Politics, heartbeats and stories

The last couple of weeks have been too much. Too much going on, too much I have to do, too much I can't deal with. But I think things might settle down soon.

My pheasant neighbour keeps an eye on things

I lose control emotionally when I have too much to deal with. There have been some not great moments.

 

Song sparrow by the pond

I ran into a couple of writers from my old writing group who urged me to come back, I said I haven't been able to write anything but they said that people would just like to see me. They are still meeting over Zoom, so I said Okay and someone sent me the link to the group meeting.

It was nice, and definitely validating to have my writer friends welcome me back so enthusiastically. I mostly listened, and made a few comments on what I liked. Then there was a discussion about trying to meet in person, various locations and possibilities. I originally stopped going partly because I had nothing to contribute but also because I didn't like Zoom. I still have written nothing but I have changed my mind about Zoom.

While they were discussing different locations I said that I was okay with staying on Zoom, but whether I attended an in-person meeting would depend on how close by it was. Apparently that clinched the deal, they said that if staying on Zoom was the price of having me return, then everybody was okay with continuing on Zoom. I felt honoured. I may not be able to write, but I can critique constructively.

The clinic wanted to teach me a breathing technique that would improve my Heart Rate Variability (HRV) which in turn would improve my health. I had to go to the clinic to learn the technique, using biofeedback. I was a total failure at it. The doctor thought the equipment might be at fault, but it wasn't. He demonstrated what should happen by hooking himself up to the equipment, and it was nothing like what I was getting. Within a couple of breaths he had his HRV under control, whereas mine was way out of control, disappearing off the screen both top and bottom. No control whatsoever. Then he took my pulse and said he thought I had a sinus arrythmia that was preventing me from succeeding.

It was a long trip there and back and I felt like it was a complete waste of time, I was a failure in self control. Well, that's how it feels.

I've also come to realize how political the Accessibility Committee is, and I don't like it. I was particularly upset that my comments at a previous meeting had been completely ignored and something meaningless had been written in. I spent a couple of days getting more and more upset about it and finally sent an email saying I could not accept the draft minutes as currently written. So at the next meeting I was told that they didn't have time to discuss my comments and so they would be deferring the vote on accepting the minutes to another meeting, as yet unscheduled.

I said that I could write a couple of sentences that would be acceptable to me and the committee could read and think about them before the next meeting. I was told that is not allowed. I said I looked it up in Roberts Rules of Order and that was acceptable. So then I was told that we don't follow Roberts Rules of Order, we follow something-municipal-something. I didn't even catch the whole name and had no idea what that was. And here I am severla meetings in and am only just now being told the parameters within which I am supposed to operate? That kind of made up my mind that I did not belong here.

One of the men at the meeting offered to chat with me over coffee about what was going on. I told him that getting stressed out like this was bad for my health so I was seriouly reconsidering. He said he understood how difficult it was but the fact that I refused to accept the minutes as written was a huge statement. And I should be patient. So that's where it stands. Plus there's another reason to stay, I might write about it later. But when I volunteered for this committee I thought it would be the least political of all the committees. It is, but that's how bad it is. The man I chatted with laughed at my comments, he agreed. I met him several years ago, he was just starting his new job in charge of Parks and Recreation. Apparently he wears several different hats within the administration now.

Lazy days of autumn

Wet spider web at Tai Chi class

It's been a while but I am still here. I spend a lot of time on my daybed, reading, surfing and watching shows in the evening. I am currently ploughing through Mick Herron's Slough House series. I get each book at the library and since right now this series is very popular (thanks to Slow Horses on Apple TV+), I am not reading them in the proper order. I put holds on the ones I want to read and it's luck of the draw which one comes first. I still haven't read the first book in the series, but I have read the most recent (Bad Actors, 2022). I am currently reading the penultimate, Slough House. In the TV series Gary Oldman plays Jackson Lamb so when I read that's how I picture him. Likewise for some of the other characters.

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Hurricane Fiona did a lot of damage here but one good thing came of it, a few friends faraway texted and emailed to see if I was okay. As a result I have reconnected with a couple of old friends I haven't been in touch with for a few years. One of them has a similar illness to me and we both are rather restricted in what we can do and who we can talk to. So it's nice, we're kind of on the same page. We used to joke around a lot, and that hasn't changed.

