Annie's breakfast face...

"Dear Grandma, please make more yogurt.  Thank you."

Just a minute, has anybody seen Wednesday anywhere?

 Well, this was fun, sort of... the day started out clear and bright and warm -- I admired it carefully through the window and then  flattened out again on the couch and, basically, slept all day.  Tottered out in the evening to hear a presentation on things Franciscan...which was stimulating and fun and interesting.  Not everybody among those attending altogether oriented toward what was being discussed or how it was being discussed.  There's a distinction, for sure, between, "open to learning more about" and "determined to get to the bottom of" -- and those who are fielding the questions are clearly aware of the difference.

Then I came home, pausing only at them there Arches to pick up a "meal," using the term loosely.  There are just times when nothing but fat, salt, and phosphoric acid will do the trick.

I think, I hope, I pray, that the "Ask the Matriarch" is recognizably posted for the morning... and so to bed, tomorrow being also a day.

A busy sort of lovely day.

After a pretty good night's sleep...re-vacuumed the living room in response to a strange proliferation of CHEERIOS hither and thither... Then got the kitchen counters cleaned, the dishwasher loaded, and headed off to the dentist for the second instalment of a three-stage cleaning.  My dentist has been my dentist for just under 40 years.  He is sidling into retirement...has taken on a new young partner and a bevy of new hygienists.  The receptionist remains the same, with a wonderful whooping laugh like a troop of cavalry crossing a tin bridge...
I dislike the tooth-cleaning routine but I have techniques for coping.  Two Tylenol (about 1/2 an hour before my appointment) seem to help.  And I tell the hygienist how gentle she has been, and how much I appreciate it.
Then home, a little, a very little, lunch (tooth-cleaning always makes me think, maybe intravenous is the way I want to go from here on), and then LAWN MOWING.  Brief frustration at trying to find the keys to the shed (the shed which contains the mower), but we managed that, and I was happy to use my NEW and very flexible 100-foot extension cord (electric mower)...It took me three or four sessions, with iced tea in between, but the front yard looks, if not good, at least INTENTIONAL.  And not so much as if "some kind o' widder-woman" lives here (my grandmother's label for a certain state of dilapidation and neglect).
And then got myself cleaned up and away to a wonderful dinner and glorious spiraling conversation with one-two-three charming gentlemen--life and art and dance and theatre and The Church and The Faith and national identity and lovely never-exhausted topics like that.
I have put the garbage out.  I am going to bed with some good reading.  Tomorrow is also a day.

Monday all day long

It's late, and I'm about to fold myself toward bed, I think.  Yesterday was "plenty" -- preached three times, one sermon at the early service and a second sermon (different readings) at the second and third services.  And I cut cake world-without-end...after the services.  Very kind things were said, and there are roses...and then Ace Brother, who had been waiting altogether patiently, whisked me away "whisk" to our favourite Sunday-brunch place, and we ate eggs with pleasant accompaniments and then reformed the constitution, the church, the nation, etc. and so forth until, in effect, they threw us out.  Back to the erstwhile workplace to pick up my own vehicle and then home through the least credible entanglement of traffic barricades and obstructions and constructions and detours...

Fell down on the couch with a blanket and slept hard for five solid hours.  Got up and "went to bed properly" and slept for another seven.

So today has been pretty productive...suffice it to say two vacuum cleaners came into play.

Number One granddaughter arrived with her accoutrements just after three o'clock.  We had a long walk all around the neighbourhood in the pleasant sunshine.  I put her hat on for her.  She took it off.  I put her hat on.  She took it off.  There was kind of a RHYTHM to it...and then on the way home we went to the PLAYGROUND, where there are SWINGS and SLIDES...she laughs aloud at the sight of them (she's not quite 15 months old) and is overjoyed to "be swung"...and fearless about coming down the slide by herself.  

What else is in the playground?  A lot of very little people...and their grandparents...so we compared notes, bragged, etc.


Came home (enjoying most of a rice cake in fragments as we went along) and then she was definitely hungry.  She practically inhaled a banana...I have never seen such an appetite in one so little... and we played.  I have a number of oversized stuffed animals, and these hit the spot... good to know!  Great hugging and cuddling and patting ... then it was supper time, with the nice things her Mama had brought for her...and her Mama arrived and was able to snatch a little supper for herself before inserting Granddaughter into her jammies and away they went home.

Absolute bliss, but oh! boy! there are reasons why we don't have babies in our sixties, and my muscles are reciting them all tonight!!!  

Tomorrow will be grass-cutting day here, weather permitting -- and a quick trip to the dentist -- and a bunch of little fiddly errands -- and then a dinner party "out."

I am in between appointments for almost the first time in three and a half years...and enjoying the freedom.  Lots and lots of projects to do but everything takes longer than it used to, and a "clear week" before me seems like inconceivable luxury.

If this is Wednesday, it must be...Wednesday.

