Season’s change…

This photo is from Maracas Bay, Trinidad where the river meets the sea.  What a beautiful day, even with the cloud cover, with such glorious water!  😔 That’s in direct contrast to getting the first snowfall of the season last night. After a lovely full moon, there’s a dusting of the white stuff, which thankfully didn’t stay past noon, but it was definitely present!  It’s apparently our earliest snowfall since 2000, which I remember as I was travelling to Banff over Thanksgiving and left here in swirling snow.  The alarm is still not fixed — it’s wired into the electrical, not battery operated, and I’m in negotiations with the property management to get it replaced, so meanwhile my poor Jerry is still traumatized and spent most of last night trying to hide under me in bed and he’s been occasionally shaking.  Don is the designated cuddler at the moment, I’ll take over later.  Don seems to be doing fairly well, which is good, and he’s been talking to the property management company and saves me some stress.  That 30-second beep is really annoying!!

My soup from last night has been quite successful.  I’ve had 2 adult-portion bowls, although I confess that I’m not enjoying the chicken as much as I thought; it just seems rubbery.  I won’t throw it out, I can’t waste food like that, but I’ve cut the meat into smaller pieces so that may help.  Because of Jerry I didn’t sleep comfortably, but I did get some rest and felt a little energetic this morning.  Sadly, I have to advise that my support worker’s mom passed away last night; she was here today and said that she’d lain down on the bed with her mom and they both fell asleep; when she awoke at 1:20am she was gone.  I feel dreadful for her; and for my cousin’s husband, whose sister died last night after struggling with pancreatic cancer.  May I say that I think that’s enough for 2023 to 2025, please?  Thanks much!

After a few attempts and some feedback from my siblings, I think that I’ve managed to write something that will honour our dad appropriately.  The latest version had no requested changes, but then I found a punctuation error, which I think I’ll have to fix; grammatical / spelling problems drive me nuts, and would annoy my father, so it will be addressed!  Because of him, I’ve been happily losing myself in sea poetry, which he always liked and I feel like we were playing our “complete the quote” game.  I cheated and used Google; it’s supposed to be limited to Bartlett’s quotations and I don’t have a copy.  I then dipped into Shakespeare, and I continue to be amazed at how many of his lines are part of regular conversation even now, almost a half millennium later.  Everyone I know says, “Ugh!  Shakespeare!  I can’t stand that stuff!” But they know many of the plots of the plays, or know many lines (often out of context) and it’s amusing to me when they learn that.  Their eyes pop, and they don’t believe me.  I know his language is challenging, but the concepts are so beautifully expressed, like “band of brothers” or “good night sweet prince” and of course, “to be or not to be” among literally hundreds of others!

That’s my literary activity for the day.  I’ve got a busy couple of days ahead, as I have some more writing for the funeral and then I have to submit my grant request reviews in just under 2 weeks, so I’m not scrambling at the last minute (as usual) and can hopefully provide something meaningful.  There are a couple of new preparatory courses that I’ll work on — one is on how cancer develops and spreads, and another on how some types of drugs work.  I’ll toss in my little nag and reminder that science is real, it works and just because something is “natural” doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily good for you or safe.  

That’s al!  I’m going to get supper and then take over puppy snuggles duty!  Good night!