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I got a Handicapped tag for my truck this week, I no longer have to worry about finding a parking spot close enough to the grocery store. I still hate that I have to drive everywhere, but at least it is less frustrating. Today I drove to the Reservoir to go for a walk, I did not park in the Handicap spot because it wouldn't have made a difference. No ducks on the pond but a nice walk. There's a look off point where you can see the Minas Basin and Cape Blomidon, I sat on a bench there for a while. Someone walked by with their little dog, the dog stopped to say hello. That was nice. I love the smell of autumn, not to mention the colours. Just a lovely day for a walk. I am still holding out hope for more ducks, they cheer me up.

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Next month will be full of appointments. I will be assessed by the Home Care Coordinator to see if I am eligible for services, and at the Balance and Dizziness Clinic to determine the cause of my dizziness and what treatment, if any, will help. Also see my doctor. She does the only one symptom at a time thing, so last time I went it was about my cough. I tried to bring up the dizziness (yet again!!! so frustrating!!!) and she said not now, next appointment. Earliest appointment available was in six weeks. So I went through the Nurse Practitioner at the Chronic Conditions Clinic and she made the referral immediately. 

At some point I am scheduled for a CT scan to see if I have lung cancer due to being a former smoker. My doctor's idea. But through a combination of prescription drugs and over-the-counter meds, I have the cough more or less under control, and I don't think it is due to lung cancer, or any of the other lung ailments caused by smoking. Also, out of the blue, I got called by an organization that tests your memory to see if you have dementia. I had gone in for a free assessment a year ago, and now they want to offer me a DNA test to see if I have genes for dementia. What the hell, why not. At this point I really don't care one way or the other. 

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Still going to Tai Chi but it is getting more difficult by the week. I am finding out just how short my short term memory is. The instructor says this is normal, but it doesn't feel normal.

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I put my birdfeeder out early this year. It is mobbed by the blue jays who literally guzzle down the seeds. But the chickadees, cardinals and nuthatches manage to get in between mobs. 

One day a nuthatch came and the feeder was not up. It flew around and around where it should have been, perhaps thinking it just hadn't looked hard enough (I know the feeling!). Then it flew away, but a few minutes later it came back and landed on a potted plant nearby. It dug up a sunflower seed and flew away with it. Ahah! Now I know who is burying seeds in my potted plants! 

The mourning dove is back too, hoping for messy eaters to drop seeds on the table below the feeder. The blue jays have cleaned up their act, they don't drop so many seeds any more. I take pity on the very patient dove and scatter a few seeds on the table for it. 

My friend that I reconnected with was telling me about the bears that visit her area. And the coyotes. She enjoys their visits. I think I would too, but not a lot of bears or coyotes here. Rare visits by pheasants is as exotic as it gets.

Sunny days, the birds and the bees

Finished varnishing the kayak, have moved it back to under the house since it is unlikely I'll be kayaking in the near future. But it does look good now. Had to take a few photos because otherwise I won't be seeing it again for another year. Sigh.

Dances with Whales

Traditionally one carves a fish or sea-going mammal into the bulkhead of a wooden kayak to help it stay afloat.

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The solar panels are now installed and running, but of course there's been a major weather change to rain and cloud for the foreseeable future. On a solar energy discussion group I saw that people with already up-and-running solar panels are ecstatic about all the sun they got in May and July. I missed out entirely. Might get a bit of sun in the fall, but by that time the sun will be much lower in the sky and sunlight will be shorter in duration. This year is a write-off. 

A little stress around my heat pump. Turns out the heat pump company installed it in the wrong place, and as a result the power company failed my solar installation. The solar guys told me if I could get it moved in the next few days there was still hope, and if needs be they would move it for me. But the heat pump people said that would void my warranty, and lucky me, they had a cancellation so they could slot me in the same day the solar guys put up the panels. 

Two guys came to move the heat pump, after a half hour of standing around waiting for head office to get back to them about what exactly was the problem and where they were supposed to move the it to. A couple of days later I got the bill, $200 for two guys to stand around waiting for a callback and then maybe twenty minutes moving the heat pump.

Not supposed to block access to power meter

I called the company and said, look, this is your fault not mine, you installed it in the wrong place as per the Electrical Code of Canada, you should have known better and there was plenty of space to install it elsewhere. They said they'd call me back, and an hour and a half later they did call to apologize and tell me the bill was being reversed. 

I don't believe for one second that this was news to them, they just tried to see if they could get away with it. But according to my new Fitbit, the stress of waiting those ninety minutes was equivalent to a half hour jog with respect to my heart rate. Got all my cardiac exercise for a couple of days in one shot.

