Living the Good Life

All of the container potatoes are growing!

The kids bought me some amazon gift certificates for Mothers Day.  I have been wanting a fit bit since buying hubby one for hubby for Christmas.  I bought the flex as have no need to monitor my heart rate (the kids and I bought the Charge HR for hubby).  It also monitors your sleeping patterns.  After wearing it for a week it definitely indicates what I have always known, that I sleep on average 4-5 hours per night and am restless between 20-30 times with complete wake-ups 1-5 times a night.  Yes, I have difficulty sleeping and always have.  The second thing I realized is that when working from home it is extremely difficult to be active.  This week I worked a couple of short shifts at my old company helping them out so was more active and yet it is still very difficult to break 10,000 steps a day.  The best bet for me is a 1/2 hr treadmill workout (we own one, bought used) a day plus a long walk with the dog.  I have also been inputting all my food trying to stay on track calorie-wise.  I hope to lose 10 pounds - we shall see how long this takes.

There is a forest path about two blocks from our home which is great for taking walks with Buddy.  We've had to avoid this area for several weeks as a cougar had been sighted near here just before we went to Spain and we didn't want Buddy to become a large cat appetizer.  For anyone who doesn't live on Vancouver Island we have alot of cougars.  They normally shy away from populated areas but because there is a plentiful food supply (bunnies/deer) and they have no natural predators on the island they seem to end up in neighborhoods more often than humans or cougars would like.

Flower planters - my souvenirs from Spain

We carried the two planters in the photo above back from Spain, they are each about 7 inches wide and 10 tall - fortunately I have a hard-sided carry-on that protected them well.  The only things we tend to buy on holidays are those we can actively use around the house and not dust collectors.  I think they look great on the pillar that holds up the roof over our back yard patio.  At a whopping cost of 6 Euro each I love them.   It has been raining the last few days so if we end up with a sunny day I will take some pictures of the rest of the patio.  I don't mind the rain as it has made our chance of fire on the Island so much lower and greened things up a bit.  I fully expect another long hot summer and we need every drop of water we can get.

Wading with Buddy

Fortunately the weather was nice last weekend when my Stepdaughter was visiting.  In addition to watching lots of movies and family game night and we went to the beach a couple of times to walk on the sandbars.  Buddy seems to have lost all fear of the water (he loves the sand but could take or leave the water last year) and was totally enjoying himself.  Maybe this year he will try swimming - he absolutely did not want to try that last year.

I paid our house insurance this week - $1008 for the year.  $400 of that is just for earthquake insurance alone, important where we live.  I had budgeted for $1030 so was happy to see it came in a few dollars lower, but I fully expect the vehicle insurance bills which come in a few weeks to be higher than I budgeted for after hearing rates went up.  As a result the money I receive from working part-time at the company I used to work (temporarily, a couple of shifts per month for May June and July) for will be split evenly between the travel fund and the big bill fund.  We save all year for these bills -  house insurance, car insurance and house taxes are all due in the months of June and July.  That doesn't work for everyone but we have always paid them outright incurring no interest and when we had a mortgage we did not roll the house taxes into that as were trying to minimize costs.

On Thursday we are taking our second trip this year, this time a road trip with Buddy.  We are driving to Ucluelet and Tofino on the other side of the island for a three night getaway for Hubby's Birthday.  We have never been to that side of the island and are looking forward to it.  We hope to take the kayaks depending on the weather so will wait and make a decision by Tuesday as it is no fun to kayak in wind and rain, but you can still have a lot of fun walking the beach paths.  We are renting a tiny cabin on the water (one room) that has a minifridge, two burner stove, microwave and toaster.  It also has a BBQ.  I need compile a list of all the stuff we need to take and start packing this weekend.  We intend to eat most of our meals in as this is a low budget weekend with the exception of possibly finding the famous taco truck in Tofino or the less famous but equally tasty fish and chips truck in Ucluelet.

We live an idyllic life here on the island, one that we planned and saved for and still work very hard to maintain.  Life is good!