Here I am hopping around the front hall laughing my eyes out, trying to get the second slipper off so we can go to dinner.  Realizing I might injure myself I sit down on the stairs and try and pry the damn slipper from my sock; but it is stuck and won`t come off. Taking a deep breath and giving the slipper a big yank, it finally comes off my foot, complete with ½ of my sock.

Turns out some little devil of a grand daughter put a big wad of duct tape in my slipper this morning. As a result with 8 hours of walking around the house in my slippers, the bloody duct tape fused my sock and slipper liner together.

One lump of coal coming up!

These days this part of my family communicates by email, spread all over British Columbia. From time to time we pick a topic about the old days and compare stories. Remember these would be really, really old stories…………over half a century ago!

Todays subject was our mother and her addiction to chocolate…..which we all seem to have genetically retained….

Well, turns out that we all used to sneak into her bedroom and pinch a chocolate or two without mom knowing, some being so bright as to filch from the lower of the two layers of the box….turns out we all did..

She never said anything about her dwindling chocolate stash……We are wondering if she ever clued into how quickly the chocolates in her “secret” stash disappeared…………..

I wonder if that is why my Dad held two jobs until we all left home?  Way to go Carole, Leslie, Kathy, Debbie and Marie…and of course myself…

Sorry Mom.

There isn`t a day that goes by that I don`t meet someone new. There isn`t a day goes by that I don`t learn something new. I like volunteering for that reason alone, and yesterday was no different.

The Council of Forest Industries Conference I was helping at in Prince George was well attended with representatives from customers, suppliers, financial institutions, law firms, local government, chambers of commerce,federal and provincial ministers, MPs, MLAs and senior civil servants.  Speeches and  announcements were made. Important stuff for our Province and the City of Prince George.

My role was to man the registration booth at the Conference Centre, answering questions and handing out forms as delegates entered through the main doors. Day two was rather slow so I spent most of my time watching others, who were coming and going from the seminars.

Just as everyone started to file into the main auditorium for the final luncheon, I noticed an elderly gentlemen walking up to the main entrance. This dapperly dressed gentlemen was moving slowly but deliberately through the first set of doors with no one in site to help him. I scooted out to the second set of doors and held them open for him. He gave me a nod as he entered into the melee of people going to the luncheon. I quickly scampered back to my place behind the information counter. Interestingly people started to make way for this senior citizen as he walked up to the counter, nodded at me once again and then started chatting with some friends that had gathered around him. Momentarily, he put on his name tag. That is when I realized who the fellow was, Ike Barber!!!

Dr. Barber’s generosity has been instrumental in helping to establish programs to promote research with the creation of the I.K. Barber Enhanced Forestry Laboratory at UNBC, the Irving K. Barber Chair in Diabetes Research at UBC, the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre at U.B.C. and the Ike Barber Human Islet Transplant Laboratory at Vancouver Hospital in partnership with UBC. There is even a bridge named after the family in Prince George. The list goes on and on, at UNBC Okanagan, Thompson Rivers University and Kwantlen College, every corner of the Province.

Truly a giant among men, and I held the door open for him; what a great day.

My wife, Dot, and I raised three girls; all grown with their own families and their own lives.  I spent some time reminicing about what we did in our younger years and what are daughters are doing at the same ages….

Dot used to volunteer an awful lot with Girl Guides…and I just realized that the tradition is being carried on #1 and #3 three daughters as Girl Guide Leaders in their own right. Dot also used to spend a lot of time helping out at the elementary school where the kids went to, cooking and selling hot dogs as a fund raiser for the Parent Advisory Council. Today the # 2 daughter sells us cookies, calendars and flowers to raise money for the 2011 P.A.C. And lastly, I spent many years volunteering at the Terry Fox Run, every third Sunday in September setting up signage long before the crowds turned up. As of this year #3 will have taken over my position for the second year in row, so I can now sleep.

I hope all of you are having a great Friday evening….gotta go finish the lawn and think.

That is why my wife is a  brilliant gardener. Over the years Dot has designed, built and maintained two different garden layouts.

