Category Archives: Friends

Life’s Too Short

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…..fill in the blank “life’s too short to____________”

Today’s Daily Post on WordPress is very timely. Last Sunday my 88 year aunt passed away. Now some of you may say she lived a good long life and you would be correct. My realization was that I shouldn’t have waited so long to get to know her better.

We tend to put things off until tomorrow but sometimes tomorrow is too late. Case in point: One year ago a group of friends from high school had finally reconnected after 30 years. We all wondered about one friend who wasn’t at our reunion so we investigated and found her. A letter was sent and then a few weeks later we were informed that she had just died. She was 60. At the funeral we learned that she had received the letter and was looking forward to our next get together. It was a few days later that she learned she only had a couple of weeks to live.

This past summer another friend at the age of 61 also passed away. Her 7 year battle with cancer finally took her life. It was her serious health condition that brought all of us together in the first place and I feel blessed for having been able to get together when we did. When my friend L called me in June to tell me that our friend was no longer seeing people and preferred to receive mail I decided to write her a card. Unfortunately I put it off (only for a couple of weeks) and she died before I made that final communication.

I am grateful for the time I spent with my aunt when she was in the hospital and the nursing home. For the last four months I saw her at least two to three times a week. My only regret is that we didn’t spend more time together when she was healthier but as my husband said it wasn’t for a lack of trying. Communication is a two way street. My aunt was always happy to see us but we were always the ones to initiate the visits.

In conclusion I leave you with these important words…..life’s too short to waste, don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

A Farewell Celebration Followed by a Birthday Celebration

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….this weekend we fondly remembered my aunt and celebrated my oldest daughter’s 35th birthday

I don’t have a very large extended family. My mother only had one sister and my father had a sister who also passed away this year and he has a brother who still lives in Germany. In total I have five cousins. Three live in Germany, one in Florida and one in Hamilton.

I have two sisters and in total we have 7 children. My youngest sister lives in Calgary with her husband and two children and my middle sister lives in Chatham with her new husband. Her two children live, here, in Toronto. Of my three children, two still live in Toronto and my son now resides in London, England.

This weekend brought some of us together to celebrate the life of my aunt, my mother’s older sister. My own mother passed over 20 years ago at the young age of 61.

My aunt H had two children, late in life and when her husband died in his early fifties she moved to Canada to be closer to her sister and give her children a fresh start.

On Saturday my cousin arranged for a simple memorial gathering at the funeral home. She put together three boards of photos and brought along 5 or 6 photo albums of her mother’s life. While going through her mother’s possessions she found this amazing photograph. We think she was about 19 or 20 when this photo was taken.

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Later that evening 15 family members went to a very nice restaurant for dinner together where we could spend more time together and reminisce.

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Today we had all my children together (including our son) to celebrate A’s birthday. I can’t believe that I have a 35 year old daughter. Our good friends B and W also came over to help us celebrate. My husband and daughter, G, made fantastic pizza rolls called stromboli. Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of it but there is one at the link that I posted.

Later we had coffee and wonderful cake that J brought. The round things on top that look like rocks were called cake truffles (very sweet).

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Six weeks before Christmas. There’s been so much food in the last few days that my husband and I feel like juice fasting. Instead we’ve decided to really focus on healthy eating and moving more. I’m actually looking forward to no sweets and carbs and eating more fruits and vegetables and simply grilled meats. Pass the water, please!

 

Share Your World – Week 35

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….can’t believe that it’s already week 35…check out Cee’s Photography for more great posts of Share Your World or join in

Have your blogging goals changed?

I think they have. I started as an incentive to lose weight and record stories from my childhood. I still do a little of both but now it’s become a venue for sharing my art, photography, and life’s adventures and challenges.

If you were to perform in the circus, what would you do?

I don’t know why this came to my head first but I thought clown. I’m not a big fan of clowns but I do like to make people laugh.

If you could go back and talk to yourself at age 18 what advice would you give yourself? Or if you are younger than 25 what words of wisdom would you like to tell yourself at age 45?

I would tell myself to pursue my interests, take risks. I was very practical and played it pretty safe at 18 but I was also somewhat romantic and probably naive. My biggest piece of advice would be to put aside money for retirement and not touch it. I’ve been lucky to have a job with a great pension plan and to own a house in the city. Not everyone is as fortunate and sometimes I think we could have been better prepared.

What is your favorite comfort snack food?

My favourite comfort foods are ice-cream and cheese. Not at the same time. When I want something sweet it would be ice-cream and for my savoury moments it has to be cheese.

Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

I’m grateful for a wonderful birthday week with family and friends. I spent the day with one of my oldest friends at the spa earlier in the week. My good friend L took me to the nail place and she treated me to a pedicure. My aunt and cousin sent me a beautiful bouquet of flowers, my sisters sent me gifts through the mail, my son called me long distance from the Netherlands, my daughters and I spent time together at the CNE, my husband cooked a magnificent meal for six of us and my dear friends at the cottage prepared a birthday lunch with cake done in the BBQ and gave me a set of beautiful earrings. WOW!

I’m looking forward to using my new Jawbone Up (a gift from my family) to record my fitness and sleeping patterns and learning some new songs on my ukulele from the ukulele book that my sister sent me. I’m also looking forward to going back to school (believe it or not) to catch up with my colleagues and meet my new students. Getting the library up and running is number one on my priority list. I just hope I get some help doing it.

My broken birthday cake. It didn’t travel well on my husband’s bike.

Share Your World – Week 31

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….being at the cottage makes it difficult to keep up with some of these weekly challenges

If you had your own talk show, who would your first three guests be? (guest can be dead, alive, famous or someone you just know)

There’s always one question that stumps me or makes me hesitate as to how I will answer. This is the one. After giving this some thought I think my three guests would be John F. Kennedy, Meryl Streep and Ray Cattell (my favourite contemporary artist and my girlfriend’s father).

One of Ray's paintings in my sister's home.

One of Ray’s paintings in my sister’s home.

What can you always be found with?

I always have my camera or iPhone with me.

What is the most fun thing you did in school?

It was probably in art class or home economics. I loved those two subjects in elementary school. In high school, however, the one thing that really stands out for me was our trip to Expo 67 in Montreal. I think it was a three day trip and it was probably my first experience away from home with a school group on an overnight trip.

Photo courtesy of : http://www.westland.net/expo67/aerial.jpg

 

What’s something you know you do differently than most people?

Writing a blog is something that I do that most of my friends and colleagues don’t do. Whenever I mention that I have a blog a lot of people are intrigued but very few of them actually try to create their own.

Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

I’m grateful for the company that I have at my cottage. My neighbours are always so generous when it comes to sharing meals. This week my girlfriend’s adult son made me a lovely breakfast of blueberry pancakes and scrambled eggs and later in the day I invited him to my place and we shared BBQ chicken, grilled zucchini and sweet potatoes, steamed broad beans from my daughter’s garden and fresh strawberries and cheese for dessert.

Looking through the trees to my neighbour's cottage.

Looking through the trees to my neighbour’s cottage.

Later this week I’m looking forward to spending time with a couple of friends from the city at the cottage. One daughter is coming over for dinner on Friday and on Saturday the other daughter is coming to the house with her brother-in-law to help us clean out the garage and take all the garbage to the city dump.

For more Share Your World posts check out Cee’s site.

Reading, Playing My Uke, Gardening and Partying

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….the only thing missing is painting

What a perfect day. I woke up early and started reading the book The Silent Wife. After a couple of chapters I made myself a cup of coffee and then started practising Somewhere Over the Rainbow on my ukulele. I’m hoping I can play it well enough to accompany the kindergarten class at this years school concert at the end of June. I then made myself an omelet and prepared fresh berries for breakfast.

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My husband wanted to start planting in his new raised bed but we decided that it needed more soil and it needed to be sectioned off with string. So I made a quick trip to the dollar store for twine and the nursery for more soil.  When I returned home I found that the front lawn had been mowed but now I could see where the dandelions were starting to expose their yellow heads. I donned my gardening gloves and pulled the weeds from the flower beds and the dandelions from the lawn. Then I took my trimming shears and trimmed away the long  grass around the tree, at the edges of the flower beds, sidewalk and driveway and around the telephone pole…..all the areas that were missed by the lawn mower. photo 2-161

It took me hours but it felt good to get out in the sun and fresh air and the yard looked so lovely and groomed. It was almost 3:00 before I finished and I had a party to attend at 4:00. I quickly showered, washed my hair, blew it dry and dressed for the afternoon birthday celebration.

It was a perfect day for a backyard get together. It was warm enough for people to sit outside and I got to meet M’s sisters and friends. M was celebrating her 70th birthday. She looked stunning and her son did a fantastic job organizing the entire affair. His friends did all the serving and bar tending. A great time was had by all.

The day’s not over yet, Maybe I’ll get a little painting in as well.

Cheers!

Share Your World 2014 – Week 17

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….I don’t know about that monkey question

What are some words that just make you smile?

Words that make me smile? From my students….”I love art class”, from my kids “thanks, Mom”, from my husband “Wine?” and from my friends “Let’s get together”.

The Birthday girl with her husband
My oldest daughter A and her partner J.
Teaching Art

When you lose electricity in a storm, do you light the candles or turn on the flashlight? How many of each do you own?

We own dozens of candles and a couple of flashlights. We only use the flashlight to find the candles and lighter. We love candle light and light candles often, especially when we’re enjoying  a special romantic dinner.P1030913 P1030906

What is the longest book you ever read?

