Bad news, good news

Even the statues around here have to wear masks

Bad news: yet another Covid exposure. Same grocery store, different day/time.
Good news: It took exactly 2 hours to find out, book a test, get tested, and be back home again.
Bad news: ran over a blue jay backing into my driveway after dark, after the test. It scuffled away from me in the snow so I left it.
Good news: Bird gone in the morning.
Bad news: Crow sitting on a snowbank in the front yard making funny noises, I took another look and saw the blue jay lying in the snow.
Good news: The jay moved, it was still alive, so I went outside and brought it indoors to warm up. It obviously can't fly, maybe its wing is broken? At least no visible blood.

Scuffle marks in the snow where the crow was "investigating" the blue jay

I went on the internet to see what to do about the bird and it turns out there is a wildlife rescue and rehab organization in this province, Hope for Wildlife. I texted them. I put the bird on a towel in a box in my windowless bathroom with the lights off and the door ajar. Hapi won't go through a doorway unless the door is wide open, she was asleep anyway. Two hours later someone from Hope for Wildlife called me and said they would send a volunteer over to pick the bird up. 

Where I found the blue jay, still alive

Good news: The volunteer arrived promptly, so I retrieved the bird in the box from the bathroom.
Bad news: The bird had revived somewhat and was really scared, it jumped out of the box and flew down the stairs into the basement.
Good news: The volunteer came in with a net and we found and captured the bird, who was by now quite feisty. We put the bird in a better box it couldn't get out of. Maybe its wing is not broken after all.

Not only would Hope for Wildlife try to rehabilitate the bird, they gave me a case number so I could email and find out how it was doing. I asked if they could release it here when it was better so it could rejoin its buddies, the volunteer said that's what they try to do. I am so impressed with this organization. It was founded by a woman named Hope and there are some videos about their work on Youtube.

More good news: Covid test came back negative, in under 36 hours.
Bad news: Went skating and fell on my bad knee.
Good news: Knee seems okay, I was able to skate a bit more after I fell.
Bad news: I picked up a prescription and they shorted me, label said 90 tablets but only 30 in the bottle. On the phone they said they'd check their numbers to see if they made a mistake. Whaddaya mean?!? Of course you made a mistake!
More bad news: I got a bill for a repair that was supposedly free under warranty, but they had this whole rationale for why it wasn't really covered! I argued but to no avail.
Good news: Got a shipping confirmation for my second order of garden seeds.
Bad news: What happened to the first order? I called their Customer Service number and waited a really long time, only to have them tell me that order was "back ordered". Back ordered?!? I thought they grew the seeds themselves! How can they be "back ordered"?!? 

Good/bad news: They took away the dog tree and replaced it with a bench for putting ice grippers on your boots.

Good news: They left the dog ornaments (Hapi's is on the far right).

Good news: An online birthday party for one of my sons. 
Bad news: I discovered I had gone deaf in one ear just that day! What?!? Stress maybe?!? 

Good news: I'm not deaf this morning.

Ice and illness

Ice storm yesterday, a mix of snow, ice pellets, freezing rain, rain and wind. Overnight the temperature rose and then fell so it was below zero in the evening and the morning but apparently quite warm in between. Now there is a thick layer of ice on the ground everywhere. I get around okay with my Icers but Hapi has some difficulty with it. I spread sand on the driveway but I still need to sand the steps she uses to get into the back yard. Also the front steps. I don't use them much in the winter time but I try to keep them clear just in case.

I was late to the Reservoir this morning, I met some of the dog walkers as they were just leaving. I recently gave a whole bunch of back issues of The New Yorker magazine to A, a dog walker in her 90s, now every time I see her she thanks me for them, she is really enjoying them. The nice thing about that magazine is that it doesn't have to be current to be enjoyable reading. I used to take my magazines to the library when I was finished with them but the library stopped accepting them when the pandemic started. A told me she used to go to the library to read The New Yorker and then with the pandemic they stopped having them. She was reading my magazines. Meanwhile I was stockpiling them in hopes of finding someone who would enjoy them since I hated to just throw them in the recycling. So we are both happy.

I had a doctor appointment yesterday morning but there was no way I was driving in freezing rain, so I was able to get the appointment changed from an in-person to a phone appointment. Yay Covid; never could have done that before. Last week I had an MRI brain scan and yesterday the doctor told me that my brain was old but normal, no signs of any abnormalities. I wasn't really surprised, I've been moving away from that idea anyway. She also offered referrals to a neurologist and to a clinic that specializes in complex chronic diseases and I accepted both. She cautioned me that the neurology referral will take two years to come about; yay Nova Scotia. I hope the other referral will be quicker but I am not holding my breath. She thinks I should try a tricyclic antidepressant for neuropathic pain. I am very wary of antidepressants in general, I will try it but I am pretty fed up with drugs that cause unpleasant side effects. My illness is just one giant unpleasant side effect, I don't need any more thank you very much.

