Involved in a scam

It started at church this morning. Richard got a notification on his phone that someone was at our front door. We wondered about it but it wasn’t until later when we replayed the footage and heard part of a conversation that we realized someone had given our address in an ad for a TV on Facebook Marketplace.

One guy came to the door, left and returned in about an hour. He was joined by a second guy. Turns out that the first guy had paid $250 as a deposit on a TV. They decided, when they realized we weren’t home, that it was probably a scam and they left. Someone was out $250. I think there was one other visitor to our door before we got home.

At lunch time a young guy with an English accent also came about a TV for sale. Luckily he hadn’t transferred any money. We thought he would probably be the last person because people who wanted the phantom TV would have been on it early in the day. A few moments ago, when we were out filling the bird feeder, three guys pulled up in a truck also wanting to buy the TV. They had come from Marlborough across the city. We encouraged them to go to the police and to contact their bank because, they too, had paid a deposit. From this latest group we learned that the scammers used the photo of an older woman in the ad. One of the guys told us he had cautioned his friend to be wary but when they saw the photo of the woman they thought that the ad must be legit.

All of the people we chatted with were really nice and apologized for bothering us. I know many people use Facebook Marketplace all the time and have had no trouble. I’m angry with whoever hatched this scam, not because having people show up at the door was particularly bothersome, but because the scammer at the least, had people driving all over they city wasting their time. At worst, people were out  hard-earned money.

We all know that there are scammers out there and we do our best not to be tricked. I guess I’m very fortunate in that I don’t come across something like this very often. I have been scammed once and came close to being scammed a second time. I feel for the folks whose day became much less than they expected because of this scammer. I hope the remainder of their day went better and that they are able to somehow recoup their money. I also admit to hoping that this scam comes back to bite the scammer in the butt!

Memories of spring break

Today is the end of spring break for teachers and students herein the public system. It’s been a long time since that mattered to me but this year I find myself thinking back on how much I looked forward to spring break and how the few years that we travelled to the coast to cycle now loom large in the catalogue of holiday memories.

I remember staying later than I meant to at school so a couple of students could finish a project. I remember the growing anticipation as the break approached. I don’t remember exactly how many years we made the trip west with the Elbow Valley Cycle Club but on one of the first trips I remember being in our hotel room in Washington where a few people were playing cards. I was lying back on the bed and I drifted off in the midst of the fun and laughter only to awaken when Richard closed the door as the last of the visitors left. I was always tired when holidays came around.

We did our fair share of cycling in the rain and some trips were wetter than others. Some trips were entirely in Canada and some ventured into the San Juan Islands and onto the Olympic Peninsula in the US. Our starting place was usually Sydney on Vancouver Island. The hotel we stayed in overlooked the sea and many of the rides went along the sea wall. It was always a treat to go to the coast in March, to leave the mounds of snow in Calgary, or if not snow the brown left over from winter, and land in the warm moist air where there were carpets of green. Often the flowers were starting to bloom and sometimes the cherry trees were a riot of blossoms.

We took ferries between various islands and travelled on the lowest level with huge transport trucks for company. We were generally the first off the ferries which gave us a chance to get through the narrow exits and up the hills before the flood of traffic. It is always uphill from a ferry dock and we quickly learned to put our bikes into a low gear on the way down to the ferry so we would be prepared for the climb on the other side.

We ate smoked salmon and Dungeness crab and as much clam chowder as we could hold. I certainly wasn’t going to come from the prairies to the sea coast and eat beef. Often there were grocery stores within walking distance from our hotels and we bought supplies for breakfast and lunch. Sometimes we chose to buy food for dinner as well and stay in our room with an urban picnic rather than eat in a restaurant.

I don’t know what year it was or where we were exactly the day we sat in the sun against the wall of our motel, ate coleslaw, bread, cheese and ham and were entirely content. At home it was snowing but in the fading coastal light we were warm.

Of course memory is a great editor and looking back it all seems idyllic. I have conveniently edited out the times we got soaked through and squelched our way into a shop or fast food joint in order to get warm before going back out to cycle more miles in the rain. I have almost forgotten about the time I caught a cold and felt miserable for most of the trip. Chances are, I will not take trips like these again but when spring break rolls around I can pull up the memories and, in my imagination, sit against that wall in the sun eating bread and cheese and being content with the world.

