#MicroblogMondays: Things I am happy about today

Okay, I will admit I've been wallowing in my annual "I hate February" mode lately, perhaps a little too much. ;)  Time for some positivity!  Taking my cue from Mali, here are some things that are making me happy today: 

*  Aunt Flo is taking her leave after her latest visit (and good riddance, lol). (I suppose it's too much to hope that it might be for the last time??)
*  Watching America go gaga over our prime minister as he visited Washington today ;)  (and, more importantly, watching him more than hold his own in his public appearances with The Donald).
*  It's after 6 p.m. as I type this... and the sun is JUST starting to set -- i.e., it's staying lighter longer again. Progress! 
* There's even a bit of a sunset visible tonight :)  -- something we haven't really seen in a while.
*  We even saw some sun today, after snow all day yesterday.
*  (While I'm getting pretty tired of the snow, it WAS kind of pretty, watching it coming down yesterday.) (AND -- we don't have to shovel it!!)
* Living close enough to BIL & family that he can call us to come over for coffee (as he did last night after supper) -- and we can hop in the car and be there 15 minutes later. 
*  Being able to stop by to visit with SIL regularly as she recovers from surgery, and bring her the occasional treat from Starbucks or soup for lunch.
*  Chatting with an old friend on the phone today.
*  Looking forward to a trip to the mall tomorrow.
* Tomorrow is also Valentine's Day :) 

What's making you happy today?

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.      

The best-laid plans...

Pretty much...!!  ;)
(A Facebook find from Intelligence is Sexy)

Now is the winter of our discontent

Let me count the ways... (I know, I'm mixing my Shakespearean metaphors here...)

• Aunt Flo is here. Again. :p  (Day 30, more or less right on schedule. At age 56!!!)
• We had freezing rain on Tuesday (I'd rather have a blizzard, quite frankly :p ). Today there is actually some sun, but it is cold (-13C, -20C windchill when I got up this morning). And it looks like we may be getting more snow tomorrow.
• I love our condo, and I love how our floor to ceiling windows let in so much natural light -- but damn, the floors near them get pretty cold...!  :p  (Laminate  in the main areas, ceramic tile in the kitchen, entryway and bathrooms.)  (Granted, even the carpeted floors near the windows in our old house could get pretty cold too sometimes...)
• The leak in the sprinkler system in our front hall closet has been fixed for almost two weeks, but there's still a hole in the ceiling to be patched (and thus, all the stuff we removed from the closet remains on the floor of my spare bedroom/office). :p  Dh messaged the property manager earlier this week and asked him to arrange to have it fixed. He said he would, but so far, the hole remains.  
• I am going stir crazy. :p
• While I was happy to see my girlfriend on Monday night (and get out of the house, lol), I was sad to learn she is moving. Not right away, but eventually, probably within the year. Back to our mutual home province, where she still has lots of friends & family. She was widowed a few years ago, and her stepchildren don't have much to do with her (she has no children of her own), and the cost of living is lower there. We only saw each other a few times a year, since we live in different parts of this vast metropolitan area (albeit I've moved closer to her now), but I knew she was always game to meet me for lunch, an outing to a craft show or sometimes a matinee at the theatre. And she is one of the few people hereabouts who knew me from "back home." I will miss her. :(
• Matching the gloominess of the weather, the political news from the U.S. is enormously depressing. Although sometimes you just have to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.  I saw an article yesterday speculating that Sarah Palin may be a candidate for ambassador to Canada!!! (Geez, America, what did we ever do to you to deserve THAT??!!) 
• On a somewhat related note, I noticed earlier this week that someone had quietly unfriended me on Facebook.  I have been unfriended a couple of times before, but either the relationship was not that important to me or the circumstances were such that it didn't really bother me. Without getting too specific -- this time it does. :(  I don't know for sure why I was unfriended, but I am pretty certain it's related to our opposing political views. I haven't posted a lot directly that's politically inclined, but I have posted some items on specific issues that are important to me, related to freedom of the press, "fake news" and how to spot it, and the Women's March. I've also "liked" a lot of news articles from the New York Times and other such sources that may have turned up on people's news feeds. I only wish this person had simply "unfollowed" me -- they wouldn't have had to put up with any posts from me that they found offensive or contradictory to their views, and I never would have been the wiser. Dh has encouraged me to just send this person another friend request and see what happens. I may or may not. I'm not in a hurry -- I think a bit of a cooling off period will do both of us good -- I don't want any big confrontations. 
• It's the Family Day long weekend here in Ontario. :p I know it's a long weekend (in February), but bah humbug. :p 

Thanks for reading/listening to me whine!

