Mama-luia

On July 8, 2012 my beloved grandmother passed from this life to the next. She had been in the hospital for a few days with what we thought might be pneumonia, and in the early hours of that Sunday, she left this world, peacefully in her sleep. She had her at least one of her children keeping constant vigil with her at her bedside in the hospital, a testament to the bond she forged with her large brood. There are so many beautiful memories of this woman that have been flooding me lately. I spent so much of my childhood in her home, running around her flat with my siblings and cousins, watching Montreal Canadian hockey games with the unlikely fan of the barely 5" tall grandmother, playing hooky from school to watch Muppet movies, listening in awe to Nana quote lengthy passages from Shakespeare despite having lost some of her memory, and hearing her amazing stories of raising eight children with almost no income, but so much heart, spunk and determination. She suffered a great de...

So it's been awhile since I told you about the sweet things my husband does for me . But I assure you, he still does them. Take our anniversary, which just happened on Thursday. For starters, he took the day off work at my request -- not so much so he could be off on our anniversary as though one oughtn't work on one's anniversary, but so we could have an extra-long weekend to tackle some household projects together, while still squeezing in time for fun Canada Day events and strawberry picking**. So, on a vacation day and our anniversary, perhaps the ideal day for a hard-working man to sit with his feet up drinking a beer and reading Plato, he cleaned out the closets. All of them. That sure made my day. But the highlight was the evening. My only job was to secure the babysitter (easy, with grandparents a'plenty around) and Patrick nominated himself to plan our anniversary celebration. After I got the kids to bed and got changed (he told me to dress up, but...