You’d think after attending the gym for over 11 years I wouldn’t have a single muscle that isn’t in shape.  Surprise!  The other day I went to a new class at the gym, called “barre” and I was shocked at how hard it was.  To start with we did what felt like a thousand plies, as it’s a class comprised of ballet moves.

Stop laughing.  We don’t wear tutus or go on pointe, but we do exercises that are surprisingly hard.  At the beginning, the instructor told us to get 2-pound weights, and a seasoned attendee said, “trust me, that’s all you’ll need.”

I was expressing surprise, as in the weight training classes I an easily wing around 8-pound weights.  However when you do a thousand reps of something, a 2-pound weight gets mighty heavy.  It was a very interesting hour.

And today as I walked the dog I realized I’ve just gotten over the pain of walking.  I started walking Louie about two months ago, and I remember I had such sore shins and outer hip flexors I thought I must’ve done something at the gym.  These pains went away after a couple of weeks and new ones settled deep into my haunches.

Then today I noticed I no longer felt pain in my butt as the dog made me run up another long hill.  So doing different exercises certainly gets a variety of muscles working.  I wonder what activity I’ll do next only to discover another whole set of unused muscles.

I had a brief bout of hypochondria this week.  You’ll recall I managed to bang my eye on a garden stake and was told I had a vitreous detachment.  Though nothing serious, the eye doctor told me to come back in six weeks for a re-check, just to be sure I wasn’t one of the 1% of people who get a retinal detachment as a result.

I went in, and of course I’m completely fine.  Then just to make conversation, I said to the eye doctor, “You know it was weird, but in March when my mom’s partner was dying I was under so much stress I lost the vision in the upper half of my left eye for about 15 minutes.  That must’ve been a migraine-related event, right?”

She, being about Nicky or Luke’s age, said “No that sounds like an ocular stroke!”  She asked if I’d had my blood pressure checked lately, and I told her proudly I’d just had a physical and am in the peak of health.  She said, “I just worry about a carotid artery dissection.”

I went home and Googled everything, then phoned my dear old G.P. Dr. Lacroix, who’s in her 70’s.  I went to see her the next day and said, “Doc, am I in imminent danger of having a stroke?”

She looked puzzled, and pointed at the computer screen displaying my low blood pressure, cholesterol levels and blood sugars and said, “How would you have a stroke?”  She said, “Honest to God, young doctors go for the most obscure things” and added a simple spasm can restrict blood flow to the optic nerve.

So you see, live and learn, and I do about so many things all the time.

I saw an article in the local paper stating the art gallery needs volunteers.  I went on-line and filled out a form, faxed it to them, and was called to come in for an orientation session.  I went to the art gallery on Friday, and said I was applying to be a volunteer docent.

A docent is a person who does the tours of the gallery.  Apparently they have a good roster of them, but they always need more as they do two school tours a day, Monday to Friday from mid-October to mid-June.

Being at this orientation for 30 minutes reinforced my strong belief I would not be a very compliant or good employee.  The volunteer coordinator, Renee, was explaining there’d be three half-days of training, one of which was to learn how to ask open-ended questions of school kids.

Then she said after the training we would watch her do one tour, and then we would be assigned to a seasoned docent and be their assistant.  After a while one becomes a lead docent.  I was sitting there thinking of my Master of Education degree but said nothing.

I’ll do their tedious-sounding training, and then hope one day to be able to graduate to lead docent.  If I do, I’ll let you know.  The commitment is to do one tour, hence be there one half-day a week, so I said I can do that.

But in the meantime I’m a baking maniac, and made 11o fruitcakes last week, and the same this week, so have over 200 fruitcakes in the can. I plan to keep this up as long as I physically can, and as long as I think I can unload all of the product.

Last Tuesday my friend Petra and I went down to Osoyoos as I wanted her to meet mom and see the house and orchard.  It was a beautiful day, so we took a detour to the Summerland Sweets store and then onto Dirty Laundry Winery.

Petra hadn’t been to either, so enjoyed that.  We arrived just before noon and had lunch outside.  Jerralynn had made candied salmon, which is salmon baked with butter and brown sugar.  She’d also made a beautiful stacked heirloon tomato salad for the appetizer.

