2023 was a good year. Lots of good things happened in our lives.
Unfortunately, we brought in the year with Covid. I apparently caught it visiting friends and family in Montreal at Christmas and on New Years Eve, tested positive, then spent the next two weeks in our bedroom, drinking orange juice and wearing gloves around the house so I would not touch anything with germy hands. Two days after I tested negative and felt better, Yim got it and three more weeks went by before our household was feeling back to normal.
But then we visited Paris, which, of course, was fabulous.
We rented an apartment in the seventh arrondisement and a five minute walk from the Eiffel Tower. What a trip this was to me. I think about my life and these moments becoming a part of them – being able to visit Paris and stay in an apartment where we can see The Eiffel Tower from our front door. I feel very grateful for these moments. Incroyable !
If you haven’t already read about that trip, I’ve inserted a link to the post above and here >
We also did a fun 14 day road trip through Welland, Ontario, then across New York State, where we we lucky enough to accidentally end up in Woodstock – we loved it there – then we headed to Maine, and came back through Vermont and ended up in Prince Edward County along the shores of Lake Ontario for two days.
Our first stop of the road trip was a quick visit with Tom and Beth (and extended family) before heading down to Watkins Glen State Park, which was absolutely wonderful. I highly recommend visiting this trail system.
Woodstock was a fluke. We thought Catskill, New York would be a nice place to stop for the night so we booked a room there out in the sticks… but the town was pretty shoddy and we spent close to an hour trying to find a vegetarian restaurant. After visiting at least six different possibilities, the last place, which was closed, suggested we drive to Woodstock, that there was a great vegetarian restaurant there called Garden Cafe. It was fabulous. Then we got to wander around all the incredible artsy shops as well. Serendipity.
In Maine, we stopped in Kennebunkport for a three day visit with our friends Colin and Sally, who spent some time showing us the highlights in between us playing catch-up and preparing meals together. We originally met Colin and Sally when they came to visit us at The Inn at Robert’s Grove in Belize and have remained close. From there, we headed north to visit and hike in Acadia National Park.
We would have liked to have spent more time hiking different trails but considering the amount of time we had, we enjoyed our introduction to the park. The weather was mostly overcast and slightly too warm, so the colours had not fully shifted to proper fall tones, which was a shame. However, I am glad we visited in October. I cannot imagine how busy this place must be in high season, given the amount of people that were on the trails. In fact, at one stop, one of the locals told us not to visit in high season, that it was just nuts there and far too busy. It’s a small place and as it was, the visitor parking lots were chock full of cars. That said, overall we both enjoyed our visit.
On our way home, we spent two days in Prince Edward County touring the area, visiting the small villages, hiking and eating and found a few really good restaurants. Our favourite was the Drake Devonshire in Wellington. It was a nice relaxing way to end up our vacation but we were glad to head home.
On a Personal Note
I am happy to report that my health challenges of the past few years are as under control as hoped for, both medically and intellectually – meaning I have internalized my potential future health issues, incorporated that information into my life and come to terms with the fact that it will always be in my mind now. The Doctors say they will now monitor me every six months for the next 10 years. I have learned to live with it.
Having said that, I intend to continue to focus on my health and fitness routines, which led to several other healthy accomplishments this year.
It’s been four full years now since we shifted to a Plant Based Diet and we love it. There’s a ton of stuff I am still reading about and testing and seeing what fits into our lives though. I just finished reading the Gut Immune Connection, which details the connection between what we eat and our brain, which I found interesting. If you feel up to it, the author draws some interesting parallells between our gut/brain connection and plant life in general. I enjoyed the book.
I have also done some reading about Veganism now and why Vegans don’t eat cheese and dairy, which makes sense to me so I intend to cut both of those items out of my diet in 2024, although we virtually never have dairy at this point in our diet journey.
My goals each year moving forward will be to continue to become a healthier and better person. By next year, I hope to stop eating ALL processed foods. Obviously, during this four year change, there has been big changes in my body weight. I’ve lost close to 60 pounds over that period and I’ve noticed an increase in my energy levels and an improved clarity of my mind. I look good and I feel good… like a much younger version of myself.
