My lilacs are blooming and my tomatoes are starting to flower.  The sun is shining today and my girlfriend and I are meeting up to visit greenhouses and then she's staying for a BBQ.  I love that woman.  She is the sister I never had.

Not really much going on.  We're off for two weeks but staying home to catch up on life.  There are some projects around the house that need doing and I hope to take Miss Katie to Fort Edmonton.

Jack will be back with us on Thursday evening.  I always worry about him when he's with his mom.  Although we have permanent guardianship, we don't have day to day parenting of him, she does.  However, we do have the same rights as a parent and can intervene if she starts using or drinking again and we have proof of it.  She's starting to fall apart already and I know I should feel some empathy for her but I don't.  I just worry about Jack.  He's my priority.  

My apologies to everyone who has wondered where their posts have gone.  I only found my spam folder tonight and all comments have now been published.  Thanks to Yorkshire Pudding.

I'm so tired.  Last week while we were in Jasper, I had some adverse effects to the antibiotic I was taking for my endometritis.  I burned the hell out of my head and my hands felt very strange, prickly, cold and hot, and then started to swell a little.  So I threw out the pills and talked to the doctor yesterday who is sending me for another ultrasound and gave me a prescription for a new antibiotic.  One of the side effects of the new drug is insomnia.  Yay.

I went to bed at nine last night, read for an hour, tried to sleep, got up, read some stuff on the computer and went back to bed at midnight.  The last time I looked at the clock it said, 1:52.  My husband woke me up at 6am to drive him to work because I need the car today;  I have a massage, a physio appointment for my foot and then an ultrasound for my uterus.  

The book I was reading last night was called "The Dictionary Of Lost Words" and I would highly recommend it.  Part of the book is about the writing of Oxford English Dictionary but it's far more than that.  The book is about family, love, class, war, motherhood and sisterhood.  I cried so hard last night towards the end of the book and I couldn't stop crying.  I was reading about WW1 and the young men dying in the trenches and I thought, we have learned nothing!  More than a hundred years later and still people are killing each other in the name of war and all the stuff that's been eating at me for the past few months came up and I sobbed, unable to stop.

So this morning I'm tired and a little weepy still.  The weather is awful, rain, wind, clouds and it's turned cold again.  

The big guy is having a hard time too.  He's grieving his father's decline and inevitable death and he's angry as hell at his family and how they've treated him over the past thirty years.  Add to that his concern about Jack and he's feeling overwhelmed and overloaded as well.  I know this will pass but it's hard right now.  

I have the chance the reduce my hours to half of what I work now but I crunched the numbers and it's not possible right now, not without my pension.  So I'll wait until next year.  We will sell the rental house and the condo, pay off our mortgage and then I will work casual.  One more year.  

Update-I had a massage and came home and did some stretching that my body desperately needs and I'm feeling better.  Writing things out also helps get things out of my head, which also helps.  I'm okay, just spilling my guts to feel better.

We all survived our trip to the mountains.  Jack had a good time but I think he was very happy to come home too.

Actually, I know he was happy to come home.  Every day he said, "We go home now".  He loved the mountains but he loves his own bed even better.  Me too.

This photo was taken on the Icefield Parkway, one of the most beautiful highways in the world.  Not sure of the names of these peaks but they're just south of the Columbia Icefield.

Jack enjoyed the snow at the Columbia Icefield.  He's standing on top of a picnic table.

We took him by sky tram up Whistlers Mountain.  There's still a lot of snow up there.

He also decided he needed to start taking photos at the tender age of three.  He actually took some good photos.  I was impressed.

On the way home we stopped at the sand dunes beside the Athabasca River to wade in the water.  The water is always warmer there and he had a great time.  He peed in the water which was the most exciting part I think.

We're staying at Patricia Lake Bungalows.  Elk wander around the place, eating and just hanging out.

Today we drove out to Medicine Lake and came across this lovely bear, casually eating dandelions.  Jack was sleeping in the car so we sat and watched the bear for probably half an hour.  I've never been near a bear for that long.  It was amazing.

We also saw a young grizzly bear yesterday, about ten feet from our car.  The poor thing is young and spending time close to town because he's a teenager and not very smart yet.  A couple of park wardens helped him out, kept the bear and the people all safe.

Talbot Lake.  There was a fire here in 2003.  As long as I've been going to Jasper this area has been bare.  Only now can I can I see the pine coming back and they'll still be relatively small by the time I die.  Nature makes me understand how insignificant we are.

I visited my daughter in law this evening to drop of a carseat, clothes and a stroller, all outgrown by Jack.  My daughter in law is also a grandmother now; her grandson is only seven months old and he's already been through hell.  The baby had three broken ribs and a broken collar bone.  He ended up in hosptial for almost three months because he also had covid, complications and four surgeries.  He was also born two months early and spent a month in NICU.  I wrote this poem for him.  His great grandmother now has guardianship of him and is caring for him.  He broke my heart.  

I met a little boy tonight

his daddy broke his ribs 

and mommy didn't tell

I met a little boy tonight 

tired of the hospital cribs

and tired of the hell

I met a little boy tonight

tired from his bath 

I held him tight

and rocked him close

as nanny warmed his milk

I met a little boy tonight

who's been through hell and back

he drank his milk

and closed his eyes

asleep in nanny's arms