We drank a delicious bottle of Wild Goose’s gewurtztraminer, and Jerralynn made an ice cream cake for dessert.  By three or so it was time to head north, so we said good bye and then stopped briefly at that adorable antique store on main street of Okanagan Falls.

It’s nice to get out and see the things we have here in the Okanagan Valley, especially with the unseasonably hot weather we’ve been having.  It’s still so hot I have to walk Louie before 8:00 AM or else it’s too hot for him.

So this should be fun, going to the gym and the art gallery, baking fruitcakes, writing a blog and newsletter.  For extra challenges I’m working on a short story I plan to submit to CBC Radio’s short story contest which closes November 1st.  Deadlines are good.

And maybe that’s how I’ve been able to stand the fruitcake business, in that there’s always an end goal in sight with it.  December 25th, here I come.

I don’t know how I found the strength, but I managed to get organized and am ready to start baking.  I ordered cellophane bags for vacuum sealing, and picked them up at the Greyhound depot.  The large fruit order I placed at Springfield Bulk Foods is ready for pick up tomorrow morning.

Today I went to Costco and bought a dozen bags of pecans.  I’ve been to the Superstore for the flour, butter, sugar and eggs.  I spend last weekend chopping and cooking the fruit for the Okanagan Harvest Cakes.  Yesterday I got rum at the licquor store.

Yesterday I also roasted all of the almonds, and today will chop the chocolate and cut parchment paper for the tins.  Then tomorrow and Sunday there’s nothing left to do but bake like a lunatic.  Once baked comes the rumming, bagging and sealing and the kitchen has to be cleaned.

A few days ago Nicky had some friends over so I baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies for them, and made a batch of chocolate meringue cookies for my web designer.  This couldn’t have taken more than a couple of hours of standing in total, but I felt my knees by the end.  I thought I wonder how a day of fruitcake production’s going to go?

Maybe a body becomes too ancient for fruitcake production.  I don’t know but I’m going to find out.  Certainly I can’t do more than 30 minutes daily of walking/running with the dog and going 3 – 4 times a week for kick-ass classes at the gym to get into shape.  If after that I’m too decrepit to bake, then I’d hate to see someone out of shape try to get into the food business.

But you know there’s not a single aspect of the fruitcake business that’s mentally hard or baffling.  It’s all been worked out, and now it’s just a matter of producing them.  So I feel pretty in control of the upcoming season, and hope to be able to spend at least two full days a week baking.

Not to whine, but I’ve told you this many times before.  Two days of baking are preceded by days of shopping and preparation and followed by days of packaging and delivering or mailing.  Being a one person show is kind of interesting.

However several people have commented to me how much they like my newsletters, so that always makes me feel good.  I really enjoy writing them, and so it’s nice to hear people look forward to receiving them.

And why would I write a newsletter if I had no business to promote?  I have to bake just to be able to do the fun parts.  And because I love the fun parts, it’s always so darn awkward whenever ‘real’ entrepreneurs ask me questions about my business.

I still recall the days of dear Gerry Bruck asking me questions from his standpoint as a former silk mill owner.  He’d ask me the simplest, most straight-forward questions such as “what’s your cost to make a fruitcake?”  To which I usually replied with, “ummm….”

So why I’m in the fruitcake business I have no real idea, but now that I have people counting on me I can’t stop.  I tried, and it caused a commotion, so never mind.

Alison arrived from Toronto last Monday so I had spent the weekend cleaning and getting ready.  I bought an adorable pink rose covered quilt with matching pillow shams at Homesense for the guest room in preparation for her arrival.  Her jars of apricot jam stood waiting in anticipation of their imminent flight east.

I snuck in a fitness class in the morning, then Louie and I hopped into the car and picked her up at the airport at noon.  The weather was nice so we spent the afternoon sitting outside on my deck, enjoying the sun.  As I prepared dinner I noticed she was reading the same book I was reading, a memoir called Wild.

Because she was in BC in August I had to go all-Okanagan for dinner.  Beside a chardonnay from Gehringer wineries, I had a wild salmon filet which I cooked with brown sugar and butter.  We had local green beans and my tomatoes for accompaniment, and for dessert we had an apricot crisp.  I’d managed to make a handful of apricots hang on long enough for her arrival.  A miracle!

