My new daybed and other new things

I did not get Covid. The crows' eggs have hatched. The daybed arrived and I have assembled it. I am getting better. Next week I am going on a 3-day kayaking trip, based at a Lodge so no camping. My garden is progressing in spite of bad weather.

One morning this past week when I was still in bed, I could hear a Mourning Dove cooing. One of the new baby crows was replying to it, too cute! The roofer has not arrived yet even though he promised 'in a couple of days.' The weather has not been good for roofing. With a bit of luck, he'll get to it before the solar installer comes calling, but after the baby crows have fledged.

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The daybed actually arrived a week early, and coincidentally my neighbour said he was coming by to install new hemlock garden frames in my garden. So I had a rather strenuous weekend assembling the bed and helping to install the frames. I also had to take out the old couch and move some furniture around to accommodate the daybed. Clean Up Day (or rather Clean Up Week) was this week, so having the daybed arrive early meant I could get the old couch out on the kerb in time for Clean Up. I saved some of the cushions from it so it was not complete, nevertheless someone eventually nabbed it before the Clean Up garbage truck came by. 

I am happy with the daybed but it does have a couple of drawbacks. One is, it's so high that my feet dangle. Another is, it's so wide that even with the old couch cushions along the back I can't lean against them when I am sitting up. There was one non-critical defective piece and Wayfair promised a replacement by tomorrow. 

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Yesterday I got my second Covid vaccine booster shot (finally!). Last night I had a roaring earache and this morning I had a sore arm and felt very tired. I think an ear infection was brewing before the shot, and once my immune system engaged with the vaccine, the infection took off. It's still there but not as painful.

In spite of all the activity I feel like I have turned a corner, the post-exertional malaise was relatively mild and short-lasting. Just two weeks ago I was having second thoughts about going kayaking due to low energy, but this week I feel excited about it. And, as it turns out, three of the women (six of us in all) had Covid in the recent past and are still feeling dragged out by it. So I secretly feel happy about that, it means that I won't be the only one going slow. They will understand exactly what Covid fatigue feels like.

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Sometime shortly after my birthday I had a long phone conversation with one of my sons. One of the things we talked about was ADHD. He's pretty sure he has it, his brother and two nephews have already been diagnosed. He can't get diagnosed because he doesn't have a doctor and going through private channels is just way too expensive. It is causing problems for him at school (he's halfway through a B.Ed.). We talked at length about how that was for him, and I just saw way too many similarities between his experience and mine. They say it is hereditary, my sons have different fathers so the common link is me. 

After that conversation I went looking for information on the internet, and now I am pretty sure I have it too. It was kind of a shocking discovery, especially in how it complicates any chance of recovery from my illness. Also in how it has affected my entire life. If I had had an early diagnosis things might have been very different. When I told a friend she said, Now you know that what happened is not your fault, you don't need to feel ashamed of your past. You should be proud instead.

I've just started reading ADHD 2.0 by Dr. Edward Hallowell (2021). He more or less says something similar. It is encouraging. I don't know whether pursuing an official diagnosis is useful or not. My sons say that the medication that they have been using has a downside, sleeplessness. Consequently they only use it in situations where they really need it and can afford a night or two of sleeplessness. My son at school uses the medication (he doesn't have a diagnosis therefore no prescription) on the occasional Saturday morning to get through a project due the following week. The other son (diagnosed, with prescription) uses it to get through very busy times at work (his work involves periods of extreme activity followed by periods of rest and lowkey activity).

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The photo above is my homemade indoor greenhouse, currently full of transplants. I planted peas and spinach outdoors this week (in one of the new garden frames!) but the transplants need warmer weather to go outside. I may have to get my neighbour to come in to water them while I am away kayaking. They are sucking up a lot of water and I don't think they will make it through 3 days without watering.

Crowsnest view

Many years ago, back in the '80s, I planted a dozen pine trees along the north edge of my property, but only two remain. When I moved back in 2010 there were three, but one of them showed signs of disease and I had it cut down before it infected the other two. 

