Barb was addicted to Dristan because she couldn’t breathe through her nose due to her cold and her allergies. Eventually, the Dristan stopped working. So, she decided to go cold turkey and quit Dristan. She struggled for a few days with her Nasonex, but eventually she started to be able to breathe through her nose. She finally started sleeping well. On Saturday, she woke up at 6 am but thought that was too early to get up. So, she went back to bed and woke up again at 11:45. She had never slept in that late.
Ivan and Barb in Retirement
For many years, I kept a family diary devoted to good news and funny stories about my family while the girls were growing up. I stopped a few years ago. I am thinking of starting it up again because I have noticed that a lot of good and funny things are happening to my wife and I.
Monday, 9 February 2026
Wednesday, 4 February 2026
4 February 2026
We got the screen put up on our back patio by five nice Mexican men. They brought a boombox and played Mexican music while they worked. It took them two afternoons. And Barb wanted to be home when they were working to see how they did it. But they finished the work before Barb got home from pickleball, and they did such a good job. We went out to the patio and checked it out, and I couldn't even tell there was a screen there because I wasn't wearing my glasses. It just looked blurry like usual.
There was something strange about their work. They had to follow the engineer’s design, which required installing a brace against the house's wall. But it wasn’t connected to the screen at all. The screen was on the other side of the patio. When we see something like this, we always say the engineer who designed it must have been smoking something strong and failed his exam.
3 February 2026
It was a very windy day when the cat was eating the rabbit outside my office window. The neighbour's barbecue blew over to the side of the patio, and the neighbour’s garbage can blew onto the grass. Our backyard neighbour, who is taking care of my neighbour’s house while they are away, came over in a winter coat and scared the cat away. He pushed the barbecue back onto the patio and picked up the garbage can. But he left the dead rabbit.
Later, the cat picked up the dead rabbit and started carrying it away, crossing the front of our house and the front lawn. Barb watched him go by and was very worried he would leave the rabbit on the side lawn beside her car. But he walked right past our house, and we didn’t see him again.