It's a Snow Day!

 Saturday we woke up to 7 or 8 inches of snow.  Then it rained, and then it was windy, and then the sun came out. In the evening we got a bit more snow.

<

To Stink Or Not To Stink.

  No question is Luna's mind.  She'll take being a stinker (literally), any day. Eau du poisson is her smell of choice. 

The salmon have been spawning somewhere up Nathan Creek, which is where we go for a walk along the dyke.    Just about every time we've been down there lately, Luna has managed to find a dead and smelly salmon to anoint herself with.

Here's the setting.  Golden Ears glowing white with snow, and the bare blueberry bushes adding a cheery touch to the flatlands.  And that schoolbus....well it takes a scenic side trip through the bushes.  Actually, it's been sat there for a long time, not sure why.  They use old school buses to transport the pickers. Maybe they are just storing it there, or maybe it's there as a lunch room of sorts during picking season.

And here we are. We had a photographer along this time.  All pictures are courtesy of Meredith.  Not quite sure what I was yapping on about here.  Practicing my flying technique may?  And the dogs, well they are there somewhere.  Jake and Luna are probably already at the swimming hole, which we tell them is closed for the season.  That's where those pilings are out to the left of my left wing arm.  The water level is quite low, and the swimming hole has changed a bit. Now there's more sand, which Calli thinks is a great thing.

Jake is ever hopeful.

Got a stick, or a ball, or damn it, got anything?

This is the only fish we saw. Calli just gave it a quick sniff, and here is looking for the rock that she had been carrying.  We don't think that Luna even noticed it, although really we weren't keeping a very good watch for Luna and her fish shoulder roll at all. 

We did get in a bit of water play near another set of pilings. If we haven't taken anything with us, sometimes it's hard to find a stick that will even float. Most of the wood is waterlogged stuff that has been washed downstream.

Jake was the only one that got any swimming in, and not much of that.  There was a bit of ice along the edge in spots, so the water would have been very cold.  When it comes to fetching, Jake doesn't have any common sense, so we have to use ours.

Jake on stilts, or maybe pilings.

See these teeth woman.....you'd better throw that stick

It was a gorgeous afternoon, the third of four dry and relatively sunny days we had in a row.

And there were three tired and happy dogs

When we got home, I was taking my jacket off in the utility room, and all of a sudden I'm wondering why I'm smelling fish.......

Luna was about eight feet away.  I went over to smell her. Sure enough.....

Meredith gave her a whiff, and she thought it was just the remnants of the previous trips.  I didn't think so, as I hadn't noticed the smell before.  There was no evidence of anything gross stuck to her back, but I got out a soapy rag and rubbed it over her shoulders anyway.  Cleaned her off, repeated a couple of more times, and now there's just a hint.

No doubt she'll be looking to top it up on the next visit.

And those four nice days we had, well they are now just a memory, because look what we have this morning!

About 7 or 8 inches of heavy wet snow:(

Bad photo, but that's Nelson checking it out.

Sunshine!

Just to prove that we do actually get sunshine, occasionally!

What a nice change from the grey.

And that manure pile, well it makes a great perching point.

Sunny during the day, and just below freezing at night, just how we like it:)

The manure pile's a bit smaller now.  I moved about 18 wheelbarrows worth to mulch the rhubarb and the blueberry bushes, and I'm not done yet.

We've been promised another sunny day tomorrow!

Wallpaper Paste

Food of wallpaper hangers champions! Oat bran porridge and raisins and dried cranberries. I was adding brown sugar to the top, but now have found that granola works too.

A while ago I was feeling all smug after leaving the doctors office. My blood pressure was in the awesome range!  After being poked and prodded in places I'd rather not mention, I was sent off with a requisition for lab work.  While my cholesterol usually was in the slightly high range, the ratio of good to bad cholesterol was always a very acceptable level.  I thought it would be even better now, considering the exercise I had been getting.  So imagine my shock when I got the results back, and my level was up...... a lot.  If I was looking for a bright side, the ratio was still sort of okay, but it was a bit of a scary feeling to have my cholesterol that high.  So one of the changes I've made is to switch my breakfast to oat bran, which is supposed to help reduce cholesterol.  We'll see.  

Of course I've done a ton of reading about high cholesterol and menopausal women, and the more I read, the more confusing it gets.  It's never simple.  Meanwhile, I'm developing a liking for the glue.  A little milk added to it helps it go down a bit easier.

I've cut out a lot of the bread, with butter, that I was eating.  Saturated fat and all that.  Then I read a few sites that classify butter as a good fat.  And today I learned that coconut meat/milk/water/oil etc. is a 'miracle' food.  One minute you think you are doing the right thing, and then you read something else that makes you rethink it all over again.

Are You Coming Out to Play?

From Wikipedia....

