My other little grandson, Charlie, turned one this week.  His mother was kind enough to invite us to his birthday party.  The party was a bust, his mom was tired and stressed but the little guy had a good time and that's all that matters.  His one eye looks red because his big sister tried to put his face in the cake but only managed to get icing in his eye.  We got to meet her family which was interesting.  They've all had difficult lives.  

My garden is coming along nicely, enjoying the heat after a wet, cool spring.

The veg, especially the tomatoes, are growing great guns, as my mum would have said.  Next to the bird feeder in the photo, is a bird house which has been filled with a family of sparrows.
 

I saved some pumpkin seeds from Jack's Halloween pumpkin last year and they've grown well too.  I had no idea how big their blossoms were.

I planted some sunflower seeds on the deck planter and they've grown well too.  I can't wait to see them bloom.  I love yellow flowers.

Jack is with us and had fun at his brother's birthday party last night.  Tomorrow we're off to the zoo where we'll meet up with my daughter in law (still feels strange writing that) and Charlie. On Sunday Jack is going to another birthday party.  Our neighbor's little girl is turning six and Jack has been invited to her party.  Which reminds me, I have to pick up a barbie doll for her.

Today we're going to Wetaskiwin to visit my father in law who is still with us and is doing well, thankfully.  I'm going to make him a treat to take down for him, kapucijners.  Not something I would view as a treat but he loves them.

I have a hard time allowing people into my life, for many reasons, and my family seems to have exploded in number this year.  It's not a bad thing but it does cause me some stress, more balls to juggle, more people to get along with, more people to worry about.  I was always told that I was a difficult person by my family and my ex-husband and yet the people who know me now think I am a kind, wonderful person and it's confusing to me I guess.  Did I change, or was I just difficult for them?  I have different people in my life now and less stress.  Dealing with Katie's diagnosis and caring for her was the hardest thing I ever had to do, with no support from my family.  It hurt a lot and I imagine I lashed out at them in anger.  But when I look back, my family was never there for me, they never had my back.  I told my brother in law not that long ago that I was the black sheep of the family and I was. I have a lot of hurt still I guess.  So unusual, I know, pain and disfunction in a family, how novel:)  

A photo of Medicine Lake that I took last month when we had a few days in Jasper.  The lake is endlessly fasinating, emptying and refilling over the course of the year, never the same twice.

I've been reading a lot, as per usual.  One of the books was a reread, "When God Was A Rabbit" by Sarah Winman.  An excellent book which is about our own history, how we tell it, who remembers it and what happens when it's lost.  It's mostly a book about a brother and a sister though.  I enjoyed it just as much this second time around and it made me think about our own stories.

The other book that I just finished reading was "The Messy Lifes Of Book People" by Phaedra Patrick.  Her books are lighter fare but this particular book is about writing.  It made me think about writing, about me writing, something I've toyed with for many years, thirty plus years and I guess blogging is a way for me to write too.

I have stories I want to tell and I started writing one and then realized, it's not my story anymore, I'm not tied to my past, it's the characters story.  It was a liberating and slightly terrifying realization.  We shall see how far this goes.  I have a track record of starting out strong and then getting bored and writing is hard work that takes a long time.

I've been back on the floor for six half days and my foot is more painful.  Fuck.  I'm so tired of this and I feel so bad for my manager who struggles to ensure we enough staff.  It will heal but it's taking so long and I'm tired of limping everywhere.

It's been bloody hot and humid here.  The plants are happy, especially my tomatoes.  The wild lupins and the echinacea that I grew from seeds are both doing well.  I also bought an indian paintbrush and planted that, so I have a small wild flower garden going on which I'll probably need to expand next year.  The last couple of years I have planted blanket flowers (so named because it used to blanket the prairies) there and they have self seeded themselves which makes me happy.

We're off to visit Miss Katie shortly.  Have a good day.  

I'm back at work half days on the floor and half days making phone calls.  My foot hurts but it's not terrible.  The podiatrist said it can take six to twelve months to heal.  I even went into the interventional suite for the first time in three months yesterday morning.  Of course, everything that could go wrong did, a wire with no luer lock on the casing, tiny veins, four pokes, bleeding post PICC insertion and a securacath that wouldn't lock to keep the line in place.  But we made it through and the patient and I talked about books the whole time.