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As I mentioned earlier I may have given myself a concussion and was slow to realize it because the symptoms are so close to what I have with long Covid. However, I've been looking into things people are doing for concussion, besides the usual stuff that doctors tell you. One of the things I happened on is creatine (not to be confused with creatinine). Body builders and athletes love the stuff, it helps them to build muscle fast. But more recently there has been some research into using it to treat concussion. 

I started thinking, if my symptoms overlap concussion symptoms, maybe this stuff will help me? Because the local university is big on athletics, there's a lot of athletes in town and guess what, a shop called Supplement King that caters to them. So I went there to enquire about creatine. 

The very buff owner was happy to tell me what he knew. Yes, he's been using it for a couple of years, no side effects but it's not recommended to people with kidney or liver problems. I told him why I wanted to try it and he was very supportive, even telling me that there's a prof at our university researching creatine for concussion. So I bought 300gms of the stuff and have started taking it. So far, no side effects, but no positive effects either. Not that I am expecting instant results, the research I have read suggests that it might take a couple of months.

If I could rid myself of only one symptom, it would definitely be the dizziness. Two years of it is depressing, and it has totally wrecked my social life. If it weren't for my garden and the birds, well, let's just leave it at that.

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In yet more boring health news, my doctor is on about my blood pressure again. When I measure at home it is fine, but when she measures at her office it is through the roof. Why am I not surprised. Anyway, she wants me to take a bunch of readings over the next couple of weeks or so, and gave me an instruction sheet and form to fill in. Problem is, I have a chronic cough, have had it from the get-go, and now it is much worse. I suspect allergies have kicked in. Well it turns out that when I am having a coughing fit my blood pressure rises into the hypertension zone, not as high as when I am in her office, but high enough to make a liar of me. 

I've started doing various things to get the cough under control, which sort of help, and I am dispensing with her instructions. I am supposed to sit up straight in a chair but that's the perfect position for a coughing fit too. So, I take the reading lying down. 

It's all very annoying having to do this. I feel like the pharmaceutical companies are pushing hard to get all old people on medication one way or another, and lowering the threshold for what is considered hypertension is one good way to do that. When I read all the potential side effects I just want to stay away from such meds if at all possible. Even if it means acquiescing to the prescription and dumping the pills down the toilet.

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Okay enough about that. In other news my onion crop is a bit of a failure, I am going to end up with bags of onion sets but not much else, maybe enough onion greens to make another batch of onion greens pesto. Tomatoes are coming along like gangbusters, I am freezing all the ones I don't eat; I have no energy for canning. Lettuce greens are a bust, and the broccoli did not do well, too dry in July. But still holding out hope for the brussels sprouts. Potato plants are dying so soon I will be digging them up, I think they will do okay. 

I got a few blueberries but the two resident song sparrows got most of them. It wasn't nearly as good a crop as last summer anyway. Green beans did great, froze most of them. I've left the bean plants in place because sometimes I get a second crop in the fall. I already notice new flowers on the bean plants. Green peppers are doing well but the peppers, although prolific, are just long skinny things which I don't like.

I planted a few scarlet runner beans, not knowing that that's what they were. Hastily set up poles for them to climb and they produced a profusion of bright red flowers that the hummingbirds love. One day while picking green beans I heard a familiar whirring sound just behind my head. I turned to see a hummingbird hovering not five feet from me, trying to decide if he was safe to feed on the flowers. In the end he decided not, but I have since seen a hummingbird (maybe the same one?) at those flowers and then later perching on my laundry line to scan the garden. Wow! Definitely will plant those again.

I was picking tomatoes the other day and unfortunately a bumblebee crawled up under my shirt. I was not aware of it until I got indoors, a kind of creepy-crawly sensation that caused me to try to shake it out of my shirt. Bad idea, the bee stung me. Bumblebees can sting multiple times, they don't have barbs on their stingers like honey bees do, so they can withdraw the stinger without injury to themselves. However, this bee was definitely injured and died soon after I shook it out of my shirt, I must have hit it. Poor bee. But now I have a very large angry red sore under my armpit, swollen up to egg-size. Have to be more careful next time I'm in the garden.

And that's all for now…

I've been told

Crow family on the roof

Quite depressed now. This month I am way sicker than I was same month last year (July 2021), which was worse than the same month the previous year (July 2020). Not a good trend. Between pandemic isolation and now isolation due to ongoing illness, I feel like my once very satisfying social life is now dead in the water and I lack the ability or energy to try to revive it. 

