It appears I have someone willing to wear an "era" costume and accompany me to the Kleinburg Binder Twine Festival.

Alix came to luncheon stayed on to watch the Jack Layton funeral service at Roy Thomson Hall.  Alix tried on the dress.  I worked on the sleeves a bit.

I decided supper would be too late for her when she got home.  I made poached turkey breast sandwiches with M------ W--- and cranbery jelly spread along with egg salad sandwiches with fresh dill from a couple of hard boiled eggs I keep handy in the fridge.  Voilà!  Milk made a very nice chaser.

I had to cut the sleeves again as it was a Very Easy pattern which usually requires one bias piece somewhere... at least in the patterns I choose.

To-morrow morning, I shall buzz up the sleeves, attach them to the bodice then run an elastic through the wrist bands and pop it on Moi to see it it looks right.  Good night for now.  God bless.

I come from a small town on the shores of Lake Ontario where we had a career mayor.  He had many children and all of them resembled each other.  The mayor and his wife were blond and from The Ukraine.

Now, there came to Port Harvey around the same time a typical English family with a bright daughter followed by a bright son.  As luck would have it, they were so English the son's name was Christopher Robin but the story is about his sister, Carol.

Now, Carol grew up excelerating in grades school and completing an entire year at Queen's summer school before she entered university after our then Grade 13.  She finished school and became a school teacher, married a brown-haired English immigrant who was "nice".  However, they had no children.

Many years down the road, the mayor's son found his way to Candlefield and looked up Carol when he knew she would be alone.  He took her passionately and sexually.  Now, Carol was past being floored and decided so a divorce would come of it.  It wasn't as though a family of children would be abhorred as they never had any children.

Days passed into months after she decided to keep the child that came of this unguarded moment.  Her husband as I said was nice and decided it wasn't Carol's fault so wouldn't divorce her, then, decided to keep the child because it was Carol's.  He promised everyone he would raise the child as his own no matter what happened to Carol as the child had come as a blessing when he and Carol were unable to have one of their own.  Anyhow, the child looked like Carol.

                              *                              *                             *                  

Just a few years ago when the catamaran hydrofoil came to Toronto to take Torontonian's to Rochester and vice-a-versa I happened to take a trip with a well-known local tour company run by a couple as their retirement investment.  On many of the tours the founder whose name the company bore came along as a curio and memorabilia of the great Margaret Martin Tour Company which is still extant.  

I crossed the lake on The Cat and understood why we were coming around the west end of Lake Ontario by bus instead of back again by hydrofoil.  In Rochester's port, he air was putrid and unbreathable but breathe we did as we had to.  There just was no air aboard ship when it wasn't running.

After a pleasant seat in the sunshine, I had lunch which meant I left my seat and came back to it afterwards.  There in my seat, before my very eyes was a twelve-year-old girl with a brown-haired man who was ostensibly her father.  I stood there and gawked at this little Carol Robin-John Vladka looking girl not the least bit taken aback by me or even noticing me.  She was busily taking in her souvenir picture book of the hydrofoil she was riding.

I sat in one of the free chairs in the middle of the ship and couldn't take by eyes off that child.  She was the spit and image of both her mother and her natural born father.  The man she was sitting with was Carol's husband, her adoptive father.  I didn't wish to make myself known as I was embarrassed to acknowledge the father on the grounds of the child's likeness to her mother, his wife and her natural born father, John Vladka.  Neither of them know me.  The child lives on in my memory of a rather happy rape story.  Ah yes, rape because Carol was married to someone else but could such a miracle happen if she had been traumatized by true rape?  The child's the answer it seems.  God bless and I hope it never happens to you.

The virtues of standard sizing has its limitations.  When the designer goofs up, the following happens and has happened in my own life.

In days of yore, one day, the transit operator decided to inform the ladies, starting with me, that bundle buggies do go through the rear/middle exit due to both the door frame and buggy axle being 18-inches.  

After a few tries, I dragged the bundle buggy back up the steps, seized it sideways and stomped out and down a full 14-inches to the ground from the bottom step.  Phew!  I was younger and stronger then.

