Monday morning....I really don't see why people don't like it! Mind you, I haven't had a job in over thirty odd years, so my "relax" time is when everyone else gets back to work, and I am left with my own little queendom to myself!

The bring home the bacon guy left for points west this morning at seven thirty or so...I immediately put on a load of dishes, folded laundry and came down to the family room to sort out all of the papers that have been accumulating over the move.

There were so many forms, booklets, and receipts!  I really didn't know where we stood financially, but I do know that we spend money wisely, and we haven't been going overboard...problem is that things like car and house insurance, taxes and appliances are expensive!  So, while there may not be any savings this month, there is a "break even" point. We haven't started our renos yet, preferring to let things sit for a bit while we really consider what we are doing. First instincts aren't necessarily right. For instance, once we got everything put away in the family room? The old carpet didn't look so bad. So, I will call in a professional, and get it cleaned. That will at least buy us time.

As for the bathroom, there is no time like the present. We have the vanity and sink waiting in the wings - all we need is our tile guy to rip down the Cowboy's efforts which basically consisted of taking a thousand dollars worth of materials and totally messing up the bathroom. The vanity was badly painted...even the handles! The countertop was nice, but far too big for the space. The tile was taupe. Problem is, the tub surround and tub are grey marble effect. Yeah, I know. Ugly. BUT we are going to put in a white floor ( the present one is a cork look...another shade of brown? Was the Cowboy colour blind?) The electrical shenanigans behind the mirror are dangerous. To add insult to injury, there was a lovely big hole that at one time housed a medicine chest.  Who wouldn't want that? The lights were on the side, but now there is one light at the top of the mirror. I would have preferred  side lights for the aesthetics...do they provide good lighting I wonder?  We also need an exhaust fan installed. These are necessities in my books!  When we are done, we should be okay sharing one bathroom. We will be in there just long enough to "get the job done" and then move to our respective change rooms to polish of the remainder of our grooming. People managed large families with one bathroom, we should be able to manage two people!  Then of course, there always is the downstairs bathroom for the man of the house.....

So, there are the plans. Today I am waiting for a window repairman.  It will be nice to be able to close the dinette window before the winter sets in!  These little details will make a big difference overall. I don't know why the people that lived here did what they did...they had a fondness for mixing a lot of beige with grey. I don't know who sold them the floor in the kitchen, but it must have been someone with a lot of grey flooring to shift! It is horrible! Made even worse by the pink beige paint on walls and cupboards. So that will be the next project!  I think it would be good to start that one once the majority of painting is done, so we will just have touch ups to do, to keep the floor as clean as possible for as long as possible! Good thing Rick has a couple more weeks of holidays!  If we do one room a weekend, we should be done the upstairs by the new year. The kitchen will be time consuming, but the bedrooms and bathroom will go quickly...famous last words!  But it is good that Rick is optomistic because there is a whole lot of panelling to deal with here in the family room! I like this quirky old shack so much!  All of our stuff just sort of fits....every new house I ever lived in seemed to require purchase of a ton of stuff to make it homey...our old stuff never worked for some reason. This time? It is surprising what goes where, and how little things just seem to sing when they are placed in their new surroundings! My mission this week, is to put away the big piles in each room that came about after sorting piles that that the movers unpacked. Fun, eh?

Well look what I found!

I thought this blog would have been swept away by now.  Life has changed so much over the last six months, and all for the better, I may add!

Health issues had me down for the count for quite awhile, but my strength is coming back and I am poised over the keyboard ready to regale you with stories of my new found life!  The first good thing, was the birth of our second grandchild! A bonny wee baby, born in May. We are totally in love with her, and of course, her big sister. Funny how life just gives you way more than you deserve, doesn't it?

Anyway, we have a new life in Saskatchewan.  I love being home, and in a smaller community.  Winnipeg was just getting too big for these old folks!  The new house requires quite a bit of work, but all in all the bones are good. And as I heard repeatedly when I asked mundane details about the house, such as "is there a closet for coats", THE GARAGE IS 24X24!! IT HAS A WORKBENCH ADN ROOM TO PARK MY TRUCK!!! IT IS DRYWALLED!!!! PAINTED WHITE!!! ROOM FOR MY GOLF CLUBS....well, I gave up after awhile, because every question ended with a golden review of the manshack! Two actually. He also has a garden shed that is big enough for the patio furniture and the barbque!  And the hose box, and the cushion box...and the pots....get the picture? LOL Priorities are so different for each one of us, right?  Anyway onward and upward!

