Happy Anniversary

It's Rob and Melissa's anniversary today. Al and Nancy's was just over a week ago; Walter and Faye's around this time too. November is a good month for anniversaries in my family (the harvest is either in by that time or there's no point counting on it). It was my anniversary last Thursday. I remembered several times in the days preceeding it, and then didn't think of it until late Saturday. Lloyd and I were married 21 years ago, and have been separated for just over two years. For the first time, I didn't spend a lot of time arguing with myself in my head; maybe if I had said this, or done that... It felt really good to not have to do that.

Resume procrastination now

Report card marks are due in Monday morning by 9 am. I have several hours to spend finishing up marking. Yesterday I took my van in to get new tires. It meant that I spent five hours at Walmart! If I had had a laptop, I could have spent those five hours marking! (This is the only time that I have wished that I had a laptop). As it was, because I'm still recouperating from a really bad cold, I came home afterwards and went to bed. Then picked up Rose when she got off work, and came back to bed. Today I don't have that luxury - must finish marking! However would love to be back in bed right now. I still have a bad cough, it hurts to breathe and no energy. Aside from that, I'm doing fine.

Took my parents to the airport yesterday. They're off to Florida with Walter & Ruth for a few days in a time share followed by a cruise. They're back in Saskatchewan December 12. I hope they all have a wonderful time. Dad's finished my front hall closet. I'll paint it in January when Rose isn't around, as she's so sensitive to chemicals. Rose is thinking she'll go up to YK for part of January as she'll be done her university classes and she's upgrading her Grade 12 for the next semester and that won't start until Feb 1.

More mice

I opened the dishwasher this morning to put a dirty cup in and a mouse greeted me. I slammed the door shut and started it, but when my mom checked later, there was no sign of it. However later today mom also saw a mouse in the dishwasher. So Dad's stuffed the air vent with stainless steel wool and hopefully they can't get in there any longer. So far this week, there's been a mouse a day caught in a trap. I'd like to be done with mice!

The Dance

You’ve seen them in movies,
the long line of girls in leotards
working at the barré, as their teacher
walks along, adjusting their positions;
changing the angle of a wrist here, a foot there,
until they know the positions with their bodies.
When I play piano, I want my fingers to dance on the keys.
My teacher therefore helps me to adjust the angle of my wrist,
the position of my foot. She reminds me to not tense my shoulders and
adjusts my hand and body posture until my body knows the positioning.
Then the dance can resume.

Key troubles

Rose has been missing her main set of keys for about two weeks. I supplied her with a second house key and she promptly lost it too. And a third. I was now out of keys, so I went and got three more cut. However, yesterday Rose cleaned her room and found all but the first main set. Last night she found that set in the van.

Now, to be honest, Rose hadn't been able to clean her room because the light burned out and it took a great deal of doing to get it changed. I was finally able to figure out how to unscrew the globe, but not how to put it back. My parents are supposed to be up to visit today, so I'm sure Dad can do that for us. In addition, the armoir in her room tipped over and it took two of us to set it back. Once we had done that, she was able to clean up her room and find all the missing keys.

Ruth suggests that we change to a pushbutton front door lock. She really loves hers. However, our front door lock is strange in that the knob not set the standard distance from the edge that most knobs are; so we're locking the door with a deadbolt, because we can't replace the knob without replacing the front door.

Metronome

It’s a love/hate relationship.
The regular tick sounds so comforting;
a steady rate, a steady pace.
Tick, tick, tick.
However, when I try to match it,
it seems to dance around –
I can never quite catch the rhythm.
Too fast... no, too slow – arrgh!
The metronome – my enemy.
Tick, tick, tick.
When I finally do go in time with it
my playing improves so much.
The missed and wrong notes
seem to vanish with the effort spent
matching its steady pulse.
The metronome – my friend.

The good news is

I was able to get someone to come out to see the boiler It ended up being after hours. It was also a very easy fix; a wire had come loose. Ten minutes on his part. Half an hour at after hours billing on my part. Oh well; my tenants have heat and we're all happy. He taped down the wire so it shouldn't happen again. (Last time I had it serviced - just this fall, the wire also came loose too easily).

Rose and I went out last night to W - we needed socks. I swear they vanish into black holes. The rule is... they never sell the same kind you bought last time, so you can't have a whole bunch of matching ones. Ah well, we do have socks again.

While we were there we also bought groceries (it still seems really weird to me to buy groceries at W) and a variety of different mouse traps. At Superstore they only sell the traditional wooden ones (2 for 69 cents) - which may be cheap, but the smarter mice figure out how to get the bait without getting caught. W sells a much wider variety. I got glue traps (which we used all the time in New Guinea), two different types of plastic ones that snap down like the wooden ones do and ones that they go inside of so you don't have to see the mice after they're caught. We set them all last night - I want no more mice! Found one little tiny mouse this morning in a glue trap. Lying there, still alive, quivering. I'm sorry, but I have a hard time feeling sorry for vermin. I set the trap outside so it can freeze to death. It was caught right by the very edge. I wonder if I can use a drywall cutter and cut off that part of the trap and reuse the rest of it? (Am I being too cheap here?)