The next day we took Louie on a long walk, then headed for Osoyoos.  We didn’t get far before Louie had a mortifying bout of sudden diarhea and then vomiting in the car.  We had to go home and clean everything up and then we started again.  It turns out the almonds I’d given him the day before didn’t agree with him.  This time our departure was very successful and we arrived at a government picnic ground just outside Penticton around 1:00 PM.

I’d packed a picnic basket with a bottle of gewurtztraminer, two sandwiches, one cucumber and the other chicken salad, and a sliced ripe cantaloupe.  As we sat by the lake eating and drinking, the dog hung out sniffing things, and we felt very serene and joyful.  There’s nothing like the soothing sound of a large lake’s lapping waves.

We arrived at mom’s mid afternoon and at 6:00 she had a dinner party for a few really nice guests.  Jerralynn made her famous filet mignon topped with asparagus, large prawns and Hollandaise sauce.  A good conversation and time was had by all.

The next day I returned home with my pup and Alison headed off to be with her family.  She and JT returned to my place Sunday afternoon, so that engendered another huge cleaning spree as I spent seven hours working on this shack.   I made a lovely dinner of lentil soup with spiced oil, scallops in wine sauce and a peach upside down cake for dessert.  Then yesterday they flew back to Toronto.

Since then I’ve been distracted by Louie and his delicate stomach.  You’ll recall as a baby he was often sick from tummy troubles.  Yesterday he vomited a few times, and finally I saw one of my Styrofoam ear plugs in the mucous.  I wonder if the other one is still in his system.

And so it’s with a sinking heart that I turn the page on the calendar as September is always the beginning of fruitcake season for me.  I need to order some boxes, and then I’ll start to purchase the inventory I need for the cakes themselves.  Then, gulp, I’ll have to start baking.

But as the summer comes to an end and baking season looms I have to say I’m very tired of watering the garden and will be happy when it’s all over for another year.

As you may recall, my childhood friend Liz died in December and her brother had a memorial at their place in January.  He said there’d be an interment ceremony at the cemetery at some time.  Liz’ mom Liza died in June, and so James decided to have them both buried on August 13th.

So last Tuesday I met mom in Penticton, and we drove out to the Lakeview Cemetery.  It was a blistering hot day, and were all out in full sun.  About 20 people attended.  The men from the funeral home, and James, were in suits, so must’ve been very warm.

A few words were spoken by a religious representative, then James talked about his mom and Liz.  He said Liz had promised him she’d come back and give him a sign, which he said she had done.  James said it confirmed his belief in the afterlife.

The two urns of ashes were there side by side, along with what Liz had requested for her journey.  She wanted the medal she’d received when she headed the Triathlon for the Sydney games, and photos of her family as well as of her home in Osoyoos.  As James, his daugher Teresa, and his wife Julie lowered the urns Julie sang.

Afterwards we were all invited to the condo for a really nice buffet.  As I stood there eating and chatting to Teresa, Liz’ only niece, I said, “Well I’m here for my Barbie.  Even though you beat the hell out of it as a kid, I still want it.”  Teresa paled, but said nothing.

Then I saw James and said to Teresa, “I’m going to ask him for it right now” and marched toward him.  When I mentioned it he asked me to come into another room with him and said, “there’s good news and bad news.”

He explained after Liz died he sorted through her stuff, threw out a lot, and then brought the rest to his home in Midway.  He said to Teresa to pick something of her aunt’s that she would like.  Teresa immedately said “I want Liz’ baby blanket.”

James, being a male, had thrown it out!  He told me when he said that to Teresa (age 24) she screamed angrily then burst into tears and cried for a day. The next day he said “Okay what other thing might you want?” and she immediately replied, “Liz’ Barbie.”

Teresa told her dad she’d had hours of good times playing with it as a child, so that’s why she wanted it.  I guess at this point James must’ve felt quite ill, as he had to try to explain to her that I wanted the Barbie.  Apparently this caused more anger and tears.

