Complexity

It's a good rainy windy day to stay indoors and recuperate.

I went to the clinic yesterday, about an hour's drive away on the highway. The highway goes through the interior forest of the province, rocks, lakes and trees. The reds and golds of the maples and birches were nicely setoff by the dark green of pines and spruces. A very nice drive.

The visit itself was long and tiring, I was there for 3 hours seeing a nurse practitioner and a care coordinator. They deal with longterm complex chronic conditions and I fit right in. I actually felt validated, this is not all in my head, it's not psychological, it's a real physical illness that is not well understood by doctors and medical researchers. The diagnosis I got is a kind of either/or thing; it's either Long Covid or it's ME/CFS or it's ME/CFS triggered by Covid.

They have two streams of treatment, one for Long Covid and one for everything else which they refer to as Central Sensitization (Fibro, ME/CFS, PTSD, and a bunch of others). They will let me know which stream they are assigning me to but they are not hugely different. The main thing is that they recently got funding for Long Covid and have to keep it separate, but seem a little vague as to whether a positive Covid test is a requirement. A lot of people had Covid in the early days but couldn't get tested because of the restrictive testing criteria at the time. So they believe I had it, they just don't know whether the lack of a positive test disqualifies me under the funding terms.

Ironically, when I was sick I was offered a test but I declined it because if it came back positive I would have to be quarantined and then I could not take Hapi off the property for a walk. She would have driven me crazy. At least without the test I wasn't quarantined. I did stay away from people and wore a mask when outside my house and got all my shopping done by neighbours, so I don't think I put anyone at risk.

It's going to be another few months before treatment actually starts, sometime in 2022. Not that there is a cure (there's not) or even an agreed upon treatment protocol, but simply guidance, support, various therapies for symptom management and referrals for testing as needed. So it doesn't really matter which stream I end up in, the only significant difference is that the Long Covid stream has a physiotherapist and the Central Sensitization stream does not. We have free physio at our local health clinic in town so if I needed that I could probably just get them to refer me there. Although I wouldn't even need a referral, I could just put myself on the waitlist. I don't feel like I would benefit from physio, but who knows.

I came away feeling quite positive about the whole experience, but exhausted by the time I got home. An interesting thing I learned is that many people in my condition often have good summers and then crash in the late summer/early fall. That has certainly been my experience. I was told that the crash could last till next summer. Or, I might improve a little over the winter and then crash again in the spring. That's more or less what happened this past year, so I guess I can expect more of it. I am glad I got a good summer. I also learned that I am very unsteady on my feet. I kind of knew that but the tests made it very clear.

The NP said, "I won't make you try to walk a straight line heel to toe because I can see that you would just fall over."

A couple of weeks ago I went for coffee with a friend who has been otherwise supportive, and she strongly urged me to not go to the clinic. That really I was just anxious about the pandemic. That kind of ticked me off, it's what I don't like about an invisible illness: people feel free to tell you it is not real. So it was nice to be somewhere that I was taken seriously and know that they deal routinely with a lot of people like me.

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I spoke to a neighbour the other day on the street, she's a lot more politically active than I am. At any rate she has recently written a lengthy letter to the town council about the student situation in our neighbourhood. She forwarded the letter to me and later in the day I read it; it was quite an eye opener. I tend to keep my head down about local issues because when I get involved I don't like what I see and it is a little upsetting. But she's younger and new in town and very gung ho about getting actively involved. We know each other because she has two big dogs who didn't like Hapi, we had to keep them all apart because Hapi would have been more than happy to set them straight about who was the boss dog around here.

So, our part of town has been zoned "R3", which is much denser than "R1". R3 is where all the poor people and all the students live, plus people like me who are not exactly poor but by no means rich. R3 is all I can afford here. R1 is where professors and doctors and town councillors and such live, nice quiet neighbourhoods with wide empty streets.

There's good money to be made by developers who have bought up all the big old houses in our neighbourhood and converted them to crowded student housing. They are still working on buying up whatever they can get their hands on that can be turned into the very profitable student housing. Bylaws state that they can't create apartments with more than 3 bedrooms, but they do. So a former single family home can now house 5, 10, or more students, each one with their own car. On the face of it, you see these big old houses in this neghbourhood and it looks not much different from R1, but the streets are packed with cars, there's garbage strewn around and properties are barely maintained. The town does not enforce the bylaws. The developers all live in R1 neighbourhoods, and so, for that matter, do all the town councillors. Out of sight out of mind.

When I lived here before, back in the '80s, it wasn't like that. There were students but the majority of houses were occupied by families. As kids grew up and moved away, parents either chose to stay or moved away too. The more houses that were bought by developers and converted to student housing, the more older residents moved away because of the declining neighbourhood quality. Now there are hardly any young families, just old people who either couldn't afford to move away, or stubbornly insisted on aging in place, or both. One older person in her 80s was told that if she didn't like how students behaved, why did she move into this neighbourhood? She's been here for over 60 years!

