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.
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.
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