On the local website Castanet I found an ad for blueberry bushes for sale.  They were just $6.50 each and it said they were 3 -4 year old plants.  I sent an e mail and said I’d like to come by and purchase some.  Mindy the owner phoned and said they had to be dug out of the ground and were about 3 feet tall.  I said I had a Honda Civic and she said she thought they’d fit into the car, lying down.

I arrived on a farm near a nursery in the Glenmore Valley and was met outside by Mindy.  We went out to their blueberry and raspberry fields and she explained they were downsizing so were selling off almost all of the blueberry bushes.

Mindy’s a slight woman of East Indian descent but she wielded the shovel like a construction labourer.  It took two of us to get the root balls out as they were 30 or more pounds each.  Once out of the ground, each plant with its branches and root ball was massive.

We managed to get the four plants out of the ground and onto a tarp, then dragged them to the Civic, one by one.  Two were hoised onto the back seat, and the hardest part was lifting the other two into the trunk.  Somehow Mindy got the trunk lid shut.

We were both sweating and I handed her $26.00 and drove off wondering that would happen when I got home.  It’s funny but I’ve always pretty much lived in a fantsy world where I imagine something magical is going to happen.  It rarely does.

When I got home there were no elves waiting to help me unload, so I got a tarp and the wheelbarrow and began with the two behemoths on the back seat.  Somehow I got them out, and was amazed at the amount of soil left behind.  I’d brought a roll of plastic garbage bags but even with that there was dirt everywhere.

Lifting the huge root balls out of the trunk nearly killed me, but I did it.  Then I put them on a tarp, and one by one, dragged them down to the lower yard where the next day I dug four holes and planted them.  I doubt they’ll amount to much given the shovel went ka-wang! many times on rocks after about 18 inches of depth.  I think that’s the sum total of soil I put into the beds, and under that it’s solid bedrock.

At the gym today one of the instructors asked me what I did on the weekend and I said you don’t wanna know because my life is filled with mad eccentricities, and told her about the blueberry caper.  Most people just go to Art Knapps and buy a quart-sized container of plants.

I purchased a soil-testing kid and peat moss as Minday said blueberries like soil with a PH of 5 IE very acidic.  This afternoon I hoed around each plant and dug in as much peat moss as I could.  Then I put the sprinkler on  them as she said they like a fair bit of water.

From the past three days of working with the blueberries, I find I’m a complete physical wreck.  My hands are a mess and my body’s in a lot of pain.  But if I can whip up a nice blueberry fool in the summer it’ll all be worth it.

Now I’m ready to phone a guy named Sal, who advertises cuttings from exotic stuff he grows here in Kelowna like paw paw, persimmons, pistachios and more.  Fun!

Mom wanted me to move my income tax paperwork to her accountant in Osoyoos, which I did.  So far, it’s been nothing but a positive experience.  First of all, the bill was half of what I paid last year here in Kelowna.

Then I learned I’m officially poor, given my income from last year, so will get GST rebates and lowered medical premiums.  On top of this, I’ll be turning 60 so as a bonus I get 30% at Value Village on Tuesdays!

So not only am I poor but old too, which is really such good news when you think of it.  And imagine, on this paltry income I’ve just ordered $250 worth of bulls’ penises for my puppy.  We all have our priorities.

Pat, a really nice woman at the gym’s turning 80 at the end of this month, and she cycles there and back for the one hour cardio or weight training classes.  I said to her last week, “Pat, while you’re here, I have to be here, too.”  She’s a great inspiration as I age.

Last week I had two lovely lunches at the same restaurant with old pals.  The first was on Wednesday when I went to the Cactus Club and met Marie, a sign language interpreter I met over 20 years ago.

The second lunch was on Friday, and was with my old pal Ralph from university days.  He and I enjoy reminiscing about our year of teacher training.  We still speak fondly of Venn diagrams and re-tell stories we like, even though we know them so well.

Ralph asked about the fruitcake business and I told him last year was the last time I’d be selling to stores and henceforth all sales would be through my website.  When he asked why, I thought for a moment and said, “Make yer own damn fruitcakes, how about that for a reason?”