I went out for coffee yesterday and after about an hour I was reduced to gibberish. I was trying to respond to a topic we were discussing and was at a loss for words, which very quickly degenerated to not even knowing what I wanted to say or even what the topic was in the first place. All I could say at the time was, I'm done, I need to go home. Fortunately my friend understood my illness and agreed that it was time to go home. She's all that is left, I get so tired of explaining to people that even though I look fine I am not fine at all, but she gets it and we don't have to waste our time time talking about it.

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Had an interesting experience on Canada Day. I went for a 30 minute walk with an 88 year old friend and her golden retriever M at the Reservoir. M knows me well and is always happy to see me. About 20 minutes in M suddenly went kind of crazy leaping up into my face. She'd just been in the pond so she was one big wet dog and I quickly became one small wet woman. M's owner tried to call her off, I tried to ward her off using my hands and saying sternly "Off!". Finally M's owner leashed M because she just wouldn't stop and we walked back to her car that way. On the drive to my house M continued her strenuous efforts to get into my face, I would say she was quite frantic. However, as soon as I got out of the car she settled right down as if nothing had happened. Afterward, M's owner and I discussed what had happened, since this was very unusual behaviour for M.

We have sometimes joked that M must have been a nurse in a previous life, she reacts quickly when she thinks someone is ill. Shortly after this incident, maybe a couple of hours or so, I crashed big time, I could hardly move or even think. I was already quite sick, starting maybe a couple of weeks before this incident (I say "starting" loosely, more like "intensifying"); that 30 minute walk put me over the edge. I've been instructed in pacing, but since symptoms of "post exertional malaise" (PEM) don't kick in until hours or even days after, it's hard to know when enough is enough. But I think M just told me: 20 minutes.

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We are having such nice weather and about all I am capable of is sitting in my recliner gazing out the window. I leave the back door open so I can hear the birds in my back yard: a couple of song sparrows, several cardinal couples, a bunch of starlings (big batch of new ones this year), and of course the crow family (see photo above). One whiney teenager and two very patient parents. The whiney teenager is the sole survivor of three, I had to pick up and dispose of the bodies of its siblings. One got trapped in my woodshed and couldn't get out, the other got sick, returned to the nest and died.

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Step one: rails and inverters for solar panels

Finally they are starting to install the solar panels on my roof. It is a long drawn out process involving multiple inspections by the electric power company before proceeding to the next step. I will be lucky if it is all completed by mid-August, so not a lot of solar energy will be generated this year. 

At this point the mounting rails and inverters have been installed, the next step is for an electrician to hook up the inverters to my electric panel. Then an inspection, then on to the next step, hopefully the installation of the panels themselves.

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My painter has completed most of the exterior wall painting, he is now working on staining the front porch and the back deck. Then it will be the exposed concrete basement and the trellis work in the front of the house. I have purchased a welded wire fence and T-rail posts for along the north side of my property, the painter has said he can help install that. Bye bye money. I don't particularly enjoy having workers around even if they are as unobtrusive as they can be. I look forward to very rainy days when none of them can come.

Sunny Days

Last few weeks have been terribly busy, and I have probably been pushing myself too hard. I am keeping lists of things I have to do, and as each item gets checked off two more get added on. I am not making progress.

A pile of turtles

Went kayaking, it was fun (and exhausting). As it turned out, the second Covid booster seriously set me back. I almost didn't go kayaking, I felt so sick. A full week after getting the shot I think I recovered, but the first day of kayaking left me almost too dizzy to function. It was only a bit less than two hours of an easy paddle up a quiet meandering river. We saw piles of turtles. Literally piles, they were perched one atop another on floating logs in the sun. The second day of paddling was much better, I had recovered from the booster shot and was able to spend the whole day out on the water. 

There were six of us in a three bedroom cottage, ranging in age from early sixties to mid-seventies. The difference in energy level between the three in their sixties and the three in our seventies was pretty stark. The other two seventy year olds were recovering from bouts of Covid in April, so they were in only slightly better shape than me. On the second and third days we split up into two paddling groups, the younger women wanted to go further faster. They even went swimming!

It felt good to be out in my kayak again, the trip was so worth it.

Shortly after I got back, the roofers arrived to reroof my house. The idea is to have brand new shingles under the solar panels. In three days they had most of it done but there are some ridge shingles missing because of shortages; none to be had in the entire province. They'll be back to finish the job when the ridge shingles are available again. I warned them about my crow family, but there was no conflict, the men and the crows did not bother each other.

I called the solar panel installer after the roof was done to get an estimate of when he planned to start. Turns out some document or other got lost so there is a delay. Surprise surprise. He thinks he will start in 3 weeks, and it will take about 6 weeks. I am not holding my breath.

