Are You Going Grey?

I experimented with going grey during the pandemic but then changed my mind

You may have noticed in some of the more recent photos on my blog that I’ve started the process of letting my hair go grey.

I’ve tried before but always gave up after a bit and started colouring my hair again because I had some big occasion on the horizon or I decided I just wasn’t ready for the change.

A friend took me on a craft-making outing for my birthday just when I’d made the decision to start going grey

Somehow, turning 70 in October made a difference and I was encouraged by having a new hairdresser who told me my hair was a lovely grey underneath and would look good on me.

One of my dearest friends has grey hair and I think it’s beautiful

I asked my hairdresser if she could streak my hair to make the turning grey process seem more natural but she said that would be expensive and since my hair is so dark she’d have to really bleach it and that wouldn’t be good for it.

So I decided to just let nature take its course. My hairdresser figured the whole process would last about a year.

I have many friends who’ve gone grey and they look lovely and now that I’ve made the decision I’ve been noticing plenty of women I see or meet who have really stunning grey hair.

The group of ladies from my church I volunteer with once a week at a Thrift Shop have been particularly encouraging. They tell me I’m doing the right thing and give me compliments on my current two-toned hair saying it’s stylish.

When I was selling my novels at a Christmas Market a couple of weeks ago a grey-haired woman I didn’t know breezed by my sales table and whispered to me, “Have you decided to go grey?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“Good for you,” she said, “You’re going to look great.”

I hope she’s right!

Other posts……………

Fashion Statement

12 Reasons to Wear a Hat

What Happened to Brooches?

The Year Past

October 2022- Visited the school where my son is the principal to talk about my novel Lost on the Prairie with the kids.

November 2022- Had a great reunion with Wendy one of my oldest and dearest friends who has moved to Newfoundland so I don’t get to see her very often.

December 2022- Celebrated my Aunt Viola’s 100th birthday in Saskatoon with her.

January 2022- Went on an amazing safari in Tanzania

February 2022- Spent a month in Cape Town South Africa and did an excursion to the Cape of Good Hope

March 2023- Lunched at The Leaf in Assiniboine Park with three friends I’ve been getting together with regularly for fifteen years.

April 2023- Launched my new novel Sixties Girl at McNally Robinson Booksellers

May 2023- Welcomed a new granddaughter to the world.

June 2023-Enjoyed some great golf rounds with my husband Dave

July 2023- Spent three wonderful weeks in France

August 2023- Celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary with five days at a lakeside cottage with our children and grandchildren.

September 2023- Had some Burger Week fun with friends

I’m turning 70 today. I look on every year now as a gift and a bonus. I am grateful for the opportunities, adventures and challenges the past year held and looking forward to the ones that will present themselves in the year ahead.

A big thank you to all of my blog readers who follow along on my life journey.

Other posts………

I Thought You Were About 45

Light A Multitude of Candles

A Sunny Birthday on a Rainy Day

A Lesson in Wine Tasting

This week we attended a wine-tasting event in our friends’ lovely backyard on a fine summer evening.

Photo of Gillian from the TXOKO Instagram page

Gillian the wine enthusiast from the TXOKO wine community who led the evening is also a teacher and that came through in her lively presentation because you could tell she really wanted us to learn about how to taste wine and appreciate it.

We tried four different wines one each from Chile, Spain, Portugal and Argentina and Gillian taught us three steps to follow …….look at the wine, smell the wine, taste the wine.

Here I am smelling the wine. Gillian told us to stick our noses right into the glass.

That’s my bike behind me. Dave and I decided it would be wise to cycle to and from the wine tasting.

It was an easy 20-kilometre round trip.

In true teacher style, Gillian had prepared a worksheet where we could record notes about what we and others thought about and discussed as we followed the wine appreciation steps.

Gillian told us there were no wrong answers when it came to appreciating wine. All our ideas were valid.

It sounded like Gillian knew some wine experts who were a bit snobbish and used technical language to talk about wines. Instead, she told us she wanted to hear about our personal reactions and connections to the wine. Everyone can be a wine expert in their own way.

The word burnished seemed fitting when I looked at a Dona Dominga Casa Silva Cabernet Rose wine from Chile that was served with a prosciutto, tomato, olive and bocconcini kebab.

My husband Dave thought he smelled the tobacco his family used to grow on their farm in Ontario when he sniffed a Spanish Min Red Blend that was paired with a gouda and artichoke pizza.

