Blogmas Day 6: Misplaced

Sunshine! It is amazing how much cheer a few rays of sunshine can add to a room. After a bright and sunny morning, the clouds returned in force, snow is predicted.

I’ve spent a good part of my morning looking for the information sheet the hospital provided for me before I checked out after the colonoscopy, can’t find it. It has been misplaced. How is this even possible! This is a small house, how many places are there that I could have put it. No luck at all, still haven’t found it. I’ve put is somewhere “logical”, but is beyond me just where that might be. This happens from time to time, I assume it happens to everyone. How frustrating!

Today was the day I had to deal with the huge bill received for the repairs to Tank. Ouch! The repair cost more than new windows for the whole house, and that really hurts. Of course it cannot be paid in one go, so I came up with a plan of borrowing and paying back that will take us well into 2019, but it isn’t so tight a strategy that we will suffer. Our belts will be tightened, but we will still be housed, warm, well fed, and able to transport ourselves to work in Attila’s case, and to medical appointments in my case. Really, that is all we need, and when I think about it, it is about all I want, so a sort of balance has been achieved.

Transportation is a huge expense, and not often counted in the assessments of quality of life. Here at Mist Cottage we spend much more of our meagre income on transportation than we do on either food or shelter, as one must include the cost of the vehicle, the insurance, the fuel, and the maintenance; it all adds up at an alarming rate. I have fond memories of living in downtown Toronto, walking everywhere I needed to go, with an occasional foray further afield via public transportation, and even more occasional drive to the countryside to go camping with my girls. Most residential constructs in Canada are such that one must have some sort of personal transport in order to function. Just obtaining food supplies is a major operation without a vehicle, where most people in Canada live.

After Attila arrived home from work, off we went to the garage to pick up the car. The bill wasn’t unreasonable, and since it was a maintenance visit, the bill was manageable. I sighed with relief. [Confession: I wrote the previous sentence mid-afternoon, as an experiment in positive thinking, think happy thoughts and everything turns out all right, right? I knew it might be, in reality, an exercise in delusional thinking. As it turned out, the bill wasn’t unreasonable, but that outcome may not negate the possibility of delusional thinking. Still, it was much more fun to think that if I wished hard enough, things would turn out the way I wanted them to.

Worldly

Weather

1°C
Date: 11:00 AM EST Thursday 6 December 2018
Condition: Mostly Cloudy
Pressure: 101.6 kPa
Tendency: Falling
Temperature: 1.1°C
Dew point: -2.0°C
Humidity: 80%
Wind: WSW 23 km/h
Visibility: 16 km

Quote

“The weird thing about houses is that they almost always look like nothing is happening inside of them, even though they contain most of our lives.”
John Green