I bought another orchid last weekend, couldn't resist the pink flowers and it was cheap.  We've all been sick this past week with nasty bug, lots of congestion, coughing, and generally feeling like shit.  My husband was the last to catch it and came home from work sick yesterday.  Jack is of course all better now and full of energy.  We handed out his birthday invitations at daycare this morning and I'm sure he'll be overstimulated for the next month, thinking about and planning his birthday party.  Fun.

It's snowing today and we're supposed to get 10-20 cm.  It's not terribly cold out, so I can still walk the dogs and enjoy the snow falling.  As I sit here typing, I just saw a huge flock of Bohemian Waxwings swirling about.  The Canadian geese have made an appearance which means spring is truly on its way.

I ended up getting lost in old photos on my computer.  I chose the best of Jack and will have them printed off, for his photo album.  Yes, I still have an old school photo album because I like turning the pages, and it will be something for him when he's grown, and my computer files have all disappeared.

I found this old photo of me and my first dog. I would have been ten or eleven at most.  

I was going to write more about the manosphere, something I just learned about today, but I'm tired of sitting at my computer now.  Have a good day everyone.

One of the bowls I made in pottery class, glazed and done.  I'm using it as a fruit bowl on my kitchen island.  It turned out better than I expected.

And below is the first soap dish that I made.  The second was an improvement, but that hasn't been glazed yet.

I'm not feeling 100% today.  No fever, but my body hurts and I'm congested.  I've had a sore right shoulder and neck for the past month and it's not getting better.  I've been putting heat packs on it, stretching, and taking advil but it's not going away.  I even had a massage and that didn't help either.  I should probably see a physio but it seems like too much effort to make an appointment and go there right now.  Maybe tomorrow.

Last week I bought some shelves for my front window, so that I have more room for plants.  The cat is too old now to bother with my plants and Heidi doesn't need her crate anymore because she's stopped chewing things.  When we got rid of the crate, I realized I could move the couch and have room for shelves.  Yay.

Back in January I bought myself a new bed frame and headboard and it was finally delivered last week.  On the weekend, hubby and I put it together and I no longer need the crappy old boxspring.  We brought it downstairs and Jack proceeded to make a fort out of it.  I told him that he could have the fort for four days, because I can only take so much disruption in my life sadly.

He loved making his fort more than actually spending time in it.  Today it comes down.

I'm too tired to deal with the general fuckery today.  Suffice it to say that the fuckery continues.

 

My pottery instructor was sick one day and was upset because she felt that we had not gotten to make as much as we might have made.  She decided to send us home with some clay, to make things, and bring them back for glazing.  I'm trying to make a dish for our cat, with some success.  The bowl she has now has a chip in it and I've been wanting to replace it, and now I can.  I'm finding that it's harder than I thought to work with clay at home, messy and I don't have a roller to roll out the clay nice and evenly, but it's also nice because I have more time to fuss with things, like a crack, or something I don't quite like.  I am enjoying it though and I'm making time for it which is important for me.  There is always housework to do, but I'm ignoring it and working on my pottery.  It's not like the housework is going to go anywhere.  It'll still be there when I'm done.

However, the dogs still need walking.  I had my first photography course on Wednesday evening, not Tuesday evening as I had said.  It was good.  I did have some envy because easily half of the ten particpants were travelling and wanted to brush up on their skills before going on a safari, or to Scotland, one woman had just gotten back from Antarctica.  Sigh.  The course was very good and I still have three more classes before it's over.

I took my camera with me when I went walking at the park yesterday, to practice with ISO mostly.  I'm pretty good with apertures.  I need to work on shutter speeds as well.  Baby steps.

I received this photo of Katie from one of her caregivers this morning.  They're at the zoo and Katie is obviously enjoying herself.  The sun is shining on her and she looks relaxed.

I'm feeling better finally.  The general fuckery was hard to get used to, but like most things, humans learn to accomodate.  We adapt, and fortunately my poor brain can still do that.  I'm thankful and I'm most thankful I still have my sense of humour.

I couldn't sleep last night, couldn't write, couldn't put a paragraph together, couldn't not think about the general fuckery in the world.  I know I am lucky.  I don't live in Ukraine or Gaza, my home is not being bombed or reduced to rubble and I am very thankful for that.  But I do live in a country that borders on the US which is now being run by ignorant monsters, and it worries me.  

Canada is small, population wise.  We make up 0.5% of the world's population and come in 37th in the world for population.  The US is the 3rd largest country in the world, by population.  We are small and and as a result, our economy is small.  This morning 25% tariffs on all Canadian goods (except oil, that's only 10%) were instituted by the US.  Overnight our friend and ally, our major trading partner, has turned on us, in an effort it seems, to destroy our economy.  trump will destroy his own economy in the process but is sadly too stupid to understand that.  And the people running the show, the billionaires, we need to call them what they really are, oligarchs, will not really be affected by any of this, except maybe to pick up more businesses at rock bottom, going out of business prices.

There is little I can do about this.  I can and will boycott American made and produced products as much as possible, but as you can see by the numbers, Canada is only a small blip in the grand scheme of things.  There are a lot of things we don't manufacture here, why would we, when the US produces them, but Canadians are banding together to find locally made and Canadian made products.  

But enough about trump and his twats.

