I took Heidi out for a walk at the dog park yesterday.  It wasn't too cold and the sky was so blue.  She's a wonderful walking partner.  She's off leash, comes when called and loves the snow.  Mostly she just loves being alive I think.

I finally feel like I've recovered from the flu and slept well last night.  It's bloody cold today so a day to stay indoors and quilt and make some cookies.  I'm trying to get some exercise in so I biked for thirty minutes on my stationary bike while I watched The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

I'm not depressed.  Winter has us firmly in her grip and I still feel good.  The walking outdoors helps so much and of course the days are getting longer.  We ate supper last night at 5:30pm and it was still light outside.  Awesome.

We also went to the greenhouse yesterday and I bought myself a primula because I need to see a live flower to remind me that spring will come, in a few months.  Mostly I'm thankful I'm not depressed,  February is a difficult month for me, both of my parents died in February but this year I'm good.

#3 Reading/Books

I love reading.  When I was a kid I would read under the covers, by flashlight, and when I heard my mum coming down the hallway, I would switch off the flashlight and pretend to be asleep.  My mum had a terrible accident in 1971.  She fell and smashed the kneecap on her left knee.  She was in and out of the hospital and casts for what seemed like most of that year.  She also ended up with a bad limp which the doctor told her she would have for the rest of her life.

After mum's accident I could hear her coming down the hallway.  My dad never checked on me but mum always did so I would only shut the flashlight off if I could hear mum limping down the hallway.  What the doctor didn't understand, was how stubborn my mum was.  She worked on her physio and on her walk until one night, I couldn't tell it was her walking down the hall and I got busted for reading under the covers.

Mum and Dad, circa 1968.

The first chapter book that I remember reading was "Charlotte's Web".  I then discovered the library and "The Black Stallion".  Then even better, I discovered that writers will write series.  Awesome!  Every Saturday dad would take us to the library, I have no idea if mum came along or not, but my brother and I would go downstairs to the children's section and I was in heaven.  I discovered all kinds of worlds down there.  It was heaven for a shy girl.

Since then, I've never stopped reading.  I used to read more before the advent of computers, but I still read.  I read when I brush my teeth.  I read at bedtime.  I read when I sit on the toilet and I used to read when I blow dried my hair.  When my children were small I would lock myself in the bathroom and read.  I had a chair in the bathroom, just for reading.

One of my favorite books is "A Prayer For Owen Meany".  I don't know how many times I've read it but I always enjoy it, over and over again.

My favorite books entertain and educate me.  I learn something that I didn't know before, from life in Nigeria, to growing up in Afghanistan to living in Sweden as an old curmudgeon, and they make me see life from a different point of view as well as share universal truths.

So today's awesome is books and the ability to read.


What's your favorite book and why?

Medicine Lake, my hubby's favorite lake, before the fire in 2015.

It's late for me, almost ten pm and I'm wide awake.  I've been having such a hard time sleeping these past few nights.  I close my eyes and a kaleidoscope of very vivid memories appear.  It felt like someone had turned on all the lights inside my head and opened up every filing cabinet that my memories are stored in. I could go back to when I was a teenager, or more recently when my ex-husband and I split up.  The memories just kept coming and coming.  I could see the everything, feel everything again.  It was weird.

I was lying in bed, wide awake, trying to stop the memories when I wondered, what's different?  And then I realized I've been taking cough medicine.  Then my hubby started snoring and one of the dogs started dreaming and twitching and I gave up and came downstairs.

So I looked up the main ingredient in the cough syrup, dextromethorphan, and sure enough, one of the side effects is insomnia.  Another uncommon side effect is spontaneous memory recall.  It can affect your sense of smell as well which would explain why I couldn't eat my supper, couldn't stand the smell of it.  At least that mystery has been solved and I'm not losing my mind, yet.  I think I'll live with the cough for now.

The week in photos.  As you can see Heidi is making herself at home and doesn't appear to be at all stressed.  She is a lovely, sweet dog who also likes to chew the hell out of everything.

We've been going to the dog park everyday which is lovely as the weather is mild and the dogs are happy.  Fresh air is always good for me too.

We bought a kennel for Heidi to preserve some of our house while we're at work.  She's quite happy to go in it.  The bone is our attempt to find something that will last longer than half an hour with her.  Every toy what we've bought her is in shreds and then she moves onto pillows and my grandson's toys.  So far the bone has lasted more than one day.  We'll see.

My grandson spent the night last night and this morning was helping me with the laundry.  He loves the laundry room.  There's a toilet, two machines with windows that everything spins around in, a broom and a mop.  Heaven for him apparently.  He's finally sleeping now and I'm sitting for a bit.

Hope you all had a good week.

This is for a certain New Yorker and you're welcome:)

And this one is for me, because age or menopause or anything else I suppose.



I went to see my doc this morning because I've been getting quite short of breath on exertion, like walking in the mall, working, going up a set of stairs.  Talk about making you feel old.  And then I had to get some estrogen cream for places that are supposed to be stretchy but are not as stretchy as they used to be.  Again with the old:)  A prescription and a req for lots of blood work.

It could be worse.  I could have died young.

