You are in My World Now

Wordless Wednesday

Nothing like knowing that when you grow up you’re going to look just like your mom! The little pig is cute right now, but when he or she grows up it’s going to be BIG!

A couple of months ago we got a letter from our insurance company stating that by April we need to replace our oil tank or we’ll lose our insurance coverage. Obviously we have oil heating, and I guess that as an oil tank ages there’s more chance that it will rust and begin to leak. So one a tank is of a certain age, 15 years I think, insurance companies want their clients to get new tanks.

So we are faced with a few major decisions. Should we replace the oil tank and continue to heat our home with Oil? As far as I can tell it seems to cost about the same as heating a home with gas. The other alternative is to remove the oil tank and switch over to gas heating. We already have gas coming into the house as we have a gas stove, but if we switch to gas we’ll need to replace the furnace and possibly have some duct work done.

Changing over to gas heating will be more costly, but if we get a high efficiency furnace I believe we’ll qualify for a rebate from the Government of Ontario. I believe the rebate might be as much as $3000 so that would cut our costs quite a bit. Still we’d have to come up with the money for the new furnace and any other work that we’d need done at that time first.

The other dilemma facing us is the fact that we’ve been using our unfinished basement as a large storage area! We have our old sectional couch down there, plus some furniture that we got from my parents home when my mother died. We also have boxes that we never unpacked when we moved from our apartment as I’ve been waiting to unpack them once our living room/ dining room and other home renovations are finished.

Whether we just replace the oil tank or change our heating system over to gas we’ll still have to clear out the basement so that the work can be done. I think over the next few months I’ll take a few hours each week and go over some of the stuff we have stored down there and slowly put some of it out in the garbage. I’m sure there’s lots of things in the basement that we’ll never use. However, what to do with the rest of the stuff is a problem.

We have a very small house and there really isn’t much room in the rest of the house to store some of the things we have in the basement. In fact, some of the furniture we have down there we planned to use in the basement once we renovated it. So I think I might have to look into a self storage service. We could rent storage space for a month or so and keep our items in storage while the work is done in our basement.

Hmmm maybe having an almost empty basement will spur us on to quickly renovate the basement. Now that’s an idea. Of course money will be a problem. We don’t even have enough money for Christmas this year let alone changing the oil tank or replacing the heating system!

So anyway … if this was your house what would you do? Would you just change the oil tank to satisfy the needs of the insurance company or would you take a leap and change over to gas heating?

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I just realized that I never posted a photo of any of my cannas in bloom on any of the blogs that I do Green Thumb Sunday on. Perhaps I never posted a photo because I have so few from this past summer.

My canna’s didn’t overwinter inside the house very well last year and as a result they took quite a while to recover once it was warm enough to put them outdoors. They didn’t begin to bloom until late August and the blooms didn’t last all that long.

The canna’s are once again indoors for the winter. I keep them in my basement. I let their stalks dry out and I cut them down and then I only water them about once a month or so. Just enough to keep them alive, but dormant in the cool dark basement.

I have several tropical plants that I place in my garden each summer, but then bring back indoors by October. Passion flower vines, a Trumpet flower vine, a Jasmine bush, a hibiscus and … I’m sure there are a couple more, but I can’t think of what they are right now. I keep the vines, jasmine and hibscus upstairs in a bedroom with a south facing window. They get a fair amount of light through the winter and are well watered. Others like the canna’s go to the basement for a winter rest.

Do you have tropical plants that you place in your garden or yard during the summer and try to keep alive indoors through the winter? I’m getting better at overwintering my plants, but it’s not uncommon to lose at least one each year … although, crossing fingers!, I didn’t lose any last winter so hopefully I’ll have the same luck this winter.

Wordless Wednesday

Hmmm is this hamster starting to rethinking his snack or just pausing for a moment? I wonder if that biscuit really is high in calories?

It’s kind of funny. Whenever I write about my Crohn’s disease and the awful symptoms it causes me I get all kinds of advice and helpful tips from my readers. it’s nice in a way, but I’ve tried just about everything that I think is medically safe - from dozens of medications prescribed by my doctors to natural remedies that I don’t think will do any harm like Cat’s Claw, probiotics and so on.

Most of the suggestions that I get have merit, but there’s always someone that suggests diet pills (why i don’t know) or some kind of multivitamin super supplement like Lipovox. Things like that might help other disorders, but I’m not sure they’d help bowel inflammation.

One of the suggestions I receive recently was Aloe Vera pills. I might try those as others with Crohn’s have found it to relieve their symptoms to some degree. It’s worth a try and shouldn’t do any harm.

