How I Spent my Summer Vacation

Hey.
Sorry about that.

I spent most of the summer working on launching a new blog and website all about design and decor. I was busy accumulating ideas. researching names, buying a domain and then, settling on a web site design and getting someone to install it for me.

It is called The Joy of Home.

It was fun.

Until it wasn't. My arthritic hips began bothering me so much I couldn't sleep. I began to unravel just a bit--and a friend stopped me and asked me to take care of myself. So, I put my baby business venture on hold and started a tiny little blog on taking care of myself. I didn't research the name. I didn't buy a domain. I just started a wordpress (dot) com blog and began to write My Body and Me Blog.

So, I started out wanting to write a blog on decorating and decor and offer consulting and courses, the whole shebang.  Instead, I started a weight loss and fitness blog --well, let's say, more accurately, a blog on getting healthier, hopefully fit and we'll have to cross our fingers on that weight loss thing--at least for a while!

I don't think I will be posting much here in the future unless it is to announce the official launch of The Joy of Home. I am looking forward to that. I wish it was up and running already, but I have to remind myself there's really no rush.

For now, you can catch me at My Body and Me Blog. Come and say hello.

How I Decluttered my Gall Bladder

1. Be diagnosed with gall stones and an inflamed gallbladder.
2. Ignore the good doctor's advice to have it removed--for two years.
3. Wake up one day, eat a piece of pie and feel nauseous.
4. Wake up for the next four or five days thinking you have a bad case of acid reflux.
5. Go to a medicentre on Friday where they diagnose the pain as definitely NOT acid reflux.
6. Go to the hospital where a test for my pancreatic enzymes is off the charts. My pancreas is essentially digesting itself because it is blocked. There are two main causes for this: alcohol and, you guessed it, gallstones.
7. Stay in the hospital for a week where they perform two procedures--one on Tuesday morning to take out two gallstones stuck in the duct the gall bladder and the pancreas share and, one Thursday evening to take out the pesky gall bladder. Learn patience, humility and how to sleep amid a million interruptions and sounds and people coming and going. (One nurse remarked, "a hospital really isn't a good place for sleep." There was even heavy construction!) Learn how to live without any wifi whatsoever.

I received excellent care and everyone was so helpful and kind. Amazing, really.
But I'm glad that's over.

Now that I'm Back

Dear Friends,

I'm afraid I've lost my mojo for doing projects around the house. I still want to do all the things on my summer projects list, but the enthusiasm and urgency is gone.

As well, I have to get the kids ready to go on their respective Scout and Girl Guide trips. Both leave Friday--Aurelia at about 5am or so, my son in the evening. I'll be looking after my three and a half year old nephew on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday as well. I'm feeling a bit stretched.

I have started a diet to lose weight. I decided to use the Mayo Clinic diet which is a food exchange (or portion control) regime based upon the food pyramid. I'm also using cognitive therapy techniques as outlined by Judith Beck in The Beck Diet Solution.

The gallery wall above the sofa is still in progress, and I have purchased paint to do the Master bedroom, but it will be a while before I get to those things.

My focus this week is to put the house back together and re-establish my housekeeping routines while I simultaneously pull out whatever the kids need and get them packed.

I am posting regularly at my psyche my soma about the weight loss stuff. Join me there if you like.

Helloooooo

Wow. Have I been busy. two and a half on-line courses, one of which involved creating three layouts (or more) a week, another which involved goal setting, and the 1/2 is another scrapbooking class I'm still taking: how to use my computer. It's a whole "thing" now, apparently, with it's own name: it's called "hybrid" scrapping. It seems I've been doing this all along as I use the computer for journaling and titles. But now I'm learning I can print paper and tags and accents, and journaling blocks and add frames to me pictures and do all sorts of wonderful things--all for the cost of ink. The above is an example.

In all, I've created fifty layouts (maybe a few more) in the last three months--and I've discovered that blogging and scrapping don't go together for me.

Oh well, that's not why I'm here, now. I'm not exactly sure why I am here now, except for the fact that I was cleaning out my inbox and saw that a few of you missed me. Thanks. I've missed you, too.

I broke a bone in my foot three weeks ago. (The fifth metatarsal, for those who like such details.) The forced inactivity is driving me mad. Well, not exactly inactivity: my chair does roll, so I've been going back and forth from the computer to the scrap table. But that's it. I can feel my hips expanding as I type. And the snow is melting, the birds are returning and I hate being cooped up involuntarily!

My mom has been generously coming over three times a week to help me stay on top of dishes and laundry. But still, things pile up and it's driving me crazy. I'd show you a picture--but guess what? My camera is kaput once again. So, yes, this time I'm researching digital SLR's.

