May 4th & 5th

Days 125 & 126 – The weekend.  It was lovely.  Warm.  Hot, really.  My leg was feeling much better and I managed to do a bit of yard work.  My grandkids came for a sleepover.  We took them frogging.  Didn’t catch a one, didn’t see nary a one, either.  Because, like all little children, they’re much too noisy to catch frogs.  Good thing for the frogs.  But, we went out armed with buckets and twigs and cans and rubber boots and sloshed through the sodden fields and then over to the slough.  They had a grand time.  And so did Grandpa and me.

Sunday, I went to my brother and sister-in-law’s for supper.  He made beer-butt chicken.  Delicious!  However, the dessert was to die for:  vanilla bean ice-cream with fresh strawberries and blackberries with — get this — chocolate infused balsamic vinegar — drizzled on top.  Seriously, it was amazing.

A fantastic weekend weatherwise — far overdue.

Grandpa and the froggers

testing the waters. . .

Is that a frog?

It’s cold!

We found a beaver house!

“Lake Bon Accord” aka ‘the slough’

Advertisement

Labour Day Monday

Well, it’s Sept. 3rd, Labour Day 2012.  I am avoiding any kind of labour today.  It’s tough enough facing being back at work.

I think we’ll go to a movie this afternoon and then to our favourite pizza restaurant — Famoso’s.

It has turned out to be a very cool, wet and windy weekend.  so much for the forecast of beautiful, warm and sunny we were promised.  Saturday night was particularly crazy.  The wind was unbelievable.  Made me think that we were somehow getting some of the tail end of Hurricane Kirk.

Don’t know if that’s really possible this far North, but wow, those winds really came up fast.

Thank God today it’s sunny.  Still cool — only 13 degrees.  Technically, we’re still in summer, but we Albertan’s can tell, Fall has descended upon us.

Tim and I went for a bike ride this morning and it made me sad to see all the leaves littering the ground.  The fields are being harvested, the geese have started migrating.  The frogs aren’t croaking quite so loudly or frequently in the slough on the corner, and the calves are looking heavier and less gamboly as they graze in the fields.  I’ve started wondering where we’re going to spend Thanksgiving this year.  And planning our holiday for Spring Break.

My month is meted out in meetings and emails and once again, I’m living for the weekends.

And, as this is really, unofficially the last weekend of summer, I decided to just enjoy it, blustery though it was.

Tomorrow it’s kids in the hallways and coffee breaks and bagged lunches.

Labour.  Day.

Saturday morning

Well, it’s my first Saturday morning of my return to work.  It already feels like I’m living for the weekend again.

However, I’ve put a plan in place that I hope will make life easier for me, and create more ‘free’ time in my working-for-a-living life.

I love plans.  I love coming up with ideas to bring some kind of small change into my life.  Sometimes they’re big plans, like the ‘no shopping for a year’ plan, or wacky like the ‘eating no dessert for a year’ plan.

The first was very successful, the second — not so much.  Seems like I can avoid buying things, but not eating things.  What does that say about me?  Hmmm….

Anyway, what I’ve decided to do heading back into this work year is schedule everything.  This follows beautifully with my penchant  for making lists.  (I have them laying all over the house.  None is ever completely crossed off, and I’m forever picking them up and creating new lists out of all the things I didn’t get done on the others.)  Never mind that, though.

My new plan is a schedule of housekeeping chores — all the stuff I hate doing and continually put off until it’s a great big disaster and I’m stuck spending an entire weekend trying to get it all done.  This generally makes me really cranky.  So, to avoid having to use up my valuable weekend time doing stuff I don’t want to do I have doled it out during the week and now have set days on which I will dust, wash floors, do laundry, scrub toilets, etc., etc.

Now, I’m sure there are many out there who are going, Duh?!  Who doesn’t do that?  And why did it take this woman over 30 years to figure this out?  Let me just say, in my own defense, that sometimes, the obvious answer is a little over my head.  It’s like those jokes everybody else gets — I laugh along politely, in confusion, wondering what the hell is so funny.

I started my new plan this week, and so far it’s working beautifully.  Here I am with time to sit and blog on a Saturday morning!  Just like McDonald’s, I’m lovin’ it!  I feel no stress heading into my busy weekend.  I’m going for a much-needed haircut this afternoon, need to stop and pick up a few groceries for the barbecue I have planned for tomorrow and this evening we’re going out to Yuk Yuk’s with my brother and his wife.  And I feel entirely relaxed.  It’s wonderful.

Of course, I only worked one day this past week — yesterday.  We’ll see how my beautiful little plan holds up once I’m fully back in to the fray.

 

 

Sunday evening

Had a terrific weekend.  The surprise birthday party for Tim went off without a hitch — except I thought the guest of honour might not show up!

There I was with houseful of guests, many of them Tim’s friends from work — some of whom I barely knew — and my husband MIA.

He had gone to watch our granddaughter in a TaeKwonDo competition for the afternoon and I expected him home around 6:30.  Our son Landon was entrusted with getting him back here, but Tim certainly has a mind of his own and so decided he needed to go to Wal Mart, then needed a drink once they got back to Landon’s, then he needed to ‘relax’ and watch some TV — he can be very difficult to manage, I tell you!

When they finally got here at nearly 8 o’clock, he was rather perturbed because there was no place to park — he hadn’t clued in that all the cars in our driveway and lining the street were cars he should have recognized.  Needless to say, he was greatly surprised by all the noise coming from the house, and when his 3-year-old grandson handed him a flashing “it’s my birthday” sign.

We had a great time, nice to see old friends and make a few new ones.  I had cooked, chopped, sliced and diced practically all afternoon, but was still concerned I wouldn’t have enough food.  As it turned out it was just right.  We had a few leftovers, just enough to keep me from having to make supper tonight, so it was all good.

It had been ages since we’d last had a party.  I don’t think we’ll wait so long to have another.

Cheers to good times, good friends and family!