LAST DAYS

In the next couple of days I will be moving to a new village within the province of Manitoba. I have enjoyed living where I am right now, but I am thoroughly in love with my new house on my new cul-De-sac. When I open my windows I hear meadow larks, robins, those darn pesky grackles, and a whole bunch of birds who I had forgotten existed. I will miss my daily visit with the foxes, coyotes, deer, rabbits etc. that take their early morning trek through my back yard on their way to the local watering hole, which is a farmers dugout. As I am right on the edge of town and farmers fields, I am going to assume many animals will trek through. Where I am right now, these animals and I had come to the point of having eye contact. They would stop and stare at me through the window and I in turn would stare back, sometimes very quietly saying something I knew they could not hear through the glass and even saying a prayer for their safety. Yes, where animals are concerned I am a big old softy. It comes because I grew up in what I call the silent house. My parents - when they chose to both be living there -  never talked to one another - at least not in my presence. I know the communicated, they each knew where each other were and what was up. The farm animals and so some extent the wild animals became my world. God used them to teach me many lessons in life and so when I got to school and learned about the life cycle I could already envision it in my mind. God in his infinite wisdom did that for me with regard to a lot of things. I could watch my aunt create a quilt, hook a rug, work on embroidery and just by watching I got the general idea and so could go on to create and understand the process. Same with cooking, I was a natural. At a very young age I could read a recipe and then just do it. My mother did get me going on the terminology and she had a wonderful cookbook/etiquette book/everything else book that I read almost cover-to-cover. In one of our moves it went missing and I often look at junk-jumble-garage sales and antique stores looking for a replacement. I have never found one. It had all the terminology, recipes, how wash clothes, how to get stains out - almost everything you could imagine. When it came time for brownie badges, well, that is where I learned to set a breakfast table, a luncheon table, and a formal dinner table. Got that badge in good time. Because of what I learned, I have always been an experimenter in the kitchen. I have always had a love for crystal, china - all the fancy stuff. Both my brother and I did a bit of growing up in our community. By that I mean there were times where we had to find shelter for the night. One lady Mrs. Gaskell who often took us in was a lovely woman whose descendants had come from England. She set her table in a marvelous way every day and was a stickler for etiquette. For the most part that is where both B. and I got our manners from. Came to good use when we had to go to business dinners, weddings etc. Her and her husband came very close to being our parent models and they performed admirably. There were other people in the community that took us in when needed and taught us both other skills. The saying that it takes a village to raise a child was certainly true in our case and I am hoping that all these people were truly blessed for what they did for us.

Anyway, once I move, I may or may not be able to have internet. The usual ways are not available out in the boonies. I do have a list of options though. The problem is that I have three blogs and both google and blogger are not great when you change providers. For instance google will only allow me to sign in under an email I had three years ago. I have attached my present email and tried to make it my main one but to no avail. Long story short - if you don't see anything here in a long while, it will mean I have had to start a different blog. Not sure what it will be called. My other two Fleming Fun In The Sun and Living life in the.....Seniors lane will also need to be restarted. I so loved my title for my general life blog. Will have to see what I can do to fix it. Have contacted google and asked questions on blogger but as you all know there appears to be no help. I will try to set up new ones today and will do a post tomorrow about new names etc.

QUILTING

This morning I started a Jean quilt. On this one I will not be using any leftover jeans, as the ones I have need to go into quilts for my kids. The jeans were all my husband's and so I need to dole them out wisely. This quilt will be for someone else. My jean quilts are meant mostly for use as picnic blankets, so I put a ripstop nylon on the back in case there is any moisture on the ground. I use mine also for on picnic tables or on the benches - depending how grungy/dirty they are. I saw somewhere where they made a couple of those short bed quilt runners that people are putting at the end of the bed, again out of jean material and voila you don't have to worry about what the kiddies are touching or sitting in. It will be a slow process as I just sold my house. I need to be out by June 28th and I still have not found a place. I probably will need an quick possession date so if there is anything I need to do before I move in, well it can get done without a lot of stuff in the way. I actually had a tiny look a couple of months ago - found one, saw it again on Monday, then saw a few more and found one more possibility, but I feel I need to have about three up my sleeve as they still have those bidding wars up here and I have set myself a stick price limit. Bidding on the second one is Tuesday, so will see what happens. I really don't want to have to stay in my son's unfinished basement if I can help it. Though I wouldn't turn it down. We have a 0.001% rental rate up here, so there are no rental units available. We have two universities here and the kids either don't give up their apartments over summer, or their parents have bought houses and they rent out rooms. Markets are very tight. I saw one place on Monday where they had 72 couples go through, and they knew at least 6 offers were coming in. They changed the house buying rules up here, so fewer people are moving and there are fewer buyers, but not enough to go around.

Anyway, have a great week.

Jean

A Lost Summer

As it is now almost the end of August, I have officially lost all of this summer. If you were to ask what I did, I can't remember. I certainly didn't go anywhere. It took me till the end of July just to clean up from winter. I do remember the blistering hot days with humidty that did more than curl my hair. I will really be glad when it cools down and stays that way! This week we are to get back up to +35 with humidex of +40 so hot again.