I'm involved in a course from Simplify 101 again, called "Organizing your Paper Clutter." Wow--will it be helpful! But it does mean that things are REALLY disorganized as I shuffle paper about. And I've discovered that you really need to be able to stand for longer than two minutes to deal with paper. But it's OK. It's not a race.

I have signed up to receive e-mails for the Spring Cure. I haven't decided how much I'll participate, if at all.

That's it for now.
Many thanks to those of you who encouraged me to "come back" to the blogosphere!

The Camera has died.

Somehow, the lens got "stuck," fully extended. No matter what I do, it won't retract.

I have to send it to another city for servicing, too. (This is quite common in Canada. The entire country has fewer people than one major U.S. city, or something like that, right?).

I am at a loss.

I am just flitting from one thing to another, all organization and all sensible plans gone.
Pffft.

The husband says that if it's going to "cost too much" then it may be time to "upgrade." And although I've been wanting a proper digital SLR, the idea of getting one under these circumstances is distressing. I need to research. I need to figure it all out, first.

And, really, all I wanted to do was take pictures of the living room with the rug today for you. And the shiny clean office. And the bathrooms.

Poot.

(PS--In a pinch, I can still take pictures with my film based SLR. The lens is really lousy, though.)

An Extraordinary Week

Photo from a local newspaper.*


There are really no other words for it.

Last Wednesday or Thursday the members of my husband's Union voted to reject their company's contract offer. It took everyone by surprise. It was against the recommendation of the Union brass, in fact. Voter turn out was low: nonetheless, a radical bunch of yahoos forced themselves and their fellow workers to the picket lines on Labour Day Monday. Between the time the strike notice was served and the strike (and turn around lock out) began, the company begged individuals to work over-time. So, my husband put in 12 hour days a few days before the strike.

The first few days of the strike were cold. The Union distributed toques. The local McD's got upset at the Union guys about something: so the strikers boycotted McD's. There was a bit of unpleasantness: but there was more support and encouragement than my husband ever dreamed there could be. There was a gas station nearby--folks bought the strikers coffee cards so they could get something warm to drink. People dropped off doughnuts. Delivery drivers waited patiently as the strikers enforced their legally defended delay time of five minutes. Some even got out of line when they reached the front and drove around to the back again to demonstrate their reluctance to cross the picket line.

But the company did not make another offer. They hired temporary workers to replace the strikers. The company even went so far as to say they would close down the warehouse if the strike went on "too long." No one doubted it. My husband was one of very few who circulated a petition for a re-vote. He took some flak for it from the yahoos--the ones who didn't ask, "Hey, where's the new offer from the company?"

We discovered that my husband could work 60 hours on the picket line (at $8.00/hour, less than half his usual wage). So, that is what he did. He would get up at 5:30 in the morning, come home at 3:30 (or later), talk to me about everything for about an hour or so, look for a job after dinner on-line, and collapse.

On Friday, he came home and told me the company had asked for a re-vote. The company! The last time a company did that here, it backfired: the Union members got their back up and voted to stay on strike. Both of us were desperately worried. It was supposed to happen early this week. The Union wisely decided to hold its own re-vote on Saturday. That way there could be a meeting first (at a vote called by the Labour Board there is no meeting), misunderstandings cleared up, the yahoos could make their final blustering arguments, and cooler heads could help keep things on a rational and prudent course.

And that is what happened. The first vote had less than 1/2 the membership participate. At the second vote, more than three quarters were there.

At the first vote, 71% of the warehouse employees who voted, voted to strike. At the second, 71% voted to accept the contract.

Today, my husband actually said he's glad it happened. He said the yahoos have probably learned something, and everyone is never going to take a vote for granted again. He said he'll be attending more union meetings from now on.

Stranger than strange, my ultra-conservative guy has become a union man.

*He kept himself well out of the line of sight of the media.

Hiatus

My computer is down.

Kaput.

I'm typing from the library, at the moment. I can't believe how hard it was to find my blog on google.

No matter. No culinary therapy at the moment, I'm afraid.

It's only been two days and so far, I've been enjoying the, well, dare I say it, freedom that has arrived with the tower's departure.

So far.

In a week, I'll probably be twitching.

I've already got about a million things to do while I have this terminal at my fingertips, so I'm not staying to chat.

See ya soon, I hope.

The Drama of (Extended) Family Life

My sister moved out of my mother's house this weekend.

She is 25. She has a son who will be one on Christmas Eve. She had scheduled a Birthday party for him on Sunday. On Saturday, she cancelled it.

For the last year the three of them have been trying to live under the same roof--while living separate lives. It hasn't worked.

My sister had the downstairs living room and dining room (she has mobility issues and managing the stairs with a baby was not wise) and she and Mom shared the kitchen. My mom lived upstairs with her bedroom and a sitting room. It was quite cozy.