A utility room is a room within a house where equipment that are not used in day to day activities are kept. Utility refers to an item which is designed for usefulness or practical use, so in turn most of the items kept in this room have functional attributes. A utility room is generally the area where laundry is done, and is the descendant of the scullery.^[1][2][3] Utility room is more commonly used in British English, while North American and Australian English generally refer to this room as a laundry room.^{[citation needed]}

[edit]Uses

The utility room has several uses but typically functions as an area to do laundry. This room contains laundry equipment such as a washing machine, tumble dryer, ironing boardsand clothes iron.^[4] The room is also used for closet organization and storage. The room would normally contain a second coat closet which is used to store seasonal clothing such as winter coats or clothing which are no longer used daily.^[5][6] Storage spaces would contain other appliances which would generally be in the kitchen if it was in usage daily. Furnaces and the water heater are sometime incorporated to the room as well. Shelving and trash may sometimes be seen at this area as not to congest the other parts of the house. ^[7]

I've been working at shovelling out  cleaning up the utility room.  I guess it could also be called the laundry room/mud room/furnace room/dog room.  The washer and dryer are in there.  There is a sink and counter space and old kitchen type cabinets, and when we moved in, there was a fridge and stove down there as well.  It is the first room you enter, when you come in to the basement of the house through the garage.  It's where the woodstove is, and where we confine the dogs if they are wet and or dirty, or if we want to keep them out of the way for a while.  I have a small fridge in there to store some of the dog food that I'll be using in the next few days. There are some dog beds.  It's where we leave our dirty boots and coats and where we store all sorts of junk that we will probably never use again.  It was the place where every horizontal surface was piled with 'stuff'.  I've just about worked my way around the room, cleaning up everything visible, and now am starting on things that are in bins or in the closet or the cabinets.  

It was nice this afternoon and the dogs went outside.  But then it was about the time that we do something with them, so Jake and Luna were watching intently to see if there were any signs of someone coming out to entertain them.  So yeah, I broke down and took a ball and some flying squirrels out into the hayfield and gave them some exercise.  And then to finish it off we took them for a walk around the block.  

 And yesterday, that window was all clean and shiny, and had no dog nose smears on it.  It's a tough life, being a Wyndson dog:)

Biting the Bullet

Every year, when I start seeing the Sun Run info in the newspaper, I toss around the idea that maybe I should sign up for one of the training clinics and actually attempt this 10K run. I jokingly mentioned it to Meredith a week or two ago.  She didn't laugh at me, and didn't say 'you've got to be kidding', so I wondered if she was slightly interested.  I didn't mention it again for a while, but in the back of my mind was the thought that maybe THIS was the year.  A few days ago I brought it up again, and then she admitted that one of her secret resolutions was to get more exercise, and doing the Sun Run was actually on her Bucket List.

  So long story short, we've both signed up for the training clinics.  Nothing like putting a bunch of money down to make you go out and exercise.  For thirteen Monday nights, we meet with our group, and walk and run.  There is a 'Walk' group, and a 'Learn to Run' group.  I probably forgot to mention that I hate running, so we've signed up for the 'Learn to Run' group.  Might as well go all out, and pay for something I hate doing.  Might as well push myself. There are two other training sessions each week that we have to do ourselves.  At least we can nag each other to get out there and get moving.  It will be fun, yeah right.  It will be fun though to be part of that 50,000 body mob on Sunday April 15th.  I only hope it doesn't rain that day, and also on our Monday night training sessions.  The other sessions, well we can try to work around the rain, maybe...

 Training Schedule 

Where DID 2011 Go?

I can't believe that another year has gone. It seems that the older a person gets, the faster the time goes.  2011 was the year that I was really faced with a sense of my own mortality.  When my mother had a stroke back in May, at first it seemed like it was just a rather large bump in the road for her, and before long she would be back to her 81 year old 'normal'.  The doctors all thought that she would regain the use of her arm and leg, but that wasn't meant to be.  At the start of this new year, she resides in a nursing home.  I thought my life would settle down again after her move from the hospital, but so far it hasn't.  As one issue with my mother is resolved, another pops up to take it's place.
Larry's mother, at nearing 102, passed away at the beginning of December. While it was not unexpected, it still leaves a great sense of loss.  One of her two remaining sister-in-laws, (Larry's aunt) passed away suddenly shortly after that, and then one of his cousins at the end of the month.  The year for Larry did not end well.
People I know, have and are still dealing with terrible diseases, and some have succumbed.  Death does not seem such a distant thing any more.

It was a long cold Spring, and Summer took it's time, but eventually came through for us in the end.  The Farmer's Markets went well, but are all consuming in the summer months.  I've decided this year to take one Saturday off a month.  Three of those Saturdays will be taken up by dog agility events, two of which will involve going away for a change of scenery and a bit of a holiday, and will also mean we will be away for the whole weekend, so no Sunday market either.

The animals are mostly doing well. We lost our old sheep April, but so far our other seniors seem to be getting along alright.  The highlight of my doggy year was Jake's win in his division at the BC/Yukon agility regionals,  as well as Luna's success at the event.

October brought our wonderful little holiday in our trailer, and this year we are going to try hard to get away in the Spring before the markets are in full swing.

Then there was the long downward slide into wet and darkness and Christmas, and now we are once again, climbing towards the light. We have gained seven minutes of daylight since the Solstice! The interesting thing is that the time of sunrise hasn't got any earlier, in fact is two minutes later than on the 21st.

So here we are, at the start of a new year. Time is passing so fast it is already the third, before I've made my New Years post.  A few resolutions have been made, with most of them to be expected to be forgotten after a few weeks.  I don't have an issue with that.  A few weeks of healthier eating/exercising/being more organized etc, is better than nothing at all.  The power walking that I started sometime last year, has had it's ebbs and flows, but I'm still doing it, which is the important thing.  My plan this year is to enjoy life more, as we can never be sure of what the future holds, and things can change in the blink of an eye.
Here's to a great 2012!