At this point, I said to James, “Oh for the love of God, give Teresa the Barbie!”   He asked if I wanted to think about it and I said “don’t be nuts.  Liz would be so happy to know Teresa has the Barbie.”

He looked very relieved, and then I said, “what’s the good news?”  He reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope with my name on it.  I thought maybe it was a last good bye to me from Liz.  When I opened it, I saw it was a gift certficate to Art Knapps, but as I didn’t have my glasses on, I couldn’t read the amount clearly.

I said to James, “This looks like $2500” and he said, “It IS $2500!”  Can you imagine?  How extraordinarily sweet and thoughtful it was of Liz to think of me and my garden on her deathbed.  Thanks, Lizzo.

I’ve used bamboo stakes in my garden for over twenty years, and I’ve been injured many a time.  One would think I’d be more careful as a result, but the other day I forgot about being cautious in the garden.  I noticed some dead periwinkle leaves and dove for them, but in my zeal I forgot about a bunch of Echinacea I’ve staked.

Wham!  I slammed my right eyebrow right onto the top of the three foot high stake with some good force as I was on my way down to the periwinkle.  I immediately felt relief I’d missed my eye, though the whole area felt kind of bad.

By that evening I saw bright lights on the edges of my vision plus I saw a few black dots in the eye that hadn’t been there before.  I trudged off to the ophthalmologist who diagnosed a vitreous detachment.  Nothing serious, as it would’ve happened with age anyway, but the blow just hurried it up by a decade or two.

You’d never think gardening would be such a hazardous thing to do.  However it’s not only dangerous it’s damned expensive as well.

The other day I was pondering the front of my deck, looking at the straggly, struggling phlox and said that’s it, this is all coming out of here right now.  I decided I wanted to match the top and bottom gardens, so drove off to Art Knapps for some Echinacea plants.

I got a bunch of those, some soil and peat moss, then spent a few hours tearing out the phlox, preparing the area and planting the Echinacea.  Something wasn’t looking right, and I realized the bed should be ringed with the same rocks used in the lower garden.

I got 50 rocks and threw them in the wheelbarrow, put those around the edges and stood back.  Now that’s more like it.  However as I said to mom, I was close to hospitalization by the end of my little project.  Another way the garden is hazardous: complete body breakdown from overuse.

As I was feeling bad about aging and how the old body breaks down, I remembered something that cheered me up.  Next July I’ll have 30% off every Tuesday at Value Village and all of the thrift stores due to being 60.  Isn’t that fantastic?

Those two old dudes were at Value Village again the other day.  You know the ones I told you about who look at stuff with magnifying glasses and who told me they sell on EBay.  That day I found a beautiful scarf, made by Etro Milano, with the tags from the store still on it for $7.

I’ve been collecting used CD’s too, now that I have a working sound system and may want to have a bit of mood music playing in the background when I entertain.  I’m determined to find a bar car somewhere, a la Mad Men, and cover it with bottles of booze.  Then my living room will be all woman cave-ish and I can block out the garden’s vile demands for beautification with music and licquor.

Here’s something that disturbs me greatly.  The other day I received a nice e mail from someone which said, “Re-sent from July 16th.”  In their message they said they’d e mailed me an order and hadn’t heard back.  Thank God the man tried again, as I replied and assured him I wouldn’t get an e mail requesting fruitcakes and just ignore it.

God only knows what happened to the original e mail, but I got the order sorted out, and it’s given me a much-needed boost.  The order’s from a book store owner in New Brunswick who wants to try my products in preparation for a possible order at Christmas.

I know this is the time to market for corporate gifts but I’ve purposely been ignoring doing any of it.  Psychologically it’s very difficult to think of Christmas when it’s 35 degrees outside and I’m watering petunias and picking cucumbers.  I’m pretending there is no such thing as either winter or Christmas.

But I’m going to try my old trick of making myself do one thing a day for the business.  You’re reading this and thinking surely to God this lazy sloth of a woman can do one lousy thing, and even at that, what good will it do?

Trust me, I’m always as surprised as you are that just one thing daily adds up to a lot.  I’m always amazed at the results whenever I try.  However it’s so easy to let days, then weeks, then even months slide by without lifting a finger.  Then I wonder why there aren’t any orders.

