The other day I was looking after Bowser and doing something (can’t remember what) in another room. Bowser was in the living room and being a bit too quiet for my liking.
I got to him just in time.
I should have remembered that Bowser has already demonstrated an affinity for yarn, as he did here (at his Mommy’s house).
Sometimes I think he is part cat.
We hope you stay out of trouble this weekend.
Rock on,
The WB
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I try to take Bowser out in any weather. But that doesn’t mean I want a soggy dog on my furniture when we come back inside. To protect my Bowser’s couch, I put a quilt down for him to lie upon. It covers most of the couch, leaving an unprotected space for me to sit upon. Easy to whisk off, shake off, and launder when needed.
But if I don’t get to my seat quickly enough, this happens:
We hope you find a cozy spot for napping, too.
Rock on,
The WB
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Some days it’s not fit for woman nor beast to be outside (for too long). For those days, I have a stash of toys to keep a certain someone outta my hair interested and amused. However I need to replenish the stash from time to time as that same certain someone is very hard on toys.
Unfortunately while I was unpacking the latest haul of toys, I accidentally made one of them squeak.
And this short video gives you an indication of why the toys never last too long.
We hope you have plenty of play and rest time heading your way!
Rock on,
The WB
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Trigger Warning: I am going to be talking about MY experience at being widowed. If you are experiencing a different sort of grief and/or widowhood you may be offended or otherwise bothered by what I am going to say.
I woke up this morning feeling pretty damn fantastic, realizing I have been a widow now for 10 years. Becoming a widow probably saved my life because the stress of being married to my second husband had a high probability of killing me eventually. (I did have a couple of mini-strokes a few years later as I was still dealing with the mess left behind by his death.) A lot of this stuff is on ye olde blogge, if one cares to search…
Proof of That Stress…
I had been living in Crazytown (as I called my life then) for quite a few years already (and it was getting steadily worse). I knew my health was being negatively affected by the pressures of living with this man and I was considering getting my own space to live exist survive in, when he was diagnosed with lung cancer. So my plans changed. The next 6 months were a blur of doctor visits and hospitalizations until he breathed his last a few minutes after midnight on November 14, 2013.
A few months later, as I was going through his papers I discovered that he had been having an affair with another woman (who also thought he was true as well as single) for 18 months while he was living with me (before we got married) and making me endure weekly (pointless, I thought) lectures on his thoughts about people who cheated on their loved ones and how awful and wrong they were. Hypocrisy, much? Guilty, much?
She had found out about me and kicked him to the curb but made the decision NOT to interfere in our relationship by informing me that he was cheating on both of us. I know she thought she was doing me a kindness but I deserved to have that information. Remaining in the dark of who this man truly was, I proceeded to marry him.
Did he really want to be with me or was I just the only option available now that the other relationship had ended?
I wonder sometimes how my life would have been different if I had known about his cheating at the time. It might have been better, it might have been worse. I am certain it would have turned out much differently. And my family would not have been so hurt by my relationship with my strange, secretive husband in the process.
This put me in a tailspin of confusing emotions. I had thought that – despite his mental illness (OCD), his love was something I could count on and draw strength from. After all, he spent a lot of time telling me how honest and virtuous and moral and good and Christian he was (subtext: a better person than me, in his mind.) And now that was proven to be false and all the memories that were supposed to comfort me in my widowhood ruined, by this discovery. And the worst part? I couldn’t even confront him with this knowledge and try to get some answers and closure for myself.
I’m truly sorry that my second husband had to die so young and of such a terrible disease as lung cancer. When he died though, my most prevalent emotion was an overwhelming sense of relief and that is the saddest thing, isn’t it? But it is my truth. My ordeal was over. My grief was very complicated and made even more so when I learned of his unfaithfulness.
The first few years of my widowhood were spent dealing with these emotions as I was cleaning up his hoard, selling my place to clear up the debts he left behind, and incurring more debt as I fixed up the decrepit building he left me with, and completed the MBA program we had both started. All while still working full-time at my career. Therapy helped; fixing up the building and making it profitable (finally) helped; becoming my alter-ego The Widow Badass helped (a lot). Friends helped too, although I had kept the knowledge of his infidelity to myself for many months after discovery because it took an awful lot of time for me to process, accept and acknowledge what I had learned and the full extent to which I had been manipulated and duped over the years.