Urban sketching and patience

As many of you know, I have written before about my fascination with drawing and my rather large collection of ‘how to draw’ books. It wasn’t a book that set me off down the current rabbit hole and even though it was only a few days ago, I don’t remember what did but here I am, firmly in the middle of all the information I can find on urban sketching.

This is a bit of a strange departure because I’ve been focusing on drawing things in my immediate environment, a small and relatively confined space, and I have often found that overwhelming. Why then would anyone in their right mind start looking at drawing/ sketching (I’m still not sure of the difference between those two terms) something as complex as a street scene? The first answer is that I really like some of the works I’m seeing in people’s sketch books and I’d like to be able to do that.

Odie in the dining room

A bit of a side-track here but it is relevant. I was chatting the other day with one of my longest-standing friends who often says that she has no patience. Lately she has begun to refurbish old pieces of furniture and has found herself lost in the process and enjoying it. ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting,’ she mused, ‘if at my age I finally developed patience?’ We talked a bit more and as I thought outloud, I realized that a good determiner of whether I have patience with a certain activity or not involves whether I love it enough to put up with the necessary frustration that comes with learning how to do it or getting better at it if I already have some skill. If the activity itself, beyond the outcome, is sufficiently rewarding I’ll keep at it and go as slowly as I need to in order to get infinitesimally closer to my goal. The other part of that is if the goal is engaging enough it provides motivation for me to stay with the process.

Now, back to the current rabbit hole. As I looked at urban sketchbooks I was struck by the use of line and the way in which many of the sketchers used a limited number of colours of wash to create their sketches. When I started looking at the videos I found many people urging the newbie to simplify and giving permission for things not to be 100% visually accurate. What you want, they said, is the sense of the place and you can leave things out, add things in, or move things around to get the result you want. Seems to me that’s the way I used to explain the process of revising writing to students. That made me feel a little less anxious about making an attempt.

Gave up on the fountain pen

Then I came across one person who said that he had come to sketching late at the age of 19. Well, if that’s late I’m hooped! His next remark hit home though. He said he had been afraid to start because he knew he wasn’t good at drawing and didn’t want to commit pencil to paper until he knew that he could do a good job. Then he realized that unless he put pencil to paper he wouldn’t have the chance to get good at it. That’s obvious but I often find that what I know in my head is quite different from my willingness to move out of my comfort zone to attempt something new.

Learning to draw isn’t new to me but it’s something I move away from and then get pulled back to. If written before about the F grade I got in a drawing course at university. Since then I’ve taken a couple of drawing courses and then let it go. Most recentlyI have filled one sketch book. The first of those drawings are from 2016. Then there’s a break and I started up again in 2020. There are only a handful of drawings in the second sketchbook for 2021 and 2022 but I have filled a sketchbook with neurographic drawings in that time. Now I’m pulled again in the direction of more representational work.

Some urban sketchers recommend working directly in ink with markers; some work first by blocking in the rough shapes with pencil; others swear by fountain pens for the initial line work. I went scurrying through boxes and came up with four fountain pens I had forgotten about that date back to my university days. I unearthed some prehistoric ink and found that chunks of it had solidified. I scooped out the chunks and loaded up the one fountain pen that has a mechanism to pull ink from a bottle.

That experiment was not a great success. Even though I cleaned the pen thoroughly, it alternated between not making any kind of a mark and dumping blobs of ink onto the paper. Ah yes, the joys of pen and ink. I made a drawing of part of my study and one of Odie’s cage against the window. Then I decided to work from a photo and actually put some water colour into the sketch. I started by blocking out shapes in pencil and then using a marker over them. Heeding the advice of the internet artists, I didn’t worry about correcting all of the lines that turned out to be in the wrong place.

It’s a start and thoughtful practice will help. I’m finding that sketching is a bit like building an instrument: you have to be aware of all of the parts and the whole at the same time. That’s a tall order and just as I think I’ve got one shape nailed I realize that the proportion or the vanishing point is off. I’m pleased that I didn’t give in to the temptation to endlessly chase my tail over it though.

Although I was hesitant to actually use watercolour paints in the sketch, I enjoyed mixing the colours. Some of them were surprisingly intense when they hit the paper. Oh well, make a mental note for next time. The resulting sketch is out of proportion and I clearly have very little control over the medium of water colours. I used to be better when I studied stage design in university so maybe I can dredge up some of that previous knowledge.

