Another year, another day...

Today is over a year from my last post. Here's a list of what has happened in that year, in no particular order:

Princess died, she was just over 15 1/2 years old and suddenly lost control of her rear end. Too big for me to carry and I declined the vet's recommendation of X-rays and possible surgery.

I flew out west and back; I stayed with a friend in New Westminster and visited various friends and family. The main purpose of the trip was to see my brother with stage 4 liver cancer on Hornby Island. I had promised myself I would go when I no longer had a dog. I had such a lovely time with few health repercussions. Wore an N95 mask on all airplanes between here and there.

My New Westminster friend's balcony overlooking the Fraser River

While out west I saw a dear friend with advanced Parkinson's. Sadly, the mental/cognitive symptoms were far worse than the physical ones. Her partner arranged for her to go into a pretty good nursing home when he could no longer cope with her cognitive decline. When I saw her she was seriously crippled and in a wheel chair, but she did recognize me and smiled delightedly to see me. Her partner said it was the first time in a long time he saw her that happy. But she cried when we left. And a couple of weeks ago her partner called me to say that she had died. Her decline was rapid after I saw her, she no longer recognized him or responded to him. She was my best friend when I lived there, I feel so badly for her, how awful her decline was. But I am grateful that I saw her before the end.

My dear friend and I

My brother continues to decline, he is all there mentally but very thin and frail.

My other brother has also been diagnosed recently with cancer. The diagnosis came in December but he didn't want to tell anyone over Christmas so I only found out in January. Simultaneously his wife was diagnosed with cancer, had immediate surgery and is recovering now. I hope that goes well.

I started attending my writing group's zoom calls, in hopes that it would inspire me to start writing again. Not sure it was that successful. 

In addition to my fish I got four mystery snails. They fornicate a lot and leave bright pink batches of eggs on the walls of their aquarium. They have zero interest in parenting those eggs.

 

Mystery snail fornication in progress

Worst drought in a long time, starting in June and not really letting up until October. Followed by an early winter with lots of snow. My snow plough guy came five times in December alone, which is pretty unusual. 

I have two new dogs, Daisy and Maisie. Like Princess they were 13 years old when they came to live with me, but being terriers I suspect they will live longer than Princess did. They bark a lot.

 

Maisie and Daisy

And I am still sick. The last couple of weeks have been bad, I am trying to wait it out. There's nothing I can do. I feel like a puddle of mud.

However last fall I attended the 3rd annual Covid Symposium via zoom ( the Covid Network headed up by Dr Angela Cheung) and among other things connected with a guy who has organized a province wide support group. Since then I have attended a few group meetings and it is nice to connect with others in the same boat. They are trying to expand the reach of the group to the rest of Canada, people in Alberta and BC are interested but they haven't made connections in the rest of the country. I'd have thought people in Ontario would be interested but apparently not. The thing about this group is that sessions are facilitated by fellow LC sufferers. It's night and day having a group facilitated by one of us versus some healthcare professional. They just don't get the lived experience.

I've also been seeing a counsellor. She is nice and really tries hard to understand, but I can't describe it effectively. She told me about a case she is following, a couple in which the wife has LC and the husband feels like she is making a lot of demands on him causing him some frustration. It sounds like the wife is not Severe, she is able to work from home. Maybe Moderate-Severe. But even so… I am curious to hear how their counsellor is handling this case.

Today: well we had a big dump of snow two weekends ago and my snow plough guy ploughed my driveway up to my car, but I still had to dig a path from my back door to the edge he had ploughed to. Maybe double my car length. The snow had drifted so parts of it were over three feet deep. After that I did not have the stamina to dig out my car. A day later my neighbour was concerned and came over to dig it out (covered in over a foot of snow). By that time I was in a crash; I couldn't have dug out the car if my life depended on it. So I was very grateful. She said she needed to get out of the house to take a break from doomscrolling (she's American Canadian).

Anyway, I am still in a crash. Can hardly move from my couch, my skin is so sensitive my clothes feel like steel wool and when I touch my skin my fingers feel like sandpaper. My hands and feet tingle, my bowels are unhappy, my eyes are burning, my head feels like it's full of lead. Not to mention no stamina and even though I am in bed for 10 hours at night and apparently asleep for most of that time, I wake up utterly exhausted. The lack of stamina and the leaden head require that I spend most of my awake time lying down or semi-reclined. I force myself to get up to let the dogs in/out, bring in a load of firewood and fill the bird feeder. I make simple meals most of the time. 

