It's our anniversary today, six years we've been married.  I swore when I got divorced that I would never remarry but this guy changed my mind.

Today is a better day, as expected.  My daughter in law cancelled our trip to the spray park when I told her Jack wouldn't be able to come with us and I understand.  She has two kids that want to play with Jack and she had a fight with her mother, so today we are free birds.  

I went shopping at Costco and filled up the car with gas.  We now have lots of toilet paper and chicken.  I also got a new book.  I live a wildly exciting life, I know.

My husband just left to drive down to Wetaskiwin to visit his father and I'll stay busy in the garden.  The season is coming to an end and I don't like a messy garden.  I've never grown cucumbers before and got nine huge cucumbers off one plant.  Not sure how many they usually produce.  The tomatoes are starting to turn red.  Last year I got seventy-five pounds from my tomato plants, I'm hoping for more this year.  The sunflowers are done so I cut the last of them to brighten up the kitchen.  I'm also collecting seeds from flowers that I like, yellow cone flowers, foxglove, sunflowers and delphinium to start next spring.  I'll also save tomato and pumpkin seeds.  Jack's pumpkin is coming along well and turning orange now.  I've never grown a pumpkin either.

When I received that text message yesterday morning, from Gracie's mom, not Gracie, to let me know that Gracie and Jack were going to BC, I burst into tears.  It seemed like a huge overreaction until I realized that last September Gracie was fired from her job, flooded our rental house and then took Jack to BC.  It felt like it was happening all over again.  Gracie was evicted from her apartment and her second cat died, then she went to BC.  Once I realized that's where the fear and tears came from, I felt better.  Just knowing why I'm upset usually helps me.

Gracie and Jack are being driven to BC to stay with her sister for two weeks.  The driver is a trusted family friend and Jack's aunt is one of his guardians.  I still think it's rude that Gracie didn't let me know herself but in the word's of her mom, Gracie's had a rough week.

Gracie hasn't worked in a year.  Jack has been in daycare since May so she didn't have to take care of him while she looked for a job.  She never found a job and managed to get evicted from a crappy apartment building that smelled like piss in the hallways.  Gracie doesn't have what it takes to care for herself, not to mention a child.  The big guy and I are going to talk to Gracie's mom, Lori, this week and try to sort something out.  They can't stay with Lori for long because Gracie and Lori don't get along at all.  

The good news is, Gracie didn't trash our house.  Yay.  Jack is safe with his aunt watching over him.  We have free time, even though I miss him so much.  I'm also back off work because my foot is not healing. 

Tonight we'll have supper out at Chianti's which will be lovely and I'll even have a drink.  

 

My foot still hurts and so I limp through each day; by the end of the day, my back, my knees, my legs and especially my right side ache with tight muscles and improperly used joints.

I'm taking anti-imflammatories again so my stomach hurts.

At work we have a twenty-two year old young woman dying of gastric cancer, her mother both angry and sad beyond words.

Covid continues on it's relentless march and Miss Katie has it again, mild thank goodness.

Gracie has been evicted from her apartment and she and Jack are living with her mother.  That won't go well.

My husband's family is a hot mess and I am sad and angry about it all but it's not my story.

My husband is hurt and sad and angry.

My flowers are dying, as they do every fall.  Trees are turning colour and leaves are dropping.  Summer is over but not the heat.

Jack comes tonight to stay for the weekend.  Tomorrow we will all spend the day with my daughter in law and other grandson at the spray park.  Children will play and laugh, fun will be had, love will be given.

And so it goes.  Life ebbs and flows, some days good, some days relentless.  Right now I have no energy to do much of anything but that will pass.

Update

I just got a text this morning, that was sent yesterday, that Jack and Gracie are heading out to BC this morning to visit Gracie's sister for two weeks so we won't get to see Jack for another two weeks and god help that family if anything happens to Jack in the mean time.  Gracie's sister is one of Jack's guardians but she lied about where she lived so that she could become his guardian so I don't trust her either.

And I'm off work for another month.  

Yambury beach.

We made it home last night, unpacked, put stuff away and then went to bed.  I had forgotten to take my anti-depressant yesterday because we left Coquitlam so early, 5:30am.  I just remembered after we got got home at 10pm and then thought, I'll just wait until the morning to take it.