In anticipation of the birthday party, my Mother and she decided that they would switch floors. Mom set up a two burner hot plate, a small fridge and a microwave for my sister upstairs. She had a bedroom, a play room and a kitchen/sitting room. But the upstairs/downstairs rearrangement happened not just because of the party, but for another reason, too. There's no other way to say it: my sister is a slob. My mom wanted her "public" rooms back. (In fact, my mom's house was so uncomfortable I visited maybe three times over the last 12 months.)

The only difficulty with this new arrangement was that my Mom had to move her bedroom to the basement. (Unlike my sister, she didn't want nor did she need to set up her bedroom in the dining room). But the basement is crowded with 60 years of past lives, and the furnace is noisy. We were actually talking about turning the dining room into her bedroom just this past Thursday as Mom just wasn't getting any decent sleep.

She wasn't walking this past week: she was staggering from cleaning job to cleaning job. When she would get here to listen to the kids practice the piano, she would eat a bit of yogurt--and hopefully sleep a bit. More often she had to rush home to bring my sister something (formulae or pablum or diapers) or take her somewhere (out to buy something) or babysit.

My sister has been going out the past few weeks with friends--friends from Junior High (grades 7, 8, 9) she had only reconnected with in the past two weeks. As she was spending more and more time with them, Mom became less and less willing to babysit. Finally, she came home from Church on Sunday to find my sister, the baby and the high chair missing. Mom called her at the friends' place to find out what was going on and my sister told her she was moving out. She'd be back next week to pick up her stuff.

I spent Sunday afternoon helping my Mom gather all my sister's stuff and put it in one room. We're changing the locks this afternoon. (Mom's afraid my sister might come in while she's out working and "help" herself to whatever she wants. Mom wants to be there to control what leaves the house. Yes, things are that bad.)

The only really truly sad part of this whole story is my nephew. Mom is grieving badly for her grandson.

A Disfunctional Time

Dear Friends,

It has been preying on me that I seem to have abandoned all life outside school. We are five weeks into our studies and I'm struggling with staying on schedule, motivating the kids to stay on task and, at this point in time, a bit of boredom.

But I am afraid to engage in the world I've created with this blog. It's very silly--but I feel both like hibernating in our school cocoon and breaking out of it and resuming "my life"--whatever that is!

But I'm not really ready to leave it, even though it is beginning to chafe, for I am afraid that if I do, school will fall through the cracks and it will be shoved to the back burner yet again. And I have promised myself that won't ever happen again. There is no more time to lose!

School truly is taking a lot of energy and time. Preparing each week takes about a full day--I don't quite understand why. I'm hoping that as I keep working at it, it will get more streamlined, but I doubt it, somehow. This week is pretty straight forward, for example, but I do have to teach "ing" endings...and figuring that out will take at least an hour.

What energy I do have over and above the daily grind and weekend planning is being spent on long term plans for our next history period which begins at Christmas. I'm trying to correlate Canadian History, artists, composers and scientists with our next major period of study--the 1600s to about 1849. It's rather daunting at the moment.

And I really should be cleaning the house!

This state of affairs can't continue forever, of course. Eventually I'll have my research done and I'll figure out how to get the house clean and keep it that way on a daily basis. That's my next goal.

But I wanted you all to know, I think of you often, even though I can't quite give myself to click over and comment on your blogs. Maybe that will change soon, too.

What I Did on SCB's Staycation

Since I too am feeling rather guilty about the volume of words I've produced, (and unlike Wende I've been long-winded and technical, to boot) I'll provide a little summary too.

Cut my hair
An invasion of tiny critters necessitated shearing my below-the-shoulder length hair to my ear lobes. I have no regrets.

Did Laundry.

Stalked the surrounding neighbourhoods for landscaping ideas
and plant ideas and curb appeal. Noticed lots of overgrown conifers and badly done additions. Found lots of tasteful and charming front yards, too.

Did Laundry

Expanded my latin vocabulary to include words like pinus mugo, lonicara, physocarpus, viburnum, and thuja occidentalis. Fell in and out of love with conifers. Fell in and out of love with P. Allen Smith.

Learned an amazing amount about plants--and that they cost an arm and a leg. So do fences.

Had Aurelia plant a little window box of flowers for the playhouse.

Did Laundry

Went back to school with the kids.We are almost back up to full speed with our grammar, math, spelling, history, latin and science.

Planted tomatoes.
Replanted tomatoes

Thought of renaming the dog Houdini.
He's getting free of us with amazing regularity and even with racing along with his nose to the ground, he's faster than Underdog. The great proliferation of rabbits in the neighbourhood doesn't help either.