However.

I signed up for HelloFresh just for a break from ready-made meals, but the minimum order is three meals of two servings each. Although for my appetite that's three servings each, sometimes four. They say that they require 15-35 minutes prep time, but at my pace it is at least double whatever they think it should be. 

I cannot stand at the kitchen counter for that long. I read the recipes and try to figure out how I can break it into two or more sessions on my feet, but the recipes have a lot of "meanwhiles". As in "while the rice cooks heat a large pan and fry some other ingredients" or "heat the oven and roast some other ingredients". 

Sometimes there are nested or sequential meanwhiles. Cognitively I just can't manage all the timekeeping involved in the meanwhiles, let alone the standing there always doing something or other. I frequently burn stuff. I have one more "free" meal and then I plan to quit. I enjoy the variety of ingredients and flavours but definitely not the work involved.

Catch up

New car in the driveway, in the rain and through a window, my reflected red plaid housecoat obscuring the view

So where was I?

Today is a very rainy windy Saturday and I am in my jammies, I may not change into daytime clothing at all. Last night my new-to-me car was delivered and now sits in the driveway. I have never driven it and it is raining too hard to transfer the licence plate from the truck to the car. I am assured that it is a wonderful car to drive, but have had no chance to confirm that.

I will definitely miss the truck. The past week I have been enumerating all of its deficiencies each time I drive it, in hopes of breaking my attachment to it. We did all the paperwork and money transfers last night, so the previous owner of the car now owns the truck. He plans to sell it to a mutual friend who really needs a reliable truck. I am happy about that, but still a little sad to let it go.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

My brother out west is in liver failure, and my 15 year old dog in heart failure. After a crisis a couple of weeks ago my brother was given 3 months to survive, if that. I was trying to figure out a way to see him before the end, but travelling across the continent at this time of year whilst sick is near impossible. Could be done but at great risk to my own health.

Princess in her new bed with her favourite toy

Finding out that my dog is in heart failure pretty much put paid to that. In the meantime my brother's status has somewhat improved, his GP is saying that with proper meds he could survive much longer than the original prognosis. He even sounds better on the phone.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

By mutual agreement my former GP and I parted ways a year ago. I've been transferred to a Primary Care Clinic and if I manage to get through on the phone on a specific morning I can get an appointment with a doctor the following week. Getting through is the tricky part, there is about a one hour window each week in which hundreds of people are trying to get through.

Nevertheless I have gotten more better care there in the past year than in the past 8-9 years with my previous GP. The doctors at the clinic ordered so many tests and scans and made so many referrals to specialists it darn near took my breath away. And unlike my former GP they explained stuff in non-patronizing ways. This is what medical care looks like!

It all came to a head in late September when the referrals came through and the tests and scans were scheduled. Extremely busy October, driving hither and yon for various appointments!

The specialists in turn recommended seeing other specialists not covered by MSI (provincial health insurance), so November has been a very expensive healthcare month. Specifically, a respiratory physiotherapist and an acupuncturist, both of whom are concentrating on getting my lungs working properly again. I was unaware that they were not!

Turns out that for the past four years I have been hyperventilating, causing insufficient oxygen to be absorbed by my lungs and in turn by my blood. You would think that hyperventilation would be obvious to me, but it was not. I think the acupuncture and breathing exercises are helping, but all the work of getting to appointments, minding my sick dog, buying a car and the usual activities of shopping, food prep, and minimal housekeeping is counterproductive. Not to mention the stress of family stuff. I am in a crash now.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

One of the internists I saw prescribed an antidepressant that she thought would give me more energy. First time I tried it I last two days, the lethargy and nausea overwhelmed me. Second time I tried it I only lasted one day, same side effects plus insomnia. On top of the fatigue and orthostatic intolerance I am already experiencing it is just too much. I am told that the side effects will subside, but I need to take the pills for more than two days. And walk the dog, get meals, attend appointments in the city, and just generally carry on with daily life.

I thought I had four days of nothing scheduled so maybe I could try the pills then, but it didn't work out that way.
I was incapacitated by one pill.
Stuff came up I had to deal with.
I crashed.