What I didn't know at the time, but know now, is that withdrawal symptoms from effexfor can occur in as little as 12 hours.  I couldn't sleep, closed my eyes and had extremely vivid waking dreams, so much so that I couldn't fall asleep.  I finally gave in and took a benadryl and fell asleep around 3am.  When I did sleep my dreams were so vivid and long.  The dreams included somebody famous, can't remember who, my girlfriend in Australia and her husband, murder, Holland, firewords and cleaning kitchens.  I woke up dizzy and nauseated.  

I took my pill this morning and won't miss another one.  

We went and got Jack this morning and spent the day with him which was lovely.  I missed him so much.  He wanted to know where we had been.  I told him we had a holiday.  "What a holiday?"  "Where you go on holiday?"

We had a lovely visit with my brother and sister in law, my sister and brother in law, and my daughter and her partner.  We didn't do anything exciting; I didn't take many photos and it was a lovely holiday, one of our best.  I was impressed with Parksville and want to go back, with Jack this time.  He would love the endless beaches.  

When we were in Vancouver we took Heidi and my daughter's dog to Kitsilano beach.  The dogs ran, swam and generally had a great time.  We had lunch at a food truck, fish and chips, and then bought fresh donuts at Lee's Donuts on Granville Island.  On the way home we stopped and gave both dogs a bath.  It was one of the best days I've spent with my daughter.

There's was lots more but it's bedtime soon.  And I need to catch up on blogs.

Rathtrevor beach  

 

Morningstar farm.

Holidays 

 

I'm reading another book by Sarah Winman.  This one is called "Tinman"; it broke my heart and gave me hope.  Here's a bit of it.

"...I wonder what the sound of a heart breaking might be.  And I think it might be quiet, unperceptively so, and not dramatic at all.  Like the sound of an exhausted swallow falling gently to earth."

It's about two friends but it's also about the AIDS epidemic in the late eighties.  I took care of AIDS patients back then, so many young men and they all died.  It was heart breaking and of course I cried when I read the book.  I was reminded of the discrimination and the fear that these young men faced, even from some of the nurses who cared for them.

The book is about love and family and loss.  

We're leaving for a holiday on Saturday, driving out to Vancouver Island to visit my sister, my brother in law and on the way back, stopping in Vancouver to visit my daughter.  It will be lovely to walk beside the ocean again and to see family.  My sister is seventy-five now.  She had a brain injury when she was twelve and some of the effects of that accident are being amplified by aging.  She walks with a limp now and never did before.  Her lack of filters and boundaries is also amplified but I wonder how much of that is from the injury and how much of that is from our family.  I have a hard time with filters and boundaries as well.

My mother in law turned eighty-one on Sunday.  When my husband visited his father on Saturday, one of his sisters told him they were having a party for her but did not invite us.  My husband is hurt and angry.  And so it goes.  I hurt and so I hurt (this comes from a Matt Haig book, "The Humans", another excellent book).  Seems like the whole world lives by this motto.

I'm off today.  I'm making it through my shifts which is good.  My foot hurts but I can manage.  I talked to a nurse educator about setting up a grief support group in our hospital for nurses and she thought it was a good idea.  It would be nice if we could make it happen.  

My sunflowers have grown ridiculously tall and I love them, so do the bees.

 

 I was in a thrift store last week and came across a quilt that had been made by cutting up someone's old quilt and then sewing together a new quilt.  This is one of the blocks, but there were also six blocks that were embroidered and obviously from a child's quilt.  Somebody tried but did an awful job.  Then somebody else had tried patching the torn bits of quilt.  It was a mess.  

So for fifteen bucks I bought an old quilt that contained handmade pieces, because I didn't want to see all that work just disappear.  Somebody make it with love.  I took it home and started pulling it apart and the more I pulled it apart, the more I realized how much of a mess it was.

Some pieces were beyond repair, so I had to replace them.

It's kept me busy this week, this pulling apart, this unravelling.  I've enjoyed it.  Teasing apart the old stitches and then trying to put it back together.  I found some nice old fashioned fabric to outline the embroidered pieces.  These pieces remind me of my mum.  In the early seventies she spent almost a year in a cast and couldn't do much, so she embroidered, everything.  

I wish I had taken a photo of the quilt before I took it apart but it was in bad shape and the restoration makes me feel good.  I'm not sure what I'll do with it when it's done but it doesn't matter right now.  At some time in the future, there will be a baby who needs a quilt.

It's slow work and lets me sit lots.  My foot is killing me now that I'm back to full days.  I can't get into see the podiatrist until September, so I'm using my cane at work, because that inspires confidence in your nurse:)

I'm off tomorrow so I'll have time to work on the new/old quilt.