A coworker of mine also works in one of the emerg departments in the city.  She was working triage last week and a guy came in by ambulance because he couldn't fart.  He had a bowel movement in the morning but felt like he had a stuck fart; but instead of driving to emerg, or taking a cab, he called 911 for an ambulance.  A fart.  It boggles the mind.  Another patient had a stuck butt plug which had to be removed and the patient left the butt plug behind, why?  

The older I get, the less I understand people.  

I haven't talked to my mother in law yet because I don't have a poker face and can't hide my feelings.  I've learned a lot about her this past month and none of it has been good.  My father in law is still alive, despite several brushes with death.  His mind is going but if we talk about the far past, he's pretty good, or at least nobody can confirm or deny his stories:)  He's a sweet, old man whom I shall miss when he's gone.

He has a mouth full of chocolate in this photo.  

Jack spent the weekend with his other side of the family at the lake so we had a free weekend.  We worked on the yard all weekend which was nice.  Got a lot of things done that had been neglected over the past year.  My tomato plants are doing very well.

Life continues on.  I feel restless.  Our holiday was not a holiday and both my husband and I feel put upon by everybody else.  We are both duty bound and put duty before pleasure, when in fact there needs to be a balance.  

The weather here remains cool and damp.  Last summer I enlarged my front flower bed and planted a peony.  This flower was the only bloom on the plant this year and when I got home yesterday it was handing quite low due to the rain, so I cut it and like Ms. Moon, stuck it a jar of water and admired it in the house.

My brother in law has gone home.  His last day here was Sunday and I phoned my mother in law to let her know that J would be visiting his father from 10-2pm.  He doesn't want to see his mom and his sister said she didn't want to see him.  It was his last visit with his father, probably the last time he will see his father, a father he hasn't seen in almost thirty years.  

My sister in law showed up there about forty-five minutes after he got there.  I've learned a lot about her this past visit.  She supplied her thirteen year old brother with alcohol, a lot of alcohol, enough alcohol to make him puke.  She did this for him until he was old enough to buy his own alcohol.  WTF!

My brother in law texted me when his sister showed up at the hospital and he drove back to Edmonton in a rage.  All he wanted was to visit with his father and that was not allowed.  His visits were interupted by his mother and another sister as well.  

My brother in law is a lovely man who reminds me of a lost boy.  He swears a lot and gets mad a lot and his emotions leak from him, especially the hurt and the pain.  Him and his brother, the big guy, are a lot alike, two lost boys who have been treated horribly by their family.  It's heartbreaking.  

It wasn't all bad though.  I got to meet Aunt and her husband.  Aunt is my mother in law's sister, and another person my mother in law won't speak to. Aunt played a large role in the family; she was a safe place for her sister's children and she's important to my brother in law.  

Families are fucked up and not just my own family apparently:)

Our holidays end tomorrow.  We didn't go anywhere, other than Wetaskiwin to visit my father in law and Fort Saskatchewan for the big guy's eye surgery.

My father in law is back on antibiotics for another UTI.  Eventually his kidney function will decline to the point that he can no longer recieve the tobramycin or the bacteria will become resistant to it.  Who's to say which will happen first?

On the upside, my brother in law is here visiting and the big guy is smiling again.  They've been swapping stories about the last thirty years and ratting each other out about things they did as kids.  He can talk to his brother and that's what he needs, what they both need.  I'm thankful they have reconnected.

My foot is still sore, although nothing like it was, but still too sore to go back to work on the floor so I'm not sure what will happen at work.  It's been three months now and it make take another three to six months.  I see the podiatrist on Wednesday so she'll be able to give me some idea but I wonder if I'll make it back on the floor before I retire.  I guess time will tell.  Not sure how I feel about that, although I do plan on working casaul even after I retire.

The days just seem to slip away somehow.  It's wet and cool here and is supposed to stay cool all week.  It doesn't bother me like it would have when I was younger.  My plants are doing well, especially the newly planted maple tree, Big Red.  He's happy and growing well.  