Effervescent was the first word that popped into my head when I tasted a Casal Garcia Vinho Verde wine from Portugal served with a grilled cheese and pesto basil sandwich.

At the beginning of the evening, Gillian gave each of us three strips of paper with different words related to wine. She encouraged us to weave those words into our table conversation as we discussed the wines.

I had a great time with the people at my table. We talked about a lot more than the wine. I was seated with a former teacher, a former librarian and a retired Canada Post employee who is trying his hand at writing. We shared so many common interests.

I know from past experience that drinking wine together is a great way to get to know new people.

I’ve always liked wine but the tips I learned from Gillian are going to make me a more thoughtful and appreciative wine drinker.

Other posts…………..

Wine Tasting- But Even Better- Making New Friends

Food or Wine? The Winner? It’s a Tough Call

A Fascinating Conversation in a Tiny Wine Shop in Lisbon

Don’t Be A Wine Snob

Wow! Wow! Wow!

Wow! Wow! Wow! That’s what our safari guide Malaki Samuel kept saying as we encountered a huge migration of wildebeests and zebras.

This is considered early in the year for the annual migration which begins in the southern Serengeti as the animals set off looking for greener grass to feed on.

We must have seen over a million zebra and wildebeests migrating together. It was just unbelievable.

Off in the distance, you can see thousands more wildebeests and zebras

Malaki estimated we drove some 8 kilometres with wildebeests and zebras in masses all around us for the entire distance.

Dave and I with Malaki Samuel one of the guides who work for Dashir Lodge. Dashir planned our whole safari for us and they did a phenomenal job! We can’t recommend them highly enough.

Malaki our guide who has worked in the Serengeti for 15 years said he had never witnessed wildebeests and zebras migrating together and as we kept seeing more and more he repeated over and over again Wow! Wow! Wow!

This is also the time of year the wildebeests give birth to babies and we were fortunate enough to witness that happening as well.

Can you see the baby’s legs just emerging?

Malaki spotted a mother wildebeest giving birth near a whole bunch of other mothers who’d just had babies and seemed to be grouping together to protect their newborns on the migration.

We watched for about 30 minutes as the wildebeest in labour walked around- the baby emerging from her rear end, first the legs and then the rest of the body.

The little thing had just plopped to the ground when we noticed a hyena nearby eyeing the newborn. Malaki told us he had seen a baby wildebeest harvested by a hyena before.

We waited with bated breath hoping that wouldn’t happen this time. And it didn’t! The hyena ran right by the newborn and its mother.

Did you know wildebeests are pregnant for eight and a half months almost the same length of time as humans?

Malaki our guide taught us lots about both zebras and wildebeests.

Something I thought was amazing about zebras was that the stripes on each one are absolutely unique.

A zebra’s stripe pattern is really like a fingerprint!

Something I didn’t know about wildebeests is that they are also called gnus. I thought those were two different animals.

Perhaps the zebra-patterned china at our safari lodge should have been a sign that we were going to see something phenomenal in the zebra world. The joint migration of zebras and wildebeests was certainly a spectacle we won’t ever forget!

Every day on our safari we keep having these amazing once-in-a-lifetime experiences that make us so glad we decided to embark on our African adventure.

Other posts………

A Rare and Momentous Occasion

My Second Novel Has A Cover

Sixties Girl- A New Book in Spring

At the Blacksmith

One day this month a work shift got cancelled just hours before it was to start and I decided to pamper myself with a pedicure during my suddenly free afternoon. I hadn’t had a pedicure in over two years thanks to the pandemic. I quickly searched on the phone for a spot near our home and found a place called Blacksmith. They had an opening and I booked a deluxe pedicure complete with a paraffin wax treatment.

My feet wrapped in warm wax

It should have struck me as strange when I arrived that the other patrons in the place were all men but it didn’t for some reason. When I was sitting in a chair with my feet soaking I asked the esthetician where the nail polish was so I could pick my colour.

That’s when she informed me this was a men’s nail salon and so they didn’t have polish. She reassured me however that they were happy to have me in the salon and proceeded to give me an absolutely fabulous hour of much needed foot care.

Later I looked on the website again and saw that the company logo clearly states they provide nail care for men. It says NAILS FOR MALES.

