Kayaking, Renovations, Life

Posted on by Chocom00n-79

It’s been quiet and busy at the same time lately for me.  Back in the beginning of the new year, I got an email from a lady who asked me if I could do freelance graphic design work for her, and she worked for the military.  I was all willing to do it, until I received the contract that I had to look over and sign, before starting any work with her.  The contract required me to obtain business insurance, which was fine.  So I then looked it up and was given quotes and I then realized that the hourly quote I gave the lady previously wasn’t going to cover much of it.  I had no idea how much I would work for her, she said it would be just as they needed me.  So when I asked if I could increase my quote, she said that it was the max hourly rate she wanted freelancers to do for her.  So I had to step back and let her look around for other designers to do work for her.  I had no idea that business insurance was going to be so much money per month, so it was horrifying.  I know have to now charge people a lot more than I normally do.  Living costs isn’t exactly cheap anymore either, so oops!   Fun stuff.

Anyway, I’ve been home quite a bit, and doing stuff out in town a bit too.  I’ve been home working, hanging out with Steve, catching up on shows and movies, working on subtitles for movies and TV, and just working on old photos and old negatives.  A lot of them got edited which is pretty good.  My mom was finally able to pick out what she wanted so hopefully I can get some of them printed.  She didn’t need much though, but it’s kind of cool just looking at all of them.

When spring hit, and the temperature finally warmed up, Steve and his dad started doing work around the house, patching up the kitchen and the bathroom.  The kitchen is pretty much done, just have to paint the ceiling now.  It’s been primed but needs paint, then it’s done.  The bathroom has been patched, but still needs more work.  Oh, joy. LOL!  It’ll take a bit, for sure.  But it’s getting there.  Steve was also thinking about what he wanted to do to the front yard of the house.  He didn’t care about doing anything in the backyard as we have next door neighbors that smoke up a lot of weed and it’s all you can smell in the backyard.  Jeez.  So all he was thinking about was doing something in the front so we had a small space to sit out in.  You can’t always smell weed coming from next door in the front, though, you can still smell it sometimes.  The neighbors have been smoking pretty heavily ever since it warmed up.  It’s horrible, and the unfortunate thing about Steve is he’s allergic to weed, so it really bothers him. He can barely breathe when he smells it.  I’m not supposed to be around weed either, because I have a heart condition and it can change the rate of my heartbeats. Eh…fun times.  So it’s been a pain.  I also found that my other neighbor on the other side of the house also smokes it up.  So it’s pretty exciting to be around weed constantly – not! Sigh, but oh well, whatever then.  So Steve started working on the front patio, scraping it down and making it even – it was in bad shape before after having those huge bushes we used to have in the front that hid the entire house from everybody.  So we had to even out the ground, add more dirt, and then look for patio stones – as he wanted to either put down wood decks or patio stones to make a small deck with some small stones to frame it and put some plants around it.  So we did that.  He decided on patio stones, and that was pretty heavy.  Lucky him. Heh…He also added some smaller white stones around the patio stones and that looks pretty good.  When it was done, he was very happy about it.  It does look a lot better than before.  Really eye catching now.  And that hibiscus plant I got for the front yard really shows up too. Heh…but it looks good.  We still have to get more dirt to fill up one side of the house, but that’s a bit later, and still have to work on adding the gutters to the house.  That’s going to be sometime this summer.  Part of the gutters are up right now, we just have to finish it up. LOL!  So much work I think.

When it warmed up, Steve kept wanting to go out and go kayaking.  We’ve gone out a few times since the weather has warmed up.  We went out to Morton and went kayaking in the Rideau Canal.  It was pretty nice there.  It was a beautiful day for it, though a bit humid, but on the water it was nice though.  The area where we took off and came back at, a couple owned a big boat and was just hanging out on the boat and they kept talking to Steve about all kinds of things.  They were pretty friendly.  They had to know how we managed to drive the kayaks here and back home to Brockville.  Funny.  It is actually interesting how we can have no trouble with not losing the kayaks on top of our car while driving down the roads.  On the way back home we saw a farmers market and we stopped there and picked up some fruits and vegetables, which was pretty cool.

We made out another kayaking trip the weekend after, if I got it right, and it was a different place.  It was right in the middle of the wilderness in Lanark Highlands/Woods Lake/Ghost Lake and I got bit really good while out there.  On the lake, it was fine for bugs, but not on land.  Holy crap!  My legs got covered in bugs and bites.  Ugh.  But the water was a nice place to be.  There was a remarkable amount of tree branches in one area of the lake so it was a lot of steering around that area of the lake.  And there were quite a few abandoned cottages in that area.  I was surprised, but it wasn’t exactly a kept up area, it was mostly wilderness so it was pretty rough in the area.  After the trek through the lakes, on the drive back home, Steve had to stop at an abandoned house that he saw on the drive down.  It was pretty abandoned and falling apart, with a lot of abandoned shoes in the house.  That part was a little weird to me. Heh…but it was interesting that’s for sure.  The ceiling really looked like it was going to collapse at any time and it definitely would if one of us had gone upstairs.  It would not even hold on one foot up there. Jeez!  But it was an interesting house.

Oh, yes, the last little while my mom had been trying to figure out whether she wanted to stay at the house that I used to live in, in Kingston.  It was the house that my parents had bought for me and my brother to move to when we were living in London and Ottawa, so to be closer to family and make it easier for us to find work and go back to school.  We moved to the house, and it was a lot cheaper than what we were paying in our apartments, me in Ottawa at a bachelor apartment and Jason in London in an one bedroom.  Anyway, we both lived there for a while, then my dad then passed away from cancer; and then my brother got a job in Belleville and eventually moved out; I got married in the house, and separated; and my mom then bought the house off my ex-husband who wanted money back from what he put in the house, and then moved in the basement apartment.  My mom couldn’t afford to maintain two houses, so she had to sell her new house that she bought around the time my dad died, after I split with my ex which sucked, but I or we didn’t really have a choice, because I couldn’t put it on just my name as I didn’t make enough, with me having no job at the time of the split.  I didn’t want to move to an apartment again in Kingston as they were too expensive for just me to live in, I don’t usually do well with roommates and I didn’t really know enough people in Kingston.  I eventually started freelancing, then met Steve and moved to Brockville, and my mom stayed at the house, but moved up to my floor instead of the basement and John’s boys then moved to the basement.  It was like this for a while, and my mom and John were getting tired of living in a house, and maintaining it, and the such like – it was too expensive for them.  They then started looking around for apartments, and found one they really liked, and then decided to sell their house.  The house sold within a week. LOL!  Everyone was looking for houses with extra income, and this was a sort of duplex so it would be good for extra income for people looking for them.  And they got it for a good price too, so they are going to be moving to a really nice apartment not too far from where they used to live.  It has a pool, patio, fitness centre, games rooms, and everything. They love it.  So they are now in the midst of moving so fun times for them.  It should be interesting.  I have visited the house, mostly to get stuff from the house – they are moving from a house to an apartment so I really had to get a lot of stuff from my mom.  At least I don’t have to buy a bed for the extra bedroom in the house, I just took their extra bed, and it’s now in the spare room.  I also picked up a few other things, totes, mementoes, boxes and things like that from their garage.  My mom is also selling a whole bunch of stuff so it’s pretty crazy. LOL!  There was a lot of going through their stuff.  I might have to go back again before they move, to get more stuff, but that’s not for another couple of weeks I think.  I have seen their apartment and the building and it’s quite interesting.  It’s completely brand new so it was pretty nice.

It’s funny, how I have been busy selling stuff, and for a while there I wasn’t selling anything.  One day, someone said they wanted my entire collection of DVDs… I sold half of them as I have been buying blu-rays to replace them, and places like the Hock Shop and the such like didn’t buy them anymore, just blu-rays, so I had to sell them myself.  Surprisingly enough someone actually bought my huge collection of DVDs…I felt so much better after getting rid of them.  I also decided to sell my Blackberry tablet, and I was afraid it would take forever to sell as they were pretty old, maybe three or four years old?  I had mine and Steve’s, and we didn’t really use them anymore.  I got a new tablet, a Samsung one, so I wasn’t even using my Blackberry tablet anymore.  I couldn’t even use TiVo on my old Blackberry, but with the Samsung one I was able to, so I’m using it way more than I did with my Blackberry.  I sold my Blackberry within 24 hours of adding it to the buy/sell site.  I was amazed it sold so fast.  Steve got excited and asked if I could sell his too, but unfortunately it didn’t come with a charging cable, but he used a makeshift one that worked just fine, and I actually sold his in a week.  It sold really fast for such old tablets.  Both buyers were really happy about it, the first one wanted it for their kid, and the other one wanted to modify it and change it to an Android.  Go for it!  It’s amazing how many people wanted tablets, even old ones. It was hard to manage all the emails and replies I got from people who asked about them. Jeez!  LOL!

I also joined a survey site to earn a bit extra money per month, just answering surveys and watching videos.  It’s a little extra money which is always good.

It’s been a crazy little while that’s for sure.  Just a lot going on for sure.  I think that’s about it, that’s been going on.  It’s enough, that’s for sure.

