Hi Jerry's Mom!

Now I am in self-isolation, hopefully just for a couple of days. Came down with cold symptoms (runny nose, headache) but to be safe I got a Covid test and have to self-isolate until I get a negative result. I've booked a Covid booster shot for 4 days from now and I really don't want to cancel it because the next available slot around here is not until late January. Hopefully it's just a cold, but even so, nobody wants a cold now. 

Covid is roaring back, thanks to a recent event in another university town and the high mobility of students and their parents at this time of year. From last Thursday until Sunday night I was ushering for several Christmas-themed musical events, mostly on campus. I felt lousy on Sunday and tried to beg off, but the organizer said they were short of staff and needed me. He called me this morning and was shocked to hear that I'd gone and gotten myself tested today; he had not thought of the risk, since everyone was masked. 

One of the events—a Matt Anderson concert—was sufficiently big that a lot of people came up from the City (another area of community spread) to see him. He does an excellent show, I'm glad I got to see/hear him. Since he lives locally, he chatted casually about local irritants, which was fun. And he gave a shout out to our local grocery store which has been handling the pandemic really excellently. Got a round of applause for that one, they really have. He had with him another local, Kim Dunn, a set of black gospel singers and a couple from Newfoundland (don't remember their names), and a great bass player whose last name might be Dixon. The gospel singers called him 'Uncle Baby' because he was the youngest of a large family and was already an uncle at the moment of his birth.

Rather ironically, my job was to check people's vaccination status at the door. So every single person attending got to stand in front of me, in close proximity, while I examined their ID and vaccination proof. It was cold outside and there was a long line-up to get in so the outside door was kept open and my hands froze. After a while of reading teeny tiny print my eyes were watering and I couldn't read at all. Not to mention the discomfort of wearing a mask with a runny nose and a headache, and the reflection of the overhead lights on the plastic IDs. The concert was delayed by half an hour due to us being so diligent about checking vaccination proof, a couple of people thanked us for being so careful. 

I had the official app on my phone for scanning the vaccination proof, but it worked haphazardly. Everyone had different versions of proof, some paper some plasticized, some big some small, some with a scan code some without. Some even from out of province. It was actually faster just to eyeball the documents rather than try to scan them.

People were trying to show me their driver's licence photo, thinking that that was what I was looking for. But it wasn't, with everyone masked a driver's licence photo is useless. I just needed to check that the name on the licence or other ID was the same as the name on the vaccination proof. It's a small town so a lot of people I recognized anyway.

One person said, "Hi! I'm Jerry's Mom!"

Jerry's mom?!? Who the heck is Jerry? Then I remembered. Jerry is a dog and I used to walk with Jerry and his 'Mom' when Hapi was alive. But by the time I remembered she was gone.

Hi Jerry's Mom!

Up all night

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The greens sprouting indoors

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

The greens taking in the sun

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

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

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

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

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

Into the heart of darkness

Yesterday I took a trip into the city for a medical appointment. It was a cancellation, so I only got the appointment the afternoon before and had to revise all my plans for the remainder of the day. I had planned to spend an hour or so working in the back yard—mowing and prepping one or two garden beds— but ended up spending more like four hours. Exhausting.

Anyway, we're not supposed to leave our communities except for essential reasons and a medical appointment qualifies as essential. Google mapped out a route for me that avoided The Rotary (every Nova Scotian's nightmare) so I was grateful for that. All along the highway were large handpainted signs thanking truckers and essential workers and flashing LED signs admonishing drivers to stay safe and not travel. Our numbers are going the wrong way, Strang and Rankin had expressed the hope we would see lower numbers at this end of the week, but not so. Third Wave Variants here we come.

My appointment was with a neurologist, a young woman. After applying nasty electric shocks to my arms and legs she told me my nerves are completely normal. But I still have nerve pain. She recommended Gabapentin. I said I had some leftover pills for my dog, could I use those?

She said, "I am supposed to say no, but my Mum was a vet and she supplied our antibiotics when we were little…"

She wrote a prescription for the drug. I tried one of Hapi's pills last night, and it was weird. Not sure whether I'll take any more. 

She mentioned that my GP had sent her a copy of a sleep study report that said I had severe sleep apnea.

I said, "What? She never told me that."

She said, "I can print out the report if you like."

I said, "Sure."

I read the report and what it said was that I had severe apnea in the supine position. Oh, that. I knew that. Right from childhood I had these awful nightmares about being paralyzed and unable to breathe. In the nightmare I would be struggling to move, I thought that if I could just move one toe or one finger then I would be able to breathe. Which was true. After many years, decades even, I put two and two together and realized that sleeping on my back caused the nightmares and they weren't really nightmares, they were actually happening. So I learned to never sleep on my back, and to avoid even sleeping on my side for fear of rolling over onto my back while asleep. The sleep study report just verified it. Apparently I spent one hour on my back and had enough apneas to qualify as severe. But once I got on my stomach, I was fine.

I had packed a lunch since I did not want to stop anywhere in the city if I didn't have to. I felt like I was at the heart of the plague and just wanted to get out of there as fast as I could. I even hesitated to open car windows for (the unfounded) fear of the virus blowing in. But I wasn't all that hungry and thought that if I booted it I'd be home before I got really hungry. Stopped once for gas and that was it, home in time for a late lunch.

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Called my Bubble friend to tell her about some puppy supplies on sale in the hardware store flyer and we chatted about the puppy, and about the recent death of a mutual friend. I read in the little newspaper that comes with the sale flyers a tribute to this friend, I had not known about her death. The tribute took up the full front page and included a nice picture of her and her husband and children and grandchildren. Everyone I know who is on Facebook knew about it but I did not. I 'lurk' on Facebook but have not acquired any 'Friends'. I've often thought since the pandemic started that I should get back on since these days that's the only way to keep up with folks, but the price I pay for being on there regularly still seems steep.

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My son is working on an online film festival, he said he could stream some films for us to watch if I wanted to pick out anything I would like to see. I went over the list online and one stood out for me. It's called Stray, about three stray dogs in Istanbul. In Istanbul you are not allowed to kill, capture or move stray animals: where they live is their home. Vets tag stray dogs to keep track of them when they get veterinary treatment and to find owners for them, but that's it. 

Another film I liked the sound of was about everyday life in the war zones of Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. The blurb said it was not about the atrocities of war but simply what the people are like and how they get along. It is an area of the world that I would have loved to visit were it not for the various wars there. Istanbul too. I was talking to a friend on the phone about these films and she mentioned that her husband had visited Afghanistan a couple of times and hated it. He is/was a cameraman for a major TV network, he's been to a lot of places for his job. In particular he hated the smell and the bleakness of the landscape. My friend said they had to wash everything he brought back from there because of the smell. But he was only in one small part of the country, a military base to be exact, so I think that his experience was unique to that time and place.