Then I put my car up for sale, it sold within a couple of days. I priced it at an amount that I wanted, then after it sold I looked on the internet to see what it should be priced at. I was about $500 under what they said it was worth. Even so, the guy who bought it tried to talk me down in price. I am pretty sure he knew it was already underpriced, he just wanted to see if he could get an even better deal. Nope.

My next big job is to get the house painted. I had already lined up a friend to help me do that, and she wanted another person to do the ladder work. A friend of hers has a son with a mental illness that pretty much prevents him from getting a steady job, she arranged for him to help, after running it past me of course. But she can't start until June and I had the idea that the young man could start this month doing cleaning and scraping. So he's been here for the past few days. He's a good worker, he just has difficulty relating to people. That's fine with me. He has some experience with this kind of work so I don't really have to supervise him. I know his mother from the dog park, she used to have a border collie that Hapi liked, which says a lot because Hapi didn't much care for border collies.

New garden frames and transplants-in-waiting

Since coming back from kayaking we've had beautiful sunny weather and I've been working in my garden. It is slow going because it's heavy work and I am tired and dizzy. I'm not making progress as fast as I would like. My transplants are huge and desperately need to be planted, but strictly speaking it is too early yet and I haven't got the beds ready for them. I did manage to get peas, spinach and some potatoes planted.

I love seeing the goldfinches and cardinals flitting about, and the male cardinals are quite noisy now, declaring their territories. Pinky and Big Red are still fighting, I saw them in a showdown in my neighbour's driveway. But they saw me watching and flew away before they really got into it.Traffic at the bird feeder is dropping off, but I keep it up because the cardinals always come in the evening and I like seeing them.

I am being referred to an internal medicine guy and I am supposed to go to the Chronic Conditions centre for a NASA Lean Test. That's to see if I have Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS). If I have POTS then I guess it means my heart has been affected, but not sure how much. Not even sure I have it, but it would explain the two years of dizziness and fatigue. It's also a known complication of Long Covid.

I am reading an interesting book, A Primate's Memoir, by Robert Sapolsky. It's about his years in Kenya studying a troop of baboons. He obviously has a deep fondness for his study subjects and a wicked sense of humour. At the start of the book he says that the tragic last chapter is completely true, but he did change a few names. My curiousity caused me to read the last chapter first, and it was so tragic I almost couldn't go back and read the first chapters. Who knew you could be so fond of baboons? Stuff I've read about baboons suggests that the males run the show and females are completely under their control, but it turns out that is wishful thinking on the part of (male) animal behaviourists. As usual, things are a lot more complicated. However, because Sapolsky's research involved taking blood samples, and the females were mostly pregnant, lactating or generally taking care of children, he couldn't take samples from them. Taking a sample involved darting a baboon, waiting for it to fall unconscious, carrying it back to his vehicle where he took the sample and then returning the baboon to where it was when it fell unconscious. Since he couldn't really do that to a female who couldn't afford to spend time away and unconscious, most of the baboons that he knew up close and personal were male. 

All the lovely sunny weather we are having does not bode well for summer crops. The land is unusually dry. It is supposed to be a La Nina summer which is unusual too, and that means more hurricane activity. The large number of snow storms we had this winter were due to a La Nina winter. Not sure what unusually dry ground and unusual hurricane activity will add up to, not much good I guess.

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.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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

Ice-mageddon

The last ice storm did me in I think. I spent a few hours on Saturday digging out (inches and inches of solid ice). Snow plough guy could only do a partial job, even the snow plough was not up to dealing with the ice. However I used a garden spade to break through the ice around my car tires and later a couple of people helped me push the car loose from the ice. Since then I've been in bed, getting up only to go to the bathroom or get something to eat. Partially fatigue partially dizziness, even sitting up with my head unsupported is difficult. Between the icy roads and the Omicron restrictions, there's nowhere to go.

However, I have a clear view of the bird feeder and that is my principal entertainment (I periodically go out to refill the feeder, but since it is so icy I have to use my ice grippers). There are a few new birds, a couple of pairs of purple finches. The males don't take no guff off other bird species but they don't mind each other. I've been enjoying watching them, but today a female finch crashed into my window hard. I looked out and there she was belly up on the snow with her legs sticking up like a dead bird. Her head twitched a bit so I got a small box and a little rag and went out to get her. She struggled a bit but not enough to get away. I left her in my foyer, a tiny unheated room. Then I went back to bed and read for awhile. After an hour or so she had lifted her head. Another hour later she was looking around. I went in to check on her and she panicked and flew around the tiny room. So I opened the outside door to let her out and she did indeed fly out, but only to my shoulder. I put my finger in front of her and she didn't move except to peck it a bit. More exploratory than defensive or aggressive. After a few more moments she flew away.