Did Laundry

Discovered the WT Diet.
Indeed. Buy nice clothes, wear them for a month and feel great about your self and at the end of the month go buy new ones. (Though I'm not rushing out to do that just yet.) My new jeans are now floating, floating on me, people. I can pick up a fistful of fabric at each thigh and the "high" waist is now below my belly button. I think it's the pants, though. My other jeans seem to fit the way they always have.

Weekend Plans.

Go for a Solstice Stroll this evening at our local Botanical Gardens. (Blast, I just called to clarify the cost and it's beyond our reach at the moment. Blast, blast, blast.)

Subject Aurelia and I to a second round of critter treatment.

Do laundry

Read more about garden planning

Read more on plants and narrow down my flowering shrub choices

Pick colour for fence.

Maybe re-replant the tomatoes?

Nit Picking

All day. Three out the four of us.

I wasn't even pleased we'd just started our Science unit on bugs.

We all got home haircuts and treated. I thought that was the big deal. It wasn't. It's the laundry and the bagging, sealing and freezing. Ugh. I'll be at it all day today, as well. No, come to think of it, even that's not it. The absolute worst of it is that every little speck now looks like a bug to me. Even the cracked pepper on my noodles.

But I am happy about this:

(This is only about 1/2 of it.)


My hair is now a jaunty length, cut straight just below my earlobe. It looks sort of like a shorn hedge. My son walked around yesterday saying, "Who are you? Where'd you put my Mom?" A few hours after giving my husband his haircut, I said, "Hello, Handsome."

Nothing.

"This is where you're supposed to say something back like 'Hello, cutie.'"

He said, "You look so different. (pause) About ten years younger."

Score.

Letter from the Front

Dear Friends,

Thank goodness February is almost over! The sun is showing her face by 8:00am every morning now, and that's a great help to get us up and at it. That said, it's almost 9:30 and I haven't wakened the kidlets yet. It is so nice to have a peaceful morning: just the sunshine, the computer and me.

We have finally got up to speed with our schooling, but still, every day there is still something which needs to be carried over to the next day. It is a wee bit frustrating to me. I have to keep reminding myself that it isn't a race. We will finish when we finish...and hopefully that will be before they move out of the house.

The girl has graduated in the last few weeks from her "Henry and Mudge Books" to Junior chapter books. I can't tell you how proud I am of her. A concentrated effort to raise my son's reading skills (mostly by researching, finding and then handing him "good" books to read) is also paying off. He's listening to Centerburg Tales by Robert McClosky on Audio CD right now and reading From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Konigsburg. It surprises me he is enjoying it so much.

Unfortunately, I'm reading a perfectly dreadful book called "June Cleaver would forget the juice box." The premise is sound: Due to Momism, the current societal pressure on Mothers to raise their children to the be the BEST, women are running themselves ragged with quilt and likely stifling their kids. I don't think I've fallen into the trap of Momism....but you never know. The author promises to reveal our "hidden thought patterns" and help us change them. I haven't quite got to that part yet. I may not. I'm not yet recognizing myself in this book, even though, as it has been pointed out before, homeschooling can be a manifestation of "Momism."

Strangely enough, I'm reminded of Flylady: one of the reasons you may be a terrible housekeeper, she wrote in an essay once, is because you are a perfectionist. That was certainly true for me. The drive to do things perfectly means nothing gets done--1) it takes too much time to get it perfectly tidied and clean, and 2) it never stays that way, so, 3) why bother? It was one of those lighbulb moments for me. But the Juice Box book isn't delivering the lightening.

At the moment, homeschooling is all-consuming. I am still writing up my Canadian History curriculum. I found a terrific tool for making blank out-line maps of Canada recently and I've been mucking about with it. It isn't intuitive to me and the one map I did create printed much smaller than I'd expected. Still, decent black-line maps for Cdn. History are few and far between, so I shall persevere.

I recently re-vamped someone else's Human Body study to take advantage of the books I had. I still need to create a few "label me" diagrams, but that is essentially done.

Next up is for me to plan our poetry memorization and reading lists. Ugh. I don't know much about poetry and I'm really not familiar with it. I just know that a combination of words can grab me by the throat--and that's what I'm looking for. I am not a fan of R.L. Stevenson. His Child's Garden of Verses is recommended on every list I've ever seen for children. But, truly, I find most of it insipid. I recently got out When we Were Very Young by A. A. Milne and I like those much better. I also like Christina Rosetti.

My desk and dining room table are piled high with books and papers, my kitchen counters are crowded with dishes, the laundry is in heaps in the basement and my son is sleeping on the couch in the living room because the dog threw up on his bed (likely a reaction to his de-worming meds--or maybe it was something he ate. He's turning into a Large Beagle and he can reach stuff on the table.)

And did I mention I have one of those scratchy throats that may or may not turn into a cold?

That's life as we know it here at the Prairie Home.
I may get some time to check in with all of you this evening.
I'd like that.
Take Care,
Moi.