Teddy et al

"Tempus fugit"

I'm in the tail end of a passing "post tropical storm" and I'm not well, neither is Hapi.

The good news is no power outage so the sump pump did its job and my basement is not flooded. Hapi's guts were upset, apparently, and rather than ask to go outdoors to relieve herself she decided to use my bedroom carpet. It took a couple of hours for me to discover this—she's not a great communicator and I was pretty much anchored to my armchair in the living room—and it was not a welcome discovery. I sent her outside into the storm, storming after her, "You're a BAD DOG!" She spent several hours holed up in her doghouse before I let her back in again.

I don't know what is wrong with me, and that's depressing. When I left BC over a dozen years ago my doctor at the time gave me photocopies of all my medical records with him because he feared that I would not easily find a new doctor to transfer those records to. He was right. Anyway, I have occasionally glanced through those records but not in any great depth until yesterday. Talk about depressing. Not only did the pile of photocopies include his records, but also a previous GP's records which he had obtained on my behalf, so this pile dates back to the mid-'90s. 

I never really liked the previous doctor but didn't feel I could switch to someone else at the time, and those records justify my dislike. She was rather judgmental of me, her notes made it clear that she did not think too highly of my intelligence or emotional stability. The doctor who gave me these records made his own notes in almost illegible handwriting, so I can't really say what his opinion was, but I think it was considerably less judgmental.

Anyway, reading that stuff when you're already mildly depressed about being sick was probably not the best idea. I think it tipped me over into a sense of "what is the effing point of anything." I am not particularly fond of my current doctor, so I think I should be very circumspect about what I say to her, I can now imagine very well what her notes about me say. You think that being honest with your doctor is a good idea, but my experience doesn't support that.

Last night my brother called me just as I was heading off to bed, we had a brief chat about a bunch of things including a long multi-day motorcycle ride he did with some buddies. One of those buddies used to be a friend of mine who was unaware that I was his sister, I gather they had a conversation about that and quite frankly, after reading those medical records, I do not want to know what was said about me. I'm not sure if anyone has a good or at least not-bad opinion of me right now.

This coming weekend I am supposed to visit B at the nursing home, but not being well I think I am going to have to cancel out. B is not going to be happy about that, I already missed the last visit because her son didn't call me to tell me about it.

So right now my life is all about the armchair and my bed, and I am putting off taking Hapi for a walk. The rain has stopped but it's still pretty cold and windy out there. The radar shows a final wave of rain on its way later this evening, the last of Teddy.

Last swim, first hurricane

Hapi and Ava in better days, doing what dogs do

Last swim of the year yesterday, first hurricane of the season on its way Tuesday. The last few hurricanes haven't made it this far north, but Teddy is due to hit us square on. Today we are getting sideswiped by Hurricane Sally, just a bit of rain and a breeze.

The swim was cold and I only did one lap because I had a lot to do yesterday and could not afford to get so cold that it took too much time to warm up again. The other women were trying to get me to stay in the water longer, they did four laps. I think they have more body fat than me to insulate against the cold. But it was nice to be in the water, I didn't mind the cold really, I just knew it would take a long time to warm up again if I stayed in longer.

Last night I had company for take-out pizza and beer on my back deck. We had "The Meat Lovers Special" pizza and Hapi wouldn't leave us alone. Her guts have not been healthy lately so I asked my guests not to feed her but she was very persistent and I am quite certain the guests were sneaking tidbits to her when I wasn't looking. She seems okay today though. One of the women brought a "growler" (jug) of local craft beer called Hellene which is her and my favourite beer. Lovely evening!

This morning Hapi and I visited her dog buddy Ava who seems better than the last couple of times, she may outlive the vet's prediction (a month at most). The exploratory surgery that revealed her fatal condition was very hard on her but she seems largely recovered from that now, her appetite is back and she goes for short walks in the nearby ravine. The two dogs lay on the floor at our feet while we humans chatted.

Ava's owner's father is back in the nursing home from the hospital, his health is up and down on a daily basis, keeping everyone guessing. But I think this is the beginning of the end. At 105 he's had a damn good run. All his kids and most of his grandkids are nearby now and visiting regularly, so that's good.

My doctor wants me to wear a heart monitor for a day to check my blood pressure. As it happens the appointment to pick it up at the hospital is the day before Teddy is due and I just didn't want to take a chance on having to return the monitor during the storm so I cancelled the appointment. The hospital clerk seemed skeptical of my excuse but she probably hasn't seen the weather warning yet, which just got posted a couple of hours ago. 

