Retirement: Review, Reflection and Refinement

I LOVE GAMES!!!!  I grew up in a family with four kids, before the dawn of computers, the internet and video games.   Television existed of course but there were only four channels and there wasn't always something interesting to watch.   Leisure time was spent playing outside, reading or playing cards or board games (or fighting with my sister 😄).  When visiting family, we also played games.  I have a million cousins and each family seemed to have their go-to games, each different from the others (maybe because we all lived so far apart?).  After a family reunion or visit, we'd head home with a new repertoire of games which we'd play until the next visit.  Card games were particularly plentiful.  I believe that my family has forgotten more card games than many people ever hear of in their lifetime. Unfortunately, I don't get the opportunity to play games often now that Levi isn't at home.  I do have a group of friends who get toge...

Does anyone remember the Arrogant Worms and their classic "Carrot Juice is Murder"?  The message doesn't hold up well to the times but the tune continues to be a bit earworm-y.  Ironic music aside, I am thankful that vegetables exist and that I enjoy many of them. I did not grow up exposed to many veggies and it has been a slow, lifelong process getting acquainted with them.  I continue to be a rather picky eater and I assume that there are quite a few vegetables that I have yet to meet.  Several "vegetables" that are actually not vegetables are on my no-fly list: zucchini and peas head up that catalogue, however I can tolerate them if they are well hidden in my food.   I am determined to absolutely detest eggplant (I believe I might spit it out if anyone was bold enough to try to fool me into eating some), ditto for bamboo shoots, and I was only recently introduced to brussels sprouts prepared in a manner that was quite delicious.    My grocery o...

With this post, I will be half way to caught up (until tomorrow when a new week starts and the amount of caught-up-ness becomes an awkward fraction).   Snowy days make me happy!  I love how the blanket of fresh snow changes the landscape so dramatically as to be almost unrecognizable.  I love how the trees bend and change shape when the snow is heavy on their branches.  I love how even tiny surfaces can have tall towers of beautiful white build up on them.  I love how snowflakes look in the micro-instant before they melt on my mittens.  I love how my cats sometimes get frustrated trying to hunt the flakes through the window.  I know that shovelling is not something that most of us enjoy and driving in a snowstorm is pretty crappy too but let's focus on the positive - this is a gratitude blog after all. We haven't had many snowy days this winter so I wasn't sure that this topic would be possible.  But I did bring my camera out on two occasions...

Look at me...on fire with the posts today 😃!   One of the topics I had planned to photograph was skiing.  I LOVE SKIING!!!  However, although I have coached kids in Jackrabbits and my job at Hiawatha this year was instructing with ski school, I am not an expert skier.  I have good technique (although I don't always use it 😆) and I have good endurance but I am not fast and I am known to be chicken on big downhills.  I can and will fall when snowplowing conditions aren't to my liking and I have mastered the art of ski-bumming (sitting on my skis to basically toboggan down a particularly alarming descent) in recent years.  One small but quite vertical hill on the Red Pine at Hiawatha has got into my head and I remove my skis automatically now on that one.  All this to say...I don't bring my camera skiing.  I would have brought it on the Pinder system at Hiawatha but the winter came and went (and came and went and came and went) so quickly, I m...

Well hello there!  Perhaps you thought I had disappeared again?  I have been negligent of this blog yes, but it has always been on my mind and I am determined that there will be 52 posts exploring the theme of gratitude by the end of this year.  Late yes, but not defunct. One of my main motivations for this project was to jumpstart my creativity in order to reignite my love of making photographs.   My trouble has been that I haven't been very inspired photographically these past several weeks.   The topics I had listed for myself week by week have not been working out, partly due to the weather not cooperating but also because I am again having some unexpected blips in making the adjustment to my re-retirement.  Maybe I'll talk more about that at a later date but for now, I'd like to work towards getting caught up (I am currently six weeks behind).  I spent the morning processing (and deleting) the photos I have taken over the past month and ...

Fair warning...I think I might have a lot to say about reading!  I am forever grateful to my parents for being readers and encouraging us to be readers as well. My first memory related to reading (and maybe my first memory full stop) is sitting on the couch with Anne and Pete who were taking turns reading the Christmas story on Christmas Eve.  I kept trying to get them to pass me the book but alas, I had not yet learned to read.  My siblings were so much older and more experienced (Pete 11 months older than me and Anne 13 months older than him).  I was determined that by the following Christmas, I would be reading that story too.  I'm sure I succeeded, although I have no definite memory of it. My reading has taken many turns over the years, from Judy Blume to reading (and ENJOYING) Stephen King in my teens, Harlequin Romances in my University years (give me a break, I needed something to cleanse my reading palate between all the VERY dry textbooks!), spy and thr...

Today I am grateful that I can be flexible.  Wait...I can hear some of you laughing but let me explain... I know that I am a planner/organizer and I like to know (prefer to know, maybe even need to know) what is coming up, how it's going to happen, where, when and with whom.  I know exactly where I will be on May 18th for example (Zoo-de-Mack) or April 8th (watching the total solar eclipse with family), or September 22nd (running the Canada Army Run half marathon) or this Saturday (skiing at Stokely with a meet-at-WalMart time of 0915). BUT...I can pivot when needed.  For example, if the weather over the next two days doesn't make for great ski conditions at Stokely, we'll snowshoe somewhere (please send your snow thoughts my way - this winter has been the pits in terms of winter sports and there is no snow in the two week forecast 😟).  See??? Flexible! Which brings me to the reason for my topic today.  This post was supposed to be about snowshoeing.  See ...