My book, which I called Okay I’ll Bite – Light-hearted Suggestions for Better Living is now available on Amazon! It’s free for people who already have a Kindle account so you can see this isn’t going to be feathering my retirement nest. However, it’s kind of nice to have finally completed that, even though it’s a compilation of past newsletter articles, and the next book will be a test of my mental fortitude.

 After getting that onto the site it was time to prepare for my 70^th birthday which was also a celebration for mom being in her 100^th year. This way if she dies prior to February 25 she’ll have seen and talked to all the people who would be at her memorial. After the event she said, “no more celebrations after this.”

It was a true test of my catering abilities as I was supposed to have help from our friends Jim and Federico, but the latter arrived from Europe with Covid so they had to cancel. I therefore made dinner for 20 on the Friday and 40 on the Saturday. Three of the Ya Ya’s attended, Mary, Phyllis and Renate, and also my friends Margaret and Bev. Phyllis made a delicious pineapple chiffon cake which everyone loved.

My nieces and their families were there, and I got the best card from Sunny. It said, “I feel like going on a spree, shopping or killing, I’m not sure which.” And of course, all the preparations and the party itself were held in Osoyoos during a heat wave so everyone snuck into the house to eat. It’s hard to enjoy food when it’s 40 degrees Celsius.

Then the day after getting home from cleaning up from the big party, my cousin Ruth and her daughter Daniela arrived from Germany. My mom’s an only child, so I have no cousins from that side, but my dad’s brother had two children, and they’re my only first cousins, so I was thrilled to be able to spend time with her and Daniela.

They’re currently off to Banff for three days and I’m catching up with my blog, have to write my July newsletter, and want to bake chocolate chip cookies for their return as they were crazy over them, as most human beings are. Calvin’s sick with a horrible flu so I’ll have to slug it out myself and mow the lawn.

The last you’d heard, I had either three or four chickens, and on the weekend of my party in Osoyoos, two more were stolen so I came to home to my own lone hen, who I called Kate. She was the only one of the six chickens I could recognize as all the others had black feathers at the neck and hers are gray.

Seeing her all alone distressed me terribly so I immediately began a search for friends for Kate. Calvin was going to reinforce the chicken fence but couldn’t due to illness, so today I bought netting and my pal Sylvie from next door came over and we secured it over the open area as best we could. Soon after I saw two large black raptors in the tree over the chicken yard.

I found a woman locally with a variety of chicken breeds, so today I brought home one lavender Orpington and one splash Marans and one blue copper Marans. If I can keep these alive it’ll be a test and then I said I would next week for four black Ameraucanas. Apparently I’ll get different coloured eggs which will be interesting, but I just want them to live at this point.