I told him I’m getting too old to be making 4000 fruitcakes to sell to stores, and after 10 years, I don’t want to.  He said his wife had recently given up her home daycare (raise yer own damn kids) and teaching yoga (learn yer own damn poses).

We agreed getting old meant setting very definite limits on what we would and wouldn’t do.  He’s like me and not motivated by money which usually confounds the hell out of people.  He pointed at his shirt and said “$3.00” as he also shops at thrift stores, and I pointed at mine and said, “$3.00 and it’s Sigrid Olsen.”

But even though my bills are low, my children like to live as though they’re millionaires, and do it in my house.  Luke currently has a Litecoin mining device running 24/7 in the basement, which generated a huge electrical bill which he tried to argue his way out of .

I held true to the peculiar oldster I’ve become, and managed to browbeat the money out of him.  And why not, as he and Nicky are currently la dee dahing it in Thailand?

On Saturday morning I went to the gym and then the Superstore as I usually do, and arrived home to be told by Nicky Luke was arriving later that day.  This always puts me into a bit of a tizzy as Luke’s got the appetite of a right whale and I need to know before I go shopping, not after, that he’s coming.

In any case, he arrived mid-afternoon and said he wanted to leave for Thailand within the next two or three days.  Another tizzy.  I raced to the thrift stores and looked for suitcases, as Nicky’s going with him and I’m loading them each with 80 pounds of gifts.

I know that sounds like a lot, but when you get a bed full of boxes of chocolate, toys, clothes and soaps, you soon realize you need a lot of luggage for all of this stuff.  I got a dozen boxes of Belgian chocolates at Costco as they’re wrapped so adorably and of course the price is right.

Nicky’s staying in Thailand for one month, and Luke’ll get a visa at that point to extend his stay, probably for another month and so he’ll be back mid-May.  Then he has some hare-brained scheme of renting my gramma’s old house in mom’s orchard in Osoyoos as his home base when he’s off from the oil rigs.

When you’re in Thailand for two months of the year, and at the oil rigs in Saskatchewan for ten, I fail to see how you need to rent a house in Osoyoos year-round.  There go mom and her handyman Alan’s dreams of renting the place by the week to tourists.

But apparently there are currently 70 homes listed as vacation rentals in Osoyoos, so maybe there wouldn’t have been a run on the little place anyway.  I’m staying out of it, but have the feeling somehow I’ll be dragged into the midst of this arrangement.

It’s kind of interesting when you’re given a square half the size of a bandaid and you choose your exterior house colour from this.  Then when the hapless painter begins painting, you realize your house is going to be mauve.  I was pretty sure I was choosing a pale cafe au lait colour, but apparently not.

Perhaps when all of the coats are on, and it’s completely dry, there’ll be less of a pinkish mauve tint to the house.  If not, I’m going to tell everyone I chose a pinkish mauve because that’s my favourite colour, and as you know, being different is what life’s all about.

The rather interesting handyman who came to look at the deck project and give me a quote has disappeared.  Normally that wouldn’t bother me, but he drove off with one of the screens for my sunroom and never returned it!

I noticed when he was here his hands trembled and when I googled him I read an article that said he was a formerly homeless person who turned himself around.  He may have, but I sure wish he’d answer my e mails and bring back my screen.  Sadly, I don’t think he’s the right man for my deck reno and other odd jobs, do you?

However Mitch, a retired carpenter, is going to build the railing for me.  Then Mike will paint all of it mauvish pink and the place will gleam like an opalescent pearl.

Now that spring appears imminent, I can see I have an awful lot of garden work to do.  I was out there this morning with the dog and cats, and everything’s so heavily overgrown and rotten.  The Jupiter’s beard’s a messy perennial once the growing season’s over and is a pile of brown stems with noodle-like consistency.

I heard birds chirping this morning and see the sun so that’s why I think I’m so hopeful about spring.  Yet the plants don’t seem dismayed at all as I see sprouts of bleeding hearts and sedum coming out of the ground.

I went out for wings with a few pals on Wednesday evening then was deathly ill on Thursday.  I think I must have an allergy to alcohol, which is why I think it’s particularly brave of me to continue in the face of such adversity.