We have started by painting Rick's office, and the clothes closets over the course of this past week. There are three hall closets to paint yet (dishes, out of season coat closet and a linen cupboard. I thought they had lost some of my towels because there was so much room in there!  I counted them, and they were all present and accounted for!)  and we have already burned through three gallons of paint. There is a lot more to go, let me assure you! The house is circa 1953, and has all the "housewifey" things a woman could want to care for her family in that era. Plus some pretty cool modern stuff...like closets with lights that turn on when you open the door!  Truly an atomic age new fangled gadget! LOL  There is a bit more square footage than our old house, but when the family visits, it will easily fill up, now that there are 6 of us.  There are two bedrooms down and a bath, with a large laundry room and get this folks, a cold room! Shelves upon shelves upon shelves for canning!  Add our chrome shelving from our old storage room and we have one super storage area for everything from pots to cans of beans!

The upstairs has three bedrooms, all about 12x12. So, in our wisdom, we put our bed in one, my dresser in another, and Rick's dresser in the third. I like air around my furniture! LOL  This is going to be the house we will grow old in, so it needs to be very easy to get around in, and take care of.  There is only one bathroom, as it was back in the day, but we are renovating that to accommodate us. There is a bathroom downstairs for company as well. I do have a "toilet on every level" rule to maintain after all!

We took possession on Sept 28 and the movers brought our stuff on the 1st of October. Then, unwrapped things and left them hither and yon. We managed to buy appliances without a divorce and will only have to exhange the range. It is a convection oven, as I have been used to, but this one roars. And even when the convection feature is off, the fan is busy. Not my favourite thing indeed. Reminds me of sitting for hours in a running vehicle, and that can drive a person to insanity.

Rick bought the house on a business trip. I had not seen it, but I must tell you, he did a wonderful job. I have always wanted a house of this era, and it will be a joy to bring back to life. I am aiming at the general feel of 1953...I don't think anyone wants to go back to wringer washers or not having a dishwasher! There are hardwood floors in the living and dining rooms, but there will be "happy tile" in the kitchen and dinette. Anyone else remember the wild tile patterns way back when? I found some vinyl that mimics the old rubber tiles, in the bright colours. We are keeping the old cupboards, because I love them. It would be so much easier to rip them out and redesign, but I like the cupboards that actually will hold your dinner plates without keeping the cupboard door ajar!  Rick has already installed sliding bins for recycling and trash, bread and pasta. There are two lazy susans so for the first time in my married life, I actually have food in my kitchen cupboards! He is off to Winnipeg for business, and I am hoping he will return with an appliance station and a little table for the dinette. There is so much to do in this house. For instance the bathroom. For instance 200 square feet of carpeting. For instance another 350 feet of tiling. But it will be done  hopefully over the next six months. I see no point in waiting to do things. I want to get on with life and enjoy ourselves!  We have already been to one show - Rosie and the Riveters.  Fantastic group of girls, extremely entertaining. We broke the pattern of our lifetime, "We'll have fun when the work's all done". We have officially taken our stance for the "We'll have work when the fun's all done!" team! I have had quite enough of isolation over the past few years. I want to get out there and observe, if not participate!

It seemed to me that there were a lot more things to do this move than last...health cards, car safeties, utilities, telephone, internet, PHEW!  It has taken us three weeks to get around to all of these places and give them all of the information required.  But it is done now...just in time for the first snowfall! I thought I would be upset about leaving our old house, but no. I didn't even know where I was going to be living!  But Rick is a good man, and has always looked after me, especially the last couple of years when I have been at an all time low with my health. But I am on the come back trail now! I can even manage to stand for a few moments as I do things in the kitchen. I enjoy going out and getting groceries, and managed to do a whole Superstore the other day...if you don't count the aisles that I didn't need to buy anything from!  So life is good. And if perchance you stumble upon this blog, thank you for listening! It is nice you dropped by!

I'm BACK!!!

It has been a long time since I have written a word, but now with health issues starting to come under some semblance of control, I hope to start up again!  I finally had enough energy to figure out how to log on to blog, truth be told! So now, what shall we talk about?

News? I have rejoined Weight Watchers. Hope springs eternal. There really is something to be said for the program....what exactly, I am not sure. The PointsPlus program keeps me eating regularly, and  lot of the right things, so it does seem to work. I have tracked every calorie since I left WW online, but to no avail.  It isn't about the calories, it would seem. I am doing the tracker method rather than the Smart Start thing...more reassuring to see the numbers on a page. And, it does seem to be working. I have lost about seven pounds since I restarted, so every little bit helps. And I do like the variety and quantity in this program. It is all good until I lose interest in making so many meals in a day. Lazy to the bone, I am!

Another subject dear to my heart is frugality.  We are practicing for retirement, so I am keeping a close watch on the pennies these days.Any tips or tricks you have to add, would be greatly appreciated!

On other frontiers, we have our flowers in for the summer....although we were outside in the bitter winds doing it last weekend. Well, the man was doing it...I cheered from the warm side of the patio door! This year we have some herbs and some tomatoes as well as the usual flowers.  I am hopeful that they will not take too long to fill out, since I know that winter is just mere months away!I am determined to enjoy our yard this year!

