So I found my old blogsite!!.  And we can now access the archive - zanneblog.weebly.com 2014-2019 - Here it is! Present time-Z and Past-time-Z are so excited about seeing one another.  Hello again, that hot day in August when the fridge conked  out, or Famously-Clumsy-Z who does pratfalls quite regularly, I am reminded.   I have started to remember how much I enjoy writing about the private world, even though MY BRAIN HAS PRECIOUS LITTLE SPACE TO SPARE. The Spanish-speaking peoples have a lot to answer for.

I have no idea why, but one day in late 2019 I felt the burning desire to learn Spanish.  Do you plan to travel in Latino countries?, you might ask.  No.  I travel a lot but always through books.  So do you plan to read Spanish novels?  No.  A good translation has always sufficed.  Might you be planning to make friends with a Spanish-speaker who wants to improve her English?  No.  I freeze like a bunny in the middle of a large mowed field when called upon to converse in any other language than this one. What remains of my brain is a blank canvas.  All I can register is my pulse pounding in my ear.

So why?  I already told you:  NOT THE FAINTEST!.  Yet inexplicably I have faithfully logged into Duolingo ever since.  By now I must have gained legendary status because I doubt that anyone else is as inept.  They probably refer to me as The Pathetic Plugger but only in private as I am most likely their only paying customer; they feel about me the way universities feel about international students:  cash cows. It was frankly easier than having to do little else but watch the website’s preferred form of mental torture:  endless repetitive ads triggered by too many mistakes.

On the plus side, language has always interested me.  Recognizing The Lord’s Prayer in Old English was thrilling, as was sort of understanding the already-familiar Canterbury Tales read aloud in its original Middle English.  Poldark, in addition to the pleasure of watching Aidan, was a joy-ride through eighteenth century English, where common English was far more antiquated and inventive than upper class speech.  Add to that  Latin (which I detested because of a vicious teacher) and university French, and I’m starting to develop the beginning of a mental map of sound laws and the directions that words can slide around our mouths over time and isolation.  Culture sticks its nose in too.  In Spanish, you don’t say “The flowers are dead” in a definitive verb (“son”);  instead, possibly because Spain was Catholic and believed in an afterlife, you would say “The flowers estan muertos.”  Those flowers are only temporarily dead.  As the pet store owner described the dead parrot to John Cleese, they are resting.

​Minutiae like that cluttering up my brain, I think my storage might be full because I have a worrisome thought that I’m losing two English nouns for each Spanish one.  

Well, hello again.  Hasn’t it just been a year.   Note lack of work in progress.

​When the pandemic arrived, accompanied by the broken ankle of Jon’s mom (whose walking was already compromised and whose home had six flights of stairs).  Neither Jon nor I remember much of that month, spent either at the hospital or having to look for a new home in the general state of emergency.  Luckily we eventually found a place at a good seniors’ residence and Jon delivered her there in the nick of time:  the very day that the hospital discharged everyone they could and just hours before all the residences locked down as well.

She didn’t want to rent her home and so the other option was to sell.  I  won’t go into detail but  the next four solid months were spent emptying it.    Every day, Theodore and I drove over and worked away  Actually, he did very little of use except to roll on his back and let me tickle him.   Good enough, actually.  The Amazing Jon assumed the role of dogsbody (isn’t that a wonderful word) and did a myriad of necessary jobs, including taking over all shopping.

Now, emptying a home of third-five years would have been a big job even without a lockdown.   For example, the easy availability of second-hand stores and garage sales is something I previously took for granted.  In particular, I depend on The Salvation Army, which is absolutely not-for-profit so I have happily driven the extra distance to one for years. It’s double-plus-good, because everything that can be re-used escapes being buried in land-fill.  With the Sally-Anne closed,  packed and carefully labelled boxes started to fill the rooms.  I kept my iPhone with me in case of a cave in.  Finally, our brother-in-law kindly drove his truck in from Kingston and stemmed the tide by hauling a few roomfuls home, where a rare open charity existed.

I tried to sell her lovely furniture but it was heart-breaking to see how little appetite anyone has anymore for used goods.  A friend from Winnipeg and I commiserated about this, as she had the same experience.  Nobody even wants sterling flatware.  Both Irene and I would have been thrilled to find such things when we were starting out.

It was September before the house sale closed and  her furniture would be moved to the residence, along with the tenth draft of a floor plan to maximize both storage and sight-lines.  Jon spent another full month dealing with investments.   The only apparent casualty appeared to be her jewellry, which resided in an unopened box in the back of her new closet until its rediscovery the next June.

Yes, I am tired.

That said, I honestly did not intend on vanishing completely.  Okay, I admit to saying rather firm and final goodbyes and thanks to all who read it in October 2019.  I guess that Weebly reads my blog too, because several months later a friend complained to me  that the website which hosted it was now claiming never to have heard of me.  Hmmm.  Having absolutely no time to locate Waldo, I filed it in the back of my brain, the cerebral rag and bone shop.

Until now, if I thought about writing regularly again, it was only to breathe a sigh of relief that there was one less thing to look after.   And one thing to look FOR:  the five and a half years of posts.

Yet here I am, able to post catch-up pieces from 2020 and 2021, now reunited with its large searchable archive.  Like the prodigal son, the original web address zanneblog.weebly.com has miraculously returned.  In both cases, a sheepish look would be appropriate.  I'm not a fan of mysterious disappearances by unsatisfactory offspring or precious websites  but will have to settle for thinking of my blog as having been off "finding" itself.  

But now the link within my gallery (zannekeele.com) to the resurrected blog has evaporated.  Waldo!!!!!! The URL works and you can also choose "Find my Gallery" above, top, to pop over successfully.  You just can't reverse the direction, at least for now.  Go figure. 

Waldo's probably making himself scarce because now I'm mad.