Blogging About Blogging

Yesterday was the anniversary of Albert's passing.

I had a cry day.

It's kind of an odd position to be in. To be so blessed, in love, and living my best life, while simultaneously grieving the loss of my other best life. And what a blessing that my new love also grieves my past love - JimE and I truly have a special thing going that few others can really understand.

Anyway, let me rabbit trail a bit here...

Our Northern Health region is currently in a different 'special lock down' than the rest of the province. And as such church has been mandated to online or zoom sessions only.

Each week JimE and Beth lead worship music; one opens with a set-list and the other closes with a couple of songs and they take turns opening and closing.

JimE opened his laptop yesterday (Sunday) morning to send his two closing songs to her. And lo and behold Beth had already sent him her set list. Both lists included "Father of Lights." (Which, incidently, is one of my faves.)

Anyway, in collaboration they decided they'd start the meeting with Beth leading it and JimE would finish off leading it again. It actually worked well.

*** end of rabbit trail ***

As a sort of last minute thing that evening, a group of us decided to meet at 6pm at Northern Lights Winery to walk through the festival of lights. Actually I think it's called "Light up the Orchard" but I always call it "Festival of Lights."

It was a nice warm evening and the walk was beautiful.

When our half hour session was over we all just sort of stood in the parking lot with no real plan since it was sort of a last minute group date. So I just threw it out there, "Party at our house!" Poor JimE. He's a good sport and is learning to just go with it when I get crazy.

And twenty minutes later the party was at our house.

I was grateful we had gotten the inside Christmas decorating done this weekend to compliment the outdoor decor that's been up for a couple of weeks. And grateful we always have charcuterie fixings and wine on hand. It was like we'd planned this party for weeks, when in fact I was a crying mess just a few hours before. We have good friends.

But we are all old people. And the party was over by 9:30. We did a quick clean up and Jim sat to watch the recorded hockey game.

I felt the need to debrief the day, so plunked down at my computer and set out to blog. Blogging has always been my own personal therapy that I just happen to publicly share with anyone else who may be entertained by it.

I sat at my keyboard starting and restarting a blog entry many times, but just couldn't get it to go in a direction I needed it to. So I took a wee Facebook break.

And the first thing that pops up on my feed is a post by my sis-in-law Coralie commemorating her brother Albert. Her post included about a half dozen photos and a video. The video was recorded during Albert's last session he had in his music room in September 2018. The phone actually fell over at the beginning of the recording, so it's just a black screen with audio. Audio of Albert singing, "Father of Lights."

Seriously?!!?

And with that, blogging went out the window. That was the therapy I needed. To finish off my "Festival of Lights" day with another version of Father of Lights.

*****

This morning I went back to my computer to see if there was anything salvagable in my attempted blogging from the night before. Nope. Nothin' to see there.

However, I noticed the post I wrote last year on November 28th. While I did publish the post I didn't actually publicly share it. I'm not sure why because I never do that. The post was only viewed 5 times. And 4 of them were probably me.

Perhaps someone needs to read it this year.

So here is my blog entry for November 28, 2020:

Learning the Attitude of Gratitude.

"He's gone."

A very short sentence, with life altering impact, that needed no further explanation.

Without a doubt the three worst phone calls I have ever had to make. On the worst day of my life- November 28, 2018.

It's been two years today since I said goodbye to the man who had been my everything for 38 years and eight days.

I've done a lot of reminiscing this past week or so. I recall last year fearing the coming of November 28, the first anniversary of losing him, and how it signified to me a moving on of sorts. Well, actually I prefer to think of it as a moving forward.

And here at the second anniversary, I acknowledge that by the grace of God, I have moved forward. This doesn't mean I forget all that Albert brought to my life. For surely I am blessed beyond measure every.single.day by the things he provided for me. And daily I am grateful. Even on days when missing him actually physically hurts my heart.

I would have NEVER imagined that I would be remarried two years later. Never imagined who I would be remarried to. Never imagined building a new house. Never imagined, never imagined, never imagined....

Never imagined.

I actually have a fantastic imagination.

And I do tend to imagine stuff.

I try not to live in fear and imagine the worst 'what ifs."

But I do find myself often imagining "what if ...." And then trying to pre-live a scenario. Not so much to bring fear upon myself, but more in a "prepare myself for anything" situation. And I truly believe it has saved me on many an occasion to walk through situations with a little more grace and confidence than might be expected. Or than I actually feel.

Walking through grief is always uncharted territory. And there is no set pattern to follow. No right way to grieve. No wrong way to navigate. No matter how many grief sessions you are required to walk through.

I have lost a child. Lost my Mom. Lost my Dad. Lost my grandparents. Lost my bestest friend. Lost my in-laws. Lost my husband of 37 years. And at times I've felt I've lost my sanity.