I think the longest book I’ve ever read was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It contains 870 pages.

Image courtesy of: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/70/Harry_Potter_and_the_Order_of_the_Phoenix.jpg

So you win a pet monkey at a fair, but this isn’t just any old monkey. It can do one trick for you whenever you want from getting a pop out of the fridge to washing your hair. What would be the trick?

I don’t know about winning a monkey. I don’t think there’s anything that a monkey could do that would make me want to own one, never mind washing my hair. Yikes! The thought gives me the creeps.

Ikea monkey. Photo courtesy of:http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/pZ80Zpi7N-E/hqdefault.jpg

Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

I’m grateful for the sunny weekend and getting out for a long walk with the dogs on Sunday. I’m looking forward to a quick recovery after my oral surgery on Thursday.

For more Share Your World entries check out http://ceenphotography.com/2014/04/28/share-your-world-2014-week-17-2/

Sharing Memories and Reconnecting With Old Friends

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…watching old V8 movies of us as kids and meeting up with friends from university

Thursday was a laid back day. I couldn’t sleep past 6:00 am so I got up and wrote my first post about the flight to Calgary. I took my time getting showered and dressed and then I went downstairs to join my sisters for breakfast.

My middle sister had given each of us a DVD that she had transposed from VHS. Years ago our mom took all the old V8 movies that my Dad had taken of us as kids and had them put onto videotape. It’s pretty rough and of course there’s no soundtrack. We decided to watch the DVD together, not realizing that it was over two hours. It was great seeing all those clips again. It brought back great memories and we couldn’t help but notice how different life was 50 years ago.

The one thing that really struck us was how formally our parents dressed. Outings to the park, going on picnics and day trips to Niagara Falls involved dressing in your Sunday best. Mom wore heels, dresses, hats and gloves and Dad wore dress pants, jackets and ties and of course all the ‘sisters’ wore dresses and party shoes. The only time I saw us in trousers was when I went roller skating down the sidewalk by our house in the Junction. Good thing too, because I took a couple of nasty spills.

It was also interesting to see the transition from long hair to short hair and then back to long hair when we were teenagers. My Mom wore her hair in a bun for many years and her hair was actually quite dark. Sometime in the 60s she cut her hair short and became a blonde. I never saw her with long hair ever again.

I’m sure there’s some way of copying bits and pieces of the DVD to share with you but I just haven’t figured out how to do that. I’m thinking I need to go to Garage Band and cut and paste segments onto a Youtube video but I’ll have to investigate that a bit more. If any of you have any suggestions I’d be more than grateful.

After lunch, I arranged to meet two friends from university at the Learning Centre in Fish Creek Park. Melissa McKinnon who I follow on WordPress has an exhibition there and one of the things I wanted to do when I got to Calgary was check out her work. I’ve seen it on-line but there’s nothing like seeing it up close and personal. The staff at the centre were very friendly and told us how successful Melissa’s opening was. Her paintings are beautiful and it looks like half or more are already sold. You can check out her blog, here.

I haven’t been to Calgary in over 20 years but I have seen my sister and my friends, L & L, on numerous occasions in Toronto. It’s been great seeing them on their home turf, something that’s long overdue. My next trip will be with my husband. He hasn’t been to Calgary in 38 years.

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Hope She’s Not Offended

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….I chose to draw the portrait of a good friend….the image came from a photograph

One of the assignments, yesterday, was to draw a realistic image from a photograph. I had a great shot of my friend L taken at my daughter’s shower a couple of years ago. It’s not a perfect likeness but it’s pretty close. Image

 

The assignment required that I add water to the pencil to shade the picture. Parts of it turned out darker than I would have liked so I think it ages my friend a bit. Other than that I’m pretty happy with it. Makes me want to experiment with my watercolours.

Cheers!

My Twin Babies Turned 32 Yesterday

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….a hectic but fun day

The day started early with a visit to Sherway Mall to look for a winter parka for Az and a birthday present for my son. I had already purchased his sister’s present long before Christmas but we didn’t know what B needed or wanted so I waited until his arrival to Canada to find out.

It turns out that B really needed new shoes. It was his lucky day. Between his fiancé, Az and me, he ended up with three new pairs of shoes, 2 casual and one dressy. We also found a warm and stylish winter parka for Az, which will come in very handy when they go to Montreal later this week. It’s always colder in Montreal.

After our shopping spree we headed to Costco for gas and groceries. Az wanted to prepare an Iranian feast for us and what better time than for a birthday celebration. We were expecting 10 people for dinner and even though they had picked up a load of groceries at the Iranian grocery store (who knew) we still still needed a few extra items to round out the meal. One of the things we bought was a birthday cheesecake for B and G. I know that’s not very Iranian but it’s a bit of a birthday tradition in our house. Turns out that more desserts were brought by others and I have a lot of cake left over.

