The landlord lady

Model at work!

Our daughter, Caroline, flew away from the nest last year and bought herself a 2 bedroom condo in June 2013. What an accomplishment these days at such a young age (25)! We are so proud of her!

Until then she had lived with us, no one was in a hurry for her and the cat to leave as we were approaching retirement anyway. I read somewhere that when you want your grown up kids to leave the house, you just start walking around the house naked and it usually does the trick! Now ladies, no pictures, this is not that kind of blog! For us there was no rush; we all gained from this arrangement, Caroline got a roof over her head and food on the table and we got an extra body to do chores! : ).

When we retired in September 2012 we just took off for Florida for the winter, knowing that Caroline would take good care of the house. See, another benefit from having her living with us!

Last summer we sold our house at about the same time she bought her condo. We gave her some of our stuff, stored a lot more in her shed and in her condo for the summer for our upcoming move to Florida. The main thing we gave her was our washer and dryer. Now you might wonder why this is the prized possession? Well, being homeless : ), except for our model park in Val-des-Bois and our condo in Florida, we had our sight on using her guest bedroom once in a while when we came to town and do laundry and of course visit our beloved cat and her too (in case she reads this... not in that order) :).

Look it's mine!

Before returning to Florida in the fall of 2013 we got the bad news that Christiane had breast cancer and we could not leave for Florida. Since there is no running water in the winter in Val des Bois, Caroline welcomed us in her condo for the winter. She even offered us her master bedroom which we declined, her guest bedroom is plenty enough. Boy! Are we glad we were not too mean to her when she was growing up!

While navigating our way through the cancer route, we learned that Christiane’s treatments we’ll add a big detour and a few speed bumps in our life with all the treatments to go through and it will not be until the spring or summer 2015 until we are back in the driver seat of our life. Ok, somebody stop me and put the brakes on these car metaphors! It’s driving me crazy! : )

Well, of course, we did tease her and her sister a lot throughout the years. When I was teasing them to the extreme, Christiane would remind me to be careful as our daughters are the one who will decide which retirement home we’ll end up in one day; when to unplug us and there is always that doom day when diaper becomes a new and fun way of discovering their parents! So true! So I would dial it down… for a while.

So, this winter 2013/2014 and the winter of 2014/2015 Caroline’s home is our home. To her it is quite normal; she doesn’t see it as a sacrifice. Of course we could rent a small studio for the coming year, but Caroline insists that we just crash at her place. She wants to be there for Christiane in her fight against cancer and to take care of me while I take care of her mom. She is a beautiful an extraordinary young woman with a heart of gold! She is generous to a fault, charming as hell and so funny! And single… Again, potential boyfriends need only to apply with dad.

It’s weighing on us sometimes to know that Caroline is stuck with us when she could be living her life, having her condo to herself, listening to her noise (she calls THAT music ha ha ha), having all her space. Her guest bedroom was supposed to be a video game room and art studio, now it’s our bedroom. We also use so much space throughout her condo, her pharmacy, walk-in closet, etc. even in her master bedroom since we bought some ergonomic chairs for us to use in her living room and moved her loveseat to her master bedroom!

Caroline keeps telling us how grateful she is for what we do for her! She arrives from work and supper is almost always ready, we do household chores (yah I see the irony here), errands, etc. which to us is just normal but she sees it as a bonus. She never makes us feel like we’re a burden. She is an amazing young woman with a big heart. During the holiday season she had cupcakes for the bus driver! She threw a Christmas party for her friends and had a thoughtful personal gift for everyone. She had even asked them to wear something pink in a show of support for her mom, which they did. If a pet needs babysitting while someone is on vacation, Super Caroline comes to the rescue! What a woman!

Thanks for everything Caroline! We are so proud of you!

Pawpaw

No brownies Point!

"I was kicked out of the Boy Scouts for eating a Brownie" - Unknown

I don’t like to give advice, but this one time, I’ll do an exception: If you go to Costco and you see the box of two-bite brownies walk run away! Do not look back, do not slow down, go straight to the customer service and return your card, you will not want to go back to the store ever!

You might be thinking: “I wonder what bug bit him today?” You are wrong! It is winter, there are NO bugs! I’m just trying to prevent all of you from doing one of the worse mistake of your life, ever! Let me tell you my story…

Last Tuesday, we decided to go back to Val-des-Bois. We needed propane and the cheapest place to buy it is at Costco. So on our way, we stopped, and since we were at Costco, we walked in the store to get a few items. So far, there is nothing to blog about except that I walked by the bakery. Usually I’m pretty good and just go and smell the bread. So far in my 53 years and 357 days *wink* *wink* of existence, I have resisted but this time I looked at one of the box of brownies and I reasoned why not, the expiry date is in March and we will have a little sweet to sweeten our meals.

They look innocent... Don't trust the look!

