I miss taking photos, correction, I miss spending a day wandering around to take photos and I wonder if I'll ever have that again.  My husband plans on retiring in the next year.  Our plan was to buy a trailer and travel around the country with dogs and cameras.  It might not have happened, but now it can't happen and I feel sad about that.  It's one of the things I'm grieving right now.  I am tied once again to the school year for eleven more years.

I'm also grieving aging and the many losses that come with aging.  I have fallen so many times in the past year, it's become a joke, to myself at least.  My knees are now very unhappy, as opposed to being only somewhat unhappy.  Sitting down and standing up has become increasingly painful since I last landed on my knees.  Stairs hurt now.

My high blood pressure requires medication which leaves me exhausted by 3pm, when I need to pick up Jack.  I've started laying down sometimes for half an hour.  The only other time in my life that I ever did that was when I was pregnant with my girls.  I don't even fall asleep but I do find that laying still for 30 minutes does help and gives me the energy required to make it through to bedtime.

I don't like medications, ironic considering I was a nurse.  It makes me feel bad for all of the pills I gave to elderly patients, believing I was helping, or at least not harming them.

Enough moaning.  Things I'm thankful for.

-ADHD medications for Jack.  They make his days so much better.  He can concentrate and he gets in much less trouble.
-Friends to walk with, talk with, and make pottery with.
-Having frozen spaghetti sauce in the freezer for supper tonight.

-Dogs, for which I'm thankful for about two thirds of the time.  Charlie can still be a dick when I take him for a walk.

-Having a young child as a senior.  I'm much more involved in my community than I would have been without Jack.

-Zero fucks left for Jack's other family.  I'm done sugar coating things for them.

-The word fuck:)

-The smell of banana bread baking in the oven.

-The stew I made last night for supper was delicious.

-It's supposed to get up to 10C today and the ice has melted off the roads and sidewalks.

-Listening to Jack laugh.

-Hugs.

The black dog continues to shadow me but I know it will leave sooner or later.  How about sooner?

 

I went for a walk yesterday morning with Heidi, a friend, and her corgis Levi and Dougie.  It was good to get some fresh air, walk amongst the trees and visit with a friend.

The snow has stayed but I'm hoping it will melt next week.  I still have leaves that need to be relocated.  I'm still feeling down but husband and I had a long talk yesterday and it was good.

It's Halloween today, so yesterday after school Jack and I carved a pumpkin.  We both got irritated with each other at one point ( I wasn't fast enough and he wouldn't stop interrupting) but ended up with a decent Jack O'Lantern to be put on the steps later today when it warms up.  The snow persists.

Yesterday I met up with Kate from Stubblejumpers Cafe and we had lunch and then wandered the Enjoy Centre.  The Enjoy Centre is a cavernous space that was quite underwhelming as a greenhouse.  It's too bad because the old Hole's Greenhouse was so wonderful.  Oh well.

Kate and me, with a little help:)

I went to pottery yesterday morning and this was waiting for me.  It's a wonky gravy boat I decided.  It's the first thing I threw on a wheel and it's the only thing that turned out over two days of throwing.  I was trimming a bowl yesterday and the teacher came along and said, "The foot is too small."  It wasn't a criticism, it was an observation, but I started crying and couldn't stop crying.  I realized I was depressed which makes sense of why I started crying.  Strangely enough, I hate crying in public, even though I do it a fair bit.  I quietly cleaned up my stuff and left only half way into the class.  

I've been having a hard time getting things done.  Everything is too much.  It snowed last week and I started dreading winter already.  I'm dragging my ass through every single day.  Why am I depressed?  That took some thinking but there are a few reasons why I'm feeling depressed which I'm not going to get into right now.  Usually for me, it's enough to know why I'm feeling depressed and that helps to lift the depression, usually.  I'm hoping that does the trick again.

I'm off for a walk with a friend this morning and a couple of dogs, so that will help too.  Winter doesn't stop outdoor stuff, it just means I have to wrap up more.  Things will sort themselves out, as they always do.  This feeling, this crap, will pass.  It always does.

 

I've decided to try growing cats instead of pumpkins.  Do I need to bury the cat deeper?

It was snowing here this morning.  It's stopped now thankfully but the ground is good and slippery.

 No dog walk this morning, baked cookies instead.

Have a good weekend:)

A nearby storm pond apparently has at least one beaver living there, judging by the two downed trees with teeth marks.  Wonder if the county knows?  I'm not telling them.

I go to a pottery class put on the county of Strathcona.  They have asked us in the past what they can do to improve the class.  All of us said that they can make the class three hours long.  We want more clay time, not less.  Right now we get fourteen classes, every Monday morning and every other Wednesday, excluding stat holidays.  This is what we asked for.  

After clay time, we go back to the old farmhouse and have tea together and chat about whatever we want to.  It's a 55+ group and I suppose it's supposed to support seniors.  Yesterday the young woman who runs the program joined us; she never has before.

We chatted a little and then she said that going forward, the program would only be running on Mondays, no reason given.  She had a suggestion though, there are free programs offered by Gallery@510 every Wednesday morning where we can sign up and learn different crafts, not clay.  She spoke at length about the different "fun" things we could learn.  She even brought a catalogue with photos!

