Category: Personal

The Holidays

Merry Christmas to everyone!

This will be our third Christmas as full timers away from our family, we will not be alone at Christmas, no there will be lots of people around here, other snowbirds and full timers. Some are part of our extended RV family, and others are friends and acquaintances from the parks and the area, no it’s not the same as family but we will have holiday FaceTime and calls with family and others. Of course we miss our family’s at this time of year, but this is a life choice we have made, and we still have no regrets.

There is just something special about laying back in my antigravity chair, enjoying seventy degrees of soul warming sunshine, and a ice cold cocktail in hand, that is oh so very hard to beat. We lived in an area that would often have snow on the ground for Christmas, but there is a lot more world without snow for Christmas than there is with. There is something about Christmas under a palm tree that is just about as special as Christmas under a snowy pine tree…just saying.

We see lots of snowbirds that head home for the holidays, and while it would be wonderful to see family, it also puts you in the middle of all the Christmas traffic and overcrowded airports, no I can’t see that being very enjoyable on any level. Then there are the snowbirds that don’t head south until after the holidays, leaving in cold winter weather with possible snowy or icy conditions. No none of these options much interest us at all, right now our overnight lows are about the same as the daytime highs back up north.

But what is happening in our lives is something that we never expected, as we set out to be nomads, you know break away from all those traditions that have always been in our lives. This issue really started to show up our first year, but is becoming a much bigger factor. It is this RV family that is becoming a very big portion of our lives, it started in January of 2018 when we met the Bannon’s for cocktails at “Beer Bellies Adult Day Care” in Quartzsite AZ. I had know Bob for a number of years like ten or more, but our wives had never met, now add to that that in the last five years or so we lived about 10 minutes apart, oh yah one more little detail, they had decided to sell their house and take an extended vacation, just a couple of months before we did. Now we are great friends and Laurie and Shari are as they say “RV sisters”, then there was Robert and Susan from Newfoundland, opened there live and let us in and they have become part of the family, and visited us a couple of times over this summer, again they are new full timers. Now last Christmas was spent with Bob and Shari on Sanibel Island in Florida with Bob and I enjoying a Caesar, while the girls scoured the beach for sea shells. And last winter added to the RV family with the addition of Ray and Karen full timers from Tennessee and Butch and Betty snowbirds from northern Ohio.

Now we find ourselves planning our travels and stops to include visits, even if it’s just for an extender four hour lunch, and if our plans appear to be not working out, some one steps in and plans a surprise gathering. Just a note, we have seen most of our RV family in the past three months, and are planning a little Quartzsite rendezvous in January, we are meeting Teresa and Anito for a week in LasVegas in mid February and hope to get together with Butch and Betty in April on our return trip back to Niagara.

Mr. Divot

Mr.Divot
Mr. Divot

It’s Tuesday October 22nd and we lost Mr. Divot today. To say it is a sad day is an understatement, he has been a part of our lives for 23 years.

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Napping in the sun

Mr. Divot’s story starts in Hamilton many years ago, when he was born as one of a number of an unwanted litter of kittens, that were dumped into the food court of a Hamilton mall when the pet shop would not except the kittens at only six weeks of age. At the time Laurie and I worked with a technician who’s son was doing a high school co-op at that pet shop. And as wrong as this will sound all the co-op students were told they should get one of the kittens and take it home, so his son did just that, much to the dismay of his father. But Frank knew a lady he worked with that loved cats, so a plan was hatched to get Miss Laurie and this kitten together, which obviously worked as he had planned. So this little tuxedo kitten came to live at our house, the name divot, came from his size, about four inches long, the size of an average golf divot. And on another note anyone who knew me would tell you that I was not a cat person, oh I have mellowed over time because of Mr. Divot, as for some unexplainable reason this kitten took to me. In fact the first night at our place he crawled up on my shoulder and nuzzles into my neck, pretty hard to resist that even for a tough guy.

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April evening at LHR on April 22nd 2019

So Mr. Divot became a part of our family when we lived in a small cottage at the end of Fifty Point road in Winona, and then moved with us to Fonthill where we lovingly referred to him as “Mr. Divot of the Fonthill Divot’s” a role he pulled off with true grace. Being an indoor only kitty, we moved into our house in Fonthill in December of 2000 and it had a sunroom that faced south and had multiple patio doors that let in so much sun, it would almost get too hot to sit in, but this became Mr. Divots favourite place he would lay in the sun for hours at a time. This was not an all season room so on a sunny winter day he would claw at the door to get into the sun room, and after spending a couple of minutes in the cold he would want back into the house. As we added a deck onto the back of our house Mr. Divot would occasionally venture out to the deck to sit on a lap but was never allowed to wander more that a few feet from the deck, as time went on he would try to get more exploring in but was still what I would call a scaredy-cat and would dash back to the door with any noise or movement.

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Mr. Divot sharing a bed with Mr. Sam

As we redid the basement an addition of a natural gas fireplace, laying in front of the fireplace on a winter day until he would be too hot to touch was his go to winter spot, with a basement window being the place in the sun when the fireplace was not on. Of course there was never a shortage of cat toys in Mr. Divots toy box but there were a few favourites, a few were a little fluff ball about the size of a cotton ball in any number of colours, in fact an evening ritual has to find a fluff ball and carry it through the house all the time meowing until he would bring it to our bedroom before jumping onto our bed where he would settle in for the night. Others were just a pipe cleaners that Miss. Laurie would make into a spring shape, he would carry it around and play with it for hours, and he also had a little catnip triangular bag that he would throw off his cat post as the humans would retrieve and throw back to the top of the post, he had us well trained. And the most recent was a hard cat-nip ball that he liked to bat about the coach, we went through a few of those as the didn’t stand up well to outside forces like slides or such.

 

When we decided two years ago to travel, as concerned as we were about his age the vet gave Mr. Divot a clean bill of health and he moved into the role of an exploring kitty, very well as he would like to get out of the coach and go for what we would call a walk-about, so he has explored a number of provinces and states 5 provinces and 28 states in total. And even went for a walk-about yesterday where he met his first chicken, as he aged he became even braver and nothing seemed to scare him anymore, so it is with a heavy heart that we have said goodbye to such an amazing creature that has enriched our home and lives and leaves such a gapping whole in our hearts as we go forward.