A Barb update
12 January 2012
• Shelburne, NS
by Barb
So - just what have I been up to? We are settling into yet another routine now that Mike is back to the job that he started the week before Christmas. It seems odd that Perry and I have the house to ourselves for a few hours a day. Mike comes home for lunch as his "commute" is the shortest he has ever had, just a five minute casual amble down the street.
I have de-Christmassed the house and the crates are packed away for another year. While working on that task I harkened back to the last time I did it. At that time I was packing the decorations PLUS the apartment contents for semi-permanent storage as we were soon to leave to go back to Virginia to re-board Nelleke to continue our live-aboard adventures. Little did we know then that that path would take a wobble in the middle. Well, not really a wobble, more like a turn to the right, a major adjustment in our course; all for well thought out reasons mind you. Makes me wonder what life will be holding when the Christmas decorations come out next December.
I donned the painter's overalls again and now have the den/TV room painted to cover up the acid green that was lurking under the wallpaper. We bought a used, mahogany-finished entertainment console for the TV, PVR and sound system and wrestled it into the room and the room looks great. We still have some of Mr. Smith's high-gloss varnished plywood on the bottom half of the walls. It is OK but not the look we want - Mike has an idea for covering it that is somewhere on the bottom of the list for house renovations and we certainly can live with it the way it is. There is a lot of work that is higher priority.
I have narrowed down the colour choice to two shades for the downstairs bathroom and while I chew on that decision I have been working on prying up the kitchen flooring that is covering lovely hardwood. I have included a picture. There is ugly cushion floor glued to old 8 inch Marboleum tiles glued to the hardwood; nasty black glue. Because of the state of my knees and my inability to kneel anymore I have to bend over from the waist to work on it. This is a huge struggle with a three inch paint scarper and hammer but it will be worth it. I just have to keep my mind firmly fixed on my vision of the finished product. Have any of you embarked on a similar project? Any hints? Ike thinks it may help if I slightly warm the areas with the heat gun.
This week I stopped by the knitting group that meets in our town library every Tuesday afternoon and had a great time. There were about 20 women of varying ages from Lockeport to Sandy Point, some born and brought up in the area, some born here and returned, and some come-from-aways like me. We were working on a variety of projects and there was quite a range of skill levels. That makes for a lively and interesting group and I will be sure to attend next week. There is one woman in the group that provided me with a lot of inspiration - she was a skilled craftswoman who had suffered an aneurysm and when she first came to the group she had a small card in her purse listing her name and address as she could not put the words together anymore to say who she was. She had also lost her knitting skills. Over a relatively short period of time, with help from the group, she is back knitting again and is a lively member of the organization. I will be thinking of her before I grumble the next time about my carpal tunnel and knee problems! By comparison I have nothing to complain about and everything to learn. The library has asked the group to make another knitted blanket to be raffled off as a library fundraiser and we will be talking more about that next week. We have been asked to bring in our odds and sods of knitting worsted weight fibre left over from projects so I will be lightening my stash somewhat. I have learned that there is also a quilting guild here in town that meets once a week - I may drop by their next meeting to see what they are up to. I have only quilted a few very small projects, nothing recently so maybe it is time to revisit that skill (and meet some more folks...).
What else, let's see. I have been testing recipes again for Chatelaine magazine, this time for the April issue. This is an enjoyable pursuit - we have to cook and eat anyway so I have just used their recipes for a few of our mains these past two weeks. You test the timings, ingredient availability, proportions and instructions and then send the comments and suggestions back to their test kitchen. The folks in Mike's office benefited from the test of the Pecan Caramel Sticky Buns - they were blissfully wonderful - and evil, heehee. They kept calling my name from the kitchen so we each had one and one half to try them and then I packed the rest off to his office and gave one to Mr. Atwell, one of our tenants, to remove the temptation. That will appear to be the way to keep to my 90 day ViSalus Challenge resolution and to indulge my love of baking at the same time - bake the evil things, have a small sample and then get the goods out of the house.
I have also been working on a canvas repair job for friends of ours in Halifax (sail covers and dodgers for their boat) - I need to get this done for the next time we get to the city so we can drop it off within the promised time frame.
We are looking forward to Shelburne's annual Robbie Burn's Day event a week from Saturday. Should be a load of fun with an opportunity to don formal dress for an evening of entertainment by pipers, poets, Scottish dancers and indulge in a lovely roast beef dinner including the inevitable haggis - I am not a huge fan of haggis but it goes with the whole event. Mike is to wear his mess kit and I have a suitable outfit topped off with a Gordon sash affixed with a MacMillan pin - Mike can lay claim to Gordons in his background and I have MacMillians on my maternal side so the combination is legitimate enough.
You can see that we are far from bored here in Shelburne! I am looking forward to bringing Nelleke here in the spring and using her to explore the local coastline on the weekends and during Mike's vacation until we are ready to resume our winter cruising plans on a couple of years - post two total knee replacements, that is.
I had better get back at the floor project so I have some results to show for the day's effort. Then it is lunch for Mike, a walk to the Post Office, back for more floor work, walk Perry in time for the two of us to meet Mike by the Town Office and then home for supper. Yesterday I added a walk to the grocery store but that proved too much for my knees and I am paying for it today.
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