Change of Season

What a difference the weather makes. Virtually overnight we transitioned from snow and freezing rain to shorts and t-shirt weather, and it was so energizing to get out of the house and feel the sunshine.

Nick’s latest treatment turned out to be the smoothest so far. On Sunday – two days after chemo – he got out for a 5K walk, and the next day, rode his bike up Merivale to pick up trip planning supplies and stopped for lunch at Harvey’s along the way. The rest of the week he had a couple different sets of friends over, went out for lunch at Panera Bread, won his fourth Fortnite solo with nine kills (this appeared to be an exciting thing), and got a lesson from a friend of ours on how to feed and grow sourdough starter (the results of which will no doubt appear in a future blog post).

Ray and I have been making the most of the warm weather – raking, hauling and chopping wood (there was a bunch of it lying on our front lawn), cleaning out the sugar shack, etc.

Some of you have heard me talk about my “Little Sister” over the years (through the Big Sisters program). She’s all grown up now and had a baby girl a couple of months ago. I decided it was imperative that I travel to Oshawa to meet my new ‘niece’ and get some baby snuggles. She is SO adorable, with big beautiful blue eyes like her mom. They let me cuddle her, but stubbornly refused to let me take her back to Ottawa with me (they promised to visit though).

And, since I was all the way in Oshawa, it also seemed like a good idea to get together with my big sister, so we squeezed in a 24-hour visit. We booked a B&B in Port Hope and had dinner at a very nice restaurant (Table & Loft). We’re both on different healthy eating ‘programs’, so we could support each other in making healthy choices. Ha ha ha. Just kidding. We both totally blew our programs. We shared a bottle of wine over dinner to celebrate my sister’s promotion at work (and a few other causes we added to the list to justify our decision, none of which I recall now). The evening’s entertainment consisted mostly of me starting to tell a story then losing my thought half-way through. “Oh wait! I remember what I was going to say now.” “What?” “It was…um…wait…I just had it. Nope, I lost it again.” This happened repeatedly. Total brain fog.

We started the next day with a very non-compliant breakfast, then did penance by going for a long walk around Port Hope. We watched a guy battle a rather feisty rainbow trout, then browsed in a book store, and eventually decided we’d earned ourselves a cream tea (scones, clotted cream and jam).

By the time we’d finished our tea, it was windy and rainy outside, but we’d already checked out of the B&B and my train didn’t leave for another six hours, so we decided to check out the neighbouring town of Cobourg. We parked in front of a theatre building and saw people going inside, so we followed them in to see what they were up to. The musical Guys & Dolls was just about to start, so we raced upstairs to the ticket counter. There were only a handful of tickets left, but we got two together and slipped into our seats just as the performers were taking the stage. We were both impressed with the quality of the performances. Great show. We finished our time together with some Thai food and then tea at Tim’s before heading our separate ways, with our spirits higher and our jeans tighter.