Loose Ends #4

In one of the very first posts I lamented the lack of decoration in the condo. I have to tell you that as at "the official last week" and Sue's encouraging words not withstanding...not much has changed.

I scooped a couple of more chairs from another unit...Scott and Heather graciously donated a fax machine which I like to think of a "piece of sculpture" both additions making the living area feel warmer lol!!!

My always, always thoughtful daughter in law Stacy, sent a house warming gift which added a nice touch to both the coffee table and the mirror propped on the catchall table in the "transition area"...do you like that term?? lol The paper bag is courtesy of Jamie...it is a jar of Char Siu sauce that has had the lid popped that I have been going to return to Rams for a while. It seems to have become a permanent fixture! lol














When I was in Toronto on the way to meet Noah, I was running through Zellers (dont ask! lol) when I spotted a couple of throw rugs..."wow..these will make my life easier!" since a lot of my mopping was caused by dirty feet becoming wet feet, both as you come in the front door and in the kitchen so they were actually a necessity but they also added a lovely touch. Notice the colour match with the existing furniture...Steven Sabados, eat your heart out!













Other than that...zip, zilch, zero! At first I thought that I had been derelict but then I thought about what had been occupying my mind and I reminded myself that no amount of beautiful decoration could top the kind of love I had been feeling! The bare walls will still be here if I come back and actually, I cant wait to be wiping little hand prints off those bare, white walls!

Tying Up Loose Ends #3

"Two islands, one paradise" is the motto of St. Kitts and Nevis. So when "the neighbours" were here, not only did we tour St. Kitts but we took the ferry across to Nevis, as well. If you use your imagination lol... St. Kitts is to Niagara Falls as Nevis is to Niagara on the Lake. Nevis does boast its share of history...it is the birth place of Alexander Hamilton, vice president of the US...Admiral Horatio Nelson met and married Fanny Nisbet here and Nevis was the site of the first Jewish synagogue and cemetery in the Caribbean.

It is a more "exclusive" island with less mass development. A lot of their sugar plantation great houses have been turned into boutique type hotels and they do have better beaches and an amazing botanical garden, but contrary to the standard line that Nevisians repeat at the end of the motto..."and it is here!" I think that I still prefer St. Kitts. Having said that, I have a few pictures to post and you can form your own opinions.

Tying Up Loose Ends #2

My next mission, generated by a request from Cath, was to get a good picture of my granddaughter... with her eyes open...sounds easy enough..especially if you listen to her parents go on about her not sleeping...but not so easy in real life or at least not the times that I see her. Calleigh is an eating machine and every 3 hours like a clock, she opens her eyes, she looks around...her tongue starts going, her mouth moving exactly like a baby birds and she wants food! She will give you about a minute and half to get your act together before she goes into her routine...first the mouth crumples like you have wounded her heart- that is the "you have 30 seconds" warning and then she lets you know her opinion of the whole situation, in no uncertain terms! Like I said right at the beginning...a cream puff with attitude!




She was trying to smile, but the sun got in her eyes!


If you catch Calleigh between ounces 3 and 4 of the bottle, when she has just had enough to satiate her appetite slightly but is not quite finished...she loves playing peek a boo with Zed and might even grace you with a smile. Also, she must have a much more discerning ear than her cousin Noah, because she doesnt particularly like to hear grandma sing and she is not at all interested in the Patty Cakes that my Noah so adored. She is definitely a hard sell...much like her aunt was! I used to say that Kirsten was such a good baby.... but only because she wanted to be....not because you wanted it. These girls have minds of their own! lol And I see that determination in Calleigh.....You go girl!!






Whaaaaat Guy?????




Then when you change her diaper and give her the last ounce of the bottle, right back to sleep and she lies in your arms and you cant help but stare at the pure sweetness of her face. I am going to miss her so much.

Once again I ask...how can it get better than this??

Noah wishes Uncle Scott a happy birthday! Calleigh entertains people passing her at the pool.

Tying up loose ends #1

Like being at a cottage, whether it is for a month or for a week or only for a weekend ...after you arrive.... you move in. Then at the end of whatever period of time it has been, you have to move out and in this case, finishing up a lot of little things. I was going to write one long blog but after 2 days, I decided that I might not finish this, never mind everything else I have to do, if I didnt separate the blog...so there will be part one, two, three etc.

