It’s time to look back at 2023! The good, the bad and the ugly – and we had it all.
January was all about the cats! We lost Sylvester on January 19th and we thought that our hearts would break. It was a very rough time for us adjusting to being a 2-cat family. Almost a year later and we’re still not over it, but we have awesome memories of that little snickerdoodle! Having older cats is difficult, especially when illnesses start creeping in.
February, we celebrated Greg and Bear’s birthdays! That meant baking the giant German Chocolate cake for the umpteenth time! More technology for Greg and we were also VERY late in taking down our outside Christmas lights! Yes, we were THOSE people this year!
March had me trying to relearn crocheting. I got a step-by-step online crochet pattern and tried to learn how to make a tiny penguin. I got lost and it’s still in a bag somewhere in the spare room! Maybe I’ll take it up again sometime… We decided to have railings installed on our newly formed front porch and all the stuff was delivered while we waited for the work to be done. I helped a friend move out of her apartment. Also started thinking about my garden and what I was going to plant this year and did a bit of early spring weeding, although the ground was still pretty hard.
April our oven quit, and we had to buy a new one. There was that embarrassing moment when they pulled out the old one and I had to clean behind it – a tremendous amount of dirt, dust balls, cat toys, grime and grit! How embarrassing! But, the new oven works well and we’re happy with it. I tackled the penguin again but didn’t get much further. It was Lent so that meant making hot cross buns – yum! Got some more weeding done and slowly tackled a few more beds and got my fairy/gnome garden out. Then, in early April, Greg was out taking his laundry to the office and doing his usual exercising by walking around the park, and on his way home he wasn’t concentrating properly and slammed into a road sign, cutting open his head. When he got home, he was covered in blood, freaking me out, so we rushed to Urgent Care where they cleaned him up and he got 14 staples in his head. That meant he was thenceforth called “Zipper-Head”! He’s since healed up perfectly well. Just after that little incident, we had a wonderful visit from Greg’s mom and sister. This was the first time his mom had been to St. Louis, so I immediately embarked on a very rushed and busy tourist trip around the city. It was so lovely to have them here and I hope they come and visit again next year!! (hint-hint). I think the highlight was the Botanical Gardens and watching mom play in the kids’ section of the History Museum (I have photos as proof!). I think Cindy’s favourite was IKEA! (What’s not to like!!). We also went downtown and went up the Gateway Arch, saw the Mississippi and walked a lot around Forest Park and ate a lot of ice cream! The week after they left, I tried to outdo Greg and accidentally fell off our front porch. I just lost my footing as I was putting the chair cushions back out after a rainstorm. I spun off the steps and landed on the concrete, breaking my glasses and cutting my head open. Another trip to Urgent Care! Greg came with me and while they were cleaning me up and I was getting x-rays and a CT scan, Greg had his staples removed. I also had no lasting issues except that we both have a bit of a scar. I see a lot of bubble wrap in our future! This resulted in me getting onto our contractor and insisting that the railings get installed asap. April/May is also the worst allergy time in St. Louis as everything is pollenating. The railing posts were sunk into the ground and concreted in and the cracks made from the jackhammering were repaired.
Late April and early May I got some plants and veggies planted. It was nice to see some colour in the garden again. King Charles had his coronation, and I was up early with my pot of tea watching it and getting into the spirit of it. I AM British so I felt like I needed to take a bit of an interest. May was the perfect month to sit on the front porch with a good book and a cuppa tea before the summer heat got me. I spent a lot of time gardening and watching my garden go from dirt to budding plants. It always fascinates me how a simple seed can turn into something edible! Our railings finally were installed, and we were very happy with them. It totally changed the look of the front of our house. At first it felt a bit confining as it made the porch feel so much smaller, but we are totally used to it now and have made it our own and we love it. May also saw the start of our neighbourhood association events. We kicked it off with the flea market and our first concert of the year. Both huge successes. I was able to finally get rid of 3-4 years’ worth of donated items to our flea market. Covid stopped us from holding our flea market and I was keeping a few things for people to be donated – then a few more things, and before long I had a room full of items. It was great to get rid of them and get my room back! We also fired our garden service and bought a battery-operated lawn mower, weed whacker and leaf blower. If you want something done properly, do it yourself! Our lawn looked much better! Greg put up a couple of shelves for me in the living room and that made a nice difference. At the end of May I reaped my first zucchini and a few other spring veggies, and Greg was happy to braai his first corn of the season. I also helped a friend move again!
