Mary's Request - Glass Pictures

Mary asked for details or close ups on Moiya's churches thrift store find.  We looked at the underside and found the name of the artist.  Moiya will have to post that here.  I think it was the PO Box of someone on the Prairies.  Maybe she will do a few closeups as well.  This is all I took with my camera.

High Points of the Day

Selfies on the Morning Ceilidh leaves for St Albert
LtoR: Ceilidh, Gavin, Arta, Doral

So Rebecca sometimes asks for the high points of the day.

I could tell her a hot point of the day.

Doral had re-created taco salads again tonight. 

I ate while no one was around, taking the food out of the Tupperware containers that he left on the counter.

I thought I was taking green peppers. When I got into my salad I could feel that those peppers were not green peppers but jalapeno peppers that should have been added judiciously to the salad. I knew I was feeling some extra heat, not just the heat that went with the day.

Later I was eating ice cream with the kids. They were enjoying their four scoops of ice-cream with different sauces – my kitchen is just going upscale on having all of the condiments for sundaes available. I grabbed what I thought was a clean spoon from the side of the counter and took my first bite. I could feel a peppery aftertaste to my sundae. A few bites later, when the hot taste continued, I figured out, this must have been the spoon that Doral used to de-seed the jalapenos. Well, as I said, a hot point of the day. I finished the ice cream off thinking to myself, if there were a flavour called Jalapeno Sundae at D Dutchman, I might try it, so that is a new experience that I won’t have to try twice.

Good morning to Amanda Price and Ceilidh Johnson

I had a moment of reckoning today, not really a high point, but a sobering one.

I saw the aftermath of an accident on the Trans Canada at the junction of highway 97 B. A twisted and bent motorcycle in the middle of the pavement, a backpack strewn open, miscellaneous pieces of clothing and plastic bags on the highway, the police directing us to move through the intersection as quickly as possible.

At the end of every day, I am always so happy when all of my loved ones are still alive. I thought about the family who will receive sad news about that accident, a life-changing one.

So, back to the high point of the day? Maybe it was playing the word game with Meighan and Amanda Price as we ate supper late at night. They ate and I was trying to get hold of my 24 hour kitchen – just make it look as though it had been perfectly refreshed. Doral and Bonnie were playing the word game as well. Who, but the 2 of them, can throw in questions where the answer is Luddite, or megabite and make it seems as though every family taunts each other with words that make everyone laugh.

"You want a wake up pose?  I will give you one", says Duncan.

So maybe I should tell Rebecca the point where I thought I should apologize today?

That would be when I saw the porcelain dolls had been taken from the low window ledge and played with behind the dining room end chair. 

The Barbie bus and the school house had been carried in from their place on the porch, so they were also there. All of the clothes were off of the dolls. As I redressed them, I wondered if the woman who sewed those little dresses knew how often they would come on and off the dolls who were once in show cases. Today the dolls had been physical touched and loved in imaginative play. That is the job I want them to do when I buy them at the thrift store. At any rate, there was a bit of an apology in my heart to her that the dolls had now lost that pristine look, but I felt happiness on my part that two little girls had spent hours with the dolls today.

The point when I felt a rush of warmth today? That was when Duncan and I were gathering up the limbs and branches from the trees that are just at the place where Richard and Miranda’s lot connects with mine: the place where Ceilidh and Gavin Beaulieu camped. Duncan told me that Ceilidh and Gavin had 2 beach chair placed there and that the sunrise at 4 am was incredibly beautiful, the colours of the morning creeping in over the Old Town Hill. I asked him if he had watched it with Ceilidh ad Gavin. Duncan said, "no, they were asleep." But he was doing an all-nighter and decided to watch the sun rise during that time. I loved the fact that one of my grandchildren had watched the beauty of a sunrise out there.

"What?  Er?  Um?, Your leaving?," says David.

High point of the day?

Maybe it was going to Churches of Salmon Arm Thrift Shop after Doral went to the walk-in clinic at Mt Ida today.

I saw two beautiful china cabinets there I wanted to buy. Doral asked me the practical question. 

“And where will you put them?”

Instead I bought a long sleeved tall shirt for Duncan so that he can help me pull twigs and cut underbrush. Price? $2,00. I also bought a few new Barbies for the girls and a small rattan chair for one of the dolls to sit on.

What price, happiness?

Ten dollars and 50 cents, total.



Arta

Toys at Churches

Today Miranda and I drove to the thrift store to bring home a ratan bar cart that I purchased there yesterday.  Wyona reminded me tonight that rattan always cracks and breaks, but for a while it will br fun.  The kids came along as well to do some shopping in the children's toys section of the thrift store.  I told them I would pay for whatever they could carry in their arms.

Michael came away with 4 items, all of which can be held in the palm of his hand.  Apparently that is all that a 7 year boy can find that interests him in those bins of toys.

Betty kept asking me to hold things for her.  I just didn't have it in me to facilitate her that way, but I did show her how to telescope one toy into another again and again.  I also showed her how to carefully make her way to the check out without spilling anything.  One of her top items was a bow and arrow set that she played with all afternoon.

Alice is gifted at buying second-hand.  She came out with a number of stuffed animals, and a dog that is really a purse, if we can judge by the zipper along its back and its carrying handles.  The zipper gets caught in the lining, so I am going to tack that back so that the purse will work for her.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

Then we whiled away the rainy afternoon with the toys and with a book Michael found in the bookshelves at home:  Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark: Collected from American Folklore by Alvin Schwartz.

Michael read the first story to us last night as we were eating supper.

I could see he was going to starve to death for the evening if someone else didn't do some reading while he ate, so I picked up the book and read for a while.

A grandmother knows she is reading the story right when she can feel three little bodies pressed close to hers and knows it is out of fear and not for comfort.

Today we learned one of the poems in the book, "The Slithery Dee".

The slithery-dee,
He came out of the sea;
He ate all the others,
But he didn't eat me.

The slithery-dee,
He came out of the sea,
He ate all the others,
But he didn't eat --
SL-U-R-P . . .

We worked a long time at getting just the right sound in the slurp.

Arta