Burnt Toast and Tea

Last night after watching a very satisfying hockey game in which our team came from behind to win by two goals, I was craving burnt toast and tea. Bursts of exhilaration do that to me. Probably because all celebrations, big and small, all my life have been celebrated by eating.

Fortunately, by the time I got the dishwasher emptied and sparkly clean, the craving had passed. Cataracts may have contributed to the “sparkly” part. I’m never sure these days. Anyway, I hate to immediately put dirty dishes into a clean and empty dishwasher (I have given up trying to discover why I feel so strongly about this). And also I should not be eating anything late evening if I want to have a decent glucose reading in the morning, and last but certainly not least, I was as usual just too lazy to mess up and then have to clean the kitchen yet again for the day. So I went to bed instead.

Tea is rarely something I crave, and I only like the fruity flavoured herbal ones that are red (yes, that’s weirdly specific I suppose). But when it comes to toast, any bread will do as long as it is toasted to the verge of cardboard crispness with some black charred bits around the edges. Then it soaks up butter without losing its crunch. Yum. Crusts work particularly well for this. W freaks out if I forget to turn the dial back down on the toaster after I’ve used it. When his toast burns he throws it in the compost bin. And I shake my head and roll my eyes for the umpteenth time in a day over his bizarre behaviour. I don’t have a lot to do otherwise so it keeps me busy.

Puzzles are also taking up a lot of my time. I think this latest obsessive thing started for me in November when my daughter said “Geez mom get a hobby!” for some completely inexplicable reason. She gets that eye rolling thing from me I guess. Anyway since then I have done close to 20 big 1000 piece jigsaw puzzles. This is getting a TAD expensive. I am also setting records reading Kindle Unlimited free books to balance out the puzzle hobby expenses. I’m not even kidding! Kindle told me I have set a new personal record for books read in a month and reading in consecutive days. I wasn’t aware there was an old record to break. These cataracts are not slowing me down much for close up eye straining stuff! The wait for surgery is 3 to 4 months, whatever that equals in terms of puzzle purchases and books read. I don’t even want to make an estimate.

Our house is getting a bit of a makeover. New windows were installed the beginning of January (coverings coming in 4 weeks or so) and new doors are going to be installed on the 30th. Then we can talk about bathrooms. I’m leaving the kitchen for whoever lives here next because I don’t even like kitchens. Doctor and lab testing appointments have slowed down considerably for me now, so that’s good news. I still keep the head of my bed raised when I sleep to ease my breathing and I still use my walker for things like long treks down hallways to get to a medical office so that taking three steps sideways and falling on my head will not be the reason for the appointment. Not that it has happened exactly like that but little bouts of dizziness happen and they aren’t predictable. So. Just In Case. My other go-to expression is Let’s just get this over with. I am such fun to be around.

Every few days I get a friendly reminder from Word Press that “it’s time to blog on Breathing Space” so maybe you can imagine how many prompts it takes for me to actually sit down and write something. Let’s just say it takes less time to satisfactorily burn toast and steep red tea. Or put a puzzle or three together.

I’m not around here much anymore, but I am still around somewhere! Just thought enquiring minds might like to know. Love to all my blogging friends. I will probably be back sooner or later. After being prompted an insane number of times of course.

The Mysterious Can Opener Caper

The very new and the very old and why are those apples so shiny?

It’s obvious to me by my title choice that I have been reading way too many crime stories lately, featuring detectives who are enamoured of their own wit in naming cases.  I download sometimes up to three free e-books a day with not a hope in hell of ever reading all of them.  But I do it for a couple of good reasons.  One, they’re free.  And two, if I can’t get past the first chapter I have a minimum amount of remorse hitting “home” and choosing another title.  Because hey,  they were all FREE.

As usual, I digress.  I have a can opener story.  I mean, come on, doesn’t everybody?   It wouldn’t surprise me to find authors giving them away for free on Amazon.  Get Book One of the Suspense Filled New Can Opener Trilogy Thriller!  I’m a sucker for that kind of thing.

Anyway, this little black electric can opener I’ve had for many years was on sale for less than ten dollars way back eons ago.  I never thought at the time what possible reasons there could be for such a low price, but I wonder if the freaking racket the thing makes had something to do with it.  There can be no stealthy opening of cans in my house.  Unless you want to root around in ‘the drawer‘ for the hand held quiet ones.  We still have three of them I think.  Pretty sure two of them still work.