When you are sick or if you have a chronic disease have you tried natural remedies or non traditional medicines?

You might remember that last week I told you one of our friends was going to be having open heart surgery at a hospital here in Toronto. Well, she had the operation on Friday and she’s still in the hospital and recovering well.

We spent the better part of the weekend going back and forth to the hospital visiting our friend and our husband. Needless to say i didn’t manage to get much done this weekend! She was seen by physio today and was finally allowed to get up and walk around so if she continues to progress well she’ll be out of the hospital by the end of the week. Fast isn’t it?

The hospital is downtown … actually the hospital she’s in (Toronto General) is surrounded by a number of other hospitals. I hadn’t actually been downtown for some time and I was amazed to see that the area around Dundas and Yonge had changed quite a bit. For years they’ve been building a new multi-movie theater on the corner of Yonge and Dundas and now they’ve removed all the boards that had been blocking it off - for years and I think it’s open.

Now that corner that had been a huge construction site competes with the huge shopping center and the other stores on each corner. It’s a mass of digital signage in that area!

I took that photo two years ago, but as you can see there were lots of digital signs back then .. and now that area on the right of the picture is a big multi-movie theater with, oddly enough, a section at the top that is used by the neighboring Ryerson University (I believe they are part owners of the complex).

In the late 80’s and early 90’s that whole area felt like home to me. I was a jewelery - part of the jewelry trade, and that area if full of trade jewelers. I had my business in that area and I lived and breathed the downtown lifestyle. I still live close to the downtown core, but in a much more family friendly area.

Have you noticed how parts of your city has changed over the years? Amazing at times isn’t it?

This weeks Photo Hunt theme is Reflection

I took these photos of the Toronto water front area while on a dinner boat cruise last year. There’s nothing like being on the water at sunset. What a beautiful view of an impressive city.

If you look closely at the pictures, above and below, you can see that the CN tower and other nearby buildings are reflected in the water. You can also see the reflection of the sunset in the water too.

I’m looking forward to seeing what other Photo Hunters have come up with for this weeks theme! You can see my other entry - Reflections of Midnight - on my main blog Tricia’s Musings if you’d like.

Chris and I just came back from the hospital. One of our friends is going to have open heart surgery tomorrow afternoon.

Both our friend and her husband are totally freaked out and upset that everything they had to do in the hospital today took so long. They basically spent the whole day waiting to see the nurse practitioner, the anesthesiologist, the surgeon and so on. In fact she still hadn’t seen the surgeon by the time we left at 8:45 pm!

I’d be stressed to if I were having surgery on my heart tomorrow too, so I can understand, but still, being an ER nurse I can also understand how hospitals work, that’s why she had to go in a day early, right?

Her husband is really stressed too. Not only does he have to deal with his wife having open heart surgery, but his best friend (also our friend) is anther hospital dying of Pancreatic cancer. Major stress!

Not only that .. but amid all of these troubles he’s been looking for jobs in business management. Yes, all these things going on and he’s unemployed too!

I just hope our friend doesn’t have any complications from the surgery. She’s been told that she’ll be able to return home seven days after the surgery … so that’s good, as long as things go well.

I expect we’ll be spending a lot of time at the hospital over the weekend!

Wordless Wednesday

Isn’t that cute? The rat has a little teddy bear and it’s the perfect size too! Even rodents need friends!

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I guess you could say I’m doing a series of posts across a few of my blogs about a recent trip to Taylor Creek Park in Toronto for all of my GTS posts today. So instead of the usual garden related post I’ve chosen to go with a nature post instead.

It was the beginning of November and some of the trees were beginning to change color, flowers were developing seedheads, milkweed seeds were blowing in the wind and my dog was having a ball running through the forest trails and taking a dip in any water she managed to find.

The Sumacs had lost all of their leaves which turn a bright red in Autumn, but their lovely seedheads or fruit were still on the branches.

Actually, there were still some red leaves on the Sumacs, but they looked to be fading fast. These ones look like they are just about ready to drop, don’t they?

A tree that I’d found on an earlier trip still had most of it’s blue colored berries, but it had lost most of it’s leaves.

Isn’t it hard to believe that this park is deep within the city when you see a picture like the one below? I mean, it really does look like a country scene does it not?

A couple hundred feet to the left of this scene is a busy highway (the 404 or Don Valley), but you’d never know it by just looking at this photo!

That’s what I love about Toronto, there are so many great parks that you can easily get away from the hustle and bustle of the city … even though you are still in it!