The Fall Months & Christmas

Posted on by Chocom00n-79

It’s been a pretty busy little while for me.  Christmas, house construction, and some outings.  In November the weather finally cooled down, so Steve and I were finally able to rake up the leaves.  It was funny because we had a lot of fallen branches from the trees all around us, that we kept throwing in the back corner of our backyard, and this fall we decided to actually get rid of the sticks and fallen leaves in that corner along with raking up the leaves.  So as a result, after all the raking and stuff, we ended up with 33 freaking bags of leaves in the front yard!  We were only able to rake the same weekend they were picking up leaves, as they finally fell off the trees as it finally cooled off.  It’d been a warm fall this year so it was crazy. So crazy that weekend, that’s for sure!  Though, the backyard does look a lot better with all the tree scraps gone. Heh…

Rhonda with 33 bags of leavesWe also went to Pink Lake in Gatineau Park, in October, which was just gorgeous.  The water was an unbelievable turquoise colour, and we were checking out all the fall colours there. You can see the link here for the pictures.  It was a bit hard to get around for me, because then I was still out of shape and sore from all the surgeries and downtime I had earlier in the year.

We also went to Limerick Forest in the end of October to continue taking pictures of fall leaves, and it was even harder to walk around then, with all the massive hills and stuff, but I was slowly improving with my strength and energy by then.  It was pretty tough, for sure!  You can see pictures of Limerick Forest here.

Steve and I also worked on the house, finishing up the front foyer by adding trim, mostly to the front foyer and the kitchen, I believe.  I think the only thing we need to put down trim in is the back two bedrooms.  And fix up the bathroom walls and finish with the trim there.  But overall, the house is finally looking better.  And we got a new foyer closet door, and put it up.  We still have to paint it along with the trim in the doorway to the basement, but the main floor looks halfway decent now.  Lots of work, and lots of little, annoying stuff that has to be done.  It can be a pain sometimes.  It’ll be nice to have it done.  We also got the big closets for each of the closets in the three bedrooms painted and put up.  It’s finally nice to have them up and hiding all the mess we have in the house. LOL!  We do have a lot of stuff…more like my mess actually.  I like my stuff, and I’m trying to go through my stuff and see what I can get rid of.  It’s not easy, that’s for sure.

Steve had been working on the house during the summer on and off, putting up new gutters and eavestroughs, as the house comes with none.  He kept trying to do it with his dad, and kept putting it off because I kept getting sick a lot (with the pacemaker surgery and then the gall bladder stones-blockage/removal surgery) in the spring/summer.  He even put up a post and a clothesline in the beginning of the summer after a year of me nagging him.  I wanted to have one up, so it’d help save electricity in the summer from less usage of the dryers.  I know Steve isn’t much of a fan of line dried clothes, but I wanted him to be able to conserve electricity and do things the natural way.  Because the house came with no clothesline, we had to put up one ourselves.  It took a while, but it’s finally up.  Came in handy in the summer, for sure.  I used it a bit until I got too sick to. Yay me…hopefully I get more usage out of it next summer.  It’s too cold to use it right now with all the snow.  Heh…but anyway, I had not noticed that the house when we bought it, had no gutters or anything, and it clicked in my head a year after we got it, after Ken was talking about putting some up, so Ken and Steve started working on it.  At one point I had to help him put up the other side.  He learned how to do it through Ken in one side of the house, and then I helped him with the other side.  It was definitely a pain.  We only got two sides of the house done, and we still have like, 5 more sides to do as our house is a split level house.  Oh joy. LOL!  But at least some sides are done.  We’ll do more next summer when I’m feeling better.  Ken might help with more, but I’m not too sure, I know he’s an older man so it’s a bit hard for him to do, but Steve now knows generally what to do, and does most of the muscle work anyway.

One day in November, Steve decided that we should go out and take some pictures of us in the Mac Johnson Trails park.  I had no idea why but he just wanted new pictures of us to put up in the house.  I was tired, I remember that, but the weather was halfway decent, not yet cold and hadn’t snowed yet.  So we went out and took some pictures and got a few good pictures of both of us.  I even considered printing them out for Christmas and giving them out but then changed my mind.  Oops!  I got exhausted I guess, from all the stuff that was going on.  I guess I’d have to wait to see if my family even wants any of the pictures.  Fun! Here’s the link to the photo shoot, that we used with Steve’s phone.  Steve wanted to do this one weird pose and I wasn’t sure if I would be able to keep my balance for it, because the place Steve chose I was like, it’s too close to the water!  LOL… yikes!  He had to kneel down and I had to be on top of his back and balance myself to kiss him.  The docks wasn’t at all steady so I didn’t like doing it at all. But the picture turned out interesting, that’s for sure.  You can see the pictures here.  It was just crazy that’s for sure, but Steve can be a bit of a crazy man.

Christmas was good this year.  Steve and I went to Steve’s dad’s son’s house in Brockville to have dinner there and open presents.  Since most people that we know lived in Brockville, we all met there and had dinner and just talked to everyone.  It was a nice visit.  We had our annual family photo shoot (it’s been three years or four now for pictures with Steve’s dad’s side) and we did it in the dark outside on the deck.  I have no idea how it turned out as I haven’t really looked at the pictures yet.  I still need to go through all the Christmas pictures – though we didn’t take that many this year for Christmas. Oops, I guess!  Anyway, the November get together was good, had dinner in mid November, so it was nice.  Ken is now in Florida enjoying his time there.  Of course. Over Christmas Steve ended up getting a really bad cold flu that he started a few days before, and he was sick for a good week or so.  I was worried I would get it over the New Year’s but I got a milder version of what he had, so I was pretty decent.  Maybe it’d come later, but I have no idea.  Steve’s was really bad.  His was a flu-flu… he was out of it a lot of the holidays.  It was nuts too because we got the flu shot in November and he proceeded to get the flu.  Funny. We woke up on Christmas morning, and he had a really hard time getting out of bed.  We had tried to figure out what to get each other.  Steve gave me ideas, and I gave him ideas.  He said he would get me a new TV stand as he saw one in Canadian Tire, a deal on it, and said it would let him get more for me if I would get it. There was nothing on display or anything so I just picked it up.  My old TV stand had been damaged several times by movers so I was done with it.  The new one is a similar kind so it will easily be scraped off.  I wanted something more durable, and stronger, that wouldn’t get scratched up and damaged so easily.  But it’s not too easy to find a stand like that, in a reasonable price, that’s for sure.  Oh well, but I got a new TV stand and it looks good, less massive than my old one.  Steve had asked for some things for Christmas and I ordered one thing that Steve had really wanted, a custom Ash vs Evil Dead board game.  They said it should be ready by December.  A few weeks before December they announced that it wouldn’t be ready until April! So I had to let Steve know that his one gift wouldn’t be ready and so I started forwarding him the emails of the updates I get from the game makers.  So it’s all wait and see.  It was expensive so I better hope it’s worth it, that’s for sure.  That’s their battle, trying to get everything decent enough to be worth the price that we all pay for the game. LOL!  Craziness.  So what was left we just opened up on Christmas Day and there was a lot of silly stuff in there.  Steve even got me a silly emoticon winter hat.  Nuts, for sure.  You can see the picture below.  Goofy, that’s for sure! Me with an emoticon toque

I got some blu-rays – Bad Moms, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, and Miracles from Heaven.  Also got some books, clothes, and some tupperware.  We relaxed at home, and knew we had to go to my mom’s place soon as she decided that she would like to get Christmas over with in one day.  She had booked Christmas dinner out at a restaurant in Picton, Ontario at Isaiah Tubbs Resort, so she planned on stopping at my brother’s house on Christmas day as he lives in the Belleville area.  So we were planning on going there before we went to dinner, and then the day of my brother said that one of his kids get nervous when they have too many people over, as Kelly’s mom was planning on dropping by that day.  And plus, Steve was sick too with a cold flu and they didn’t want to get it, as their kids are sick all the time. Heh…so my mom decided to opt out as my brother asked for us to come earlier in the day so that Zaiden wouldn’t get too stressed out, but that would mean all four of us would be sitting around in Belleville waiting for our dinner reservations.  So we decided not to and my mom would go to Belleville a different day to exchange presents with them all with less people around.  So we relaxed and hung out at my mom’s place.  Steve was so lucky, he was so sick that day, that’s for sure.  Heh… Blowing his nose, sneezing, coughing all day.  I got some gifts from my mom, the biggest being the new bed set.  I used to have a bed set that suited my old bedroom in the house my mom is living in, I used to have peach walls there, and now that I am in a house I have light blue walls in the bedroom and the bedspread doesn’t suit it anymore.  So my mom found a bed spread set for us for Christmas, so that was nice.  Here’s a picture of it here.

Blue bedspreadJohn got us a very funny gift – a picture frame, saying My Children Meows.  And a antibacterial hand wash that says: Thanks for Scooping My Poop, with a “I mean, what else you got going on?” motto on the package.  Just a crazy antibacterial hand wash, for sure!  LOL!  We also got some money as well for anything for the house, or things we need.  Anyway, when we drove all the way to Picton, it was quite a distance away…ugh.  But when we got to the restaurant it was really cool looking.  Really big and very nice there.  There were a ton of people there, and the food was pretty good.  A big Christmas dinner buffet.  It was pretty cool.

