Gratitude and Glimmers #106

"Perfect happiness is a beautiful sunset, the giggle of a grandchild, the first snowfall. It's the little things that make happy moments, not the grand events. Joy comes in sips, not gulps."

                                                                            - Sharon Draper

Welcome to my post of glimmers (of joy and wonder) and gratitude for the month of March. You can find links to more posts like this one at LeeAnna's blog, Not Afraid of Color.

1. This is the absolute BEST. I couldn't' stop grinning the entire two videos. Watch both, one comes on after the other) and I am still grinning as I type this! Click to watch Huxley the rescued raven imitate his rescuer's sneeze and say his name.

2. Spying these two robin’s eggs at the base of a cedar where I knew they were nesting gave me a little glimmer of joy.

3. The day we met Zora and her foster mum was my birthday. On the way home we stopped at a favourite local bakery in the little town of Comber, just off the 401 highway for those who may be in that area. It is WELL worth the pitstop.

Decorated for Easter

They were out of buttertarts by then (drat) but I snagged these two cookies. Like, no, LOVE! 

4. One of our favourite places to walk is the Leamington Marina. This was the first one with Zora.

5. I like (and follow) Maoriblue on Instagram. He’s in Brazil, owned by three American bullies😍 He makes the most wonderful food for them, and has a recipe book out. One of the treats they love are yogurt and fruit popsicles, so I bought a popsicle mold and this ice cube mold at Dollarama last week. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough Halal plain yogurt left to make popsicles, but I was able to make a few little ice cube sized treats with blueberries for them to try. They were a hit! Zora took quite some time, licking and licking hers, then taking it in her mouth, then dropping it (first time with a frozen item like this) but she eventually ate it up. She loves the Halal yogurt—a spoonful— in her dish but this was the first time she’d had it frozen. Rufus is not a fan of the yogurt but he sure liked it frozen with the fruit inside.

6. I like roadtrips. This one was just two hours, a small way to celebrate my birthday. We drove up to London for a concert by an artist I really like, Royal Wood. Fortunate Ones opened for him (from St John’s Newfoundland, beautiful harmonies). Royal put on a really good show, mostly from his new album, Dear John. I was ‘gone’ when he played Juliet, one of my absolute favourites of his. MacGyver isn’t really a fan of folk and soft rock music, though he really appreciates live music, but he loved the humour from both acts, which was hilarious.

Ahead of the show, we had a burger and fries at Crabby Joe’s, just a block from Wolf Performance Hall where the concert was. This is right downtown London. Well! Right outside the restaurant was parking, (free! - like how often does that happen in a downtown core?) and the first two spots were reserved for EVs with a Flo charger right there. It’s just a Level 2, the same as what’s in our garage, so no a fast charger. However, for a whole $5.36 we plugged in for 3.5 hours while we ate and attended the concert, we got enough charge to drive back home. 

Now, with the price of fuel these days at an exorbitant amount, (today, April 29 at the time of finishing this post, we saw $1.73 - $1.77.9/L) it bears telling you here (this is info from MacGyver who is a nerd and tracks all this stuff) that the fee was 1.50/hour there to charge. We got 21 kW. In our garage, charging overnight while we sleep, which is what we do, it would cost us slightly less than $1.60. We are on ’time of use’ charge for power here in Ontario, so the highest (on peak) per kW charge is during the daytime, with mid-peak and off-peak (overnight) lower and the lowest respectively. So our 4-hour, 200 km, round trip to London and back cost us $6.96. As MacGyver constantly says, they are marketing EVs all wrong.

The other thing to note in that photo is how low a profile an EV charging point has. SO MANY people say to us (clearly those who have not actually done any proper research) that “We just aren’t there yet for infrastructure.” At which point my husband or I will pull out our PlugShare app and bring up our location and show the person just how many chargers are right in the very area where we happen to be at that moment. Every. Single. Time. The person is gobsmacked. 

Yes, there are bigger charging centres, such as the one in St-Germain-de-Grantham, Quebec, where there were 20 Tesla chargers, and that many every other EV car chargers, but loads of them are low profile like this Flo, or fast chargers can be off to the side of a Canadian Tire parking lot or a Shell gas station, or a McDonald’s… Look closer at your library or City Hall or grocery store parking lots, and you might be surprised!

But I digress.

7. We are quite smitten with this dog! She has quite the little personality, some typical bully breed traits (omg, she’s a puller, and the past two days I am LIKING the Halti we first used on Rocco, though she isn’t totally a fan). She often will pick up a stick and happily trot along for quite some time with it in her mouth. It truly gives my heart a little squeeze (aka glimmer) of joy.

She had her first visit to our vet, as requested by the rescue organization to ensure she has a clean bill of health. 

Making sure Dr. Hailey is writing everything down (or maybe it’s the message from Dayna: lots of treats and pup cups recommended”)

Channelling her inner Yoda

We ordered her a harness from Canada Pooch, which we’re picking up tomorrow at Pet Valu (senior day discount😉) which will hook into a seat belt we are also picking up tomorrow for her. Apparently she always threw up in her foster mum’s car, but we think it may have been because she was crated in the back  and facing backward. So, to keep her looking forward, and not bother Rufus or jump over seats, for the couple of short trips we’ve done so far with her, such as the 15-minute drive to the marina, or this 20-minute trip to the vet, she sits on my lap or between my thighs, and we haven’t had an issue yet.

8. I love magnolia trees, and I feel so lucky that they bloom all throughout my birthday month, beginning with the white ones in the first week, through the creamy pink ones, that are pretty much done now, except those that are right on the lake edge such as the first one below at the end of our street, to the deep pink ones that are open now, and finally lemon yellow ones that open in early May.

