Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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A belated birthday wish

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One of my brothers did something kind of funny the other day.

My birthday was at the beginning of the month and he was away on a vacation with his wife. He’d gone to Peru and all through the trip he sent an email (pretty much every day) telling us what areas of the country they were visiting and sending a few photos of the wildlife or of the meals they were eating. One picture was of deep fried guinea pig! Not my kind of meal, but apparently it tasted ok.

Anyway .. he’s usually pretty good about remembering my birthday, but I guess with traveling and then getting back to work shortly after their return home he forgot that my birthday had come and gone. So on the 20th I get this call from him and, since he doesn’t call all that often, I though maybe something was wrong, but it was just a belated birthday phone call.

Wasn’t that nice?

While we were on the phone we talked a little more about his trip, a few other things and joked around. Then only a few minutes after we’d hung up I got an email and he’d sent me a birthday picture. It was composed of three pictures of me as a child – one of me as a baby walking through the Tulips at the Experimental Farm in Ottawa, another of me sitting on his lap when I was about 3 or 4 years old and then the last picture was an old school picture – probably of me when I was about 9 years old. It was really cute.

I don’t know if he already had the birthday picture made up before our phone call or if he made it very quickly but it was a great idea. I’m going to have to remember to try to do something like that for him or maybe one of my other brothers or sister for their birthday. I think they’d like it too.

Speaking of my family … I haven’t heard from my brother out in Vancouver for a while. Last I heard he was just about to close a multimillion dollar deal for his business. I think it had something to do with getting investments from asset based lenders. I wonder if that went through or not. If it did, the business he’s been working on for the last year should be off to a good start.

Anyway … I’m sure I’m not the only one with family that sometimes forgets their birthdays. I usually don’t forget my families birthdays, but I’ll get distracted on the day of their birthday and then end up wishing them a belated happy birthday … kind of like my brother just did for me. Does that happen to you too?





Getting my vitamins

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I’ve been talking a lot about the new migraine medication that I started taking about a month ago. I’m sure if you were new to this medication you’d be babbling about it too … it’s so weird!

I mean — I’m starting to feel a little more normal again, but for the first few weeks I kind of felt like I’d been drinking or like I’d been taking illicit meds or something. I’ve never taken a medication that’s made me feel so strange – yet that’s worked so fast on it’s specific problem.

Of course as I keep saying it has lots of side effects. One of them is that I might start to lose some of my hair! It’s a low risk, but it’s there. So … rather than waiting around to see if my hair starts failing out and then having to start looking for a hair loss product I’ve been proactive and I’ve started taking a B vitamin called Biotin.

I’m just taking a low dose 300 mcg daily rather than the 3000 to 5000 mcg that’s recommended when hair loss has already occurred. I figure it can’t hurt, and since I have Crohn’s and have trouble absorbing a lot of my vitamins and minerals anyway it’ll probably help me out in other ways too. I’m also taking a daily multivitamin and Omega-3 oils.

Do you take vitamins daily or do you think your regular diet gives you enough vitamins and minerals?

The view outside my door was pretty nice today

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I had some nice entertainment, or maybe I should rephrase that and say eye candy, right outside my door earlier today.

My neighbors were getting some work done on their walkway – having some interlocking brickwork put in and the crew that came to do the work, well, they certainly weren’t hard on the eyes!

Hey, women do look too. We just don’t talk about it as much as guys. LOL

I brought my dog out a few times for her little walks so she could do her business and so I could uhm … browse. I mean … I wanted to see what work they were doing – maybe my husband and I might want to have interlocking brick installed in our front walkway too? Uh huh.

I know hefting bricks and that kind of work is heavy manual labor, but at least two of the guys must lift weights and or must take muscle building supplements because they were HUGE! I don’t know how guys can do anything with muscles that big .. I mean, how do you buy clothes?

Anyway, it was nice to have such a nice view right outside my front door – on the first day of Fall. I’m sure I won’t get many more views like that until next year!

Feeling more like writing – what do you want to read about?