The first one was in rainy Port Coquitlam, where we toiled together from scratch for 12 years. The second and current one is here in drier but cooler Prince George, where we have lived for going on 30 years.

She has accomplished a lot more here, reducing the large lawns to a more manageable size, replacing them with gardens of indigenous plants(flowers, fruits and vegetables of all sorts). My favourite is the strawberry bed. It provides just enough for the grand children’s little hands and our morning breakfasts for about six weeks.

Until recently that is.

As my retirement unfolds, I find that I enjoy reading. Recently I started reading in the gardens…..and discovered that if I plant my chair just so, I can snack on the freshest of strawberries.

 Let me introduce you to my reading room #1. I  Note the natural foot stool on the raised bed sill….

I know that Ablus would approve.

Late Sunday afternoon after a long day of weeding in the gardens the fruits of my labour were piled in two sealed garbage cans full of Taraxacum and Elytrigia repens; dandelions and couche grass to the ill-informed.  Normally I compost everything, recycling for the late fall or early spring on the lawns. But given the distinct possibility that I might be pulling these little devils up again from the lawns , I decided to take my days work to the land fill up the hill.

With room to spare in the back seat of my trusty Toyota, I stopped by my daughters place and picked up a large open plastic box of lawn clippings that she had been meaning to dispose of for some weeks…..now throughly dried out. Usually frightfully heavy, but now quite light to pick up for even this old guy.

Off I went, looking forward to a Double-Double upon completion of my appointed task.

Now you may not know our land fill, but it is situated on a highway just on the outskirts of Prince George….a quick zip of a drive from our place because the speed limit is about 80 kmh for the major part of the drive.

Flying up the hill, windows down, fresh air blowing through the car windows, what a great feeling.  You have to appreciate that this was the first dry day in about a week, the fresh air blowing through my hair….radio blasting away to the sounds of Buddy Holly.

Things were going fine, shooting along. Visions of Timmies dancing in my head. That was until I hit 75 kmh…………..suddenly in the rear view mirror this bloody vortex of dried grass clippings started to appear……in the back seat of my car!!!  At 85 kmh every cubic in of air space in the car was full of god damn dead brown grass….now being sucked out the windows…

By the time I pulled over and stopped, there wasn`t a blade of grass in the container from my daughter. Half of it was spread all over the highway. You can imagine where the other half was.

I have to thank my lucky stars that my wife decided not to come with me on this one trip? It is her car!!!

Did you know that there are no vacuum machines at any of the car washes in this blinkin` town on Sundays at 5:00 p.m.????

As a two and a half year old, I am still learning to match what I want to do with what will happen once I get caught. Gee this is hard…..oh what the heck, lets paint the bathroom!

I don`t even know what a “consequence” is………..

“Silence is a woman’s best garment”

Amen!

She and her parents have been staying with us for the past two weeks and it has been quite an experience. Watching the parents laugh and play with their first born took me back a few years. I got the shivers a few times because as it sounded all too familiar.

Well tonight after dinner the three of them went home. Their house has been renovated and painted and they are all anxious to get back to their own beds and lives.

We have been enjoying the numbing silence for the past three hours. No one talking, laughing, running around. No giggling, no one flitting about like the fluff of a daisy.

I was just on my way up to bed and passed by my Meg`s bedroom. I poked my head in and saw the empty crib…..I miss her already.

The favourite is lilacs, which grow profusely in Prince George, just not on our property. It must be the soil since we have done everything to nurture the three that we have, but no blossoms yet……20 years and counting.

So to get some cuttings into the house we for that brief time period(like right now) we went for a drive today. We found a very large lilac that had a lot of branches hanging over the fence onto public property on a major thorough fare. Dot jumped out and proceeded to take some samples for the living room. While I waited in the car a little thought crept into my mind that I should just take off and leave her to her own devices….I can just hear her cussing me out. Garden shears in one hand and stolen lilac cuttings in the other; all by her lonesome.

She is very lucky that I left my house keys at home, otherwise she wouldn`t be sitting in the living room right now.