I went to the South Okanagan on the weekend, both to deliver fruitcakes and also to visit mom and Gerry.  I dropped off at Terwilligers Gifts in Penticton, and thought one day when I have time I simply must shop at that store.  They have absolutely to-die-for pottery and they wrap everything very beautifully.

After that I went to Handworks Gallery on Main Street in Oliver, owned by a wonderful woman named Esther.  It’s the kind of place where you can find locally-made arts and crafts and learn something about each artist from her.  Plus, I like her style: she keeps coffee brewing and has my fruitcake ready to serve with it, so her sales of my product are brisk.

Finally I dropped an order at Tin Horn Creek Winery in Oliver, which is situated like a castle on the top of a hill.  I adore the steep driveway, which they keep in indigenous plantings on either side.  Once at the top the view of the valley is one of the nicest, even though there’s nary a body of water in sight.

It was a sunny day, and because it’s been so warm all of the coloured leaves have remained on the trees.  Below Tin Horn Creek it’s solid orchards, and the leaves of the cherry trees were a gorgeous gold on the bottom, with the topmost branches a fiery red.  On days like that I’m knocked out by the beauty of the Okanagan Valley.

Mom had a few people over for dinner on Saturday evening and she made a moist and delicious pot roast.  She’d bought the most decadent coconut cream pie from the bakery at Prince’s in Oroville, WA and I had an enormous piece.  Then at midnight, after everyone had left, I had to have some more.  Mmmmm.

I got home on Sunday exhausted, as usual, because as you know by now, mom loves to stay up late.  She made me sit there and visit with her until 1:00 AM, then she looked at her watch and said with surprise, “it’s 1:00 AM we should go to bed!”  By then I was like, “just shoot me” because I’m usually fast asleep by 9:00 PM.

After cleaning up some of Nicky’s detritus, it was mercifully 4:30 PM, which is the hour at which I put a margarita into the freezer so that it’s ready at precisely 5:00 o’clock.  Imagine my horror upon finding most of the tequila gone!  I have to say that thanks to people like Eckhart Tolle, most of the time I seem able to keep a grip on how much adrenalin I allow to flow through my body.

However, my world is the size of a pea.  Hence small pleasures, such as my drink at 5:00, are very large and important.  So I indignantly marched downstairs and tore a strip off Nicky, who admitted he and Jordan had drank it the night before.

Just as I was planning a murderous revenge, there was Nicky, home with a bottle of tequila for his mentally deranged parent.  He hugged me, and said, “sorry, mom.”  So what can I say?  I probably need to read a bit more Eckhart Tolle.