As with many such incredibly cheap items, this thing refuses to die.  If I’d picked up a forty dollar deluxe model it would have broken down in six months.  There is no doubt some Murphy’s Law about that very thing.

With use, however sporadic,  the little blade gets gooped up with the liquid from whatever I’m opening, and the little wheel that turns to rotate the can also gets grungy, as does the handle I press down to start the gawd awful wake-the-dead noise because I normally open a can only when I’m in the middle of some kind of complicated messy food prep. Like making tuna salad sandwiches. Trust me, I can make that complicated and messy.  So my point is, the thing gets dirty. And although I always have good intentions of cleaning it up in a timely fashion, the task does get overlooked.  Until it’s so disgusting I can’t do that anymore.

Yesterday afternoon I realized a soapy wipe was not going to be good enough this time around, so I armed myself with a pointy paring knife, dish soap, an old tooth brush, and super hot water from the sink sprayer, thinking if water somehow gets into the motor and ruins it, well it is old and cheap and who cares unless I electrocute myself later.

As I was scrubbing away and cursing the man who designed this impossible to clean piece of crap (it’s always a mans fault when something is hard to keep clean, have you ever noticed that?) the silver handle popped off and clattered into the sink.  And suddenly it was super easy to wash, and the little wheel was now exposed and clean in no time.  Seriously. And it all popped back together again.

It was one of those eureka moments.  The piece comes off so you can throw it in the dishwasher.  The guy who designed it (probably a woman) was not such a moron after all.  This is the second time I’ve been dumbfounded in the kitchen this month.  (Contrary to popular opinion, this does not happen on a daily basis.)  My son unscrewed the top from my immersion blender so it’s easier to clean the blade half.  I did not know it was meant to come apart.  Well, now I know two new things.  I wonder what other totally obvious things I’m missing.

This is why life for some people is a continuing exciting adventure of discovery.  In which a small thing like getting your can opener cleaned up can be the highlight of your day.

Okay, so this wasn’t really a caper, and also not particularly mysterious.  It’s about a kitchen utensil, so I don’t know what you were expecting.  I did hint at death by can opener, and that was pretty exciting, right?  And the story is free.  So we’re all good.

Happy last day of April.  Hope you’re enjoying the sunshine.

Sharing My World 79

Share Your World – April 23, 2018

If you could have an endless supply of any food, what would you get?

Sick.  And very fat.  Assuming I go with my first choice which is chocolate lava cake with real whipped cream.  And the only reason I thought of that is because I saw an Instant Pot recipe for it on Facebook, source of all indispensable information.  Good thing I don’t have a cake pan insert.  Phew.

I also want to say coffee, but that’s not exactly a nutritious staple either, so my final answer is soup.  You can have a mad variety with that one.  I’ve always said I could live quite happily on soup alone forever.  Not sure if it’s true, but it’s a fun thing to say.

List at least five movies or books that cheer you up.

It’s a rare thing for me to watch the same movie twice, but I did it with Bridesmaids.  Twice in a movie theatre and at least twice on Netflix after that.  If that one doesn’t make you laugh out loud more than once then I’m thinking you might need more help than a movie can give you to cheer yourself up.

I also can’t think of any book I’ve picked up to re-read in an attempt to improve my mood.  So I guess I’ll take a fail on this question.

Something I do like to watch though is multiple seasons of tv shows, because that’s like a book or movie that never freaking ends and can keep me up until ungodly hours in the interests of finding out what the heck god forsaken thing happens next.  And although I profess to prefer comedies, I watch a LOT of crime shows.  They’re not all that cheery normally, unless they’re badly done and then they’re hilarious and obviously listed in the wrong category.

If you were a mouse in your house in the evening, what would you see your family doing?

Not much.  So little in fact,  I would not be surprised if the mouse rather quickly passed out from boredom, or left altogether in search of a more stimulating environment.    W watches stuff on his computer.  I watch stuff on my IPad.  We yawn a lot.  We go to bed.  For a bit of excitement we might discuss the weather if it’s being its normal shitty self.  But that just puts us in a bad mood so mostly we skip it. Or he goes on and on about it and I don’t listen.  Yeah that sounds more like it.  Important to get this boring shit right.

What did you appreciate or what made you smile this past week? Feel free to use a quote, a photo, a story, or even a combination.