Since then I've seen two female finches at the feeder, but am not sure that one of them is her, they look alike. I guess I could have kept her indoors a bit longer but I don't know what their water and food needs are or how badly she was injured, so I left it up to her. I hope she's okay.

The four mourning doves survived the storm, I see them occasionally. One of them perches near the feeder and looks at me through the window. And now that the snow is so solid the pheasants who live in the bushes behind my place can walk on top of it and I have spotted a colourful male poking around my back fence.

Today it is raining. It will probably freeze overnight, yet more ice. So far this winter is rapidly approaching the snowmageddon we had in 2015. Icemageddon? The one good thing about the ice storm was there was no snow shovelling necessary and you could walk on top of the snow because it was frozen solid. All 50 cm of it. No power outage here but tens of thousands of them in a swath that marks the worst wind and freezing rain. My town is located on the edge of that swath, so we were very lucky. I think they have not finished getting power back to folks 4 days later, and more power outages are happening due to this storm today. Hope we continue to be lucky. 

Our power company wants to not only raise the rates for residential customers but also penalize anyone with solar panels. Amazing. There was such an uproar about it that the premier of the province said he would make sure they legally could not do that. I am getting solar panels in the spring so my installer called me to make sure all the contractual documents were signed so I would be grandfathered in under the old rates. The proposed penalty is so hefty that it would discourage most people from attempting to install solar panels, thereby putting the nascent solar industry out of business. In Nova Scotia our principal sources of electricity are coal and oil fired generators, and supposedly the Maritime Loop from Muskrat Falls. A financial disaster in and of itself. Years ago our power company was owned by the government, but they sold it off to an American company and nobody is pleased with that either.

There's a joke circulating that after the latest ice storm the power company was checking on how many customers used generators during the power outage, with the intent of slapping on additional penalties for generator use.

Sorry, no photos, just no energy. It's either way too cold or way too slippery to risk freezing my fingers or unbalancing myself. Not in a happy picture taking mood anyway.

Weekend Nor'easter #3

Third nor'easter this month on its way, should be here tomorrow morning. Shovelling out after a nor'easter puts me in bed for three/four days after, I am so-o-o-o looking forward to this one (not). Plus, after a big dump of snow it's forecast to also deliver a hefty load of freezing rain, which should make shovelling even more fun (not). I would hire someone to do it but I don't know anyone, or even how one would go about finding a snow shoveller. Snow ploughs are easy, shovellers not so much. Last year the girls next door were quick to volunteer help; this year it's guys with a snow blower who like to blow their snow onto my property.

On a bright but kind of weird note, I saw four robins in the bushes behind my back yard today. In January. I guess some of them have started overwintering here.

Another bright note, I have at least two pairs and possibly three of cardinals coming to my birdfeeder. I recognize two of the males, one is skinny and light red ('Pinky') and the other is fat and dark red ('Big Red'). Cardinals are skittish and not particularly sociable, the males and females tolerate each other but only just. But two males? Big Red beats up on Pinky something fierce. Pinky is always looking over his shoulder when he comes to the feeder.

Four mourning doves have taken up residence under my house. There's an overhang at the front of the house surrounded by wooden lattice with a couple of holes in it just big enough for the doves to slip through. The birdfeeder is nearby so when the weather is bad they can just pop out to check for seeds on the ground; when the weather is good they hang out on the power lines. I like the doves, don't mind them hanging out under the house. At first I was worried that they were trapped there but having seen the two holes they use I don't worry about them anymore.

I did get out skating once or twice but there's been too many big dumps of snow for volunteer shovellers to manage so the ice is pretty much buried now, except for one small rectangle for the hockey players. Just as well, a nice sheet of smooth ice is too much of a temptation for me and I pay for it afterwards.

My social life is down to zip. I am too tired and dizzy to get out for more than necessary grocery shopping. Omicron has pretty much put paid to anything more than that. Most days I can't even get up the energy to phone someone. 

On a really nice day I'll walk to the Reservoir, and once this month I actually met someone there that I knew. We only know each other through dogwalking at the Reservoir and she lives in another town, we have no friends or acquaintances in common. She's quite a bit younger than me but somehow we connect on a very personal level. So we exchange complaints about life in general, and get a few laughs. Hapi isn't around anymore so her dog has no one to entertain him while we are jabbering on. His patience eventually wears thin and he finally starts whining about it. 