At the tippy top of the one you see in the photo above, there is a crows nest. First time ever. I can't really see the nest, it just looks like a dark spot at the top of the tree, but there is always one crow up there and it calls pretty much incessantly. Yesterday I caught sight of "the changing of the guard," as one crow left and the other arrived. Whichever crow is not in the nest is very busy foraging.

Unfortunately I am having the roof redone this month, and that will be directly below the nest, probably just as the eggs are hatching. I don't know how that will go and I can't reschedule. I hope the crows don't get their knickers in a knot but manage to maintain the nest and nestlings in spite of the commotion. I will warn the roofers.

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I quit the Pacing program after the second session. The second session was run by a student OT as the first OT had left for unspecified reasons, and the third session was going to be run by another OT. Each session so far has consisted of an hour and a half or more of Powerpoint slides, and the third session OT sent an email with the slides for the session attached. 47 slides! I emailed back that that was way too stressful, and she responded that if this did not serve my needs I should phone to cancel my participation. I did that.

Who does that kind of thing?!? Even for healthy people at an in-person workshop an hour of Powerpoint is more than enough, and for unhealthy people using Zoom, an hour and a half is absolutely over the top. I used to teach the effective use of Powerpoint and other methods of information delivery, a twenty minute presentation is more than enough. I realize OTs are not trained in online teaching but, ... O.M.G.

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J came by yesterday and we took the cover off my truck and started her up. It was lovely to see it again, instead of a yellow blob in the driveway. The battery needed a bit of a kickstart but other than that the truck is fine. J is replacing the tires and rims on his truck next week, then he will give me his old rims and he will mount my new tires on them and the truck will be ready to go. He has lined up a buyer for my Mazda as well.

The Mazda is a kind of soccer-Mom minivan in nondescript grey, but it has run well through the winter and it transported Hapi everywhere after I sold my old truck, so I will kind of miss it. But having two vehicles in the driveway is inconvenient. The "new" truck (it's actually older than the Mazda) is a bit small which is a good thing and a bad thing. No extended cab so no big dogs can sit in it. But the roof of the cap on the box is low enough that I think I can manage to get my kayak on it by myself. I already figured out the method on the old truck and this one will actually be easier. Better be, the muscle wasting that has occured since I became ill is quite shocking.

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I ordered a daybed for my livingroom. My sofa is great for sitting on but not so much for lying on, and I do way more lying down than sitting up these days. I wanted a bed I saw on the IKEA website but they wouldn't deliver and going into the city to pick it up seemed daunting. I checked Walmart and Wayfair, their beds weren't as nice or as economical but they did deliver. 

In reading a lot of customer reviews I realized that all of these beds have to be assembled by the customer and assembling wooden beds appeared to be a very frustrating experience, no one mentioned frustration with the metal bed frames. So I looked at the metal beds and found one on Wayfair that I thought I could live with, at a reasonable price. They say it takes 30 minutes to assemble but all the customer reviews said it was more like 2 hours. No one wrote that it was frustrating, just that it was important to read the instructions carefully. I look forward to its arrival.

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I visited some friends earlier this week and it turned out they had Covid. So I was exposed, having walked in maskless without checking. I immediately left, went home and washed up as best I could (even a nasal rinse and salt water gargle! not that that would make a difference, but you never know) and then went grocery shopping to stock up in case I got it. Today is Day 3 after exposure, so far so good but I read that symptoms are not likely to appear before Day 3. According to the CDC in the US, I should test on Day 5, and if symptom-free test again on Day 7. So the next few days will be the critical ones.

I later talked to one of those friends on the phone; he said it was like a very bad cold. His wife got it first and she is already out and about, she had a mild case of it. He's still "under the weather." He advised me to stock up on ready-made food, that it's important to keep eating even though your appetite is gone. Since I am already ill, I don't want to guess how getting another bout of this will play out.

B got Covid in her nursing home, now the home is in lockdown. B is okay, I've talked to her a couple of times since she got sick. A bit spacey but okay.

Nova Scotia used to be one of the best for low case counts and adherence to mask mandates; now that the mandates are all removed we are the worst. The Omicron is rampant and I know way too many people who have or have had it.

Sign seen on campus