My dear friend Beverly from former Prince George days, took 10 fruitcakes as gifts to Oklahoma with her this summer.  She said she continues to receive e mails from friends saying they’ve just had another slice of yummy fruitcake.  It makes me realize I have to tell people about the on-going appreciation such a gift brings.

But of course all of this sounds dreamy in theory, but the reality is one poor old woman buying hundreds of pounds of product, baking thousands of fruitcakes, and lugging heavy packages to the post office every other day.

Never mind.  I’ll worry about all of that if my marketing attempts go anywhere in growing my corporate orders.  I like to worry about things that haven’t even happened yet as I think it’s a good way to procrastinate.

In the meantime, I’m carefully freezing apricot halves so in January when the north wind blows I can make myself a really nice-looking apricot crisp.  I’ll be looking back on the fruitcake season that was, and with any luck, deep satisfaction welling within me.

Poor Louie with his long coat is suffering from the intense heat we’re currently experiencing here in the Okanagan.  I continue to run around in the yard in my underwear and even at that I’m over-dressed so I can just imagine the poor pets.

Petra, Kathy and I had a nice lunch last week sitting out on the veranda at Harvest Golf course’s restaurant.  It’s a gorgeous setting, and the weather was ideal.  And surprise, they actually have quite a lot of decent things on the menu.  I don’t know about you, but I’ve been to places where I really had to force myself to order from their dreck menu.

I don’t know what got into me but on Sunday at the dot of 10:00 AM when Sears Home opened, I raced in and bought a stove.  Boom!  It wasn’t really all that sudden, as I’d been browsing on-line for a used stove, and then I thought oh what the Hell.  I then went on-line and perused Sears and picked the one I wanted, then went in and ordered it.

I noticed the majority of the new stoves have these ghastly huge windows that fill almost the entire oven door.  I said to the salesperson I wonder what people do when they get something stuck between the panes, as invariably happens if you bake a lot.  He chuckled ruefully and said yeah, really.

The stove I bought has a very small window, is a Frigidaire and is white, so now I’m in a mess as my old fridge is almond.  Remember almond?  It came after harvest gold and avocado and before stainless steel, which I don’t like.  But as the fridge is still fine I couldn’t see throwing it out right away, so will try to cope with the mismatched appliances.  Cue theme from Deliverance or The Beverly Hillbillies.

One day in early 1999 I was out on a Sunday and on impulse bought a new stove, fridge and dishwasher at Sears.  I remember coming home and saying to Denis guess what I bought at the mall today and him going what? It was amazing, really.  Now that’s what I call shopping.

So these three old friends are now 14 years old, but the stove saw too much action.  It’s the stove where the kids made their vile pancakes from home ec and also the mad food fetishes like deep fried onion rings, crepes, and deep fried calamari.

I started the fruitcake business on that stove.  I actually ran the business from that one stove for quite a while, though I had to use the United Church’s so-called inspected kitchen as a front.  You know, rent the kitchen one day a month, then turn out 500 fruitcakes and act like I did it all there.  The usual.

So it’s a bit sad to say good-bye to the stove, though I won’t miss its cracked ceramic top and filthy horrible oven and cloudy window.  I kind of feel like buying hundreds of pounds of fruit and making even more jam, just to try to push the elements right over their limits.

But as it’s 37 degrees out I won’t do any of that.  Instead Louie, the cats and I will remain inside the air conditioned house and peruse recipes so that we can inaugurate the new stove when it arrives next Wednesday.

Mom held her usual birthday extravaganza in Osoyoos for me on the weekend.  There were 16 people in attendance from the Town Drunk to the Town Mayor.  Jerralynn barbecued skewers of shrimp, pork  and chicken with mushrooms, onions and peppers.  She made a delicious Black Forest cake for dessert.

Because of past experience, mom wanted at least 16 bottles of wine chilled in the fridge, one bottle per person.  Some people don’t drink wine at all, yet all of it and more was consumed.  Jon, the Town Drunk, likely had three or four bottles on his own.  When he left he was incoherent, so I’m guessing he had the non-drinkers’ portions.