When we got home, we stayed at my mom’s for a little bit, and then headed home.  We both were exhausted from the day there, that’s for sure! Just a full day, and with Steve being sick it really wiped him out.  I was all creaky and sore from the past few weeks so it was driving me crazy.  Steve and I had switched sides in the bed because Steve wanted to see if he slept better on my side of the bed, and if I was okay in his side of his bed.  He was always really sore, and always having trouble sleeping, and I kept snoring in his face all the time.  So we switched.  I still slept fine on that side of the bed, my snoring was better, it wasn’t to Steve’s face (apparently I snore only on one side?) and when I did it was away from his face.  However, I found that that side of the mattress wasn’t up to par.  I used to have this mattress with my ex-husband – we both bought it a while back as my ex-husband complained that my old mattress was too hard and I think it was also a double. So we bought a cheap mattress with a new bed frame, and he was happy again.  However, my ex-husband was a heavy set man, so the mattress in the long run got damaged pretty badly from his heavy weight.  The funny thing is he only used it for a year or two before we broke up.  Crazy.  I guess it was because it was a very cheap mattress?  One side of the bed, where I sleep on, was fine, still firm, and his side of the bed was…springy and soft and sloping.  Owww.  Every morning I woke up with an extremely sore back. I have a bad lower back so I like my mattresses firm.  Ugh…so, Steve and I decided to look in the Boxing Week sales in Leon’s on mattresses, and we found one that was a pretty good deal, so we bought a new mattress.  Yay me.  And while we were purchasing it, Steve was eyeing those UHD TV’s that Leon’s was selling, that were on sale.  He really, really wanted one, and since it was on sale, and he didn’t have to pay it up front, just month to month for now.  So he ended up getting a new TV, one he had been drooling for ages.  Typical.

The mattress got delivered and we’ve been using it for a few days now.  I would say my back is slowly improving, but it’s not completely better yet.  Steve says he sleeps pretty good on the bed, so all wait and see for me, I guess.  It’s only been a few days now since it was delivered.  New Years was quiet for both of us, we just stayed in and watched the celebrations in New York City on TV.  I just can’t believe it’s 2017 now… time just flies on by.

I’ve also been editing a lot of old photos from when I was a kid since January 2016, going through the negatives and scanning them up and editing them.  I find that most of them look so much better than when they were originally printed so it’s pretty cool.  I even scanned them up so my mom could go through them and see if she wants any of them printed again and replacing her old photos.  It’s pretty cool.  I know it’s too bad that my mom threw out some of her older negatives.  She only had some groups of negatives and those came out pretty nice.  Steve’s are pretty cool, especially the ones of him as a kid.  But it sure takes some time to edit them and get them ready for online viewing and to be printed.  I’m still waiting for my mom to pick them out online, but I’m not sure if she knows much about how to do that. LOL!

I think that’s it.  There was lot to say for sure! Oops…

Surgeries & Life

Posted on by Chocom00n-79

Wow, it’s been quite a while since I have said anything.  I guess anyone who knows me, knows I had been sick for quite a while, that no one could pinpoint what it was.  I even went to the hospital emergency room several times for help figuring out what was so wrong with me – I kept getting sick and having sharp pains every time I ate and so on.  My mom had reminded me that a few years ago – maybe a good 8 years ago I found out that I had stones in my gall bladder – which I had completely forgotten about.  And they said to wait until I had attacks before doing the surgery much to my former family physican’s disappointment – he wanted me to do surgery right away.  Anyway, I couldn’t really pinpoint what the problem was originally, and then I surprisingly threw up one day out of the blue.  I didn’t feel nauseous, I just went and threw my breakfast up immediately and when my mom reminded me I had gall bladder stones, I looked it up, and it said to go to the ER if I ever threw up.  It could be blockages and so on, and when you throw up go to the ER right away because it usually means I need immediate surgery.  Well, I went in on a holiday to the ER and it was pretty dead, and asked them to check me out.  Unfortunately the ultrasound person wasn’t available then, as it was a holiday, so he had the day off.  I had no idea that people had days off in the ER on holidays so I was like, gee, great. So I had to wait for an appointment, and the appointment was for three months later, in August.  I didn’t think that was right, but I didn’t really have a choice.

I personally hate going to the ER in Brockville – the wait times are always so freakin’ long.  Some times it’s all right, it can be quick, but other times…oh my God!  Steve really, really hates it there, so we try to avoid it if we can.  I do have a doctor but the ER usually finds out stuff fast, so that’s why I went there.  But they were useless.  They did say that if I had another throwing up attack, to come in the ER again, but to try to avoid any red meat and extremely high fat food in the meantime (chips, candy, red meat, etcetera).  Anyway, when I finally went in for my appointment for my ultrasound, three months after the fact.  They said that they saw that the stones were in a bad position (one stone was moving through the tube to the liver) and that I did actually need surgery.  I did see my family doctor and all that but she said the same thing, to go to the ER if I had another attack, but would call to have a gall bladder specialist to contact me, but it usually took months before they would see me.  So gah!  LOL…anyway, I was sent to get prepared for emergency surgery and so I was given a hospital room to rest in, and was given a whole load of painkillers – you know, it’s gall bladder stones, they are painful.  But I have had it for ages, and it usually is fine until I eat. That’s when I hurt.  So I was just high on painkillers for a while.  Exciting times.  Anyway, so because it was emergency surgery, the surgeon had to find empty slots where he could do the surgery and so on.  My mom came down to Brockville from Kingston to help relieve Steve from staying with me all the time – I’m deaf so I usually need someone there to tell me what the doctors and nurses have to say and so on.  I was put in a room by myself, it was normally a room where I would be paired with someone else in it too but I got lucky and was put in by myself at first.  Anyway, the wait time took an extremely long time – I think I was in hospitals for two weeks total before I finally had my surgery.  Yikes!  The nurses did say they recommended I stay, so they will take me in faster, instead of staying at home and waiting for a call for surgery, so they would be more likely to do me quicker and send me home quicker.

Then another complication came up.  The surgeon in Brockville was saying that because I have a pacemaker, and they need to use electronics to cut my gall bladder out (it had to be removed completely), and as a result I needed to have my pacemaker turned off.  There is no pacemaker clinic in Brockville, I usually go to Kingston to go to my appointments for my pacemaker.  They have a hospital and clinic there for people with pacemakers.  So…the surgeon said it was no big deal, all they had to do was put a magnet on top of it and then take it off when the surgery was done.  It shouldn’t be a big deal, so I was like, okay… then the head of the department came to see me and discuss what he thought I should do.  He recommended that I go have the surgery done in Kingston as they would bring pacemaker specialists in the surgery room. They can turn it off, and turn it back on without any issues as they have all the equipment there.  Brockville doesn’t quite have them all, though they do know what to do, but the head of the department gave us the advice to do it in Kingston, even though he knew the surgeon in Brockville wouldn’t be too happy. LOL!  It makes sense – Kingston does have more specialists there than Brockville does so if anything goes wrong, they would be there to fix it immediately, and so on.  So I decided to do the surgery in Kingston – much to my mom’s relief, then she could go home to take a shower and clean up and so on, instead of using the hospital showers. LOL!  Funny.  Steve was all, ugh.  LOL!  Oh well.  So the hospital transported me to Kingston General the day after I spoke to the head of the department.

I was personally glad.  You know I was put in a room by myself in Brockville and a day or two before I was transferred, someone got put in the room I was in.  They woke up my mom at like 3 in the morning when they moved the person in.  And as a result woke me too, there was all those lights, all those people running in and out of the room, and jeez, the smell.  I think the smell woke me before the lights and commotion did.  Oh my God, it was horrible.  The smell… 🙁  It smelled like poo and just, soooo strong that it made me sick. Ugh!  They were running around and all that preparing the lady to rest and find out what was wrong with her.  She did come from the ER.  But the smell… holy god.  She ended up having a catheter stuck in her – she was supposed to have it replaced regularly and it was stuck in her as it was in her for way too long.  But UGH…It was horrible.  It was a horrible night – I and my mom were unable to sleep for a long, long time.

I think they transferred me to a single room soon after that, so that was good.  Then when it was time to transfer to Kingston, an ambulance took me there, and I ended up in a room with another person, so that was okay.  Kingston is usually pretty busy so I’m okay with that.  But at least I got a window this time. 🙂  It took a few days again before I was able to go in for surgery.  It was a lot quicker than in Brockville. I was exhausted by the time we got to Kingston. LOL!  Too much painkillers and bed rest. Ouch… I tried going for walks and stuff but still, ouch… my back. Too much lying around and discomfort, and all the sick people around me. LOL!  At least the room I ended up in in Kingston had roommates who needed surgery like myself so they weren’t too bad.  The lady I ended up with also had gall bladder issues that she needed surgery for.  So it was okay, she was just a heavy smoker and went in and out of the room a lot. What can you do?  Then, finally, I was able to get the surgery done.  It’s funny, because when I was growing up, they were saying that having surgery would be hard on my heart, because of me having to be put under.  It’s too much undue stress on my heart, but I had to.  It was a gall bladder attack!  I also already had surgery earlier in the year for my pacemaker replacement – I think it was around April (around my mom’s birthday) or so that I had it replaced.  They had to call me several times before Steve finally listened to the messages and I missed a bunch of appointments, and my pacemaker battery was literally nearly done.  So when they finally got me in, they checked and said, I needed surgery ASAP, so I did have one.  Exciting times.  It was fast and easy, though the surgery room I ended up in was awkward in the bed. Different type of bed for surgery, and it was awkward.  I had to be put under for that one because I had to have new wires put in my veins, so I was put out of it for the first time in years.  The other replacement surgeries I usually am awake for, as they only need to take out the pacemaker box and put in new ones.  This time I had to have new wires put through my veins so I needed to be put out for that.  I was a bit nervous about that, but it turned out okay.  Then there was the gall bladder attack, and I had to be put under again so it wasn’t so much fun – two surgeries in a year.  Poor Steve!  LOL!  He’s had to come with me to both of them and explain what was going on and so on.

