DEAL WITH IT!

When I was a kid, my summer days were spent by the lake and my evenings spent playing cards or board games by propane powered lights with my mom and extended family. All these years later, those memories are still very fond ones.

Naturally, when we purchased our own cottage back in 2000, a wooden game box for puzzles and everything else needed to keep preteens busy was one of the first things created. They would swim through the day and if it rained, the game box was immediately cracked open before the television was ever turned on.

As I type, I can hear that classic pop-o-matic sound of a game of Trouble clicking away, or squeals of an exciting game of snakes and ladder in need of a referee well underway.

Their favourite card game was crazy 8's and I feel like they played thousands of those with my Dad before he passed in 2005.

As I reflect in my 20th summer at our cottage, I can't help but notice how much things have changed.

The kids don't come by very often anymore and the majority of my time is spent alone, yet I still love playing cards and board games. The difference is now it's against downloaded robots or an online audience.

 

Playing Phase 10 while listening to the Blue Jays play.
TAKEN: JULY 2018

Every once and a while I can convince my husband to play but it's not really his thing. In the summers since the kids left home, it has always been a negotiation to gain his interest in participating.

For instance, in summers past, though I absolutely hate baseball (which is another post) I would concede that we could listen to the game on the radio if he'd agree to play a board game or a couple of games of cards in return. With this summer season cancelled, I think I am going to have to become super creative.

With cottage life officially underway and no sports to use as bait, I'm thinking I may need to bust out a topless option with benefits for Canasta to get him interested in participating.

Either way, I'll deal with it. 

Get it?

Cards?

Deal?

That said, feel free to insert eye roll or head shake now.

A solid groan would also be totally appropriate!

J IS FOR JAMMERS

My son Jukebox, singing in the finals of Muskoka Voice!
TAKEN: AUGUST 2018

My oldest son was born in the dead of winter in Muskoka; he slept in a bassinet beside my bed for the first month or so, then graduated into his very own crib. Once he moved into his nursery, I made a choice that there would always be a radio playing. Why? Because we didn’t want him to be one of those babies conditioned to total silence.

Always set to the local radio station, it was rarely turned off. He dozed off to the tunes, and woke up the same way. I truly feel that early choice we made for him, has embedded the musical passion he has today.

Genetically, Jammers has always been completely surrounded by musicality. It’s a very common thread that is everywhere (on all sides of our family).

He is completely self-taught, disciplined, and he has fully embraced music as a craft. He’s talented. He’s extremely talented. Name the instrument, he can play it!

Keep going Jukebox. We know you can accomplish whatever you put your voice and self driven talent behind!

WHEN LESS IS MORE!

(l-r:) Wonder Woman, Smartie, Bestest Bee, Darin & Me
TAKEN (l-r:): 2009, 2010, 2011, 2016

I read somewhere that distance can be the perfect messenger to help one understand who is worth keeping in your life and who is worth letting go. No matter how you slice and dice it, keeping in touch with anyone is tough, no matter what the geographical distance.

Most people, myself included, make excuses. There's work, home, dogs, family, work & work, not to mention life in general: the circle of actual excuses, are in fact the vicious circle that kills most efforts.

As a result, when I began carpooling in 2015, I started using that time to connect with people I truly missed and never got to see. Four years later, I can honestly embrace that I've worked harder to reach out to the people that mean the most to me. 

How? Sometimes I might might voice text, singing to the other, or simply calling because I'd just heard a song on the radio we both love. Sometimes, I'd get so carried away with swearing about my situation at hand, that they burst into true belly laughter.

My favourite are the times when one calls me. Simply because they feel we just need to hear the others voice.

Best part are the chats that end with an ‘I love you’, my second are those that end in laughter at a joke only the two of us get. Most importantly, I always ensure I tell them that I’m very glad they’re in my life.

I don’t know about you but I feel that truly great connections will always allow you to reach out, offer to hop a flight & grab a hotel, simply because you need to be near their energy. Those are the one’s you’re forever grateful for.

Honestly, when you understand a person that well. You can handle whatever plethora of bullshit, life is gonna serve ya!

PS: Jo, NannyF, B-Rad, Sweenymiester, SBM, Tim & Twos, Lady Di... Thanks.

M IS FOR MARRIAGE

My 2019 April A-Z Blogging Challenge posts will primarily consist of words & corresponding quotes.

(...With the odd opinionated electronic journal entry inserted to keep you on your toes.)

F IS FOR FURBABY

My 2019 April A-Z Blogging Challenge posts will primarily consist of words and corresponding quotes.
(...With the odd opinionated electronic journal entry inserted to keep you on your toes.)

HAIR TODAY. GONE TOMORROW.

Last Thursday I had a planned lunch date with someone I hadn’t seen face to face since May of 2017. Unfortunately, we discovered the night before there was a calendar conflict,  so the easiest thing to do was reschedule for this coming Friday.

My first world problem was I wanted to surprise him with how I'd grown my curly hair to the middle of my back. Not because he'd give a shit, but because there is always a bit of a tell when you haven’t seen someone for an extended period of time. And for me, I knew the length of my hair would've been a bit of  jaw dropper.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not vanity on my part, more a sense of personal pride.  From the time I was a young girl, my mother kept my hair cut short for the ease of getting me to school in the morning. Then, as I entered my teen years, I didn’t have the knowledge nor understanding on how to manage naturally curly hair, so as it grew out, the frizz always outweighed the future fashion potential of it all. That, combined with a barely there A cup, I ended high school looking like a boy that was trying too hard.

