Tricia's Musings

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



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Father in law going in for a procedure

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My father in law is having a gastroscopy tomorrow. Much better than a colonoscopy … but still he’s kind of nervous.

He’s apparently been having some trouble swallowing when he’s eating so his doctor wanted to make sure there’s nothing wrong with his esophagus or stomach.

We’re a little worried for him too. He’s 81 now I believe so any operation is a little more risky than if he were younger.

Like I said earlier I’m glad he’s not having a colonoscopy though .. the prep for that is kind of like doing quick trim burn and cleanse but worse! I should know – with my crohn’s I have to have that test at least once a year and sometimes twice or more. It’s awful.

I don’t get along all that well with my in-laws because of some things they did in the past, but still, I’ll be waiting to hear that everything went well. So will my husband.





Waiting for dinner – it smells heavenly in here

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I’m currently waiting for a slow cooked beef stew to be finished. It smells delicious in here! Mmmmm.

I added extra vegetables … like a couple more potatoes than the recipe called for, and carrots – for some reason the crock pot recipe I’m using didn’t list carrots and the pot is just full! I think we’re going to be eating stew for a while. I’ll have to freeze some of it I think.

I have a feeling that after finally eating dinner tonight I’m going to be on the computer looking for the top weight loss products LOL. Nah … the recipe is actually fairly low calorie and low fat. The stewing beef I used didn’t have any visible fat and I browned it in a pan before adding it to the crock pot. Plus the beef broth that I used was all fat free. So it’s going to be a health dinner, especially with all those fresh veggies.

If you want the recipe I wrote it out on my blog “My World” (see the link at the top of this post). I’ll let you know if it tastes as good as it smells!

We lost another good neighbor

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One of our neighbors passed away last week. He’d been diagnosed with cancer and had been sent home to be cared for by his family when it was discovered that his cancer was too far advanced to help.

I think it was August when he was sent home and he was given about two months to live at that time. It looks like he lasted longer than the doctors expected, but I don’t think his last months were very good.

He was an elderly man in his 80’s. Luckily he had his family constantly around him to comfort him and help care for him. I’m going to miss him, he was a good man.

We don’t have too many elderly neighbors left! When we first moved here pretty much all of our neighbors were in their 70’s or 80’s. Now they’ve either moved away to live with family, live in a retirement home or have passed away.

I guess we only have two older neighbors now.

The older lady closest to us is becoming a bit like my former stalker elderly neighbor Sofie. She calls us a few times a week to come over and help her with things around the house. Things like changing her vacuum bag for her, or checking out some strange noise she’s heard.

I feel bad for her because she has really bad arthritis in her hands. I think she just started getting some special treatments for rheumatoid arthritis from her doctor, but it will take a while to work if it’s going to help her.

It’s strange how the neighborhood is changing. I know all neighborhoods change, but I don’t think it will be as friendly once all the older folks are gone. I’ve said many times that living on our street is kind of like living in a one street small town (good and bad in that way because everyone knows your business). Now the new people moving in don’t seem to be quite as friendly.

Anyway … I don’t know if we’ll get a new neighbor in the house owned by my neighbor who died or not. One of his daughters had lived with him on a permanent basis. Perhaps she’ll just continue to live there or maybe in the spring we’ll see a for sale sign on the lawn.

Has your neighborhood changed a lot since you moved in?

Finally rearranged the living room

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Remember that mini-renovation project that turned into a bigger job that I told you about last week? Well, my husband and I finally finished it!

You see, in preparation for our new TV my husband and I decided that we wanted to rearrange the living room. Sounds simple enough, right? The only problem was the electrical outlets where the TV was going to go in the “new arrangement” weren’t hooked up! We’d disconnected them a few years ago when we were doing other reno projects in the room and never hooked them back up.

So my husband had to rehook up two electrical outlets and we put baseboard molding along that wall. We still have to put baseboard molding around the rest of the room (and finishing putting the Tin ceiling in too!).

We did finish the electrical hook up and the baseboards, but we didn’t rearrange the room because that’s when I started getting sick with this terrible head cold. Yes I still have it! Luckily it’s not quite as bad as last week, but now I’ve got fevers with it, so I’m hoping it’s not about to turn into pneumonia or something. Sigh.

Yesterday we got word that our TV will be ready for pick up on Friday, so since it was my husbands day off and I was feeling ok we decided to get to work and rearrange the room.

I’m now sitting on the opposite side of the room typing this post on my notebook computer and it feels weird! We used to have the loveseat and couch close together sort of in an L-shape but now, I’m on one side of the room on the big couch and my husband is on the other side on the loveseat.

Let me tell you, rearranging all that furniture wasn’t an easy task!

We have really big living room furniture! We have a large leather couch, love seat and an easy chair. Plus we also have a 50″ HDTV and a big dog crate in the room. The living room and dining room are connected (we knocked down walls when we first got the house) so it’s like one big room, but of course we do have a dining room table so it’s two rooms in one big room. The actual living room is about 15 feet wide by 20 feet long. Not a lot to work with when you have big furniture. LOL

We moved the big couch, easy chair and love seat around several times before we finally found just the right spots for each of them, We thought the TV was going to go on the opposite wall from where it had been, but we discovered that it looks much better in the corner by the window on an angle. Yes, it blocks the window just a little bit, but this configuration works best.

It does make the room feel a lot bigger, but it’s going to take some getting used to!

Do you ever rearrange the furniture in your living room or bedroom? If you do, do you find it feels a little strange for a few days?

I’m so ready for this head cold to go away

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Well I’m still feeling like crap today, unfortunately. My head feels like it’s blown up to twice it’s size, I’m dizzy and my nose is stuffed. At least my nose isn’t running as much nor are my eyes tearing as much as yesterday. Maybe my decongestants are finally starting to work, or perhaps the cold is starting to get a bit better?

I think I’m just going to rest this evening and hope that I get a good sleep tonight. I haven’t been sleeping well all week, so I’m do for a good night’s sleep. Chris and I need to look for life insurance, so maybe I’ll put in some time on the computer and look for a life insurance online quote or something. Or like I said, maybe I’ll just relax … I can’t do that tomorrow.

At the moment we’re trying to patiently wait for a call from Best Buy. We bought a Plasma TV two weeks ago but it’s been on back order. Since we bought it they keep telling us every few days – it’ll be in on Monday, it’ll be in on Wednesday and so on … the latest was that it would be in today. Hopefully it is.

If our TV made it to the store we’ll pick it up tomorrow and then probably spend a few hours setting it up, hooking up our home theater system and of course finishing rearranging the living room. We did start that last week, and we managed to get the small renovations finished that we started, but when I started to get sick with this darn head cold we put rearranging the furniture on hold until we get the TV (or at least until this weekend). Hopefully I’ll be feeling a little better by tomorrow … especially if our new TV does arrive.

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