Waiting at a crossroad

I went for my Covid test Thursday afternoon, the place was full of young soldiers. My town now has two testing sites, I went to the new one. At the door I was greeted by a young soldier who handed me a mask, but I was already wearing two masks.

He hesitated, saying, "Oh, I don't know what to do."

I whipped off one of my masks and took the one he was offering. The next soldier I met was positioned to monitor the line-up and send individuals on to the next station. I asked him where he was from, he said he was from the city.

"Thanks for helping out," I said.

I got my Covid test in the nick of time, they are no longer testing asymptomatic people until the lab has processed all the symptomatic tests. I guess one could lie about symptoms if one were desperate for the test, but then one would have to self-isolate until one got a negative result. So far I've had three tests and each tester has had a different technique. The first test is so far the winner for low discomfort quick efficiency, who knows whether it was as effective. The second test was the most uncomfortable, the third test took the longest time, the tester inserted the swab and then just let go of it and left it while she counted the seconds to herself. Then she twisted it a few times and withdrew it.

On Friday I felt a lot better so I think it really is just a cold. I am not expecting to get the results back nearly as quickly as before, maybe by Monday. They didn't tell me I had to self-isolate but it's probably the prudent thing. Who wants to catch a cold in these times? I certainly didn't.

It rained all day. The weather radar for the entire province was down and out so it was impossible to predict when it would stop, certainly the weather reports are completely unreliable now (Covid related). The garage owner said he'd drop off my car at the end of the day and took my payment over the phone. Ouch. Oh well, the car hasn't been in for repairs in a long time so I guess it averages out.

If it weren't for the fatigue and dizziness I would feel a lot better about the future. On the one hand I feel like I am at a crossroads with a lot of opportunities opening up for me to do new things, make new choices. On the other I am too damn tired to even clean up the mess of my past/current life. I am chipping away at the edges. Gave away some of Hapi's stuff, broke down a bunch of cardboard boxes for recycling, mowed the lawn for the first time this year. I've swept the floor a couple of times but it needs a lot more than a bit of sweeping.

I have a preliminary appointment with a chronic conditions clinic coming up and I almost had an appointment with a neurologist. Unfortunately, with the car in for brake repair and me with a (presumptive) cold, I had to pass it up.

"Don't worry, you're at the top of the list now, you'll get the next one," said the woman calling me.

I didn't really want to drive into the city in the midst of lockdown anyway.

First rainy day all month

Hapi and beach friends

It has been a week of dealing with garden harvesting and heat. The tomatoes have really enjoyed this weather, I have a bumper crop as do many others in this area. Green beans keep coming, and no matter what you do to avoid this there is always way too much zucchini. My freezer is almost full and I am looking at ways to cram yet more food in. I should have canned the tomatoes but freezing them is so much easier and I just did not anticipate the quantity. I've been eating a lot of tabbouleh and tomato salads…

Hapi and I visited her best friend Ava the other day, Ava was not feeling well. Her owner said the vet had discovered "a mass" in her belly that could be very serious. At the moment she is on antibiotics, steroids and water pills, so hard to say whether she is not feeling well because of the mass or the medication. I thought Ava would long outlive Hapi, but maybe not.

A local guy died last week of a massive heart attack, he was a bit of an icon around here. A little bit older than me, he ran a shop on Main Street that was infamous in its heyday, he dealt in psychedelic paraphenalia. The place was a little warren of stuff: smoking gear, incense, posters, record albums, etc etc. The little bit of light that came through the big front window hardly made it more than a few feet into the interior. He also dealt in used furniture and his main customers were students looking to buy for the school year and sell at the end of it. Most of us parents had kids who hung around that shop. He also kept doberman pinscher dogs, he loved that breed. He sat out front of his shop in an old wooden swivel office chair with one of his dogs lying at his feet whenever the weather was good; he was a street fixture. In later years he had health issues that made him grumpy, he sold the business to a young guy who radically revamped it and we hardly saw him on the street anymore. After his last doberman died suddenly he did not get another one. But news of his death travelled fast, in spite of his disappearance from street life he was definitely not forgotten. 

I visited B on the weekend. The nursing home schedules the visits now, you just have to show up. B was in an ornery mood, she'd been chastised by a worker at the home and she was annoyed about it. Group living is hard. But otherwise she's okay. She says she'd rather be living in her old apartment where she has a little more freedom, but she can't really take care of herself and she'd be trapped there as much as she feels trapped in the nursing home. In the home they don't allow people to play cards because of the pandemic, but at her old apartment she'd have nobody to play with anyway.

Beach decorations

The heat wave seems to have broken, maybe temporarily or permanently, hard to tell. At any rate yesterday was quite lovely and today it is raining. It's not really a lot of rain but it is definitely welcome. Hapi perked up quite a bit with the cooler weather, instead of going straight to the pond to soak yesterday we went instead for an explore on the bike trails in the woods. She hasn't wanted to do that in many weeks. Watching her prance down the street later in the evening I felt like she was back to her old self.