You have to start somewhere

Anyway, at this point, it’s an intriguing pass time. I have no idea how long I’ll keep working at it or if I’ll abandon it completely at some point. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see what level of patience this will require and whether or not I’m up to the challenge.

Urban water stories

Today I’m thinking about water, sometimes too much, sometimes too little. In December of last year it got really cold which is not surprising for this part of the country. Our house is old and, despite new triple-pane windows, it’s still leaky. We have to turn down the humidity in the winter so we don’t get frost on the windows that haven’t been replaced. What was surprising this year is that we noticed condensation on the inside of the light tubes that we have in the kitchen and bathroom. Why condensation now when there had never been any before?

We were puzzled but wiped the condensation off and waited to see what would happen. We didn’t think of looking in the attic until I got hit by a couple drips from the bathroom fan. Ok, we have a problem. I got the ladder, lifted the hatch to the attic and had a look around with a flashlight. There was a layer of ice on the inside of the roof and, instead of being distributed evenly, the insulation was in mounds in some places and non-existent in others.

We considered getting up into the attic and evening it out but we didn’t really want to be crawling around up there in the cold. Richard to the rescue. He got online and found a company called Attic Rain. Yup, that’s what we’d be in for if we didn’t do something before the temperature warmed up and all the ice on the inside of the roof melted.

Sucking out old insulation

They came quite quickly. The guy thought, when he looked at the house from the outside,  it would be a straightforward job. Then he got into the house and had a look in the attic. We have renovated this house so many times I’ve lost count but I think the most recent one was #5. In the course of these renos we have drastically changed the roofline and there are some spots so tight that only a small person can crawl from one part of the house to another in the attic.

The good news was that the problem was fixable. The bad news was that it would be expensive. Apparently when we had the pot lights (all 25 of them) put in they weren’t properly sealed. Perhaps the electrician thought the contractor was going to do that and the contractor thought the electrician was going to do it but, whatever the cause, it didn’t get done. We were in for rain not only in the attic but in all the rooms where condensation could drip from the pot lights.

When we told friends about the situation they advised us to go back to the contractor and negotiate to get it fixed. That was a good idea but we were more concerned with getting the job done quickly so we decided to go with Attic Rain. They came the next week. It took a day but they sucked out as much of the old insulation as they could. Some of it was wood chips, sealed the pot lights and then blew in new cellulose. For the last week or so temperatures have again been in the deepfreeze and the only indoor showers we have had are the ones we have taken intentionally which brings me to the next story.

Old insulation waiting for pick-up

In the early hours of Tuesday morning a fire in the next block to us burned a garage to the ground. We didn’t know anything about it until we were texting with a neighbour who was walking her dog and saw the sheet of ice made by water from the fire hydrant at the end of our block. Apparently the hydrant didn’t shut off properly and Wednesday we got a notice saying that our water would be shut off but that there would be water trailers available so that we could get water. 

That morning I was running the hot water for some reason when I thought that I was probably wasting water and I could have used less if I’d heated the kettle. ‘Oh well,’ I thought, ‘I know how to conserve water if I have too and this once won’t hurt.’ Then in the afternoon we got notice that the water would be shut off.

We ran around and got the various coolers, jugs and thermoses we use for camping and filled them with water. I intended to have a shower after I had finished in the shop for the day but by supper time other things had interfered. Luckily we still had water so I managed to take a quick shower before the water went off. We were pleasantly surprised when the water was back on by the next morning. 'Well,' we thought. 'that wasn't too bad.' The fact that the water trailers hadn't moved should have been a clue.

When Richard was coming home that afternoon he saw some guys from the city on the neighbour’s property trying to find the water shut off. He talked to them and found that the water was going to be shut off again, this time for several days. Meanwhile all sorts of equipment started to show up near our house. There was a truck with a load of plywood and other bits and pieces used to shore up a trench while guys are working in it. A backhoe was parked at the other end of the street and both ends of the block now sported No Through Traffic signs.

We hadn’t yet finished using the water we collected on the first go round so we filled everything up again and, sure enough, part way through the afternoon the water was turned off. We aren’t sure how long the water will be off and we’ll probably have to get more water from the trailer sometime today. It’s a bit inconvenient but we are used to conserving water when we go camping and can take a shower using a bike bottle. We are being careful with how many dishes we use and can manage to wash them using a minimum amount of water for washing and rinsing. We have a dedicated jug that we set on the picnic table and use for hand washing when we’re camping. We got by with that during the latest renovation when, for a month, our only source of water was the shop sink. At that time we had a working toilet. This time we need to fill the tank manually and that is the thing that takes the most water.