June saw us utilizing the front porch a lot. The front of our house gets more shade than the back, so that has become my little oasis. Even Greg seemed to prefer it even though he loves the heat and sun, whereas I hate it. More gardening and weeding and lawn cutting. We had someone come over to quote us on converting a basement storage room into a type of giant linen cupboard – something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. The quote was acceptable, and we signed the docs! We also had an addition to our family and Greg’s nephew’s girlfriend gave birth to little Autumn rather early, but all is well. Then, the start of the great sewer debacle happened. We had a backup in our drainage system, and we were unable to use the washer for a while. I spent every other day at the laundromat doing Greg’s laundry for his business. There were a lot of sheets that needed to be washed regularly and it cost an absolute fortune to do. We called a plumbing company in to sort it out and it just escalated into a massive project that eventually involved jackhammering up half of our basement and replacing all the sewer pipes and lining one of them. We had multiple cameras scoping out the pipes and different results from most of them. The first company did a botched job which the second company had to fix (twice) but they managed to make it right several months later. Also, it was hot! Very hot! We also had our second neighbourhood concert in the park.
In July we made our annual pilgrimage to Phelps, WI to see Greg’s family. It’s never without incident and after leaving very early in the morning when it was still dark, we started our 12-hour drive north. About 2 hours into the trip there was an accident with debris all over the highway. I didn’t have time or ability to swerve, and we hit some of the debris resulting in a flat tyre. We pulled over the side of the road and almost straight away, a highway patrolman stopped to help us. He changed our tyre for us, and we hobbled to the nearest place to get it replaced. It was a holiday weekend and a very small town so naturally they didn’t have staff, nor did they have our size tyre (it’s a farming community so they mostly only had truck tyres). So, we hobbled further to a bigger town and after another couple of tries, finally found a place to replace it for us, after a couple of hours’ wait. We knew this would extend our trip time and we hadn’t yet made it to Greg’s brother to pick him up. All was ok for the rest of the trip, and we had a lovely visit with Greg’s mom. No snow (lol), so I managed to get up the driveway’s hill with no problem. We celebrated mom’s birthday, went downtown to their little July 4th parade, met one of Greg’s old friends and met little Autumn. Our niece also visited on her new UTE and she took me for a drive! Fun!! Let’s do that again in 2024!! The trip home was uneventful. Greg finally got his inflatable pool out and spent a couple of hot days in it listening to our hometown baseball team’s games. More filthy, loud work in our basement. I had to postpone the storage room conversion to September due to the sewer work. Our poor cats were not impressed with all the noise and dust either. The first sewer company made a horrible mess of our basement, connected the wrong sized pipes and did a hack job of concreting. A second company was called in to fix it, only to discover that they’d installed the pipes backwards. This was all inspected via a permit from the City! The second company redid their work and dug up everything else and replaced all the pipes and took much better care of our property. They kept the dust to a minimum and cleaned up every day after they were finished and made sure our water was reconnected when they left. It was pointless for me to try and clean while they were here, so our basement just became a hive of filth for 2 more months. I got my first harvest of tomatoes and banana peppers! My sunflowers grew and my garden started looking rather lush. We had one huge rainstorm resulting in some huge flooding in the back yard. We hadn’t had much rain until then, so the garden soaked it up and the giant lake in the back yard sunk quickly. It was impressive to see though! At the end of July, we had our neighbourhood association trivia night – almost!! Due to the big storm, we had no power at the event so that meant no lights but more importantly, no air conditioning!! We had to postpone it for a week and get all our stuff together again a week later!
August started with our Trivia night: same place, same group of people and this time, with power! We totally sucked at Trivia, but we did win the best table decorations. Yay us! We have to be good at something! Trivia is always a fun night. We had another concert in the park which was very hot and not as well attended but still a big success. I helped a friend move into her new apartment. Our basement sewer work was completed, and I spent a very long time cleaning and getting things mostly back together. We needed to replace the flooring as parts of the carpets was destroyed so we got a quote for vinyl plank flooring and gave them the go-ahead to order it. I washed walls, ceilings and furniture multiple times and the dust just kept coming back as it settled. It was a huge and never-ending job. I’m still finding areas that I missed. One of our neighbour’s went on vacation and a neighbour and I enjoyed taking care of their chickens for a week. I am rather afraid of birds of all kinds so this was a bit of a “face-my-fears” week. I did fine and they were fun to watch and easy to take care of. The eggs made it worthwhile too. Greg hired someone to paint his office. It hadn’t been painted in quite a few years and desperately needed to be spruced up. He also bought a new rug for it and the room looks lovely again! Greg and I celebrated our 20th anniversary, Aggie celebrated her 16th birthday, and we had a lovely visit from Greg’s mom’s neighbour’s and did a few touristy things with them, ending with another successful concert in the park on Labour Day weekend!