The gall bladder one was pretty simple, though it weirded me out that I had a missing gall bladder afterwards, and it took a while before I was able to eat normally and comfortably.  But as of now, as it’s been nearly two months now since the surgery, I’m finally back to normal, and there’s no more hassle with eating and so on.  It just took so long before I was finally able to. Yikes!  But it was a relief when it was done.  The whole summer I was sick so much that Steve wasn’t able to do a lot around the house, working around it and so on.  I wasn’t able to paint the closet doors and so on, so it could be put up.  After I recovered and healed, I was able to do a bit more.  It was hard, because after the pacemaker surgery I had to rest for 6 weeks.  Then after I had the gall bladder surgery, and after that I also had to rest for 6 weeks again.  It was ridiculous how much time I had to sit back and do nothing for.

I tried doing stuff with Steve, as his favourite season is summer, where he can do more.  Swim, enjoy the heat, and so on.  He’s not a winter fan, but neither am I.  So we tried to do some things, as he loves to hike too.  I have gone hiking over Thanksgiving weekend, so that wasn’t too bad.  It took me a bit of time to get used to hiking and exercising again.

I have two cats, and the youngest was having issues for some reason.  She got sick earlier in the year and I didn’t understand why.  She’s not exactly the most affectionate cat, or the most friendly, but she is Steve’s cat.  I usually watch over her along with the other cat who I found out to be 14 years old.  Wow… that’s an old cat. I can’t believe she’s still going with all the stuff that’s wrong with her, but Violet has not been a problematic cat since I got her.  All she has problems with is her teeth and hairballs (she’s a long haired cat).  But otherwise she’s a pretty good cat, pretty active and a pretty affectionate cat with me.  She’s not a huge fan of males though, never has been. LOL!  Purrsworth is a bit of a moody cat, sometimes she’ll be okay with people, others she’d avoid like the plague.  She’s in love with Steve.  I usually like to pet cats until I’m tired.  Purrsworth doesn’t like being pet more than once, otherwise she’ll attack and growl and hiss at you.  She loves to be played with like a dog, which is a pain (like playing fetch, chasing strings, mice, etc).  Anyway, Purrsworth is around 4 now, and she was suddenly having issues – she was throwing up constantly – I wasn’t sure if it was Violet or Purrsworth as Violet has a tendency to throw up hairballs sometimes.  But I was just surprised at how much throw up there was.  All in the basement or some in the living room.  It was shocking. But I had no idea who it was from, and then one morning I got up and was amazed at a huge puddle of pee in the kitchen. I was like, holy crap!  Did a big animal come in or did Steve pee in the kitchen?  I was like, jeez… then Steve and I noticed that Purrsworth was even more cranky and needy and sounded like she was in pain all the time when she used the litter so we figured it was her.  So we took her to the emergency vet to see what was up with her.  It turned out that she had this mysterious urinary disease that vets are still trying to figure out.  She was given some medicine, and we had to start feeding her urinary wet food and some urinary dry food, and see what she prefers.  Most cats with this disease prefer the wet, so I was like, jeez.  It was an expensive check up with Purrsworth.  They thought she had an infection at first, then noticed that she had more.  So we had to change her diet and gradually she got better, stopped throwing up and peeing everywhere.  What happens with cats with this disease is that their bladder grows cysts along the lining and gets painful and feels like infections, pressure, and pain, so she needed to eat special food so she wouldn’t get her bladder all aggravated.  And I had to start putting litter boxes on every floor of the house, so that whenever she needed to pee there was a litter box available.  I have two cats, so if one was using the litter and she needed to pee and she couldn’t, so her bladder would explode on the floor instead of the litter.  So that’s why I needed to get another set of litter boxes.  It was really adding up on costs, so it was ridiculous. LOL!  But once I added litter boxes, she was better at maintaining her need to pee in the litter box instead of the floors, and there was one near her food, because the wet food she has helps her pee easier so she can use the litter right away when she needed it and go back and forth to her food and the litter.  It’s so weird, but she’s finally doing better.  It’s just odd that she has issues with her digestion, and I did too with my gall bladder, so it was like, what’s going on?  LOL!

It has been a bad year for health for all the living creatures in this house, for sure!  Oh well, hopefully things stay well.  Steve’s birthday in August I ended up doing not much, as I had the surgery a few days before his birthday and finally came home two days after, on a Wednesday.  His birthday was on Saturday so I wasn’t really up to moving around much and doing much for his birthday.  We were supposed to go camping for his birthday but Steve had to cancel it, because of the craziness with the surgery. LOL!  So we just stayed home for his birthday and relaxed.  His birthday present, he said, was to have me home. Funny, funny.  September was pretty quiet – there was the Tall Ships thing, and my friend Christine from Ottawa came down to check out the Tall Ships, and Steve and I were supposed to meet up with Christine and her husband Cris there at Tall Ships, but Steve had a bad migraine from the changing seasons, so they came over to our house afterwards and hung out.  We caught up, and Cris and Steve got to meet for the first time, I think they hadn’t met yet.  Pretty crazy.  They had very similar personalities so that worked out well. 🙂  They were planning on camping out that night, and I offered them the spare bedroom to sleep in before they had to leave in the morning, so they stayed the night and I actually got to catch up with Christine, so that was good.  The next day Steve and I went to Tall Ships Festival and it was pretty good.

Thanksgiving this year was interesting.  My mom usually has Thanksgiving at her place, but she was getting pretty exhausted, as she was working 6 days a week and her doctors told her she needed to lighten up her work load, so she could heal up her hip.  She was getting probably too old to be working that much.  Now that she’s back to working 5 days a week it’s been better for her.  But she decided not to have Thanksgiving, making a huge meal, this year and relax, and recuperate.  So Steve and I stayed home and had Thanksgiving at home, and Ken, Steve’s dad was coming to work on putting up the gutters for the house, so we invited him to have Thanksgiving dinner with us, early, on a Thursday.  Steve had the time off, so I had to do an early Thanksgiving dinner.  All good, the turkey was an already stuffed one, and it turned out pretty good.  Surprisingly enough.  I was pooped too from the crazy year, so I didn’t really want to do a bunch of cooking and stuff like that.  🙂  So an already stuffed turkey, and I just had to make potatoes and veggies which was pretty good.  We had some pumpkin pie, which was of course, always good.

The next weekend was my birthday, this weekend.  My mom and John came to Brockville to take me out for dinner for my birthday.  They asked me to pick the restaurant that I wanted to try.  I wanted to try a new restaurant – Tall Ships Waterfront Grille.  So we all went there for dinner yesterday. I wasn’t sure if it would be any good – the reviews for it were half-half.  Some said good, some said it was horrible. LOL!  My dish was pretty good, and so were the guys’ dishes.  My mom didn’t like hers.  She got fish and chips, and the fish had a very bland taste to it. (It really did!)  My pasta dish, was pretty yummy.  I got ravoli stuffed with crab, scallops and a third seafood though I don’t remember what, covered in tomato cream sauce.  It was quite tasty. 🙂  The guys had steak and they liked theirs, though Steve said that his would have been better at places like Kelsey’s – they are less expensive, and tastes better.  John loved his special steak though. 🙂  It was worth a try, and I might not even go again.  The views from the restaurant was gorgeous though, it overlooked the water, so it was pretty cool.  We went at sunset so it was quite pretty. 🙂  My mom got to look around the house, she only had been over once before while the construction was still going on, and we were just out in town several times.  Fun!  I just feel a bit older now…I’m now 37, so it’s a weird age.  When you turn an age closer to the 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, it kind of feels not right. Funny. 🙂

I guess I got all caught up here. 🙂  It’s been quite a while since I have written here – I’ve just been sick most of the year so oops.  Steve was trying to get me to make journal entries here and there, at least once a month, but I kept getting sick so that didn’t happen. LOL!  We’ll see how I feel from now on and how things go from here.

Christmas & Miscellaneous

Posted on by Chocom00n-79

The last little while has been pretty quiet. I’ve been busy working on pictures that I already have, and trying to clean up the photos that I have saved in my Google account. There’s just so much. LOL! I’m just trying to make them look better, add my credits to most of them, and stuff like that. I can be pretty critical of my own work. When I finish them, I always think I could do them better, edit some stuff better, design better, make them look better. I’m like that with my design work too. I may create something, then a bit of time goes on and I think it could look better. It’s crazy how my mind works, but oh well. Not much I can do about it. I am constantly improving stuff in my head which drives me nuts.

I’ve been working around the house, cleaning it up as much as I could, organizing, getting ideas of what I would like for Christmas for the house – I’ve also been helping do little by little type of work, so it’s been nuts. Steve’s been so tired from work so he hasn’t really gotten around to do too much around the house. Of course, not surprising at all. I don’t remember what has been done in the house lately, but it’s slowly getting in place. The kitchen floor finally looks a lot better, the tiles are all in, the grout still needs to be filled in, but that’s later, and then there’s the trim. The trim is done in the living room, but not the kitchen. I think that’s about it for the kitchen, to make it look finished. We need to buy new closet doors for the entry closet, as the one that was there before was broken, maybe we never saw it, but whatever. There’s just no closet doors there. There needs to be closet doors installed upstairs, but if we stick with the old ones, we need to patch them, fix them, paint them before putting them in. They are weird doors, they don’t go up to regular door height, they reach up to the ceiling, so those are hard to buy. Fun.

