Here are a few bird photos I took earlier this week:
Sally loves watching the birds.
Snowy afternoon bird party
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I just ordered a pizza delivery from 3 provinces away
It is my Mom’s birthday and I was racking my brain what I could send her for her birthday. Something special. Something quirky. Something to make her smile. This year my Grandma is living with Mom and she has been sick so I wanted to do something for Mom that Grandma could enjoy too.
So I thought of a million different things, and settled on one.
I was going to make them dinner.
Only I’m in Nova Scotia and they are in Listowel, Ontario.
So I started my research last week. Who could I rope into bringing them food? Or maybe I could get a cake delivered? What about an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen? Who would deliver it? Bribe the kids who work there to swing it by Mom’s after their shift?
Nah….
I decided to go way simpler.
I remember once Mom and Grandma Stock came to visit me in the Sault and I went to their hotel room over looking the St. Marys River to play cards with way too much pizza and chicken wings and we had a riot.
So I decided I was going to surprise them with pizza and wings.
A couple days I started to narrow down the plan, and I found the menu to one of the local pizza places in Listowel that I knew wouldn’t lead me astray. I browsed all the specials and the menu and started the plot. How was I going to find out if Mom would be home and then how was I going to convince her not to cook?
So I started poking Mom with text messages, trying to find out what she was doing for her birthday. She had no plans, and no visitors.
So I told her I would be making her dinner.
That was a day or so ago.
Today all day Grandma has been telling Mom she is so silly and would she just take a pizza or something out of the freezer for dinner?
Mom said No. Lisa and Jeff are making dinner.
Oh you are so foolish, Grandma Stock said. They are in Nova Scotia. They can’t make you dinner.
All day long I was anxious. When would I call in the order? Will they answer a call from a different area code? Would they take payment over the phone? Could I put a tip on for the driver on the phone?
When it was close to the time, I put the menu on my computer screen, and the number from the pizza place’s website, and the address for Mom’s house.
Then I placed the call.
I was so nervous. What if I didn’t pull this off? Then it would be Mom’s birthday and she wouldn’t get anything from me!
Ring. Ring. Then it went to an auto answer and said it would redirect my call to their closest restaurant to me.
No!!! That won’t work! Click.
I remembered seeing another number for them on one of their website, so I dug around and found a new number.
A young foreign fellow answered the call. He was kind, but slow, and stumbled around. He took my order, and then asked for Mom’s address. I gave the house and street number, but then he wanted to know if it was North, South, East or West on that street. He said he wasn’t from there. I said I wasn’t either, and I calling from Nova Scotia, but I thought the street was short so the driver should be able to find it.
I slowly gave him my credit card number, and he slowly read it back out as I delivered it, with the expiration date, for everyone in the restaurant to jot down (garlic fingers on us I guess. haha)
7 minutes and 33 seconds after he answered the call, the order was complete and the pizza was on the way into the oven!
25 minutes later, like clock work, a jubilant Mom was on the phone. She said Grandma was in tears. Stuck between laughter and crying, Grandma couldn’t believe I just made them dinner, and she was off to fetch dinner plates. Mom sounded so tickled. Funny thing is – they were playing cards when their dinner arrived, just like that night in the Sault.
I got them 2 medium pizzas, BBQ wings, Caesar salad, 4 pops, and some Brownies.
Mom said they are full and have enough food for a couple more days (so if you are in the area, swing by 
).
Branching out, trying new things
Life can get a little dull in the winter.
I decided to shake it up a little. To try something new. To enrich my life. Explore new avenues.
I bought my first coconut.
I was so eager to stick my straw in to drink that rich coconut milk. Like I was wasting away on a beach, desperate of thirst.
But I learned something about branching out.
Either this coconut is bad. Or coconut milk is really gross.
Why is there a leg beside the sink?
Why are there often fly legs on my bathroom counter?
Do flies lose them before they die?
Do they eject their legs like discarded socks?
Do they need to cut weight so they shed a leg or two?
Or is my bathroom counter home to a fly body shop, where a fly can exchange his old parts for new?
Travel between Ontario and Nova Scotia can be tricky in winter – at least for us
So last time we travelled to Ontario in the winter, we spent Christmas in a small motel in Quebec with a broken truck and we had to eat Leonard.
Fast forward 4 years, and Jeff found himself working in Burlington last week for work.
He tried to come home on Friday, and the plane got all the way to the Bay of Fundy, but there was too much snow on the Halifax runway, so the plane turned around and took him all the way back to Toronto!
WestJet put him up in a hotel, but they lost his luggage, so he had no clothes, no toothbrush, and nothing to do.
They weren’t able to get him on another flight until Saturday at 5:30pm!
Luckily he made it to Halifax this time, and his luggage was waiting for him at the airport.
He sure was happy to be home!
Today’s bird party sponsored by….
Brian & Leanne & family!!
They had a humongous bag of sunflower seeds delivered to our house for Christmas.
Today I filled up the bird feeders before I left for work with their seed.
I see the birds have already dug in!
