Richard Killey

The vast majority of the posts on this site are about my grandchildren, my children, my childhood, or my young adult life. None about me as I age. Well, for a change this post is about something in my later years (I recently celebrated my 60th birthday) and this story deserves to be up there with those other important stories of my life.

This is about a beautiful woman that I met about a year ago. But so much has happened it seems like a lot more than a year.

It has been an awesome year for Cass and I. From that first email on February 8, 2010, to the first hike a week later, and then fast forward to today, our first official Valentine’s Day. So many awesome memories. I will have to start a new category, “My Golden Years”!

I look forward to many more Valentine’s Days, and the 364 days in between each one.

Love you Cass.

I woke up before dawn yesterday, and as I lay there looking out the window, I saw a sight that almost froze the blood in my veins.

The constellation Orion was low in the sky, almost straight south of me. That brought back memories of both my childhood, and that of my brother’s.

Both of us were astronomy buffs to some degree. I was always into science, especially space related. After the Hardy boys, I moved to Tom Swift, and shortly thereafter, adult style science fiction. Considering how well he did in school (!) I am not sure what got my brother into astronomy. He ended up being quite the StarTrek fan, labouriously putting together almost the entire series on VHS, taped bit by bit from TV. We were supposed to see the most recent movie together, but he saw it with someone else and said it was not that good. I have yet to see it.

Okay – what does this all have to do with winter?

The constellation Orion (a warrior) is a winter constellation here in Canada. Its appearance just before dawn tells me that winter is coming soon.

Bundle up!

Dad came home from work one day when I was in my early teens. Once he got in the door he checked out the mail and several others matters, and then asked if I knew where mom was.

Oops! I had forgotten to tell him that she phoned to say she had been in a car accident. Off dad went to check it out.

I do not think that mom was physically hurt very much, but emotionally she was a wreck when they got home. She had been making a left turn and someone started to pass her, and BOOM!

She ended up going to court over it, as they figured she had not signalled and it was her fault. She claimed that she had. My dad says that the judge threw the case out.

It has been almost 5 months of marriage, and the 2 love birds are still like they are on their honeymoon! And I have learned that Les is a romantic. I have found some poems!!! The only bad point is that Kristina works an afternoon shift, so they do not see a lot of each other except on weekends.

Les celebrates a birthday in 2 weeks and I am looking forward to seeing what Kristina does for the big day. Stay tuned.

Kristina is going to the altar! I think she has found a great guy, and I hope and pray that they grow and learn together in a positive way. There is definitely potential for fireworks, but also for a great level of teamwork. As usual, I will be pretty much a hands off father/father-in-law, giving advice when asked.

I am looking forward to the big day, and the many years to follow.

Les (soon to be my son-in-law) is like his fiance’s maternal grandfather, in that he can usually figure out how to fix or build almost anything. One of his tasks today was to cut a piece off one of those molded marble counter tops. He got a great deal on one, but it was too long.

He went to Home Depot and bought a diamond blade. He then attached the blade to an electric grinder and set up the hose so that water was constantly washing the blade and the marble. Presto. Top is now the correct length.

Hold it! Water, electric grinder! Isn’t that dangerous? Probably, but Les is still around to tell me the story.

Reminds me of the little house that Heidi and I bought in 1977. About 500 sq. ft. of luxury. NOT! Anyhow, it had very few proper electric circuits. I had studied house wiring in grade 12, so I figured it should be easy to add a new circuit. There was room for a new breaker in the main panel so I went and bought all the necessary stuff. After roughing in the new wiring, I grabbed a working flashlight and went into the basement to wire in the new breaker. For safety reasons I was going to shut off the main 100 amp breaker so I could add the new 15 amp breaker to the panel.

Oops!

There was no main breaker. The hydro was coming into the individual circuits directly from the pole. Now what?

Well, I was 26, and on a roll, and not interested in discussing this with the hydro company, figuring they would make me upgrade to a proper breaker system at $$$$ cost.

I got 2 dry cinder blocks, put a dry piece of wood on them, put on dry rubber boots, stood on the wood, and did the wiring on live, hot circuits. ZAP!!!!

No, I was fine. Just like Les. No electrifying moments.

Would I do that today? No way!!

Jasmine has always loved the water. Maybe it is because her mom used one of those water birth methods when delivering. There is also a definite swimming gene in the Killey family, as my brother Jim was a huge fan of the activity.

Now I have been told that Jasmine has the basics of swimming figured out. I asked when she took lessons. She never has! Wow, a natural!

I feel deathly ill. It started last Saturday evening and will probably take until at least the coming weekend to clear up. I am even taking a prescription, which is usually pretty amazing, as I detest man-made drugs.

Ever since I was a kid I have hated being sick. Especially stomach flu. As a kid I hated upchucking with a passion. Kristina, on the other hand, may have hated it, but seemed to be able to get it over with and move on.

The one I have now is a combo deal. Both lung and throat infection. I feel crummy, have low energy levels, and am bored.

When my little brother came along, I was almost 9 years old. I thought he was awesome. It was so neat to have one, and I was so proud of him.

Then he grew up!

Shortly after “Jimbo” learned to walk and open bedroom doors, I developed a definite love-hate relationship with him. I was an avid model builder, but it did not seem to matter where I put them, Jim would figure out how to get at them. He would then play with them until there was nothing left except little tiny pieces of plastic and decals.

In our latter years in 402 Grantham Avenue I had a model railrood, HO scale. I don’t remember him wrecking parts of it, so maybe he was over his destructive phase by then. He did, however, continue to cause heartache to our parents. It is a miracle our dad is still alive, about to celebrate his 81st birthday.

Back to the love-hate relationship.

Guess what I named the city on my train layout? Jamesville, after my little bro.

My mom was a very active card player. Whether it was bridge (both casual and tournament style) or crazy eights, she loved card games. I think that her mom, my grandma, was the inspiration.

When Grandma Girling came for a visit, out came the cards. I remember as I got older I would actually get a bit upset with her, as she would always arrange it that I would win. I once told her that I need real competition in order to get better.

I babysat Jasmine last night (she’ll be 5 on Tuesday!!!) and we played 3 hands of a card game. Officially it was Old Maid, but I played it more like rummy. Well, there were 2 bad cards in the deck. One was the old maid and the other was a card that was missing its twin. Jasmine quickly figured out that these 2 cards were not good.

I notice in the first hand that we played she would always take the furthest card to her right when she picked from my hand, so I started to put the bad cards there if I had them. She did not seem to notice the negative pattern so I finally told her that I was tricking her by putting the bad cards at that end. She said that I would not trick her anymore and sure enough she started taking cards in random spots.

Kristy thought that was mean of me to take advantage of Jasmine. Hey, it’s up to Grandpa Richard to help prepare her for the card sharks, the hustlers. What better way than to have her experience defeat in a controlled environment.

Now she will be more wary of Grandpa’s tricks.

p.s. We tied in the first 2 hands, but then in hand # 3 Jasmine beat me 9 to 7. Her comment upon learning that she had won? “Now I trick Grandpa.”