#MicroblogMondays (on a Tuesday): Inspiration from Down Under

I'm late with my #MicroblogMondays post this week, but I have a good excuse. ;)  I went into the city last night with a girlfriend to attend the first lecture in this year's Unique Lives and Experiences series. (We also had dinner beforehand, along with some great conversation!) 

Our speaker was Julia Gillard, former (and first woman) prime minister of Australia. I don't know much about her politics, but I was predisposed to like her -- first, because I realized she is exactly my age;  second, she is an unapologetic feminist;  and third, she has suffered untold slings and arrows for being not only a woman but a childfree one at that (as I wrote here in 2010).  She told us that she & Barack Obama had joked about which of them made the most unlikely leader -- he, the first black/biracial leader of the United States, or she, an unmarried, childless, atheist woman as prime minister of Australia?

Gillard was an excellent speaker, moving away from the lectern and only referring to her notes when she had statistics to quote or a quotation she wanted to read. She spoke for almost an hour, and then answered questions from the audience for half an hour. I wish had taken notes! -- but here's some of what I remember she said:

• Bias and misogynistic attitudes towards women are ingrained and pervasive (and she backed up her observations with statistics and academic studies).
• Education is the key to greater success in life. Gillard loved school, and is emphatic about the role education (and free state university tuition) played in her own success. She's now the head of the Global Partnership for Education, and is passionate about educating girls, particularly in developing countries.
• Women need to be bold, try new things and not hold themselves back.
• Women must call out sexism and misogyny when & where they see it. (Gillard did so, memorably, in what's become known as "the misogyny speech," where she blasted the (male) leader of the opposition for hypocrisy. She had the audience groaning -- and gasping -- when she related some of the horribly sexist things that were said and written about her -- including, after the death of her father, that he had probably "died of shame."  She was also compared to a "barren cow" and reminded that infertile cows inevitable get slaughtered and turned into hamburger meat.)(I kid you not.)(!!!!!)
• She said the most valuable political advice she received (which she encouraged the audience to do too), shortly after becoming prime minister, was to write down her purpose -- what she wanted to achieve during her time in office, what she wanted her leadership to stand for. She said she carried that increasingly dog-eared piece of paper with her in her purse every day and looked at it often. 
• She encouraged women to carve out some quiet time regularly to think and rejuvenate themselves. (She would tell her staff she was going "into the Cone" -- as in the Cone of Silence -- a "Get Smart" reference that had those of us of a certain age chuckling).
• She firmly believes in the value of quotas (in both the political and business worlds) as a way to level the playing field and uncover new talent that might otherwise be overlooked.
• Being the "first woman" is an honour -- but even better would be to watch as the second, third, fourth and so on emerge and succeed. :)  
• There is life after politics. :)  Gillard spoke with pride about her family, and how she had moved back to Adelaide to be closer to them (hmmm, this sounds familiar...), including her 89-year-old mother, sister, niece and nephew (she hosted his wedding in her back yard) -- and now a great-niece and nephew.
• Most important, Gillard urged women to develop a strong sense of self/self worth. She worries about young women in particular, growing up under the influence of social media and deriving their self-worth from the opinions of others.

She left the stage to a standing ovation. :)

What women have inspired you lately?

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.     

Close some doors

A Facebook find :)

Odds & ends

• It's February!  My least favourite month (although November usually runs a close second).  February 8th will mark 19 years (!) since Day One of the cycle that resulted in my pregnancy with Katie (my LMP date). And there's also "Family Day" (gag) to (not) look forward to. :p  Not to mention the continuing chaotic barrage of bad news from south of the border. :(  At least: (a) the sun was out yesterday (makes a HUGE difference -- it went back into hiding today, though... :p );  (b) there's Valentine's Day to look forward to (not if you're dh!! lol);  and (c) it's a short month...  
• Yesterday (Feb. 1st) marked one full year that I've been officially retired (after losing my job 18 months earlier, in July 2014). Things have changed so much since then, I still sometimes find it hard to believe that this is my life now. Not that it's a bad life (not at all!) -- just very different from the way I imagined it would be, and certainly different from this same time last year (although we were already beginning to look at condos then).
• Sometimes I feel too young to be retired. Sometimes I do get a little bored/stir crazy (especially at this time of year). But it's a good life overall, and I feel very fortunate that I was in the position to do this now.  I never got to be a SAHM (or a mom, period -- the stay-at-home part was probably just a pipe dream, finances & mortgages being what they were/are...);  why can't I enjoy some time as a homemaker a little later on in my life? 
• Our front hall closet is still dry (knocking wood!). I still check several times a day. The drywall/ceiling still needs to be repaired, though. So the stuff from the closet remains in the spare bedroom/office for the time being.
• Construction work on the townhouse site behind our condo building resumed yesterday, and they're back at it again today. I don't know anything about construction, but it looks to me like they are still working on sewer installation & road building. They started clearing the site around the same time we bought the condo last spring, and there are still no foundations dug let alone any actual building construction underway. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the schedule -- they have been gone for up to several weeks at a time, and then they'll show up & there will be a flurry of activity. If there's rain or snow, there's no point in them working;  the site becomes a muddy mess.
• In some ways, it's a pain in the you-know-where... they start work precisely at 7 a.m. (& often arrive earlier) so the noise usually wakes us up. And if the noise doesn't wake us up, the vibrations will -- it's like a mini-earthquake sometimes! Sometimes I think it's no coincidence that we had a leak;  I often hear things rattling around when there's a big "BOOM!"  :p  I have to admit, though, it's been fascinating to watch the process unfold.  I've been taking photos regularly of the progress (or lack thereof, lol) and sharing them in their own photo album on Facebook.  I'm not sure anyone else finds it as interesting as we do, but hey, my page... ;) 
• I found some pretty new placemats today that go well with our décor. Some supermarkets in Ontario have just (finally!) started selling beer & wine (previously, you had to go to a government-controlled liquor or beer store) and we each bought a bottle to be opened for dinner tonight (red for him, white for me). We'll use my crystal wine glasses that sat packed up in our basement for so many years and are now displayed in the beautiful china cabinet we had custom-built last summer. So even though it's February ;)  life is good. :)   