Update: Argh. Looks like the cam might have froze on one pic. I’ll reset this afternoon, if it doesn’t fix itself.
Zeus in the box
A day in the life of …. ME
8:38am – Holy smokes that was a good sleep. I didn’t stir once. Who turned the TV off? Last I knew I was watching Seinfeld? Where’s Monty? Wow, he’s still sleeping too!
8:39am – Relief. Wow did I have to pee.
8:42am – Still really windy. Sounded like a jet above the house last night it was so windy.
8:43am – Uh oh! Birds are out of seed! They could be here soon for their morning bird party.
8:45am – Let Monty out. Fill up bird feeders.
8:48am – House is intact. Garbage can only blew a few inches over. White eavestrough extender blew off and 6 feet across the back yard!
8:50am – Feed Monty.
8:51am – Tell Zeus it’s fire time.
8:53am – Take some wood stove ashes outside. Close eyes and jump back as I through ashes into the wind on the driveway.
8:54am – Resume fire building.
8:55am – Turn on a Bubba the Love Sponge replay to listen to.
9:00am – Hug and squeeze a needy Zeus.
9:05am – Swat Zeus’s tail away from the stove.
9:15am – Close up damper and declare fire officially going.
9:16am – Turn on TV. Decide to watch a movie. Once that Jeff likely wouldn’t watch if he was home. Check the PVR to see what I’ve recorded lately. Settle on “Gnomeo & Juliet”.
10:40am – That was an awesome movie! All about animated garden gnomes. Lots of Elton John music in the sound track. Feel inspired to decorate our lawn with 100 or so cute garden gnomes. Think of Jeff’s reaction if I did this before he returned from Ontario. Snicker. Wonder where I could get gnomes in January.
10:45am – Hit Randomizer on Elton John on my iPhone, hook iPhone into speaker dock, crack Elton, commence singing/shower/dance party.
11:00am – Trim toenails.
11:01am – Think about what a good idea it would be to do a day in the life of post about myself.
11:12am – Start blog post and make up times from 8:38 until now.
11:27am – Only 3 birds out there. Maybe it is too windy and they are hiding out somewhere. Wish a blue jay would come and eat his peanuts.
11:32am – Surfing web. See there is a fracking protest disrupting traffic near the Canso Causeway. Think about joining protesters. Remember Jeff is not here to bail me out of jail. Decide to protest from afar.
11:34am – Cave. Open bag of licorice all-sorts I bought Dad for his birthday. Oops.
11:36am – Realize I have a lot of music shuffling on my iPhone that I don’t like. Switch to listen to a Shannon Burke radio show re-run. I haven’t listened to this guy much, but I’m a talk radio nut and need to branch out and not listen to Howard Stern re-runs of shows I listened to live.
11:45am – Fill up dishwasher and turn it on.
11:50am – Publish a couple stories for my ForestTalk website.
12:00pm – Text with Julie as she is heading with Mom to meet my husband and his parents for lunch. I guess if they can’t have lunch with me, tracking down my husband is the next closest thing. I hope they squeeze and hug him and pretend he is me 
12:15pm – Kiss Monty on his whitening snout and let him outside. I think he’s still looking for Jeff to come home.
12:20pm – 19 mourning doves arrive at bird feeder (some under it, some resting in tree). 1 evening grosbeak, some goldfiches, and chickadees.
12:24pm – Let Monty in. Get new box of kleenex from the pantry for my office.
12:34pm – Decide it is time for some outdoor exploration time.
1:17pm – Back inside. Monty and I went for a walk around the yard, then we went up in the woods and walked around the back of our lot. Realized Monty doesn’t seem to put himself in my shoes when he is leading the way. We walked around trees and zig zagged here and there, sniffed deer poop, stopped twice to unhook my glasses from tree branches, but I drew the line at walking under dead hanging logs at knee height. Headed home and I took a nice little meditational stretch on the porch swing. Smelling the wood smoke in the air, listening to the wind in the trees, the birds in the trees, the cool air pinking my cheeks.
1:21pm – I see more birds have showed up at the feeder. The finches are actually picking away at the niger seed too. Usually they ignore that feeder in the winter and just hit the sunflower seeds.
1:30pm – Random internet browsing. Need to update ForestTalk theme. Think I’d rather nap.
2:15pm – Julie is texting me about her lunch with Jeff and his parents.
2:22pm – Turn on TV
2:25pm – Go downstairs to rake out hot coals. Open damper a bit to help burn off coals for next reload.
2:30pm – Vacuum dog hair out of electric baseboard in front hallway. It could be heading to -17°C on Sunday night so I should get a couple baseboards ready to go on to help keep the house from freezing.
2:37pm – See I missed a call while I had the vacuum on.
2:37pm – Call Jeff back. Listen to complaints about his gravy being too light at lunch. Thinking I haven’t eaten lunch. I could use a hot turkey sandwich and gravy. Tease Jeff about having all the baseboards on and sitting in shorts in a 26 degree house. Ha ha sucker.
3:07pm – End phone call. Head back to TV.
4:59pm – Did I really just watch Celebrity Wife Swap with Dee Snider and Flavor Flav? What has this day come to?
