Tag Archive | baking

New Eyebrows

Mar31

As we age a lot of ugly stuff happens, not the least of which is the loss of eyebrows. I realized I had maybe half of one left over each eye and was wondering what a person does about it. Then I heard about microblading, and intrigued, decided to go ahead and have it done. Turns out it’s actually a tattooing of brow “hairs” which look amazing and natural. Who knew?

Maintenance is time-consuming and expensive, but what can one do, just leave things as they are? No. Poor Calvin has witnessed many beauty treatments around here and so is used to seeing me resembling either a burnt mummy or a bruised car accident victim. End result: less visible aging, so pain be damned.

But of course the old carcass isn’t fooled as for the past few days I’ve been digging in the garden and my hands and haunches are killing me as a result. I’m digging out voracious grasses that have practically consumed entire perennials, shaking them out, and putting the plant back. Due to lazy neglect, I have hours more to do. Had I just weeded faithfully into the fall, but no.

Because I have to be in Osoyoos for four days early April, then I’m leaving for Germany mid-April, I’m not able to do the usual volunteering for the election. I certainly wouldn’t have booked the time away had I known, because you know how much I like politics. Because I’m leaving before the advance polls open, I have to go to my local Elections office to vote early.

And as it turns out I may be too late going to Germany because Mom’s cousin Doris, age 94 and who I always stay with, is in hospital and not doing great. So that’s a terrible surprise as I was looking forward to our coffee, bread and jam in the mornings. I’ll stay with her sister Hannelore, age 92, instead and it’ll be just as lovely, but different without Doris.

You know how cocky mom is and when she turned 100 she said “Now we’ll see who’s gonna die next.” Luke and I turned to each other and said “Ballsy!” But with that kind of omen I wonder if it isn’t poor Doris who might be the one. Mom has a way of casting spells that’s hard to explain.

My six lovely hens are all laying nicely and the one Aracuna is laying blue ones. Now my eggs all look very bespoke and ready for Pinterest. Some are dark brown with speckles, some almost mauve, the blue, and an almost white (from Kate the old Sussex hen). I like giving them to friends who are quite impressed.

Tomorrow the former gym women are coming for a coffee klatsch. I made a hopefully moist cherry, chocolate and pecan loaf and in keeping with the fruit theme, cookies made with dried strawberries and dark chocolate chips. It’s all for naught really, as they’ll have a couple of cups of black coffee and then leave. Gym women!

And then it’s pretty much a sprint until I leave due to being in Osoyoos for four nights to babysit mom. It’s wonderful having the camera as I can see her using the walker to go into the kitchen, pour a glass of wine and make her way back to her chair to eat some chocolate and watch TV. So she seems to be pretty good for her age, but it’s too dangerous to leave her alone at night, hence the babysitting.

I can get Luke, Jan and mom’s feedback on the new eyebrows, so that’s one good thing.

Chicken and Iguana Bacteria

Aug20

One of my favourite stories from when Margaret and I stayed on the Island of Cozumel came from a couple from the southern U.S. They said their young son received an iguana when it was just a baby and then he and the animal slept together for the rest of its life. The dad said his son had that lizard for years before it finally died.

Margaret and I both felt sick as we had kids that slept with cats or dogs, but not reptiles. A few days earlier we’d been offered a chance to pet an iguana and said no thanks. Recounting that story to another person at the Cozumel condo he said his son had kissed an iguana in Mexico and once home found himself filled with parasites.

Then the other day I had written how I’d kissed Jennifer, one of the new chickens, and my friend Eve sent an e mail saying “Please, please do not kiss chickens.” I don’t want to find myself full of parasites, or perhaps with a brain worm, so I’ll definitely take Eve’s advice, especially since she’s a pharmacist with decades of experience.

Now that I have Okay, I’ll Bite for sale on Amazon I’m working on a romance novel for seniors. I wrote a romance novel 20 years ago and am now revamping it to feature oldsters and will see how that goes. Writing is a hard slog, but I have to do something to keep my brain from withering.

On that note, I went to Vernon again for 20 pounds of frozen chicken feet for Jan. She reports they’re delicious, but I keep thinking about the claws. Do you just spit them out, or are they removed prior to cooking?

