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Reporting back from a non-sportsperson’s sporting holiday
Earlier this month, my husband and I went to visit his son, who, as well as finishing up his MSc also coaches D2 college football. Part of that trip, of course, was a football game. ID 15638054 © DannyHooks | Dreamstime.com Now, when I say I’m not a sports-educated girl, I mean it. I was known, when I worked full time, to have to remind my colleagues regularly that they did not want me filling a last-minute hole in a foursome. Every spring when golf season came around, I would muse that golf lessons should be my company funded professional education for the year. “Which… Read more…
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Remembering my father’s hands
My Dad died recently. Not yesterday, but earlier this year, after a long battle with cancer. When we had the Celebration of Life last month, when the weather was warm enough to, my mother put out books of photos of some of the things Dad had created in his life. Dad had always been an avid gardener and general woodworker, but beyond that, so the story goes, he didn’t have much creativity. And he certainly couldn’t draw a straight line with a ruler. But around about the time I was an early teenager, he started taking duck carving classes. This… Read more…
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How much change can one person take?!
They say when you retire that you shouldn’t make big life decisions. You know, ride it out a while and see where things settle. Yeah, that wasn’t what I did. In January 2025, I announced at work that I would retire at the end of July. It was not a secret that I was planning to go soon and my boss asked for lots of time so there’d be a good period of overlap with my successor (that’s another story!). So that started the countdown clock. In May, I got engaged to the handsome ginger-haired man I’d been seeing. His… Read more…
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Juice to the rescue?
Have you ever had cherry juice? No, not just the leftovers after a bowl of cherries for dessert, but a full glass of the brilliant red liquid that just hits the spot? Me neither, until I spent a year in Türkiye. Until then, I’d been brought up on apple and orange juice. Grapefruit juice or tomato juice were for fancy occasions. But that year, I learned about tiny bottles of peach juice and apricot juice and yes, sour cherry juice – or vişne suyu, as I learned to call it. After school, a gang of us would go to the… Read more…
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For the love of reading: my favourite childhood reads
When one of my sons was small, he always had his nose in a book – in honesty, they both did. But this one had an overzealous phys ed teacher tell his older brother that he shouldn’t be reading so much at recess. Me? I figured if a six year old wanted to read Harry Potter at recess, I’d just let him. He’s still a voracious reader – much as his mother is, and it got me thinking recently about the books I loved in my childhood. I still have some of them, although I admit that others got donated when… Read more…
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It’s all a matter of perspective
“It’s cold. I mean, really cold.” That’s what I heard when I mused about the temperature in the Aegean Sea, when my new ginger-haired husband and I started planning our winter honeymoon to the south coast of Türkiye. We love travelling in January. The crowds stay at home, the weather’s usually not too bad, and we can roam (with lots of sunscreen) without worrying about heat stroke! This trip, we had some ancient Roman ruins to ourselves without a single soul in sight. Bliss. Temperatures were looking like 8-10 Celsius for the two weeks we’d be there, so perhaps people… Read more…
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Aborted kilt mission
They say if you’re kind, then kindness will be returned to you. I guess it’s not always meant to happen in the moment. Not my guy, and not the right tartan, but you get the idea! A couple of weeks ago, southern Ontario got its first real taste of winter. While Toronto mostly got rain, heavy snow fell north of the city. Of course, that was the day that my fiancé and I were scheduled to drive to Barrie to pick up his new kilt. Yes, my ginger-headed man has decided he’s wearing a kilt to our wedding! The drive… Read more…
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Reflections on a road trip
Late in the summer, my daughter and I packed up her new car with all her belongings – at least the ones that weren’t already half way across the country – and began what was either the best or worst idea we’d had to date. We had four days to get from southern Ontario to Kelowna, BC, and then one more day to move her to her new home in the Kootenay mountains and for me to get back to Kelowna to fly home. It would turn out to be just over 5,000 kilometres of driving. I admit, I was… Read more…