Right now

Right now... (an occasional meme, alternating from time to time with "The Current"): 

Reading:  Mostly online articles via Facebook & Bloglovin re: the new administration in the U.S.

Enjoying the new Oscars preview issue from Entertainment Weekly, my favourite magazine. When I was working downtown, Thursday was the day that new magazines would arrive at the downstairs newsstand, and I would buy a copy to enjoy on the train home later that afternoon. Since I stopped working, however, I've been finding it harder to find copies, nevermind in a timely way. I finally decided to subscribe (which is actually much cheaper than buying individual copies at the store). I now look forward to getting my copy in my mailbox every Tuesday or Wednesday. :) 

Still only partway through "Mr. Churchill's Secretary" by Susan Elia MacNeil, a mystery set during WWII Britain.

And, of course, the to-read pile continues to grow (insert red-faced icon here). One recent purchase: "Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right" by Jane Mayer (seemed timely...!). 

I've also retrieved "The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon" by David Grann from my gargantuan backlog of unread books. Moving it up in the pile, as I understand there's a movie adaptation coming out this spring. :)

Watching:  CNN, ad nauseum, for the last few weeks. It's like a train wreck;  it's hard to look away, even though it makes you feel ill sometimes. :(  And it's exhausting, even from north of the border. :( 

On a happier note: I've been enjoying "Victoria" on PBS. Although last week's episode, where Prince Albert produces a knife and slashes his shirt in front of Victoria not just once but TWICE, was a little ludicrous at times, lol. 

Listening:  For any drip-drip-drip sounds in the front hall closet (or anywhere else in the condo, for that matter)(do you blame me??). So far, all has been silent, and hopefully it will remain that way (knocking wood!!). 

Feeling: My chair shaking from the heavy equipment at work on the townhouse construction site behind us (which started bright & early at 7 a.m.!). With these not-so-good vibrations, I sometimes wonder if it was such a fluke that a pipe sprang a leak...!

Drinking:  Can't do without a cup of tea, first thing in the morning and later in afternoon. :)  (Especially at this time of year.) Sugar & lots of milk, please. ;)      

Eating:  A lot of soup for lunch. Comfort food!   

Wearing:  Long-sleeved waffle-weave T-shirt from Old Navy and Hyba yoga pants from Reitmans.

Smelling:  Some new essential oil blends that I bought for our diffuser recently at Saje, including Citrus Dream, House Warming and Refresh. It is fun trying different ones, although you can't always tell how they're going to smell just by sniffing the bottle.

Visiting:  SIL, most days right now, as she recuperates from surgery. Taking her lunch & treats from Starbucks, keeping her company and seeing if we can help in any way.

Figuring out: Twitter. :p  Dh is an addict. ;)  I don't think I'll be tweeting anything myself anytime soon ;)  but adding a few people & sites to follow here & there. Why I need another social media app on top of Facebook, Instagram & Bloglovin, I don't know, but we'll see...

Despairing: Whether we'll ever see the sun again. :p  (Although today is sunnier than it has been -- thank goodness!!)  The media has been reporting that this was the darkest and gloomiest January in years, with less than half the amount of regular hours of sunshine, and I believe it. :p  I grew up on the Prairies where (as I often tell people here who like to tease me about the extreme weather there) it may be -30C, but the sky will be blue and the sun will be shining, so I find this all more than little depressing. :(   (And of course, the news doesn't help either...!)