Down Town Time

It is May, and therefore the time when university professors go gallivanting around in the small gap between exams and summer school and research projects. The YD and partner are off to Brazil, and I am in the city looking after Miss M.

When she was much smaller, her parents would drop her off Chez G when they went to conferences, but she now has not only school but also gymnastics practice most school nights and so Grama is doing the driving to gym and the school drop off and all that. Grama does not have to do much else, though, as Miss Almost Ten M got herself up this morning, got her room cleaned and her clothes on (except for the odd tiny button), made her own breakfast and lunch and wrote her own email answer to her mother's morning message. Grama watched in amazement. They grow up before you can blink, almost. From mop-headed toddler to sophisticated, integrated young woman seems to have happened so fast and so soon. Not that I miss pushing the stroller for hours at a time. Much.

So, here I am perched, almost downtown, until the weekend, with very little to do. I did bring my Minute book because I have a set to write ASAP. I do have a fairly comprehensive shopping and errand list. But I also have two cameras, cardinals singing on both sides of the house, a very simple supper (hamburgers, please, Grama) to prepare and hours of time on my own when all the things I have listed under JOBS are undoable because unreachable.

I have just been paging through the archives of this blog and am amused to find that there is a post in May most years from the ED's home, celebrating emancipation from the home tasks and marking the grandkid's growth and behaviour changes. I repeat myself. Both the YD and Miss M point this out to me. I am quite sure this is going to get worse, too, as my mother and grandmother were very prone to retelling stories.

Meanwhile JG is at our home, dog and cat sitting and lamenting the fact that he thinks the dog has rolled in something noxious, probably bear shit. What a time for me to be away from home!

The YD is going out to our place on Saturday to pick up her (hopefully clean) animals and help her father dismantle my pool, since we are shutting it down and selling it. A sad decision, but a necessary one as we have to simplify some of the jobs that a rural home on three hundred acres of 'Managed Forest' requires. I gave up my Community Health Centre involvement almost a year ago, and the other committee I work on, the Active Seniors' Koalition, is folding up for lack of funding. We did get one last infusion of cash, though, to run a one day 50+ Activities Exposition and that takes place next week. The bulk of the JOBS that I have left behind have to do with that. The rest are either housework, or things that need to be done for the Hall Committee of which, lacking my wonderful friend Marion, I am now secretary, publicity person and (sob) baker of pies.

However, I have this break and we have rented a cottage for the whole family for two whole weeks this summer. It faces south, too, and I will have to photograph something other than spectacular sunsets. We're going to be on the Ottawa river this year instead of the Rideau canal system. The YD assures me that the water is usually warm since the upstream dams release top water. I hope she is correct in that.

Time to quit this quite boring catch-up and give Miss M's cat back her chair. And, I guess, get the white cat hair off my denim covered butt.

I have a three page instruction email from the YD with about the same amount of tasks to do with their menagerie as with care and feeding of Miss M. And, once I have pampered the pets, I want to find and buy plain white and good quality summer tee shirts. An almost impossible task.

Cardinal is now singing very close by. Time for the telephoto and some careful stalking.