Bobby - end of an era

Note: I wrote this on August 7. I was hoping to find a suitable photo for this post but never did, and then forgot about it. Only ran across the draft of this post by accident in October.

Yesterday I heard that a man I kind of grew up with died on Saturday. Kind of. Our parents were good friends at one time, they met when they lived on the same street in Toronto. I was just 4 then, the same age as Bobby. He was very worldly-wise in my four-year-old eyes, he knew how to make phone calls and we talked on the phone. He said we would get married when we grew up, and that actually scared me, I am not sure why. 

Once we ran away from home together, he seemed to know exactly where we were the whole time but I was utterly lost. At one point we ended up on a very busy street with stoplights, I didn't have a clue how stoplights worked and didn't want to test them, but Bobby did. Fortunately I was just too scared to be cajoled into crossing that street. We ended up back home in time for supper.

Shortly after that his family moved to Mississauga and a while after that my family moved to Forest Hill Village, then one of the municipalities that made up Metropolitan Toronto. But our parents remained friends and there was a lot of visiting back and forth over the years, we kids were close enough that Bobby once referred to me as his cousin, in a particular situation where I felt in danger and he was putting himself between me and the mean kids.

Bobby's younger sister and I became quite good friends as kids and teenagers. I ended up introducing her to the man she would marry and have a couple of kids with. More water under the bridge and Bobby moved to the US and I never saw him again, although I did hear stories about what he was up to from his sister and younger brother.

I was chatting with Bobby's sister over Facebook when she heard from Bobby's girlfriend that he had just died at her place. Not sure what happened, might have been a heart attack. I asked her if she had any photos of him, today she posted a few on Facebook.

"End of an era!" She texted me. I guess it is. In her family she is now the elder: both parents and her older brother gone now.

It is not so much that I miss Bobby or am sad about his death (I am), as that it brings back so many memories of us as kids. There were eight of us and we did a lot of things together, like family, or at least close cousins. Bobby was definitely something else; his sister said he became eccentric later in life, but I think he was born eccentric.

In the last few years of his life he reconnected with an old girlfriend. He moved back to Canada to live with her. I am glad he found love at the end. His sister said it changed him, for the better.

Beginnings, endings and inbetweens

Students are back and my neighbourhood is surprisingly quiet. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. What, did they all mature over the summer? I saw one guy walking up the street with a bong, and later a couple of guys carrying 12-packs of … water! Maybe they all gave up booze? I don't know. I am enjoying the peace, for however long it lasts.

The dry sunny weather continues on and on. I've never had to water my garden in September before. We have water restrictions right now so it is a good thing I have a rain barrel. The water restrictions are not due to lack of water but rather a broken part in the reservoir that needs to be replaced, but is caught up in supply chain issues with no ETA.

I started a Tai Chi class. I really am hoping this is a level of activity I can tolerate. My Fitbit tells me that the first class hardly raised my heartrate at all, a good sign. But the following two days I've been pretty much confined to home due to dizziness, not a good sign. The instructor of the class is really good, plus he has volunteer helpers—more experienced students—to help guide us. There's one woman in the class who I am pretty sure has dementia, she sticks pretty close to her husband and only vaguely follows the instructions. But nobody says anything about that, the class is very inclusive. I don't have to pay for the class until I've completed two sessions, to know whether it suits me or not. At this point the jury is out. I really enjoyed it, but spending two days after virtually bedridden is a little disconcerting.

Shortly after I got out of my Tai Chi class I saw the news that the Queen had died. It feels almost like a death in the family. I know that some people disapprove of the Monarchy but I for one do not. She has been a source of stability for a very long time. When I was three years old I went with all my extended family to see her when she visited Toronto back in the day. Since our house was closest to the parade route, the family gathered there afterward. I remember the gathering but not so much the Princess (she wasn't Queen yet), just that it was a momentous occasion.

I liked living in a country with a Queen, I like that Canada is part of a larger community, the British Commonwealth. I realize that the Commonwealth is just the old British Empire with a new name and that the British Empire was a great colonial power that did a lot of damage in many parts of the world including here, damage that people are still having to deal with. But being part of a larger whole, for better or for worse, and having a long history, also for better or for worse, seems to me a good thing in the long haul. And I'd rather be part of the British Commonwealth than the Russian Empire.

