2013 IN REVIEW

Over the last few days, I have been thinking a lot about life....and death. What brought me to start thinking about this? It may well have started with a death.... On Thursday the 19th of December, there was a report of a fatal car crash on a nearby highway. Well, it just so happened that a couple had just dropped off their dog to be looked after over the holidays, because they were driving to visit family and did not have room for Nova in their vehicle. When they left, they were headed to their home, which would take them past where the accident had reportedly happened. I was hoping that it was not them, or anyone else that I knew. (It's bad enough that SOMEONE had been in it.) It turned out that the two occupants of the vehicle hit by the other, WERE know to myself and my children! The victim, an 18 year old girl, had been a crush of my son's, and the driver was a cadet in the Squadron that both my children are members of! This accident hit my son particularly hard, because of the connections he has to the people involved. The boy driving was not very badly injured, but suffers in other ways due to the accident. The girl's funeral will be son's first since my mother passed away almost 12 years ago, when he was just 6 years old. It will be the first funeral involving good friends, and someone his age. My son intends to keep close contact with the boy who was driving. He wants to make sure that he gets a shoulder to lean on when he needs it, or whatever else the boy needs that my son can do for him. Needless to say that I am very proud of my son! This accident has affected me more than I ever thought that it would.... I think that it is because I know the drive quite well, and that I met the victim a few times in the last year. I also think that it is because she was the same age as my son, and he has just received his drivers' license. --- And our roads have been particularly bad this winter. (Even though the roads were clear and dry at the time of the accident.) This Christmas, we have a house guest: a dog that I decided to take care of over the holidays, so that her owners could drive to Winnipeg to spend them with their family. They had to take their smaller vehicle, so there was not room for Nova to go along. She is a Shepherd of some sort (my husband thinks that she is part wolf!) She is not very well trained. But is a good dog just the same. I have been working with her, to see if I can train her a little. But, I don't think that I am experienced enough with dogs who are older, and who have not been worked with much. She is well enough behaved, but she could use some more manners when taking food out of your hand or walking on a leash... Oh well, she's only hear for a few more days, so we will just have to manager as is. This year was somewhat eventful, my son graduated from high school, and is looking for a job while he waits to either enlist in the army or go to college to take an Emergency Responder Course. My daughter finished junior high, and is now in high school. She seems to be somewhat happier there, than she was in junior high. The school population is larger, so hopefully she will be less likely the target of bullies like she was in junior high. So far so good! She is also enjoying her classes much more. The teachers at our local high school seem to be a group of caring teachers who are good at what they do. Time will tell if this will continue on into the next semester, and the next two grades. I surely hope so. We have been working on renovating our basement. This started earlier than we had intended, because we developed a leak in the foundation this Spring. This was probably caused by a faster than usual melt of the snow. Anyway, now we are clearing out our basement, so that we can develop it into a suite for our son to live in. But first, his girlfriend will live down there, when she comes to stay with us for the summer. -- She lives in Saskatchewan, and wants to come here to work this summer, and visit our son. It is amazing how much junk one accumulate in 13 years! We have come across things that we had forgotten that we had! Everything must be cleared to give my hubby room to move around, and room to demolish some of the walls affected by the flood. My next few blogs will be about this process. Also because of the leakage, we had a friend of our son's dig a hole by the foundation, so that my hubby could reseal it and check the weeping tile. We are trying to decide what to do in the spring: should be have a cement patio installed in front and back of the house, where the leaks occurred? Would that help stop them from re-occurring? My hubby has planned to rebuild the walls in the basement, that face the foundation with a space between them and the foundation walls, so that he can access the foundation if the leaks reoccur. Then he plans to install a kitchen area, rebuild the walls in our office that were demolished due to the leaks. He also plans to install, or have installed a bathroom in the basement, finish the walls, floors and ceiling in the laundry room, storage room, bathroom areas! We plan to have all of this done by the time July 2014 comes, because that is when our guest arrives! WHEW! As I said, I intend to chronicle this journey into construction from beginning to end! It should be interesting! The rest of the year was relatively uneventful, except that our son turned 18 in April, graduated from high school and earned his drivers' license. Our daughter finished junior high and entered high school, where more BOYS exist! This will be her greatest challenge: keeping her head in the books, and off of the cornucopia of boys that surround her at school.....wish us ALL luck with this one!