There was a question a week or two ago – Been anywhere recently for the first time? – and I’m going to answer it now because I actually did leave my house for an extended period of time.  We are talking hours.  Holy.   Imagine living here for so many years without ever visiting these two places –

Muttart Conservatory and the Art Gallery of Alberta.  I greatly appreciate Son and Daughter-in-law and grandkids who took me to see these places because they were both lovely.  Kind of makes me wonder what else there is that I haven’t been paying attention to in this city.

Then of course there’s my new books which I’ve mentioned already, pictured above.  I had to scrounge up a bedside lamp to start reading ( in bed, my favourite place to read), having forgotten that real books don’t light up in the dark.

Hope your world is also filled with wondrously magical things worth sharing. Oh, did I say “also”?  Okay I did, so I must have meant to, right?  Right.  More equally thrilling stuff to come I have no doubt.  Even though you might.

Something About Some Things

Yay for The Daily Post!  And yay for the word “vague” and Savage Chickens being vague.  I don’t know why all of that is inspiring for me today.  I suppose I could dream up some vague reasons, but why, right?  It’s  got me writing.  Good enough.

I had it pointed out to me that my last post was in December.  Well it’s kinda been January ever since, but finally (Finally!) I think the snow is giving up and going away.

So here’s a few things I’ve been up to in this hundred and some days-long month from Hades.

1.  Crocheting.  It all started with my sudden desire for an old lady shawl.  So I made one.  It looks like half of a giant doily and is not particularly warm.  My attempt at making a “shrug” was somewhat more successful but it was big and bulky and annoying to wear so eventually I took the seams apart and did a border and turned it into a blanket.  I have it on my lap as we speak.  And then the slippers began.  I don’t know if I’m up to fifty pair, but it must be close.  I guess you could call it an experiment gone out of control, but I do love messing about with patterns and sizes and different yarns, and my vague goal at this point is for my immediate family to have slippers for life.  They’ve all been very nice about it so far.  Even W has been wearing shoe box size monstrosities and professing to love how warm they are.  Now I’m working on the last sleeve of a rather interesting sweater and that’s maybe all you need to know about that.
2. Shopping the yarn sales at Michaels.  Sometimes two and three days a week using coupons and vouchers and going to the checkout getting the same unlucky lady almost every time, who would probably like to ask me WTF I’m doing with all these random colours bought in fits and starts but is too polite to ask.  Or more likely she’s seen it all before and does not even care.
3. Instant Potting!  Thanks to my son who brought his Instant Pot when they all came for a visit at Spring Break.  My mother was not a fan of pressure cooking and instilled in me a healthy fear of blowing up the kitchen with one of those things.  But a week of watching K use his (and eating all the delicious stuff you can make in it) was enough for me to find the courage to buy one.  I’ve been using it almost every day since.  Yay for more experimenting!  But, you know, on the cautious side.  I sit in another room while it’s working because if it blows I don’t want to go with it.  Childhood fears are really hard to shake.  But the soups are to die for.  Well, not literally.

The sun is shining, the temperature is almost balmy, and it’s getting harder by the day to justify my reluctance to get the hell out of my house and go for a walk.  Ice on the sidewalks has been a powerful deterrent.  Probably wouldn’t be able to find any now.  But I also have a ton of reading to do, many free e-books and three new actual real books from Chapters that I’m saving and savouring and slavering over.  Well that sounds vaguely disgusting.  I don’t even care if they were bad choices and are stupid stories, they are REAL BOOKS.  Yay for real books.

So, am I back to blogging?  Who knows.  Hope so.  Seems possible.  Time will tell. I love being vague.  Kind of the story of my life.  Or not. I don’t know.

Sharing My World 76

Somewhere north of Lake Superior on our road trip heading home taken through the car windshield en route because yes I am exactly that lazy.

Well look what I just retrieved from various places in the drafts folder.  Proof of my good intentions.  And other not so admirable traits.

Share Your World – August 14, 2017

When you leave a room, do you turn the lights off behind you or keep the lights on throughout your house most of the time?

When I’m home alone there are a lot of lights on everywhere, upstairs and down.  Probably because there’s no one following me around turning them off.  So I guess that answers that question.

What do you feel is the most enjoyable way to spend $500?

Because of some unexpected expenses this year, the unnecessary expenditures have been put on hold.  And those are always the most enjoyable kind, aren’t they?  Three people in the last little while have asked me, while browsing through my “library”, if I have any new books on my shelves.  It feels a little alarming to me to have to say that I don’t.  Buying real honest to goodness in your hand page turning books is the best way I know to spend time and money.  Because omg, look what you bring home.  Hours and hours of awesomeness.