Here’s a couple of other things that happened this year that I am pleased with…
This Years Biggie…
I completed my three year Hormone Replacement Therapy. I am proud of myself for getting through that with courage, determination and discipline.
I had done the reading. I knew what the potential side effects were and I was determined to exercise as diligently as possible to minimize them. The treatment was going to replace all the Testosterone in my body with Estrogen for several years and I was told it was going to mess with me. The Doctors told me physical exercise would help and I took that seriously. Nonetheless, I got hot flashes and night sweats for three years. There were mood changes for sure. I also got some serious chills and on at least a half dozen occasions, they were so bad that I sat in a hot bathtub crying uncontrollably while my teeth chattered. The injection needles were huge and hurt like hell. They stuck them in my stomach and the more weight I lost, the less fat the Nurse had to stick the needle in.
But it’s done now, my PSA is non-detectible and my Testosterone has reached halfway back to normal levels and I feel strong so my life will continue.
I consider that this year’s biggest accomplishments and all I had to do was get through it… Geez – Life huh?
Becoming Sober
During this, I also stopped drinking alcohol this year. Turns out alcohol did not mix well with the large amount of drugs being injected into my body or play well with my mood swings and hot flashes. In other words, alcohol and drugs inside my body at the same time weren’t a good combination for me. It affected my life and my relationships with people I care about, including and most importantly, myself.
I decided that if I was to continue my exploration of how healthy I can become, alcohol had no place in that lifestyle.
So, I accepted the fact that it was a problem and found the strength and resolve to stop.
If I have done anything to anyone reading this while being a little tipsy during the past three years, which sometimes loosened my tongue – and was replaced with a rather sarcastic sense of humour – I offer a heartfelt apology. Not that it is an excuse but the frustration of the medication occasionally gurgled to the surface.
This is a significant change in my life which I commit to maintaining.
Weaning Myself off Otrivin
Many years ago, I broke my nose playing hockey. In fact, I broke it a few times and since we moved back east from Victoria and possibly before that, I’ve been congested and was using a nasal spray called Otrivin to alleviate the congestion but it was getting out of hand. I couldn’t breathe properly on almost any given day and I finally went to the Doctor to ask for help. Turns out the more you use Otrivin, an over the counter decongestant, the worse your conditions become. Great.
He prescribed a steroid spray, and that has worked well. I can breathe normally again for the first time in years. And I don’t have to use it every day… in fact, by the end of this year, Doc says I should be able to use it once a week and then stop entirely.
To me, that is a big deal. Seriously, I can breathe all day and all night now. HUGE.
My Training Regime
I continued following my exercise routine with the goal of decreasing my body fat – particularly the fat around my obliques and my pecs. The Zoladex injections, which were basically an Estrogen hormone replacement for Testosterone, caused my body to retain water in places I did not appreciate. It has been more of a challenge than I anticipated but it is one I am comfortable working on until I get my body back the the way I want it.
I have started to weigh myself daily and track what I eat loosely to ascertain what foods fluctuate my weight and have learned that as expected, almost all processed foods result in weight gain. When I stick to a whole food diet, my daily exercise seems to be enough to maintain my body weight.
On November 20, I found out that my Testosterone was now halfway back to normal so I should see some positive changes in my muscle building. Because of that, I intend on joining a gym in January to restart my strength training.
A saddle bag of groceries on my ride home.
For me, change takes time but over the past four years, I have taken to running most mornings, which has now morphed into a daily habit. Had someone told me four years ago that I would be running 10K – 15K six days a week, I doubt I would have seen that coming. I am still swimming one mile (84 laps) twice a week and in the warmer weather, I am also biking an average of 15K daily (in the warmer weather months).
This year I decided to also do virtually all of our grocery shopping on my bike, and that provided me additional motivation to go for more bike rides. We are lucky that three major grocery stores are right along the bike path.
Understanding my personality has been key to all this being possible. Change is not something I can do some days and then take a break from other days. For me, it pretty much has to be a shift in my lifestyle. It requires daily dedication and self-discipline, to the point where the new habit takes the place of an old one and no longer requires a conscious effort on my part. Our friend Karen would have said it was because I am slightly ‘On the Spectrum’, which was her polite way of saying I am sometimes a tad obsessive.
