packing

Catherine, my darling daughter, has been working on the best way to pack for this trip to the UK. I've done a lot of  travelling, but I've never bothered about having to take everything on board the plane with me. I've always tried to pack light, but not take much to stow above or below the seat. I carry with me a handbag that has everything I need on the plane, and let the baggage crew take care of the rest. However, Catherine has other ideas. She came with me to buy a new suitcase that is supposed to hold everything I'll need for the two weeks I'll be there. (She's staying an extra week to visit cousins in Scotland--I saw them last year.) But her suitcase is the same size as mine. Hmmm. I always knew she was smarter than me.
My way of packing my big suitcase (for my husband and myself together) is to use two pillowcases. One for him, and the other--a different colour--for me. Inside the pillow cases, I have plastic bags to pack shoes, and net laundry bags for underwear and for cosmetics.
Catherine wants cubes. So I went with her and got what she recommended. They're a pretty blue, all matching, with labels on them saying "shoes" or "underwear" and so on. Bigger ones for sweaters and pants. Solid plastic ones for shoes or dirty laundry. I have to wonder what the difference is, besides the pretty blue plastic. I'll use them all, of course, but I still plan to put it all in a pillowcase. Just for the sake of tradition, I guess. I'm not going with my husband this time, so the colour of the pillowcase won't matter.
How do you pack?

on the road again

Well, not exactly the road. But traveling again. This time, no travel agents! (Why would I ever use one of them again? I'm not that stupid.) Nope, this time my dear daughter made all the arrangements. So, in just 12 more sleeps, she and I will board a plane for the UK. I guess we have to change planes in Calgary before we'll actually be doing that. Then we'll be in London for six sleeps and head off for North Wales. There, supposedly, I'm to go hiking. Well, I think I'll be strolling in the villages while she goes hiking. Once upon a time, not so very long ago, I would have enjoyed the hikes. Now pushing eighty, I'm not so keen anymore. I've been studying the Welsh language, though, and I hope to have some opportunities to see how well I've progressed in that area.
I'll be sure to let you know how it turns out.

not ideal

Definitely not an ideal world! Monday, it became clear that Mona was not doing well, she could not keep her food down, and it was a huge battle getting the insulin shot into her without jabbing myself or my husband or maybe getting Mona in the eye. Not a good scenario in any way. So, I had to call the vet and arrange to take the cat in at the end of the day and have her put to sleep. Definitely not an ideal world, or ideal anything. A very teary day for all of us who loved her.
I want to thank Dr. David Kopp and all the techs at Lindsay Veterinary Hospital for their kindness, understanding, and support.

in an ideal world

A few days ago, someone told me that my cat needed to have her insulin shot at exactly 9am, because "ideally, we like to have her here exactly six hours after her shot" but I could not get to the vet's office at exactly 3pm. Life--real life, not ideal life--made that impossible. Could I give her the shot a half hour later? No, because "ideally we like to keep it consistent." Well, newsflash! this is not an ideal world. Sometimes my husband or I have a doctor's appointment that makes EXACTLY nine o'clock cat insulin time impossible. So she gets it half an hour earlier, so we can get to OUR appointments. We do not live in a hospital with nursing staff, doctors, techs, etc., running around keeping IDEAL schedules. 

In my almost 80 years in THIS world, I cannot remember a single solitary ideal day. There have always been wars or famines or hurricanes or earthquakes or starving people, or cats missing their precise insulin times. 

This is not an ideal world, unfortunately. The cat got her shot fifteen minutes late and got to the vet fifteen minutes early. Somehow she survived.

this spring

Spring is my favourite season. The sun has finally started shining. The snow is all gone, except for a beautiful showing on the mountains that flank this small city. Penticton is in the South Okanagan district in British Columbia, Canada. Sunny Okanagan, they call it. Usually it is. But like most places in the world these days, usual does not seem to be the norm anymore. So, we enjoy the sunshine while we have it, and hope that this year it will stick around for a while.
I really should have a photo to post here to show how beautiful this place is. I'll see if I can find one. Here's the official website.

joy?

Today, I have no feeling of joy. Usually, I look forward to my time at Cowork, at my desk, working on editing my "completed" novel, or writing new material on one I have on the go. But not today.

For one thing, I have a few people who owe me money, and I really hate to ask for it. But the amounts are quite substantial, and I could certainly use it right now.

But that's not the main thing. What is really bothering me is this computer. Have I mentioned it before? It's a Microsoft product called "Surface" and is the worst piece of junk I've ever worked on. It totally has a mind of its own. Sometimes, that's just irritating, and I can rein it in and do what I wanted it to do in the first place--write my novel, or compose an email, etc.--before it took off in another direction altogether. This time it's more serious, and is really making me wonder if I shouldn't just quit the whole idea of creative writing. I don't love it anymore. Not on this contraption.

What happened? Recently I paid an editor about $1600 for an evaluation. So, of course, I took her comments on the document very seriously. I don't hand over $1600 for nothing, you know. So, since about last November (about three months ago) I've been editing and rewriting the novel I had considered to be finished. I'm very grateful to Karen Autio for all her work.

So now: Surface has decided that all my edits should be written in red--the parts I'd deleted are in red, but with strikethroughs. And I can't delete anything at all. It's locked in.

Sure, I can get someone to come and help me get rid of it all, but why should I have to do that? What on earth made the damn thing do that? I didn't have the cursor where it didn't belong. I didn't click on anything other than the keys I needed to type my edits.

OH LOOK! It's about to do it again! I just got a "heads up" notice that it's going to give me a whole lot of updates I didn't ask for and don't need and don't want. But this is Microsoft, and I apparently don't own the piece of junk I bought at Best Buy in October 2015.  (It had to be in the shop for repairs FOUR times before April 2016. Four times in six months.) DON'T BUY A SURFACE COMPUTER!

saying yes

Everyone knows that a two-year-old child's favourite word is "no." Later in life, we seem to find that word more difficult. At least I do.
Yesterday in church, our priest said, half joking I think, that he's "wired to say yes."  Me too.
In the past couple of weeks, I've been asked to take on three jobs, and I've said "yes" to all three. They seem to me to be related. First, I was asked to let my name stand for "Church Committee" as it's called at St. Saviour's. At St. Thomas, it was called "Parish Council" and at St. James, I was a warden. This job will take just a few hours once a month, so not terribly onerous.
The second job request/offer came from Brother Willy, TSSF. He and some other Third Order Franciscans are starting a programme called "Emmaus Travelers"--a method for TSSF members to connect with one another. Actually, we each have directories with addresses and phone numbers, etc., and are encouraged to find a pen-pal, or someone to connect with. I guess that's not happening, so we have this new method. I've been asked to be the Canadian contact, to match people up in some prayerful way. I'm hoping to get some direction with this.
The third job request/offer is similar, but on a diocesan level--to be on a Spiritual Direction team or committee--I'm not sure what it's called. The woman who was asking me to do it was interrupted and promised to get back to me with more details. I'm waiting for that. Meanwhile, I'm sure I heard myself telling her "yes" I would do that.