Mashup

A few odds and ends from the past couple of weeks.

I got my first dose of Pfizer. Older already-vaccinated people said it was the one with the fewest side effects so that was good; turns out that for me at any rate the rumour is true. I am also one of the few people I know who managed to get the shot at the local community clinic; everyone else is having to go much further afield to get it. I booked my appointment as soon as I woke up, around 6.30am, and apparently that is what you have to do to get a shot in the local area. Meanwhile vaccine is going begging in the city, if you care to make the hike you can get it easily there.

As it happened there was a sale of composted manure on at a building supply store near the clinic and I thought, Two birds with one stone. But I had heard that a sore arm was the most significant after effect of the vaccination so I asked the nurse who was administering it how bad would it be and could I lift heavy bags afterwards. She said that actually that was a good idea, that the more I used the muscles in that arm the less pain I would experience. So, 300 kg of manure later, only a little bit of tenderness in the area of the shot and that only lasted a day. Tip for the day, and you're welcome. Mind you, the nurse didn't say it had to be 300 kg, you could get the same effect with a little squeeze ball.

I spent less than half an hour at the clinic, 15 minutes of that spent waiting after the shot to see if there were immediate anaphylactic reactions. Several stages to getting the shot, each stage requiring another round of hand sanitizing. By the end of it, at the last hand washing stage, I said, Now I have the cleanest hands ever! Everyone who left the waiting area said Thank you! to the handwashing volunteer, who replied, Thank you too! 15 minutes of Thank Yous and Thank You Toos! I told a friend about it and she reminded me of a 22 Minutes episode called Canada Goes to War. A bunch of Canadian soldiers in a trench, popping their heads up one at a time to fire their guns and then yelling out, Sorry! When they jostled or passed each other in the trench, another round of Sorry! all 'round.

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My dishwasher finally bit the dust. It was old when I bought the house and lasted another ten years so I can't complain. I've been debating what to do when it finally quits, and given the pandemic rise in price of practically everything, it would cost almost double what it would have costed to replace it back in the day. I decided to handwash the dishes for awhile and see if that was realistic, and it definitely is. 15 minutes a day, no more. I use the dishwasher to store the dirty dishes (bottom rack) and the newly washed dishes (top rack). Doesn't take up precious counter space, gets the mess of dirty dishes out of sight, and it is not nearly as noisy as the dishwasher was when it worked. So I am happy with the arrangement. I suspect that the dishwasher is repairable but I am less and less inclined to get that done.

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I sat in on my youngest son's MA thesis defence via Zoom yesterday afternoon. It went really well. Although I have been in conversation with him every week, he doesn't like video calls so this was the first time I've seen his face since I don't know when. He looked very professional in his glasses, which he didn't have last time I saw him. It was quite a thing to see him in action, reading the synopsis of his thesis and then responding to critical questions. I remember how nervous I was doing my MSc defence, my son did not seem nervous at all. So that's it, major step forward for him. 

My older son in Toronto is having a bad time of it. Between pandemic surge, provincial government mismanagement, kids at home due to school closures, and his own job which has amped up in stress. His description of it sounded like herding cats and whack-a-mole combined. His boss resigned and now he doesn't know who he is supposed to report to. The boss resigned to take a new job elsewhere and I think my son is also a little jealous, the former boss is now working at a job my son wishes he was doing.

The middle son is at home for another week or so, then he takes on a summer job as a "bird dog", flying in northern Alberta assessing forest fires. He seems to be doing okay and is looking forward to flying again.

A friend and I, both with three grown offspring, have a little joke about our kids: One out of three ain't bad. It seems like our grown kids are always having ups and downs and sometimes it is hard to maintain perspective about their problems. So if even one of them is doing okay, one out of three ain't bad. I've been watching the latest Crown series, and in one episode the Queen has lunch with each of her grown children to determine which is her favourite, a challenge posed by Prince Philip. Turns out they all have problems or are behaving badly in one way or another. At the end her husband tells her not to take their problems to heart. But she couldn't even say one out of four ain't bad. That's not good.

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Hapi declines. Last week I gave her a bone which she buried several times and then dug up to chew on. That night she had a bad bout of diarrhea on the kitchen floor and I had to get up to clean it up in the wee hours. She scurried outdoors and spent the rest of the night, all of the following day and following night sleeping in her dog house. She didn't eat at all during that time. She recovered and had a day or two approaching normality, but she kept digging up that bone and chewing on it and had a second round of diarrhea a few days later, fortunately outdoors. Now she sleeps pretty much all the time, with a couple of hours up and about in the late afternoon/early evening. When she walks she thuds stiff leggedly.

It's time. A dog walker at the Reservoir said, We're sure going to miss her. That was kind.