It was Mothering Sunday/Mother's Day in the UK, and I volunteered to cohost a text chat in the private Childless Collective online community for an hour in the morning after breakfast. I wasn't moving too fast that morning, and did it while still in my PJs (!).
I (finally) showered after we had brunch, and just as I was drying myself off, the phone rang. It was BIL: our great-nephews were spending the afternoon with them while their parents went out for new tattoos (lol) -- so off we went to BIL & SIL's, where we had tea/coffee, visited and chased the two little guys around for three hours.
We stopped at the supermarket en route home to pick up some pizza slices for an early dinner, and then my sister called. She & my dad had been to view a local apartment that's coming vacant soon. She said it was quite nice. And... Dad thinks he's going to take it (or at least apply for it, but they spoke with the manager, and it sounds like he's likely to get it if he applies). It's a little earlier than he was expecting to move -- he was thinking summertime -- but you have to take these opportunities as they arise...!
My sister asked me if I was willing to split the monthly rent with her, until we can get Dad and some of his stuff moved over there, clear out the rest of the stuff (or at least the excess), and get the house sold (at which time he says he will pay us back out of the proceeds). Dh & I were expecting this, and said yes, of course (although we'll have to make a few adjustments to our cash flow!). The rent is really quite reasonable (certainly by Toronto standards...!).
I was just going into a Zoom call with some online friends, so I told her to tell Dad I'd call back in about an hour and speak to him then. Chatted for an hour with my friends and then called Dad (my sister was still there too, although almost ready to head home for another work week), and talked a bit more about the apartment. A neighbour's daughter lives there and is quite happy there. Dad has heard that another building in town is a little nicer (it's in a nicer location), but it's a life-lease arrangement requiring a fairly significant chunk of change up front. And who knows when a unit there (or anywhere else in town) will open up?
Got off the phone with Dad -- and it was almost time to watch the Oscars on TV! As I mentioned in another recent post, I haven't been to a movie theatre since before the pandemic, and most of the nominated movies were ones I'd barely heard of. I didn't recognize half (more than half!) of the people featured on the pre-show red carpet broadcast I watched. But I have watched the Oscars since I was a kid -- it's the only awards show that I still sit through, start to finish -- and last night was no exception.
Host Conan O'Brien was well into his opening monologue when I suddenly realized I did not have a ballot/list of the nominees! Ever since I was a kid, I have watched the Oscars with a list of nominees in hand, marking off the winners as they come up and keeping track of which movies are receiving the most awards. (I kept all those marked-up lists too, for years, until I realized all that information was now readily available on the Internet. But the habit of tracking during the show persists!) Back then, I would clip a ballot from the newspaper; these days, I find one on the Internet. Since I didn't time to check out several and decide which one I liked the best, I just went to Oscars.com and printed off the nominee list. Which was fine -- except it ran several pages long, which meant flipping madly through the pages as each category came up, trying to find the right one. (Thankfully, the pages were numbered!) I was also attempting (mostly during commercial breaks) to monitor (and occasionally contribute to) the Oscars chat on Anne Helen Petersen's Culture Study on Patreon.
And I was thinking about my mom. :( I bawled my eyes out in the In Memoriam section, particularly near the very end of it, when Barbra Streisand showed up to pay tribute to Robert Redford and sang a few wistful bars of "The Way We Were." As I've written before, Redford was my screen idol when I was growing up: my mother took us to see "The Way We Were" and "The Great Gatsby" -- at the drive in, on a school night!! Mom loved the movies, and the Oscars, and let me stay up late on a school night to watch with her then too. I was thinking about her last night (obviously) -- and the In Memoriam section, and Redford tribute, finished me off, emotionally.
By the time the broadcast ended, around 10:40 PM (much earlier than in the days when it started at 8 or 8:30 PM!), I washed up, etc., it was almost 11:30 PM when I finally crawled into bed. I had hardly glanced at my emails all day! and I am still trying to catch up today and clear my inbox.
Woke up this morning to an alarm clock at 7 AM. Did not have breakfast (or even anything to drink), because I had appointments at a local imaging clinic for both a mammogram and an abdominal ultrasound to screen for aortic aneurysms (!). I'd never heard of this, but I did a little Googling: apparently it's a new screening program (implemented last fall) offered by Ontario Health when you turn 65. I got the letter about it at the same time I got my mammogram reminder, and booked them together.
I will need to fast overnight Thursday/Friday morning too, because I'm going for bloodwork to check my cholesterol (eeek). Cross your crossables for me that my results are acceptable (or at least show improvement -- despite my erratic schedule and diet the past few months...!). I do NOT want to have to take another prescription!
En route home from the imaging clinic, we stopped off at the supermarket to do our usual Monday grocery shopping. It was earlier than we usually go, and the store was nowhere near as busy as it is then. Back at home, I finally had a belated breakfast, then washed, chopped and packaged up the fruits and vegetables we'd bought -- just in time for lunch.
This afternoon, I went looking for my previous bloodwork results (I view them online, print them off and then compare them to previous test results) in a big plastic bin full of assorted junk: medical-related & dental bills and insurance claim forms, as well as random photos that need to be sorted, keepsake theatre programs and ticket stubs, wedding and shower invitations, funeral cards and obituaries that I've printed off, etc. And got sidetracked. ;) I did find what I was looking for, but a whole lot more too: several hours later, there was pile of paper to recycle, another pile to shred and a third pile to toss outright, but the box was much better organized and not QUITE so full. (Dh thinks I still keep WAY too much stuff -- but I'm slowly chipping away at it...!).
And it's spring break here this week. Not sure we will be brave enough to make our usual trip to the mall for walking and shopping among the expected crowds...!
How is your week shaping up??
You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.
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