Yim’s Ballet, Burlesque, Zumba and Health
Yim continues to enjoy her ballet classes twice a week and performed her very first Ballet Recital on stage in Wasaga Beach in early June of this year, during which she had a solo. The video is posted above. She had talked to me over the years about her taking ballet lessons as a young girl but I had never seen her perform in person. I was impressed by how graceful her movements are. I don’t know much about ballet but I do know grace when I see it.
She also still teaches Zumba twice a week, which means she is also busy learning new routines on a regular basis – I often hear her tapping her feet with her headphones on when I am coming up the stairs and she is now doing a few fitness classes at the Y.
Plus she is enjoying her Burlesque Troupe, Kat’s Meow in Stayner, which is run by our friend Kat Salvador. Every Sunday afternoon, she heads off to have some fun with a group of women. In between, I get to see a lot of costume development here at home.
Kat and her partner Kim have become good friends and we love their company. Kim’s a hoot. He has so many kooky stories about his years in the music business and seems to have worked with everyone from Alice Cooper to Celine Dion. He is also a very talented recording artist. He turned me on to several new artists this year and introduced me to Studio 79 in Blue Mountain.
Here’s one of Kim’s songs –If the End isn’t in the Wind
Overall, Yim is one healthy lady but she did have a few little issues this year, which we have looked into and are dealing with. She began having a pain in her butt (No, it wasn’t me), so we made an appointment with the Doc, who made us an appointment with a Nerve Specialist (in Barrie), who did a bunch of tests and found nothing and we also made an appointment for an MRI (in Etobicoke), which did find a few things.
It turns out there is some mild degenerative disease throughout her spine, particularly between Lumbar L5 and S1 so we have made an appointment with an Osteopath to see what can be done.
Our family Doctor says if Yim can still do all the dance and exercise she does, it is nothing to worry about at this point, but we plan on seeing the Osteopath anyways. Our Doctor explained it very well and we feel like we understand what can be done and we will do that. Nothing to worry about at this point.
Plus she is still sewing regularly. By regularly, I mean she has clients calling her almost daily.
Around the House
We did a bunch of work around the house this year.
We installed a new backsplash in the kitchen and updated the laundry room by adding a vintage pipe clothing rack on the wall for drying purposes and for Yim’s sewing, wall cabinetry and a nice stainless steel sink and cabinet. We also acquired a couple of new paintings by Sue Tupy. In the backyard, we added several new Cedars into the garden, added a bean trellis on the back of one of our garden beds, put in a stone path walkway to the backyard and added a small privacy fence around our hot tub, all of which we are very pleased with.
In our gardens, our Kale did exceptionally well this year – in fact, as of this writing, it is still growing even with a light dusting of snow. We grew purple potatoes for the first time as well as our normal veggies – bok choy, several lettuces, purple basil, dill, tomatoes, swiss chard, green beans and celery.
Our Golden Russet espalier experiment did well, growing at least 18 inches and yielded a handful of apples and our Yellow Dwarf Plum tree did exceptionally well – providing us with well over a hundred plums. Our strawberry patch continued to do very well and I had to build a larger container. Our blueberries started to take root this year and gave us a small container of fruit and we planted raspberries for next year.
Time Spent with Friends
For those of you who read my posts, you will know that last year I was working to conserve the greenspace south of our house from development and in the process, we made some new friends in the community – most notably David and Gail Jeffries. David is a semi-retired Architect and pretty creative guy. Last January, he made some ice snow globes and I helped him set them up in our forest, which we were trying to save. We thought it may help bring additional attention to the possibility of saving the drive of old growth spruce trees by lighting up the walkway for residents to enjoy on cold clear winter evenings but an Arborist declared the trees well past their prime so they will be removed during development.
That said, the Town of Collingwood did reach an agreement with the developer which included many of the concessions we asked for so I am happy with that and think all our neighbours should be as well. If you are interested in what we accomplished, you can read that story here >
I appreciated all the help and support David and Gail gave me during the process and am enjoying their friendship.