I’m still doing lots of reading.  Every day I download one or two free e-books from Amazon.  There have been some real doozies but there have also been a few gems.  I wonder if I’ve missed my calling as a fiction editor.  I like the idea of someone else doing all the thinking and then I just improve the way the story is told.  I do a lot of skipping over the dreadful parts.

Complete this sentence: My favorite thing to do on my cell phone is…

Well first off I have to find the damned thing.  If I’ve left the sound turned on it makes that part easier.  I check for missed calls and text messages, making a mental note of how long ago they happened.  Sometimes I’m so on the ball answering a text it must truly startle the recipient, since my normal response is hours later.  I’m working on this, I promise, trying to carry my phone around with me from room to room, but doing that is also the reason I misplace it so often.  It could be anywhere.  It’s rarely used for phone calls because we still cling to our land line.  And I never use it for game playing because the screen is too small.  It’s always with me when I leave home, even for a walk, because what if I broke my ankle or got lost or needed to take a picture of the inside of my pocket?  Best to be prepared for these things.

Share Your World – October 9, 2017

What do you consider is the most perfect food for you? (It can be your favorite food to something extremely healthy.)

Once upon a time it was rich, dark, chocolate ice cream with drizzled chocolate syrup. Then unfortunately I grew up.

The perfect food for me now that I am old and boring is low in carbs, low in sugar, high in protein and essential vitamins and minerals and fibre and all that other good stuff, tastes fantastic, and a small portion completely satisfies my hunger. If you have any idea what that food is, please let me (and the rest of the world) know so we can all feel less despondent about leaving chocolate ice cream behind.

Meanwhile I will continue to struggle with my choices. However, I have to tell you I’m astounded lately by my consistently low glucose readings so I must be doing something right. Even though I continue to periodically give in to a craving for salty crap like potato chips.

Are you focused on today or tomorrow?

Today, this moment in time. Well that would be ideal, wouldn’t it? Never dwelling on the past, never fretting about the future. Never craving potato chips.

If you could interview one of your great-great-great grandparents, who would it be (if you know their name) and what would you ask?

My great-great-great grandparents on my dad’s side of the family were probably messing about somewhere in Scotland in the late 1700’s. Pure conjecture on my part since I’ve never researched anyone so far back. They could have come from anywhere and changed their identities for all I know. Since they are all dead I think I might be inclined to ask them what they’re up to now.  Or perhaps more realistically, what they were up to then.

What inspired you this past week? Feel free to use a quote, a photo, a story, or even a combination.

My lack of participation in the big world of blogging should be your first clue that I have been largely uninspired lately by anything at all.

 

Okay, so that ended on a bit of a low note! Must have been a bad news week.  Ever leave something in your draft files so long (because it’s not good enough to publish) that when you finally get around to cleaning them up, some of it really doesn’t sound as blah as you thought it did originally?  But as for the rest of it, the “delete” button is your friend?  I’m down to seven drafts, so on a desperate day any one of them could surface.  Apologizing in advance.

 

More Please

What would you like more of this year?  Here’s  my list.

1. peaceful sound sleep
2. great coffee
3. good books
4. amazing sunrises
5. gorgeous sunsets
6. smiles
7. creativity
8. writing ideas
9. positive thoughts
10. laughter
11. daydreaming
12. fun
13. love
14. gratefulness
15. magic
16. healing
17. random acts of kindness
18. crazy (the good kind)
19. sunshine
20. joy

Gotta get going on this one.  Starting with coffee.  Wish me luck.

Girls on Trains

The reading of this book went a lot faster than the previous one I ploughed my way through, and when I finished it I gave it four out of five stars.  Then I read some reviews and was surprised to see so many negative ones.  The biggest complaint was its comparison to “Gone Girl” with reviewers saying it either didn’t live up to expectations or that they didn’t like either one since the characters in both  were unlikable dysfunctional idiots.

Well, it was full of those, but I liked it anyway.  The story is told in bits and pieces by three women.  Rachel is an alcoholic who has blackouts and often a less than firm grasp of reality.  She has lost her home, her husband and her job and spends most of her time feeling bad about her situation, telling lies and making excuses and riding on the train.  She wallows and is unable (or unwilling) to change.