Anyway, I miss Queen Elizabeth II, the end of an era that lasted almost my whole life. I think she did a very good job of it. It will be strange to have a King rather than a Queen, but I hope he does well too. I read something about him, how he was in the habit of espousing weird ideas that people made fun of him for. You, know, organic food, the environment, that sort of thing. Now he looks a little prescient.

Son #3 comes home

Peony time!

My son just left this morning to return home. It was a very good visit, we seemed to be on exactly the same page as far as activity level and need for alone-time. I was pleasantly surprised at how good-looking he is becoming as he ages, I almost didn't recognize him when I went to pick him up at the airport. 

Mind you, that wasn't completely due to handsomeness. With his knitted cap, sunglasses and mask he looked like an alien. Towards the end of the week he talked about how much he was enjoying this and how sorry he was he hadn't booked a longer visit. After so many years he was afraid that a week was about as long as he could stand.

I bought tickets for us to go to a concert together at a local community hall. I thought it was a great concert, he was more critical. He thought the band's sound system and/or how the sound was being managed was lousy. Lousy enough that he didn't want to venture an opinion about how good the band actually was. 

Before we went into the hall we met some friends of mine and there was a lot of joking about how many friends/neighbours had Covid, how many last minute cancellations there were due to Covid. My son forgot his mask but I had two. We went in and shared a table with some more friends of mine, and they too joked about how many people they knew with Covid. Initially my son took has mask off to imbibe the drink he ordered, but quickly put it on afterwards. I asked him later about the fact he wore his mask for the entire concert when hardly anyone else (including me!) did.

He said, Are you kidding me? This place is a cesspool!

I had to admit he was right. The longer since the mask mandate was removed, the laxer we all got. The rate of infection and number of deaths have come down since April, but they are still much higher than previous waves. They say it is so bad here because we never got any herd immunity. We were so strict about the rules that we all stayed safe, but once the mandates were removed we all went a little crazy and ended up with one of the worst rates of infection in the whole country.

While here my son reconnected with an old friend. They hadn't seen each other in over a decade and a lot has happened in both their lives in the interim, so I think they were a little reluctant to meet since they didn't know if they still had a relationship. Turns out they very much did. They had several very long conversations while hanging out together and one of the things that came up was that neither could remember a time when they didn't know each other. They became friends before their memories kicked in. 

It's true, they were very young when they first met, and they only met because their parents were friends since before either of them were born. In spite of long periods living in different parts of the country, they had some remarkably similar life experiences. On his last night here the friend took him on a quick tour of the area, they hit several beaches and some other places, after dark. I thought that was pretty cool of the friend to do that.

My son was a little apologetic to me about how much time he was spending with his friend. I said, Don't worry, I'm not jealous. Spending an intense amout of time with anyone—even a beloved offspring—still takes its toll on me and I am happy for a bit of a break. I would have been very happy if he had booked a longer visit, but at the same time I don't know whether I would have had the stamina for it.

One morning he was up before me and he wanted to make coffee for me. But he took one look at my fancy espresso machine and decided otherwise. He referred to it as my Junior Chemistry Set that I call a Coffeemaker.

We had to be at the airport two hours before departure time, and it takes over an hour to drive to the airport. We had to be up at 6.00am and leave without breakfast. I was giving him directions (he drove), but normally he relies on Google for directions. I got distracted and we overshot the highway exit for the airport and had to drive an extra 25km to get back. I said something about there being highway signs but then realized that he probably never looks at the signs because he relies on Google to tell him. I am old school, I even keep a paper map of the province in the car.

So today I am so exhausted that I am just killing time till I can go to bed. Not so good at napping.

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.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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).

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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.

Mind afire at five

Woke up at five a m, my mind afire.

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

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

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

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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

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

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

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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

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

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

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

Family Visit

Annapolis Basin from Fort Ste Anne

My eldest son was visiting this past week, he just returned to his home in Toronto this morning. We had to be up at 4.30am to get him to the airport on time, and it was a 2.5 hour round trip (he did half of the driving). So I am not much good for anything today. Fortunately there are leftovers to eat and nothing I need to go out for.