And I still don't know how to accurately walk through this sh!t.

Truly, I want more than anything to be able to post a blog or write a book with a step-by-step guide on how to navigate loss.

But there is no such guide.

The absolute best advice I can give is to daily be grateful. This is ultimately what has sustained me. Being grateful every.single.day. Even on the hardest days, find something to be grateful for.

As encouraged by St Paul in Thessalonians: in everything give thanks. It doesn't mean being thankful for everything that comes your way. But rather, in every circumstance focus your mind on things you can be grateful for.

I can't describe it, but finding gratitude in all things has changed my life.

And for that I am grateful.

This man. I am so grateful for the foundation we had that can launch me forward with the grace of Jesus into the future. 

Here's the link to Coralie's Facebook post of Albert singing "Father of Lights"

Your Freaking Out is Freaking People Out.

I went to Costco on Monday.

I bought toilet paper and paper towel because I needed both. There was lots on the shelf and I didn't notice anyone else buying any

We went to Superstore yesterday. We spent $178. I bought soup bones to make broth but no other meat. The coolers were not as full as normal, but certainly not bare.

The rice and cat food aisles were a little scant but there was toilet paper on the shelves.

I didn't notice anyone with ridiculous amounts of anything in their carts - and I looked for it.

I went back to Costco today (mostly for a few Christmas items I wanted) The beef coolers were full and so was the rotisserie chicken shelf. There was no fresh chicken, very little pork. No bread but lots of keto bagels. No produce in the walk-in cooler except mushrooms and pomegranates. There was still some fruit. I didn't check the toilet paper aisle.

I really saw no-one panic buying. Even at the beef coolers. There were many people taking the ground beef almost as fast as they were loading the coolers. But everyone only had one or two packs. It was all fairly decent and calm.

The store was quite busy for a non-pension/welfare Wednesday and the line-ups were long but they moved along quite efficiently and the staff were friendly.

People on social media are freaking out about people panic buying and telling everyone to calm down and just stop it. But to be honest, it's the freaking out about panic buyers that's freaking people out.

Stop freaking out about panic buying! It's not really happening.

These grocery stores pump through A LOT of people every day. Every single regular day. It only stands to reason that after three days of no trucks getting through from the lower mainland due to the catastrophic flooding closing every highway, the store shelves will become bare.

It will take a while for trucks to get rerouted and get the food chain flowing again but food will come. This will give us a chance to clean out the forgotten soup in the back of the pantry and use up the scraps in the bottom of the freezer that would otherwise become freezer burnt and tossed in the spring.

Details I Think I May Wanna Remember Some Day.

Did you lose your sense of taste?

That's usually one of the first responses from people upon hearing I had COVID.

No. No I didn’t. Jim did for about a week or ten days.

But the list of symptoms is long and varied, and in an attempt to commit to memory just how bizarre some of them were, I shall blog an entry for my own personal record keeping.

It started with a dry tickle cough and eighteen hours later I could feel a fever coming on and my eyes felt like they were getting glassy. And within a day my eyeballs hurt. Not really a headache, just sore eyeballs.

My appetite disappeared and rather than the expected loss of taste, my mouth felt like it was full of bitter chalk. Yeah, I was brushing and flossing regularly.

Jim developed what he calls “the touchy feelies,” a full-bodied skin sensation likened to the beginning of a shingles episode. I’ve never had shingles, but I only developed this odd sensation on the top of my head. It felt like I’d stood up and smashed my head on a cupboard or something – like my scalp was bruised.

Another odd sensation happened in my right foot. When I walked and put pressure on the ball of my right foot I would get a bizarre electrical shock through my foot. Jim had a similar thing but his was sudden unexplained pain shooting through his ankle, sometimes while just lying in bed.

I slept a lot.

I was tired, but more than tired I was weak. My arms felt like they weighed 150 pounds each. I say I slept a lot, and I did, but it was in short bursts, always broken up by coughing fits. I’d get restless and have to move from bed to couch and back again regularly. Cursing my two story house with each ascension and descension of the stairs.

The constant coughing left me feeling like I’d been punched in the solar plexus, making me feel consistently nauseous. Although I never did actually throw up.

During the second week diarrhea set in. Trust me when I say, do not, I repeat, do not, fart in bed if you have COVID. It takes far less energy to run to the toilet for a false alarm than to deal with the aftermath of not making it, if you know what I mean.

Also bladder control was a bit of an issue. I didn’t necessarily feel a terrible urge to pee, but regularly had pee running down my leg by the time I reached the bathroom. Thank you God for tile floors.

After two weeks the dry cough became phlegmy, which was a rusty red colour. I’d never experienced anything quite like it. It was kind of a pretty fall colour that went with the changing of the leaves that I’d lay and watch out the window as they changed colours.