BIG MISTAKE! We arrived at our home for lunch, Christiane had made some sandwiches and we enjoyed them. I looked at the box of brownies and decided to try one… Oh my Gosh! They were the perfect brownies! I ate the first one, they are two-bite brownie and I tried to respect the suggestion and ate only half of one… then I had all those sensations coming to my brain telling me that my life will be changed forever! They were so moist and so chocolaty, every bits coming down was like an orgasmic delight.

Hey Christiane where is my missing half?

Looking at my wife, I could tell she was also having similar a experience. I slowly reached for another one, Christiane followed my lead and helped herself… we ate 3 brownies! We could have expedited the whole box down our digestive track. The whole time it was so quiet, all you could hear was hummmm hummm, we kept looking at each other hoping the other one would take one more, so the other could just do the same and feel no guilt!

Thinking back, we should have ate the whole thing at once, this way we might have hit (the box) bottom, but we let reason guide us…

I found myself spending a lot of time thinking about the BROWNIES. For me it was so much easier to say NO to drugs. I NEVER even had a puff of pot, if I ever took any (illigal) drugs, it would have been without me knowing it, maybe in something like a brownie (from Colorado:)), but I’m pretty sure it never happened. 

But those brownies, they are addictive for sure, every time you take one, you are trying to re-live the first time you had them. I’m thinking about going to detox and register for the 12-step Brownies-holics program, which is: NEVER be more than 12 steps away from brownies. I would give up brownies, but I’m no quitter!

Not a two-bite, it's a bite-two!

On another subject, I just read one of the blog I follow.  You have to check it out, it's  Murr , I was sitting by myself reading it and laughed so much I was crying!
 

Feeding our dear guests

Yesterday, we had guests coming to our home; we didn’t have much food for them so I made a trip to the village to make sure to have something delicious and nutritive for them.

Once back to our place I realized I didn’t have a recipe book and there were no recipe on the bag so I improvised…

Ingredient: a 60 pounds bag of corn

Instruction:

Pour 3-4 pounds of corn in a basket 

Let cool down outside for 1 hour

At this time, I was starting to worry about the whole idea… should I add salt? What about Butter? After all, I always have salt and butter with MY corn!

But if you feed them, they will come.  Our first deer visitor showed up just when the corn was ready. A few minutes later, the second one arrived; they didn’t mind having to share the basket!

After a few pictures, they left, they forgot their manner and didn’t say thank you but we won’t hold a grudge… We still have over 55 pounds of corn for them!

Here's a joke we saw on a cartoon almost 30 years ago:

A man kills a deer and takes it home to cook for dinner.

Both he and his wife decide they won't tell the kids what kind of meat it is, but will give them a clue and let them guess.

The kids were eager to know what the meat was on their plates, so they begged their dad for the clue.

Well, he said, 'It's what mummy calls me sometimes'.

The little girl screams to her brother Willy: “Spit it out Willy, it's an asshole!” 

Look at that, even a small video this morning :)

Mium Mium!

Is that for me?

Wait for me!

2 heads are better than one!

I'll keep watch... 

Hey I think I heard a "click"

Happy winter!

We came back to town for a whole day and then we returned to our little frozen paradise... We decided that we will be spending as much time as we can here, nothing wrong with the city but we really enjoy the slower pace of life in our frozen land! 

My favorite season is winter! I don’t care if it’s colder, if it snows, if it is icy, I just love all of it.

Just to paint you a picture of what I see while I’m writing this blog:

I have a perfect view of a mountain, there are snow flakes coming down, just a few at a time, you can almost count them. Across the frozen lake, I can see some traffic on the main road, like the flakes they are going slowly. White is every where except for some green on the evergreen trees.

In our castle, we are warm and cozy, there is no one around, even the road is blocked so it means every thing we need or want has to be carried. My back is thankful that we just bought a little sleigh to carry everything in: water, propane, food, and all the other necessities (our necessities).

This afternoon we might read, watch TV (we brought the last season of Dexter), build a fire… who knows! I’m planning to go back to the village and get some deer feed. That is pretty much the only visit we will get and we would not want to be inhospitable and not feed our guests.   

Easy does it!

This is our view! Priceless!

Even in the frozen-land the sun rises

Natural fiber optic

Waiting for customers

Don't you think I have a cool hat?

Richard, get more logs

My soles/soul are warm!

Days Off

Yesterday we made a decision… we are going to take a few days vacation. We are going back to Val-des-Bois, about an hour east of Ottawa, to our “summer castle”.

Our life during those days will almost be like going back to nature; there will not be 150 + channels on TV, no Internet (no blog, sigh!), no full fridge, no water (no toilet), no telephone, no way of driving the car all the way to our home, and when we first get there – no heat.