I start a photography course this evening, my husband bought it for my Christmas gift.  I'm quite nervous about it because it's the technical side of photography which I know virtually nothing about.  I have to look at my camera manual for god's sake!  For those of you who don't know, I have ADHD and manuals and me just have a hard time.  Nursing school was no different for me.  I learn best by watching and doing, so I'm hoping for a lot of that, plus I'll ask lots of questions (Mary I'm looking at you).  Once the first class is over, I'm sure I'll feel better.  I'll have a better understanding of what's expected of me.  The unknown is always scary.  See above.

I'm hard at work in my pottery classes.  We have two more classes for making things, and then the last two classes are for glazing.  I'm going to take the same class again for the spring session.  We have such a lovely, young instructor.  She's kind, encouraging, and full of ideas.  I made my second slab vase yesterday and it was so much easier and better looking than the first one I made.  Improvement is satisfying.  The women in the class are lovely and encouraging too, and we talk which I love.

I've been stress cleaning which is good, at least the house will be clean.  When I can't control anything else in the world, my bathroom will be clean.  I'm also off to Ikea to buy a shelving unit for my front window.  Heidi no longer needs to be crated (she used to chew everything but has stopped) and I have more room in the living room which means the couch doesn't have to be up against the window and I can put some plants there.  Plants make me happy and I need some more happy right now.  

The world is too distressing right now.

Oak leaf caught in ice.

 Fungi of some sort.

Heidi at the dog park.

That's all I got.

I made this wall hanging for a friend at work, The Princess and the Pea.  I was inspired by a similar one made by Kate's mother, over at Stubblejumpers Cafe.  I think I'll make myself one too.

I'm still feeling down and then realized the date.  My mum died on February 25, 2013.  I still cry sometimes when I think about her and what the last year and a half of her life were like.  It wasn't easy for her or for me.  Mum died of a massive stroke, which is what she wanted.  She was terrified of ending up in a wheelchair and dependent on others to take care of her.  The last time she went into the hospital, she could still walk.  She was admitted on a Friday, had a stroke on Sunday, and died on Monday.  

I loved my mum.  She could be manipulative, in the nicest way possible, but she was a good mum.  I inherited her excellent sense of humour.  My aunt told me a story about the day my mum and dad got married.  One of my aunts was late to the wedding and came in part way through the ceremony.  My aunt had bought new shoes for the wedding and they squeaked as she walked into the church and found herself a seat.  My mum's shoulders started visibly shaking as mum silently laughed during her wedding ceremony, because of her sister's squeaky shoes.

Mum didn't have an easy life.  Dad was angry a lot of the time.  They lost five babies between me and my sisters.  She moved to a new country to be with my dad after the war. She missed her family in England and didn't see them again for almost twenty years.  She was not "allowed" to work outside the home by dad, once he made enough money to cover the bills.  She came from an upper middle class family in England and ended up living in what could be called a shack when she arrived.  I think that dad spent the rest of his life trying to afford nicer things for her.  Mum was also a beautiful woman and I think dad knew he was "punching above his weight class".

Most of all mum could laugh.  I still have her rubber chicken that someone gave her.  She loved jokes and she even loved dirty jokes, although she would say, "Oh Pixie."  I don't think mum knew what to do with me.  I coloured outside the lines and didn't always follow the rules.  I don't know if she was proud of that, horrified, or jealous.  She was a woman of her time, born in 1924.  

Mum taught me to laugh, she taught me to knit, and garden, and best of all, she taught me to love walking.  When my kids were little, and the weather was decent, we would all bundle up and go for walks with her.  Her father had four girls, a disappointment for him, I'm sure, but every Sunday, he would take one of them with him on his long walks.  So I guess I can thank my grandfather, whom I never met, for my love of walking too.

Mum holding me in 1962.

RIP mum.

This is the vase that I made in my pottery class.  I'm still waiting for the rest of the things that I made to be fired.  It turned out much better than I expected it to.  I like the colour and the leaves on it, and I was feeling pretty good until one of my classmates came in late and broke down crying.  Her brother had died in an accident on the weekend and she was a mess.  We held her, hugged her, and then another classmate and I drove her home as she was in no shape to drive.  I was feeling shaken up too by the time we got back to class, and the feeling lingered.

And poor Miss Katie seems to be on a downward trajectory again.  She beat herself up on Sunday and then again on Monday, comple with a couple of hours of screaming and crying.  I thought we had that licked, but I was wrong.  I hate to see her in pain (emotional pain).  It breaks my heart.

My neice is getting married in November, in Canmore, and I just booked the hotel room for us.  Sadly I did not pay close attention and booked with an American company online, so the amount was in American dollars, not Canadian dollars.  Not only that, but I don't want to do business with an American company when I will be staying in an Alberta hotel.  The cancellation process was painful, involving a nice Philipino man and much bullshit, but I finally got it cancelled and booked a room with the actual hotel, in Canadian dollars.  Now I just feel like an old woman who can't manage to do things on the internet, even though I've always been like this, except now I'm old and worry I have dementia. Sigh.

I think I just need a good cry

Yesterday I talked to my brother for awhile on the phone.  He just retired last month and is having a hard time adjusting to so much free time.  We had a lovely talk.  Apparently the sister I don't talk to, asked my brother why I hate her.  I told him that I don't hate her at all, I just don't want her bible judgements in my life.  She's been rude to me since I got pregnant with me son, almost 42 years ago.  I'm noticing that when people think I'm angry, it's more often that they're angry.  Funny how that works.  

At least the sun is shining today and it's supposed to get up to 7C.  I may get out in the back yard and do some poop scooping.  Don't be jealous, I know I lead a glamorous life.  

Don't mess with a cobra chicken:)