Well, thanks to the internet and a kick-ass hairstylist, I figured it out. It was expensive in the beginning but I justified the expense by telling myself I was worth it. As I aged and truly understood how one treats grey hair, I took the matters of the management of it into my own hands and the very large bills disappeared.

Hair's looking great. Shame about the face!
TAKEN: August 2nd & 7th, 2018

So here you have it. A picture of the longest my hair had been in I don’t know how many years, and me headed to work yesterday shortly after 7am, with uber curly hair!

The dead nuts honest truth is the 99.9% of the time I'm away from work or alone, my hair is either up and off my face, in need of some root touch up, or simply a dogs' freakin’ breakfast. So much so that when I landed for my cut Friday lunch I was wearing a Taylor Made ball cap & looked like a super serious paper bag hag.

Glass half full? She made me look and feel beautiful for my trek into Toronto, and I have told her that I will always pay her serious money to never allow anyone to see what I look like when I land at her shop.

How serious am I? When my buddy Barbie spied me up in Instagram at the concert she asked, ‘when are you gonna start aging like the rest of us?”

My response... “Hopefully, never!”

Which is partially thanks to the hush money I will always pay my hairdresser!

W IS FOR THE WORKS

THE WORKS!
A limited edition of this iconic Canadian cocktail. YUMMY!!
TAKEN: APRIL 21st, 2018

E IS FOR EXHILARATING

Well, it’s that time of year again when I jump on a plane and tackle something on my bucket list for my birthday; and for the very first time since I began this indulgence, I was torn about how I wanted to celebrate.

My last birthday was perfect. It was spent in a great hotel in the French Quarter of New Orleans with the perfect tour guide, my good buddy Darin. It was amazing but crazy expensive. Totally my fault, because I had waited until the last minute to decide it’s what I wanted to do. So, just before this Christmas past I booked the same hotel I had stayed at last year and marked my calendar for an even longer 2018 birthday stay.

As the date grew closer, I began to worry that returning to the French Quarter Festival so soon would be disappointing because my last visit had ticked every single ‘amazing experience’ box imaginable. Then, when I returned from Bahamas in February, something equally amazing as my passion for everything music surfaced on my radar: the Toronto Raptors.

They had so much momentum going in their favour at the time that I started my research. Where would they be playing my birthday week? As soon as Google fed me my info, I knew I had to make a choice. I costed taking in their last season game & then flying to New Orleans for the weekend but I only had so many Ben Franklins left in my jar. So a decision had to be made. 

Peeps, check out my kickass tickets and where I'm jetting off to...!

Two Toronto Raptor games, a killer oceanfront suite at the Grand Beach Hotel,
& evening dining in South Beach, Miami. Giddy UP!
TICKET PICS TAKEN: MARCH 10th, 2018 

Seeing the Toronto Raptors play at home on Sunday, hopping a plane the next morning to land in my oceanfront suite on South Beach on Monday. Relax and watch my team officially win the Eastern Conference Championship on Wednesday then head back to Canada with a suntan and a smile. How cool is that?

Not gonna lie… Bucket list excess once a year is absolutely exhilarating!!

MY CUP RUNNETH OVER

This morning I awoke and decided to stay in bed simply because I could. You know those kind of days, when you wholeheartedly embrace being a fornicating canine? Anyway, as the morning progressed closer to the noon, I text my daughter and asked if she would like to join me for lunch: she said yes.

As I landed at her apartment to pick her up, she appeared to be walking toward me carrying a relatively large cardboard box. I knew it wasn’t her laundry, because that is usually presented to me in a very task specific kind of basket, not a box. So, with my curiosity piqued and her wearing a cat shit eating grin, she arrived at me and announced, “...I have something for you.” Inside were more of the very treasured Petro-Canada glasses I obsessively collect!

Thanks to everyone for every effort
to help grow my special collection. *hugs*
TAKEN: MARCH 17th, 2018

Being in the middle of town and opening that box today made me realize that my more than decade long act of collecting these beautiful holder of anything liquid (in memory of my father) has evolved into a true tag-team effort. 

This lot came from a blog reader and personal friend of Staccs that I don't really know. So I want to say, yet again, that I am truly grateful to all that call, buy, deliver, and even text message location deets; while truly remaining on the lookout.

The interesting twist to this post is that when I got home and sat down to begin to write this one, I did what 99% of us do when we sit down at a computer, I checked my Facebook.  As soon as it populated, I discovered it was the anniversary of the death of a man that I spent a phenomenal amount of time with he and his family during my teen years.

Looking at the photo she'd posted and reading her tribute to her dad, embraced everything I would say to mine if I could. That I love him, and miss absolutely everything about him. Every... single... day.

I know there are so some naysayers out there may think the glass collecting obsession is silly, but it doesn't phase me. Instead,  if I could offer one vantage point of logic to their negativity it's that what they don’t know is, in the very minute I hold one of these new to me special treasures in my hand, I'm in a wonderful moment with my Dad. Today I could hear his laughter in the car with my daughter and I; and there's nothing even remotely silly about that.

Cheers to both these awesome guys today. Hope they are sharing a burger & a beer.

Not to mention having a good laugh about my asinine glass collection!