It's morning, I'm up, I'm washed, I'm dressed, I'm reasonably groomed, I've taken my meds, I am having a pretty good skim milk latte (having made a pot of espresso earlier) and anticipating some Enhanced Oatmeal.  Decided oatmeal-every-morning would obviate weary choice-making.  But it definitely needs help/work/thought etc.  Pretty sure I want to carry on with the additional sesame seed flax seed wheat germ wheat bran cracked wheat sunflower seeds* possibly unsweetened coconut raisins or even craisins cinnamon cloves and of course salt.  The Tabasco was an interesting experiment, but.  Thinking now along the lines of crumbs of dried lemon or orange zest. Artificial bacon bits, for now, no.

"The policy here" is to assemble all these good things, plus water, in the teeny-tiny oatmeal saucepan in the evening, and apply heat upon rising.  So dried enhancements, like the lemon and orange peel, have leisure to reconstitute themselves overnight.  Thinking further on this weighty matter.

*The theme of this cereal is "let's be moving right along here," as you see. 

In other news, coming to the end of my third part-time interim post-retirement appointment, and facing forward as confidently as possible.  Meantime, granddaughters continue shedding joy in all directions...and Beloved Famblies are all well.

Wrangling together a sermon on the Dedication of the Temple and the Faithful Centurion and the Astonishing Galatians.

FRIDAY, Friday, fridayfridayfriday...

Hello all from the bowels of the Public Library.  I am a bit distracted, there is a gentleman even older than I am at the next computer over, being instructed in Twitter by a Library person, it is funnier than the circus.  "GO, OLD COOTS (AND COOTESSES)!!!" I say.

I have a solemn promise from my Personal IT Wizard that I shall have a computer all working and re-stocked with files etc. by sundown tomorrow.  It has been revelatory, confining my pointless self-distraction Earnest Inter-Webs Labours to an hour a day, in the meantime.  An instance of Involuntary Simplicity.  Beneficial, too, I think.

Reading Doris Goodwin's book on Eleanor and Franklin and "the Home Front" -- it is hefty, slow going, but interesting--gave me a running start on the NYRB review of Oliver Stone et al., The Untold History of ...  I didn't know anything about Henry Wallace.  Now I do (I think).

Re-reading The Virginian, which I love.  "A middlin' doctor is a pore thing," etc.  Words to be going on with.

Off to do some banking and make some appointments and then home again and consider the rest of the day.  I did some mending the other day -- I have a very nice cozy pair of Haflinger (sp?) slippers but I have worn a fuzzy hole in the toe of one of them.  The design is of a sheep, so I mended the hole with green embroidery floss and then added some more embroidered "grass" for the sheep to be eating.  If I can remember how to do the lazy daisy stitch I may include a few flowers.  The result is not unsightly.  Not as unsightly as the hole, at least.

Did some housework yesterday and it must have made a difference as I had to empty the "big" vacuum cleaner three times before I was done!

And so it goes...

Family Day

It is "Family Day," soi-disant, in Prairie Province -- cynics see it as "we needed a Monday off in February" and/or "Previous political figures attempted to compensate for inadequate parenting they provided by proclaiming a holiday in honour of families."  Whatever.  It is nice to have a Monday off particularly when the weather is not outstandingly horrid.

As it is a provincial holiday, not a federal one, the Post Office works, and we GET REAL MAIL.  Including some reading matter -- Jen Hatmaker's 7, or is it SEVEN?, and various magazines.  Also donation receipts to attach to the tax return.

Cleaning house, focussing on small areas i.e. about 18" square.  As long as I can see results heading to the curb on garbage pick-up day, I'm happy.

And doing some cookery -- made bread this morning from the sourdough basic recipe, with many modifications; the usual yield is two medium loaves, but this morning I made one loaf and a speculative quantity of long rolls suitable for hot dogs etc.  Came up with 10, of varying sizes, and I think 12 would be feasible.  This is basically white bread but it is mightily enriched with veg. oil, skim milk powder, wheat germ, wheat bran, cracked wheat, and quick (small-flake) oatmeal.  Sometimes sesame seed on the bottom also.  I'm well pleased with the result.  Makes good sandwiches, makes good toast, makes good French toast, and eventually makes great croutons and/or crumbs too.

Yogurt (home made) and granola (home made) for breakfast, very tasty.  I'll take a large jar of yogurt to #1 Granddaughter tomorrow, she consumes it at a great rate which is good for Grandma's ego.

Still computing courtesy of the public library (also open, this afternoon, predictably full of young'uns)...

Did not preach or officiate or do anything liturgical this last Sunday except to garb up and adorn the chancel.  Having worn out my alb to the "borderline disgraceful" stage, I regularly wear cassock and surplice.  Turns out this suits the African constituency in the parish just fine.  A delegation informed my Excellent Boss recently that "THAT one" (i.e. me) "is PROPERLY dressed"...which he found very funny, fortunately.

Reading Umberto Eco, a slim collection of essays entitled five moral pieces.  I acquired it for the sake of the essay titled "Ur-Fascism"; in other translations it appears as "Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt," which is wittier.  But there is also a gorgeous little essay in the form of a letter to Cardinal Martini of Milan -- title approximately, "When the Other Makes an Appearance."  Wow, can this man THINK.  (So can Cardinal Martini -- not surprising that their public dialogues were a very "hot ticket" in Milan.)

I'd better make a break for home at this point, company coming for supper...