MY HEALTH AND LIFE'S ISSUES

My seems to keep deteriorating.... BUT I don't seem to want to do anything about it.... Why? Because I seem to have this crazy idea that I am going to suffer the same fate as my fate as my Mother. She passed away 11 years ago at 66 years old from ALS or Lou Gehrig's Disease. Why do I think this? BECAUSE: Of all of her children, I am the MOST like her: I look like her - I am the only child who has her coloring - Blonde hair Hazel eyes. All of my siblings have dark hair and eyes. I am the same height as was: 5'4" I have the same weight issues she did: I am struggling with it. I have been depressed for most of my life; as was she. We both had difficult childhoods. Different reasons, same results. Her mother died at the age of 66 years, from complications resulting from obesity, heart issues, blood pressure issues and diabetes. I am obese, have diabetes, high cholesterol, depression, and thyroid issues. Her next oldest sister died due to complication with ALS....at the age of 66 years. So I figure that I have approximately 15 years of life left. I am 50 years old at this moment. So instead of fighting to get "well" I am curling into a ball, and slowly succumbing to my fate. Why though? I have two kids who need me....although I am sure that my husband could manage quite well without me.... I have never heard him say otherwise, so I assume that this is so. (I have told him on several occasions that I could never have accomplished what we have without him.) ? What is it gonna take to shake me out of this? I have already almost died once during a surgery.....does this need to happen again? Maybe if I remembered anything about the near death experience, it would make a difference.....maybe. WHAT DO I DO ????

SAME OLD SAME OLD.......

Looking over my past posts, I've come to realize that the issues in my life keep rotating.....taking turns repeating themselves over and over again..... Why? I TRY to resolve each issue as it arises.... I THOUGHT that I had them conquered.... BUT NO! I guess that I was just fooling myself into thinking that these issues were done and over with! Why? Why doe they keep repeating themselves? I am I not learning anything from them? Is my husband? I have always though of myself as being reasonably intelligent.... I have always thought of my husband as more intelligent than me.... (I have learned A LOT from him, and hopefully he has learned something good from me.) We have been trough a lot together in the past 21 years. But still the question remains, why are the same thing repeating themselves? Is there nothing NEW for us to learn? Or do we just look for something new in the same old issues? Why? What purpose would that serve? Is there anything new to be found there? If so, why have I not seen it before, if they repeating? Same issues, same lessons....right?

TO FOSTER OR NOT TO FOSTER.........

We've been fostering rescue dogs for about 6 months now.

In that time we've only had ONE bad experience.

But..........
she's been enough of a handful that I am considering NOT fostering again!

She came to us Christmas Eve, and right away we experienced what a handful she is !

Such a handful i fact that, I stayed behind on Christmas Day to watch over her !
She can scale a fenced yard like there was nothing there!
She won't go in a kennel.....she's WILD on a leash.....and she's BOSSY with my dog !

I reported this a soon as I could to get help with her, and the foster group's answer was to try to move her ASAP !

Well, it's almost a week later, and she's still here ! She is NOW leaving New Year's Day, which means that I will once again, miss another family gathering !

GAH !

NOW WHAT WOULD YOU DO ?

WHAT IS THIS WORLD COMING TO ?

What is this world coming to ?

Last fall my family went swimming at the local leisure centre . It was our daughter's birthday, and we took two of her friends with us . We were to go to the local pizza place later and then to our home for "presents and cake".

However, these plans changed for myself and one of the little girls that we had invited...

As we were changing back into out street clothes, she started to scream and carry on saying that someone was taking her picture from under the stall's wall !

From the instant she started, it seemed that all "you know what" was breaking loose !

From what seemed out of nowhere, the leisure centre security guard appeared and kept the perpetrator in his change stall. Then the police arrived to take our statements, and take the guy into custody.

We gave our statements again the centre's security guard, then the girl and I went off to the police station where we were to meet the officer who had attended the incident.

While waiting for the officer, we witnessed the officer bring the perpetrator into the station in handcuffs.

When he was secured, we were asked to come in to give our statements again to the officer.

When we were finally done, we joined the others at the pizza joint, and I tried to act as if nothing had happened

TEACHERS' STRIKE

For the last week, I have been homeschooling my children due to a teachers' strike in school district.

We only work for half a day, but sometimes it is really hard to motivate my 11 year-old to do the work.

I'm not teaching them anything new, because the teachers are not allowed to send any home. They can send workbooks, and then parents can try to teach whatever is next in the book.

Unfortunately, my son "forgot" to bring any hoem with him. So I went onto the net and downloaded some.

We also have educational software that both kids have been working with. My (11year old) son loves "Math Blaster". I'm glad that he does. Math Blaster is a video game-like math software, so that's probably why he likes it . (He LOVES his PS-2!)

It's only been a week, but I don't know how much longer I can keep him motivated. So far my daughter has noproblem doind the workbooks that she brought home. --I hope that this keeps up!

I've heard rumors that the strike could last anywhere from another week, to three more weeks. So far the two sides have net met for exactly one week. They keep acusing each other of not wanting to meet when the other calls for a meeting. Who knows what is really happening. Any teachers that I know personally cannot talk about it (as per their union rules.) So I will try to attend the next School Board Meeting to try to get their side. I may even get the union's side if there is a Union Rep. there also.

Wish me luck.

FINDING A PLACE TO WRITE

I've always wanted to write .



I just never could decide how, when, where etc....



Then it "hit me" : create a blog !



What better way to get my thoughts "published", reviewed, critiqued....



I find writing very therapeutic : a great outlet for excess feelings and thoughts .



I have a lot of "stuff" milling about in my head : my genealogical research, the effect that my Mom's death had/has on me, the present state of my family, the world's situations.....I could go on......and on.....


More later......