It’s much warmer today so fetching water won’t be such a chore. All of this has made me acutely aware of how much we depend on the technology and infrastructure that surrounds us in cities. I know that when the water comes back on, using the dishwasher and having a shower will be pure delight, for a while until I fall back into complacency. In the meantime, I’m going to hold off on that shower in the hope that the water will be back on soon. Just because I know how to take a shower by heating water and using a bike bottle doesn't mean I really want to.

In praise of kale chips

It’s been a while since my last blog post. I’ve had a few ideas but haven’t applied the butt to the chair to get them down and I’m now behind at least two posts according to my self-imposed schedule.

Things have been chugging along pretty well and I thought I’d bring folks up to date on the eating plan. I have a few sources of very tasty recipes. The food is satisfying and I’m having difficulty getting in all the different types of foods that are recommended in a day. I’m very glad I didn’t give away some of the pants that used to fit me because I can now get back into them.

I’m not really a person who needs a lot of snacks but unless I eat something between meals I can’t get all the food types in. I’m okay with fruit, veggies, and beans in general. The issue comes when I try to get 3 servings of beans, 1 serving of cruciferous vegetables, and 2 servings of greens each day. I can usually manage 2 out of 3 types of food. I like smoothies which are a good way to get the greens, although I don’t want a smoothie every day. In the last few days I’ve gone back to making kale chips. Although some people think kale is the worst vegetable ever, I don’t mind it in salads, soups, or pasta sauce. Still, kale comes in huge bunches and it’s hard to use it all up before it wilts.

Most of the recipes for kale chips use the oven. I’m not fond of anything that needs babysitting while it cooks and you have to watch kale chips closely so that they don’t burn when you do them in the oven. There is another option: the dehydrator. We have one which hasn’t had all that much use lately so when I found a recipe for kale chips that used it, I dragged a chair over to the cupboard so I could retrieve it from the very top shelf. I had to wash a bit of dust off the top before I could use the dehydrator but it works like a charm.

Wash the kale; take out the tough centre ribs; wash the leaves and break them into smaller pieces; drizzle a bit of olive oil on them; mix them around so they get coated and add spices. It takes very little oil to make the spices stick. I’m a huge fan of freshly ground black pepper and my favourite so far is a bit of salt and freshly ground pepper. I’ve also used chilli powder and smoked paprika. I liked the chilli but I was a bit too stingy with the smoked paprika and I can only taste the merest hint of it on some of the chips.

Once the leaves are all spiced up I put them on the trays and turn the dehydrator on for an hour and 15 minutes; set it and forget it. These chips are such a hit with me that I made a special trip to the grocery store yesterday for two bunches of kale. I made one batch of chips when I got home and another batch this morning. Extra salt and oil isn’t the best thing for this eating plan although I’m not using very much of either on the chips and, if it solves part of the problem of being able to get enough variety of veggies in a day, I think the compromise will be worth it.

Another idea I have is to make batches of roasted chickpeas. Fruit has been my go-to snack if I want something around 4 p.m. While there is nothing wrong with fruit, having a legume or a green snack will add variety. I will have to babysit the chickpeas in the oven though.

Another good find is popcorn. Of course it works as a snack and I’ve found that putting a bit of balsamic vinegar in a spray bottle and spritzing the popped kernels allows spices to stick to it. As with the kale chips, salt and pepper is my favourite. I’ve also found that popcorn works as a garnish for soups. It does go soggy but so do soda crackers and I don’t mind them in soup. In this application the popcorn gets no enhancements of any kind. Air pop it and toss it into the soup bowl. I know that sounds weird and it might not be to everyone’s taste. It works for me.

As I was reading this over prior to posting it, I finished my half of the latest batch of kale chips. Looks like I’m going to need to go back to the store either today or tomorrow. Stay tuned.

A kick in the butt

Note to self: it’s a bad idea to book a physical exam right after the Christmas season. Like a lot of other people I went face first into the cookies and the chocolates. Also since we had Covid in November my regular exercise routine has been, shall we say, less than regular. Mostly I’m in good health but today I got the ultimatum: get the cholesterol down or go on medication. My doc was very nice about it prefacing her remarks with, “I know you don’t like to take medication but…” We agreed, I have three months to try to turn down the dial with food and exercise. Apparently I've managed this trick in the past although I don’t think the numbers were quite as high as they are this time. Nothing like a little motivation!