We had a great visit, lots of good conversation, visiting with friends (his, mine and shared friends), various outings and TV watching. I had Indian Summers (2015) so we watched one or two episodes each night. It was originally planned as a 5-season show, but only the first 2 seasons were made; just not popular enough. I got quite into the stories of some of the characters and wished they had finished it so I would know what happened to them.

We ate out a couple of times, went to Halifax to visit a friend of my son's who recently moved from Toronto to Nova Scotia, did a little road trip to Annapolis Royal, and went kayaking a couple of times. We also went swimming at the Reservoir of course. A PEI friend of my son's dropped by my place, he was on a business road trip selling cider from his cidery business on the island. He left us with ample samples of his wares which we drank every night and I think there is still a little bit left. 

The friend in Halifax is absolutely ecstatic about her move to the Maritimes, she loves the city. Her partner's mother lives nearby ("720 steps away!") and helped them find a lovely house rental in a great neighbourhood (the North End). I mentioned that I was considering an e-bike but was uncertain about price and quality. She recommended a bike that both her teenage daughter and her MIL love, so I actually ordered it the next day. It won't arrive till the end of the month or early September but I am looking forward to that.

We planned our road trip to Annapolis Royal to arrive in the middle of their Saturday Farmer's Market and while browsing through we ran into some old friends of mine who hadn't seen my son since he was a toddler. They made laughing comments about things he used to say (at age three) and he smiled through it gamely. 

After we parted company he asked me if he was supposed to know those people, because he had no recollection of them at all. I said he was only three then so no, I didn't expect him to remember them. At least they didn't say how much like his Dad he looked, which my son hates. Yes, he looks like his Dad but he doesn't consider that a compliment. It was Pride Day in Annapolis, we missed the parade but caught some of the musical entertainment. We walked along the waterfront boardwalk to Fort Ste Anne and took a couple of photos before going back to the truck.

On the ramparts of Fort Ste Anne

We took a slightly different route home just to make it a little more interesting. About halfway home I realized I was sinking into a kind of hypnotic trance so we stopped and traded places. My little truck is my baby and I am reluctant to hand over the wheel to someone else, but it was clearly necessary.

My son took a lot of photos and he said he'd send some to me, but I already have the photos he took while we were kayaking.  Another friend of mine came along on that trip too.

I'm in the red life jacket, my friend in the yellow one

He took a couple of photos of the juvenile eagle we visit regularly. It moves around but we can usually find it. 

We have to paddle hard to get across the lake, but once across we can meander around the little islands and coves.

Crossing the lake

Also this week I got a roof rack put on the new truck cap. I still need a couple of tie-downs on the bumpers before I can put my kayak on the rack but that is coming soon. 

This week I am doing some training to be an election information officer at a local poll, the election is the following week. We have four candidates in my riding, one of them is a friend and she asked if I would take one of her Party's signs on my lawn. I decided not to, since she's running for a Party I don't intend to vote for. Not that she wouldn't make a good MLA and she might very well win, but I'm done with strategic voting and I now only vote for what I believe in, even if it's a Party that has a snowball's chance in The Very Hot Place.

Rainy Thumb Rest Day

Big Rain Day and I can hardly move out of my armchair. I called our kayaking leader last night to say I wouldn't be coming due to predicted rainy weather and she said, But you will come if it's a beautiful day, right?

Uh… sure...

I spoke with my youngest son later and he said, Why did you lie? Your hands hurt! That's a good enough reason not to go, why did you lie about it?

Uh…

My son The Ethical Philosopher.

Truth is, I don't like to admit to weakness if I can avoid it.

I love being out on the water, and it is killing my thumbs. But paddling fiercely into a strong wind is exhilerating, I don't want anyone telling me I can't do it because I am hurting myself.

Aylesford Lake Kayak Loan Program

These days, first thing in the morning I am on automatic: roll out of bed at 6.30am, coffee, toast, granola, wash dishes, brush teeth, put on bathing suit and pack waterbottle, hat and sunscreen into backpack and I'm out the door. An hour later I am at the lake, signing out a kayak and slipping on a life jacket. Then I'm out there. I am the second fastest and strongest paddler, I team up with the first fastest and we determine where we are going today and then go for it. She is ahead of me, I am putting everything I've got into keeping up with her. I don't know where the other paddlers are, they've gotten used to D and I disappearing across the lake. Yesterday D didn't come so I went alone; she said she had to go to the South Shore but I bet she was home resting her thumbs.