Anna (married to Tom, Rachel’s ex) lives in Rachel’s old house with Tom and their new baby.  She is exasperated by Rachel’s inability to let Tom go, her drunken phone calls at all hours and her lurking about, and she fears for the safety of her child.

Megan lives a few doors away with her husband, does not have the idyllic life that Rachel imagines as she observes the couple each day from the train, and has her own set of issues and secrets to deal with. For a short time she helps Anna out when the baby is small.  And gets herself up to even more shenanigans, but we don’t learn about that until later.

When Megan disappears, everyone left is a suspect, including Megan’s therapist who was seen by Rachel (from the train)  kissing Megan on her deck the morning of the day she went missing.

I can’t count how many times I sighed and thought OMG Rachel, what kind of asinine thing are you going to do next?  But hey, it kept me interested and reading right up to the end.  There’s a real art to giving out just enough information to get readers headed in a certain direction and then having them find out some new thing that changes their minds.

I stand by my four stars.  Even if you figure out the mystery well before the end, it’s still an enjoyable journey getting there.

A Finished Book

Look at me, all done reading a book!  And not knowing how to explain why it’s been so long since the last time I did that.

I remember reading Kate Morton’s other books…

• The House at Riverton
• The Secret Keeper
• The Forgotten Garden
• The Distant Hours

…so I didn’t think it would be a stretch to like The Lake House.  And I did like it.  I just didn’t love it.  There was way too much messing about getting to the point.  And far too many coincidences and characters and back stories and sub plots and descriptions and hopping around in time.  Just too many words.  I guess that’s why I could never write an entire novel, lacking the patience to expand everything to death without giving the ending away in the first chapter.

A child disappears and it takes seventy years to solve the mystery of what happened to him.  People with secrets!  You just want to give them a shake.  How’s that for a book review?

If the reading of this book hadn’t started well before Christmas and proceeded in fits and starts up until this afternoon I suppose I might have found it shorter.  Mostly I read in bed when I was already tired and rarely came across anything riveting enough to keep me awake.  Not even half way through I found myself no longer caring what really happened or why, but FINALLY the end arrived and it all came together in the neatest little package ever, tied with a bow.  I don’t know why that felt trite and disappointing, but it did.  Just too darned neat and tidy and resolved.

Anyway, it’s a story and it’s been told.  If you like Kate Morton you will enjoy this.  But I don’t think you will be blown away.

Deep Thoughts on a Shopping Bag

It’s the attention to little details that make shopping at Chapters such a delight for people like me who love this kind of thing.  If there must be a shopping bag, why not make it say something wonderful?  I forgot to take a reusable bag with me and I was walking, so I reluctantly said yes to a bag, but happily this one will NOT go directly into the recycle bin along with my guilt about the environment.  I will use it again, because you don’t just recycle John Keats.

Not in any way trying to out-do Keats, and everything he mentions in this quote is lovely, but I would like to change the sentiment a little to reflect my own personal preferences.

Give me

a blank canvas, crispy bacon,

Argentinian Malbec wine

soft candle light

&

a little peace and quiet…..

Hmmm… are all these things meant to go together?  I’ve never had bacon with my wine.  Or painted by candlelight either.

I do have some other weird habits though, one of which is reading labels and product descriptions and getting bamboozled into buying them simply because they sound peculiar and interesting.  I bought a hair product once because it promised to deconstruct my hair in to loose textured beach waves.  It contained black figs and sea salt.  Really.  Eventually I poured what remained of it down the sink because what it actually made my hair look like was a very structured haystack.

What is a beach wave anyway?  And why did I think I wanted some of those?  Hard to complain to the makers of a product when you don’t have a clue what they are promising you.

Great books are just the beginning.  Isn’t that an awesome little statement?  Even though it doesn’t specify whether it’s the beginning of something amazing or the beginning of something horrifying we still want to have those great books.  Because beginnings, right?

And we want those great books in great bags!

Thank you Indigo.  For your bags and your words and your little in-store coffee shop making all your books smell like Starbucks.  I will be back for more.  But you know that, don’t you?  Yes, you do.

Three Quotes: The Middle

“I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was.”
― Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Three Quotes in Three Days  (see yesterdays post)

I nominate three people out there who would like to complete this challenge!  You know who you are, even if I don’t!  Yes, that was a very lazy way of getting out of actually naming people.  No pressure here.  But I do recommend this book.  It’s wonderful and weird.

Hope you’re having an extraordinary summertime Tuesday.