For example, I am currently on a mission to use of the foodstuff in the freezer and everything else that has an expiry date. The deal was that we would eat out after the place is cleaned up but I am not sure that I will ever be getting a restaurant meal because I dont know how to use the what I have without buying something new! lol I have about 10 tortilla wraps, a couple of packs of bacon, 1 pork tenderloin and 4 hot dogs. There was chicken fingers when I started writing this, but now they are being combined with left over spaghetti. :-) Oh and a bottle of Grey Goose! but I think that has Scott's name on it! The refrigerator?? As everybody knows..I am the queen of condiments...if only man could live on dressings and sauces alone! lol




In the cupboard there is some pasta, Carnation milk, an open box of pancake mix and some rice. On the counter is one bulb of garlic, two tomatoes and a whole lot of potatoes...Scott asked me if I was trying to corner the market on them! Don't ask what I was thinking....I wasn't! lol So what am I making?? Update...This blog is taking so long to write that we can now strike half the bacon and one tomato off the list. Last night was bacon and tomato sandwiches for dinner. Tonight...quesadillas to use up the tortilla shells, some cheese and an open bottle of salsa. Tomorrow night?? Maybe cream of hot dog and potato soup! lol Who knows!

Some days are just perfect

There are certain days that you remember like they were just yesterday... It was one of those days that ran like clockwork, from the moment I woke until the moment I went to sleep that night. To someone with a split personality like myself! ....someone who craves "some sort of logical order" with a lot of "fly by the seat of your pants" thrown in..lol...it was a perfect day.

It was cool and gray spring day in Campbellford. In the morning, while 5 1/2 year old Jamie was at school and Kirsten, who would be 4 in 17 days, was at nursery school, I scrubbed our house from top to bottom...now, they call it nesting...who knew???... back then it was just called...cleaning your house! In the afternoon I took Jamie back to school while Kirsty and I did a large grocery shopping. To this day, I can still remember carrying the two cartons of large tins of apple juice into the house. It was around 4 o'clock and we had just got back home from picking Jamie up at school when the library called to say the a book I had reserved was in. It was "The Executioner's Song" by Norman Mailer and I was dying to read it, so I threw the kids back in the car...literally..there were no car seats back then lol! and ran to the library which at the time, was up a steep stairway over a store.

Got back home and actually stopped moving for a moment and then it hit me...just a minute here...I am in labour! I was so busy I hadn't even noticed!!!! Talk about a "fly by your pants" type of day! lol It was 5 o'clock. I alerted the "baby daddy" ;-) to the fact that he was needed. I threw the kids back in the car and went to pick up the baby sitter. Back home around 6.00... cooked dinner for all of us....it was hamburgers and frozen french fries. By 7.30 I had Jamie and Kirsten bathed (yes together! :-)) and put to bed...but where was their father???.. The pains were coming pretty fast. :-( I remember seeing the terror in the 13 year old baby sitter's eyes. At five to 8 his secretary finally dropped him home ....Dr. Talkalot! :-) although I don't exactly remember laughing at the time, especially after the "what????...I didn't know...why didn't you drive yourself to the hospital???" remark. . lol! Back into the car and off to the hospital we went.

At 8.35 on Thursday April 10th, 1980 ... one of the longest, skinniest , baldest (sorry Scott! lol) baby boys that I had ever seen was in my arms. By 9.15, I had hopped down off the table and walked back to my room. By 10.30 I was asleep with Scott Karem Thomas in a bassinet next to me. A baby that turned out to be truly and amazingly perfect (we are talking pre- 18 months here! lol) born on an amazingly perfect day.

HAPPY 28TH BIRTHDAY TO MY BABY BOY... I WISH YOU AN AMAZINGLY PERFECT DAY AND A HEALTHY HAPPY YEAR!!!!

I Cant Believe its almost over

Where has the time gone? I cant believe that it is almost 3 1/2 months since I wrote the first post on here...yes, I did take a month off to go to England to welcome Noah B...and coming back to greet Calleigh's on her arrival has made the second part of the journey fly by at break neck speed....but stilll!! I have less than 2 weeks left so I am officially in vacation mode and in my spare time, I have taken to sitting on the upstairs balcony in the glorious breeze..... thinking, reading and simply looking at the view.

