Spring Has Sprung

Now that we are past the important day in March, we are officially into the Spring timetable.

I'm pretty excited that Spring is here because I'm always tired in Winter. I know that we have not had very much snow fall this year, but it has been quite cold on many days. I can generally cope with the hot weather a lot better, although I have to admit that temperatures around 85° or more in the summertime makes it difficult for someone like me to walk around very much during the day.

Of course, this is a very special and important Spring for me. It was in this time period a year ago that there was a very significant change for me in my life. As you may recall, last year I was quite sick around this time and was in the process of recovering from my very difficult illnesses that changed the nature of my life when I was in hospital during the winter. That meant that effectively I missed physically the first part of Spring and only started going outside on a significant basis after we moved to Tecumseh towards the end of May. I was able then to start walking again and was gradually able to increase the amount of time that I was outside, as I walked generally 3 times per day i.e. right after all of the meals. As time went on, and as we walked in the summertime, my walks per day lasted over 2 hours. I sure exercised a lot!

In my first year here, a number of people did see me walking around the area, accompanied by my wife Marsha. I don't think that many people knew what I was recovering from and why I was walking around all the time. The good part though is that no one seemed to be negative in dealing with me, but were rather quite supportive and welcoming.

Of course, living in the environment in my condominium is quite useful for my wife and me. Unlike the massive property where I lived in my old house, I don't have a whole bunch of property that requires lawn cutting every week. Rather, it requires no outside maintenance since we pay for gardeners as part of our monthly condominium expenses. This is a real perk!

I have pretty much "retired" from working at least at this stage of my life and certainly enjoy the life I'm living now. I had to learn how to deal with this new environment after my illness and recovery because it was not the kind of existence we were living before at all. I think we have done a pretty good job of adjusting.

I can hardly wait for warmer weather to come. I really do want to do all kinds of things early in the year that I could not do very well last year because of my physical condition. I must admit that I am not sure exactly what I am going to do in the garden. I am hardly a great gardener in any event. I will be allowed to do some flower gardening work provided that a lot of it is done in my own flowerpots. I actually bought one last year for some flowers and with masterful watering was able to keep them blooming for a good part of the summer. It will be fun to try to do it again this year.

Believe it or not, my walking really worked out last summer. Towards the end, I was walking several hours per day all around this area when the weather was good to get some great exercising for myself. Actually, my wife became very fit as well over the summertime because she accompanied me on all of these walks. I was very impressed with her. She looked so fantastic as well.

Yes, we were the "older couple" holding hands as we walked down the street. Now that is something as I have mentioned before that I have rarely seen many older couples do. Oh well, maybe people thought that this couple of 41 years were actually newlyweds.

Naturally, with my fantastic BBQ in the backyard, I will be doing a lot of the cooking this year. Meat, chicken and even some fish will be prepared by me, as long as the weather is good because it is just a task I really enjoy. Naturally, I have to prepare hot dogs as well and hamburgers too. They taste so good after being barbecued. Who knows what else I might try and learn how to cook. There are so many kinds of food that I can experiment with.

Sun-tanning by sitting outside or going for a walk, swimming at the Condominium's pool, sharing snacks and drinks with neighbours around here and even having some BBQ treats with friends and family in our unit behind their house are all activities that I hope that my wife and I will be pursuing as time goes on. I would also like to schedule visits with people that have been in contact with me from the time I was hospitalized to now. I really appreciate all the on-going support and everyone who takes a moment to read my blog posts. This helps with my recovery and getting emotions out, while re-connecting to the world.

So there you have it. Yes, it is the new life that I'm just starting after a lot of the misery that I went through last year. Fortunately, I have a fantastic partner, Marsha, who helped me so much and continues to be by my side. I am hoping that there will be plenty more memories to make this year for all of us.