Now that I know I made a mistake I won’t be going back to Blacksmith Parlour but if you are a fellow and you are looking for a great pedicure I can definitely recommend them highly.

Other posts………

Packing From the Feet Up

My Grandmother’s Shoes

I Had My Toes Read

Where Were You in 72?

The thrift store where I volunteer is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2022. To prepare for events marking that milestone one of the managers of our shop asked us to submit a photo of ourselves in 1972. This is the one I sent her.

This photo was taken during the summer of 1972 after I had just completed my first year of college. I was working for the Mennonite church leading work camps. Teenagers from across Canada and the United States signed up to work for three weeks in a certain location and college students like myself provided leadership to groups of eight teens who lived together during their time of service.

I led three such camps during that summer. One was at a large mental health institution in Denver Colorado that housed hundreds of children and adults. Our group members did music therapy with the residents. I also led a group at a church in Winnipeg where we’d been asked to build a playground. I led the third group at a camp in Mississippi where we actually built a cabin.

I don’t seem to have kept many photos from that summer experience but did find these two from my third work camp group in Mississippi where we built and painted a cabin. In the photo of me eating in my granny glasses, I notice I have embroidered a flower onto my shirt, and peeking out of my shirt is a string of beads, my boyfriend, now husband had made me as a gift

I traveled from location to location by plane but flew standby in order to save money. The whole thing was a growing and eye-opening experience for sure.

I was already dating my husband Dave and he was working in Coaldale Alberta that summer. We exchanged letters almost every day and I still have all of them.

Where were you in 72?

Other posts……….

Where Were You?

A Lament For Letters

I’m A Shop Girl And I Love It

YMMV

In a twitter comment the other day someone used these four letters YMMV and I wondered what in the world they meant. I did a little research in a variety of urban dictionaries and discovered that ……….

YMMV is short for ‘your mileage may vary’ and originates from its use in advertising for cars. Car manufacturers started using the phrase in the 1970s and 80s when they were promoting the favourable gas mileage on their various car models.

Due to truth in advertising regulations they needed to add a disclaimer to their ads about their cars’ gas mileage since they couldn’t guarantee a certain gas mileage. Weather conditions, road conditions and the habits of individual drivers could impact the kind of mileage a car received.

Currently however YMMV is used in a much wider context to compare individual experiences, opinions, and ideas and acknowledge the fact that others may have a different response or result than you did.

You can use it when you write an evaluation of a service or treatment. “I had no reaction whatsoever to the Pfizer vaccine but YMMV.”

You can use it to review a product you’ve bought. “I find my new Eddie Bauer jacket to be totally waterproof but YMMV.”

You can use it to give an opinion about a television show you’ve seen. “The series Ted Lasso often leaves me in tears but YMMV.”

You can use it to comment on a trip you’ve taken. “We found British Columbia to be a cold and very wet place on our recent visit but YMMV.”

Now that I know about YMMV look out for it in future blog posts.

Other posts……….

What Does Yeet Mean?

Extra Crispy

Chreaster Really Is A Word

I Did It Myself!

My watch has a new strap and I installed it myself

I have a Timex wristwatch I love and have had for more years than I can count. I like the big numbers I can see without my glasses and the way its face can illuminate at night so when I wake up I can check the time. I’ve had one new battery put in over the years but otherwise that watch just ‘keeps on ticking.’

However, the watch straps always wear out, and once I almost lost the watch when the strap gave way and it fell off. So whenever I notice my strap wearing thin I have to hunt around for a place that sells reasonably priced straps and has a person on staff who knows how to replace it for me.

I used a dull pointed knife to change my worn strap in no time

Last week I noticed my strap was about to give way and just for interest’s sake googled changing your watch strap. Sure enough, there were lots of videos that showed you just how to do that. Although having a special jeweler’s tool was helpful you could also just change the strap using a pointed dull knife.

The job’s half done

I ordered a strap online and when it arrived I changed it myself in about five minutes!

It was so easy and here I’ve thought for most of my life you needed to be a jeweler with fancy tools to change a watch strap.

I wonder what other things I could do myself if I just gave them a try.

Other posts……..

Don’t Be Scared To Be Creative

Casted

Dave Makes a Mask

Modeling Career-Different Perceptions

Can you, short of an earthquake hold a pose?  Are you willing to be centre stage for long periods of time? Are you comfortable having your body parts talked about? Can you be the object of intense scrutiny by a roomful of people for at least an hour?

