Where Have I Been?MY

I'm baaack! Oh my it's been so long. I have only one reason for being absent, work. From the time my plane hit the ground in Edmonton to the time it took off again it was all work. Crazy work. So get a cup of tea/coffee/wine whatever you fancy and let me spin you a tale.

I noticed the last month that I was in Mexico last winter that I wasn't feeling right up to snuff, something was off, not off enough to go to a doctor. Sometimes a nagging head ache which I blamed on my swimming goggles (I learned how to swim and boogie board), sometimes just not very energetic, sometimes a fever, sometimes constipated (yeah in Mexico, that's really off) and yet sometimes not. It was cold in Chihuahua, thought maybe I'd caught a flu bug. Day before I left Mexico I was covered in a very fine rash, then I knew something was up, but no time to go see a doctor, I would wait until I got home......this was my big mistake.

It took 2 weeks to get in to see the doctor, by then I had done my own research and had diagnosed myself as having Dengue fever, doctors hate it when you diagnose yourself. During the course of 3 more weeks I had 3 doctors, all of which had to goggle Dengue fever. After a blood test it was confirmed that I did indeed, to their surprise (not mine) have Dengue fever. Now they don't know what to do with me, except monitor my blood to make sure I am not bleeding to death internally. Meanwhile i am working  my ass off breathing life back into a frozen and dead golf course after a brutal winter. Working long hours. Not to bore you with all my whining, let's just say I slowly and quietly suffered for about 4 months, I dragged myself to work and back each day. Everything around me suffered as well, my yard, my beautiful garden, and my house. Here is the surprising part, I didn't care. I didn't care to work in my garden or my greenhouse.

 It was clearly time for a change, a big change, one that I had been thinking of for awhile but just wasn't ready for. I no longer needed a big house, a big yard, a big garden, I need to simplify my life. To hurry this along for you, I bought the prefect little 19 ft holiday trailer (a glamper), I searched online and held out for the prefect one (this took all summer) and it's a beauty, a 1974 Squire, bought from the original owners. It was love at first sight. I sold/donated most of my "stuff", aside from a small chest stored in a friend's shed full of some "worldly treasures" my life now fits into my little 19ft glamper. I am so proud of myself that I managed to do this without buying a shed or rent a storage unit and it was easier than I thought. The more I got rid of the more freeing it felt and the more I wanted to get rid of. I had to totally clean my house which was very cleansing and therapeutic. I learned so much about myself.

I was living in the past, mourning my broken marriage and my child growing up and moving out. I couldn't believe it. I was not mourning my x-husband....gosh no, I was mourning the marriage, I hadn't moved on from being married and having a child to raise to being single, to living alone. I hadn't embraced being single.  Single people don't have a deep freeze full of food, single people don't have 30 jars of salsa or 25 jars of tomatoes sauce or 30 jars of jam in the pantry. They don't have boxes of teddy bears in the shed, or old hockey equipment for a 7 year old. they don't have dishes in the cupboard for 20 people, they don't have 20 containers of pumpkin sauce in the freezer (nobody does) and they don't have a 3 bedroom house with 2 bathroom and a huge "rec room". When I say this was easy I don't mean that I didn't cry, oh I cried buckets of tears as I came across all kinds of treasures. All kinds of tears. Things were dealt with though, dealt with so that I no longer need to hang on to a house full of crap. I Learned that I don't have to hang on to a box of my child's teddy bears, getting rid of them does not mean I am a bad mother, I learned that I don't have to keep living in this house, my child is not coming back to sleep in her old room, I can move, I can leave, and I don't have to hang on to her stuff anymore, stuff that she doesn't even want. Single people do not store other people's stuff, other people store their stuff.

It was a hard summer, it was a summer of tears, nostalgic tears, tears of work frustrations, tears of fear of change, ghost tears of the past, tears of pain from the present, tears of tiredness,  and the cleansing tears of finally letting go, and lets not forget tears of guilt, guilt for not being able to keep up with everything.

And if all that wasn't enough, I also quit my job (gasp), I finished the season and then resigned. I spent 9 years at that golf course, leaving that beautiful place brought a few buckets of tears too. I won't bore you with my reasons for leaving. Member....this space is never to be about work. It was also just time.

So, come spring time I will searching for a new golf course and a place to park my home on wheels. Right now it is safely stored at a friend's farm.  Stick around, life is about to get very very interesting. I am finally really single and totally free. Free of baggage.  So.......I booked a ticket to Turkey and Jordan and Mexico. Yup, that's quite a trip. Stick around and I will tell you all about it.

 But first, I spent some time with my kids. My first grandchild almost makes me cry every time I see him, he is the exact imagine of my daughter at his age. Not only does he look like her, he acts like her, talks like her and this may sound weird, when I touch him or carry him he feels like her, he has her bones structure and carries his weight just like her. My second grandson has her nose and her smile but he is built differently, he will decide who he is and by the looks of him, will beat his own drum and make up his own songs as he goes. These 2 little darlings melt my heart.

So, now, hang on, right after Halloween we're going to Turkey.....I hear they have good food there. 

