Since I began to realize I had migraines, and wasn’t hungover constantly (they both feel the same, curiously) I started to keep the recommended migraine journal. Over time, it became evident that not only does alcohol trigger them, but exercise does as well. So after all these many years, I had to tell the gym to cancel my membership!

I have so many friends there, and will miss those women terribly, but I have to get out of this pain cycle. I feel good, go to the gym and do a class, and then the next day I have a migraine and can’t do anything at all. It just doesn’t seem worth it.

Yesterday when I walked Louie he decided to take a very long walk, and we were gone for 50 minutes. I figure if I can wing my weights around a bit, walk the dog, and try not to eat like Mike Duffy I should be okay. In any case, I’ll continue the journal and report back.

Certainly if I ate like Nicky, I’d weigh the same as Kirstie Alley in no time. On Sunday I made a nice pot roast for us, and as well as mounds of meat, carrots and potatoes, Nicky smothered the entire plate in a full cup of thick gravy.

I had an interesting dream whereby a friend and I were going down a building, and through various doors, to get to the main floor. Once we swung through the last door, and as we were about to exit, the outer doors closed and we were trapped in this box.

When I woke up I wondered what kind of a box I feel trapped in, and realized the dream showed me I couldn’t return where I’d been, nor move forward until a puzzle had been solved. After that I decided to quit the gym, but I’m not sure if that’s what it was about.

There are two neighbours that border my vegetable garden area, and the other day one of them dropped dead. Norm was so loud that when they first moved here about 15 years ago, I recall asking Denis if he was on our driveway. It turned out he was down at his own house, but I could hear him all the way up here. A man filled with life. Not!

He was 64 and planning retirement next year. I often thank Old Man Holmes-Smith, my grade 12 English literature teacher, as we learned excellent quotes such as Do not ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee (Dunn). Hence when someone dies, I always think man, that could’ve been me!

Next week a Woman in Business magazine insert will come out in the Kelowna Capital News, and I’m one of the people being featured. It was so nice of a young reporter to contact me. Due to my age, when I arrived and saw he was about the same age as Nicky I thought the poor kid!

Can you imagine interviewing an old bag about her business, and then that business is fruitcake? He didn’t take notes but recorded the conversation. At one point as I was expounding on the virtues of fruitcake, he yawned. I really felt for him at that moment.

I don’t know why, but for some reason I told him I’m trying to write the memoir of Nuttier than a Fruitcake, so he may include that in the article. If so, I might actually finally have to do it!

I told the nice cashier at Lakeview Market my son’s engaged to a Japanese girl and she (of Japanese descent) said “don’t you already have a Thai daughter-in-law?” I said yes I do, and now I’ll have a Japanese one, too. I said obviously I was such a terrible mother they had to go right outside their own race to get the bad taste out of their mouths.

Nicky and Haruka plan to get married in a very small ceremony, either here or Japan. I suggested they might meet halfway in Hawaii and marry there. All we know is it’s likely to occur in April.

That’s the good news and other than that, the bad news is mainly around the continued broken appliances around here. I got a new washing machine at Christmas, a new fridge in January, and now the water softener is broken, and will be $800 to replace.

But with the amount of minerals in our water all of the pipes’ll be filled with gunk if I don’t buy a new water softener. It took a while for me to realize it’d stopped working, as I thought I was just having an awful lot of bad hair days.

Louie, the feisty dachshund, was barking for about twenty minutes, so I thought he must be seeing the deer, as they always make him bark like that. It went on and on, and so I went out to see. I could hear him down the hill where he likes to shout at the deer.

I walked over and as soon as I did, a bobcat he’d treed saw me and jumped from its perch on a branch and sprang off. He went after it, but the cat was almost flying it moved so fast. We’d seen tracks in the snow around Christmas, but didn’t know what kind of animal made them.

I wonder if that’s the animal that attacked Wrecks, causing the abscess he had a while ago. It’s always hard to know as we also have a large raccoon population and they hate cats, too.

The other week I got a form letter from the BC government stating all food producing businesses now have to complete some onerous forms around food safety. I threw this straight into the garbage, and then yesterday I got a call from someone in the Ministry letting me know about free workshops to help us with these new processes.

As he’d e mailed me the dates, I replied to him saying really? I said I took Food Safe and had a business license which involves a health inspector coming to your place. I said you want more from all home-based food businesses in BC?

So every food vendor at every outdoor market will have a food safety plan? Will every on-line cookie and cupcake business be contacted to do this? It seems expensive, unnecessary if the person has been inspected, and antithetical to entrepreneurs who loathe more forms. Why all the red tape given all some of us have gone through to be in a food business to begin with?

So many questions about our illustrious provincial government, and so little interest in complying with their make-work assignments. I wonder how this will pan out.