Crackers and Jam Who Knew?

So, I am struggling along with the new changes. That is totally said with tongue in cheek, of course. How hard can it be to add such delectable things?  

This morning, I had (1/4 cup before cooking) oatmeal with a tablespoon of  brown sugar and a glass of milk. Lunch was a cream cheese and cucumber sandwich with a bowl of romaine, onion and apple salad. I just polished off a snack of gluten free crackers and two tablespoons full of fruit spread, and I am thinking of all the lovely options there are for my evening meal!  It will likely involve a fish fillet and baked potato of some sort, with whatever I can dig up for vegetables.  Possibly an onion, beet and goat cheese salad to start with perhaps a side of green beans garnished with toasted almonds?

The pickin's are getting pretty sparse!  I am down to the last dregs of produce in my refrigerator.  I have a list as long as my arm of all the foods that will work well for me now that I am back in the carb eating world, and I know for a fact I can easily buy them all without worrying that they will go bad. No longer will I have to limit the carbs so severely.  The basic plan is to include 30 - 45 grams of carb with every meal and 15 for each snack.  The diet may not do anything for the scale, but it is doing wonders for my moral!  And the best thing is, that my sugars have leveled out to just where they need to be, pretty well through the day.  I really have an appetite now - something that I really haven`t had in quite a while. Why bother feeling hungry when you can`t eat my body was saying!  Well, now, it reminds me that it is feeding time at the zoo before I even glance at the clock. Life is good!

MMMMM LUNCH!!!

All sorts of adventures are happening under our roof!  For one, we had a drain pipe burst and render our family room useless.  Thank goodness it was covered by our insurance. The wet is gone, but the disorder lingers on as we await dry-wall and carpet men.  I have also started insulin therapy, which has rendered me pretty useless for anything other than testing and figuring out how to stuff more carbs into my life! For years, I have avoided them, because they just did not make me feel good,  but now? They are an unmovable  requirement of the new regime.  It is finally coming together, and I am getting the hang of the new rules.

So, I have started to eat more carbs. And to eat every three hours,  to snack....all those things that 'dieting'  has preached against, are the very things that I need to do! Just goes to show, that when you think you know it all, you just may not.  I would like to burn every diet book I have ever read, every program I have ever been on, and every mean spirited word out of every doctor that didn`t bother to check why I was able to thrive on so little, choosing to believe instead, that I was lying about my diet. But that is all water under the bridge, and I am just happy to have a team of professionals on my side that have heard this all before, and don`t doubt me for a minute.  Instead, they are putting their efforts into helping me find a balance.  Hopefully, this will remedy the years of misguided information that has rendered my body extremely proficient at retaining every calorie.

Of course, there is always a downside. More carbs has equaled weight gain for me, but it is unavoidable. Hopefully I will have more energy and move more, to compensate, but if not? I will have to learn to live with the consequences. Nothing in life is free, is it?

And I have gained over six pounds to date.  Sigh.  BUT my levels are the best they have been in years.  I do best when in my own kitchen, and it definitely shows in my numbers. For the last couple of days, I, have been hovering at a normal level!  This is a miracle for me.  I have been gradually adjusting my dosage, but being the impatient person I am, it was difficult not to go overboard and add more insulin too quickly.

There must be some merit in this fill your face with carbs diabetic diet.  Lunch today was a major coup.  Goat cheese, Craisin, walnut, apple salad. MMM good. 250 calories, 14 carbs. Still not enough carbs, but Rome wasn't built in a day. My goal is to have 30-45 grams carbs per meal, and 15 grams  for my bedtime snack.  My afternoon snack is usually something from lunch that I didn't have room for! I also had a slice of gluten free bread, toasted with 5 gms of butter,  three slices of Piller's turkey breast and five olives.   (Only four in the picture, but there were five! Kitchen duty is hungry work!)  I think the trick is to use small bits of tasty things that give you a luxurious feel to the dish....who wants to face a lettuce and tomato salad when you can have variety like this?  I am determined to use foods that are natural occurring carbs in fruits and vegetables, rather than too many baked or overly processed items.  Gluten free baking is very  carb dense, and not very filling, whereas this lunch? Should keep me until 2:30 when it is time for a snack!

Goat Cheese Craisin Apple Salad

Toast 10 gms of walnuts.

In a mixing bowl, whisk 1 T of Miracle Whip with 1 T skim milk and a dash of vinegar. 

Add 10 gms of craisins, then stir well .

Dice a small apple and toss in with the dressing.

Add a few slices of sweet onion.

Add a well packed  cup of sliced romaine lettuce.

Sprinkle toasted walnuts and 10 gms of unripe goat cheese over all.

250 Calories 14 carbs 13.5 grams of fat