I’ll never forget my first sitting as an art model. Before I took the job I did a little online research. One website suggested you consider the above questions seriously before becoming a model.

Many years ago the art teacher at the international school in Hong Kong where I worked, sent out an e-mail asking for volunteers to serve as a model for a drawing class. I was a little hesitant. Wasn’t I too old?

Then I read the story of Lala Lezli, a former dancer with the celebrated Martha Graham company, who modelled for California artists for fifty years. She was still working as a model when she died at age 92. I wasn’t too old to be a model.

I also found out art students need to learn to draw real people, not just the idealized human form. Models should be of all ages, races, shapes and sizes. Indeed when I hesitantly replied to the art teacher’s e-mail I was surprised by his warm response. He’d be happy to have me, model.

I asked if I should wear a special outfit, but the art teacher suggested I dress in a normal way. I’d read models should come prepared with interesting poses, but the art teacher had a pose in mind. He wanted me to sit on a chair on the elevated platform at the front of the room. He even arranged my feet and hands and told me which direction to turn my face.

 I walked into the class as the teacher was giving final instructions and was quickly seated so the students would have a maximum amount of time to work. It was surprisingly easy to sit still for an hour. I had a good view of the drawing tables and was fascinated by the progress being made on the dozen different images of me emerging on paper across the room.

It was interesting how each of the students perceived me in a slightly different way. No two sketches were the same. Just like in life, I thought. No two people perceive us in the same way and we have to accept and indeed appreciate that.

Other posts …….

Using the Other Side of My Brain

Paint By Number

My Husband is Famous

 

Mrs Brown’s DayCare-This Woman Should Be A Jamaican Saint

Children, children everywhere!  One hundred and forty of them! Our host here in Jamaica, Tony Beach took us to visit Mrs Brown’s Daycare in the Edgecombe Ghetto of Runaway Bay last week. Tony has great respect for the work done at this daycare and he wanted us to see it for ourselves. Here’s Tony with Mrs Claudette Brown who runs a daycare for 140 children on a tiny piece of land in a ramshackle old building with four small rooms. Six other women work with her. When we drove up the children outside playing in the small cement and dirt front yard rushed up to the gate to greet us. The children said “Hello, Hola and Bonjour” welcoming us in three languages. “Do you want to know how to say hello in German?” Dave asked.  When he said, “Guten Tag,” the kids quickly copied him. A little boy immediately grabbed Dave’s hand and a little girl mine when we entered the yard offering to be our guides. It was amazing how many children were crammed into each of the tiny rooms. In the two-year-old’s room, they were giving the children lunch. Tony told us when the daycare runs short of money for salaries the women who work there simply divide whatever funds they have left after expenses for their salaries. Apparently Mrs Brown often ends up staying at the daycare till well after it closes at 5 pm, sometimes till 8 o’clock, because parents don’t show up to pick up their children. Sometimes she just ends up taking children who are left behind home with her. 

The kids ran to get books and asked me to read to them. I was amazed at how they knew their colors, the names of shapes, concepts like big and small and over and under. Tony told us the local primary schools say children from Mrs Brown’s daycare are usually well ahead of the other students when they enter school. A teacher in a tiny dark classroom with tarp walls was working on counting concepts with a small group of older children. Tony and Mrs Brown were having a heart to heart talk while we toured the daycare. Tony runs an after school program in Runaway Bay and he tries to share supplies donated to his program with Mrs Brown and help her out financially when he can. Often parents of Mrs Brown’s students can’t afford to pay the minimal fee she charges and she hates to make the children leave because she tells Tony, “it’s not their fault their parents don’t pay and I can’t punish them because of their parents.” As kids do everywhere these Jamaican sweethearts loved Dave and they all wanted to play with him. Claudette Brown gets no government support for her daycare. It is her own service to the community.  She’s quite an amazing woman. 

We were so glad Tony had taken us to Mrs Brown’s daycare. She is doing so much to help so many children with so very little. 

Other posts about Jamaica……..

Beaching It on the Caribbean

The Remarkable Place We Work in Runaway Bay

Pedicure Patois

Building A House in Jamaica

Wish I Had Them In Jamaica

Pirates, Plantations, Political Activists and Pot

Jamaican Introductions

Acquiring a Taste for Jamaican Food

Dead Yard Party