Rural Routes, Blog Version

I miss the birds.

We used to sit at the kitchen table and watch the winter birds, chickadees mostly, although there were blue jays, magpies and woodpeckers to see as well. We put out bird seed and suet and watched them go to it.

I hear that blue jays are abundant this year. Earlier this month, one woman from the community I shall probably always call ‘home’ reported nine feeding at one time.

Since we moved, I did one day see a couple of chickadees and there are the remnants of a crow’s nest in one of the trees outside our patio door. But sightings have been rare since Christmas.

“A bird!” K called out to me this morning.

“What kind?” I asked.

“Don’t know. It flew past the window, but I didn’t have time to see it clearly.”

I am tempted to put out a bird feeder and see what happens. Feed them and they will come? I will never know unless I try.

YEAR’S END

I watched 2019 arrive in New York City and was determined to stay awake one more hour on New Year’s Eve so that I could watch Canadian programming. K had gone to bed early and it was just me and the dog and the cat.

A bubble bath sounded like a fine idea. I would soak in warm sudsy water, then go back downstairs to be in front of the TV again at midnight.

That warm sudsy water had lulled me into a somnolent state when suddenly the water started thrashing vigorously in the tub. I screamed.

K had woken up and was standing outside the bathroom. He had turned on the Jacuzzi.

It took no time at all for the bubbles in my bath to increase to the point where they were threatening to spill over onto the floor.

“Turn it off!” I screamed again.

K says he thought he had heard the jaccuzi turn off. He thought that was what had wakened him. He  was doing a good deed by turning it back on for a few more minutes, he says.

Do I believe that? Or was he just playing a joke on me? Hmmm… I have lived with this man for more than forty years. Neither would surprise me.

At any rate, I was awake and alert when midnight struck and the old year ended. So alert that I was still awake four hours later.

ASSEMBLY REQUIRED

If I never see those words again, I will not be disappointed.

We toured Ikea looking for new furniture, but did not purchase there. Instead we opted for a brand name furniture store, assuming that our furniture would arrive completely assembled.

You know what they say about assuming things. When you assume, you make an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me’.

With the exception of two bedside tables, everything else has required assembly.

A bedside table for the spare room came in 111 pieces, some large, some tiny. No Allen wrenches, unfortunately.

That bedside table is thankfully the last of the furniture to be purchased. My days on the assembly line are done for now.

PARKING

Parking had never been a big issue for us. We parked the vehicles in the driveway. In winter, we plugged them in. End of story.

But now we live in a condo with two vehicles and one indoor parking space. Residents are not allowed to park in visitor parking. There is a one-hour parking limit on one side street and another nearby street is a snow route which means no overnight parking between December 1 and March 1. Finding a place to park that second vehicle overnight became a major headache.

Eventually we found a solution and we are happy. But we noted that, a year ago, parking would not have been on any list of issues to worry about.

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