I know the result I need and why I need it. Now the issue becomes how. Hang onto your hats because this may be a long one. First a little background. Mum was a trained dietitian. She made nutritious meals and I don’t remember disliking any of the food she served. I think, as with sewing, I absorbed a lot of information just through our conversations.  Forward a bit to the time I moved out to live on my own.

I was in a situation where I had cheap access to a cafeteria which served multiple versions of sticky, gooey, wonderful desserts and I ate most of my dinners there. I’m lucky in that I’ve always liked salads and most veggies but when you're young and there are a lot of pizza parties complete with beer, it’s pretty easy to put on weight. Add to that the fact that I’d always been, ‘chunky,’ ‘solid.’ You can put in your own adjective and you get the picture.

When I went for a check up that time the issue was high blood pressure. The prescription: lose weight. The doc, who was a charming Scot, prescribed some pills to help with that. I filled the prescription but didn’t take any of the pills. In retrospect I’m glad I didn’t as they were more than likely amphetamines. The other part of the prescription was to stick strictly to 1000 calories a day. Well, I was young and scared about the possibility of high blood pressure so I took on the challenge. I logged my food. I calculated calories meticulously. I dropped almost 20 pounds and a clothing size. The blood pressure went down, and I felt hungry and deprived. I remember my stomach rumbling as I sat watching friends down ice cream while I drank mint tea. Now I can’t help wondering if part of the high blood pressure was ‘white coat syndrome.’

It took a while but the weight came back plus a bit more. Then the weight pretty much stayed put for a number of years. During the 80’s it started to creep up a bit more and the prevailing wisdom of the time was ‘fat makes you fat.’ Enter Jane Brody’s Good Food Book. We made spaghetti sauces with lentils and used applesauce in muffins instead of oil. I’ve never been much of a cookie baker. I find them fussy but muffins, quick breads, yeast bread, and fruit loaves? Sign me up. By limiting the fat, my weight again dropped and that lasted for a while.

By the next round I was cycling a lot and had taken up running, registering for 10km and half marathon races. We did some long distance cycling trips during the summers and were active members of a cycling club which had rides every weekend. For some reason I can’t remember now, I decided it would be a good idea to sign up for a course at the University of Calgary that provided training and an entry to the Honolulu marathon. I had a deferred salary leave that year so why not spend a few days in December in Hawaii? A friend and I embarked on marathon training together. The coaches were recommending The Zone Diet at that time so that was my guide but I did eat a fair number of brownies and pieces of pie at the end of long runs. Again, the weight eventually crept back up even though I continued to run half marathons for ten years.

At one point I tried The Carbohydrate Addict’s Diet and again lost weight. I remember cycling from the parking lot at Muleshoe to Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies and eating cucumbers and cheese for lunch. Eat lots of protein; fat will help you feel full; stay away from bread, potatoes, grains and most fruit. That worked, for a while.

Then I started to see a pattern. The eating plans seemed to be mostly of two types, the low fat diet, and the low carb diet. There were endless permutations and combinations with lots in the middle of the spectrum. Regardless of the nutritional advice, the structure of the books was very similar. They went something like this, ‘Here are my credentials  (the writers were often MD’s of some variety), I was fat, unhappy, and sick. I went on this diet and now I’m healthy and athletic and so are my patients.’ The texts of the books are often sprinkled liberally with testimonials.

The frustrating thing is that you can find two doctors making the same claims but advocating diametrically opposed methods. Since I’m not about to read the individual studies cited, how am I supposed to know which one to pay attention to? There is also a fair amount of mudslinging back and forth between camps. These guys cherry-picked the data. These guys were bullied because their research findings contradicted conventional wisdom. There was a coverup of so-and-so's research. Dr Atkins died of a heart attack and was obese. Dr. Atkins died as the result of an accident and was puffed up because of  fluid retention in the hospital.  Apparently Dr. Atkins' autopsy results are publicly available, so I'll let you track down the final verdict on that bit of scandal. The food lobby pays for studies so most of the studies find in their favour. The design of the study was flawed.  I also found that the famous Nurses’ Study is often cited by both sides. You can find books that tell you anything you want to hear about diet and nutrition. I’ve read so many that I’ve lost count and can’t remember the names of them. I'm not even going to touch on the stuff on the web. At times I've sworn off reading diet books but I drift back because I find the topic interesting. So what do I do now?

