Mini-vacation at the seaside

Just back from fabulous weekend away. Yes it was fabulous. We turned out to be a very harmonious group of women, laughed and played a lot. None of us were great sleepers though, the morning hours before breakfast saw us slouched on couches and armchairs recovering from our rather sleepless nights. But the breakfast coffees and teas soon put everything to rights and all the meals were excellent. We swam, we walked, we hot-tubbed and sauna-ed, we watched the huge rollers crash on the rocks just offshore. Further down from our little cottage was a sandy beach where a half dozen or so wetsuited surfers played in the huge waves. A couple of them were able to stand up on their boards and ride the waves into the shore.

It was quite wonderful. The youngest woman was about the age of my middle son, the oldest just turned 80 this year. One woman was a 'retired' lobster fisher, she had her own boat and her own licence and for two months a year she worked her buns off fishing lobster. But the cost of fuel and bait was high and the market price of lobster low, so after ten years of that she put her name into a lottery and won: the government bought her out. Now her son fishes with his father, it's in the blood I guess.

I can't speak too highly of this resort so I will tell you its name: White Point Beach Resort. They've been around since 1928 and it's just a fabulous location on the South Shore of Nova Scotia. One of their hallmarks is the bunnies. Just before check-in time they spread bunny kibble and leftover veggies around the lawns and the bunnies come running. Kids buy little bags of kibble and run around the lawns looking for bunnies to feed, and of course the bunnies are not dumb, they come running too. It's also a pet friendly resort, I suppose that dogs who chase bunnies are severely reprimanded.

Hopeful bunny

I suspect that potential hirees of this resort must have friendliness as a prime requirement, all of the staff were cheerful, helpful and friendly.

Two of the women had mobility issues and were a little taken aback by the limited accessibility of our designated cottage. It wasn't great but they managed. The weather was cold wet and windy on our arrival and departure but lovely in between so we were able to get out on the various trails and pathways. Getting to the beach involved climbing over a steep bank of rocks so we left that to the surfers and their holiday companions. I found the roar of the surf quite mesmerizing and since our cottage overlooked the ocean shore it was constant.

The fisherwoman and her mother were from Cape Breton and while the fisherwoman now lives in the Valley, her mother still lives on the ocean shore of Cape Breton. She said waves like what we were witnessing at White Point were part of her everyday life; her home overlooks the ocean too. She invited all of us to come visit in the summer, there are five beaches near her home and a campground; if there's no room at the campground we can park in her driveway. One of our group has an RV that could sleep 4 or 5, but she said it was difficult to drive and she would have to bring her husband along as driver. Some of us know her husband and don't mind that at all. He has already agreed to do it so I guess that expedition is on.

We have a second expedition planned as well. Before I left for the weekend, another friend recommended that I go see Cosby's Garden Centre in nearby Liverpool. I mentioned it to the other women and one of them had already been and said it was wonderful but she thought it would be better to go in the summer. So we're planning a trip back to Liverpool to see that. My friend who recommended it was disappointed that I didn't go, she thought it would be quite magical in the winter time. Well, you can only do so much. It is a garden, but it's main purpose is to display the concrete sculptures of the artist owner. I am told it takes at least an hour, if not two, to view it all.

There was a bit of a problem around cost. Due to a misunderstanding the cost quoted to M did not include meals but she thought it did. There was a tense moment at our first dinner when we discussed the matter with the manager. In the end he gave us a deep discount, but we did not fully understand how incredibly generous he was being until we got the final bill. Let's just say that he clearly made customer satisfaction a big priority.

There were a lot of guests over the weekend but most checked out Sunday before lunch and the new guests would not check in until later in the afternoon, so at lunchtime they closed the main dining room and only served lunch in the lounge. However when we arrived one of the wait staff directed us into the dining room where they had set the table with the very best view of the ocean, just for us! It was amazing!

Away for a bit

I've been procrastinating, about writing this post. But now I'm down to the wire so here goes.