Making the decision to retire at 60 and move to Vancouver Island was also very good for my mental health. I was no longer bombarded by memories every time I walked on a familiar trail or into a different room in the building my husband and I had spent so much time in. It was and is a fresh start and a new beginning.
Today I wake up every morning with a smile on my face and in my heart and look forward to the day ahead. This is me – a widow of 10 years. I’ve done my best to absorb all the lessons that can be gleaned from my travails and experiences so far and I am grateful for them all. I’m pretty sure I still have some revelations/a-ha moments in my future, though 😉…after all, if life has taught me anything it’s that I am a stubborn thick delusional SLOW LEARNER 🤣 per my marriages.
Rock on,
The WB
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Believe it or not, the rain turned to snow I featured in the last post did not include a frost. That (our first frost of the season) happened the day after the snow fall (October 26). Only on Vancouver Island, you say? 😉 Yes! At least in my little corner of the world.
Rock on,
The WB
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On October 25, we woke up to snow. We had experienced an atmospheric river event the day before and as the temperatures dropped, the rain turned to the white stuff.
The morning’s walk looked like this.
We hope you are having adventurous weather too (but not too adventurous!).
Rock on,
The WB
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The second Monday of October has been designated (since 1957) as the day Canada officially celebrates and gives thanks for the annual harvest. Although it has been recognized as an annual holiday since 1879, there wasn’t an official date to celebrate before then and sometimes it was celebrated in November instead of October. I don’t know if we ever shared the same date as American Thanksgiving however we did adopt their customs of making the meal centre around turkey, pumpkin pie, and squash!
This year’s Thanksgiving was even more special to me because it included some food that I had grown or harvested myself (which I am truly thankful for!) AND because it included a special cranberry relish made by my challenge co-host, Donna. Donna and Richard were able to join us at my daughter’s house for this special meal (another in the long list of things I am thankful for!)
Kabocha squash (aka buttercup; aka Japanese pumpkin) is hands-down my favourite squash. This was my first year attempting to grow it and for some reason I had it in my mind that it was difficult to grow, or maybe that it couldn’t be grown in my climate. I’d only even seen imported kabochas in the grocery store and never seen it at farmers’ markets either so I had incorrectly surmised this. Thankfully I found some seed and took a chance, anyways! The plants ended up almost taking over my garden, like some kind of alien life force 🤣.
Another item featured in our harvest celebration was the blackberry! We had as a family gone blackberry picking on several occasions in August, and some of this hard-earned bounty ended up being featured in a trifle.
And here are some shots of the harvest feast:
Bonus content: Last month there was some fun discussion in the Comments about my drawer of shame. I thought I would include a photo, so you have a visual…
That’s it for me for this month. As always, please join in the fun in the Comments section and/or join the Link Party.
And please check out Donna’s blog, where she “goes bananas”!
Feeling thankful for all my readers and contributors to this challenge…💕�?💕
Rock on,
The WB
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Nature has a more limited colour palette here in the west, than it does in the eastern part of Canada. But Bowser and I are appreciating every day, just the same.
We hope you are having a great and colourful weekend! This is my post for Change is Hard’s Walktober Challenge.
Rock on,
The WB
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I’ve come across so many Amanita mushrooms this fall. Never encountered these before. Now I am obsessed.
Rock on,
The WB
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Meet Poppy:
Bowser has been spending even more time at my house this past week, to give each dog a break from the other. I can’t say that I am mad about that 😉.
It’s been an interesting week! Who knew Bowser could appear to be practically zen-like, in comparison? 🤣
Rock on,
The WB
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Formed in 2009, the Archive Team (not to be confused with the archive.org Archive-It Team) is a rogue archivist collective dedicated to saving copies of rapidly dying or deleted websites for the sake of history and digital heritage. The group is 100% composed of volunteers and interested parties, and has expanded into a large amount of related projects for saving online and digital history.
