Canada Day, Goodbyes and Mac & Cheese

Guess who's hand is feeling better? It's not 100% but I can type, write and use a can opener again without it resulting in searing pain. So that's a very good thing.

Happy Canada Day! Being that I live in Ottawa and that we host the world's largest Canada Day party, today means that the downtown core is packed. I went downtown last year but opted to skip the festivities this year. I wasn't really in a "get up close and personal with 200,000 + strangers" kind of mood. I did watch the noon show on tv though. I think last year's was better. I heard the fighter jets fly by and I can currently hear some fireworks in the distance. I'm not sure if they're the ones form downtown or the ones from the park down Carling but I can hear a low, rumble and boom.

Today I spent my day being very domestic. I did up the dishes and made a half-assed attempt to get my kitchen in order. That kind of stopped after I found the item that I'd misplaced in the kitchen. I then spent time on my balcony, planting the last of the plants that I picked up in the market yesterday. I added lavender, garlic chives, chocolate mint and a yellow gerber daisy to the mix. My balcony looks quite nice now. Very green and cheerful. For dinner I made macaroni and cheese from scratch and I have to admit, it blew my mind. It was so friggin' good!! I had some fresh green beans with it. I picked those up in the market yesterday. I love being able to go out and get fresh, local produce. It makes everything taste better.

I felt a little home sick today too. My home town has quite the parade every Canada Day and I can't actually recall the last time I was there to see it. It must have been a good 15 years ago. I remember that we used to take my grandmother and her friend and then we'd go back to my parent's house or over to gram's house for pizza afterwards. Later in the day, my brother and I would go to the park as they always had a carnival with rides that weekend. In the evening, there would be fireworks at the park. My parents live a block and a half from the parade route and only 5 blocks from the park so it made getting around quite easy. Definitely less than 200,000 + people to deal with.

Wow, 4 paragraphs and only a tiny bit of numbness. This is great progress.

Work is going to be brutal this week. We have several new people starting tomorrow and we have a farewell party for my boss later this week. Where I work, people come and go frequently, so I'm kind of used to seeing people leave. But my boss had been there since I started working there. She helped to build the unit I work in. She gave me my job. I really don't know how to say goodbye to her. I'm an emotional person to begin with and this week is a PMS week so I'm going to be extra emotional. Not sure how I'm going to get through it in one piece. Perhaps I should just skip wearing mascara this week and put up a sign, letting my co-workers know that if they find me crying in the bathroom, I'm perfectly fine. LOL.

Speaking of work, I should sign off and get to bed so that I can at least pretend to be alert at work to welcome the new people tomorrow. On the upside, I have leftover mac and cheese for lunch :)

Good Night!

Sarah

Death and March (Not a Death March)

March kind of sucks for my family, specifically my mom's side. And it lived up to its bad reputation this weekend.

My grandfather passed away 16 years ago on March 16th 1987. He was buried a week later on March 23rd, which just happened to be my Grandma's birthday. I'm pretty darn sure that was the worst birthday she ever had. I was too young to absorb any of that. I just remember being very angry with God for taking my grandfather away from me. Ironies of ironies, I remember riding my bike around the block in anger and I finally stopped in a parking lot to cry/yell at God. Turns out I was in the parking lot of the funeral home by my parents' house. Looking back on it now, it strikes me as funny. I was 8. 8 year olds do funny things that amuse their old selves many years later.

Next up came the death of my Gram. Once again, March got the dubious honour. March 7th 2006 to be exact. 16 days before her 89th birthday. Atleast it didn't happen on her birthday. That would have been like a double curse or something.

March got a bit of a reprieve last year as my darling niece was born in late March. A blessing indeed.

But as of this weekend, March is back in dubious territory. My mom's best friend's mother passed away on Saturday. While her passing does fall into the territory of being a blessing as she's now at peace, it's still hard on the family, no matter how prepared they think they are. I'm usually fantastic with words and speaking but death is the one time that I find it hard to find the words, or better yet, the right words. When my great-grandmother Watson and my Gram died, it was a blessing. My great-grandma had checked out years before and was just a shell who happened to still be breathing. My Gram wasn't much better when she went. She knew that her time was near and she wanted to go. She was ready. In both cases, they'd been without their husbands for a very long time. I guess they were both over due for a reunion. Death brought them both peace. I hole heartedly believe that they both went on to a much better place than the one they'd found themselves in here. I know it was for the best. But it still doesn't stop the paid and grief of their passing from happening.