I'm going away for the weekend to a famous (locally) la-di-dah resort. It's going to be very expensive and I am going to be sharing a cabin with five other women, most of whom I don't know. It could be a total disaster. On the other hand, I would never book myself into an expensive famous resort on my own and it could be quite luxurious. Spa, sauna, pool, ocean beach, entertainment, the whole nine yards. All meals included. And, if things go south, there are lots of oceanside woodland trails to escape to.

I was invited to go by a friend who wants to celebrate her birthday in a big way. It's not even a decadal or semi-decadal birthday, she just wants to do it. This friend is bigger than life: loud, overwhelming, kind of full of herself. When I've told people what I'm doing this weekend the reaction is almost universal: Wow it would be great to go to that resort, but with M? For three days in a cabin together? Wow. To her credit she also has a heart of gold. Everyone agrees on that. Just a little hard to take in large doses. And with CFS, just a little bit harder. But, I'd never be going otherwise and you gotta take advantage of opportunities when they arise, right? 

We are leaving tomorrow morning and today is a busy day of tying up loose ends before I can go. Not fun.

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So we had an atmospheric river—the In new weather phenomenon—followed by a significant dump of snow. They said "flurries" but this was definitely not flurries. We actually got off light though, Cape Breton and western Newfoundland were hit hardest with lots of washed out roads. Fortunately no loss of life that I've heard of. Watching the satellite views before it actually hit was interesting, our east coast atmospheric river actually originated in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, just like the ones that hit Canada's west coast. Ours headed more south, snuck across the continent along the US-Mexico border with little or no precipitation to speak of, then once it reached the Atlantic it loaded up, veered northward and dumped on us. The fun new weather event.

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I have a birdfeeder on my back deck this year that the blue jays have staked out as their personal feeder. During a major storm it has the advantage of being under a roof. The jays are messy eaters, they guzzle beaksful of seeds to fill their gizzards and in the process spill lots of seeds on the ground. In this case, on a tabletop below the feeder. So in warmer weather the squirrels come to clean up, and the mourning doves. The doves have figured out the jays' eating habits so they follow the jays around because the doves can't manage the feeder, they have to scavenge below it.

During the storm a lone dove arrived in company with a jay, but the jay left shortly after. So the dove waited. No more jays came, the dove kept waiting. It was getting dark out and my kitchen light was on so the dove could see me. He didn't fly away when I aimed my camera at him, he kept waiting. But the jays were gone for the day, eventually the dove had to leave too. I felt sorry for him.

November arrives late

November rainbow

November weather finally arrived: wet, cold and grey with a touch of frost and snow. Up until this past week we have had almost idyllic weather all summer and most of the fall, but it had to come to an end sometime. Meanwhile western Canada has been hit by phenomenally bad weather: a summer heatdome, lots of forest fires, and now intense rain, wind and flooding. A once-in-a-lifetime Very Bad Year weather-wise. But here we had an awesome year. I don't often use that word, awesome, but it applies this time.

Locally we're seeing a surge in Covid cases and deaths, thanks in part to "faith" gatherings where the participants did not see fit to follow Covid health guidelines. One pastor had the gall to comment that the subsequent deaths were unfortunate but just part of God's plan. Initially the provincial government was lenient, saying that they were more focussed on education than enforcement, but apparently the God's plan comment put our premier over the edge. When the powers-that-be give you a pass you don't go all smug about it.

Some participants in the gathering thought they were adhering to the guidelines, that since church services do not require vaccination passports being checked, therefore a much larger gathering involving many hundreds of participants from far and away should also be allowed to go maskless and passportless. Dr. Strang said that was not so and the guidelines were clear about that. However, I will say that when I checked the guidelines with respect to another gathering I was involved in, the guidelines were not clear at all. I came away wondering what exactly was supposed to happen. So I will give the organizers of that faith gathering a little benefit of doubt on that score, but the God's plan comment was kind of over the top.

The other gathering I attended was the first in-person meeting since before the pandemic of an organization I belong to. I went to it just because I was thinking I'd get to see some people I hadn't seen in that long since I haven't been attending Zoom meetings. Apparently at least half the membership was thinking the same thing and so there were many more people in attendance than had been planned for. Where we usually got a dozen or maybe a couple dozen attendees in the before times, I am sure well in excess of 50-70 people showed up at this meeting. Passports were checked and everyone wore masks, but at a certain point the president of the club suggested that people could take their masks off. I thought, Nothing doing, mask stays put. I'd only just gotten my 'flu shot and didn't want to chance even getting a bit of 'flu.