In honour of the cooler wet weather I am doing a bit of cooking today, bread and bone broth. And of course tabbouleh with lots of tomatoes. Last night I sat outdoors chatting with neighbours, one of them had bought corn earlier in the day. We debated who grew the best corn, two of us plumped for one farm, one for another. We'll have to do a taste test.

And finally, my car's exhaust system is broken yet again. Each time it is a different part, and each time the part is so expensive that my mechanic has tried to replace it with something less expensive. I hope he succeeds one more time.

Race to the finish

Chicory weed, one of my favourite summer flowers

Hapi can no longer climb the basement stairs on her own, she waits at the bottom while I go down and arrange a towel sling under her rear end. Sometimes we manage it smoothly, sometimes not. Those stairs are tricky, sometimes I lose my balance and fall on top of her, sometimes I move too fast and she stumbles. The new normal. A friend asked me if I could increase her pain meds but I don't think pain is the problem, it's muscle wasting.

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Big excitement at the Reservoir the other day, a few of us standing around the beach when three eagles appeared overhead. One eagle attacked another, they locked talons and grappled in mid-air amid much whistling, then all three flew away. Two returned to the tree they usually hang out in and whistled for quite a while after.

One of the people on the beach happened to be a naturalist who had a camera with a big telephoto lens; he tried to get a photo of the event but he says it's not very good, it all happened too quickly. However he did have a recent photo of the two baby owls at the Reservoir which he showed us. I had seen one of the babies a couple of weeks ago and then it disappeared and I feared the worst. Not so, he said, the two babies are now adult-sized and flying around a bit. It takes a lot of practice to fly through dense forest.

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We got a new member in our writing group and one person wrote that we should give her a copy of our "guidelines". Once again I voiced opposition to the idea—I really dislike that document, it doesn't reflect what we actually do and now that we are totally online it is kind of irrelevant. Nobody responded to my objections so I thought that meant that no one agreed with me, however one member did eventually write to say that she was in total agreement and was glad I had spoken up. I would like that document just to die of neglect, I am not really up for the turmoil of yet another revision process.

Fireweed: harbinger of fall, the higher the flowers on the stalk the closer it is

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I took my car to the garage yet again for a final repair to replace a broken transmission mount. The car has been making awful noises for over a year now and this was supposed to fix it. I don't doubt the broken mount, however the noise is still there. I arranged to go out for lunch with a friend at a place across the road from the garage while they did the repair, this is the first time we've gotten together since mid-March and we had a great time. The garage phoned me to say the car was ready and they would leave the key in the car because they like to take a two-hour lunch. After lunch I drove my friend home and a couple of hours later I called the garage to say I was coming back to settle the bill.

I told the mechanic the noise was still there, he was sure he had fixed it so he wanted to take another look. In the end, by process of elimination, he is deducing that the problem is the transmission itself. His recommendation is not to fix it, too expensive, and start looking for another vehicle. He gave me a discount on the cost of replacing the transmission mount. Transmission might break, but it won't fall off! So there we are, dying dog and dying car.

My friend's vision is completely gone now, she is much worse than she was in March. But she's a barrel of laughs and it's good to spend time with her, we laughed ourselves silly. At the restaurant the staff were all masked. At one point one waitress started yelling at a man to get out, get out right now. The man left and we were staring at the waitress wondering what just happened. She laughed and said, We do this all day, I yell, he leaves by the back door and walks around to the front door and comes back in again. He's here all day. She was just making space for the noon hour custom.

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I am having some problems with my loom so I phoned my old teacher for advice. We had a nice chat about this and that but she couldn't really advise me. I have come to the realization that this loom is defective and perhaps I should look for another one. A loom that fits the bill will cost me three or four grand new, less if I can find a used one in good condition. Having had the experience of using better quality looms at the classes I used to attend, I know it will be worth it, even if I have to order one new. And I'll be able to re-use some of the parts of my existing loom. It was handmade by a gentleman in Ontario and it looks good and appears well put together, but the devil is in the details. It was intended to duplicate a Leclerc loom, so I am looking for a 'real' Leclerc loom. But it's a lot of money, a new loom or a new car? Don't know that I can do both.

My not so free day

Before the rain, when the beach was sandy and the water was clear

I had to take my car back to the garage yesterday morning, nothing serious, just a follow-up to a previous visit, and I thought I had the rest of the day free. Took Hapi to the Reservoir and viewed the damage from the other night's heavy rainfall. As I previously noted they've been renovating the beach and trails at the Reservoir and the heavy rain did a number on it. The trails are mostly okay but the beach washed out to sea, so to speak. Half of the nice beach sand that they had just trucked in got washed into the pond, leaving the gravel underneath exposed and the pond turned into a mudhole. What a mess. Of course all immaterial to Hapi, as long as she can wade in and enjoy a nice soak, mud or no.

Got home and read an email inviting me to a luncheon meeting—all bring-your-own and socially distanced on a shady patio—in less than an hour's time. That was fine, I could do that, and while I was at the meeting my son texted asking if I was available to talk. Sure, why not, just give me an hour to get home again. Only that chat ended up being the better part of two hours and then it was time to get Hapi's supper, respond to some of my writing group emails, get my own supper, and that was pretty much the end of the day. So much for a free day.

