Morning Memories June 2022

DD has been coughing for about a week. Choco had a seizure this morning.  Festus just enjoys cuddling.  We are spending the day together. ❤️

May 2 - No Playground Coat!!

 It is finally warm enough to not wear a coat during lunch hour/recess supervision.   It has been a long cold crispy winter.  Brrr....   Anyway, in four days Festus will be a year old.  I can't believe he made it...and me too!  He was a HARD puppy.  Biting, chewing, you name it.  Went through 5 harnesses - all beautiful in the beginning.  After destroying the last one, I made him wear a piece of rope in the shape of a harness until I found his latest one.  I discovered Value Village is an awesome pet resource!  Anyway, he has more good boy days, than bad boy days now. :-)  Ahhh, all good things these days. 

love to all,

Darci and the Fur kids

What A Beautiful Memorial Year!

The worldwide congregation is just wonderful. 🦋🌹 We can all show love and support for each other, and develop the BEST friendships. I have two immediate congregation families. Lake Country and Korea. Today I attended the Memorial of Jesus ransom in Korea. This is my old congregation and Kh. They had two zoom connections. One at the door so online participants could talk to ones as they arrived at KH. And one aimed at the speaker. Then after the meeting, a brother roamed with the tablet so the online participants could say hi to ones in the hall and also meet Bible studies and visitors. It was beautiful and so encouraging!!! 😁🌸 The taxi driver named Youyo was in attendance too!  He came to study the Bible and become part of the congregation in part because my friend Brenda kept talking to him about it each time he picked her up for meetings. Anyway, our congregations really are special!🌸🌼❤️

Getting Ready to Sizzle

 Hey hi to all, :-)

It is May 15th tomorrow and supposed to be 27 degrees. Beautiful.  Usually, I like about 25 degrees but it has taken so long to get to the really warm weather this year that I am truly looking forward to some heat.  I am working on painting and refinishing the walls in the 30ft travel trailer. (I don't live in it full-time anymore). I know it is older, but I absolutely adore this trailer.  It is just totally airy and bright and has a wonderful feel to it.  Several years ago, it was the answer to many prayers, so I will always love it.  It was home whenever I came home for visits when living overseas, it was easy to pull no matter where I took it, it is well built and got me through many cold winters and hot summers, and helped me keep my life simple all this time - just a true blessing from Jehovah God all the way around.

Things weighing on my mind this week.  The ones in the Middle East.  Scary.  Lots of prayers being said for them.  The amount of trust and endurance they are showing at this moment is incredible.  Using peaceful moments in our life to build our faith and trust certainly was good advice to receive.

So wasps are fast.  You would think the way I ran from the wasp nest after I knocked it down that it was a near-death experience.  I had it all planned out except for the part where I turned and ran but forgot there was a metal pole holding up my awning...  so like now, I got a goose egg on my forehead.  Nice.

So I am hooked these days on watching this chef cook with things we can find in our backyard and lawn.  All I can say is - Future. Future. Future.  Knowledge is power...and delicious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyRfaksY6a4&ab_channel=CBCLife

Okay, gotta run.  The cuties and I have to brave the storm outside and get a walk in before work.  Have a wonderful, warm, happy week!

Love to all,

D, P & C

 

The Pink Stool

 Hey hi to all :-)

    All is good here.  For the last couple of years, I have been researching pallet gardening and this is the year to give it a go.  So far so good.  The big factor in doing this, is that have a small yard, and I get a small sliver of sunshine - just enough for a sunny wall, so that is where my garden should be.  And amazingly, everything is sprouting!  A month from now I should have vegetables falling every which way out of the wall.  I put tomatoes on top but they are bending over so that was not necessary.  Mint and all the super tall ones are on the bottom, but I am learning the plants will grow straight out so placement doesn't matter as much as I thought it may.  I will post updated pics.  And since I have a blue theme going around here, that is what I painted the pallets too, Electra.  Then of course a pink stool, because I love pink. :-)

Choco is adjusting well to our home.  He gets along really well with Pearl.  After he realized she is the queen and he is the serf everything fell into place.  :-)  I actually learned that tip online.  It said when introducing a new dog to your home always pet, feed, and pet the old dog first and there will be no jealousy issues.  It works!  And because he is a senior I am thrilled because he is already trained and good to go.  Puppies are cute, but not for me. :-)

Anyway, very grateful for Jehovah God's care these days with world conditions as they are, and hoping that all my friends are coping well too.

Love to all,  Darci, Pearl & Choco

Started a Loose Watercolour

Momma and her babies.  Will take a few more days to finish due to work schedule.  But isn't creation wonderful!

It Has Almost Been A Year

 Hey hi Everyone!

I can't believe it has been a year since Covid restrictions started, and our lives changed so drastically.  Even though it has been a huge adjustment in many ways, there have been some wonderful positives come out of it too.  I have spent quality time at home and got painting again.  Something that also happened was that I connected again with my congregation in Korea.  Each smile feels like a warm embrace.  I love my congregation in Canada, as well as my congregation back in Palm Springs, but my congregation has filled a hole in my heart because I hadn't seen them in so long, and I just yearned for that.  Also, I feel wiser, and more mature, at this time in life, so that I can show my gratitude to them better too.  They were the ones that patiently helped me build a wonderful life in Korea, and helped me see the world-wide brotherhood in action.