In November, we had a get together at Steve’s dad’s place, to have an early Christmas, as Ken was going off to Florida soon, for the winter, to his second home. So we got together with Ken’s family in November, had dinner with everybody and opened presents. It was a nice visit. We had turkey for dinner and just hung out and talked to everybody. I was wiped out by then, with working on the house and feeling off, which I found out what was wrong later. Bleh! LOL!

There was a lot of running around trying to find Christmas presents for everybody – I had a hard time finding out what everyone wanted for Christmas so it was a bit of a pain. Steve didn’t want a lot or us to spend too much, because he wanted to put money towards the house, not unnecessary gifts. Sheesh, typical of him, huh? I saved up a bit of money, and with Steve’s help we were able to get halfway decent gifts for everybody. I ended up feeling off and unwell – I found out I had GERD a few months ago, so I was feeling off again, so I had to increase my medicine and it has slowly improved again. My health likes to go awry just “because.” That’s what it feels like sometimes. Heh…but things seem to be getting better. Steve and I woke up Christmas morning, opened gifts – I knew most of the gifts I was going to get and so did Steve, I think he knew all of his. He asked for tools and stuff for the house, so I ended up getting a lot of that for him. I ended up getting a sweater from Steve, that I put on for Christmas day, to go to my mom’s. A hour after I put the sweater on, Violet was sitting on my lap, and then when I had to get up, she jumped off my lap and hooked her claws in the new sweater and pulled one of the knit stitch out. Sigh…I tried putting it back in and couldn’t, so I didn’t know what to do, so when I went to my mom’s, she tried fixing it but couldn’t. The sweater was really thin and very soft, and pretty delicate I suppose, that a cat’s claws could just hook in it really easily and take it with them. Grr! It wasn’t easy or even possible to fix, so I had to return the sweater on Boxing Day, and since they had none in my size left, I just returned it and looked for something else to get. There was only one thing I liked in the store so I got it. LOL! Figures! That’s what happens after Christmas! Heh…I ended up getting a long sleeved t-shirt, not a sweater, in a similar style. So it’s all okay.

We then headed out to my mom’s in the afternoon. My brother and Kelly wasn’t coming – they wanted to celebrate Christmas at their place with their kids. They had invited us over for Boxing Day but Steve had been working his butt off at work and at home, so he was too tired. He also came down with a stomach bug – he wasn’t sure if it was food poisoning or a bug. So he had fun eating on Christmas day. LOL! He didn’t feel well that day and for a few days in between. In the morning he was okay, but in the afternoon and evening it really hit him. Oops. The food was good at my mom’s, the turkey and the miscellaneous is always good. John’s boys came by for dinner as well, so it was interesting. It was mostly quiet as Steve was sick, and I was just talking to Mom most of the time. Fun times. It was relaxing.

Steve’s been busy working so I have been too. At home, working on work stuff, and my pictures and trying to improve what I already had online, and fixing it. I’ve kept occupied doing stuff around the house, which seems like there’s more work because it’s a bigger place, more likely. Heh… Funny. Oh, yes, Steve decided to order the blu-rays of the “X-Files,” as he used to love the shows when he was a kid, and I was like, um, okay…I had never watched the “X-Files” when it was airing. I always thought it was too scary, but now that I have watched shows like “Dexter,” “Breaking Bad,” and so on – would “X-Files” actually be scary for me anymore? I have no idea, so when Steve got the blu-rays in – there’s 9 seasons in total and there’s so many. Jeez…so I tried the first four episodes. They are suprisingly funny. I like David Duchnovy, I used to watch “Californication” – that was hilarious when I first started watching it. So I had to give “X-Files” a try. So far they are pretty silly, but at the same time has dark parts in it but it’s more scary than gory. Gory stuff is something I am squeamish about – I hate it when movies have too much blood in it – “Dexter” was pretty bad at that part. LOL! But I liked the story, ironically enough. So I’m now giving “X-Files” a try, and I have no idea if we’ll be able to watch it all before the new “X-Files” show airs. There’s like 200 shows. Doubtful, but I do have the DVR for the newer shows so it’s not too bad really.

New Years was quiet, we just stayed in and relaxed for New Years. Steve was looking up on things to do and go to on New Years Eve, but I was too tired to even think about driving all the way to Ottawa or Kingston to see the fireworks or any event. I’m still worn out, I’m just tired of being sick, tired of having all the work to do in the house, and winter has been weird this year. LOL! Hopefully things will get better with my tiredness, but I’m crossing my fingers!

It’s been interesting so far.

Thanksgiving and Birthdays

Posted on by Chocom00n-79

Wow, I’m so tired today! I’ve been sick for the almost 2 weeks so I really am not feeling so great. It’s not much fun, but oh well, nothing I can do about that. The past little while has been interesting, with Thanksgiving, my 36th birthday, and the continual renovations on the house. The house is slowly coming around. The bathroom got done – with the painting and all that – it was horrible in there. There were dirt all over the walls and ceiling that seemed to me to be poo or whatever it was, streaked all over. Ugh. I had to do a deep cleaning of the streaks on the walls before painting it…it made me want to throw up! But it got cleaned, and then I was able to paint it, thankfully. It looks a lot better and I can breathe better in there. LOL! All the windows in the basement got replaced so I’m glad about that – because it was easy to open them from the outside and crawl in with the old windows. I know everyone says steel windows are better, but I don’t believe it. Not if you can crawl in the house. Craziness, but they all got replaced with vinyl windows so I was relieved about that. There was a lot of breeze coming through the old windows that I really could notice once the cold weather hit. Just chilly!  Oh well…

Steve and I were invited to my nephew’s birthday party in the beginning of October, so we headed out to Belleville for his 4th birthday with my mom and John. It was crazy busy in the house, so many people that it was just crazy. People were outside, but it was cool out there, so some were outside and some people were indoors. Good thing Jason has a big backyard with all the people he invited for Zaiden’s birthday! Heh.

Thanksgiving was different for me this year. I ended up with two Thanksgiving dinners, which was crazy. Steve’s dad, Ken said that I should do Thanksgiving at my place with him and Steve, and I was like, but I’ve never done or cooked Thanksgiving dinner before? Yikes! So I had to prepare a big dinner for Thanksgiving and I needed my mom to help me out with a recipe for her homemade stuffing though everyone said I should buy boxed stuffing – but I don’t even like it. I always very much prefer homemade stuffing, but I just haven’t made it before so I was a bit worried about that. Heh…Oh well! I’ve always just seen my mom make it but I didn’t really know exactly how to make it, so yikes! Figures!

I had Thanksgiving dinner with Ken and Steve on the Saturday before I went to my mom’s on the Sunday for her Thanksgiving dinner. So that was interesting. I got a general recipe from my mom, and it really did not work.  Oops!  It was tasteless and too moist, but next time I’ll put much more seasoning in it, and put less water/broth in it. Guess I have to continually learn. The turkey was really good, but it helped that Steve’s dad had come early in the morning to do work on the house with Steve, and he was able to help on how to cook the turkey, so that was good. The rest of the meal was really good, so I was happy about that. It was just the stuffing that didn’t work out too well, but I have an idea of what to do next time, of course. It was still good anyway, and then the next day we both headed out to my mom’s for Thanksgiving dinner, which was good. My brother, his wife and two kids were there so it was good. I still have to work on the pictures and post it online – I take so long in posting pictures. I had realized I hadn’t posted any pictures in nearly a year, so I have been working on adding pictures that I hadn’t posted with all the craziness that had been going on in my life – with the houses, construction, and stuff. There has been hardly any free time in my life to actually do this. Funny. But some time soon they will be posted – a lot of pictures have recently been added, but it’s just crazy. I still have lots more to post.

My birthday came and went – it was mostly quiet, of course. I wanted to see how many people would remember my birthday without getting any notification on Facebook so I turned off the birthday notification in Facebook. It worked – very few people remembered my birthday. It’s fun…LOL! Steve took me out to dinner to Kochi Sushi. It was good – even though Steve kept wanting to order weird sushi dishes in the buffet. Sigh. Funny though. I ended up with a couple of tops and chocolates for my birthday, of course. My mom got me some stuff for the house, some picture frames that I could use in the house for my birthday. A few days later I ended up with this cold thing that my mom had during Thanksgiving, and I’ve had it since then. It’s November and it’s sort of tapering off now, but I can feel it coming out now. I just was fighting the sore throat and achy body for nearly 2 weeks and now I can finally feel it come out. Sigh. So long! I don’t want it anymore!  Ugh!  I do need to get flu shots soon, but I only can get it when I get better. Exciting times.

Halloween last night was different. I have done Halloween in Kingston before but I found that we didn’t get that much trick or treaters there, so it was not something I was highly expecting for Brockville, now that we have a house, and we could actually see the trick or treaters. We got an unexpected amount of trick or treaters coming to the house, and there were some neighbours that came by and was thanking us for removing the huge bushes that was in front of our house. LOL! Everyone keeps watching the changes in the house and they are happy about that. It’s a bit weird how much people keep watching us, and the house. I guess they really want to see changes there, so yikes! It’s pretty weird, but interesting. We did get a lot of trick or treaters and it was pretty fun to watch all the little kids come around, but it wasn’t fun when we ran out of treats, and Steve had to go out and get more. Jeez. He came back and then we had a bunch more. It was just insane how many kids we had come to the house, or the neighbourhood. There was so many kids out…I’m surprised, because in Kingston we had barely that many. So it was pretty cool actually.