5:19pm – Just watched the Canadian Parks show about Fathom Five National Park on the Bruce Peninsula. I had no idea that in the 30′s the flower pots of FlowerPot Island were cemented and bricked so they won’t erode or fall over on a tourist.
5:21pm – Fed Monty
5:22pm – Opened up the damper, cracked the wood stove, time for fire #2 of the day.
5:23pm – Seafood Medley is on the menu for Zeus tonight. Fed Zeus his prednisone pill. It is so easy to give him a pill now. He practically opens the hatch himself for me to stuff it in.
5:45pm – Fire ready. Zeus is full and lounging on the dog bed near the wood stove, ready to soak up some heat.
5:55pm – Just made a little plate of crackers, old cheddar, and kielbasa. Mmmm. Listening to Manson’s radio show on RadioIO.
6:09pm – Just saw a tweet that there is a LIVE show on today. Hallelujah. Switching to listen to the Abe Kanan show on Howard 101.
6:30pm – That radio show wasn’t cutting it. Time to dive into YouTube for some educational videos.
6:41pm – AHH! Just bit my tongue. Almost right off I think. Damn licorice.
6:41pm – Sorry licorice, I know it wasn’t your fault.
6:56pm – Monty is whining. Better go investigate.
7:02pm – Monty and I went outside. It is lightly snowing. He didn’t really have to go. I think he was just hoping for a Milkbone when he came back in. Little manipulator. I’m not caving.
7:31pm – Hoodie and sweat pant time. Back on the Abe Kanan show.
7:34pm – Inspiring to make phone calls. First stop. Becky. Haven’t talked to her for eons. Was thinking of our wild night in Halifax and our visit to Peggy’s Cove earlier.
7:35pm – No answer. Left a super lame voicemail. I hate voicemail. Should have been funnier. Can I redo?
7:46pm – Tweaking my blog template.
8:46pm – Just went through hundreds of old emails from 2001′ish to 2007. Copied out photos and saved them separate from the emails. Found some real gems. Even a pic of Julie’s eyebrow ring.
9:00pm – Just became friends with an ol’ friend on Facebook. Love catching up with friends!
9:30pm – Am I really going to watch Jeff’s Denver Broncos? I never have ever watched football by choice. This is new.
9:31pm – Give Monty a rawhide.
10:23pm – Watching Monty rub his face in the snow. Porch is covered already. I’ve been babbling away on Facebook with ol’ friends. Not old friend, just long time friends hehe
11:15pm – 42 – 7. Am I jinxing Jeff’s team by watching?
11:20pm – Getting sleepy. Time to check fire. Rake out coals. Room for a few pieces of wood. Let Monty out.
11:29pm – Reflecting on day. 90% unproductive. Just what I needed. I did good!
11:30pm – Let Monty in. He runs straight upstairs to bed ( to wait for his bedtime milkbone)
11:31pm – Monty came back downstairs.
11:33pm – Guessing Jeff has long ago given up on his Broncos and is probably in bed. This game is getting rough. Injured player on every play.
11:35pm – Digging into a new book I finally got my hands on – The UV Advantage.
11:42pm – Oh good, Denver hits double digits. 42-10
11:56pm – I am heading up to bed to read some more about the healing qualities of the sun. Good night. Wait. Text from Dad. Bet he is watching football. Yep.
12:05am – Haven’t made it upstairs yet.
12:14am – K going to bed for real this time. Good night. Sorry about your team Jeff.
12:17am – Football brawl. Damn still didn’t get away.
12:20am – ok for real THIS time. Bye.
The weather is never disappointing here
Evidence that the weather here never disappoints:
- It started to snow heavy last evening and quickly we had a few inches everywhere.
- Jeff plowed the driveway at 4am while I shoveled the deck and cleaned off our vehicles so he could get to the airport. It started to lightly rain while we were outside.
- During my work day it warmed up, much of the snow melted, and the fog grew thick. People on the news tonight were saying it is the thickest fog they’ve ever seen. Now I heard the east coast folk knew fog, but this certainly isn’t the thickest fog I’ve ever seen, but it IS ominous at any rate.
- Tonight the entire province of Nova Scotia has a wind warning. Gusts of 100 km/hr are supposedly on the way, even though it is completely calm out there now at 7:10pm
- There may be thunderstorms over night.
- By Sunday it will be -12°C
Awesome!
Jeff is in Ontario. I will be having a quiet weekend at home. I’ve got many things to do, and hopefully one of them won’t be chasing the roof in the wind tonight.
Monty is pining away at the door for Jeff. He thinks Jeff should be home by now. He is usually a little extra whiny for the first day or two after Jeff leaves.
-14°C and I forgot…..
I was almost all the way to town this morning when I realized I forgot something.
The thermometer on the dash varied between -11°C and -15°C during my drive.
But it was a nice calm morning, no wind, just beautiful.
But I forgot….
MY COAT!
Oh well, I often just carry it from the car to my office in the morning anyway. As long as we don’t have a fire drill and the car doesn’t break down on the way home, I’ll survive