Well then

After looking and looking at billions of blog layouts, here and at Pyzam. I finally have decided I will try this one for awhile. It is kind of like smelling perfume though, after the first three your nose dies! Well, after all I have looked at I may be wrong in thinking this is easy to read. Please feel free to tell me to change it if you find it hard to read.

I think I have all of my blog roll up again. I will check my reader later and make sure I haven't missed anyone. I think there might be one or two I still have to add.

So over the holidays, I was playing around with the backgrounds so much, I neglected to do a few things! The most important of which is to thank Virginia Lee over at I ain't dead yet.

She gave me this award:



It is from the Shameless lions writing circle and is called a Roar for powerful words . You can all follow the links and read all about it. I am so pleased to have been given this award as I don't consider myself a writer and I just blog to get things off my chest.

The next thing I have not done yet, is to pass the award on! So without further ado, I hereby award the following people (in no particular order) the Roar for powerful words!

1. My cousin Leah at The Goats' Lunch Pail. She never fails to write or say what is on her mind, but is a rare person in that she does think before she speaks (or writes).

2. Frank over at Remaindered Random Musings. He writes about his walks with Benny and always makes me laugh. Then he throws in some pictures and some memories of Christmases and brings a bit of awe and a tear to the eye.

3. Hilary over at The Smitten Image. She takes wonderful photographs and shares them with the world. She tells us about the pictures and includes tales of her kidlets and she has a punny sense of humour.

4. Crabby & Mary at Cranky Fitness. They have a way of getting real information out that works for me. They give you information from sources that contradict each other expecting that you are intelligent enough to separate the wheat from the chaff. And they are funny!

5. Wide Lawns and Narrow Minds. This blog is funny, well written and sassy! The author calls herself "Subservient No More" and tells tales about living in South Florida and her family.

6. oh, darn! Well, I will restrain myself to 5 even though I think I could probably give the award to all the blogs I read!

So, all of you can follow the link above and pick up your awards.


Well, doing this has reminded me of a few more blogs to add to my roll and I have to get my site meter back up and I have to go and make something to eat, so I will leave off for now.

Take care.

Just one more post

I can't end my first year of blogging on an odd number. So, here is post #40! Yeah, an exciting number isn't it? Well, the post may not be any more exciting.

My cousin Leah of The Goat's Lunch Pail, is to blame for my becoming aware of blogging. She inspired me (all unknowingly of course) to try it myself. I very quietly started on another blog site and whined and bitched. Once I got that out of my system and wrote a post that I thought would be worthy of sharing, I told my sister (she has managed 61 in less time than I). She in turn told cousin Leah. By this time I was getting very frustrated with the other site, so thought I might like to try it over here where other people might actually find me.

Lo and behold they did! They even seem to like what I write sometimes.

So, to all of my new found blog friends I would like to wish you all a happy and prosperous New Year! I will leave you with something to laugh at.

Kai - My Standard Poodle

Sibu wondering what Kai is guarding.

Kalon, a friends Siamese with Sibu at about two years.

Shadow, braver than Sibu, getting the bone in an unguarded moment.

Good Afternoon!

Time speeds up

Or at least it seems to. We have all at some point in our lives noticed the phenomenon of this. After all, wasn't it just last month we were celebrating spring, how can it be New Years already? Well, maybe not spring, but you get the picture.

Remember as children, the year seemed to stretch forever, summer especially? You could hardly remember everything you did in the past year, you were able to do so much more than you can now.

You managed to get in skating and making snow forts having snow ball fights, making snow angels, then before you were tired of that, you got to see the snow melt away. Then you were anxiously awaiting clear roads so you could get your bike out and the freedom that gave you. You explored the trees across the road, down by the reservoir where you waited for the pussy willows to show up and looked for wild crocuses in the field.

Then there came summer! Wow, you could spend hours in the cool shade of the trees by the water, finding driftwood and the odd bottle or bottle cap. You could walk over to the swimming pool, the reservoir was dangerous, you didn't swim there because a neighbourhood child drowned there. If you didn't feel like either of those, the schoolyard was a couple blocks away and they had jungle gyms and monkey bars! The real ones, not these mamby pamby things kids play on nowadays! Nothing but good hard packed dirt if you fell! And boy was it hard!

If you had a quarter, you could walk to the corner store which was on the other side of the school yards and get a pop, then take the bottle back and with the refund and the change left over from the pop, you could buy candy.