The weather here is fucking cold as one older patient described it yesterday.  You know it's cold when old ladies say fucking.  It's supposed to warm up but to be honest I'm pretty lucky.  We have a garage.  The big guys does most of the driving and we have underground parking at work so I'm not really suffering.  I haven't been to the mailbox in awhile but that can wait.

There was a lot of ice fog this morning which I really didn't like because you couldn't see much when driving, hopefully that dissipates soon.  We have to watch poor Lucy when she goes outside to pee or poop because her feet can get too cold to get back to the door so I have a pair of shoes ready at the back door in case she needs to be rescued.

It was a weird week at work, lots of strange things but nothing awful.  There was a car fire on a busy road that patients and staff have to use to get to our hospital so that meant a quiet morning for awhile yesterday and then a lot of patients all at once.  Thankfully nobody was hurt in the fire.  It must have been scary as hell for the two drivers involved in the collision.

I'm thankful for a furnace that works and indoor toilets.

What are you thankful for today?

Nothing much going on here.  We're in the middle of a deep freeze so we're hunkered down although I did go out to Walmart last night.  Our house is cold at night and I have given every single pair of fleece jammies to my daughter in law where they sit on the floor in the basement of her house, stinking of pee or poop or vomit.  I had no warm jammies for the little guy so I popped out and got him two pairs of jammies with Santa on them for $3 each which was a good thing because he had diarrhea last night and then vomited all over himself and his bed, which is why he and I were in the laundry room last night.  These jammies are not leaving this house.

The little guy is good, except for his tummy apparently.  We have tentative plans and will wait and see how things go.

It's been a sad week in Edmonton.  Thirty of the people on the Ukrainian airline that was shot down in Iran on Wednesday were from Edmonton, whole families wiped out.  I can't even imagine.

This afternoon we're going to go see a man about a dog.  I need something good this year.  Lucy is aging quickly.  Her cough is getting worse and she will not live for a long time.  Her early years of abuse have wrecked her heart and she has congestive heart failure.  I told the big guy I want another dog because I know he will be wrecked when Lucy dies, so we're going to meet a dog that I've had my eye on for the last month.  We'll see.  If she doesn't work out for us that's okay but I think she will.  I have a feeling.  Even though I swore I would never have two dogs again, I miss long walks and Lucy can't manage those anymore.

There is a loaf of sourdough bread proofing, more laundry in the dryer and my grandson is sleeping.  Life is good-ish.

I'm working on a new quilt right now.  A young friend of mine at work is getting married this year and I promised her a wedding quilt.  Her favorite color is teal.  I hope she likes the colors.  I've known this young woman since I started working at my hospital.  She's like a daughter to me and I'm so happy she's found a man who makes her happy and who loves her as she is.

I've only worked two days this week and I am thankful to have today off.  We were short staffed on Monday and it was awful.  We were so busy we had patients waiting over an hour for us to even take them back to our waiting room where they often need to wait for another hour while they drink the contrast before their CT scan.  There was a lot of apologising by us, not by management obviously, but by the nurses who actually care for patients.  It always seems to be the way in hospitals.

Yesterday was a better day but there was still a big hiccup for one patient.  It was his first visit with us.  Patients with lymphoma and leukemia have a problem because cancer cells like to hide in their brains.  The chemo used to treat their cancers can't cross the blood brain barrier so the chemo must be administered through the CSF, cerebral spinal fluid, if they do end up with cancer cells in their brains The patient comes in, 5 mls of CSF is taken out by lumbar puncture and 5 mls of chemo is administered.

Before we can do this we need blood work to check coagulation and platelets, to make sure the patient doesn't bleed.  Apparently the nurse that the patient and his wife saw on Monday didn't think she needed to do the blood work that the hematologist had specifically ordered so when the patient arrived yesterday we had to get STAT blood work done which you wouldn't think would be a big problem except in a cost cutting measure, all of our coags now go across the street to the University Hospital, so STAT usually takes 2-4 hours.  Yesterday I walked the patient and his wife down to the lab and told the manager herself what had happened and I was deeply surprised to have the results back in 1 1/2 hours.  However, we then need to order the chemo which takes another hour to make.  The patient and his wife were wonderful but I felt so bad for them.

I gave them another lab req for Thursday so that this doesn't happen again for them on Friday.  What's so frustrating is that the patient and his wife had both questioned the nurse on Monday about drawing blood because of the IT chemo but the nurse knew better.  Fuck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  The lesson here, listen to your patient.

My grandson is doing well.  My son is back in jail.  Life goes on.  It doesn't upset me anymore when my son goes to jail.  The first time he went to jail was fifteen years ago and since then he's been in and out too many times to count.  There was a period when he did well and went back to school and got his Business Degree but those days are over.  He seems to careen from one crisis to another and I am trying so hard not to take responsibility for his fucked up life.  He is an adult and has been for a long time but I still wonder what I did wrong.  I imagine I did lots of things wrong, like every parent that has ever lived, but I wasn't a bad mother.  I still hope that he becomes a good man and father.

It's snowing here and looks like it will snow for awhile.  It's supposed to get cold this week too, down to -30C which I don't like but which makes -15C seem warm in comparison.  The chickadees are busy at the feeder outside the window and there is sourdough baking in the oven, so a good day.

The woodpecker just showed up too:)