The meeting was interesting, we were trying to figure out how to revive our book club. One person refused to do Zoom and a couple of others refused to meet in person indoors, even in a very large space with a small group. So no concensus on that, but everyone agreed that we all missed our old club meetings. We also fear that things are going to get worse in the fall. The local university is going to be going half online and half in person, but there is no plan for providing quarantine space for returning students from away. The town also has no plan for dealing with that. I hear that South Shore ports are dealing with an influx of Americans boating up the East Coast, and we've already had two outbreaks (Nova Scotia and PEI) because of one American who was told to quarantine but decided not to and after infecting a bunch of people tested positive himself. One of the people he infected worked in a continuing care home. This province needs to up its game in enforcing quarantine orders.

My son is trying his hand at online dating, this is actually a pretty good time for that. Because of the pandemic people are spending more time getting to know each other online before actually meeting, and rushing into sex is pretty much off the table. I think that is a good thing. He told me that he had recently received a wedding invitation from an old friend who he considered to be seriously emotionally damaged. He said it made him feel like life was so unfair: here's this guy who my son was sure would never be capable of carrying on a serious relationship inviting him to his wedding, while he himself was still single and looking. Not that he didn't wish his friend well, but darn it, why couldn't it be him? I laughed and told him I understood the feeling completely.

We compared notes on Hapi and Hiro, her brother now deceased. He said that in the last few months of Hiro's life he felt like a full-time hospice worker, Hiro's care was now his job. Sounds familiar. This morning I chatted with a couple who own a dog of similar age and condition as Hapi and they agreed that it really was a full-time job. You wrap your life around it, it takes up so much of your emotional headspace, never mind the time and effort of actual care. They usually go to their cottage on PEI in the summer but they won't be going this year, too hard on the dog. They saw Hapi and me across the pond and told their dog that Hapi was here, their dog picked up his pace in anticipation of meeting Hapi, but when they met he immediately sat down with his back to her and she ignored him too. Dogs are funny.

A tale of a cat

I've just moved to the next level of pandemic self-isolation, the car is in the garage.

It has been making funny (not ha-ha) noises all spring, gradually getting worse until last week it was a full-blown exhaust system set free. I had friends tell me that some young men would pay good money to have a car that sounded like that, but I found the noise most troublesome at the deepest levels of my physiology. I don't know which was worse, driving with the windows open or closed, but opted for open in case there were dangerous fumes associated with the roaring and sputtering noise.

About the only thing I use the car for these days is to drive Hapi to the Reservoir when I think she's not up for the walk to get there, and occasionally to drive down town to pick up something or other than I can't fit into my backpack. My mechanic, B's son, gave the car a good looking-over and determined that this was a job for a licenced mechanic in a bona fide garage, and recommended one that is out of town. Last week I called to make the appointment, was told I could bring it in Monday afternoon but since I thought I was going to be busy that afternoon the appointment was made for Tuesday morning. A day or two later my plans for Monday fell through and I called back to see if I could get the Monday appointment since Tuesday morning was a tad less convenient. The guy said sure.

What I didn't know was that he had made an appointment for someone else but right before I called that someone else had cancelled so the Monday afternoon time slot had reopened. However Mr Garage Guy forgot to write my name into the time slot so when I arrived there yesterday he was puzzled, aren't you supposed to be here tomorrow? But no matter, he still had the open time slot he just wasn't prepared to fix anything then. He'd take a look and see what parts he'd have to order. With the car up on the hoist he showed me the source of the problem, the catalytic converter hanging by a rusty thread, so to speak. Then he noted my bald tires. I knew about that, I was just hoping that I could make it through the summer with the small amount of driving I now do. He did not agree.

The upshot of it all was that he would keep the car over night and see what he could do about rounding up a replacement "cat". He also told me of a dealer in used tires who he thought sold reasonably fit tires if I wasn't in the market for brand new ones. I'm not. This car only has to last as long as Hapi does, after that it's toast as far as I am concerned. Under normal circumstances he would go online and order the cheapest cat he could find, but these days delivery of online goods is so delayed that I might have to wait a couple of weeks or more. That would entirely depend on Hapi remaining healthy enough to walk to the Reservoir in hot weather and her health is so up and down that I can't predict that. Getting a ride with someone else is not in the cards with physical distancing and all that. So he's going to try to find one locally.

Mr Garage Guy drove me home. First time I've been in someone else's car in months. He had a super big truck, it had an extra step just to get into it, and we drove with the windows open. We chatted about all sorts of stuff including haircuts, roadwork (it's started) and family members living in the States. He'll call me today to let me know what the situation is with the cat.

There's a shop in the next town over that sells peanut butter that I really like. I hope I get the car back before I run out. I usually get my drinking water from a spring on the other side of the Ridge but I have already run out of that and am drinking town water (flouridated, not tasty). And eggs. I won't be able to go to the farm to buy fresh eggs, I'll have to make do with store-bought. Oh the trials and tribulations of a pandemic!