At some point over the summer, the Wally Byam Caravan would pull into town and take over the two schoolyards! I don't know if I spelled the name correctly, I think so. It was a group of campers that traveled together and they would set up for a few days each summer and then be gone! They were mostly from the U.S. but I think there were a few from Canada as well. My Sister and I (as shy as we were) would go and look at all the different trailers and license plates from all the different states. We would marvel over the Airstreams, they were so shiny and pretty and we would even meet some people.

There was so much to do in summer, you looked for garter snakes in the field, we even found one once and where one had shed it's skin. You had to look for those stink bombs too! Sing silly songs and learn to call seagulls, make squeaky noises with the long grass and try to learn to whistle with your fingers.

Then the days would get shorter and colder and mom would take us shopping for school clothes and we would start school. You would help make your costume for hallow e'en and run around getting candy, quite often in snow, certainly in the cold. Then you would start in on making snow angles and forts and having snow ball fights. Help with decorating the house for Christmas and shopping and baking and getting out of the way for Mom and Dads big party! The party was held between Christmas and New Years and involved all the musicians Mom & Dad knew. My sister covered the party in more detail in her blog over at Bag Lady's Blather.

That was what a year used to be like, now it is more like:

Winter, grumble, grumble, hate cold.
Spring finally! Damn more snow! Start seeds, plant seeds.
Water plants, deadhead flowers, wish you had a house again.
Oh, was that summer, put away the outdoor furniture.
Winter, ugg Christmas crowds! I'm not ready! It is New Years!


So, how fast does the year change for you?

Happy New Year everyone, I hope it is all you want it to be and more.

Good Morning.

Yeah! Leah's at home!

That's right folks - Leah (The Goat's Lunch Pail) is back at home as of last night! I only just read the email, so my apologies for not posting sooner.

She informs me that as soon as she has caught up on the blogs, she will be posting herself. Probably within a couple of days.

Merry Holidays all!

Leah update

Hello all! I just got back from the hospital. Leah looks much better, and wants to go home! They stuck the camera down her throat to do the test and the next thing she knew she was back in her room. It sounds like they did not flat line her, but gave her a jolt anyway, which got everything back into rhythm.

They are keeping her over the weekend, as I think I already mentioned, to do a MRI on Monday. One of her nurses today indicated that tomorrow will be soooo busy, trying to squeeze 3 days worth of patients in on one day, that it may not happen until Thursday! He was going to check and make sure she was on the appointment list, not the wait list and let her know. He hadn't found out by the time I left, so we are all just to will hers to be the first MRI of the day, so that the results come back early and then she can get on home!

She thinks the MRI, is so they will have a base line, if this ever happens again and to see if it will tell them anymore about why this happened.

She has had lots of visitors bringing food so that she doesn't have to eat the hospital cardboard mystery meat, overcooked veggies & weak broth etc. and is very happy to hear the well wishes from all of you great bloggers.

I know she is looking forward to telling her tale herself (and will be much better at it than I) so I will leave it at that.

Thank you all for your good wishes for Leah and here's hoping you all have a healthy Merry Holiday!

Christmas Trees Past & Present

This first tree is what we did this year at my friends house. Minimal decorations, coloured lights, of course the angel and lots of tinsel!


















This is what the trees at her house usually look like. Minimal tinsel, coloured lights, lots of decorations, garland and of course and angel (this is from a few years ago).















This was my house about '96 I think, artificial tree, I always have a Star and it looks like this year I did a white theme.














This was my favorite tree, probably '97, I changed all the bulbs to red (what a pain) and made angels out of mom's old hankies, ribbon and small styrofoam balls. Filled in with a few other white decorations and beads and then used tons of baby's breath instead of tinsel.











Sorry for the quality of photos, I have never had anything but point & shoot cameras. You should be able to click and see them better than against this background though.

Well, I am off to visit Leah, I ran out of time yesterday, so I will post again tonight on how she is doing.

Merry Holidays to all.

Won't be home for Christmas

By the looks of things, cousin Leah (of the Goat's Lunch Pail), will still be hospital Christmas day. That sucks big time! The Doctors want an MRI before they let her leave but it can't be done until after the weekend for some reason. Sure, do it on Christmas instead of the weekend!

I visited today, but she had not yet had her procedure done, it had been rescheduled for 2.00 p.m., so it was a short visit. I filled her in on blog-land and all the kind thoughts and wishes coming her way. She is so happy to get them and misses blogging very much.

When I got back home later in the afternoon, her husband had called and left a message telling me that everything had gone well. He was on his way to their home to pick up a few necessities of life and will be back in the morning.

Of course my ever-so-important job is weekends, but, I will still try to stop by and she how she is doing. I will of course keep you all informed as to progress. They moved her from a private to a semi-private last night, so I have to be more careful using my phone to access the web.

Good Evening All!