However, we will have electricity, propane, fire, books, and a view of the frozen lake and the mountain.  I’ll bring the camera to share it all with our blogging friends, if you are curious, you can go to the following post I wrote in 2012: camping-lac-vert  

We don’t know if we’ll be gone for 2, 3 or 4 days, so if you don’t hear from us for a while, don’t worry; we just stepped out of the office!  

It’s not you, it’s you!

Yesterday 2 unrelated occurrences happened… I was chatting via Facebook with someone. Martha from (Plowing Through Life) posted a comment and joined our blog. To me both are connected.

Even though I am French Canadian, I am much more comfortable writing in English.  However, yesterday I was writing to a friend on Facebook and I made a mistake.

I wrote: “I don't know how to be depress... maybe you don't know how to be happy!”. Usually I write something and then I review it before sending to make sure it reflects my thoughts. Unfortunately I forgot that with Facebook chat, if you press ‘enter’ it sends your statement… ahhhhh

I am not kidding, I felt bad all day…  If I had reviewed my statement it would have been something like: “I don't know how to be depressed... maybe there are people who don't know how to be happy!” I just don’t have the skills and insights for telling people how they are feeling and why. I am really sorry.

‘You’ is a pronoun I have problem with in English. In French, there is 2 “you”, the first one –tu- is when you address one particular person, the second one –vous- is when you address 2 or more persons (there is something else but it’s irrelevant for this French lesson :)). So when I write, I always review the ‘You’ and its context!

Time to bring back Martha! She is living in Kingston, this is an awesome town about 100 miles south of Ottawa. To my wife and I, it’s the last place where we lived in 2 different barracks, while we were singles! We got married right after we left Kingston. My English abilities were limited to a few words.

Cases in point: Once in a while, I would order pizza, to be delivered to the women’s barrack where men were allowed to be present in the basement.  There were tables, a shuffle board and a tv room.  I was not allowed to go to her room… (I’m NOT saying I didn’t go ha ha ha). We never knew if we would get the pizza or not, I could place the order but I couldn’t understand what the answer was. I couldn’t confirm if they understood where I wanted it delivered or even if they understood my thickly-French-accent order.

Even going to McDonald was a challenge! In French, glace means ice… I would forget about this and order a coke without glass… I was so proud of myself to be able to order in a foreign language until I looked at my wife-to-be who was laughing at me… I was just not getting any sympathy from that girl!

I was not the only one having trouble in English… once, a few of us from class went to McDonald (at the time there was only 1 McDo in Kingston) and one of the guy didn’t know what  “Anything else?”, means so after he ordered: “One Big Mac, One fry and a coke”, the cashier asked: “Anything else?”, “One Big Mac, One fry and a coke” he repeated, and again for 4 or 5 more times, the cashier was starting to look at him with question marks!  Finally, someone else from our class told him what she mean “Anything else?” meant. We all had a good laugh!   

The worst thing when learning a new language is when you are so proud of using the right word in a sentence and to find out you were way off…

One of our first English speaking friend couple were Keith and Pam.  One night we were at home and it was only the 2 of us and we had nothing to do… there was a knock at our door, it was Keith asking us if we had anything planned, they had leased a movie (on Beta) and they invited us to watch it with them. “YES!” was our instant answer.

At the end of the evening, as we were leaving and I told them: “Thank you very much, it was a really boring evening!”. They just looked at me.  Christiane who was standing behind me came to my help (I think), said: “WHAT?”. I didn’t know there was any thing wrong. I was so proud of having said exactly what I meant! I repeated: “Thank you very much, it was a really boring evening!” Now my dear wife is laughing and I’m thinking that MAYBE I did a small mistake here, I reviewed it in my head… “boring” that’s the right word – Check, “Thank you very much”  that’s a polite sentence to use in social context – Check, “was” it’s the past tense of “is” – Check – but wrong past tense! It should have been… “Thank you very much, it would have been a really boring evening!” Darn!

One more example no one asked? Well yes I do have another one… Years later we were shopping at a computer store and I was buying an inexpensive item. The cashier asked me: “Would you like our membership card?”. I was starting to be pretty confident in my ability by then… so I answered quickly: “No I’m not a frigging customer!”. My dear wife who was beside me, turned around and said: “WHAT?”.  “No I’m not a frigging customer!” annoyed me answered… and now she is laughing, the poor cashier does not understand what is happening, and to tell you the truth, neither do I… “What is wrong?” I’m trying to ask. When Christiane was finally able to stop laughing, she explained to me that it’s not “frigging” but “frequent” that I wanted to say… Who would have guessed there is a difference between “frigging” and “frequent”? Not that I hold a grudge, but I think it’s the last time I shopped with my wife and the last time I went shopping to that frequent store :)!