And once feeling sick, there’s no way I can do anything hard so I just got right into the car and drove to the Salvation Army thrift store.  I bought a couple of things for around $10 then hit the Mennonite’s and the hospital auxiliary.  Finally I ended up at Value Village, where I again spent some money on a few things.

For around $50 I managed to spend a good three hours getting outside of my mind and body so who can complain about that?  When I got into the car and drove off I thought, wow, I haven’t thought about feeling sick at all, and compared to Advil and Gravol, which are so hard on the liver, this seems to so much better.

I see I’ve bought a lovely top which doesn’t got with anything, so now I have to do a good bout of pants shopping.  What can occur there is I’ll end up with pants that don’t go with anything and need to return for some serious top shopping.  You can see how this can go on forever.

As it was the one-year anniversary of Jerry’s death, his sons David and Jerry Jr. decided to come to Osoyoos to hang around with mom which was awfully nice of them.  I had to get Jerry at the Kelowna airport on Friday afternoon, and then he, Louie and I drove down to Osoyoos.

Jerry and David grew up with a standard red dachshund called Crackers, who they called Crackie, so they both love dachshunds.  And Louie loves everybody anyway, so it was a good time for the dog.  Jerry photographed him from all angles so I hope to have nice shots to share on Facebook soon.

You may recall I was in a fight to the death with Moneris Solutions over closing my account with them, and I can report that it all ended up in my favour!  I received a nice call from a senior customer service rep who assured me all charges would be reversed.  So if you ever feel unjustly treated, for God’s sake do something about it.

Today I’m going to try a new cake recipe and I hope it’s good because I’m taking it to Kathy’s tomorrow for Petra’s birthday dinner.  It’s an orange cake, and has orange mousse between the layers and then butter cream icing over all.  Orange zest goes into the cake, mousse and icing so it should be flavourful.  Perhaps I picked orange as it’s spring-like?

In 2007 I thought I should get credit card capability on my website.  Somehow I heard about Moneris Solutions and applied to them, and have been able to process Visa and Mastercard payments ever since for a usorious fee.

There’s the percentage charged per transaction, of course, but then there are also “service fees” and surprise! there is no actual service.  I recently decided to inquire further about these fees a couple of months ago, and called Moneris.

The customer service agent I spoke with said I could get a lower rate if I entered the card numbers on-line, rather than on the phone as I do now.  He said they’d send me a secret password to get started.  Nothing arrived for over a month, then two days ago a terminal and a bunch of wires arrived by courier.

Seeing this just confirmed to me I had to get away from Moneris, as this customer service rep had lead me to believe I was entering in my computer, and made no mention of a terminal and pin pad!  Also, I really don’t want to pay their fees any longer, and probably don’t need credit card capability for my customers anyway. I notice many people prefer to pay by cheque or with bank transfers, which are so easy and free.

So two days ago I phoned to cancel my contract with Moneris and that’s when all Hell broke loose.  I told my story and was transferred three times, and put on hold for several minutes each time, which was really helpful in making me feel absolutely sure getting away from Moneris was the right thing to do.

I spoke with a gal named Amanda, and for some reason I brought up the terminal which I’d just received.  She stated, “I don’t have any record of you having a terminal” to which I replied, “Well of course you wouldn’t, because your customer service is so poor.”  She said until the terminal was picked up and returned to them, they couldn’t close my account, so she said she would make sure that happened.

I said great, and then she added there’s also a $300 cancellation fee!  I asked why, and she explained my contract had automatically been renewed last year and it’s in “the terms and conditions” of the contract. To say I was mad is like saying Kim Jong Un isn’t very nice.

Today I noticed more “service fees” from Moneris out of my account, and so this time I spoke with Diane.  I asked why, when I had been assured the account would be closed, more fees had come out.  She said it takes 5 – 7 days.  Then she phoned back and said she saw I had a terminal, and guess what, no arrangements had been made by our little Amanda for it to be picked up!

Had I not called today, Moneris would merrily be dinging me with “service fees” and I would be assuming they’d snatched the $300 from my account as per the “contract” and it was closed.   Then in a couple of weeks I would see even more service fees, have to phone again, reach yet another agent, who’d go, “Oh I see Diane didn’t put that request through……”

Someday however, I’ll be seeing the back of Moneris amd then I can laugh about the whole situation, much like you do after a really bad hemorrhoid has gone away.  What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.  I also decided besides putting up with that, it’s good to make a Better Business Bureau complaint, which I did, and I’m sending a letter to their head office as well.  May as well spread the misery around.

