Leave nothing but footprints ...

This is going to be a plaintive post; I have a new version of Word that has more bells and whistles than even my last one. As I try to navigate through it, I am also on call to go and help JG with HIS new Word app. He has not used Word much ever, having preferred another word processing program when he worked, maybe something called WordPerfect, and having done very little word processing in the last two and a half decades. Since I am not at all sure what I am doing myself, this is not even a story about how, in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. In fact, I appear to be typing this in something called Aptos (Body) and I did not decide to do so. It’s not bad. I am interested to see how it will come up when transferred to Blogger. (In serif typeface in the draft, a sans serif when published. Wha...?)

I am more than annoyed with Blogger today. It ate two sets of well thought out and nicely worded comments that I wrote on posts I enjoyed. The comments were not nearly as thorough or as well written on the third attempt. But if, when I hit SAVE it actually does save, I guess third time pays all. Or something like that.

The ED was out on the weekend and went for a snowshoe in about a foot of new, untrodden and crusted heavy snow. She did most of her usual circuit through both the home hundred acres and the back hundred, in a little more time than usual and remarked that she was labouring coming up the last hill. Yeah. She did, a bit wistfully I thought, wish for her sister and her dog to, as she put it, break trail for her.

Aforesaid sister has resigned her prestigious position and handsome remuneration and is now on leave, using up her vacation and then her terminal leave before she will make the final decision about retirement. This is Freedom 55 Plus, and she is off to do a bike trip in the Far East and then a hike in Europe and then may pack up her home in Brussels prior to getting her house in the city back from the renters. She has home renovations in mind but so far that is all that she is discussing of any planning. I am surprised and yet not surprised at this decision. I knew she was not happy in many of the requirements of the position, but was not aware of the extent of her frustration. I suspect she was making the best of it when talking to us, to spare us worry. At any rate, she may be available as a trail stomper by next winter’s need.

As a personal report, I think I have found at least some of the surfaces of my desk and table here in my office. Between the hall material, the paperwork needed for my various medical appointments and the stack of usual filing, there was a fine mess. Then I was hit by a request from JG to find a particular document from his brother’s estate papers that I had handled. We got a portentous government document saying said government owed deceased brother money still and JG needed the reference. I dug, piled up files, muttered and after three tries I found the dratted thing. The money owed turns out to be about three dollars. Or about the cost of sending the cheque? And I am now refiling and Putting Things Back. When the ED was here, she put the Christmas boxes all away under the stairs, and so that is that for another year. It may, sometime, become tidy. There is a tidy in the affairs of woman…

I am stopping now before this leads on to anything. Up top you will have seen a fine photo that the ED took of the back beaver pond. You can contemplate that; nature is neat in more than one aspect.