I like that we have this odd relationship where we have little in common on the face of it but can talk endlessly about it. Since neither of us is regular about our Reservoir walk timing, it only happens sporadically.

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.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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.

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.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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.

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.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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.

Birds and ballots

I noticed about a week ago that the little cardinal that flitted around my back yard and sang constantly all day long was absent. It took me a few days to notice his absence and I guess I just thought he was somewhere else for a few days. Then I nticed that there was a cat visiting my back yard; he would scamper away whenever he noticed me watching him. And finally, while mowing the lawn a few days ago, I found scattered blue jay feathers. I put it all together and cursed that damn cat.

I tolerate cats but am not a huge fan, mostly because I am allergic to them and they always like to rub up against me. But now I dislike them all and that orange-and-white cat in particular. I feel like a good friend was murdered. I don't know if the chipmunk has survived the carnage, haven't seen it around either, and the back yard is deathly silent these days.

Today I watched a young male cardinal checking out my back yard from a nearby tree and I hoped he was thinking of moving in. But he came with a companion, a much larger bird of another species (I am not sure what it is). I suspect the young cardinal is hanging out with the bigger bird for protection and I rather got the impression that the big bird was calling the shots. It will be up to him (or her) whether they move in or not. This new cardinal isn't a singer, or at least not today, but it would be nice if he moved in.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Our provincial election was on Tuesday and I put in over 15 hours as "information officer". In fact, all I did was run around sanitizing after each voter. In my not-so-humble opinion our supervisor did a poor job of organizing our poll and as a result there were lengthy line-ups. There were no breaks, the voters showed up constantly and we had to keep our masks on whenever there was a voter on the premises. That meant no eating or drinking either. By the end of the day I was exhausted and in pain all over.

What makes it worse is that as "information officer" (the supervisor took over my job as information officer and relegated me to sanitizing) I was low man on the totem pole and my opinion did not count. The supervisor was not doing the job of information officer effectively and as a result too many people were waiting in line for half an hour only to be told that they either didn't have the right ID or they were at the wrong poll. He was supposed to catch those folks at the door and redirect them. So it wasted their time as well as the time of all the people lined up behind them. The tasks of registering and screening each voter fell to two people who processed things very slowly while two other people just handed out ballots and sat there doing nothing otherwise. They couldn't step in to help, the supervisor was too busy chatting with voters and doing my job, and I couldn't do anything about it except scurry around with the sanitizer.

After the poll closed we counted ballots and registration cards and the tabs ripped off the ballots. The numbers were all supposed to match up and of course they didn't. So we recounted and recounted and recounted until we finally got it all to match up. At least there was a clear winner. I spoke to one of the other candidates the next day and the scuttlebut is that the winner didn't even want to run but was cajoled into it. So now we have a reluctant MLA who wishes he had said no. The provincial election signs have all been switched to federal election signs and we have another month to go of election campaigning. Only the names of the candidates have changed. It seems the election issues are more or less the same, with similar promises being made.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I went on a little road trip with a friend the day after the election and we discussed the election results. The Progressive Conservatives won by a landslide, apparently Nova Scotian voters are not happy with the Liberal party that was in power. They did a good job of handling the pandemic, but not much else. Anyway, the PCs focussed on a single issue, health care. My friend said she belonged to a Facebook group about saving provincial health care and after the election the group moderator said she was disbanding the group because the PCs were in power now and they were going to fix everything. We both guffawed. I bet that woman believes in Santa Claus too.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Between my extreme annoyance at the poll work and losing my lovely singing cardinal to a crappy cat, I was more than ready for a hard paddle on the lake two days later. I visited the young eagle, who was crying plaintively that morning. She stopped when I paddled up to her tree but started in again when I left. Her head and shoulders appear a little greyer than before, I looked that up on the internet and it probably indicates her age as around two years. This is odd since juvenile bald eagles don't usually hang around the nest that long, they are usually off on their own by 6 months of age. Either premature aging or a very immature juvenile.

March news

Not much has happened in the last week, either that or my memory is shot to hell and I just don't remember what has happened.

My neighbour told me that the trees behind our houses have been full of Cedar Waxwings so I have been keeping an eye out for them and sure enough they arrived when I had my camera ready. They twitter like a crowd of grasshoppers. From a distance they don't look like much, easy to mistake for starlings. but up closer you see their crests and bright yellow bits, they are very pretty birds that like to hang out in large groups. They also are not that shy, they didn't mind me coming close to the trees they were perched in.