The girls hard at work.

The girls hard at work.

Once we got home Az and our daughter, G started to cook and cook and cook. When Az told me that 1 kg of rice wasn’t enough, I was shocked so when I picked up our other daughter, A, her partner J and our son-in-law we made another stop at a store to purchase more basmati.

The green olives were the best I've ever eaten. They were purchased at the Iranian market. The marinade included ground walnuts and it became a great dipping sauce as well.

The green olives were the best I’ve ever eaten. They were purchased at the Iranian market. The marinade included ground walnuts and it became a great dipping sauce as well.

When all the guests arrived the place was buzzing with activity. I noticed that Az was not happy with one of her dished and was quite upset. I tasted it and I thought it tasted wonderful. I passed it around to a few more guests to sample and they all agreed that she needed to serve it. Ignorance is bliss. It really did taste devine but I’m sure if it had turned out the way she wanted it would have been better but we didn’t have anything to compare it to. The whole meal was an explosion of taste in the mouth. I’m sure I could never recreate it on my own but our daughter G has a little more experience and hopefully I don’t have to wait for another visit from B and Az before we can experience this meal again.

Of course there was way too much food, especially desserts. My husband is hoping we don’t have to go grocery shopping for awhile. My fridge is jam packed with leftovers and the cheesecake is sitting outside in a cooler bag on the deck where it is frozen solid.

Thank goodness there aren’t anymore major birthdays now until the summer. My waistline can’t afford more days like this.

Cheers!

Things I’m Grateful for in 2013

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….despite a few ups and downs we’ve been blessed this year

Health

My husband continues to be ‘cancer’ free. His scans have been positive and for the most part is blood work is good. He’s suffered from shingles again but he’s on the mend and we’re waiting hear about surgery for his thyroid in the New Year.P1030973

I’ve been healthy this year. My weight goes up and down but I’m still more down than up and all my tests have come back with good news. Even my eyesight has improved to the point where I don’t need to wear glasses for driving anymore. I ran another 5k this year and I improved on my time from the year before.

My father has fully recovered from his fall this summer and is back to his daily walks with the dog.IMG_0066

Family

We visited with my husband’s family in Ireland this summer and met up with our son who we hadn’t seen in a year and a half. We also met his girlfriend for the first time.

This Christmas all my children and their significant others, including our son and his girlfriend spent Christmas Eve with us. On Christmas Day it snowed some more so Az truly experienced a white Christmas.IMG_0041

My sister in Chatham has been preparing for her wedding in January and we convinced my father to attend the wedding. We booked and paid for his train ticket and we will be going with him the day before the big event.

My brother-in-law surprised my sister in Calgary, on her birthday (Christmas Day) with a visit from her two sisters (me and C from Chatham) this coming March. He’s paid for our plane fares and is planning some more surprises when we get there. This is as much a surprise and treat for the two of us as well.

The biggest surprise happened Christmas night when my son announced that he proposed to his girlfriend, Az. My husband and I were the first to be told the joyous news but the phone calls to Iran, the U.S. and the sisters in Toronto soon followed.P1030978

Avoiding Disaster

This summer Toronto experienced an overwhelming amount of rain and thousands of homes were flooded. We, luckily, stayed dry and weren’t inconvenienced. This past week we were hammered with ice and again we were safe and warm and not in the dark. Thousands of homes around us (literally over 250 000) were affected with power outages and temperatures well below freezing. For many families the power still hadn’t come back on for Christmas. As of today there are still over 35 000 families without power (one whole week).

Doing a Job That I Love

Even though I could have retired almost two years ago, I continue to teach because I love it. I love the kids, I love what I teach and I love the people I work with. My colleagues and many members of the community have been so supportive and caring. They are like a second family. Thank you all for making coming to work a joy.

Friends, Old and New

This year I’ve continued to stay connected to old friends from high school and I’m ever grateful for all of my friends. It takes effort to stay in touch when you move or change jobs but it’s worth it. Thank you for all the dinners, movies, canoe trips, concerts, walks, yoga classes and long talks. I don’t know what I’d do without you.

My Blogging Friends

I couldn’t possibly mention all the people that follow me but I am most appreciative of those that take the time to write to me on a regular basis. I love hearing from you and the encouragement you give me to keep doing what I’m doing. When I started on this journey I had no idea where it would take me or how long it would last. It’s been almost two years and I don’t see stopping anytime soon. Thank you Mark, Viveka, Leanne, Mary, Beth, Dorothy, Rosemarie, Paul, Ann, Anne, Lee and Baz. I’m sure I’ve one or two of you but please be assured that your comments are always appreciated.

Happy New Year everyone! All the best in 2014.