And of course, for real stimulation there’s treasure hunting. Elsa and I went last week, and I found the perfect towel rack for my bathroom for $8.00. I said to her I could’ve used that when my German visitors were here as I have just one rack for towels which is awkward for guests.

We both bought masses of things and justified it by saying we hadn’t been in over a month. Once home I did manage to find four or five tops that could go back to thrift in order to make room for the new items. But there’s still a very large volume of everything in this house.

To celebrate how wonderful it is to be alive I bopped into the Mission Thrift Store today and had to buy a cute pair of vintage Japanese geese and a lovely soup bowl. The bottom of it said Black Knight Hohenberg, Bavaria and at $2 I thought why not. When I googled it, I was happily surprised to see it’d be ten times that on e bay. Manufactured sometime between 1921 and 1946, and in mint condition.

You know how I fear and loathe change, and it appears two local institutions are gone for good. One is the old BC Tree Fruits company that was founded 88 years ago but is now in bankruptcy and closed. The other is our local news station, formerly called CHBC, then it became Global, and now bye bye.

To deal with these stressors I’ve just made those date balls everyone goes nuts over, and will now make some chocolate chip cookies and a batch of brownies. When the going gets tough, the tough put on an apron and start softening butter.

You’ll Probably Find This Hard To Believe

Feb28

As you know, I’m the Laziest Human on Earth, so to think I’m at 21,000 words on my memoir is quite astounding. But when you’ve written a blog since 2009 it’s not all that difficult to go back in time. I force myself to write 1000 words a day as that’s very manageable. Then I’m allowed to waste the rest of my time on YouTube videos.

Re-reading those blogs I see pets, food prep, adult children who won’t move away, and gardening projects were huge topics. Another subtopic was the fruitcake business, which was the point of the blog, and then to a minor degree every few blogs saying yep, for sure, I’m ready to write a book, though it never happened. Now that I’m doing it, I find it astonishing, but I guess it’s true, for everything there is a season. Or decade.

And speaking of many decades, mom turned 99 on Sunday, so now she’s in her 100th year, hence the party this summer to celebrate that. As I said to her, if dead, we’ll use the party as a memorial. If alive, more fun for mom, plus she’ll have seen all the people who will be invited to her eventual memorial. Mom’ll appreciate that given she wants to know everything about everyone all the time.

I made mom’s favourite Bacardi rum cake for her birthday dinner with Luke and me. I’m able to get an entire 26-ounce bottle of rum into a Bundt cake, and it’s so moist, pungent and delicious mom will wolf the entire thing in a few days. In her younger years she could eat an entire cake, but now maybe one quarter per day is her limit.

Nick and family came to visit at mom’s to say goodbye as they’re shoving off to start a new life in Japan. I’m so proud of him for having such an adventurous spirit but I think he comes by it honestly given my dad left Germany at age 23 to start a new life in Canada. It seems to be what the family does, move all over the world, embracing new cultures. Maybe we’re part Viking or something, though they beat up cultures, so who knows.

I used to be all snooty about the Kelowna Actors Studio, then I went to New York, and now I like the Actors Studio. Forty years ago, shows on Broadway were huge complete with an orchestra, but now there’s not all that and the tickets are around two or three hundred dollars. Here I paid $65 to see an excellent production of Tootsie and loved it.

As you may know we’ve had two huge fires, one in 2003 and the other last year, destroying hundreds of homes. I have a lot of ponderosa pine trees and so a lot of needles and I wondered what the best way is to get rid of them. In the past I always had them hauled away, but then people said you can compose them so I wondered if I should do that.

I contacted the City and a person from the landfill replied, “I don’t know. Ask a consulting company.” I thought wow, I pay $350 a month and though I do have garbage collection, and I suppose the police, fire or ambulance might come if I call them, but other than that, I’m unsure what else I get other than rabid high-rise development. The City of Kelowna is a curious place.

I should’ve done this right from the beginning, as I know if I have a question, I can go to the Hall Road Neighbourhood Facebook page, and I’ll get all the free advice I need. The consensus was to remove the needles, and this makes sense given to compost takes a lot of water and time, and I have neither as we’ve been told a summer of drought lies ahead.