March came in like a lion, cold and blustery; let's hope it leaves like a lamb. I managed to get in a bit of skating, highly unusual for March, but the area of the pond that is skatable is so small that the time it took to put on and take off my skates was probably longer than the time I actually spent skating.

Remember B, my friend in the nursing home? Well, she finally got her first vaccination shot this week. They had promised it for early February. She has an appointment for the second shot in early April, just days before she plans to attend her daughter's funeral. Yes, her daughter died, cause not really known, she was found dead in her apartment. She was probably as unwell as B and she had stopped taking her insulin about a month before she died. Very sad. Also very hard on B, they spoke on the phone dozens of times every day. 

B's daughter was not mobile so she couldn't visit B even before the pandemic except on major holidays (Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving). The funeral is being held in the small village where B raised her family; a local funeral director is taking care of all the details and it will all be done at no cost to B. The daughter wanted to be buried with her husband but she will be buried with her father instead, since B could not make arrangements in the town where her son-in-law was buried. They are one hard-luck family.

My brother sent me a couple of photos that he had scanned of the house my parents lived in right after I was born. One photo shows me and my parents (and their two dogs, Gunner and Tigger) in front of the house, probably around 1949, and the other is what that house looked like in 1986. At the time I lived in Ottawa and on a visit my parents showed me where the house was. So, looking at the more recent photo and knowing that it was somewhere near the river shore in that village, I used Streetview to find it by following all the streets that were close to the water on the map of the area. It's still there. It looks a little bit like the house I live in now.

Reading and trade offs

Hapi seems to be having some difficulty with pain, I discussed it with her vet and the vet prescribed gabapentin. She warned that the gabapentin would make Hapi "loopy". Coincidentally my own doctor prescribed something for me to combat nerve pain, and I have to say it's making me feel "loopy" too. I am thinking that almost any medication for nerve pain is going to have that side effect. Personally, I'd rather deal with pain than loopiness. My level of pain is relatively low, perhaps if it was much higher I'd be more willing to accept loopiness. I don't know how Hapi feels about that trade off.

We were late arriving at the Reservoir yesterday (due to loopiness); several dogs and owners were just leaving as we arrived. Hapi insisted on following the crowd back to the parking lot. One owner commented that Hapi just wanted to hang out with the other dogs, I said that it was more likely that she knew some of those dogs were going to be fed treats when they got back to the cars and she wanted to be in on that. I let her follow her nose and she managed to scarf up a few treats before everyone left and we went for our walk in the park. The trails are getting icy but the pond is no longer skatable.

Today is probably the coldest day of the year. The thermometer is in deep subzero territory and the wind is at blizzard levels. Not a lot of snow though. Yesterday was (relatively) warm and wet so between the rain and the melting snow we now have lots of ice. I took Hapi out for a walk early this morning because the forecast was for falling temperatures and rising wind speeds. Sure enough, lots of icy trails. I tried to stay in the woods to avoid the worst of the wind. I am grateful for Lee Valley Icers, the old lady's (and old man's) friend.

Hope for Wildlife emailed me that my blue jay does not have a broken wing or foot but appears to be suffering from head trauma. Now I am thinking that I did not run over it with my car after all, but that it crashed into one of my house windows near the bird feeder (and driveway). No blue jays have shown up at my bird feeder since then, I think they now consider it too dangerous. I met a friend on the street who lives a few blocks away, she says that recently there are twice as many blue jays at her feeder and they are eating her out of house and home. 

I just finished reading Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of Mind (2020), by Peter Godfrey-Smith. The evolution of consciousness, or mind, is a theme Godfrey-Smith also wrote about in in his previous book, Other Minds: the Octopus, the Sea and the Origin of Consciousness (2016). In the earlier book Godfrey-Smith focuses on octopus consciousness and how that might have evolved; in the more recent book he looks at the evolution of consciousness in general. He discusses what consciousness is and whether non-human animals have the same kind of consciousness that we have, and if not, how does it differ. 

I like his writing style, his apparent scientific knowledge particularly of the theory of evolution, his philosophical slant on that knowledge and the huge resource of his scuba diving experience on the Australian Great Barrier Reef. Of course he includes photos taken on some of those dives. His focus is on the early development of life in the sea, he gives short shrift to more recent development of modern land-based animals. I like that because so much of writing about biological evolution is focussed on land-based animals which is really a relatively recent development. Most of our modern biological processes were first developed in an ocean environment and only much later modified and adapted for land-based life.