A logical person might say to pick a course down the middle and stick to that. That does sound very sensible. The problem is I’m not the sensible type when it comes to food. I like it and I want to eat until I feel satisfied. I’ve been on the calorie counting ride a few times and I simply can’t be bothered with it. When I’m counting calories I feel picked on and cross. Well, just eat less. Right, if only it were that easy. For the folks who say that it probably is. I’m not going to rationalize or get into a discussion about will power. For me, ‘just eating less’ is not an easy thing to do. I could consult a professional and I might. 

I think with all the reading I've done I have a pretty good understanding for a lay person.  Even though I don't read the studies cited in the books, I check where papers were published and look to see if the ideas appear in reputable journals. There was one book that swore that you could lose weight by eating a teaspoon of sugar two hours before a meal and then taking a teaspoon of olive oil an hour before a meal. Those may not be the exact details but it was something like that. I think that was called the Shangri-la Diet. I admit to buying and reading that book, justifying the purchase under the heading of entertainment or comedy.

There are some other eating plans that don’t fall into the two broad categories. Eat Right for your Type advises that what is good for you to eat depends on your blood type. I didn't try that one either.  The Eight Hour Diet is one I did try. Rather than specifying what to eat or how much to eat it suggests you eat within an 8 hour window. I’ve actually been following that one for probably close to 15 years. I like to think that without it I’d be even heavier, but who knows.

I had always been a breakfast eater. I’m up; I’m awake; now where’s the food? For the first few weeks not having breakfast was a struggle and I was always looking at my watch to see when I could finally eat. Now not eating until around noon is just part of my regular routine. I’m not any hungrier at lunch than I used to be when I got up and it sure saves time when you need to get out the door in a hurry. So now I eat two meals a day and I don’t usually snack after supper.

Research is coming out now that suggests the makeup of your microbiome contributes to how you metabolize food. Can I take a pill for that? How easy that would be! Although I find the research in this area really interesting I’m not holding my breath for the microbiome silver bullet.

So what next? Well, once again, I need to drop some weight. Thank you Covid 19 for providing a good excuse to throw any reasonable eating habits out the window. Actually, my current doc didn't specify that I need to drop weight: she gave me 3 months to get the cholesterol down or it’s medication time.

The reading I’ve been doing lately has to do with the nutrient density of food. If you’re in a society where you don’t know where your next meal is coming from, you need to be able to store calories against the times of famine. I’m very grateful not to be in that situation. The next thing I’m going to try is a plant-based, whole-foods diet. I don’t think anyone will have an issue with my eating more fruits, veggies and whole grains. When push comes to shove, I think I enjoy the kinds of foods this diet recommends rather than the low carb diets I’ve been on before. As always, I’m looking for something I can sustain over the long term. I love potatoes and have hardly eaten any over the last few years. Before Covid I was pretty much doing without bread so I know I can do that. Nuke a potato, give me the salt and pepper and I’m good to go. I like porridge, beans, and lentils. The truth is that I’ve lost weight on all of the diets I’ve tried and it took me longer on some than others to fall off the wagon and put it back on. I don’t think I’m ready to give up milk and yogurt yet, and I admit to going overboard on the ice cream lately. It’s actually frozen yogurt so that shouldn’t count, right? Wrong, just as much sugar and maybe as much fat as the real thing.

Ok I’ll give it a go with plain yogurt and milk, no cheese, very little ice cream. I’ll drink more green tea, and mint tea which don’t require milk. I have a tea called North African mint that has pepper and licorice in it. It is very tasty and because my blood pressure is low, I think I can have a cup a day without worrying about the effect the licorice has on it. Some of the chai teas are made without black tea and they taste pretty good, although I do prefer chai with milk. I’ll have to cut out the splash of juice in my sparkling water but we’ve found a brand of organic lemon juice that isn’t bitter and I can use that most of the time. If I have a water bottle with cold water beside me I’ll drink it without thinking so that’s a plus. There are some good sites online that suggest combinations of spices so that the food isn’t bland. Lentils, beans, and rice are a snap in the Instant Pot, one of our favourite cooking implements. Of course, I’ll also cut down on the sugar, honey, and maple syrup even though I don’t think my consumption of those things is excessive.