One day, not sure I’ll live to see it, I hope ours on our front lawn dwarfs our house and vehicle as this one does, photographed in Leamington last week.

9. I love these tulips which we bought at Halifax Seed Company last fall when we were on our Maritimes trip. MacGyver dotted them around our yard, and of course, couldn’t quite remember where, so it’s been a lovely glimmer see them bloom!

10. I like buying Canadian, now more than ever, especially this past year with the constant threats of making Canada the 51st state, and the economic war waged upon us with these stupid tariffs. So I liked stopping in at Fabricland (Canadian owned) to buy (on sale for their birthday—yes!!) Canadian-made batting! This is Soft Loft, which I’ve used in several quilts now, one of which is being published in Make Modern next week! I also bought 1.5 metres of their bamboo batting to try. I will let you know what I think.

$15 for 78”x100” is pretty decent, I’d say!

The bamboo was $13/metre. I usually use polyester batting in comfort quilts, and often in baby quilts which will be washed and washed.

11. Just after stopping in at Fabricland, we went to the Ronald McDonald House which is right inside Met Hospital in Windsor, where I dropped off no less than four comfort quilts. Wow, this was cool: it was their 10th birthday (April is a good month!), and so they were having quite the celebration with the CEO, to whom I was introduced(!!) down from London, and it was quite the process to donate! They filled out a form which they use to thank me apparently, and took my photo with their phone as well as with mine when they learned I have a blog.

Two of the four quilts I donated.

Not shown: Plaidish quilt, and the cool vibes rainbow one that will most likely go to a NICU baby as it’s a smaller one. I have donated for several years to the Windsor Sexual Assault Centre, but never had quite the reception as here, although I know my quilts are much appreciated and they’ve told how much the kids love and need their quilts. I truly got many glimmers, talking to the two girls, one of whom is pictured here with me, who also lives in Kingsville, knowing that the quilt will bring comfort to a sick child. And it also reinforces how very grateful I feel to be in such good health, with a healthy husband and daughters. And even more so, to be immeasurably grateful to hospitals, science, doctors and nurses and support staff, researchers who toil in labs for years, finding cures so that humans like my grandson, Brady, are alive and thriving, as compared to just two years ago this month, when he was so gravely ill.

12. I’ll just end with a great show to watch out for, yep, it’s Canadian, CBC exclusive, but I bet it’ll get picked up by other countries, as Heated Rivalry, Schitt’s Creek, and North or North, all have, to mention just a few great ones. This new one is Must Love Dogs. It follows Winnipeg Blue Bombers, Brady Oliveira and his girlfriend Alex Blumberg, a realtor and dog rescuer for nearly two decades, both of whom work with a rescue in Winnipeg, saving and finding homes for dogs. It is a wonderful show, and we’ve been thoroughly enjoying it. You can catch it on CBC Gem. That link takes you to the article about them and the new show, and is the source for the photo below. Zora actually watches it from time to time as well!

13. Oops, and I have to mention books because some of us, well, particularly Diann and me, put each other onto good books. I spent the majority of the month reading the prequel to The Priory of the Orange Tree. This was A Day of Fallen Night, by Samantha Shannon, another 846 pager tome, in which I also lived and breathed and dreamed! She has created quite the intricate and amazing world, and I just loved her new strong female characters, as well as the themes of good vs evil, family drama, perseverance, integrity, and of course, dragons and magic, and totally natural, accepted characters who may be two-spirit, gay, bi or heterosexual, gay marriages, men who cook and sew and raise babies while women are running things, and killing evil things! Another excellent one I read this month was with my U of A Book Club, How to Read a Book by Monica Wood. I caught the last 15 minutes of her book talk with our moderator, but will be able to follow the link to watch it from the start of the hour, not to worry. What a terrific book that explores forgiveness, guilt, family, both the family you are born into, and the one you create for yourself, the power of reading, of donating your time (and the rewards that can bring), of new beginnings no matter your age, just so much packed into this wonderful story. Monica mentioned the really neat activity that many town libraries have initiated in America: that of choosing just one book for the entire town to read, and then bringing in that author and discussing it. I’m not sure it there is more to it, as there is with my book club where we get weekly questions in a forum that we can answer/discuss. Monica said that travelling around the States has helped her with her feeling of despair over the past year and a bit at what is happening in her country, that she feels that in the audiences are people who haven’t all voted the same way, yet they are there and it shows the power of and need for books. A-freaking-MEN! 

Now I’m off to devour The Black Wolf by Louise Penny, which I finally got from my library (I was 50-something in line for it). On our Windsor trip this week we also stopped in at the Windsor Public Library (I am a member of it as well as Essex County) to get a book I discovered thanks to the HeyCafé Booklovers café I’m in, We’ll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida, for which I have waited an interminable time in the on hold line, and then had to make a pitstop at Essex County Library, my Kingsville branch, to pick up one that was in, for which I have been in yet another interminable wait line, The Astral Library by Kate Quinn (only a 14-day loan period because of its demand). And, I have to have Louise’s book back by Friday, which was another 14-day only loan period, gulp. What a lovely set of problems to have if you’re me!

Thanks for reading a rather lengthy but joy-filled post! We’re taking in two Jane's Walks this coming weekend, couldn’t get into one at Point Pelee I would have loved this past weekend because it was full. Are any of you taking in Jane’s Walks in your towns/cities? Windsor and Essex County had the most in Canada last year I believe! We’re doing one about the restoration of the Detroit River in Sandwich Town, Windsor, and another about meaningful murals in Butterfly lane also in Windsor.