Guess what the majority of my gifts were?  That’s right, booze.  I received 7 bottles of wine and Nicky gave me a bottle each of vodka and tequila.  There were also gifts such as a lovely floppy hat, a bath set from the Body Shop, and Luke gave me his old Ipad!

Lynn, who’s lived on the orchard beside ours for the past 40 years, always brings me apricots for my birthday.  As I’m typing this I have part of my mind on the stove as apricot jam is burbling away.  She gave me about 60 pounds of apricots and I’ll need all of them.

When I arrived with my puppy on Friday evening, our friend Jim was there from Vancouver and so were Freddie and Wendy.  Jerralynn arrived after work, and then we had dinner and partied late into the night.  As you know, I come from hardy Hun stock, so my family parties like it’s 1999 all the time, yet I’m too weak for it.

So I’d like you to picture this scene.  My pup and I were fast asleep early Saturday morning when the amplified telephone in my room rang.  I lifted my sleep mask and saw it was 6:19 AM.  Then the orchard workers decided to drive their tractor back and forth under the bedroom windows for half an hour.

Needless to say I packed it in at that point, and got up, though I felt dead tired.  Due to feeling a murderous rage welling up in me I did the old star 69 to get the last number called.  It was David Bruck, Gerry’s middle son.

I left him a steely, measured message regarding the fact there was no message left from him, yet he had called at 6:19 AM so I was wondering if everything was okay.  He called later that day and said sorry many times, but both Freddie and I were miffed.  Freddie’s bedroom also has an amplifed phone, and he also had the tractor experience.

The birthday party was on Saturday night, so once again I didn’t get to bed until midnight, then was up around 8:00 Sunday morning, feeling seriously weakened.  I immediately got one of those ghastly migraine auras I now get if I’m over-tired and had to lie down for a while until it went away.

My pup and I took all day Monday to recuperate from Osoyoos.  Those people reading this who’ve accompanied me there are nodding when I say it’s NOT for the weak.

I don’t know why, but I’d kind of forgotten about shopping at people’s homes as another option for finding great stuff.  If I need anything, my M.O. is always to head to the thrift stores and browse until one day I find the item.

But I’d made a list headed up Long Term, and many items have been on this list for quite a long time.  Then I remembered our local site for finding used goods at people’s homes, castanet.net.  What joy and excitement to be able to cross three items off my list in just one week.

First of all, I’ve been without music, other than a radio, for about four years.  For some reason the stereo system didn’t work, and as I’m incapable of opening a CD case, I certainly can’t figure out electronic problems.  In any case, I had hideous, huge old speakers, so I started by taking those to the Salvation Army.

Then I began to look for speakers on Castanet, and found two nice Bose speakers for $50.  I drove over and bought them from a 15-year-old kid in West Kelowna who tried to explain woofers and tweeters to me.  I just said if sound comes out, then that’s what I want.

Luke hooked up the speakers and of course he had the amp working in no time.  He then gave me strict instructions never to touch the amp, and I swore I wouldn’t.  Then he handed me a flipper (I now have four lined up on the coffee table) and said this is how I’m to play music henceforth.

After that, I found an adorable metal bistro table and two chairs set for $40, which I’ve put down in the vegetable garden beside the greenhouse.  I put a lovely pot of snapdragons on the table, and voila!  Adorable.

Then I got a decorative metal bench for my xeriscape garden, to be placed at the end of the pebble pathway along the cedars.  It was kind of beaten up for $85 but by then I thought oh what the heck, I’ll just pay the 85 bucks to the woman.  And really, where it’s sitting, no-one can even see any of these defects, so I have to ignore them, too.

My stove is 14 years old and a complete mess, so now I’m shopping for one on my new favourite site.  I found an ad which says 1.5 month old KitchenAide stove for which the person allegedly paid $1600 for $600 so I’ve contacted them.  Maybe I can cross stove off my list soon, too.

As the kids and I reviewed my fab purchases, Luke said why would any buy new?  Why indeed, but it sure is great for people like me, as the stuff people throw away is still so nice.  I said to Luke honestly, the only thing I buy new are dogs and food, because the latter just isn’t any good used.