And she may be right, I will take any excuse not to do it. I am resisting being diagnosed with hypertension because I really don't want to go on drugs for it. Bad enough dealing with insomnia, never mind all the other ills of old age. Slippery slope and all that.

Of bites and bikes

Not a biter

The other day a friend's little dog bit me, ripping my jeans and drawing blood. I was on my bike at the time, I saw my friend walking her dog and stopped to say Hi. The dog has been friendly to me in the past, insisting on jumping into my lap whenever I sit down on a visit with the friend, so neither of us expected the sudden attack on the street.

"It's your helmet, it scares her," my friend offered.

I was on my way home so I said something about how she should be more careful and then went straight home to wash the wound and apply antibiotic cream. In a text message shortly after the friend expressed her apologies and said she was considering drastic options.

I don't think the dog is rabid, just obnoxious. But if it can turn on someone it knows and has been previously friendly with, well, that is dangerous. On the other hand, it provides affectionate companionship to its single older owner, I hate to deprive my friend of that. So for now I have reiterated my strong opinion that she needs to be more careful when out and about with the animal. If she decides on the drastic option anyway I certainly won't argue.

I thought this week would be the last of the weather warm enough to swim, but with the influx of smoke from out west the sun's strength has been dimmed and it is substantially cooler. I did go swimming on Monday, Tuesday was way too cool, and with the dog bite and the high wind I decided not to go yesterday. I probably won't go today either and tomorrow will be substantially cooler. So Monday was it, the end of swimming. I plan to take up cycling instead.

The day the dog bit me was the first time I had ridden my bike in well over a year. It's not true that you never forget how to ride a bike is all I can say. My first wobbly ride down the driveway nearly ended in disaster. But I am getting better.

I have been admiring the various e-bikes making their appearance now. I once had one when I lived out west, it cost me $800 and was so big and heavy that if it fell on top of me—which it occasionally did just walking it to a place where I could mount it—it was quite a struggle to right myself and the bike. Now they cost thousands, easily more than the cost of my current well-used car. But the idea of a bike that I could ride uphill with a load of groceries does appeal. One e-bike owner told me that she had two bikes, one a normal and one an e-bike, because the e-bike is so heavy she cannot get it onto her car bike-rack by herself. Something to keep in mind, I can just barely get my normal bike onto the car bike-rack.

Smoke

It arrived yesterday. Faint high level haze during the day, ominous red-brown "fog" in the west in the evening. The sun set behind the smoke a half hour before its time. Today was supposed to be a sunny day but I don't think it's going to be. Maybe hazy.

Quarantine

Hapi hippopotamus at the beach

I live in a bubble, the Atlantic Bubble. It consists of four provinces with small populations and very low rates of covid-19 infection. One province is quite large geographically but mostly empty of people, the other three are the smallest provinces in Canada. A friend told me that right now we live in one of the safest places in the whole world, but because the largest part of Canada has rising rates of infection there are quite a few countries that will not accept Canadian visitors. I'm not complaining, why would I want to go anywhere else right now?

You can drive all across Canada from west to east, but when you hit the border of the Bubble there are road blocks and you have to prove that you have a right to be here or they won't let you in (flying in is another story, that is under federal control so we can't stop anyone from arriving at an airport). That means you have to have some place to live here, even if it's only a seasonal place or a relative's home. And, once you've proven that, you have to drive straight there and quarantine for two weeks. You can't even stop to buy groceries. So even if you are a resident of the Bubble like me, if you leave and come back you need to quarantine. There's nowhere else in the country that has that requirement. My kids can't visit me because they have jobs and can't afford the two-week quarantine time. I am not travelling due to Hapi's health status.

Covid-19 rates of infection are rising for a second time in the four major provinces of the country, but not here. Every case here in the Bubble is travel-related and not due to community spread. So it's usually nipped in the bud because anyone travelling into the Bubble has to quarantine immediately and contact tracing is in place for the few that test positive.

Right now we have university students coming in from other parts of the country and the rest of the world. Being a student at a Bubble university gives you the right to come here but you still have to quarantine. We have hundreds of students in our small town who are in quarantine now. Most of them are doing it respectfully, a few are not. I have two students in quarantine next door to me, they have just finished their quarantine and are extremely happy to be set free. One of them told me it felt like being a caged animal. They had to get three nasal swabs during their quarantine and I'm told that is pretty unpleasant.