Pearl is doing well these days.  I caught her trying to jump off the end of the bed a couple weeks ago.  She actually did it as I yelled for her to stop.  I was in mid-sentence of running toward her, telling her that she was almost 15, hard of sight, and probably had brittle bones.  But she landed fine and trotted off to her food bowl.  Crazy fur-ball.

We are still in the RV trailer.  Renting the pad at mom and dad's while Stan stays safe at my place.  Only Jehovah God knows how all this will come together.  Stan's health is precarious, and with COVID he seems to be doing fine plunked in his armchair in front of the TV. 

Meanwhile, I am making things work.  All that matters to me is that we are okay.  Pearl is healthy.  My closest friends and family are doing well.  I am grateful. 

The Scary Covid 19 Nurse said ISOLATE! - So I did...

 So much has happened since the beginning of the school year.  All of us staff entered the school in sheer panic and fear, not knowing what to expect and what would happen.  But I am so glad I chose the school to work at that I did. Rigid, regimented, detail-oriented, clean up the kazoo, are all terms that would describe my daily life for the last 3 months.  Protocols to no end.  I knew that if this virus got past the defenses the school set up there was no stopping it, as there was no safer school anywhere.

Well, last Sunday night, I got a text message from my school principal saying he wanted to meet on zoom.  Minor events of life started flashing before my eyes because this is REALLY out of the ordinary, nothing good about this request.  I go on and have it confirmed that COVID exposure has happened. I logged off and started shaking.  Every bad scenario of what I thought would ever happen started going through my mind.  The Principal said to be at the school at 8am for details that Interior Health would provide him during the night so he could pass along what he was learning.

It was bad.  My class.  Everyone was told to isolate for two weeks.  The principal told me to call 811 to talk to the Covid nurse, which I immediately did.  She said you have to go home and isolate and not go out NOW.  I felt like a stiff tin man as I walked to my truck, but got in, and got home, and started to think about how I would make this happen.

I have been letting an elderly man live in my place to avoid COVID himself, which means I opted to stay in my 30ft travel trailer on an RV pad beside my parents' place.  But I was pretty prepared.  For the last few months every time I went shopping I bought a little extra and threw it in the chest freezer "just in case" I was ever in a lockdown situation due to COVID.  I had full tanks of propane, a full tank of water, and TYPE O blood.  I looked at the last one as a bonus because several times on the news outlets recently reported that people with O type blood did better during the sickness time.  So upon arriving home I started prepping my place with the mindset that if I did get sick it all had to be organized in a certain manner so I could take care of myself, and take care of Pearl.  By that first evening, I was prepared to be sick.

Woke up the next day, and was still standing.  So with nowhere to go and nothing planned to do, I started rummaging through a closet for art supplies that hadn't been used in many years.  Then I phoned my parents and asked them to dig through their basement for a mini step machine I had bought and forgot about also several years prior.  They dug it out, crept up to my door, and left it.  Small and compact I decided it would have to be my exercise plan along with kitchen dancing for the next two weeks.

And so it began, my covid quarantine.  Time doing things I love but had no time for.  Time exercising, in a way I had never exercised like before - in a small space. Writing, art, learning from incredible people on YOUTUBE.  I think I will cherish this time after it is finished.  ...as long as I don't get sick.

My Covid Staycation

Hey Hi!  With all the stuff happening with the Covid 19 virus, the health official asked us to travel local this year.  So I decided to make a route of wonderful bike rides, boondock or stay in rec sites to keep it all economical, and I have to say it has been great.  Pearl has jiggled around in the basket as we have done skinny trails, fat trails, gravel trails, paved trails, etc.  By far the favourite so far is the Princeton trails.  Can't wait to get back to those.  After two+ weeks on the road, it was such a hard decision where to go next, stay and do more interior ones, or go do a couple coast ones.  Well due to the intense heat this week in the interior I have decided we are heading to the coast.  Will avoid people as we have been doing, and just enjoy nature and what Jehovah God created on this Earth.  Here are some random pics in no particular order.  Just little memories of the wonderful time Pearl and I are having on the road. 

Prayers are ALWAYS Answered

So yesterday was the anniversary of Harvey passing away.  I knew it was going to be a gut punch of a day to get through, so in my morning prayer I asked Jehovah if he would help me turn it into a day of looking for ways I could help others.  To be watching and alert.  So I hopped in my car and headed off to work.  No spectacular moments happened where I really felt like I was making a difference.  I came home, dug snow, more snow, and more snow, came inside and basically laid like a wet noodle on the couch with my eyes closed because I was so tired.  Then at 9pm my phone dinged with a message.  It read: "Darci, I need your help".  It was from a Bible study I had a year ago that decided to go another path in life.  I immediately phoned back and she said she was in the hospital.  So I got up the next morning and went there.  The nurse told me that she had been there a week but that her family had just called and said they were on their way to pick her up, so I knew we had little time to really 'talk'.  Had a good heart to heart about where she is at in her thinking, and she asked if she could start studying again, and coming to the Kingdom Hall.  Really...is there ANY better way to be able to help someone???

Love to all,
from D & P