My new home, everything I own fits in here. 

I did discover paddle boarding, bought a board and had time to put it in the water 3 times, enough to know it will be a new hobby. In looking for a new job and a place to park my new home I will be making sure there is a body of water close to paddle. 

This little man has stolen my heart. 

Did you ever see a cuter face

This guy can't stop smiling, he is adorable like his big brother

Hanging out after a hard summer, relaxing. 

Halloween, this little man shares his grandma"s love of all things green....including John Deeres

Seeing as I will not be back to this golf course I figured it was fitting to add some last golf shots......to us turfies, we call it "golf porn". While this space is never supposed to be about work, a part of my job is who I am.

Stick around, we"re going to Turkey

from a sweater to a pile to a blanket to a sweater

Where have I been you ask? At work and at work and at work. I have been coming home from work, stripping my dirty clothes off at the door, in the shower, a quick bite to eat, feed Louise......oh yeah, have to tell you about Thelma. Then to bed.....it was like that for about 3 weeks, but it's over now, the weather has turned and we are now in "just getting it over with" mode.
So, one morning Thelma had died during  the night, and I have no idea why. There were no signs the night before that anything was wrong, she seemed her usual self, was eating, but hadn't laid an egg for some time, I thought this was just because she as molting, I do think she was molting but chickens don't die from that, maybe it was a tough molt, I have no idea. There were no marks on her showing that something got her. It was rather sad finding her that way and I felt so bad for her faithful friend Louise who is now alone, well not totally alone.

 yup, that's Bobbi, the cat that doesn't live here and isn't a pet. When you come to my house this is what you see on my front step;

He may lift his head to see who is coming...or he may not.

He changes position once in a while, not sure who us feeding him...ok ok....sometimes I feed him, but not as much as his derriere is round. He is s big round lump of cuteness.

For the most part I am o with loosing Thelma, I am a farm girl and I know that is how it goes on a farm. I just would like to know what happened, it was no sudden. Louise will be with me for a few more weeks and then she will go back to the farm where she came from and if the rest of the flock will  welcome her back she will spend the winter there, if the flock will pick on her she will be butchered, and I am ok with that. I sure am still enjoying her, she is still laying me an egg everyday and I love hearing her clucking away in the back yard.

Remember me unraveling my favorite sweater? I had some problems....ok lots of problems, so I went to get some help and unraveled the whole thing, turns out the colorful flowers on it were small pieces of cut yarn, every piece was cut not dragged alone the back, which meant a whole pile of little 4 inches pieces of yarn....what to do with them, certainly not reusable. No...I didn't throw it out, you know me better than that, I could spin it together on my spinning wheel...maybe some day. For now it's tucked away safety in a closet, call it "sheep insulation". I ended up with grey, black and white yarn and after a trip to the yarn store I bought some yarn to put some color into the sweater, but wasn't too sure how to incorporate it into the pattern, I didn't want anything too complicated, something simple. Then one day as I saw my yarn sitting on a chair....yes my yarn sits on a chair in the living room so that I can look at it everyday....actually I almost never sit in the living room ....or sit at all, I saw my yarn and I saw something. Do you see it? Red, white, yellow, green. I think just blue is missing.

 I was reminded of the Hudson's Bay blanket. My colors are not as bright and I have grey as a background instead of white, but this was my inspiration. Stripes are easy, not complicated.

I want one of these really really badly now, I have visions/dreams/fantasies of making a quilt like this for my bed., an by now you know me and this is not going to go away soon. It's going to be in my head all winter. I want this. 

So I fired up the needles right away and soon discovered that I don't like knitting skinny stripes much, I don't like switching colors so much, and something weird always happens at the color change part, it's never a smooth switch a roo, so then it was decided that the sweater will have a green, a white, a red and a yellow stripe at the bottom, just above the ribbing and then the rest of it will be grey and the same stripping at the bottom of the sleeve just above the cuff ribbing. Then I had the green, white and red stripe done and I realized that that was the colors of the Mexican flag, it so happened that it was Independence Day in Mexico that day (September 16) and so I had Mexico on my mind all day...ok I have Mexico on my mind all day every day now...but much more on that day. Should I leave out the yellow and call it my "Mexico flag sweater"?

Add a yellow strip or not?

It is a beautiful yellow, perfect shade for the red and green. 

Not sure how to proceed, good thing it's Monday tomorrow morning and I have 89 other things to do this week and I can think on this for a bit.

Soon my work clothes will get put in their cozy Rubbermaid container and put in the shed for the winter. I won't miss them but I am always happy to see them again in the spring. 

Soon I will have eaten my garden, oh how I have enjoyed my garden vegetables. 

This week I will put my garden "to bed", last year I did it last minute and that really messed with my happiness as I was preparing to leave the country, this year I will get it done early, so to not jeopardize my happiness.

Here are some shots from my office before we put it all "to bed" as well.

It's golf art. I'm a geek that way.

I started this at the beginning of summer for my grandson's bedroom...finally finished. It was of course ordered by my daughter. The quote is from one of Robert Munch's books.