I talked to a young couple who just came out of quarantine at a parent's ocean front cottage. They could walk around the property and go swimming at a small beach in front of the cottage but one of them said it felt like being a dog who is never let off leash. Even though they had everything they needed there, they were not free. One of them is a UK citizen trying to get his permanent resident status here, which normally would be a no-brainer but now is virtually impossible. Without it he can't work or apply for  government healthcare. People whose applications for status are on hold due to the pandemic are in a difficult position.

Wealth

Hapi standing in my reflection at the Reservoir beach

The other day I was walking at the Reservoir with A. She is a year younger than my mother would be if she were still alive, she has the same name and she grew up in the same province. A's father was a doctor, my mother's father was a lawyer. A's family lived in a small village on the shore of the St Laurence River, my mother's family lived in a wealthy suburb of Toronto. My grandfather was involved as a lawyer in the amalgamation of some 12 or 13 smaller communities with Toronto proper, so by the time I was born, the house my mother grew up in was now in Metro Toronto. When I started school I used to walk by that house every day. I marvelled at how grand it was, nothing like the tiny overcrowded house my family lived in then.

But I digress. A walks very slowly and so does Hapi so I like walking with her because then I don't feel like I am slowing anyone down. A's dog Teddy is a little devil of a toy poodle who scampers everywhere, but he is growing older and shows more interest in Hapi than he used to. A and I chat about history, both personal and world. We share book titles that we think might interest the other. So, on that day I got talking about my childhood memories of "The Cottage", my grandmother's summer home that we stayed at every summer until I became depressive teenager who didn't want to go anywhere with anyone. I described the lake, the water activities, the trails, the tennis courts, the Regatta and the Corn Boil, so on and so forth.

A was ewwing and ahhing at my descriptions. She told me that I was so lucky to have that, that she routinely begged her parents to buy a little cottage on a nearby lake. Her father said No, they lived right on the Saint Laurence so why did they need a cottage on a lake and besides, he worked all the time being a country doctor. A loves tennis, so the fact that I had access to tennis courts all summer long particularly impressed her. However, I do not and never did love tennis, so I pretty much ignored the courts. My cousins were avid players so sometimes I accompanied them to the courts and would explore the surrounding woods while they played. And tucked into the underbrush not far from the road, I discovered a shuffleboard court. Now that I could get into! The mallets were kept locked up with the tennis paraphenalia so I had to borrow the key from my obnoxious cousins, but still, a small price to pay.

Telling A about the shuffleboard court, she exclaimed, Oh you were so lucky, so wealthy! Not just tennis courts but shuffleboard too! Well, I have to say I have never looked at my childhood as "lucky" or "wealthy", but A has set me straight. I think I have always looked at my childhood through that constricted lens of a depressed teenager, and missed the best bits altogether.

More swimming

Yesterday I went swimming a bit earlier than usual. I've been trying different meds the doctor prescribes for insomnia; the current one leaves me quite lethargic during the day. However I am addicted to the swimming so I keep it up in spite of the lethargy, and yesterday I went early because I was afraid if I waited until later I would lose motivation due to the lethargy.

I did four laps, up from my usual two. Somehow the minute I hit the water the lethargy disappears and I am capable of amazing feats :-). Just kidding.

The local eagles have been very active lately, gliding in the updrafts. Before I left home for the Reservoir I watched three of them circling the University, two of them were circling so close to each other they almost touched wingtips. Then they'd whistle at each other, "stay back! stay back!". Later while swimming I watched another five overhead. One of them swooped down and skimmed the treetops by the pond. It was so close we held our breaths afraid that it might hit a tree and fall down. The fish were jumping like crazy too. Lots of tiny flies right above the surface of the water that they were going for. A man was out swimming with his dog, they didn't swim as far as us but pretty far for a man and a dog. The dog was right at the man's side without actually hitting him.

When we got out of the water we stood or sat around drying out and warming up in the late afternoon sun. We chatted about this that and the other thing. One of the women, C, asked me for my cell number, I gave it to her and she recorded it on her phone. A few days before I was so tired—someone set off fireworks at 3am and I got up to check on Hapi and never got back to sleep again—and I had a backlog of tomatoes to can, so I decided to stay home and do tomatoes instead of swimming. C had waited around for me to show up thinking that I was just late so now she wanted my number so she could check on me if I didn't appear. I gave her the number and asked her to text me so I would have her number too. 

The tomato patch, still chugging along

When I got home after swimming there was a voice mail waiting for me on my cell (I don't take the cell with me when I go swimming), from an unknown number. I played the message. At first I thought it must be a pocket call because there was no recognizable message, just a bunch of background noise, but I didn't know who it was from because I didn't recognize the number. I listened to the noise for awhile to see if I might recognize who it might be.