Today my wife is getting blood work done and tomorrow we are back in cancer land for the first chemo “threat-ment”… I don’t know when will be the next post as I might be losing my proof reading gal and I will be back in my nurse uniform! :(  (comment from Christiane: the uniform fits him real nice :).  I’ll add one more sample of “Lost in Translation”; in his very last sentence, Richard had written: “I might be loosing my read-proofing-gal” WHAT! :) )

Memory fast lane in military

It’s a slow day in CancerLand, so I thought of going to MemoryLane with this post…

I joined the Canadian Armed Forces in March 1977, I was 17 years old. It wasn’t for a noble reason like serving my country; it was to keep peace… inner peace that is! I was not going anywhere, I was a high school dropout and I was not happy in my family.  

My wife also joined in 1977, she was camouflaged so it took me all the way till 1978 to find her and parade her to church…

The army is a great place to learn a trade while earning a salary. I was making $500 a month, it sure was more money that I ever dreamed of (honestly) making!

Once we completed all the training, we were posted to Valcartier (Quebec). I went to an army unit and my wife to a Communication squadron.

Usually, in June, my unit would go on manoeuvre in Gagetown (New Brusnwick) –Julia you might know where that is ;)-. I heard it is a nice area however all I got to see were pine trees. I was living in a tent sleeping on a cot, I didn’t enjoy that kind of life much but what I enjoyed or not didn’t seem to be of concern for my superiors LOL.

My wife on the other hand was going on trips to do maintenance on equipments. She would write to me on hotel stationary… after a good meal in a nice restaurant… life can be sooooo unfair!  (Comment from Christiane: come on Richard it happened once!)

We left Valcartier in 1982 and were transfered to Ramstein (American Air force Base), Germany. We were working in a bunker in Kindsbach a small site a few miles away from the base.  The bunker was inside a mountain. It used to be an ammunition depot.  It was built during World War II for Hitler’s war machine.

Needless to say, we were having the time of our life… it ended in 1985 when we received our marching order to go to Carp (Ontario). My wife was stationed with the Communication Squadron, in another bunker; I was posted down the hill from her to something called NICS (CC).

After 2 kids, my wife removed her uniform for good in 1989!

Missing bratwurst and German beer, we took a plane to Lahr Germany in 1991 for another posting. We returned back home in 1994 when the Canadian military base closed.  We were among the last 35 families to leave the base!  But before you can leave, you need your transfer paper.  First I was transferred back to Carp (Ontario) but at the Communication Squadron this time. By then I must have had a bad reputation because Carp was closed and my transfer was cancelled.

I was re-assigned to NICS (CC) Foley Lake. This is in Nova Scotia. I was really happy with that, I already knew the equipment and was looking forward to live in a small town (Truro). In February 1994, my wife and I went on a hunting trip… house hunting! We found and bought a nice house.

Upon our return, we got bad news… Foley Lake was closing, our transfer was cancelled!!! However, since we already had bought a house, it was decided to send me to the communication Squadron in Debert, it was even closer to the house.  

In the previous post on my blog I made a comment to Julia about how much we love the maritime, would you believe it but this whole blog post now is about that one statement.

Germany was wonderful but the pace was, at time, as fast as the no speed limit on the autobahn… there were no slow lane, it seems that I rushed and was being rushed every where. I’m out of breath just writing about it:)…

Then we arrived in Nova Scotia (NS)! I remember the first time I went to the grocery store to buy some necessities; it was around 9:00 PM, there was almost no one in the store, I got a couple of things and went to the express register. There was only one client in front of me being served, in a few seconds I was going to be out of there fast and easy! Not so!

When you are in the maritime in a small town, people know each other and there is nowhere to rush to, so they take the time to smell the Mayflowers (official flower of NS of course!). Being clueless about this way of life… I was waiting for the customer to pay and leave. The clerk had a can in her hand and she was about to scan it, I was waiting for the beep that is not coming… I started to focus a little more about what was happening.

The teller was talking to the customer and asking: “So is your father going to Florida this year?”

I’m in the back probably rolling my eyes and thinking “scan the darn can already…” but it took a while before it was done! -I would say in our previous life “a while” was defined as forever. Meanwhile the cashier and the client kept talking like it was NORMAL to do so. Didn’t they know they were delaying ME… then I smiled, I took a deep breath and was thinking: “Richard slow down, you are in NS, no one is pushing me, and I don’t have to push either…” When in Rome do as the Roman does, right?  

We were not even a month in when rumours started spreading like wild fire… Debert was closing the very next year… 6 months later (January 1995) the military was offering the possibility for early retirement.  I realized that I was a dinosaur; my military trade was being phased out.

We stayed only one year in the Maritime, but, it does change a person forever. We were always close to the sea; we had a life rhythm that was slow and meaningful. The landscapes were breathtaking. The people were the best! Just to show you, when we moved to our house, all the neighbours came by to greet us and introduce themselves … we have never seen this before and haven’t seen it since either!