So, when the students rioted during Homecoming Week, I now blame the town council as much as anyone else. They let the developers create a ghetto, they even officially blessed it by calling it zone R3. What did they think was going to happen? Students are transient, they have no particular attachment to this town beyond the 3-4 years it takes to get a degree, they live in squalid conditions, why would they care?

What bothers me now is, should I go ahead and get solar panels? If this neighbourhood is going to the dogs and the town doesn't care, why should I take the risk of investing in my property only to have it torn down by some developer who wants to cram in yet more student housing? And how much of this noise and congestion and irresponsible behaviour can I take before I too want to pack up and leave? I am wondering now whether to sign the contract or not. They called me last week to say that funding for this year has been used up but there will be more next year so I should postpone signing the contract until December.

Yup. If at all…

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The birds aren't stupid, they've figured out the squirrel-proof feeder. I put the old feeder on my back deck so they now come to both feeders. The jays dominate the back feeder and the doves hang out on the deck floor below them because the jays are messy eaters: lots of leftovers for them. The chickadees, cardinals and nuthatches come to the squirrel-proof feeder in the front where they don't have to compete with the jays. So I can watch birds now from either my livingroom or kitchen windows.

Up all night

I got maybe 2-3 hours of sleep Friday night. It was a warm evening and the students next door (all boys) partied on their back patio until around midnight. That would have been not great but okay, except that they resumed the party at 4 am. I had previously made an agreement with the landlord to not call the police but to call him instead, and I didn't really feel like doing that at 4 am. I had also previously spoken to some of the boys and asked them to keep the party indoors after 10 pm, which is when the municipal noise bylaw kicks in. I was mad enough that I couldn't get back to sleep. I texted the landlord this morning and he says he'll deal with it after the student reading week. If there is a second occurrence in the meantime, I will definitely be calling the local police. I am not good at napping so Saturday was pretty much a write-off.

Last weekend was the local university "homecoming" celebration and boy did the students celebrate. Many hundreds of them in residential streets whooping it up, vandalizing property and generally keeping the neighbours up all night. Police were called but they said there was a limit to what they could do given the huge numbers of drunken students in the streets. Our little town made the national news as a result. Needless to say, citizens, town councillors and the mayor are not pleased. The university offers apologies and wrings its metaphorical hands, making vague promises of disciplining culprits. A neighbour had a conversation with the university president, who offered the excuse that first year students did not get adequate socializing in high school because of pandemic restrictions on high school social activities. The university bans alcohol on campus, so guess where students go when they feel like having an alcoholic celebration. The same neighbour told me that the female students living next door to her had to call the police because male students were trying to break into their house to party. They were really scared.

I was lucky last weekend, the students next door kept their celebration indoors, or else they participated in the street ruckus elsewhere. But not so lucky this weekend. The students seem to think that because they've been forced to stay home for a year and a half and because they are mostly all "double-vaxxed", that they deserve to party hearty now. What's a little Fourth Wave and Delta Variant? And who cares about the neighbours who don't care for rap music in the middle of the night? The university seems to take the position that because the partying was not on campus they have no responsibility. The town has to identify "the culprits" before they will do anything.

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The weather on Friday was quite lovely, I went for a long walk downtown to collect my mail (in this town we don't get home delivery but have to go to the post office to pick up mail, which makes it a bit of a social occasion), then through town to a ravine that leads up to the Reservoir. 

I met a neighbour at the beach and we chatted for a bit. She said her husband had gone to the city to see the opening of Dune. She asked him if he had read any reviews before he went and he said no he hadn't, he planned to see the movie regardless of what critics said about it. She was a bit mystified by that, why would you not care? I laughed; if you're a Dune-fan then you really don't care what the so-called critics have to say about it. I told her that lately I've been looking at "puppy porn" online, pictures of dogs available for adoption. Of course I particularly look at the Malamute puppies. She wondered if I was one of those people who favoured a particular breed, I said not really and the Malamute is absolutely the wrong breed for someone like me. But they all look like Hapi and Hiro and I guess I'm kind of imprinted on them.

Later she sent me a Facebook link to a video about New York dogs. The city has banned dogs on the subway unless they fit in a bag, so ingenious New Yorkers have bundled their dogs up in all kinds of bags to take them on the train. Dogs as big as Golden Retrievers have been bundled into bags, and some dog owners cut leg holes in their dog-bags so the dog can walk onto the train. 

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As noted in a previous post, my birdfeeder is up but now the squirrels have discovered it. So I bought a squirrel-proof birdfeeder and put that up. Apparently it is more than squirrel-proof, the blue jays and cardinals can't use it either. Yesterday I watched a frustrated downy woodpecker pecking away at it, it clearly couldn't get at the seeds but was determined to peck its way through to them. The chickadees are okay with it but the goldfinches still haven't shown up. I am hoping that when the weather gets a little colder the squirrels will hibernate and I can put the old birdfeeder back up.