I heard myself, it was us swimmers chatting in the sun after our swim. The message continued on for over 5 minutes, I think it only cut out when there was no further room for it in my voicemail. Then the test text came in from C. I texted back that I had just been listening to a voice message from her phone with all of us in it. She said she never sent that message. I think when she was recording my number on her phone, her phone decided that she wanted to call that number and so placed the call. It felt strange to be listening to a recording of myself and a few others just chatting.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I don't know how much longer Hapi will last. She's not eating as much, probably because she sleeps all the time. She's given up on the basement, she spends the night outside. Her fur is a mess, her bald patches are becoming noticeable. I now have to use the towel sling to help her into the car to go to the Reservoir in the morning. The couple who own Owen say they always look for Hapi, and are amazed that she is still coming for a walk. Mind you,"walk" is a relative term. She walks slowly to the pond, immerses herself and then just stays put. One day I walked all the way around the two ponds by myself because she didn't want to get out of the water. Then she walked back to the car by herself, because I was still on the far side of the pond. Another dog walker followed her to make sure that she didn't wander off, but she knew where my car was and just waited there.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The long weekend was kind of crazy here, the returning students were "packing" as the Premier put it, going around in huge groups unmasked and tightly packed. At least one kid was fined for it. I hope they settle down soon. Of course it's only a minority who are misbehaving, the majority are staying safe. But I am sure that the fireworks at 3am over the weekend were a student "prank".

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I talked to my son who has been waterbombing fires out west all summer. Actually he spent very little time actually flying, the summer started out cold and wet so there were very few fires this year. But he did go down to Washington state to fight fires there. Because he is considered an essential worker he doesn't have to quarantine when he crosses the border. Nevertheless he was in an area hard hit by the pandemic so the firefighters were staying away from town in their base camp as much as possible. 

He told me that in the nearest town people were taking the pandemic very seriously, social distancing and wearing masks. He said the rate of infection there was something like one in a hundred (this province's rate is around one in a thousand, and that's the highest rate in the Atlantic Bubble). Now he is laid off for the winter and debating whether to look for a winter job or just do "Daddy Daycare". He said they were further ahead financially if he just did the childcare, so he's looking for a hobby to occupy himself. He bought two guitars for his daughter's birthday, he intends to sign his daughter and himself up for lessons. What a good daddy!

Swimming in tomatoes

Yesterday afternoon I walked with Hapi around the town harbour. It is quite tiny, once advertised as the smallest ocean port in the world. But since it has not been dredged in decades, it is far from being an ocean port now. 

The tide was high and the water dead calm. A small flock of sandpipers was playing there. They would fly in amazing patterns close to the surface of the water so that their reflections made it look like there were twice as many. After a few minutes of flying they would all land on rocks or mud at the edge of the water for a few more minutes to rest before rising into the air again. They flew together, sometimes breaking into smaller groups, circling and crisscrossing the harbour. There were two larger birds flying with them but I couldn't make out what kind of bird they were. Not ducks or gulls. It was fascinating to watch.

I've been swimming every day. It's exhausting and gives me a backache and dizziness, but I do it anyway, it feels good at the time. There are about half a dozen of us who swim at more or less the same time. At first I took Hapi with me but now I leave her behind so I don't have to deal with smelly wet dog at night. She's getting weaker and tireder anyway. The last few mornings I've had to coax her a lot to get her to go for a walk with me.

Owen the Bernese Mountain Dog is back at the Reservoir, I hadn't seen him all summer and feared he had passed on, but not so. His owners took him to PEI for a bit and they've been staying away from the Reservoir in the heat of the day. But it's cooler now so they're back. He is one of my favourite Reservoir dogs. Ava is still with us but getting sicker and not eating well. She wagged her tail when Hapi and I came by for a visit but Hapi wasn't so interested. I think she knows what is going on and doesn't want anything to do with it.

I haven't been writing much because I've been busy and tired. Harvesting the garden, processing tomatoes, swimming. Everybody has way too many tomatoes. A friend was giving away buttercup squashes and I said I wanted one; when she came by to drop off the squash she tried to get me to take a pint of tomatoes too. I turned her down. When I go swimming we trade tomato recipes. Today I picked a basket full to overflowing of tomatoes, I ate several while I was picking. I had tabbouleh for supper and tomorrow I'm going to try a recipe another swimmer described, a Caprese pasta dish.

There's maybe one more week of swimming weather, it's getting cooler and I am not such a stalwart swimmer as to go swimming in cold water. Cool yes, cold no.