Duck season

The second Covid wave has finally arrived, the Atlantic Bubble is done. We did well, but not well enough. The HRM is the major hotspot in the Maritimes right now, and apparently Covid was identified in the waste water of my town last week. It didn't show up this week, but still. In the city they've had some popup testing events where anyone can get tested for the virus regardless of whether they have symptoms or not. Depressingly, they are finding asymptomatic positive test results. Contact tracing is becoming more difficult because there are so many cases and by the time Public Health tells their contacts that they need to self-isolate due to exposure, it's already days later.

I don't have much to say other than that. With no family in the vicinity and sons who don't phone (daughters are generally better at that but I don't have any), I am feeling very isolated now. Plus the dog who is deteriorating more rapidly, I wonder if she will still be here at Christmas.

I took the picture above this afternoon. These days Hapi is not interested in a morning walk, so we go in the afternoon. I was trying to get a photo of all the ducks on the pond but they don't show up that well, you can only see a few of them in this pic. While I was taking this photo a couple walking by stopped to look at Hapi. The woman said at first glance she thought Hapi was a Shetland pony.

I've been trying to keep Hapi out of the water but today was very warm and she escaped and got into the pond where I couldn't reach her to pull her back. I think she must be as depressed as I am, I won't allow her in the water or into the basement, her two favourite things these days.

Second round, nobody learns

Gaspereau Canal, 2017

On our walk yesterday along the Gaspereau Canal I was briefly distracted talking to another dog walker and Hapi slipped away down a steep bank into the water. I knew she'd never get out on her own and asked the dog walker to stay for a few minutes to help me get her out. He was very kind, said not to rush, he was in no hurry to go anywhere. Fortunately he was wearing high rubber boots and was able to get right into the water to grab Hapi's collar and guide her out of the water. Once again we dragged/pushed her up the bank. This time the man was doing the pushing so it went a lot faster and Hapi was less traumatized by the experience than the last time. Almost as if it was a normal part of a walk. Damn dog.

Hapi in the canal, when she could still get out on her own

At every step of the way the man asked permission to touch her, he was very gentle. His wife held their own dog away from the scene since it was an over-eager six-month old retriever pup.

Saw the homeopath this week, came away feeling uplifted and hopeful, a far cry from how my GP makes me feel. Homeopathy may be scientific bunkum but if it makes me feel better, however briefly, then I will keep it up for as long as I can afford it. There's more to healthcare than so-called evidence-based medicine.

Covid is rising in a second wave across the country and has breached the bounds of the Atlantic Bubble. Premier McNeil is once again vocally annoyed at careless spreaders, the city is being put on stricter conditions. Not exactly lockdown, but close. So far no positive cases in my health region, but we are close enough to commute to the city that it's just a matter of time. A friend is planning an in-person trip to Costco next week and I've been watching the daily listings of exposure points on CBC. Some of them are awfully close to the Costco store. Personally, I think I would give it a pass.

I watched the daily Covid briefing with McNeil and his chief medical officer Dr Strang. They do a good cop/bad cop act: Strang is the reasonable good cop explaining what is going on and why, NcNeil is the bad cop glowering and looking threatening over Strang's shoulder. McNeil has already turned in his resignation from politics so he has no worries about being re-elected. Going out on a high, I'd say.

I don't think any of us will forget his mantra: Stay the Blazes Home!

And November

I put my birdfeeder out a week or so ago and almost immediately the chickadees found it, quickly followed by the blue jays. There are an unusal number of jays in the neighbourhood this year, at one point I counted over eight at or around the feeder. They fight amongst each other and scare off the smaller birds. The chickadees are also more numerous than usual and they seem adept at scooting in and out to grab a seed between jays. 

I am concerned for the other birds though. I've only seen two goldfinches and that is unusual as well, they were formerly the most numerous. A cardinal pair visit just before dusk but often the feeder has been totally emptied by then, thanks to the jays. I am now trying to replace the empty feeder later in the day in hopes that the small birds and cardinals get a shot at it, the jays seem to find other places to go around noon.