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The greens sprouting indoors

I started my winter indoor greens crop: arugula, leaf lettuce and romaine. They are all up and doing well. 

The greens taking in the sun

On good days I put the planter outside but otherwise it resides under a grow-light. 

I can start another planter under a second grow-light (lower shelf in photo above) but I am holding off on that, I may just bring in a couple of pots of chives and thyme instead. 

I still have greens in the outdoor garden, they will probably survive into November. By then the indoor greens should be big enough to start harvesting. 

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I finally upgraded my Macbook to a newer operating system. I've been putting it off for a over a year because I have to do a clean install, involving deleting all my files and then replacing them afterward. I was afraid of losing stuff, of having the clean install go terribly wrong and not being able to recover from it. But it was getting harder and harder to put off because my browser was no longer supported in the old operating system and was not functioning properly. I finally bit the bullet and did it. Mostly it went okay but my latest photos are not reappearing. That means until I get that sorted I may or may not be able to include photos with this post. 

Later: As you can see I did manage to post some photos but the there is still an unresolved problem with the photos updating on my computer. Apparently it is frustrating a lot of users but so far (two years now) Apple is not offering a viable solution.

Fall catch-up

I was invited to Thanksgiving dinner this afternoon but had to bow out. Had a bad night's sleep and woke up this morning feeling like I was coming down with something or other. I feel a little better now, but better to be cautious these days. A couple of years ago I would have taken the chance of giving a cold to other people—maybe—but now it just seems terribly irresponsible. I am very disappointed though.

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I put my birdfeeder up this week and after a day or so the blue jays discovered it and now there is constant activity just outside my living room window. So far I have also seen a couple of chickadees, a pair of cardinals, a nuthatch, and a song sparrow. The goldfinches are so far missing in action, I hope they are just slow to get the memo.

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I have an appointment later this month at a clinic over an hour's drive away that may be able to give me a formal diagnosis, and yes I'm still sick. Both summers, 2020 and 2021, were moderately healthy but by fall it was all back in full blast. Something about the fall I guess. The house badly needs a paint job and I thought when the cooler fall weather arrived I could tackle it, but now I don't have the energy for it. The yard work has pretty much come to a halt now but there is still a lot left to do. I did manage to get the garlic planted but I don't know how much more I am going to be able to do.

I have a stack of library books that I can't read and am wondering why on earth I ordered them. Even the titles are daunting. I harvested a whole bunch of cabbage which I am wondering why I planted because I don't like cabbage. Now I have a bumper crop and no idea what to do with it. I managed to trade the two biggest heads for a couple of hubbard squashes, so that's something, and the person I traded with gave me a recipe for pickled red cabbage which she said was really good on tacos, so that's something too. If I ever get up the energy to pickle.

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In spite of feeling crappy this is one of my favourite seasons in this province. Especially October. It's still warm but not hot, lots of sun and because the sun is so low in the sky a beautiful yellow tinge to the light. And of course the fall colours, which are really only just beginning. They usually peak around Thanksgiving but this year peak colour seems to be delayed. We get "Frost Advisories" regularly now but until this morning I have not seen any sign of frost. And it's what they call "patchy", I saw frost on the back lawn of a house across the street but none anywhere else. My neighbours got frost but I did not.

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After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing I've settled on a contractor to install a solar panel system and the municipal financing program has sent me a contract to sign. Ten pages of fine print. Most of it was pretty much what I expected but one paragraph in particular seemed a little too vague for my liking so I have requested clarification before I sign.

I contacted a couple of roofers to see if I need to do anything about my roof before I cover it up with solar panels and one of them followed through with a site visit. Running his name by friends later it turns out he comes highly recommended. Anyway, he's going to send me an detailed estimate but gave me a ballpark figure which is a bit daunting. He had a nice dog which he says he takes everywhere with him, a point in his favour. I may be eligible for a housing authority grant to help seniors stay in their own homes, but I don't know if I'll qualify, mainly because I think they prefer that your roof be leaking or otherwise in very bad shape, which mine is not.

I had to laugh though, I had had some work done on my roof a half dozen years ago and I thought I'd give that roofer a call. I couldn't find his contact info so I googled his name and it turns out he's now in jail for murder. Oops.

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I now have three bikes in my shed and that's probably two too many. So I put one of them up for sale on Facebook Marketplace, only minutes before Facebook crashed. My bike crashed the system. However the next day I got a response from a woman who said she's been looking for that exact type of bike for years, but she lives in the city and wondered if I could put it on hold for her till the weekend. I was a bit hesitant but she offered to pay for it right away, I agreed, and she sent me an etransfer immediately for the full price. 

It all happened so fast that I was kind of shocked; I then wondered what else I could put up for sale since this seemed so ridiculously easy. She has not yet picked up the bike, she was going to come yesterday but messaged me that her daughter was sick so could she postpone a couple of days. Sure, no problem, I've already been paid and can afford to wait a few more days to get rid of the bike.

Well, must go now, the blue jays have emptied the feeder so I'm being called to replenish.