping, although the swelling in my foot has gone down some. Apparently all one can do is not walk on it, or use crutches. Right. Obviously the remedy is not meant for someone living in a house with many, many stairs. That’s me, who would rather have a sore foot than a broken neck – the most probable result from my trying to negotiate said stairs on crutches. I’ve stopped the pain killers. The foot is uncomfortable, or a better description would be annoying, but most of the time not bad enough to need to buzz myself out.

I did take the time to stop in and see my bro, Bird. He has 3 scans to get done before mi-August, and one of them is on Monday. That’s the same day as my appointment for new brake installation on my truck. It shims when I try to stop, but has done at least 100,000 km since the present brakes were installed, so I count myself lucky. Back to Bird – he thinks Fran may be free to drive him into the city for his scan, will let me know tomorrow (later today – it’s 1 AM). Whatever happens, we shall manage to work it out so that he gets there.

I also spent a little time with my Amiga, Suzie, who arrived yesterday from Detroit. Talk about good timing!! What a sight for sore eyes!!! I’m looking forward to lots of giggling, heart-to-heart talks, and, of course, a little tequila thrown in for the fun of it, LOL! She plans to be around for a couple of weeks. Her company is most welcome!!

My youngest son and new-again daddy Jo came over and did some fix-it moves around the house last night. He and I chatted for a long while when he was finished. His new baby boy was seen by specialists in Ottawa today. Mummy has something in her blood that shows up in each baby’s system when they are newborns, so each baby has to be checked out. It’s a good precautionary measure. We’ll have the results in 3 weeks. So far Mummy has not passed it on to her two older boys, so we’ll keep fingers crossed that this one will be okay too.

Bow & Yo are watching over our poor little AC (the female of the two cats). AC is dying from some feline disease, and both my children are heartbroken. We get so attached to our pets, and it hurts like hell to lose one. When AC does go to Rainbow Bridge, her remains will be buried here in the bush beside Beef, and Ben, and Mouse.

I have a couple of hours of work to do tomorrow morning, and expect to see Bow & Yo arrive later during the day for our sad task, so off I go to get some more shut-eye. No celebrating of St-Jean for me, although I could hear the fireworks (probably from Morin Heights) while sitting on my gallery tonight. Hope everyone out there is having a good time, and that they are VERY diligent about designated drivers.

Take care, y’all – sending you SMILES.

Luv from the Bush in Quebec

BAD TIMING.

Don’t do it! If anyone asks you to go shopping for clothes after the Christmas/New Year season – refuse! Point blank. If you decide to go anyway, be prepared to face the result of your nights and days of delightful feasting on all sorts of goodies. Everything in your regular size will not fit (as opposed to being rude and describing it as ’way too tight’). DO NOT let yourself be steered towards the ‘XXL” section. Take your pride in hand, then turn around and walk out of there before the temptation to slap the obviously insincere, flattering salesperson (who keeps turning you AWAY from the mirror) overrides your sense of dignity!

The above paragraph must give you a hint as to what I was doing yesterday. Yes, Suzie and I went shopping. Wrong move. The only thing I should have been even considering would have to be a treadmill or an exercise bicycle. UGH! Thankfully the dollar store saved the day – buying household and art supplies doesn’t make one notice the 15 or so extra pounds on your butt…except if you walk every aisle in the place and get tired faster than usual from lugging around the extra weight. Even then, you can console yourself that this is the beginning of the exercise plan you swore to undertake as you were stuffing yourself with the second helping of turkey and creamy, mashed potatoes, and lots of that delicious gravy, please….Sigh! I wonder what they’ll think when I have to show up at the office in sweatpants?

I have to say that we did have a good time – as Suzie and I always do. We stopped off to see my bro, Bird, where we stayed to chat with him and Fran for a bit, then I dropped Suzie off at home and came back to my bush. I was in bed, safe in the arms of Murphy, by 7:30 PM. Wonderful! I didn’t hear a thing before 3:30 this morning. Murphy had taken his leave by that time, of course, so I made my coffee, booted up Kilroy’s blog, and then followed it by reading on my writers’ site until the sun came up. Yes, the elusive sun!!! Kilroy has been lamenting its absence, so must be very happy this morning?

I have things to do and people to see, so will get to it now. Hoping you all have a great day, and that you are SMILING while enjoying the spectacular scenery provided by Mr. Canadian Winter!

C ya later!

Luv from the Bush in Quebec.

SUZIE, ME & TEQUILA

Boy, was I out to lunch in my last post here. There was no Habs game Saturday; it was on Sunday and started at 3 PM instead of 5 PM. Maybe the players were hung over too,because they skated rather lazily, and lost. Not that I could fully concentrate on my ‘living room couch coaching’ ability. I had headed up to Suzie’s earlier than planned the night before, and we managed to empty that whole bottle of tequila between the two of us – that’s in shooters with beer chasers!! Heinz was my designated driver. I don’t remember calling him to come for me, and I’m not sure that I even recall his arrival, nor the drive home. He tells me we were dancing the flamingo, and alternately singing and laughing at the top of our lungs when he walked in, the music at full tilt – just the 2 of us – Suzie & me. I do remember that my daughter came to join us for an hour or so, but she was sober, not quite on our wave length, so she hightailed it out of there. LMAO!