It took nearly two days in my weakened state for it to dawn on me that the pretty red colour was actually because I was coughing up blood. Probably not a good sign.

The COVID numbers in the north skyrocketed while we were CV-positive, to the point they were shipping people to other cities to be treated because they just couldn’t keep up with treatment here in PG. Had this not been the case, I probably would have made a trip to the ER to have the blood investigated. But I procrastinated long enough that it corrected itself and after a few days the phlegm became clear again. For this I am so very grateful. I know of many others who took a terrible turn for the worse at this point.

The phlegm colour cleared, but the coughing was still horrible.

It was exhausting and not great for trying to get some sleep and heal. I felt like I was trying to push all my guts through my pelvic floor and out of my vagina.

I remembered as a child we had a chicken who laid an egg so big all her intestines were hanging out her butt behind her. I’m sure we ate her for dinner that night.

I wondered if it was humanly possible to push all my intestines out without having to lay an egg.

I sleep with a CPAP machine, and I am sure it was helpful to keep my airways open and my blood oxygen levels acceptable even though I was only breathing super shallow, as inhaling much air always set off a coughing fit.

Another weird observation I made was that my fingernails didn’t grow over a three week period. I had painted my nails the first day I was starting to get sick and at the end of three weeks I had zero polish grow-out. Normally I have annoying gaps at the cuticle within about 4 days. Not really something to whine about when there are others being ventilated, intubated and even dying. But it was an observation.

And my hair felt really dry. Kind of straw like. I normally have quite healthy hair and it hasn’t been coloured in a year and a half. It definitely needs cut. I have an appointment tomorrow.

Anyway, here I am entering my fourth week fighting off this beast. I can’t count the number of times I’ve said to someone, “It’s been horrible, but I think I’ve turned a corner.” I think I have turned so many corners that I’m starting to get dizzy.

But I am much better. Still have occasional coughing fits. My lungs feel ‘heavy’. I don’t know how else to describe it. I’m not really short of breath and I don’t really know how long I have to be on guard against pneumonia, but my lungs still aren’t right.

I had three nights in a row where I slept pretty much all night, then last night I hardly slept at all again, even though I didn’t nap during the day. There seems to be no rhyme or reason, you seem to be doing fine and then you get a day that whacks you again.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at going into my fourth week. Trying to remain grateful for my life through it all. And I am. I know things could be much much worse.

Jim has been so good through it all. I just love having him at my side. Making toast. Ensuring I was drinking enough. (The fluid nazi, I lovingly refer to him as.) Winterizing everything at the lake. Watering flowers and doing all the things.



And right in the midst of it all I sold my house. I’m so very grateful. But I was panicking at how I was going to get all the paperwork done with the lawyer. But Carolynne Burkholder-James and modern technology worked it all out.

Had I not been quarantined inside and pretty much unable to stand upright for more than three minutes at a time, I would have cleaned a little harder for the new people and perhaps baked them a batch of cinnamon buns or something. I trust they will be as blessed in their new home as I was for over sixteen years. But I am so happy to get renovations over with and just get on with our lives. JimE and I can start our real New Beginning. Somehow I didn’t expect to start it with four weeks in bed.

But I am happy with the 14 pound weight loss. I guess a diet of bone broth, Neo Citran and Amy’s organic soup, supplemented by a few bowls of homemade goodness from people that love us, is a fairly successful weight loss program.

And laying around for three and a half weeks with my phone in my hand means that it’s the first week of October and 80% of my Christmas shopping is done. Yay Amazon and Costco.ca.

A couple of dangerous discoveries have been experiencing SaveOn home delivery alongside the joy of having a housekeeper come in.

Yes, I suspect COVID has changed life as we know it.

Clickety Clack. Clickety Clack.

So we drove home today through the Fraser Canyon.

Somewhere near being across the river from Keefers, we could see a long train that was sitting and waiting on the tracks.

And I was brought back to my childhood years of when I in fact lived in Keefers, in the middle of nowhere.

Those parked trains were a big part of our wilderness playground.

We'd climb the ladders and peek inside the open-top cars or run on top of the boxcars.

We loved to put pennies on the tracks and collect them after the train rolled over them and flattened them to smithereens.

Many a scorching hot day, we'd steal an egg or five from the chicken coop and crack them on the sizzling tracks and watch them fry.

Though I was never brave enough, (I had just finished grade three when we moved away, so I suppose I'm excused for my lack of courage) but the boys used to hang onto the boxcar ladders and test their stupidity, er... I mean bravery, by seeing how long they were willing to hang on when the train started going again, before jumping off.

