Bitter Melons and Bread

A cool August 3. It’s a sweater and bread baking kind of day. I had a slow start. I had phoned my sister to drop by to pick up some beets and a birthday present for her son. My nephew is going to Japan in October. I still have some Japanese yen from my last trip some 20 years ago. My intention of another trip came to naught so he might as well have it. It’s not big money, maybe $115 Canadian.

We had to have coffee and talked of our dad. It was not the best of things to talk about and left me not in the best of form. I had plans of baking bread. It was late in the morning but I carried on and hope for the best. The bread turned out ok though my memory got foggy and couldn’t quite remember the count of yeast and flour. My auto pilot must be functioning well. Now it is at the end of a strange feeling day. It remained cool and cloudy. I had to wear a sweater out to water the garden. It was nice to step inside the toasty warm greenhouse. It was heaven to see all my dangling bitter melons.

On cool cloudy difficult days, it is nice to have coffee with my sister, bake bread and bask in the warmth of the greenhouse amid the dangling bitter melons. Now the day is almost done and I can breathe a little easier. Tomorrow is a new start.

In Our Mother’s Closets

January 30th, 2nd last day of the month and of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. It is the end of the day. I am tired. A busy productive day consisting of my sister and I taking our father to see the internal medicine doctor early in the morning.This past year has been many office, walkin-in and ER visits since our mother passed. We are all so vulnerable the first year after a significant death. And more so when the person is 94 and it is a spousal death.

We’ve all worked hard taking care of our father. The doctors commended our efforts. Our father is doing well now. They wouldn’t change a thing. They gave suggestions for possible things to do if such and such arise. And they will set up a follow up appointment in a month’s time. We are pleased that there will be a follow up and hope that it will hold up. Less doctor visits would be good.

There was still a lot of morning left after the appointment. We had planned to work on clearing more of our mother’s clothes before taking dad out for lunch. We hadn’t realized how much more there still was. This time wasn’t as emotionally difficult as the first closet we did last year. I even dare to say it was fun. We had alot of giggles and Oh my gods! as we pull out each item and tried them on. Our mother kept everything in very good condition. She must have kept all the things we had given her for Christmases and Mother’s Days. We never celebrate hers or dad’s birthdays either. We celebrated the kids’, her grandkids’ birthdays.

We got ambitious and went to the downstairs closets after lunch. Wow! There’s no need to go shopping. We could just shop at mom’s. She even kept some of our clothes for us. I pulled out the dress I sewed for my sister for her high school graduation. I had forgotten what it looked like. I couldn’t believe that it was me that sewed that dress. And I did it on my simple Kenmore from Sears. My sister couldn’t quite believe she could still get into the dress. Unfortunately she couldn’t quite zip it up in the back. Just one size too small.

I dropped 2 bags off at the clothing donation place. I have plans of using the cotton blouses to make another logcabin quilt. This one will be for my sister.