What the designer and the transit operator didn't consider was that there are caps on the 18-inch axle to hold the wheels on making the egress quite impossibly about an inch too narrow.  Now that's quite a bit when the steps are boxed in not allowing me to twist the buggy through one of the two back doors.

Some packing boxes are wisely made and others are, well, standard sizing.  The outer measurements of both the packing boxes and boxes that are supposed to go inside are the same.  It should be the interior of the packing boxes and the exterior of the boxes holding the goods that should allow a good fit.

My latest plaint is my new refrigerator.  I had to replace my old olive green refrigerator.  I set out to determine all angles including one from life's oldest lessons as a child in the former Eaton department store.  The salesman told Mom and Dad before they started choosing a refrigerator, they had to know the size of the space available for the fridge. 

With that knowledge in hand, I chose the only refrigerator that would fit and at that only if I had the baseboard of the niche taken out.  That was due to standard sizing of the fridge to the upper walls of the niche.

Wisely, the new store sent me an unadvertised fridge that would fit without wrecking the wall and floor finishing.  A much smaller refrigerator that has earned my disdain in the short period of time I've had it.  Firstly, it's painfully small.  There is even lots of space left over in the refrigerator niche.  Secondly, they charged me more for their expertise and wisdom than for the other impossible but more spacious fridge I ordered.

Thirdly, inside the refrigerator, the shelf above sits on the lids of the jars on the shelf below if I am to have any economy of space.  This is insane as all the weight on the shelf above would rest on glass jars.  

This phenomena is due to the height of the jar being the same as the height of the space allowed for the slides that are built into the sides of the fridge interior.  The designer hadn't allowed for the thickness of the shelves themselves.

However, when foresight is used, the tall yoghurt container does fit between shelves very well without lifting the shelf above to make it fit.  However, the height between shelves doesn't allow two medium tubs.  ¿¿Mores:  Eat yoghurt not sauces and pickles??

It's a Catch-22 situation, my friends.  Do I live with this comical situation or have the designer sacked for the entrepreneur's better economy only to have another novice designer fudge up my life?

God willing, there will be a solution.  God bless and good luck shopping!

Last Saturday, we held a yard sale with the building next door in Montague Parkette between us.  As I was the first one from my building, I got the choice spot under the trees near the parkette entrance.  Slightly ahead in lucre, I started my next year's famous overcrowded dwelling sale collection - two bagsful of video cassettes as low as three for a dollar in perfect condition and academy award winners!

Allwin arrived fashionably late as every stylish gal knows she should.  Due to her artificial knew, she sat on the patio chair of the vendor beween us.  As her home is her hobby, his things went for a little more than others's as every fine lady deserves.  A basket from Allwin because the handle decoration faded left a drilled hole in it.  Perfect condition.  Good for Mommy's gift basket.

As far as my balcony gardening goes this year, I am only able to grow radhish sprouts and the odd radish.  Some are red, some are pink.  Others are white and longish and promising to become red at the bottoms but will they?  Last night's rain made the sages taller and stronger.  The lone catnip plant goes on by itself beside the sages.

This morning, I made fresh radishtop pickles by salting them down and rubbing in the salt and then chopping.  It was just enough for one serving with fish and rice.  There is some satisfaction to "balcony truck gardening".  God bless.

Today, as I was entering the QMB2, a friendly Canadian face with the abovementioned name appeared.  At this point, I recalled the glamourous ninety-year-old retired pianist who had volunteered in the third world organization one day a week with three or four other ladies.  I shall always remember her as she had an aura about her which set her apart.

Her hair was all grey but kept long and meticulously curled around the edges much like the early Hollywood stars.  Annette had been a pianist who was sought by a cellist now living in my building and still performing.  Apparently, the rift came in the marriage of no children when career paths diverged and she comfortably retired on money from her family.  

She never told me her surname.  She was just Annette, and what an Annette she was.  She was ninety, beautiful, presentable...  However, the day did come when a terminal bowel condition required her to have surgery and she retired from our circle of volunteers to her daughter's home in California.

Annette was a star.  She knew how to star in life itself.  Would that we were all Annettes instead of just one of the plain old selves.  Life would be so much more interesting and polite and pleasant.  God bless Annette wherever she is to-day.