We loved counting the cars as the trains whizzed by.
Back in the early 70's graffiti was realitively novel and it was a thrill when we saw it.
There were cars stacked high with lumber.
And tanker cars loaded with various fluids.
We saw many cars filled with pinky red potash. To be honest, I don't actually know what that is. But it was pretty.
I loved the black cars piled high with yellow sulfur. I loved the smell. Ok, I actually loved the taste. Yup. I tasted it. And still to this day I like the taste of a burnt match. Hey, don't judge me.

And next to getting to witness and wave to strangers in a passenger train, I think my favourite were the cars loaded with new vehicles.

While my memories were still flooding through my mind, we caught up to and drove alongside another train on our side of the river today. It seemingly went on for miles and miles as we eventually got past it.

And there were no passenger cars. No new vehicles. No lumber. No pretty potash. Not even any graffiti.

Each and every car on both trains were the same:

Made up entirely of flatbed cars each carrying two seacans.

Miles and miles of seacans.

No Canadian natural resources.

No Canadian passengers.

No Canadian-built cars.

It made me a bit sad to consider the changes that have come to our world in the last 50 years.

But I brightened a bit when I scanned up and down the train and wondered if one of those shipping containers was carrying my Amazon package.

Life. She's a Funny Thing Sometimes.

Facebook reminded me today of this memory from five years ago. When I came 'out of retirement' to begin making money as an artist.

It took a bit of an attitude adjustment to be able to call myself 'an artist'. I always felt like a bit of an imposter or something. Not a 'real' artist.

I started joining fb artist groups and following other artists, including a local super-talent Erin F, pencil artist, who creates under the name "Velvet Lead Designs"
Oh, I admit to creeping on her profile and being a wee bit envious of both her beauty AND her talent. And though some of her subject matter is perhaps a bit dark and/or provocative for my decor style, it has an innate ability to evoke emotion. And I admire that. I dreamed of maybe one day having a piece of Erin's art in my possession.

What I NEVER dreamed was that within five short (long??) years, I would be a step mother.

And not only a step mother, but a step-mother-in-law.

Yes, I am a step-mother-in-law.

To the one and only Erin F.

And a piece of her art hangs above my bed in my brand new house.

Who'da thunk it!

Happy 1st Anniversary BiFF!

Many people refer to their wedding day as the day they married their best friend.

On August 3, 2020 I truly did marry my best friend.

We didn't fall in love and then become the best of friends. We didn't date to test our relationship for compatiblity. Quite the opposite occured. He had been my very good friend for many years when circumstances played out and put him in the position of being my best friend. My BFF. Or BiFF, as I like to call him.

And love just sort of snuck up on us.

And 365 days ago we commited before God, family and friends to remain BFF's forever.

It's been a crazy year.

And I've loved every moment of it!

I'd do it again tomorrow. And tomorrow after that. And tomorrow after that. And every tomorrow to follow.

I love him more every single day. Each day I truly am even more grateful for him than I was the day before.

I am so so blessed.

Nothing looks the same...

When we put the house 'at the farm' up for sale in 2005, it was life-changing for me.

While I loved raising my kids on acreage in the best community ever, I hated the extended snow season that came with living on the north side of a hill in the Hart region of our city.

I convinced Albert that it was in the best interest of all that we move to town after Jed, our youngest, graduated highschool.

Ok, it mighta sounded more like, "Jed and I are moving to town where there is bus access for him and I don't have to drive 30 minutes to get to work, church, groceries etc. Do you want to come with us?"

I spent most Sunday afternoons from December to March driving around neighbourhoods in PG assessing how much snow they had, how many kids hung out in the streets, and where the bus stops were.

We had discussions. I had dreams. I had visions. We toured homes. I X'd off various neighbourhoods.

And on July 19, 2005 we took possession of our "town house" on Sanderson Rd.

It wasn't a dream home.
It didn't even have giant potential.
But it was south facing. It had a shop. And city garbage pick-up.
I was convinced.

It didn't take long for Albert to realize that moving to town was indeed the right thing to do for our current lifestyle. But moving was hard. It was an adjustment. And he wasn't ready to do that again any time soon. While he admitted it was the right thing to do, he adamantly told me that we wouldn't be moving again for another 18 years. (the length of time we were in our house at the farm) I mentally calculated that I could begin house hunting again in 2023.

And sometime about 2017 when we'd been in the house about 12 years and made many adjustments, additions, memories, and renovations, Albert realized that his "18-year plan" was zooming in all too fast.

"I take back my 18-yr plan," he said. "I'm not willing to move again. Ever. I am going to die in this house."

And he followed through about a year-and-a-half later.

So here I am in 2021.

Two years before our original plan to sell our Sanderson house.

And at sixteen years and four days I posted a "For Sale" sign on our home.

My house looks nothing the same. My life looks nothing the same.