Jack woke up at 3am this morning.  He's got a bit of diarrhea, probably from drinking the damn pool water.  We have a little inflatable pool and he drinks water out of, despite repeated warnings not to.  He likes to fill up his water guns in the pool and then drinks out of the water guns.  I'm sure it's good for his immune system but not so much for his intestinal system:)  He's sleeping now after a bitchy morning, both Nana and Jack were bitchy and tired.  

Me on Monday when I go back to work and have to make phone calls for six hours.

We had Jack this weekend, most weekends.  He was full of piss and vinegar.  Saturday night I thought I would die of exhaustion, but I didn't.  Yesterday was much better and I took an hour to sit outside and read a book.  I say this often and tell others to do the same, but I need to care for myself and I haven't done that, ever.  I take care of everyone else.  

I picked up a book last week at Walmart, I think.  It's called "The Change" by Kirsten Miller, a young woman; I wondered what the hell the writer would know about menopause and then, math.   I looked her up and she was born in 1973, not as young as she looks and apparently I have a mental block when it comes to people born in the seventies.  How can they be old enough to go through menopause?  

Anyway, the book is about menopause but it's also about women and women's power, the treatment of women, murder, and friendship.  I've recommended it to Ms. Moon but I would highly recommend the book to everyone.  It's well written and made me think about my own power which I seem to have given up.  

I've felt old this past year.  It's been a horrible year but I'm not old or powerless and it was the kick in the ass I needed to get my own head out of my ass and reclaim my own power.

I don't know why men are so afraid of women and our power, or us having power.  I don't know why men think that women are disposable, expendable or replaceable.  Not all men, obviously, but it's more common than many would have us believe.  Even lovely men who love us don't understand what it's like to be treated differently because we are a woman.  I had one doc grab me and tell me that I must obey him because I am a woman.  Another doc put his hands on me and sexually assualted me at work, in the report room.  He lost his license and I testified twice against him.

The United States is a case in point right now.  The US has the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world.  Look it up.  The supreme court in the US has decreed that abortion should be once again be illegal.  Who decided this?  Six men and three women.  Six people who don't have uteruses decided for an entire country what women should be able to do and not do with their uteruses.  Six men have decided that thousands of women are once again expendable, that their lives are forfeit because they may get pregnant and if an abortion is needed, they cannot have access to one.

So a country that doesn't provide universal health care, or a year of paid maternity leave, or affordable daycare or free childhood vaccinations or health care, has decided that what's needed is more unwanted children.  That will solve everything, all of society's problems.  WTF!

It's more complicated than that, but it's not really.  These six men and three woman have decided that what they believe is right.  Except fifty years ago that was not the case.  Are they both right?  Are they both wrong?  Is it any of their fucking business what women do with their bodies?  

If women can't have safe abortions there will be more back street abortions.  Unwanted pregnancies will not go away, not with wishing and not with this throwback of a law to the dark ages.  No contraception is 100% effective.  Women will die and children will suffer. 

So again I will ask the question, why are men so afraid of women and of us having autonomy over our own bodies?

     

Heidi at the dog park.

We've had a lot of rain and huge black clouds.  The rain came down so hard yesterday while we were on the highway that was hard to see and scary.  The black clouds match my mood.  I'm still tired and feeling down.  I'm going to take the dogs for a walk shortly and I'm hoping that will help lift my mood.

The big guy had his cataract surgery this morning and they gave him an ativan.  He's sleeping on the couch right now and I'm sure he'll stay there for most of the day.  All went well and he is the proud owner of a new lens.

Jack came back to us yesterday.  Poor guy was so tired but he slept well and went to daycare today, happy as a clam.  This weekend he'll get a chance to visit with his little brother and Miss Katie.  Hopefully that's a good thing.  Katie's kind of on his shit list right now because she laughed at him.  

My brother in law is coming again next week for a visit which will be nice.  A chance for the two brothers to visit their father together.  My father in law is doing well, now that his UTI has been successfully and correctly treated.  Time will tell but for now he's enjoying my homemade cheesecake with bumbleberry coulis.  

I'm still on holidays and will need to see the podiatrist before I go back to work.  My foot is starting to feel better which is nice.  This morning I didn't even use my cane when I got up out of bed.  Progress.