September is my birthday month as well at Rugby World Cup month! This time we were able to get the games and they were shown at respectable times. I watched a lot of rugby and yelled my lungs out for the South African Springboks! A friend and I went to the Mandela exhibit at the Science Center, which was excellent. We finally got our basement flooring mostly finished after about a week of work and that meant that I had to re-clean the entire basement again. It was exhausting, but it is done, and it looks lovely. My sweet neighbour put an offer on the house she’d been renting, and it was accepted and finalized! We were so delighted that we don’t have to train up a new neighbour!! AND I still get to play with her awesome dog! Win-win!
In October we bought a new rug for the basement living room and that finished off the basement. It’s such a great feeling to be finally done! We also hosted our first National Night Out block party. I was a little apprehensive that not many people would show up, but we had a great turn out and it was such a fun night getting to know more people on our block and reconnecting with people we already knew. Our basement flooring project finally got completed. They’d had to order extra planks as they didn’t have enough to finish. The day they finished, the closet company came in, and in several hours, the storage room was transformed into a closet and it looks fantastic! It only took me a day to get it all sorted out and I’m very happy with it. It was still hot and my garden was still producing veggies although slowing down. We bought some solar lights for our front porch railing posts and they look great. We got our latest Covid booster so feel nicely protected for the Winter. Our neighbours across from us added to the membership of our block by giving birth to a beautiful baby girl. The Rugby World Cup ended victorious for South Africa with the Bokke winning the Cup again! I even sprayed my hair green for the occasion! I was so thrilled with having rugby in my life for a while again. Halloween saw Aggie and Bear being dressed up, which they hated. They had their annual photo shoot and then ripped the outfits off themselves as fast as they could.
In November a friend and I took a road trip to Grafton, IL and went to a winery and took a stroll around the area. We were looking for the leaves changing, and they didn’t disappoint! We had a lovely trip and vowed to go back again sometime. Greg and I went to see one of my favourite comedians, Kathleen Madigan, at the Steifel Theatre. We thoroughly enjoyed our night out (my birthday gift). I also got my hair permed (woot), cat-sat a gorgeous ginger monstrosity for a friend, baked a ton of cookies and celebrated with another friend in SA as she moved into her new house. Thanksgiving was spent at home, and we invited a couple of friends over to celebrate (and eat) with us! The following day Christmas threw up all over the house as I got stuck into decorating. I love Christmas so it’s never a chore. Our weather was still way too warm, so it was a little weird sitting downstairs with all the decorations and no fireplace on. Greg found a nice warm day to put the outside lights up too.
December was still way too warm with temperatures way above normal for this time of year. I went to a Christmas market in our neighbourhood, more cookies were baked and I coloured my hair. We hosted a Christmas Cheer evening with our immediate neighbour’s and had a lovely evening. My book club had a Christmas lunch and as usual we were involved in several lunches, dinners, and get-togethers of small groups. On Christmas day we had a few friends over and ate a lot and laughed a lot and had a lovely time. I ended up going with a friend to the Garden Glow at the Missouri Botanical Gardens which was amazing. They put up hundreds of thousands of lights at random areas of the Gardens and you’re able to walk around looking at them. Some are set to music; some are flashing, and some are just twinkly. It’s a very popular event with thousands of people going through the gardens while the event is running (several weeks). It was a great way to end the year. Greg has been cleaning out his old computer and transferring data to his new laptop, so it’s been good for him to have several days off to get it done. He had another record-breaking year of business which he’s well pleased about. He still loves what he does and he’s very good at it and his clients recognize that and support him wholeheartedly.
Tonight, being New Year’s Eve, Greg and I are planning on staying home, ordering Chinese food and binge watching something on TV. We may make it to midnight, but we’re not fussed if we don’t. We’re looking forward to a less eventful year in 2024. We have some plans for the year ahead, but our biggest wish is all our friends and family to have a happy, healthy, and less stressful year.