Skipping Along

Alright so I’ve been away for a while. Truth is I haven’t had much to say and what I did want to say was not very nice, or just boring, so I figured I should save it for myself.

I’ve had a very good couple of weeks for the most part. very busy at work however, and so my energy level in the evenings doesn’t have enough reserves for blogging.

I’ll start with the bad stuff first. Have you ever said something to the wrong person and have them twist your words and repeat it to someone and the whole thing becomes one HUGE mess? Ya, that was my world at work the last couple of weeks. Someone I have known for only 6 months had a casual conversation with me in which I voiced my opinion of what a friend’s manager MIGHT be thinking in a particular recent situation, and that IF that was the case, I couldn’t say that I disagreed with him. This friend I’m talking about, I’ve worked with her for ten years, her husband and I go to hockey games together, I went to the hospital to visit when their kids were born, they come to my house for BBQ’s, you get the picture, very good friends. Anyway, this new person, she told my friend that I had talked to her boss and agreed with him about how he is handling the situation. Now my friend won’t talk to me. If this is all sounding very “high school” you are absolutely right. And that’s a large part of what’s making me insane. If everyone involved was male, we would tell each other to f’off, then talk it over and go for a beer. But no, oh the drama. I could tell you more but it just gets more ridiculous, and honestly, it’s a waste of time. I only posted it because it DOES bother me to lose a friend over something I didn’t do, and it put me in a less than ideal frame of mind these last couple of weeks.

So that, plus a riduclous workload made a little less than my normally cheery self. But it wasn’t ALL bad. Kelly and I returned to Point Pelee last weekend and although the birding was not quite as good as the week before, we had fun and I added a couple to my life list.

One was this little fella. He was hard to spot at first. We knew where to look because a crowd had gathered, but he was still pretty well camouflaged. I was able to add Screech Owl to my life list.

 

Also on the same day, thanks to an alert birder who pointed it out to us, we were able to see a yellow warbler building it’s nest. She was building it just a foot off the ground, and it looked like a tiny teacup made of silk.

 

Another good thing is that with some help I have managed to plant our little herb garden. It’s not too big, in fact it’s in containers on the deck, but it has most of what I think we might need to add to recipes through the summer. I’ve always wanted to try this, and Kelly seemed to like the idea so here it is.

Dinner was especially good tonight, if you’ll allow me to pat myself on the back for a minute. I made NY strip on the BBQ and vegetable skewers. The skewers were mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, red onion, and three kinds of sweet peppers. I brushed them with half a cup of Olive oil, to which I added 2 tbsp of Balsamic Vinegar, 5 cloves of crushed garlic and salt and pepper. My mother made some basmati rice, and my sister made a fruit cobbler. All of it went perfectly with a bottle of Cabernet Franc.

 

This has nothing to do with anything, but I still want to mention it because it made me happy. I was driving to work on Thursday, doing my usual thinking and planning about the day ahead, driving on autopilot dodging the same potholes I dodge every day. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something bright yellow on the sidewalk. I looked up ahead of me, and it was a little girl, maybe 9 or 10 years old. It was a bright sunny day, and there she was, with her bright yellow shoes, skipping to school. Yes, skipping. Not the kind with a rope, just the skipping along that happy kids do, not a care in the world. She wasn’t doing it to make someone laugh, or to make a statement, I looked around and there was nobody for blocks. No, she was just skipping because she WAS happy. And she did NOT have a care in the world. For a moment I remembered that feeling, I felt that happiness. She made my heart sing. She really did. I smiled all the way to work.   The world needs more skipping.