Floating in Tea

After Sarah and I arrived in Dublin, my sister brought us back to the place where we were going to stay.  My sister was staying in my cousin, Joyce’s, house.  Sarah and I were going to stay in their chalet.

My sister made us breakfast of tea, bread, ham and salads.

Then we went visit my other cousin, Helen, Joyce’s sister, for a brief visit.  That was the only place where we didn’t have tea.

We went to my Aunt Violet’s and had tea and biscuits.  From there we went to Greystones and had fish and chips for lunch on the harbour.  Next we visited my Aunt Yvonne and Cousin Billy and had more tea and biscuits.  Cousin Billy was hilarious.  He is an eccentric.

Then we went and picked up my last living Aunt Carrie (my father’s sister).  The other Aunts were Aunts by marriage.  Carrie will be 90 this year.  We went out for a drive for the afternoon and looked at grave sites.

Then we picked up another Aunt Pixie and went back Aunt Carrie’s to a big spread of cake and sandwiches and more tea.  My Aunt Carrie showed us around her place and we saw her donkeys and her horse which I think she keeps to keep the grass down.

Her daughter, my cousin Evelyn, came home but was too busy at first to visit with us.  Later when we were having tea she came over to my Aunt Carrie’s house (they live next door to each other).  My Aunt and my cousin were bickering the whole time, we were having tea and it was hilarious to listen to them.

From there, we met my cousin Helen and her daughter and went out to a pub for dinner.  Sarah and I were so stuffed with tea we couldn’t eat anything.  Then we had an early night because we were jet lagged.

First Irish Mistake

Sarah and I flew to Ireland the day before her birthday.  We arrived on her birthday.  My sister picked us up at the airport.  When we went to get in her car, I made my first mistake of the trip.  I tried to get in the driver’s side of the car as a passenger.  I forgot they drive on the other side of the road in Ireland.  That was the first of many mistakes I made in this trip.

Barb’s Weight Loss Program

Barb has been working for two weeks straight fixing up the house to get it ready for sale.  She cleaned everything so much that our real estate agent says it squeaks.  She is painting the baseboards.

She only takes time out to play pickleball.

She lost about 15 pounds and her pants now look baggy on her.

New Fastball Equipment

I thought my batting was poor because I had a poor bat.  So I bought a new bat.  When I brought it home, I found I didn’t like it.  So I returned it and got another.   The second bat that I bought only cost $49.  It was not very good either.

So a couple of weeks later, I went back and bought another more expensive bat.  Then I found the handle was too thin.  So I brought it back and got a new grip added.

Then my helmet broke.  So I went to get a new helmet.

I had all this new equipment for batting.  Unfortunately, I kept hurting my right hand when I hit the ball.  It even hurt to swing the bat.  So I took a couple of weeks off of batting and didn’t use my new equipment.

I made an appointment with my doctor to ask him if there was anything I could do to help my hand.  When I went to see him, of course, I couldn’t seem to show him where my hand hurt.  He said he would make an appointment with a sports medicine doctor anyway.

When I finally got my appointment, it was going to be a month later.  I decided I was go back to batting because it didn’t seem to make sense to not bat and let my hand get better, then see the sports medicine doctor when I didn’t have a sore hand.

Laura’s Boxes

We had cleaned out Laura’s room and put her stuff in the basement.  Then we rented a storage unit for Laura to put the stuff.  Barb was surprised to find that the storage unit place was just down the road from our house.  They sold boxes and packing tape at the storage unit place.

Barb made it my job to box up all of Laura’s stuff.  I bought a number of boxes and started packing.  I packed everything in the basement and Laura wanted me to label the boxes so she would be able to find things later.

A couple of days later, Julia came over to look through her stuff.  She asked about her old school books.  Barb said they were downstairs.  Of course, I had packed them in Laura’s boxes.

Julia was happy when she realized I had labelled the boxes.  She found a box that was labelled books.  She opened it and found her books right away in the first box she opened.

Sarah asked about the body cast she got for her scoliosis.  I had packed it in one of Laura’s boxes too.  I knew it was Sarah’s body case but I thought maybe Laura wanted to make it into an art project.  Unfortunately, I didn’t label the box that I put it in.

VHS Tapes Everywhere

Barb used to watch her favourite TV shows on the VCR.  We had about 5 VCRs.  Now that she uses Kodi on the computer, there is no need to tape shows on the VCR anymore.  So I gathered up all the VCRs and brought them to Future Shop for electronic recycling.

When we were cleaning up the house, everywhere we looked we found more VHS tapes.  Barb had collected hundreds of them.  She stored them in boxes all over the basement.  I brought them to Future Shop for electronics recycling as well.  It was embarrassing bringing box after box of VHS tapes to the store day after day.

Nice Neighbours

Barb is getting the house ready to sell.  Our real estate agent told her to clean under the hood of the oven and she did.  The real estate agent said, “De-clutter”.  So Barb took all of the dried floral pieces off the walls.  We threw out so much stuff on garbage day.  Some of our neighbours picked up some of the stuff for free but we were sad to see that more things didn’t go to happy homes.

Our neighbour gave us some flower pots and lawn furniture to spruce up our patio.  She lent Barb some gardening tools to pick out the weeds between the bricks.  Our neighbour even did some weeding herself on the front walk.