Race to the finish

Chicory weed, one of my favourite summer flowers

Hapi can no longer climb the basement stairs on her own, she waits at the bottom while I go down and arrange a towel sling under her rear end. Sometimes we manage it smoothly, sometimes not. Those stairs are tricky, sometimes I lose my balance and fall on top of her, sometimes I move too fast and she stumbles. The new normal. A friend asked me if I could increase her pain meds but I don't think pain is the problem, it's muscle wasting.

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Big excitement at the Reservoir the other day, a few of us standing around the beach when three eagles appeared overhead. One eagle attacked another, they locked talons and grappled in mid-air amid much whistling, then all three flew away. Two returned to the tree they usually hang out in and whistled for quite a while after.

One of the people on the beach happened to be a naturalist who had a camera with a big telephoto lens; he tried to get a photo of the event but he says it's not very good, it all happened too quickly. However he did have a recent photo of the two baby owls at the Reservoir which he showed us. I had seen one of the babies a couple of weeks ago and then it disappeared and I feared the worst. Not so, he said, the two babies are now adult-sized and flying around a bit. It takes a lot of practice to fly through dense forest.

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We got a new member in our writing group and one person wrote that we should give her a copy of our "guidelines". Once again I voiced opposition to the idea—I really dislike that document, it doesn't reflect what we actually do and now that we are totally online it is kind of irrelevant. Nobody responded to my objections so I thought that meant that no one agreed with me, however one member did eventually write to say that she was in total agreement and was glad I had spoken up. I would like that document just to die of neglect, I am not really up for the turmoil of yet another revision process.

Fireweed: harbinger of fall, the higher the flowers on the stalk the closer it is

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I took my car to the garage yet again for a final repair to replace a broken transmission mount. The car has been making awful noises for over a year now and this was supposed to fix it. I don't doubt the broken mount, however the noise is still there. I arranged to go out for lunch with a friend at a place across the road from the garage while they did the repair, this is the first time we've gotten together since mid-March and we had a great time. The garage phoned me to say the car was ready and they would leave the key in the car because they like to take a two-hour lunch. After lunch I drove my friend home and a couple of hours later I called the garage to say I was coming back to settle the bill.

I told the mechanic the noise was still there, he was sure he had fixed it so he wanted to take another look. In the end, by process of elimination, he is deducing that the problem is the transmission itself. His recommendation is not to fix it, too expensive, and start looking for another vehicle. He gave me a discount on the cost of replacing the transmission mount. Transmission might break, but it won't fall off! So there we are, dying dog and dying car.

My friend's vision is completely gone now, she is much worse than she was in March. But she's a barrel of laughs and it's good to spend time with her, we laughed ourselves silly. At the restaurant the staff were all masked. At one point one waitress started yelling at a man to get out, get out right now. The man left and we were staring at the waitress wondering what just happened. She laughed and said, We do this all day, I yell, he leaves by the back door and walks around to the front door and comes back in again. He's here all day. She was just making space for the noon hour custom.

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I am having some problems with my loom so I phoned my old teacher for advice. We had a nice chat about this and that but she couldn't really advise me. I have come to the realization that this loom is defective and perhaps I should look for another one. A loom that fits the bill will cost me three or four grand new, less if I can find a used one in good condition. Having had the experience of using better quality looms at the classes I used to attend, I know it will be worth it, even if I have to order one new. And I'll be able to re-use some of the parts of my existing loom. It was handmade by a gentleman in Ontario and it looks good and appears well put together, but the devil is in the details. It was intended to duplicate a Leclerc loom, so I am looking for a 'real' Leclerc loom. But it's a lot of money, a new loom or a new car? Don't know that I can do both.