Steve and I also went to Rock Dunder in Gananoque and it was pretty cool there. We went there to see all the fall colours and when I went there the fall colours hadn’t really hit yet, so it was mostly green then. It was still really nice up there and I got some photos so it was cool. A little dizzying being up on the hill of Rock Dunder, though, but it was cool. I wanted to take some pictures so to use for TVCOGECO’s photo additions on TV, so it was good. Some exercise, and all that. Always good to have, though I honestly hate exercise. Heh…Funny.

It’s been pretty busy back here for me, so it has been good.

Florida Vacation, Houses, Construction

Posted on by Chocom00n-79

Yes, it’s been a really, really long time since I have last written here. I know how it is, it’s just been busy, and I keep thinking I don’t have a lot to say. Obviously I didn’t have a lot to say for a year. Pretty crazy! It’s been pretty nutty – but at least I haven’t done a bunch of trips in the past year. I’ve been mostly staying at home and just saving up money and the such like as I wanted to get a bigger place than the apartment I was in. I was tired of the walk up for the laundry, it just got to be a bit of a pain carrying laundry down four flights of stairs from the third floor to the basement. I even took a spill down there with the laundry so that was a sore trip down. Whoops!

Even though we were determined to save as much as we could for a bigger place, we went on a week long vacation back in January to Florida. Steve’s dad, Ken, had a house in Florida and he also got us plane tickets for Christmas, so we could fly down and back for cheap. We didn’t really spend anything, except for a car rental and groceries and dinners out. We got to the house after a really, really, really delayed flight (we had to change planes in Chicago and we ended up with a plane that got to the airport and the pilot made everyone in the flight sit in the plane for way too long and of course we missed our connection, so we ended up waiting for yet more hours in the night before another flight was available to take us to Florida – it was available at like 7am in the next morning. God knows we were sleepy when we arrived to Ken’s house!) and Ken got us to try the oranges from the orange tree he had growing in his backyard. Those oranges were good – we ate quite a few of them while down there. Steve’s dad’s neighbour surprised us by giving us free tickets to go to Epcot Centre in Florida. Steve has never gone to Walt Disney World as a kid and wanted to check it out – I have been to Walt Disney, Epcot and all those fun stuff when I was a kid. I came down twice growing up with my family so to go to the amusement parks and the beaches. So I always enjoyed that – and I came down again with my ex-husband’s family but it was more for the beaches, shopping, photography, and rest, no amusement parks. So it was funny checking it out again – Epcot Centre that is. We went down for a day and luckily, we got pouring rain really bad while down there. It was ridiculous, but it came for a good while, and we hid out with a bunch of people in stores until it let up, then continued on. It was a bad day for rain but that’s okay. We still got to see and go on a lot of rides in Epcot Centre anyway. LOL! We also went to a few large flea markets so that was funny to check out. It was a good time down there, relaxing and a lot of checking out of Florida. We went to Vero Beach on one side of Florida. Ken lived in the centre of Florida so we could choose what beaches we wanted to go to and drive down. We went to the Florida Aquarium as well so that was fun. Steve did a bit of helping his dad out on renovating the house he had down there so that was interesting.

My brother had his second baby, Rylan back in March. She was born on my grandmother’s birthday so that was a little weird. She was born with a bunch of problems as she was a premature baby, and everyone thought she would end up with the same heart condition as my brother and I did. She was put on meds for a bit but I think she’s not on them anymore. She seems to be doing better and all that. I’ve only seen her once, oops! It’s been pretty crazy the past year.

My brother and his family got a new house so they had us all over one day after they moved in, and that’s when I got to see Rylan for the first time. It was interesting, as they moved in the house around the same time Steve and I had found a house that he would have been happy with, so it was pretty crazy for us all. My brother got a house that was quite nice, but had some problems with, so they are renovating it slowly. I moved in a house that was pretty much stripped so we had to add new stuff to make it livable. New flooring, paint, window replacements, and so on. It’s slowly getting back in shape. We looked around at a few houses – which were mostly scary looking, old, or just really tiny, before we found this house. We got the house in May, and then moved in the end of June if I remember right. When we got the house, I was worried that we’d have to move in the house in the shape it was in. The ceiling was falling down in the kitchen/dining room, there was no flooring, the kitchen was old, falling apart and pretty greasy, and the bathroom was very, very gross. *L* It was mostly just cleaning that needed to be done and stuff but it was so icky. I really didn’t want to get the house to start with but Steve was so in love with the layout of the house and where it was, so I had to let him get it and he promised me that the renovations would be mostly done by the time we moved in. It really wasn’t, but a lot got done. I’ve lived in the house for, um, two months now? And it’s still not done. Not surprising. *laughs* We still have to finish the tile flooring in the kitchen (pretty crazy, I keep hurting my feet on the tiles as it’s higher than the rest of the flooring in the house. *L*) The bathroom needs to be done painting, along with the kitchen. The guys keep finding different stuff to work on so I have to leave the painting of the side of the kitchen alone until they are done renovating and working. Craziness. The windows still need to be installed in the basement – Ken says he still needs to buy windows for the back basement, along with the big front window in the living room. Otherwise, it’s good for the winter. Hopefully! It’s getting in better shape as it goes along. All I could remember was walking in the kitchen and seeing that huge hole in the ceiling. It was like the ceiling was going to come down on us anytime! Yikes! They had replaced the roof, but not the rest of the ceilings in the house. The person previously was a hoarder and left the house a disaster, so when he died it had to all be cleared out and moved out and cleaned up. The cleaning I had to do a lot of. Ewww!!! It was gross in parts of the house, but it’s slowly getting better, and looking cleaner. But at least I can go normally and live normally here now. Things are going slower now, so it’s all good. I have a clean kitchen that works, and a bathroom that is clean and works as well, so it’s going along all right.

It’s funny, because the house is heated by gas, and there was a tap of some kind on the side of the house, and we realized that it was a gas tap sort of thing, and Steve thought we should get a gas BBQ that we could just hook up to the side of the house when we needed it to use it. It seems to work well, so let’s see how it works out for the gas bill. LOL! It’s different, for sure.

While we were working on moving out of the apartment and in the new house, Steve found sales on a couple of kayaks and said he really wanted to get them. We both really enjoyed using kayaks when we camped in Bon Echo, if I remember right.  The ones we rented there were really sleek and we actually went pretty fast in them, I remember going, oh my god, this is way too fast!  *laughs*  But it was quite easy to use and was really fun.  So we decided to go ahead and pick up two that were on sale, and we have used it.  It’s not as fast as the ones we rented, but it’s still pretty nice anyway.  We’ve taken some outings several times over the summer just to get out of all the construction of the house and the such like.  Fun times!  We also have the room to put the kayaks in, we couldn’t get anything like that before in an apartment – they would definitely not fit!  Funny.

Steve actually turned 40 the past August – I had fun teasing him about his age. He’s quite getting there in age, that’s for sure! He seems all good with it so far. Heh…just funny though. We went to Buell St. Bistro for his dinner out for his birthday. The food is always really good there.

Steve found out through work that there was going to be an ASL interpreted performance in the Gananoque Playhouse, and I was like, I’m surprised about that. I had no idea that they did stuff like that, so Steve got tickets so to check it out. It was for a play “Tuesday’s with Morrie,” It turned out to be a pretty good play, which was surprising, I wasn’t sure if it would be after reading the synopsis, but it was. The interpreters I remembered from when I was in college, plus when I visited Canadian Hearing Society, so it was kind of funny seeing them again. It was good to go and see, hopefully they’d have another interpreted performance. It was quite good.

I guess I don’t really have much to say. There has been a lot that has happened in the past year that it’s hard to just remember what the heck has happened. I need to post more often but it’s just been crazy busy here lately so it’s been hard to remember to do that.

Another Year Older

Posted on by Chocom00n-79

It’s been a quiet past little while. I’m now 35 years old – yikes! Time seems to fly by these days. Thanksgiving weekend was pretty good – I got to hang out with my family on Thanksgiving Sunday so it was good. I hadn’t seen my brother and his wife and son in a long while, so it was good seeing them. We caught up, talked about what my brother and Kelly were going to do, as they are having their second child. Steve had been talking about maybe relocating to Ottawa if I could find a job there and he’d drive back and forth to Brockville for work. And as I was talking to my brother he’s going to do the same, only relocating to Smiths Falls/Ottawa area. So that Kelly can be closer to her family and have them help her with Zaiden and their unborn baby. It should be interesting. It was good catching up with my brother and my mom.

My birthday came along, and now I’m 35 – the years seem to fly by for sure! Steve had to work on my birthday so we went out to dinner on the next day, on the 16th. I had to look up online and see what restaurants I wanted to try in Brockville, for my late birthday dinner. I decided on going to Buell St. Bistro in downtown Brockville and it was a pretty good place to eat at. My birthday itself was a quiet day. Heh. Steve had to work all day and night so it was pretty quiet for me, so I just relaxed all day so it was not too bad at all. I had gotten Steve’s older cell phone, the iPhone 5S, while he had bought himself the new iPhone 6 and passed me on his older phone, (I had the iPhone 4S previously) and said it was my birthday gift. Sheesh! Heh. I got a card and a jumbo pack of Toblerone the day of anyway, and just mellowed out. I got some chocolates from my brother’s family and some clothes from my mom over Thanksgiving weekend, so it was pretty good.