I get so mad at the kids for their lack of impulse control because it’s one of my worst traits.  Or maybe it’s one of my best, as there are times when I want to get things done immediately.  For years I’ve been depressed about the exterior of the house, then two days ago I decided it was time to find a painter.

I browsed on-line, and Ouija Board-like I let the mouse lead me to the right person.  There he was, a guy named Mike.  I sent him an e mail and even though it was Sunday, he replied immediately, asking when I’d be around so he could give me a quote.

I hadn’t replied so Mike phoned on Monday morning and asked when I’d be home, and we set a time to meet for 2:00 PM.  He arrived promptly and I proceeded to walk around pointing at the trim and siding, as well as the peeling cement stairs to the basement.  I said maybe do the deck as well.

I went inside and let Mike wander about, making his estimate.  The whole thing with paint will be $3000 so I said sure, go ahead.  Yesterday he came and brought the paint brochure so I’m going berserk trying to decide on the colour.

You know I’ve always hated the deck railing since the day Denis completed it, as it’s just too clunky looking and no-one ever sits on it.  So as I’m going to be having the exterior spruced up with paint, I decided to have the railing changed at the same time.

Because it worked so well with Mike the Painter, I went on-line to look for a carpenter or handyman, and I used the same technique.  The mouse stopped at someone who listed themselves as a retired carpenter who was bored.  I e mailed him, but didn’t hear back.

The next day I went back on-line and found a handyman who does renovations.  He replied immediately and set a date and time to give me an estimate.  Of course then the carpenter phoned, and I told him I’d contacted someone else but he wanted to come and give me an estimate too.

And guess what, both of these guys are named Mike!  They came today and both will supply me with an estimate.  Mike #1, the retired carpenter, only looked at the deck and said he’d send me some photos of railing he’s done.  Mike #2 appears to be more of a handyman type, and I asked him to also give me an estimate on fixing up the sunroom’s exterior.

So now I have Mike the Painter, and if I go with Mike the Carpenter for the railing, then I can go with Mike the Handyman for the sunroom renovation.  The latter Mike’s already raced off with one of the screens to see if they need to be custom-made.

It’s funny how you live with things for years, and then one day really look at them and see how terrible they are.  When Mike the Carpenter was here I said why is that lattice area around the deck so ugly?  He replied it’s because it doesn’t come right down to the ground, hence the hideous cocmrete footings are showing.  He said it’s easily fixed with a proper wood wall.

Such a simply question with a very straight-forward solution.  Just do it!

My friend Petra and I drove to Osoyoos on Monday, which was the newly-minted Family Day holiday.  We picked mom up and had lunch at the N’Kmip Winery which wasn’t good as usual, though the view’s lovely.  It’s only in rural Canada that one would drive 100 miles each way for lunch.

The night before Petra and I went to see the play The 39 Steps, put on by the Kelowna Actor’s Studio.  It’s a dinner theatre, so we met at 6:30, ate, then the show started at 8:00 PM.  You know me, I’m always in shock when something starts at that time of night as it’s my bedtime.

But one must challenge oneself from time to time, just to be reminded that life can’t be comfy all the time.  My idea of bliss is sitting on the couch with my dog, watching TV.  So every once in a while to be forced out of that routine is probably healthy.

Because I’m turning 60 in the summer, the government kindly sent my pension contribution statement.  It appears I’d get a paltry amount if I decide to take it now, and so I can see I’ll be yoked to the vagaries of work until I’m 65.

But I told myself to cheer up, as that’s really just 64 months away, and you know how time flies at our age.  It’s an excellent opportunity to be thinking about all the things I want to do when I have more time.

Regardless of that, I’m going to order a couple of bee hives this spring, as there’s no point in postponing that project.  You’ll recall I’ve got the the bee suit and smoker, so it seems silly not to get the bees to go along with it all.

As well, I plug along in my creative writing pursuits, and with any luck will have a short story to submit to the Okanagan Short Story Contest.  I was humiliated yet not surprised to see the story I submitted to CBC’s short tory contest contained a typo!