Memories are funny things. I hardly knew my grandfather (we called him Cooch because he loved trains...get it? Choo-choo train?). I didn't even know him for a quarter of my life, yet I'll see something or hear something or smell something and thoughts/memories of him will come flooding back to me. I'm almost positive that he's the reason I like trains so much. I love it when my Uncle David comes to visit and he and my mom start telling stories about Chooch. I hardly knew him so hearing their stories helps  bring him back to life for me, so I can get another chance at getting to know the great man that he was. It's when I'm working on my genealogy research that I really wish he was still here. His side of the family has been a real pain in the butt to trace and I could really use his knowledge. That's just one of my many reasons why we should never take our elderly for granted. They're walking, talking pieces of history and there is so much that they can teach us.

Now, this next revelation might make some of you think I'm totally nuts, but while I know that they're gone, I'm pretty sure that both my great-grandma Watson and my Gram come to visit me from time to time. It's not a scary thing. It's actually quite comforting and it usually makes me smile. Sometimes it's just a feeling I get, like I'm not alone but I'm not worried or scared so I know that someone familiar is here. Sometimes I keep catching something from the corner of my eye and when I look, it's gone. I have a photo of my Gram hanging off a hook on my corner shelf. Every now and then, I'll look over and the photo is swinging on the hook. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot and there's no draft, no large trucks having gone down the street, no vibrations from my walking around. Just little things like that. They just remind me that even though they're not here, they still love me and are with me. Which is true. No one ever really leaves if you keep their memory in your heart.

Oh! And Julius Caesar died in March too. March 15th, 44 BC or so history believes. I guess March wasn't a good month for him either.

Good Night!

Sarah

Well That's Certainly Darker Than Planned...

Over the years, my hair has been many different colours. I have been a blond (once by accident and once on purpose), had my hair fire engine red (again, once by accident and once on purpose) and I've had it jet back (totally on purpose). I'm fortune in the fact that my skin tone lets me look good with lots of different hair colours. I used to dye it myself but over the last 5 years or so, I've been paying professionals to do it. Mainly because I had blond highlights for a long time and after the one and only time I let my mom give me highlights, I vowed never to let anyone other than a professional highlight me.

Seriously, she turned me into a blond. And took far too much joy in poking me in the head with that little stick. It was a kit where you wear a plastic cap with little holes cut out into it and you take this plastic hook like thing and poke it though the holes and pull a small strand of hair through (so the highlight look natural). I'm sitting in a chair, in my Gram's kitchen, with my mom stabbing me in the head. And then the grand son of one of my Gram's friends was over so mom let him take a stab at it. Literally. I should have known it was going to be a disaster by how much hair mom pulled through. I only wanted a few highlights. She did my entire head. The next issue arose when rinsing out the dye - mom freaked out a bit because my hair looked a bit orange, not remembering that hair darker when wet, so she decided that it wasn't done yet and made me sit longer. The result? Almost white blond hair. For a solid week I freaked myself out every morning when I first looked in the mirror.

Anyhow, December of 2011, I got tired of being a blond and went back to my roots as a brunette. I haven't actually coloured my hair in the last year. My stylist left the province and I have a hard time parting with the kind of money that salons charge, so I decided to try the "at home" approach again. Since I was going with a solid colour, I knew I couldn't screw up too badly. Last week, Baby F and NB helped me pick out a colour.  I was having a hard time deciding between 2 shades and silly me, I opted for the darker of the two. One of the cardinal rules of hair colour is always pick the lighter one when trying to decide between 2 colours. I knew this and still choose the darker one.

So....I dyed my hair tonight. And it's darker than it was. But a lot. Not quite 50 shades darker (ha-ha) but several shades darker than the photos on the box. It kind of looks like I'm attempting to channel my inner goth or something. It's not black but it's damn close. We'll go with dark chocolate. I will admit that I did want my hair to be darker and I wanted the little silver hairs that keep appear to be covered (and they totally are) but this is quite a fair bit darker than I'd hoped for. Oh well! I'm sure it will lighten up after the first wash or two. I'm also wearing a white top right now which probably makes it look darker than it is. I'll just have to remember to wear something dark to work tomorrow to compensate. LOL. And definitely remember to wear blush. And like my mom said, don't wear red lip stick...well, I could but people might not get that I'm just trying out my Elvira impression.

My hair feels soft and it's really shiny now though, so that's good. And my scalp doesn't feel like its on fire which is really good! It will be fun to see how many people at work tomorrow notice the colour change. Maybe I'll try for hot pink next time.

Good Night!

Sarah

At least it looks natural!