As you can see by the hair...the breeze is actually a wind and it can swirl at any time! lol

I have read lots of books...memoirs, sap, cook books and currently, an autobiography. I have a "beach book" ( Atonement) and a "home book" going at the same time. This one is courtesy of Jamie's visit in January...Bret Hart's story is not ordinarily something I would have picked up, but with my '80's immersed in the WWF.....ooops WWE....it is interesting to see all the names I once knew. I still think of the Macho Man and Miss Elizabeth story line with fondness! lol

I spend lots of time on this verandah just daydreaming and letting the mind's computer running on autopilot. I can make myself laugh with those thoughts...remembering funny things from the past days or even just the past. Random thoughts... like yesterday, I was thinking about my all time favourite movie...Witness....my favourite tear jerking movies...Love Story and Brian's Song... and why was it that my sisters were prostrate on the floor crying after Terms of Endearment and I could only sit there and laugh? Heartless they called me...but the image still makes me smile when the computer stops there, 18 years later. :-) Well...you get the idea...very random! lol

It will be very sad to say goodbye and there is no doubt that I have truly fallen in love again. I know now that we are both different...a little older, a little wiser and both with a little less innocence...completely different but at the same time we are the same as we always were. And in the case of "my island"...It has never really been about the people....it solely is about the sheer natural beauty and what it does to my heart.
That feeling has been enhanced by the fact that it has been very very windy lately and I have come to realize that I LOVE wind!!!!!! The winds have also been stirring up the ocean bottom so the water in the Atlantic has been an exquisite turquoise colour...to die for! I am telling you straight out...the wind, the sun and an ocean view, to a 50 something woman...it is orgasmic!!!! lol!!

The sunbathing Calleigh. (She hates the wind as much as I love it...something about trying to breathe through it!)

I am not looking forward to leaving Miss Calleigh either. There are so many changes so quickly when they are this small, plus...I have already experienced the feeling of leaving one grandchild and it is a sad one.

Luckily though, I wont have too much time to be sad when I get home....because...first Kirsty and Lee are coming with Noah B on the 29th of April and I cant wait to see how much he as
grown since I last saw him! Then if all the stars align properly, on Mother's Day ALL my children and their amazing spouses (except Lee who has to go home on May 6th, but he has already spent a Mum's Day with his mother in law..and 1 a year is always enough! lol!) will be in Canada at one time...a very rare occurrence..believe me! and no better Mother's Day present exists! Dinner on Monday May 12th is at our house and all are invited to see my girl Calleigh and my boy Noah together!

The ever smiling Noah!

So I have 11 more days to appreciate my surroundings and soak up this atmosphere. If I havent posted..you will know what I am doing.

Don't Judge a Book By Its Cover

Last Sunday evening after Calleigh's first journey to the beach I had invited Scott and Heather over for hamburgers and I was going to make homemade french fries to go with them. Of course, between us we couldn't come up with enough potatoes and the usual suspects of supermarkets were closed. Scott suggested that I try Best Buy. I had been there once before with Kirsten but it was a couple years ago and I think that we were there to get garbage bags or something like that and it was a case of running in and out. I am not sure why I haven't been there this time around other than that it is on the other side of Basseterre and I don't remember being that impressed. So off to Best Buy it was. Well let me tell you....my siblings that live in Pickering may have "the fake Bruno's" but although it doesnt have Sir Raymond style "turkey soup," we do have "the Bruno's of St. Kitts" and it is sweeeeeeeeeetttt!






I haven't really missed a lot of food stuffs since I have been here...good meat the most, but I definitely wish I had discovered Best Buy before I only had 2 weeks left. It was like discovering a food wonderland but not being able to buy much because I am trying to whittle down the stocks not increase them..but I can dream in living colour now!
The produce section by St. Kitts standards is amazing! Relatively fresh and variety too?? Green beans, corn on the cob, plums, pears and potatoes from North America! I know that you are all saying so what? Believe me, this is a big deal.

Next up is the refrigerated "gourmet foods." Who knew that so many varieties of hummus, goat cheese and olives existed here, of course sitting right there next to the homemade muffins and the imported cake. I will need some of that hummus to go on my Rye Triscuits! I haven't seen these in the real Bruno's!












By the way, I am willing to do either Thanksgiving or Christmas this year, if anyone is interested!

Pumpkin pie and mincemeat tarts! Does it get any better than that??

And don't worry about sandwiches for the kids...ok, maybe not Adam....there is the Pizza Shack for him...but we have 2 kinds of Smuckers Peanut Butter and Jelly and yes, I haven't looked at this shelf for many years but this is something completely new to me...Peanut Butter and Honey together! For some of the adults... not you Cath!...we have tuna..of course they have used the old...stock 2 rows with the same product trick...but still 2 different kinds!




And it can all be washed down with San Pelegrino ...whaaaaaaaattt?!!!!!! or if the kids get too unruly, maybe a little shot of Hypnotiq or any other liquor...right off the supermarket shelf will make us feel a little better. Well...you get the message!