And they say it right on the site: Check your submission.  I was like ‘yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve read it a hundred times’, and sent it.  Then a couple of days later I idly opened the document only to see I’d somehow cut off half a sentence.  I must’ve copied and pasted and didn’t re-check.

Hence this submission’s going to be gone over with a fine-toothed comb before being sent.  I wonder if Alice Munro started like this, but somehow doubt it.  Perhaps Erma Bombeck, whose style my writing somewhat resembles, had these issues in the beginning.

Another project that’s looming is exterior house paining.  Not by me, don’t worry.  But I have to call a couple of companies or handymen to get quotes.  I’m so poor at that step.  I just want to have a fairy come in the night to do things while I sleep.

But really, living here gives me so many nice pursuits that working isn’t all that pesky as I don’t have to leave home in order to do it.  It’s almost mean of the government to send a document like that when all it does is confirm the worst: Carry on!

I just placed an on-line order totalling $157.19 for bulls’ penises.  This morning I shelled out over $30 for 3 penises at Buckerfields, and cut one in half and gave it to Louie.  Two hours later it’s almost gone, so I can see this isn’t going to work.

I went on-line and starting doing research on bulls’ penises and came upon this fantastic site.  It’s bullysticks.ca and they have really good prices for penises.  And they’re so good for the dog as they’re all meat and excellent for cleaning their teeth. 

Now I have a crate of penises coming so I hope that’ll last Louie for awhile.  But from now on I’m certainly not schlepping to a store when this was so much easier to do.  I can see how agoraphobia begins.

I needed to get out last weekend though, and decided to make my rounds of the thrift stores.  I nearly wept, but in the Mennonite thrift store I found a pair of Ingledew’s Grazia-brand made in Spain pumps.

The woman at the till and I examined them and thought perhaps they’d been worn once.  They were $9 instead of $300 so why not?

I got Louie a stuffed donkey a la Shrek, for $3 and it’s slightly larger than he is.  I could tell he liked it as he decided to have sex with it almost immediately.  Neutering didn’t do much to diminish his zeal around certain stuffed animals.

You know how compulsive I am over some things, and the juicer’s one of them.  Most days I throw a beet, some carrots, a bunch of parsley, an apple and an orange into it and make myself a delicious glass of juice.

 You’re thinking one would lose weight juicing, but you’d be wrong in my case, as I believe I’m gaining.  It’s my own fault of course as my gluttony knows no bounds.

For example yesterday Kathy and I were invited to Rosemarie’s, another nice woman from the gym, for a Devonshire cream tea.  She’s from the area so made us lovely buttery scones, and served them with strawberry jam and whipped cream.

When she sent the e mail inviting us, I salivated for two days while I waited.  Then yesterday I had a healthy glass of juice for lunch in preparation, so when I got there all ravenous, I proceeded to put as much jam and whipped cream on the buttery homemade scones as I could.  Mmmmmm.

So I suppose the dog comes by his insatiable appetite for delcious things honestly because of his adoptive mother.  One way we’re dissimilar however is in how dirty and messy he is.  He loves bringing in pine cones and then chewing them up, spreading debris throughout.

Louie also takes the stuffing out of his toys, and of course his favourite thing is to go downtairs to the laundry room and get a sock or underwear, bring it upstairs, and chew holes into it.  You can see how the money spent on the penises is a good idea.

Twelve years ago mom and Gerry moved in together, and they were 77 and 87 years of age respectively.  After a year Gerry said they should get a dog, so mom said okay and they got a puppy.  This was quite miraculous as mom has always loathed pets, so it was weird to vist there and have a pup greet me.

Schwarzie was raised as Gerry and mom’s child, so she meant the world to them.  In the early years Gerry would put her on the leash and take her for walks.  One day when they returned mom and whoever was with her started screaming.  Gerry, who had macular degeneration had no idea why.

As it turned out, the dog had picked up a dead bull snake on the walk.  I guess it’d been slashed by the farm equipment and she’d found it as they’d wandered through the old apple orchard.

Another adorable thing she did was beat the hell out of Gerry.  Because the dog was at the top of the pack, if the three of them were watching TV and Gerry decided to get up for something, she’d race over and bite him hard.