Sometimes I think that Hapi's health and mine are somehow linked, that we have the same problems at the same time. I wonder if it's something in the water we both drink? Or if it's some kind of woo-woo psychic link? Or I am just projecting? I am fed up with not being well, not being able to skate or ski. I can still walk but I pay a price for that in fatigue. In the midst of the storm yesterday there was a brief period when no precipitation was falling from the sky and the road was not too icy. I had run out of milk so I walked down town to buy some. I wanted it to be a quick trip so I did not wake Hapi. It was quick, but the walk back up the hill was completely debilitating. I am so tired of this.

Winter Coatless

Hapi's fur is slowly growing in, it's about 2-3 cm (1-1.5") long now. Some of her outer coat is black so she is starting to darken along her flanks. The new fur is quite coarse compared to the old fur on her face, I suppose because the hair ends are blunt due to having been cut.

There's another old dog at the Reservoir who got shaved at the beginning of the winter, he's a Golden Retriever. With his shaved coat he looks like an oversized puppy. I saw him the other day along with three smaller dogs. Hapi and all the small dogs were wearing their store-bought winter coats, the Golden was coatless.

I said something to the owner about him being the only dog without a coat, the owner said, "We don't need no stinkin' coat!"

It was true, the Golden's fur was short but thick and he seemed pretty happy.

So I'm hoping that soon Hapi can go without too. It was warm enough this afternoon to go out coatless.

I made snowshoe trails in my backyard for Hapi to get around in the deep snow, but she doesn't use them much because they are not as hard-packed as the ones in the woods. 

We had a big dump of snow and it has stayed cold since then so the snow has stayed too. But tomorrow we are getting rain and freezing rain, and temperatures will warm up. Having the deep snow has been really nice but I think we are now headed into ice and slush. Such is a Maritime winter.

Octopuses

My brother sent a link to my blog post about Covid politics to some of his friends, one of them wrote to me about his concerns in that regard. Among other things he referenced an article about how the second highest mortality rate (after seniors in long term care facilities) is among seniors over age 60 living in the community. The two groups together account for more than 95% of Covid mortality. And I just heard that some of the vaccine doses intended for my province are being diverted to the northern territories.

So, to distract myself from negative thoughts, today I am going to talk about octopuses. Have you seen the Netflix documentary "My Octopus Teacher"? It is endearing. I am a sucker for underwater cinematography so for sure I enjoyed it. However, my son wasn't quite so enamored of it, he pointed out that the narrator seemed to count himself a friend to the octopus in question and yet he filmed a horrific scene of 'his friend' nearly being killed in a fight with a shark. He did not interfere. With friends like that…?

I just finished reading Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, by Peter Godfrey-Smith. The author is a professor of philosophy and a scuba diver. He spent quite a bit of time observing octopuses off the coast of Australia, in a location he calls Octopolis. Octopuses are normally considered to be solitary creatures, only getting together for purposes of procreation. However, Octopolis is a kind of underwater city of octopuses. Since these creatures are not really evolved to be sociable, they do a lot of fighting amongst each other. The thing that is most notable about them though is their intelligence. They are comparable to some birds and mammals in that regard. 

From an evolutionary perspective, it is highly unlikely that the common ancestor of birds, mammals and cephalopods (the animal group that octopuses belong to) was all that intelligent; the intelligence of cephalopods developed independently of that of birds and mammals. There are some common features but one interesting difference is that octopus "brains" are distributed over their bodies, an octopus tentacle is as brainy as an octopus head. Some people speculate that cephalopods are really descended from aliens, but Godfrey-Smith says that although their intelligence may seem alien, they are as much of the Earth as we are. Just different.

Another thing about them is their incredibly short life spans. We are used to intelligent species being long-lived, relatively speaking, but octopuses live two short years. In those two years they learn so much and exhibit so much craftiness and intelligence, and then they die. It seems such a waste.

In 2008 I went snorkelling in the coral reef off the coast of Belize and had my own encounter with an octopus (actually two). I won't say it was life-changing, but it was certainly one of the more amazing experiences I have had.

Snowstorm

Big snowstorm overnight Sunday into Monday, about 47 cm (16") on the ground by the end. High winds blew it into thick drifts. One of the students next door helped me shovel out my car and then my snow plough guy came and cleared out the rest of the driveway. In the process he took out half a dozen bricks I was using as a border between the garden and the driveway, and dumped them somewhere. I found one in a big pile of snow on my front lawn and two more across the street, but couldn't find the rest. The ones across the street would have been in the path of the sidewalk plough which came by later, so who knows where the rest of them are.