Now...the surprise...not only is Best Buy a Bruno's in disguise it is also a Superstore!! Yes..that's right...not only is there all these gastronomical delights but if you are in the mood for the home department they have carpets, table cloths, pillow cases and a whole row of comforters! It has been cool and really windy lately, so I guess these are coming in handy!
I will admit that the shoes are a ghetto, a little more Payless and a less Town Shoes but hey, who am I to judge anyone elses taste! Especially in shoes!! lol











No Superstore would be complete without its "Joe Fresh" section and yes people, we have that too. The problem is that I don't know if I can walk down this aisle again though. The thought of all those Americans running around in their US #1 wifebeaters and their USA Master bikini underwear is putting me off eating and is as damaging to my psyche as 3 Bean Salad is to Cath's!




All in all if I find myself back in St. Kitts for any extended period of time I will definitely be visiting our "Brunos" on a regular basis!

Finally!!

There is nothing like visitors from "home" to get your rear end moving and do the things that have been put off for so long. As I have mentioned before, the intent of this blog was not only to keep up with the handful of people that actually care about what I am doing...it was also to show you this beautiful island. So..with our neighbours from Woodbridge visiting St. Kitts, I finally had an audience that was interested in my island tour and what St. Kitts really looks like.

When I lived here previously, I did this tour on a regular basis and it is definitely something that I enjoy doing...very very much... but this time around, without anybody who shared my interest, I hadn't really looked at St. Kitts with the same eyes...until now. As an aside..if you look at the map, you will see that St. Kitts has one road that circles the island (the thigh part of the drumstick). It takes approx. 50 min to drive around without stopping.

Normally I start my tours in the morning going around the island clockwise but since we were getting a late start, this time we went counterclockwise and with the intent of having lunch first. In the end, I decided that the original way is the best method because people are more tired after lunch and if the tour is going counter clockwise, there are no stops after lunch. Straight home James! type thing.

So...first stop Ottley's Plantation. Ottley's is the site of an old sugar plantation with the "great house" and a few of the managers houses still standing and having been restored. It is currently owned by an American couple and being run as a high end bed and breakfast and separate restaurant. The setting is serene and stunningly beautiful and it is constantly rated as one of the highest ranked hotels in its class, but from our experience at lunch..I can't tell you that the food or the service, matches the prices they charge....although one lunch doesnt really make a proper judgement.













Leaving Ottley's we continued the tour towards Black Rocks. It is a very simple site but for some reason, it is moving to me. The sheer power of the ocean crashing against the rocks which are lava deposits from centuries ago just affects me in a certain way. There is a wildness to this site that makes you so aware that it could not have possible been created by man and it is very apparent when you are looking at it.













Right after Black Rocks, it is a short journey to see The Golden Lemon hotel in Deippe Bay, so named because when the Huguenots landed here in the late 1500's they thought the area looked like home..which was Dieppe, France. The hotel is a former warehouse and shop built in the late 1600's and restored in the 1970's by a man that was the editor and House and Garden magazine. It used to be a "place to go," hosting Tom Cruise's first honeymoon (when Tom was still.."the man to be" :-) as well as other stars, mainly because it is in a very private location, but it seems to looking a little tired and run down now....sort of like me! and I heard it was for sale. This is also where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Caribbean Sea and you can watch the currents meet, creating a small area of pure calm. Before they built the new port, a lot of boats used to be anchored here if there was any type of hurricane warning.











Driving around the top part of the island, through Sandy Point, the second largest town in St. Kitts and then just past there is one of the most amazing sites in the world to me. Brimstone Hill is a fort built very very high up on the mountain side in the early 1700's. To stand at the bottom and imagine how they got all those bricks up there over 800 feet, to say nothing of all the cannons weighing over a ton...well it is just mind boggling! The picture below doesnt do it justice so you will just have to believe me on this one! Declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000, the St. Kitts historical society has done a great job on the restoration and if you arent interested in the fort itself, the views from Brimstone Hill are absolutely breathtaking.

























The monkeys playing on the road on the way up the hill, provided an extra bonus of entertainment!

Next on the tour was Middle Island, home to the tomb of Sir Thomas Warner..the first English governor of St. Kitts and Samuel Jeffererson, the grandfather of Thomas Jefferson, as well as the oldest surviving Anglican church.












By this time, the driver was getting bored and tired and he refused to obey my..ok they were last minute..commands of turn here! So the tour was cut short and Romney Manor, home to Caribelle Batik and Bloody Point by Old Road with the Carib petroglyphs were missed. My guests were actually interested but...maybe another time!














It was a strange feeling after returning from the tour. Up to now, I had sort of kept my distance to prevent myself getting too involved with this island that I had once loved and in doing so, stayed mostly in the area in which we live....but after the trip around the island, once again I knew...how could you not love this place steeped in history and dressed up in the most beautiful of sceneries?