It’s funny because I had sorted all my bigger sized clothes to give away, and gave them away, and just the other day I found another big bag of bigger sized clothes in the apartment. Ugh! I can’t believe I still had so many! I gave away two large garbage bags of bigger sized clothes, and now I have to give away one more big garbage bag! Wow…I can’t believe I had that many clothes. Right now I basically have very few clothes for myself. Heh…Figures! Sigh…oh well.

I’m now officially divorced! Yay! I was waiting till October 18th to officially be divorced, and now I am, so it’s a nice relief. Hehe…now that part of my life is over with, so it’s nice.

I went in to see my doctor and I was asking her about getting my tubes tied – I know I don’t want to have kids, and I don’t want to risk it. It’s just that I’ve always feared having kids – childbirth and all that wasn’t something I wanted to experience and to risk it, isn’t really worth it. I’ve already died once so I rather not try for that again. Heh, and yikes, for sure! So I talked to the doctor about it, and they would talk to someone at the hospital and book an appointment for me to talk to someone there about having the procedure done.

So it’s all wait and see, I guess! Fun.

Road Trip 2014, Camping, and Divorce

Posted on by Chocom00n-79

It’s been a busy little while for me. The summer was generally pretty quiet – as I had been busy saving up money to get a house and the such like. I went exploring caves back in June 2014 and that was really scary for me to try but it was really, really cool to check out. The hike to the caves was really, really long, but then the caves part, going in and exploring was a bit scary. For one thing, I cannot hear, and the caves are very dark so you really, really needed a bright light to explore it. *laughs* It was really cool though. Once you got your nerves out of the way, exploring it was pretty cool, just seeing what it all looked like. It was wet in some areas, and full of water in others, but other parts were pretty dry but dark. I was nervous a lot of the hike through the caves. *laughs* I really needed Steve to help me out with the balance part because with me lacking my hearing and then my vision in some parts of the cave I really needed to hold on to someone to go along the caves. It was crazy! Haha… you can see the video here on Lusk Caves:


Lusk Cave from Steve Savage on Vimeo.

The tiredness that I had most of the beginning of 2014, I still have it. I can’t figure it out, honestly. It’s just hanging around like an annoying gnat. :/ When I exercise it helps, but the funny thing is a while back I injured my wrist doing burpees, and I haven’t been able to exercise for a while. My wrist had been driving me crazy, and I just figured out what it was – it was just a pinched nerve in my neck that was affecting my wrist. Steve is not much on massaging or anything like that, so I wasn’t able to figure it out until my mom tried massaging my neck when I visited her recently. It turned out to be a pinched nerve – it actually went away for 24 hours pretty much. It’s back again but Steve is unable to do it just right. He’s not really much of a masseuse. Heh. He keeps telling me I need to go to the doctor to get help for it. But I don’t think getting massage therapy is covered by the health card anymore, so it’d be ridiculous. I can’t afford to pay for massage therapy. Yikes!

Anyway, in the end of August, Steve and I were on vacation, and we decided to go camping and then to go out east. We weren’t planning on going out east until the last minute, but since we were taking our time in saving for houses, and stuff like that, Steve decided we should go before we actually had a house, as it would suck up all our savings once we had a house. So when Steve had his vacation banked, we went camping at Sharbot Lake for three or so days, and after that, we headed out east. It was crazy, but was pretty cool. We only planned to drive out to Nova Scotia, go around the Cabot Trail, then go to P.E.I. to check out Green Gables, and then drive back home. Easy trip, pretty much.

Camping was pretty good, it was pretty quiet and relaxing, as Steve was pretty exhausted from all the craziness from work so we just relaxed, swam, and the such like. We were talking about how we both had never gone kayaking before, and why didn’t we try it this time? So instead of a canoe, we rented two kayaks for both of us, and tried it. You really need to be able to keep your balance in it when you weren’t moving. *laughs* But once you went, you really, really went! It was very smooth and fast so it was a lot of fun. We both got really wet but it was pretty cool just checking the kayaks out. We reached one place in the lake – Black Lake – where it was covered with ivys and I even got to pick out some flowers. It was really pretty that’s for sure, but it sure got you all tangled up in it. We both really enjoyed it so we’d likely rent kayaks again or get our own later on. We did some night photography – one night there was a view of the Milky Way so clear it was pretty cool. It was a relaxing three days of camping.

When we came back from camping we unpacked, and packed up again, slept at home once, and then left the next morning. The first day out we drove through Quebec, which was pretty bad – full of crazy traffic and construction, and reached Grand Falls, New Brunswick that night. The second day we drove through the rest of New Brunswick and reached Nova Scotia, stopped at the border and took pictures with the Nova Scotia sign. (We stopped pretty much anywhere that looked cool and took pictures.) We ended up at a town called Whycocomagh – such a funny name – on Cape Breton Island. We had planned on stopping at Baddeck, NS, as that’s where the Cape Breton trail started, but Steve was tired of all the driving so we stopped just before that.

The third day we reached the Cabot Trail and then started driving through it, so we got to explore, which was nice. It was a pretty cloudy and gloomy morning but the rain held off so it was pretty good. There were a lot of ponds, swamps and forests all around us. We encountered some strange spots along the Trail, a old church, and so on, and there were a lot of small shops all around us so we got to see nature, and got to stop at different places to pick up some souvenirs of the trip there. We actually got to check out the Atlantic Ocean coasts, which was beautiful. It was quite rocky, that I wasn’t expecting, but it was still beautiful. Steve kept having me go down to the coasts whereever we pulled over at. And it was unbelievable how high the roads were from the coasts. It drove me crazy! Heh…there was way too much climbing to do and too much stepping down to do. I was so afraid I’d fall right down and break my neck…it was nuts! Both Steve and I are not the biggest fans of heights but he kept taking me down. I have no idea why – but at the same time I did, he just wanted to film all the untouched land. It was his thing. Sigh…but the entire coast of the Atlantic Ocean was beautiful, we even reached a spot where all the rocks were red and that was pretty cool. You can see the video of the Eastern Cape Breton Island:

Eastern Cape Breton Island from Steve Savage on Vimeo.

We reached the tip (or the middle of) the Cabot Trail, and we had been talking about going whale watching before, both of us have never done that, but were interested in checking that out, so we booked a time in the evening to go whale watching with Oshan Whale Watch in Bay St. Lawrence. The sailor had told us that the time we had booked for, they didn’t usually get that many whales then. If it was morning or noon, they’d get a lot more variety, but the late afternoon/evenings tend to have a lot less variety of whales.

We were all, oh, that’s too bad. But we still set off with our group. We actually did to get to see one kind of whale – pilot whales. That was pretty cool actually. They were swimming all around us as the sailor used the whale calling whistle or whatever it was, so they were swimming all around so everyone was taking pictures. When you haven’t seen whales live it’s still really cool to see them all around you. They are massive – yes, they are smaller whales generally, but they were still pretty big. It was really cool. We also steered to Turtlehead Rock, where there are usually seals and otters hanging out at. I didn’t see many, just some seal heads popping out of the water and back in. That animal was hard to find. We also went to another area where there was a small waterfall at, and on top of a massive rock it was covered with birds – Great Cormorants, I believe. It was cool, they all were just sunbathing in the sun. Heh…the whale watching ride took us around 2 hours, so it was nice just checking out everything. It was just beautiful out there. You can see the video on the whale watching here:

To See Whales… from Steve Savage on Vimeo.

The fourth day we continued on through the Cabot Trail. We kept stopping at coasts and taking pictures, so it was funny. Some of them you really could explore the coasts forever, so it was cool. Really pretty and all that, so it was nice. The water was a touch cool, but not too bad. There was a lot of scenery to check out so it was nice. There was one spot while driving through the Trails, where you could see the road go on forever and ever along the water. That spot had that red chair there so you could just sit there and enjoy your view. It was just funny that there was a chair specially for that. Heh. You can see another video on the Western Cape Breton Island here:

Western Cape Breton Island from Steve Savage on Vimeo.

We drove through and decided to stop at a beach as I had wanted to relax at a beach somewhere along the ocean for a little bit and sunbathe. We found a small sandy beach so we just relaxed there for a hour or so, and then we headed out to catch the ferry to P.E.I., and got on it and then just headed out to Wood Islands, P.E.I. We had our dinner in the ferry and took some pictures and video, and then we took in a motel for the night in P.E.I.

