Jocie's Blog

  A road trip for me is a large part of life.. it is life.   When I was a kid, we went on road trips all the time.   Short ones, but long enough to get me excited. Then when I got older, they got longer and longer, until lately.     It was cool driving from Darwin to Alice, in a rental, in March two years ago.   By ‘cool’ I mean.. far out.. groovy, because actually it was pretty hot.   Darwin to Alice is 1496 and a half kilometers of almost straight highway from the Tropics to the desert.    I had rented a mid sized car, because when I booked it, it was just going to be Paula and myself.   But, I found myself, four other women, a s*&t load of luggage making the journey,   and there was not a word of complaint!   My almost-in-law family is pretty amazing. Years earlier I had driven from Darwin to Cairns, alone, only to find the man that I thought was waiting for me there, didn't actually want me in h...

  Getting old ain’t for sissies.   But some of us carry it off pretty well.   For example, I have these friends in Mexico.. an older, gay couple.   They are a couple of older ladies, as a lot of us are living around the lake in Chapala.   Living in the interior of Jalisco,   is lovely, but it does beg a trip now and then to the busier, touristier places with a beach.     Things have changed since we were young.   We don’t look quite the same in our bathing suits, our memory is often not what it used to be, but it is still lovely to feel the hot sand on our feet, and the taste of a margarita is still magic.   And while at home we most often have a routine to protect us, out in the wild there is the ever-present worry over losing stuff.     We can walk into a room and forget why we are there.   Once in a while we put our shirt on inside out.   But the most frustrating thing is how often we...

 So.. I have spent a lot of time in my new house, thinking about what comes next.  I decided I need to make it more of a home, and started looking for a dog.  However, it isn't easy during times of Covid.  So I put an ad on Facebook for a room mate, and got a few inquiries.   I love adventure, but meeting new people is hard for me.  On-line a couple of people asked about it, but one person kept coming up and so we agreed to meet, for coffee.  Well, the coffee shop was closed when we arrived.  I looked at the fellow.. a bit older than me, and a real person, not as scary as I always seem to imagine strangers to be, and invited him back to my house.  After all, that is what we were discussing.  And it wasn't so bad.. he got me looking at ski boots.  It has been years since I have tried on ski boots.  But listening to him talking about the nearby hills, and the possibilities, I decided to give it a go and headed to Kamloops....

 I would say Happy New Year but really?  It is just a new year this go round.  Not that I am unhappy, just not expecting much for these first few months of 2021.  I was chatting with someone on New Year's Eve when they signed off with a 'Happy New Year'.. I say it back but thought.. ya ya and hung up.  Then it dawned on me.. it actually was New Year's Eve.. so I called back and returned the greeting a bit more enthusiastically.  A new year had been promised for so long, I hadn't realized it had actually arrived.  But here we are. Fingers crossed.   My usual 'Canada' thing was to take down the tree, the decorations and clean up.  But I had already done that.  My usual 'Canada' thing was to start to put into place all those resolutions.  But, I don't have any.  It is not that there isn't room for improvement, it is just that I don't really feel I have any control over it.  2020 stripped that away.   I continue...

 Well you can almost here the collective sigh of relief as Christmas came, did its thing, and has now left us .. for many... alone.  And that is okay.   I read somewhere that 'Christmas' is a full time, temporary, job but one we love.  Putting up the lights in preparation for for shortest day of the year.  Putting up a tree to bring the light inside the house.. decorating it to bring even more sparkle to the long nights.  I have two televisions now.. and regret nothing.  I watched a White Christmas yesterday.. The Grinch the week before.  I could have music going upstairs while Gabe was able to binge on some Netflix (or Prime) series downstairs, where it was cooler.  It was a good Christmas for me.  Since leaving Jaffray I have spent a lot of Christmases on my own, so this year was rather special.  Not the case for many though.  But it seems people figured out how to have a good time and still obey the rules of the day....

My son Monte seeks adventure.  He is a civil engineer as well as a climbing and skiing guide with Black Sheep Adventure Sports. Check it out on Facebook. He comes by his talents honestly.   His father owns a contracting company, and his mom, well... I applied to work at the Fernie Ski Hill the minute all three of my boys were in school.  I was raised on that hill as my father was instrumental in creating the slopes, and my mother, the lodge.  Once I got married, I managed to get up there a few times with just one child, but once the third one arrived, it seemed an impossible dream.  Skip ahead five or six years and the boys  were off to school. I had a few hours free each day, and was eager to go skiing yet again.  I couldn't really afford a pass, but if you had a job up there, they gave you one.  I called called the ski school and asked how I would go about getting qualified as an instructor.  "You can start Saturday," the fellow said....

 So this morning I woke up and it was almost six.  Yesterday, I 'slept' in until 7:30.  This is late for me.  The last few years I am often awake in the middle of the night, but here, in my own home, in my own country, I am sleeping really well.  The only night I struggled was when I thought I was going to be working at Walmart - apparently I don't want a job. Or at least that one.  I wake up in the morning, make coffee and light the fire. Yes.. lighting the gas fireplace is done at the push of a button on my remote but someone has to do it. Then I start to think about what to do with the day ahead.  There is always something, even living alone, there is always something.  Last weekend, it was selling honey.   Rea opened her little shop in the barn.  It started with the ribbon cutting.  We had to wait a bit for the first car to pull into Honey Lane, but when they did we cheered and made a big deal of it.  They had a child ...