Mostly, I've been thinking about changing my life and what that entails. I know that I want to move by the end of October. Will it happen? I sure hope so because usually halloween night winter starts. It is so weird. During the day of halloween it is usually a very mild day with temps. up in the 18 to 20 range (around 68 F) and then once the kids hit the streets, the wind comes up and by the end of the night it is snowing. Yes there have been a few years where that did not happen, but they are few and far between. Anyway, back to moving! I really would like to move before the snow falls. I have my eye on a couple of places and hope to have it all sorted out this week. Then I can get my house up for sale. I am told it will take a week at most to sell. Before I can list though there are a couple of things that need doing. The people who renovated my house did not know to tape the drywall (or maybe just skipped a step) - hence in my sewing room (a.k.a. the spare bedroom), the ceiling looks like it could fall at any time. You can also see where they put up the metal on the corners, but again did not tape. In the living room, my dear departed darling decided to see how they made the bay window, so out came a bit of drywall and boy I don't know what planet he was on when he fixed it - what a mess. His dad was a carpenter and painter and the apple really fell far from the tree in this case. I also need to put some new carpet in the basement and paint down there. You would think that I would know a drywaller but no, no, no, not a one to be had. I need to find one this week. Hopefully will be able to find a painter too. In my dream world they would be one and the same. The carpeting, I am hoping both sons and my daughter will do that, but that too may be only a fading dream. If only some other relatives lived closer, but they are all at least 900 miles away.

I am wading through my life and finding it very interesting to see the things I wasted good money on and know within my heart, I will never get to creating or using them. I know at some time Glenn must have warned my about this, but did I listen? Never, and now I am really sorry I didn't. I really had to have a good confession and prayer time with that. In fact, God has been dealing with a lot of things big and little that I probably wouldn't have let him in to deal with if Glenn was alive. I know it sounds bad that Glenn had to die so I would smarten up, but it really isn't like that at all. God's timing is perfect and so his time to take Glenn was then and now it is time to deal with things and move on.
Moving on is hard too. Some days I miss Glenn so much, I too want to go home, but in my heart I know now isn't the time. As I go through all our things deciding what goes and what stays, it really shows me how unimportant things here on earth are and how important prayer, obedience, trust and relationships are. I am praying now very differently than in the past and God has given me different burdens than before. What a wonderful God we have. As for the things, I also realize how little I need on a day to day basis. After I get through them mess in my sewing room, (why oh why did I keep all those scraps and patterns from the internet) I will just have a few things to get rid of in the basement and a whole lot of old paperwork. Glenn believed with all his heart that if he threw out one scrap of paper it would come back to bite him. So we will be having a few fires once it gets a bit cooler. I have so much furniture to get rid of also. Though I am only in a 1180 sq. ft. place, there were areas that needed larger furniture i.e. who wants three sofas? I am really hoping to get this condo that is a little way out of town. It is an apartment type with 1320 sq.ft. and has just been totally remodelled. It is gorgeous I tell you. If I get it I will post pics. Two bedrooms, one is set up for an office and has a murphy bed. That one will make a great sewing room. It has a large laundry room where I plan to keep all my fabric and stitching gear. It has a great kitchen, dining room, living room that is open concept. The bedrooms are not side by side and have their own bathrooms. It has a very nice balcony that has an attached terrace. I swear the terrace is so big I could fit my current house on it. I am really looking forward to being able to entertain out there. It overlooks the river and the lock. I would be on the second story and underneath my terrace is the indoor parking. I like this one so much but if it gets sold before I am ready, then I know God has something even better, so am not worried at all. All I can say is that if this falls through, I will be very excited to see what God does provide. My daughter would like me to move to a town closer to her. I am hesitant though winter driving here is really bad sometimes. The vehicles are good for the weather, it usually is the blowing snow that makes the drive so bad.

Roscoe went to a new groomer last week. She did an awesome job. She did a short show cut and he knew it! As we strolled around the block you could see him smile and hold his head up high and oh my when he saw the "missus" well she really hurried her walk to keep up to Roscoe. Usually the missus is very slow and stops to have three or four good rolls in the grass or snow. Her "dad" could hardly keep up to the pace that day. By the way he is a Bichon and she is a large golden retriever. The neighbours have such a laugh over the two of them. Just a few days ago, the neighbours across were walking their little shitzu cross. A few of us were standing there talking when they came up, so I introduced their little lady as the "mistress". We all had a good laugh over that. Roscoe will miss the girls, but hey I'm sure there are more out there for the little gigolo.

Got a new camera so maybe one day soon there will be pics. Have been working still on my stash with a couple of quilts. Got a new Phaff so am slowly getting use to it. In the needlework area I am working on one Hardanger piece and one cross stitch. I normally don't do much cross stitch, but in this case I will make an exception.

Have a blessed week all!
Jean