I think almost everybody was busy clearing snow on Monday. The student who helped me borrowed my shovels (I have 4! They all do different things!) to do her driveway, and then later a student across the street borrowed one. I told a friend about it and mentioned that the student across the street liked to throw loud parties; the next time he does that I am going to remind him ("Remember me? The Shovel Lady?"). My friend said I should take the shovel with me to his next party. Just as a reminder.

Today we went to the Reservoir for a walk, the snow was deep but the snowshoers had cleared some trails. It was blindingly beautiful: sun, blue sky, white snow, black trees. We met up with some other dogs and owners and all walked together, single file in the narrow snowshoe trails. One dog, a young tan-and-white Springer Spaniel named Jerry (Jerry Springer) was enjoying dashing through the snow, while Hapi and her buddy Owen (a Bernese Mountain Dog) plodded along behind the humans, because the trail is so much better after a few humans have stamped it down.

Unfortunately it was hard work for Hapi and her left rear leg is not great, she kept slipping off the trail into the deeper snow. At one point she gave up and just lay down in the trail. After a minute or so of rest she was able to get back up, but at that point we decided to head straight back to the car, enough was enough. I kept her in front of me so I could catch her if she fell again. Jerry the spaniel bumped her a few times racing to get by her so she switched to a parallel trail. Then we met up with a young husky who romped with Jerry. Huskies are hard to control and usually kept on leash but this one had a radio-controlled collar so the owner could let it run. Turns out the husky's name was Winter.

Newfoundland is having a Covid outbreak. First New Brunswick and now Newfoundland, it feels like the walls are closing in. Scary.

Covid politics

I've been doing a lot of reading about the Covid-19 vaccines and their development, and now that they are in the beginning stages of distribution I've been reading about that; mainly about how the distribution of initial doses is prioritized when supplies are very limited. So, the scientific literature shows that the risk of death rises dramatically with age, while the risk of contagion and spread is principally among the young and mobile. The issue is, which is more important, stopping mortality or stopping contagion? 

In general, scientists are coming down on the side of stopping mortality. This means getting the vaccine to the people whose risk of death is highest. Various studies have looked at how much comorbidities impact the risk of death and whether people who have COPD or diabetes or hypertension are more at risk than people of "advanced age". So far the research is showing that advanced age trumps all. Specifically, age beyond 70 years.

Most published studies, perhaps all, rank ages in decades: 50-59, 60-69, 70-79, 80+. I have yet to see a study that uses different age ranges (55-64, 65-74, 75-84, etc), so whether the risk of death rises dramatically between 74 and 75 is undetermined in the published literature. 75 years old is just not a critical marker of anything.

And yet. Looking at the immunization priorities across our country and also in some other countries (UK, USA), the age of 75 is frequently used as a cut-off point. My guess is that it's political. There is the original issue of whether stopping deaths or stopping spread is more important, and there are groups with some political power who want to justify going to the front of the line. Politicians are trying to compromise; if you move one group to the front then you have to move another group to the rear.

So, if you start looking at stopping the spread, who become the priority groups? Well, kids have been ruled out on this one, nobody ranks kids as being the most important group. Likewise for teenagers. Even though the most mobile groups in our modern society are probably school kids and teenagers. So healthcare workers go to the top of the list, especially if they are working with old people. Then a bun fight breaks out; if you're going to protect this healthcare group then why not that one? Who has more power to sway the case, low-paid personal care workers, better-paid and organized trained nurses, or highly trained and politically powerful doctors? And if doctors go to the front of the line, why not dentists? Pharmacists? And of course their employees the dental hygienists and pharmacy technicians…

When the vaccine distribution first started in December, the media loved to display photos of young photogenic healthcare workers getting their jab. God forbid we show an old lady's flabby arm being jabbed. Old women are better viewed masked and gowned behind the thick plate glass of nursing home windows.

Different provinces have worked out different compromises and timelines. Here in Nova Scotia, my age group 70-74, goes to the back of line. People over 75, people in nursing homes, anyone doing anything in healthcare, truckers, meat packers and host of others ("food supply security") take precedence over everyone under the age of 75 who is not in any of those special categories or not in a long term care facility.

Furthermore, looking at the rate at which vaccinations are being distributed, Nova Scotia ranks lowest of all provinces and territories. Currently the average rate is 2.4% (roughly) for the entire country and 1.3% for Nova Scotia (as of today, on the CTV News Covid vaccine tracker). Our phases of distribution (1, 2, and 3) are considerably later than any other province. I read one source that said that Phase 3 (my phase) won't happen until the fall, in spite of PM Trudeau's assurance that everyone who wants it will be vaccinated by September. [I accidentally transposed the 'r' and the first 'u' in his name and briefly considered leaving it that way ;-)]

I am pretty sure my sons living in other provinces will get vaccinated long before I do. One of my sons is an aerial fire fighter, I am pretty sure the provincial government he will be working for will make damn certain he is designated an essential worker and he will get vaccinated before his training in the spring. The other two live in Covid hot spots where vaccine is way more available than in my little province that worked damn hard to contain and keep out the virus.