She was there every minute last year when Gerry was in his bed, dying.  After that, she consoled mom and then all of a sudden last spring she became very sick with diabetes.  Mom tried giving her shots but found it too hard, so decided to just put her on a raw meat diet and try the herb Gaba which is supposed to be good for regulating blood sugars.

It didn’t work, and sadly the dog was euthanized by the vet yesterday and naturally we’re all heart broken, given all the poodle meant to everyone.  But as we know, if we own dogs we have to be prepared for their ridiculously early demises.

Another thing to accept is adult children and their frightening whims.  Luke said he can go and work on oil rigs in Azerbaijan and wants to do that as then he’s closer to Thailand and Jan.  I can understand the latter, but working in a terrorism-ridden country doesn’t sound good to me.

Just thinking about countries like that, or Russia and the Olympic Games and the amount of corruption to get them off the ground, makes me so glad to be a Canadian.  And I hate to say it, but as I live in the best region in the best country in the world, I’m smug.

But as usual, I look out my kitchen window feeling ashamed of my immediate environs.  I think I’ve mentioned the 32 tires stacked in the yard, as well as the dozens of large cardboard boxes in which the kids’ electronics are delivered on a regular basis.

Because of the intermittent wind storms, there’s a thick layer of pine needles everywhere.  Step one in getting a handle on this mess is calling a rubbish removal company, closely followed by a landscape labourer.  Maybe Nicky’s pal Taylor’s got time to haul a dump truck or two’s worth of pine needles off this property.

A poor faithful customer tried to order two fruitcakes only to be told there aren’t any, so I really do have to get with the program and bake a bit.  Life carries on, after all.

My dreams are so wonderful and vivid, and before I woke up this morning I dreamt about a young lion.  I checked out the meaning of lions in dreams, and one site suggests “the appearance of a lion in a dream may signal that new power or passion my awaken within you.”

It’s funny, as one of the topics I want to explore for my January newsletter is passion, or the lack thereof in many people.  To have passion about something can move mountains, as witnessed by people like Martin Luther King Jr.  As you well know, I’ve never really lacked in this area.

Of course it’s wearing, as witnessed by those who had to live through the early days of the fruitcake business about which I was aflame.  Then there’ve been the convictions a bee hive will save the planet, a xeriscape garden’s the only moral way to go and my letters to the editor decrying development on Agriculture Land Reserve land.

This past week I’ve experienced the usual highs and lows of all of our lives.  One of the dear women from elementary school who I’ll be meeting in May for our big 60th birthday celebration let me know her younger sister died.  Then my friend Petra e mailed to say their dog Buddy became extremely ill and was euthanized.

On the positive side I had the great pleasure of being visited by people I’ve known all of my life.  Eve and Angie (formerly Baillie) are the daughers of my mom’s deceased best friend, Liz.  Eve spent a couple of nights and Angie spent one and it was tremendous fun.

Nicky asked me how I knew them and I explained.  I said to him it’s like the Lynch’s girls and you remaining in touch all of your lives; or Alison’s boys who’ve known Nicky and Luke since they were all small.  It’s not necessarily that these people are friends, they become almost like cousins.

Angie has three adult kids and I like the way she never refers to them by name, only as The Big Girl, The Little Girl and The Boy.  Isn’t that adorable?  At one point I said I’m sorry to have to ask but I forgot their names and she had to remind me.

Remember how happy I was to get Netflix plus through that box I was able to see the last 8 episodes of Breaking Bad, thanks to Nicky’s stealth on the Internet.  However after the visitors had gone, I saw down and was ready for another episode of Nip/Tuck only to find the box dead.

I mean dead as in nothing happened whatsoever when I pointed the flipper at it.  Changed the batteries in the flipper, and still nothing, so called Nicky.  He checked it and declared the box pooched, so drove to Future Shop for a new box.

He installed it and went downstairs.  After an hour or so the screen went black and then a loud whining sound started coming out of the speakers.  I asked Nicky to check it, and at first he was blase but when he heard the noise, he was like, “Holy F”

It was fixed, but not before he declared the sound was very, very rare and hence quite interesting.