My original web meanderings brought me to quite an astutely old British name who proved to be suffering at subsistence level.  Suffering crackling static in the winter and eating only vegetables which abounds in her breadbasket valley at rock bottom prices to make space for to-morrow's harvest.  

The other is a person who is amongst the privileged of America who owns several homes in various parts of the land and whose family tradition is proudly military.  Her name is also British and her seemingly carefree way of life took me quite by surprise as she sought personal happiness and acquired a style of living quite foreign to the other woman.  

The other woman's budget of a superficially happy-go-lucky(?) Southern Po'r White who felt privileged to have a bursary/scholarship given on the grounds of race and colour will never be able to realize the life of the other woman even in a dream.  She is your hardworking, disillusioned bravado of the trained-to-work-and-toil underling never to move forward and upward to the heights of personal wealth and comfort in the true sense of personal American liberty.

They both threw me off course considerably from getting a "feel" of each other when they came at me in black letters on white paper.  They mutually made me feel the one person was almost frivolous and the other so basic and banal that I couldn't reconcile the effect within myself.  I had to stand apart from them for awhile but actually did choose on the grounds of literary principle to choose the uplifted and uplifting.  

Here, up north of the border, I remain safely ensconced in the almost set apart position in the wealthiest of the civil service commissions enjoying the privileges never to be experienced by the poor elsewhere beyond the terminology "set apart".  It will be for her to excruciate and endure and to fall in with the wretched sufferers to whom she administers at almost the lowest remuneration of qualified workers.  

'Though I might never travel here and there to make the weather suit my clothes, I am free.  I am Canadian and comfortably privileged to be me.  Hopefully, someday, we shall all be happy.  God bless.

Ah, yes, everything was delivered and set up and I didn't recognize the cabinet.  Nevertheless, I sent the move co-ordinator and friend of Mom's an extra large bouquet of tulips at her anitque shop bearing her name.

Now on recalling a couple of details of what I remember of Mother's china cabinet, I see this one I have with all my tableware stashed away in, is not hers or mine.  "Denis" made a mistake, or, did he?  The cabinet he brought me was old, sunburnt, warped and damaged and repaired in four places.  However, it was the same brand as Mom's cabinet and burnt into the wood inside the top drawer.

As I recall now that I am not het up from moving all my own furniture prior to the arrival of the cabinet, I see the reversible lattice to plain wood panels on the outer two doors are not there, and, the middle has two doors enclosing drawers.  I don't recall Mom's cabinet having doors to open before opening the drawers.  I also don't think Mom's cabinet had awkward flatware slots built in as this one does.  I certainly don't recall four lights behind four glass doors either.

Now, I made the mistake of accepting it thinking nothing and that the colour just seemed darker in this room.  Also, I am not always over at Mother's taking in details of new things she has bought after I left home to be that observant about something that was just there.

Oh, well, it's Good Friday now and I'm going to have to wait until a week day except the telephone messages left for Mom's dear antique dealer friend and Mother herself.  "Denis", by the way, is not listed under his impressive business name that he gave either. Did someone bribe him to exchange the newer and better cabinet for this dried up stick of furniture? Did he exchange it to sell for more money than this one?  Is he a crook or not?  We shall see in the next episode of The China Cabinets.  

God keep all my friends and associates safe so this doesn't happen to them.  God bless and good night for now.

In the meantime, I take in redhat events with other chapters.  My latest outing was to the Fallsview Casino in January with a group from out of town.

When I see the composition of some of our groups, I feel my own lack of success in forming a chapter is due to my people being so few in this part of the world.  

Needless to say, I've been told there are scads of us by women who keep seeing all the corporate men coming out in force for business luncheons in our business district.  

They are the men with or without families who stay up to five years but not quite due to Canada and Japan's conflicting laws about who may be a director anywhere of a Japanese corporation.  Meanwhile, there is a Canadian law stating that our local directors must be Canadian citizens.  

Apparently, we differ on what is a Canadian corporation or a Japanese corporation but none of them stay to become Canadian citizens only which takes five years.

Their wives usually keep to themselves except when they socialize with neighbours or English Canadians.