Our daughter-in-law to be, Natalie, visited Toronto and we spent the day with her playing pool and eating Chinese food. That was fun but this time, there was no grey area as to who is the superior pool player unless of course she let me win 🙂
As usual, we had our two visits with Tom and Beth this year and enjoyed taking them to Nottawasaga Bluffs while they were in Collingwood. Tom and I have been friends for almost 40 years now and it’s a comfortable friendship, like I think family should be like. We are all easy with each other and always have a good time. We will be spending a few days with them between Christmas and New Year this year in Welland.
We also got to spent quite a bit of time with Sue Tupy and her partner Bill this year as I worked with Sue to build her a new website. Sue is a cool lady and an amazing artist. Check out her new website at www.suetupy.com
In December, we enjoyed a surprise birthday celebration in Toronto for Yim’s brother Andy. It was fun to see the big extended family all in one place again including Suyin, Cody and Nat, who managed to make it in from Montreal for the weekend.
A Goodbye
Sadly, a woman in my life named Jean Collins passed away at the age of 95 from terminal Bone Cancer. Jean was the Mother of a late 1970’s era girlfriend and a Nurse. Jean took care of me in my early 20’s after shoulder surgery on my rotator cuff. She welcomed me into her home and made sure I was okay. She also made certain I did not take too much of the Demerol the Doctors prescribed. After my parents passed away, she and her husband Fred were always there for me as surrogate parents for the past 45 years.
Fred and Jean owned a farm in Bethany Ontario for many years with a pond in the center of the property. In 1999, I took Yim there to meet them and while visiting the pond and standing on the old dock, Jean walked up behind me and pushed me in. She enjoyed a good laugh at that, as did Yim and I loved how easily that bonded the two of them forever.
I will miss her and am grateful for our last visit together. Yim and I brought Jean a bottle of red wine that she had asked for and we wheeled her out into the sunshine and had lunch with her. When we poured her a glass of wine, she tasted it and said – ‘Mmmmmm’, and smiled.
The last words we ever said to each other were “I love You”.
Some weeks later, I woke in the middle of the night feeling her presence in the room with me and I thought to myself, I have to call in the morning. When I did, I was told Jean had passed away peacefully in her sleep. I was with Sue Tupy later that day and she told me that Jean’s spirit had contacted me during the night to let me know she was okay and on her way to walk by Fred’s side, which I thought was sweet.
Rest in peace Jean.
Cooking
I’d also like to throw in that in 2023, I started to cook with more confidence, adding several very good dinner recipes to our lives. I wanted to start learning to cook so while Yim was taking Burlesque classes on Sundays, I started to prepare a different dinner each week as a surprise.
This year I learned to make Miso & Peanut Butter Aubergines, Tofu Miso & Mushroom Steaks, Primavera Pasta Salad, a Swiss Chard and Potato Bowl, a Barley Bowl, Crunchy Thai Peanut & Quinoa Salad, a Cashew & Lo Mein Stir Fry, Butternut Squash & Sweet Potato Soup and learned to make a Toasted Sesame & Ginger Salad Dressing and a wonderful Peanut Butter & Tamari Salad Dressing.
I am pretty pleased with myself for learning these dishes.
Grace…
Our friends Joe and Gillian had a girl last year named Grace and are in the process of launching their own supplements business. Both of them managed a local gym that Yim and I were members of, where we became friends (but the gym was forced to close its doors this December due to some poor ownership attention to detail on the part of the owners), and they bravely launched Thrive Protein. Since Yim and I take a protein powder every day, we were excited to learn that was what they were doing and we have been supporting them since.
That has included being lucky enough to be their ‘Official’ babysitters at arms length for Grace. Whenever they need a break or have business to attend to, we have been more than happy to be able to enjoy Grace in our home. She is a happy little girl and we enjoy her company. We both enjoy having her around…
Happy New Year
In closing out the year, I was happy to be able to share a dinner with my three favourite girls at Andy’s 70th Birthday Celebration in December below.
Happy New Year everyone.
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