I stopped talking and left early.  I felt like we had been treated like old ladies/children, who couldn't manage to do things for ourselves, women who needed her help to figure things out.  We were a problem that she needed to solve.  Why, I don't know, but I felt it.  If the program needs to be cut, tell us why.  We all pay for the program.  It's not free.  

We are a core group of six women who are have been going there for 2-3 years.  Our ages range from 63-73.  Some of the women are widows, some are still married.  Between all of us we have raised seventeen children.  We have navigated abusive partners, divorce, widowhood, raising children alone, and grief.  We are not stupid.  We are not children.  All that we want is someplace to go and work with clay, while we learn about pottery, and support each other.  It keeps us off the streets:)

I was angry yesterday when I got in my car to leave.  I felt like I had been condescended to and I haven't felt that way in years.  If seniors face this kind of treatment (and I'm guessing yes) on a regular basis, I can tell you that I am going to be one angry old(er) lady and there will be swearing.

Warning, a lot of profanity.  

The weather continues to be nice, although snow is forecast for this coming weekend.  I don't imagine the snow will stay but it is a reminder.

We had a windstorm on the weekend which knocked out power and traffic lights in some areas.  I haven't been out and about in a storm like that before and it was stressful.  The winds hit up to 100 km/hr.  What I didn't realize is that the same windstorm that swept through here, also hit Canadian Forces Base Wainwright where training with live ammunition was taking place.

Apparently there often grass fires at Wainwright because of the live ammunition, and there was a grass fire on Saturday but it was far enough away to not warrant any additional precautions, or shut down training.  Except the wind shifted and hit 100 km/hr and in less than a minute, the training area was engulfed in flames.  There seems to be some unanswered questions about explosions, but there was a massive fire for sure.

Four military personnel lost their lives and another 39 were injured, 19 are in critical condition.  I have a hard time with stuff like this with fires, mass casualties, families forever changed, grief I suppose.  The most horrible part was the wingnuts who thought it was a conspiracy coming two days before the referendum here.  That somehow the Prime Minister was to blame.  WTF!

I have no fucks left for whack jobs who blame everybody else for what's going wrong in their lives.  The UCP likes to blame Ottawa and immigrants when it is in fact their mismanagement of resources and our province.  They seem fine with fanning the flames of racism and do nothing to stop it because it serves their purpose.  It's disgusting, but that is not a strong enough word for what I think.  The UCP seems fine with burning this province to the ground to advance their own agenda.

I hope the referendum goes well today and the UCP and Danielle Smith are told in no uncertain terms to leave our province alone and shut the fuck up.

Some of my husband's shots of the Sockeye, my photos didn't really turn out very well, not of the fish anyway.

I happened to buy a couple of books before we left for our getaway and one of them was called "Margo's Got Money Troubles" by Rufi Thorpe.  I didn't know anything about it but I liked the first paragraph so I thought I'd give it a go.  I read it in a day and when I was done, I started rereading it.  It wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea, but I loved it.

The book is about a twenty year old woman, Margo, with a brand new baby who is fired from her job as a waitress because she can't find childcare.  In the US there is no year long paid maternity leave, which just boggles my mind.  US politicians want young women to have more babies but provide no supports for that to happen.  Don't have an abortion but we're not helping you either once the baby is born.  The height of hypocrisy in my mind.

Margo's mother is kind of a gold digger (sort of, but mostly a woman who puts looks and herself, before all else) and her father was a wrestler until he wrecked his back.  She decides to support herself and her son by appearing on OnlyFans.  It's a story about family, addictions, sex, hypocrisy, misogyny, shame, algorithms, and love. 

I was twenty-one when I had my son, way back in the eighties.  I refused to marry the father, even as a twenty-one year old I realized that would be a huge mistake, that was a problem for more than a few people in my life.  By the time my son was two weeks old I knew that I would be on my own raising him and would need a decent job.  I applied and was accepted into the nursing program.  I started nursing school when my son was four months old and we both survived the two year program.  My mum was amazing and took care of my son for me while I went to school, studied, and did my practicums.  I couldn't have done it without her.  I was very lucky but I worked hard too.

The character Margo is a smart, resilient, hard working young woman.  I admire her.  She's not real obviously and in real life she would have a lot more baggage to deal with, but it's nice to read a story about a smart, successful young woman.  She is judged relentlessly for making pornography but she stands up for herself and fights back.  The book makes us think about sex and sex workers in a different way.  One character makes the point that if a guy is looking at a naked woman and she doesn't know, she's not slutty, but if the woman offers an image of herself naked, if she is in control of the narrative, then she is considered slutty.  The double standard for men and women is alive and well sadly.

Last night we watched Law and Order: SVU.  It was about a drunk young woman who was raped by three men but the law in New York states says that if a woman willingly gets drunk, then it's more difficult to argue rape.  If a person voluntarily drank alcohol or took drugs, prosecutors face a high legal burden. Under existing statutes, they generally cannot claim the victim was "mentally incapacitated" solely from voluntary substance use.  As a young woman who voluntarily got drunk, I can assure you that I never wanted to be raped, nor have I ever met a woman who did.

I digress but you get my point.  Double standards still exist and are vigorously defended by courts, legislators, schools, and religions.  And men wonder why women are angry.