We had a speaker that night as we usually do and her topic was the story of Abraham Gesner. You may or may not be aware that Gesner invented kerosene, and that he grew up not far from my town in Nova Scotia. I only knew that because there is a country road intersection with a stop sign not too far from town where there is a monument and plaque honouring him. It's kind of out in the middle of nowhere, the monument stands at the edge of a farm field. Every time I stopped at that intersection, which is not frequently but maybe once a year or so, I wondered who the heck is this guy. Well, now I know. 

Our speaker was a retired history professor who has written a book about Mr. Gesner and she had a lot to say about him. So much so that she went overtime and people were fidgeting and growing quite restless long before she finished. A vice-president finally stepped up and told her that time had run out. It was an unfortunate end to an otherwise interesting talk.

Briefly, Gesner grew up on a farm in the early 1800s but was not in the least talented at farming. He met and courted a young woman who was the daughter of a prominent physician, and the prospective father-in-law encouraged young Abraham to get trained as a doctor, since it was obvious he would never be able to support his daughter by farming. Abraham ended up going to London England for his medical training. In those days medical training was a loosey goosey affair, Abraham took a variety of courses including geology. It turned out that his real passion was for geology, not medicine or farming. Nevertheless he completed his medical training and returned to Canada to practice medicine in New Brunswick. He made lots of home visits around the countryside since that is what doctors used to do, and on his travels he collected rocks. Lots of rocks. Eventually he switched careers to become a geological surveyer and then his travels expanded to almost the entire province of New Brunswick.

Unfortunately Mr Gesner ran into trouble advising the province that they had coal deposits suitable for mining when in fact the deposits were entirely unsuitable. He lost his job. He experimented with liquefying coal to use as a replacement for whale oil in street lamps. He was eventually successful and came up with kerosene ("coal oil"). He opened a factory in New England for the manufacture of kerosene but ran into business trouble and was sued multiple times. I don't know the details but I rather gather it was bad luck, ignorance and the highly competitive market that he was operating in that was his downfall. He returned penniless to Nova Scotia. He did manage to secure a job teaching at Dalhousie College in Halifax, but before he could take it up he died, in his early 60s.

Nowadays kerosene is made from petroleum but Gesner's process of converting coal to kerosene saved a lot of whales. It was in fact the beginning of the end for the lucrative 'Boston coast' whaling industry. That industry revived somewhat when it was realized that whalebone was very useful in women's undergarments (corsets and such), but kerosene was definitely the first nail in that coffin.

Gesner firmly believed that the Earth was only a few thousand years old, as Bishop Usher had proven through his biblical studies. He was not to be deterred, he argued firmly in the defense of a youngish Earth. However towards the end of his career and studies he came to admit that perhaps it was not so, perhaps the Earth was millions of years old. I admire that he defended his beliefs so vigourously but in the end changed his mind in the face of overwhelming evidence. He was scientifically inclined and willing to change his mind with enough evidence for doing so. He died before Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species but the writing was already on the wall with the revelations of geological strata associated with a progression of fossils toward modern species. Darwin's big discovery was not so much about evolution but the natural mechanisms facilitating evolution.

I think I find this man interesting because he tried his hand at a number of different things, some successful and some not, and he loved exploring. He was training in England at the start of the Industrial Revolution and very interested in the potential for change it portended. He came back home to Canada fired up about the possibilities and in the end he made a contribution. As I said, he saved a few whales and provided an affordable source of light before electricity became the norm. Having myself depended on kerosene for light at a certain period of my life, I think that is notable.

Mind afire at five

Woke up at five a m, my mind afire.