Our second, third, fourth generation and so on are divided into religious denominations as well as varying religions.  

Our cultural centre does not expect to have anything that isn't bona fide Japanese.  Without asking, I know I'd have my expenses increased by being told I have to join the JCC.  

Even if I did, I'm not sure, I'd get a Redhat Chapter organized with activities that bears any resemblance to any that the Chapters and Groups I know have at the moment which is in line with my immersion training.

I got into a generally German group whose unofficial leader condones anyone who is able to say she is of German background.  With them, I have had moderate luck but still "reign" without "subjects".  That is, my own chapter with real chapterettes.

I generally stay out of Japanese gatherings because my Mother wishes me to do so as our main social life with them seems to be funerals and interrement luncheons.  

My Mother who is currently ninety years old has had better luck outside the Japanese communities in Toronto.  The only Japanese she socializes with are Japanese Canadians with whom she has had past relations in her life in a Japanese community situation.  

Where does that leave me?  Shall I, a full-blooded Japanese Canadian, say I'm German, too?  Anyhow, I have had full immersion in main stream society having been in boarding school and universities and go on being myself  -  the different one!

As far as my "other life" goes, most of my pen pal age peers find their health setbacks milestones in their lives.  Some even mention them in the club listings almost as a condition of acceptance of the sufferer.  Either that, or they make mention of congenital conditions after several cautious months into the correspondence life of the relationship.

I maintain these sore matters are all right to talk about as long as they otherwise "have a life".  I quite gave up on two pen pals as one ONLY documented her medical setbacks and the other one very correctly wrote only about herself and her family but only at intervals when her part-time teaching job was at a hiatus and only about issues that had gone awry healthwise and correctly, never negative about her own health.  

Not one detailed missile did I receive from her about good times such as travelling, weddings, baptismal parties and so on.  That is, of course, as ancient-of-days health books recommended  -  that we tell grave matters only to strangers so that the weight of them is alleviated from ourselves but doesn't weigh down the auditors of the sad information.  Where and when does a true platonic relationship begin and carry on then that is not a matchmaker's work?

Well, I say it all has to be approached with a strong sense of humour and a sense of joie de vivre and a grain of salt. An example of this would be a woman "showing signs of prosperity" refusing to be guilt-tripped by the need for clothing by the unfortunate overseas.  The cartoon shows her saying that there's no need to donate her over-sized clothes to the clothing drive for the mission fields as they wouldn't even fit the victims of whom are pictured only the emaciated malnourished children who don't even grow to adulthood let alone fat!

It's just time for us at our fantabulous age to raise a glass of fizzy and open a box of chocolate and drink to laughter, love and life!

On that high note, I bid you enjoy whatever you wish and never hesitate to reach for the impossible in thenew year because dreamers always can take life with hope in their hearts, health in their outlook and live successful lives "'til the end of time!"  God bless.

My first adventure there in eating came when I ordered smoked trout salad.  The concoction was mainly frizzy lettuce with traces of other lettuce shoots  dressed up in crème fraîche laced with dill (champagne) vinegar and myriads of smoked trout bits.  After awhile, I caught on there was something missing.  I needed toast!  The buttered, toasted baguette slices arrived quickly and I enjo-o-oy-ed!  What a blast that was with a pitted Bing cherry coke.

By luck and luck alone, my keys had worked their way out of my pocket and I returned the very next day for dinner.  After two drinks, I dined on slow-cooked, grain-fed, organic pork chop leaned against a mound of potato salad with herb tips mixed into its crème fraîche dressing. What a delectable meal with a dessert that was a selection of choices in itself.  

Chocolate coffee "soil", a gritty, crunchy mixture, beside a wee ball of homemade raspberry ice cream sitting on the end of a small bar of finest, dense cake.  On the other side of the bar of cake, a sweetened sworl of crème fraîche hid a judicious wedge of fresh plum.  To die for...

Of course, the black coffee topped off the night...  Dark but not bitter!  I went home quite happy and had my keycard re-programmed the next day.

I'm looking forward to having another delectable morsel for late lunch on Tuesday or Wednesday.  Won't you join me some day?