It's all politics and who holds power to sway politicians.

This'n'that

Thursday nights I watch a Prime Video show with two of my sons via the Watch Party feature and afterward we chat about it and other things. They're in a different time zone and not available until early evening their time (late evening my time) so it's a bit exhausting the next day but kind of worth it. I enjoy having those regular conversations, and I don't really care about the quality of the show we are watching, I now realize, because it is just one more thing to talk about. So the fact that the show was kind of disappointing was okay, we all agreed on its shortfalls and tried to pick out a few good points in it.

For our online chat we have been using an app that one of my sons uses all the time for online video games, and we will be able to use it to watch shows streaming from other sites if we want to. My son demonstrated that by showing us a video game he has been playing.

One happy thing I learned is that my youngest son has been accepted at two different colleges for a teaching degree. He's waiting on the third which is the one he really wants to attend. Apparently the pandemic has burnt out so many teachers that governments are desperate to hire/train more. A year ago he was turned down pretty summarily when he applied for entry, now they are chasing him. In the mean time he has been tutoring, first in person and then online, so I think he can handle it. Teaching is something he really wants to do.

A day of snow followed by rain followed by double digit warm temperatures has put an end to skating for now. If we were to get a prolonged cold snap we might see more skating but I kind of doubt it. The pond rink looks like toast. On the really warm day I took Hapi out without her coat and she was fine. I passed a couple of people who muttered, "What breed of dog is that?" Nobody would guess she was a malamute. 

Yesterday we visited Muddy's, a convenience store on Main Street whose owner loves Hapi, he was dumbfounded by her new look. He couldn't keep from laughing, and he grabbed every customer in his store to show them Hapi. Good thing he gave her lots of treats. These days she's a sucker for dog treats.

A friend's dog died two days ago. Buddy was a Rottweiler, a year younger than Hapi. He was always a sick dog, Addison's I think, but she nursed him along for a very long time. Now she's a wreck. Buddy wanted to be friends with Hapi but Hapi wanted nothing to do with him. I didn't want to take a chance on it, if they got into a fight Buddy would have destroyed her. He was a sweet dog with people, but a bit iffy with other dogs, kind of like Hapi in her youth. It was hard to predict how they'd be if they ever were allowed together.

Winter Sunday

There is something about a winter Sunday that's peaceful and timeless. Everything is white and black, traffic is in a lull, lots of people are staying indoors because of the cold, so the outdoors looks bare and empty. It seems like it will never end.

In the morning while waiting for Hapi to wake up I decided to go for a walk by myself. Soon enough this will be my daily experience. I walked in a part of the Acadia woods that would take Hapi a very long time to get to because she walks so slowly. While out in the woods I ran into E with her dog Lulu, a Great Pyrenees. Lulu has gotten into trouble at the Reservoir enough times that E doesn't go there anymore. A nice dog but big and excitable. It was nice to walk with E and Lulu, a little bit of dog-fix plus catching up with E whom I haven't seen in a while.

Shortly after I got home Hapi was ready to go out so we drove to the Reservoir. We were late, a few people I often walk with were just leaving, but that's okay, we go on the ravine trails when there's no one else around. Hapi perks right up on the ravine trails, she goes faster than me. Then I went skating.

By the time we emerged from the ravine there were lots of people already on the ice, kids, parents and dogs. Somebody brought a portable barbecue and the smell of burning charcoal was starting to waft over the ice. Hapi hung around hoping for a snack. There were tiny toddlers racing down the ice on teeny tiny skates and older kids carefully picking there way on new-to-them skates. Big kids with hockey sticks and pucks, one hockey net and a pair of boots set up as goal posts, and some "rink rats" clearing powdered snow off the track.

On Saturday I was out on the ice the afternoon while Hapi slept at home, I met a friend who brought her kick sled. It's a Swedish thing, two ski-length long blades with a high-backed chair joining the blades at the front. There are a couple of pads on the blades behind the chair that you can stand on, you hold the back of the chair and you kick the sled along with one foot, like a scooter. The blades are long and flexible so you can steer by bending them. I tried it out and then my friend pushed me around while I sat in the chair. She said that in Sweden they don't clear the ice off the sidewalks, everyone has a kick sled to get around on.

There's a constant stream of people coming and going, you can only skate for so long before your feet turn into blocks of ice so very few people stay for the entire day. I usually only skate for half an hour but lots of people skate longer. They enlarged the parking lot this past summer but it is still way too small, there are lots of cars parked on the street. It is so great to see all ages of people out there, skating, playing and learning to skate.