18:05 - 08/20/2019
summertime
Hello Dear Diary
First tying up loose ends from my last entry: A+ and I went to see Aquaman over the holidays. The cinematography was breath-taking. A+ sister has become very ill so he has travelled to her city twice to be with her and his nephew - he is still there as we speak.
I found a story about JK Rowling being outed as an astrologer. A 12 page analysis of someone's astrology chart found signed by her up for auction on E-bay I think.
The other big bonus has been that number four son, who still lives with me, found a very well respected name brand washer and dryer on the local buy/sell website for $20. My old beaters hadn't been working for a year so I spent several weeks just washing bedding and other heavy items. I rarely had those amenities (that actually worked) when the boys were small so I had just filled up the bathtub and done my own version of the old grape stomp. With my favourite music blasting it was fun and good exercise too. The only time it wasn't appreciated was when all the boys were sick with flu - or in sequence - vomiting every few hours. Then keeping up was hard, icky work. When it is -30 C and one can't hang things outdoors, well that is a real pain.
Since then, January, my one boy cat died in February. I just wasn't up to writing about it until now. My girl cats still miss him and go looking for him from time to time. It just makes me sad.
I have visited the Music Centre, Lougheed House. and the Museum when it was free, the weather was ok, and I felt physically able. You see a cyst formed on a nerve in my hip - I think from the injury I had last September - and walking longer than half an hour was simply agony. I finally got frustrated enough with it to ask my doctor to remove it. He did so in July and my muscles are very slowly readjusting to walking like a normal person.
Since that was successful, I got up the courage to ask to have the impacted wisdom tooth extracted in July as well. I figured that the pain from both operations would balance each other out. My blood pressure numbers have dropped significantly which is an added bonus. I do have to have more dental work but since it has been nearly 40 years since I could afford to have it done (the disability pension is footing the bill) I guess that isn't too bad. Most of the damage was out of my ability to deter. I guess the wound care skills I learned while working in the hospital stood me in good stead.
The biggest stressor for me was when one of my son's wives ran into trouble with immigration. It cost thousands of dollars to resolve. I think they had tried to fill out the paperwork with the help of a consultant before and had lost their (significant deposit) because there were errors in their submission. They couldn't afford to try again. Fortunately I had met a really good immigration lawyer when I had been doing a lot of human rights volunteer work. He did a great job in resolving the issues although my daughter-in-law and the oldest daughter had to fly out of the country all the same. We weren't certain that they would be allowed back in the country until the very end of June but, happily, things worked. I did give my son my credit card so they could pay the lawyer, all the fines and pay for the flights. The thousands of dollars are sitting on my credit card that is at 20% interest. I did call the credit card company to ask for a reduction in the interest rate but no joy there. My own bank helped me reduce the interest rate on about 1/3 of the charges but I'm still trying to find a way to reduce the interest on the rest. Oh well, one day at a time, one step at a time, and life goes on. Maybe I'll still find a way to get to Scotland. Genealogy research don't you know. England being just south would allow me to look further into my Dad's family. Finally there's Sweden but my worhing knowledge of that language is still pretty primitive.
We have managed to get together - my sibs and my Dad - a couple of times. The weather is co-operating this year. There was also the country and western concert held near my home this past weekend. Very loud music, lots of big pick-up trucks swirling through my community with wanna be cowboys looking for girls and a lot of trash dumped all over the place.
Anyway Dear Diary, I have a bunch of housework, including laundry to see to yet this evening, so I will say good-bye for now.
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