My feet were cold. Warming them up necessitated turning on the light, reaching for a blanket hung over a nearby chair, unfolding it and laying it over top of my bed; a series of actions sure to wake me up so thoroughly I'd never get back to sleep. And it was one of those nights when I'd been awake enough to note the passing of time: one o clock, two o clock, three o clock, etc. So I lay there trying to endure the cold and finally caving and turning on the light to reach for the blanket.

I have a 'firm' rule: no getting out of bed before six a m. Not that it does any good or that I stick to it at all costs, but still, at five a m I am not inclined to get out of bed unless I have to (for example, my bladder in distress). Hence my mind afire. When I say my feet were cold what I really mean is everything below the knee. The cold feet expand, I feel half dead below the knee and I know it is working its way up. Used to be just the feet, now it's not.

I had the thought, we create our own reality. I create my own reality. Not just attitudes and stuff like that but literally. Everything. The world I live in is of my own creation. I think we know that when we are very little, but by the time we reach adulthood it becomes entrenched: reality just is. You can mess with the edges, tweak it here and there, 'improve' yourself as it were, but the hard core of reality just is. And now, at five a m with my mind afire, I see that in old age the edges of reality are starting to curl up and disintegrate, revealing its flimsiness. If I wanted to I could just peel it all away, but I cling to it. Want to prolong it as long as I can, however unsuitable or knocked about or whatever.

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Friday nights two of my boys and I get together online to watch a show and chat. Last night we talked about Hallowe'en. My experience and my oldest son's experience are totally different; he and his wife live for Hallowe'en, I endure it. My son set up a kind of outdoor photo studio and invited all visitors to have their pictures taken in their Hallowe'en costumes. They had hundreds of visitors and he produced hundreds of stunning photos. Really stunning. I am in awe of his talent. The backdrop is black, the colours are brilliant, the costumes amazingly creative. The personalities of the individuals in the photos leap out at you. Whole families out trick or treating together and obviously getting a huge kick out of it. One photo after another of joyful people having a really good time. I guess in their neighbourhood they are renowned, everyone comes by on Hallowe'en. 

He was explaining the photographic technique he was trying out that night but it all went over my head, I was just stunned by the quality of the photos. He's shown me other stuff he's done and I am equally stunned by it. Why is he not a professional photographer?

I have dabbled in a variety of creative endeavours but have not developed any one talent the way he has with his photography. In some ways I feel like I have wasted a whole lifetime dabbling instead of getting down to just one thing the way he has. Well, not just one thing, he has a family and a job and a life besides photography, but you know what I mean.

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I called a friend yesterday to ask her help/advice with a landscaping idea I had. She came over in the afternoon and I laid out the idea and walked her around the property to see what she had to say or could do. She said that she could help me with some of it but not all of it, I'd have to get someone with a back hoe or some such for what I had in mind. But she did start to help me get some metal posts out of the ground around my vegetable garden. I had fenced it to keep Hapi out, but I was trying to get rid of the fence because it was more a hindrance than a help now. The metal posts are firmly embedded in the ground after being there for a decade. Nevertheless my friend being a lot stronger than me was able to pry six of them out of the ground, with a little help from me. All within less than an hour.

After she left I collapsed sick. That's what physical effort does to me now, I can make the effort and feel good doing it at the time, but afterward I pay for it in spades. That was part of the mind afire thing at five a m. This is my life now, I'm not seeing a good end to it. Things are only going to get worse. At some point it is going to become unbearable, the bad times outweighing the good times by a lot. 

When I first got sick, over twenty years ago, it lasted for five months. When I told my doc that I was getting better, he was sceptical. He said, Alright, but don't do anything for a year. He meant nothing strenuous or physical: no running, no sports, nothing beyond a bit of walking. I was scared enough by those five months of being sick that I took his advice seriously. Also my life was such that there was not a lot of opportunity for strenuous physical activity, it was a relatively easy thing to give up. And I got twelve good years out of it.

Ironically things went south after I moved to Nova Scotia. On the one hand my life opened up and I had lots of friends and lots of stuff to do, and after twelve years of health I believed I could have it all. My second and third bouts of illness happened after moving here, each one only lasted a couple of months, I still thought I was in the clear. Well, the honeymoon is over. My old doc's advice still stands, but is way harder to follow now.