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I was talking to my son about Hapi and her brother Hiro. He had told me that Hiro had cancer which incapacitated him. But now he tells me that he doesn't think it was cancer, rather it was a preventable accident. I think he felt very guilty about the accident and clung to the cancer theory advanced by the vet who attended Hiro's euthanasia. That is sad. He texted me a Youtube video of seven Malamutes and a toy poodle being fed by their owners through a window (8 minutes long), it is very cute. Most of the Mals look like Hapi, one looks a bit like Hiro.

He also texted me a link to another Youtube video (11 minutes) about the myth that destruction of the environment and climate change can be halted by personal actions such as changing lightbulbs and taking shorter showers. This was in response to my comment that I felt pressured by certain people to invest in solar panels for my house. My son said the solar panels weren't going to save the world. That if anything, the gain of reducing hydrocarbon-based energy usage is offset by the cost of mining and manufacturing the components of solar panels.

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I went to an Artisan's Market event at the local Lions Club hall with a friend. Names and phone numbers were taken at the door to enable contact tracing if needed, a handwashing station provided and of course masks and social distancing were obligatory. Nevertheless the place was crowded, it was difficult to maintain social distance and I found the noise bothersome. I got to chat to a couple of people I recognized behind their masks, but I soon got overwhelmed. My dizziness ramped up and I started looking for the exit. I told the friend I arrived with that I would wait for her outside. It was cold and damp and the only place to sit down outdoors was a still-damp picnic bench, but it was better than staying inside the hall.

I did see some nice things there but I couldn't think straight enough to determine whether I wanted to buy anything. My friend had a Christmas shopping list in her head that she successfully ticked off as she moved from booth to booth. I was very impressed with her efficiency. She has a large family in the area and Christmas is a major production for them. But over the years she has gotten her Christmas shopping down to a system, she knows what kinds of things she can gift to each family member. She emerged from the hall happy that most of her Christmas shopping was already taken care of.

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Sorry, I have no pictures. I've plasticked over the window where the birdfeeder is so it does not photograph well, and taking gloves off to use the cell phone camera outdoors seems like too much bother these days. Our lovely warm spell is over and we are back to the regularly scheduled November weather. Trees are bare, ground is wet, air is cold.

Remembrance and Honour

Remembrance Day is always conflicted for me.

I do believe that all those soldiers who died or were seriously injured physically and otherwise ought to be remembered and honoured. And I have no doubt at all that serious acts of bravery and heroism were rampant on battlefields. But I also believe that those soldiers were co-opted into battles that ought not to have been fought in the first place. Their deaths were all the more horrific for being the result of very nasty propaganda and distortions of truth.

Not to mention the helpless civilians on whose home turfs those battles were fought. We modern North Americans have not experienced any of that, we have very little idea of what a war is really like because for us, it is always 'over there'. We can look to refugees from modern battlefield states to get some idea of what it is really like, but rarely if ever do we have days of commemoration for such refugees.

The USA is in a bit of a tough position. Called on to be the Policeman of the World, to go into countries in the midst of war to arbitrate or enforce or whatever, and also vilified for going in where they are not wanted at all or picking sides based on their own economic self-interest. If Trump has done anything positive on the world stage it has been withdrawing American troops from battlefield countries.

I heard on the news yesterday that Canada is complicit in recent civilian deaths in a central Asian battlefield because we supplied armament to fighters. We like to think of ourselves as Peacemakers, all the while profiting from arms sales.

These are the things we should be remembering but not honouring.

Poor old dog gets a pedicure

This is a photo of my favourite tree at the Reservoir. It waits to turn brilliant yellow after all the other trees have finished, it is outstanding. It's been windy this year but in less windy years it drops its leaves directly below so it looks like a spotlight on the trail. 

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I am reading "Bright Eyed" (subtitled "Insomnia and its Cultures") by Richard Vaughan, a Canadian poet who died last month (October). If insomnia is a thing for you, I recommend it. Won't provide any cures or even hope, but it's pretty bang on. I'd never heard of RM Vaughan before his death made headlines last month, but I think I will go looking for more stuff he's written. Reading reactions to the news of his death, he sounds like quite a guy, wish I'd known him.