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I haven’t been myself the last few months and I think it’s been evident on my blogs.

Obviously if you’ve been reading my posts over the last several months you know I haven’t been feeling all that well. First it was the Crohn’s that (well for the last five years) and then that seemed to start clearing up (finally!), but then I started having severe migraines.

I thought the pain of Crohn’s was bad enough, but somehow over the years I managed to work through it and well, at least I could work from home and when I really wasn’t feeling well I could at least read or watch TV.

Then when the Migraines started I began to get dizzy with them. Even watching TV or trying to read was difficult. Heck – sometimes even just lying down didn’t stop the spinning sensation. Now if only the migraine medication wasn’t causing so many side effects and now maybe skin blemishes I’d be happy! I think I have to get some acne products to battle the blemishes.

Normally my blog posts have lots of pictures in them, but I just realized … I haven’t picked up my camera to take photos of my garden or even taken my camera to any of the events or places I’ve gone since the end of May or beginning of June. Now that’s a first!

The good thing is that my head is clearer these days. My migraines are a lot better and well, the dizziness is still around, but it’s better than it was. In the last month it’s easier for me to write posts that it was all summer. Now if only I had more pictures of some of the things I did over the summer to add to my posts that would be nice. LOL

Oh one more good thing … maybe .. yesterday I wrote that my abdomen was so sore that I was curled in a ball on the couch. Today, for some reason, I’m feeling quite a bit better. My abdomen is still crampy, but it’s better than it was. Maybe it will slowly start to get better over the rest of the week. Fingers crossed.

So … now that I’m feeling a little more up to writing, or a little more “able” to write, what kinds of things would you like to read about? If you’re a long time reader of Tricia’s Musings what kind of posts do you enjoy reading when you come to visit?

Lets see .. I can write more posts about this great city – Toronto – and the various events that I like to try to attend (usually free or almost free), or I can write more posts about my silly Labrador Retriever?, life with my husband, crazy neighbors, my garden, home renovation and decor – although we haven’t been doing much renovating these days. What do you WANT to read about?

Have to complain about the letter carrier

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I don’t know what’s going on with our mail delivery service this summer. We’ve lived in this neighborhood for almost ten years and for most of that time we had the same mailman.


Actually our mailman ended up being a friend of ours as he was seeing (and living with) a close friend of mine from work (they even helped us put in our skylight) so it was always nice when I’d see him delivering our mail.

I haven’t talked to him lately, and I haven’t seen him delivering our mail either. Perhaps he got a better route or a big promotion? It seems that over the last few months we’ve had a series of temporary mail carriers.

The lady that’s been delivering the mail the last couple of weeks is the worst. I hope she doesn’t turn out to be our permanent carrier! I think she’s afraid of our dog barking. Yes, even when the door is closed and there’s no way our dog can even see her or you know … get to her. Of course if our dog could make contact with the mail carrier it would only be to say hi and probably give her a lick since she’s the absolutely friendliest dog in the world. She just likes to bark when she hears someone at the door.

It doesn’t help that this woman who delivers the mail has big heavy mail bags on both sides of her body and she bangs into our screen door every time she enters our front porch.

Anyway I guess she’s afraid of the sound of a barking dog because she certainly never even sees our dog. So now, when she hears Midnight barking she just drops the mail and runs!

The mail doesn’t even get into our mailbox. It’s often left scattered all over our inner front porch and sometimes it doesn’t even make it to the inner front porch – sometimes it’s outside on the steps! That’s not good.

I’m picturing soggy, ruined mail in the winter if this keeps up.

Oh and yesterday I found not only our mail but our elderly neighbors mail in my rose bush! It was our neighbors social security disability check! Imagine if I hadn’t found that mail or if it had blown away? Then my neighbor wouldn’t have received the money she probably needs to make it through the month.

I think on Monday I’d better remember to call the Post Office and make a complaint about this letter carrier. I hate to do it, but this kind of poor mail delivery has been going on for weeks. It’s not right.

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