Rather than trying to untangle who is right and who is wrong, I’m going to be my own guinea pig once again. Maybe this will be the eating plan that will stick, until I go to Scotland on a cruise ship. That is months away from now and if I fall off the wagon then, which I likely will, and have established a diet that I enjoy and that works to keep the blood work in check, I’ll be able to go back to it without too much complaint. Really, I can do without the whipped cream and butter if you offer me potatoes and yams instead. And, yes, that last sentence is partly to convince myself.

For now, it’s ‘back to old clothes and porridge,’ as Mum used to say. I always found it a bit strange coming out of her mouth because she was gluten intolerant, but still, the idea works. I’ll let you know how I’m doing. That will keep me accountable and I won’t be offended if you choose to ignore the dietary navel gazing. Stay tuned.

By the way, all the best in 2023. I had planned to write a cheery and uplifting entry for the first one of 2023. Oh well.

The Times They Are A-changin'

There are no flowers on the kitchen table next door today. In fact, there is no table. We don’t spend a lot of time staring from our kitchen window into the neighbours’ kitchen but our windows do overlook each other. Often as I turn from the fridge to the counter to cut up vegetables I notice flowers or a bowl of fruit caught in the winter sunlight that comes through their window. We have nothing as interesting for them to look at in return, just our stainless steel fridge door and perhaps a bit of our stovetop.

Yesterday our next-door neighbours moved. For the last 9 years we have had the best neighbours anyone could ask for. They got to know people in the neighbourhood that we have hardly ever spoken to despite living here for over 30 years. They were happy to fill us in. Since we are retired we tend to sleep late and countless times during those winters I drew the blinds in the living room to discover that the neighbours, who rise early to go to work and get the kids off to school, had shovelled the city sidewalk outside our house as well as doing their own. Sometimes we were lucky enough to be able to return the favour, but I think they cleared our walk much more often than we cleared theirs.

They kept an eye on our house for us and let us know when there was a package delivered if we hadn't noticed.  They picked up the packages that arrived late and took them into their house for safekeeping if we were away for a few days.

When our garage door was open one morning in the fall they let us know and so we discovered that the e-bike had been stolen. We got it back the next day and our neighbours shared our relief. I often wonder how it is that I don’t know or see the things that the neighbours do. Am I just unaware or do I spend too much time in my own head to notice what’s going on outside the house?

During the summers it was lovely to wake to the sound of children laughing as they imagined worlds in the playhouse at the back of their lot. It was also fun to watch the kids on the swing attached to the ash tree in their backyard. There were conversations with adults and kids through the fence or standing in our front yards. The Easter Bunny from next door visited us with chocolates and a couple of years ago a sign appeared in chalk on the sidewalk in front of our house wishing us a Happy Anniversary. We sometimes left muffins on their step and we tried arrange to sing Happy Birthday to each of the family members. 

It was comforting to live next door to friendly neighbours. The people who owned the house before them  weren’t as easy-going.  They didn’t like the way our eaves trough was put up. In the spring, snow melted beside our driveway and ran onto their property. Water does tend to run downhill but somehow that was our problem. When we got a phone call from them or when they knocked on the door we wondered ‘What now?’

The neighbourhood is changing. The property across the back lane that used to be zoned for single-family dwellings is now zoned for multi-family and retail. Houses are coming down to be replaced by x-plexes. The other family from across the lane who also deserves the title of the ‘best neighbours anyone could ask for’ sold their property and, during the summer, moved farther into the neighbourhood away from the busy street and the back lane traffic to and from the bottle depot and the liquor store situated in the next block. The offer from the developer was simply too good to pass up. Their house and the one next to theirs will come down to make way for an apartment complex sometime in the next couple of years. I hope both of our former neighbours love their new locations and that they will have good memories of the time they spent near us. I wish them many joys and neighbours that are as kind, generous, and courteous as they are.

Perhaps having many more eyes from an apartment block on the back lane will be a good thing, although I feel a bit of trepidation about what that will do to the parking situation and to ease of access to our garage. Perhaps the couple who bought the house next door will be wonderful neighbours in their own way. At the moment, though, I’m a little sad that we never had the drinks on our deck or the barbecue in the back lane that we talked about. We did have many other good times, so today I’m going to pause, remember,  appreciate, and although I'm not Irish, offer an Irish Blessing which seems appropriate.

May the road rise up to meet you.

May the wind be always at your back.

May the sun shine warm upon your face;

the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again,

may God hold you in the palm of His hand.