Poutine. Hockey. The Charge made the playoffs!

We opened the Puddle early this year hoping to avoid the most popular dates, which are often unavailable and leave us with a late opening. When we open it later on, we struggle to get the water clear in the warmer days. Then it’s a race against time for getting it up and running for the Youngest’s birthday, which coincides with the long weekend. So Mr. Tucker is out getting the chemicals balanced and cleaning filters on this gorgeous spring day. Since the backyard is essentially our only summer vacation plan it will be fun to get it cleaned up, the garden planted and the pool ready for family and friends.

Tax season was – once again – exhausting. We are lucky to have someone who prepares our taxes for us but as usual: I owed, Mr. Tucker got a refund. It worked out fine except that this year I have to pay quarterly tax instalments because I owed over $3000. Just a reminder for folks on CPP (including CPP-D and OAS) that taxes are *not* taken at the source, so if you have other forms of income during the tax year, you could end up owing. A lot of the complications of this tax year were from the condo rental. Even though I had a loss on the unit, it was still a lot of paper work.

The time in between the end of skiing/snowboarding to the middle of May is the calmest time in the school year. It’s basically the time the kids apply for summer jobs. The Eldest is going back to work for the city & the Youngest got herself a volunteer position with the library. Both positions had extensive interviews and so hopefully between camp/volunteering the Youngest will have a busy summer. We did apply for some jobs for her but we were a bit late and it doesn’t look like that will happen. The Eldest is working on her driver’s license as well, so hopefully she will get that this spring.

I continue to…not spend that much time online? My group chats are hopping and I am so grateful to have kept in contact with a bunch of folks. My brain is much calmer for it as well. Mr. Tucker has started doing Muay Thai twice a week and we are trying to head out for a walk every day (trike for me). I also started doing physiotherapy in January and it’s helped a lot. I am struggling to keep up with my home exercises but that is just plain laziness on my part. When I do them I find my mobility and strength increases exponentially but I still tend to drop the ball when things get busy. Dragon boat starts up in two weeks – along with the chaos of end-of-the-year school activities – and then we are right into summer.

Canada elected a new government & we will see how that goes over the coming months. It’s been a brutal start to 2025 around the world politically. Although I’ve calmed down since the drama of the winter, the world still feels a bit fragile and chaotic.

But life goes on.