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A few days ago I gave Hapi a long cow rib bone. I get a shopping bag full of raw bones from a local butcher for $3, and she's been chowing down on these things for as long as she has lived with me. However this will be the last one. She went to town on it, there was nothing left of it by the time she was done. Then she spent the last three days barfing and pooping bone bits. Some of them up to 2" long. O.M.G. She had her first "normal" poop this afternoon, I really hope she has not sustained any internal damage. She acts like she's okay now, although the first couple of days she looked a bit iffy.

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More or less at the same time one of the other Reservoir dog walkers told me she had a dream about Hapi, that I had neglected to trim her toenails and now her nails were so long they were causing her pain.

"Look at the way she walks, she's in pain," this dog walker said.

Well, yeah.

"Look at her toes," she instructed.

Hapi's feet are covered in long hair so I couldn't see her toes without trying to pick up her paw, and of course Hapi wasn't going for that.

"See, she's in pain, not letting you pick up her paw is a sign of pain."

Oh brother. Just seems to me that with two weak rear legs, me trying to lift any of her paws off the ground was going to leave her a little precarious, of course she would object. Anyway, Hapi now has a pedicure appointment at the vet's next week. I really have no idea whether her toenails need it or not.

The person who took the photos of Hapi in my previous post also put them up on Facebook. Someone commented on how terrible she looked: was she lost? neglected? abused? I didn't see that, but another friend saw the photo and responded to the comment that she wasn't lost, neglected or abused, she was just old. And well-loved.

It is true that her fur is a mess, thanks to her daily wades in the pond and my inability to groom her. She lies on the ground and expects me to crouch over her while brushing or trimming her fur; my back just doesn't permit more than a few minutes of that. So yeah, she does look kind of scruffy.

We go for a walk and see a rainbow

This morning we went for a walk with a walking group. I rarely go out with them these days but they were going to the Kentville Ravine, an old favourite of mine and Hapi's.

That's me on the right, green beret and black and green jacket.

A bunch of the walkers were going really fast, a few were going really slow, and I was somewhere in the middle. At a certain point the hike went uphill rather steeply and the slow walkers decided to turn back. Hapi decided to turn back with them, even though I was forging ahead. At a certain point I realized she was not going to follow me so I turned back too. That was probably the first time I've seen her choose to go with someone else rather than me. She made the right decision.

Hapi is keeping an eye on me. And yes, that's a sprinkling of snow on the ground, first snow of the season.

The other day we had funny weather, rain and sun at the same time. So briefly we got a rainbow.

I had to clear a bunch of greens out of my garden yesterday because it was going to get too cold for them. I rather hastily dug up some arugula and romaine and plopped them in a planter box which I brought indoors after dark. The romaine is okay but the arugula is looking pretty iffy, I hope it recovers.

On one of our late afternoon walks I stopped to talk to a man who keeps a vegetable garden near the sidewalk. I always admire the garden, his veggies are huge. Anyway we chatted about tomatoes and rats (they eat his tomatoes! He thinks there's something going on that rats are eating tomatoes) and weather and such, and he gave me a big tomato. It's called a Brandywine; he said I should save the seeds to plant next year.

I cooked a big batch of chicken in red wine to use up the remains of the bottle I opened last week. I also made an apple-tomato chutney that called for wine vinegar, but I didn't have quite enough vinegar so I made up the difference with the wine and some cider vinegar. The wine was almost vinegar anyway.

Today I canned the chutney. There's a big shortage of canning supplies due to Covid, so last month I bought the last box of teeny tiny canning jars because I needed the lid rings. Or thought I did, turned out I didn't so I canned the chutney in the teeny tiny jars. I guess they'll make good gifts.

That's a lot of activity and I am exhausted. A friend who does odd jobs and such to make up her pension offered to do some stuff for me (paid of course) and at first I said I'd wait till Hapi was gone but later thought better of it so she's going to come over to assess what needs doing. My house has become a bit of a pigsty because I am putting off doing anything about it till 'after Hapi'. Hapi has other plans.