I was expecting to feel groggy the next day, of course. But I was also smiling inside. Suzie & I do this once or twice a year, and it always seems to work as a much needed ‘time-out’ in my head. We don’t go anywhere; just stay at her place, the two of us, and there’s a lot of giggling, sometimes crying, much loud music and dancing, and just….FUN! No one else sticks around for long - we’re too foolish. It’s like a mini-vacation.

Sunday I read, did some writing, relaxed with the hockey game, and drank gallons of water. By Monday I was back in the office, but had already decided that I badly needed a couple of days off. I contacted my associates to warn them. High season will be starting in a couple of weeks (yep, tax time again!) and, if I want to be able to handle it, some vacation time was necessary. I’ll be there Thursday, but today, tomorrow, and Friday are all mine. I’m going to play outside with my doggies, do some writing and reading, sleep when I feel like it, and just chill out. I’m sure my friend, Kilroy, is proud of me!

Speaking of sleep, I’m heading for an afternoon nap right now. The pits are already curled up by the fireplace, the bush is quiet in its layers of snow, and dreamland awaits. Ah, but life is good, and I’m SMILING!

Luv from the Bush in Quebec

ON THE SECOND DAY OF NEW YEAR....

One of my favourite writers from the author’s site I have joined e-mailed me a complete story she had written, and I was looking forward to receiving and reading it. She sent it on Dec 27th, but it was still not in my mail-box. I was thinking of calling Sympatico.ca to complain, but it was New Year’s Day, and I really didn’t feel like losing a couple of hours on the phone, trying to understand broken English. Who needs that kind of frustration to begin the year? I decided to play with the ‘tools’ tab in Outlook (my mailbox) and, although not at all electronically talented, did something right. I think. Or maybe the dudes working at the main server switched on a lever during the night. Whatever happened, I not only received her story, but also 53 e-mails from various contacts...some of them written in October!!! I was flabbergasted! And very, very happy. Needless to say, I spent most of the second morning of 2010 reading and laughing (a lot of them were jokes) which, next to hockey, is my ‘cup of tea’.

I had planned to go shopping this afternoon but, due to all the time I spent on the computer, this did not happen. There is a Hab’s game staring at 5 PM, which I don’t want to miss, and then I am to go to Suzie’s house and celebrate her birthday (happening at midnight) with tequila... I need to find a designated driver, or sleep over at Suzie’s. I’d prefer the former, because I expect to be in the throes of a hangover tomorrow, and my own bed is where I’ll want to be. Do I sound like a glutton for punishment? Not really. A conversation with my friend this morning set my mind whirling. His words stung. The events of the past year, both at home and in business, HAVE turned me into a lady far too serious, too tense and not much fun anymore. Even when very tired, I didn’t usually have to force my smile. It appears all too infrequently at the present – a classic sign of burnout. Anyone who knows Suzie can vouch that her character, and our joint shenanigans, are a good staring point for the antidote to this flaw….so tonight I’m gonna let it all hang out! At least my groaning tomorrow will be for the right reasons, LOL!

My wise friend, Kilroy, was frank with his comment on my latest post. And, as usual, he was also right. Sometimes we lose sight of our needs, and tend to stubbornly look to the muddle inside for a solution, instead of accepting advice from those who care, who can be objective, and who are far clearer about what is required. Breaking habits is difficult. Every now and then we need a gentle nudge from a loving friend. Thank you, Kilroy!

Time to go – the Habs will be on the ice in moments. If I don’t write tomorrow, know that I am suffering…but with a SMILE!

Luv from the Bush in Quebec

The New Year

Ahhh...a new year. I stand, gazing out my window, steaming coffee in hand, and watch the snow fall steadily on my mountain. Beautiful!

The electricity had gone off, but at least the coffee was already brewed. I hoped it would come back on quickly – I hadn’t read Kilroy’s blog yet, an important part of my morning routine. Was this an omen? 2010 is going to force me to change my routines? Ugh! I know some things need to change, but I want to be the one in charge of that – no help required from outside sources, thank you very much!

I spent the last day of 2009 working until 2 PM, then came home and snoozed for an hour. My energy level is extremely low, probably due to the cold/flu bug which is still harassing my body’s system. I was up in time for the hockey game, of course. After watching our Habs win again, I reluctantly dressed to go out, all the while keeping one eye on the Canada-USA juniors (Canada won that one too!!). Suzie has arrived from Detroit, and I had promised to meet her for a “Ringing-in 2010” party. I kept my promise, albeit I arrived quite late, and left very early. I was back home by 11:30, and welcomed the New Year by sitting quietly by the fire with Heinz and the doggies, lifting a glass of wine in salute, and munching on Oka cheese – a stinky beginning, LOL!

I know the kids will be calling (my daughter has already) to extend their best wishes, and my brother & niece intend to drop by later today too. The power is back on (or you wouldn’t be reading this!), and on the first day of the New Year, so far, peace reigns in the bush.

And I’m heading back to my comfy bed for a couple of hours – it’s called catch-up – while the going is good. I want to wish you all a happy, healthy, prosperous year for 2010. And for those suffering at the moment (my thoughts especially to soldiers and their families), I pray that healing will not be tardy, and that your memories of loved ones sustain you until you can once again SMILE.

Luv from the Bush in Quebec.