The fifth day we drove through P.E.I. to get to the Anne of Green Gables area. When I was a girl, I used to read the whole saga of the Anne of Green Gables books with my friend Veronica, and those books were based on the P.E.I. locale, so I really did want to see what the inspiration was all about. One funny thing about P.E.I. was that it was full of very colourful boats and boathouses so it was cool to see. It was a real country type of place to be in, I hadn’t realized that. The last time Steve went to P.E.I. with his ex-wife, they went to the tourist part of P.E.I. for Anne of Green Gables, where it was like a big park and a fair sort of thing; and he didn’t really enjoy himself. I really didn’t want to go to that, I wanted to go to the inspiration part, where the books were actually based on. So we went to the Anne of Green Gables Museum, and that was pretty cool just checking it out. It’s funny after we started touring the museum, a black cat came running to us to be petted. I thought it was really weird to find a cat running in a museum. *laughs* Steve got all excited and wanted to pet the kitty. It was pretty funny. The house was the place the author was using as her inspiration for the book. It was covered with her books, mementos and the such like so it was cool. We also checked out the yard, and even through the nature walk in the side of the house. It was very short but still nice just walking through it. Heh…funny. Before we got there we had driven past Lucy Maud Montgomery’s birthplace, and I was like, ooh, I would visit that too! So we went to the Gables first, and then when I was done there, we headed to the birthplace to check out. It was another museum of where the author was born at and where she lived in. I ended up buying the whole Anne of Green Gables book set, so I can read it all over again and go back to being a girl again. I used to borrow Veronica’s set as her family was big on the author’s stories, so I never had my own set. It was just handy to have then. Here’s a video of P.E.I. here:

Prince Edward Island from Steve Savage on Vimeo.

It was cool checking it all out. When that was all over, Steve and I headed out in search of a lighthouse to look at. We both wanted to check out lighthouses while we were out east, so we found one close to the museums, the Tryon Lighthouse. We got there, and saw that we had to walk some distance to the Tryon Lighthouse. We parked next to the trail, and we walked through a trail along fields and stuff like that, and reached the lighthouse. It was really, really pretty there. The paint on the lighthouse was pretty stripped from all the sea salt around it, but it was still cool to see. It was on top of a huge cliff to the ocean. One thing about the cliffs, they freak me out if I look over it… it’s so steep and scary. But it was also really pretty though. We then finished up checking out P.E.I., and then before we got on the bridge we stopped at a shore by the ocean, where there were all red rocks and sand, so we were just exploring the area and stretching out before we started driving again. Heh…It was quite nice there, the water was great, and it was warm and really pretty there. After we finished taking pictures and film, we got back in the car and headed out on the bridge to New Brunswick and just stopped at a hotel somewhere in New Brunswick. We ended up at a hotel where they had a German restaurant inside the hotel, so we stopped over there for the night and went to dinner at the hotel. It was late by the time we got there, and oh, my God, how good was that! Very tasty! The menu had small and large portion servings, so Steve decided to get the small portion serving of everything in the menu. He ended up with a massive plate of food. *laughs* It was crazy, it made me wonder what the large portion was like?! Haha…the food was amazing though. We crashed that night, and just headed out driving again the next day. We got back home on our sixth day. We didn’t stay overly long, but because I had never been out east I wanted to at least see what it was all like. So six days was good…I can always return if I want to. I know if I returned I would like to explore P.E.I. more, it was really, really pretty there.

When we finished our vacation we were very tired…heh! Steve returned to work after a few days of rest.

Oh yes, it’s funny – my mom told me earlier in the spring/summer that my ex called my mom to let her know that he was putting the divorce through (finally!) and that it would possibly be done by the end of the summer. So we had to wait for three months or so for it to be processed by the courts, and I just got the paper in the mail saying that the divorce order has been put through and I will officially be divorced as of October 18th! I’m so glad about that, it’s like a late birthday present for me! Hehe…kind of funny. Both my mom and Steve says I need to have a party when it’s through. Very funny. It’s just weird, I guess, but it’s a relief it’s over now.

It’s a bit funny because sometime in the beginning of September Steve had a woman come in his work and she was deaf like I am, and she was asking about getting internet, and of course it was the wrong place for that. So Steve had to help her out and let her know who to contact for getting her internet hooked up, and he actually could sign to her to help her out. She was totally surprised about that and he had to tell her that he had a girlfriend who was deaf. She had no idea about other deaf people living here, and he said that we could meet up and see if we get along. So the day that she came in, I heard about it, and I said I wouldn’t mind meeting her. So we met up and she was actually a pretty nice lady, who has two kids, so it was kind of different having someone to actually talk to here in Brockville. I have lived here for three or so years and I haven’t actually found anyone to talk to, another deaf person locally. So it was cool to meet someone else. I’ve met up with her twice so far just to get to know her and so on, so it’s been interesting that’s for sure. It’s been a pretty busy past little while, that’s for sure!

A Quiet Period

Posted on by Chocom00n-79

What’s been up? A whole lot, that’s for sure!

I had made a New Years resolution when 2013 came around last year which was to lose weight within the year, I wanted to go back down to 130 pounds as I noticed I was gaining weight again, so I was determined to lose weight and go back to my original weight. I know I was having a hard time with eating once I moved to Brockville – I was overeating which was not much fun. So I decided to count calories and eat less so I could lose weight. It worked – it took forever, but I lost 20-30 pounds in one year so by the end of December I was in my goal weight – 128-130.

Then when 2014 came around I was determined to start working out, it was my new resolution, so to get my energy back up in a good level. But I was finding that a very difficult thing to do, unfortunately. :/ Ugh. I still am currently having a tough time with that. I actually found that the workout videos by Zuzka Light were available for Canadians finally after 2014 came around so I ordered them a couple of months ago, and they are quite good. Unfortunately I’m not quite yet in a good shape to actually do it all, so it’s pretty difficult. Her workouts are always so painful when you start out on them. There are twelve different workouts in the DVDs and I have only gotten up to the 8th one. It’s pretty tough, and my weight hasn’t really changed much – I was gaining again so I wasn’t happy about that, so I decided to get my thyroid checked and see my doctor. My thyroid was still in a good place – so much so that it helped me lose weight in the past year. My doctor is now checking for other things that may be affecting my health – as I’m constantly tired and have no energy and she thinks it may be mostly perimenopause (I’m 34 after all!) but she’s checking for other things as well so to see what happens. Hopefully they’ll find something soon.

I spent a lot of the beginning of 2014 watching the Big Bang Theory Blu-rays. I just finished the 6th season in the end of March. Heh…Steve thought I was crazy for watching so much but I was also feeling off after the New Years which sucked, and helped me watch so much. *laughs*

When 2014 started, it started out pretty quietly. I was also going through all my photos on my computer, I had tons and tons of photos on the computer that I really, really wanted to print out for myself, to put in my albums. So I could just look through them instead of having to turn on my computer and dig through all the crappy pictures to get to the good to print out. I like the good, old times where you just look through albums and talk to people about different pictures. I do that online with people I know but I like seeing them in person usually. I went to Walmart with Steve to develop some pictures, but I’m not even done yet. I had like 700 to develop that day, and Steve had 200, so not too bad for him. Steve is done developing the pictures he wanted, but I’m not done yet, which is sad. I developed hundreds of photos…and unbelievably enough I’m not even done. That was horrible…now I’m just waiting to get more money so to develop more pictures. Heh…crazy.

Steve got sick with a cold flu in February and I had to take care of him, and then I got sick with it. Sigh…it was no fun at all! I got the flu shot in the fall but that flu wasn’t covered by the shot, and it really wiped you right out. Valentine’s Day was quiet for both of us…I think I got the flu around Valentine’s Day while Steve was getting better, so yay us. Fun…

Steve was also checking out on getting a house and whether he would be able to. He wasn’t too sure if he could on his own, but because I wasn’t really working full time I couldn’t help him out, even though I have really good credit, so…oh well. Anyway, he was looking into it and he was told by his dad’s broker that he would have to work on rebuilding his credit before he could get a house. We had been talking about looking around for houses and all that, as it’s really, really affordable around here. But he still had to find out and now he has to work on rebuilding his credit…so much fun. Too bad I’m still on disability. Blah…not like I would be able to find work really – I’ve been working with the Canadian Hearing Society for a while on help on finding work and they haven’t even found anything either. So yeah…fun.

Anyway, just a while ago I was checking with the doctor to see what was wrong with me – I was just feeling so exhausted, and was a bit moody and so on, so on, so I was trying to see what was wrong with me. The doctor thought maybe I may have either a B-12 deficiency or celiac disease. I was like, really? More stuff where I would need more medicine for? She’s just checking information and checking my blood to see, just in case I have it, but she believes it may just be my stages of perimenopause as it’s very similar to thyroid issues. Fun. Sigh…not so much fun for Steve to be around me that’s for sure! Heh…the exhaustion I’m really sick of. I want to feel normal again, but that’s all up in the air right now. Heh…

I was looking up coupons online for various stuff, and found one for the Harlem Globetrotters and I thought it’d be fun, so I asked Steve if he wanted to check them out, as we weren’t quite saving up money for houses or anything like that right now as Steve needed to rebuild his credit up first, so I asked him if he wanted to go see them and he did, so I ordered two tickets for us to go watch the game. I’ve always heard about them and it sounded like fun…so we went to see them in Kingston and it was hysterical. Lots of fun and lots of entertainment, that’s for sure. It’s funny because the official Harlem Globetrotters Instagram site liked our picture together with the basketball court in the background of us. So it was a bit funny.

We went out to dinner at Kelsey’s as Steve had done some video work for a woman he knew from work, and she was so grateful for the help, that she gave him two gift cards to restaurants, so we decided to use one of them last night. It was a good meal – I always like Kelsey’s fajitas! Heh…we also went to Mac Johnson Wildlife Trails to look at the melting snow on the river and enjoy it – it was quite warm yesterday, like it was today. Spring is finally coming…I hate winter so much, I really do. The cold really gets to me, especially now that I have lost all my weight. Shee…heh.