When I get home I usually have a list of things to get done: errands, garden chores, whatnot. But I try to spend at least an hour doing nothing to regain energy for a late afternoon swim, across the Reservoir and back. It's a 5-minute bike ride away. By evening I am so exhausted I wonder if I'll make it out to kayaking tomorrow. Lights out at 9.30pm, down for the count moments later. Repeat all over again at 6.30am the next day.

But there's only so long I can keep up that pace, four days apparently. I didn't go today but I still had a list of things to do. Didn't do any of it. Read the list and mentally ticked off each item: Not Urgent, Forget It. Too damn tired.

Eldest son is coming to visit for a week, he says he has to work online for part of that time so I will probably get out kayaking while he works. But no kayak time is scheduled until Tuesday so hopefully four days of not paddling will allow my thumbs to improve.

One of the kayakers gave me a phone number to call to work as an election poll clerk. I procrastinated because I wasn't sure I wanted to work 14-16 hours in one day. But I did call today, they don't need poll clerks now but there was an information officer position available. I took it. Pays less for same amount of time, but oh well. At least it's close by.

Here's another photo from the evening at Houston's Beach last week; that's me in the pink shirt gazing intently at the popcorn being popped over the fire.

Solar eclipse and window blinds

There was a solar eclipse early this morning, I made a pinhole camera to view it but it didn't work. However I photographed some shadows on nearby houses that sort of display the eclipse: the sunlight filtering through leafy trees that serve as excellent natural pinhole cameras.

I've spent the last week on a rampage of cleaning, painting and installing window blinds, and am now in the midst of moving furniture. The energy ran out yesterday, so I may not accomplish anything today. By late afternoon I just could not get enough air, I felt quite oxygen-deprived. But I got a lot done.

I used to have a lovely maple tree in front of my house that cast excellent shade on the large west-facing windows of my living room, but the tree had to be cut down and the last couple of summers have been murderously hot in that room. So I determined to try to fix that artificially with new windows that blocked some of the heat and new cellular blinds that cut some more of the heat without blocking the light. Otherwise I would have to use the thermal curtains which leave the room in darkness all afternoon and early evening. 

As I described in a previous post the windows got replaced a few weeks ago. Then I went to Home Depot and picked out the cellular blinds I wanted. I decided to get new regular blinds for the rest of the windows at the same time. Money is cascading through my fingers and down the road like a waterfall! But before I could install the blinds I needed to paint the new window frames and touch up the old ones: two coats of primer and another two of the semi-gloss finish paint. Oh my!

Installing window blinds involves screwing a lot of hardware to the upper surfaces of the window frames, that means a lot of standing on various stools and step ladders holding a screwdriver over my head. The wood of the new windows is relatively soft but the old window frame wood is not, so pressure needs to be applied. I have an electric drill but I thought that holding it steady overhead was going to be more than I could manage so I screwed all the hardware in manually. I was in a race against time, a heatwave was coming and I wanted at the very least to get the west-facing cellular blinds up before it started. I did that, but only just barely. I spent the two-day heatwave (30C+) installing the rest of the blinds, moving around the house just ahead of or behind the sun. 

The new paint on the window frames made the baseboards of my house look terrible; they have not been painted let alone washed since I moved in over ten years ago, and they look it. So I determined that they needed cleaning at the very least and maybe if I had the energy I would paint them too. And then I had the brilliant (not) idea of moving my bedroom from the west to the east side of the house. Fortunately, I am now sleeping in the basement bedroom (cool and dark for the summer) so the chaos of moving furniture is confined to rooms I am not currently using on a regular basis. So I can take my time about it. But once I get started it's hard to stop, I keep thinking, just one more thing. Hence the utter exhaustion yesterday afternoon.

My winter firewood arrived and is blocking my driveway; I have a young friend who has offered to help stack it and I need to contact her about dates and times. My garden is all planted and mulched, but the straw mulch is full of seeds (oat or wheat, not sure which) that are now sprouting and all of the promised rain has never materialized, so weeding and watering are now required. Not to mention weekly lawn-mowing.

My son's father-in-law died suddenly last week, I wanted to send condolences to my daughter-in-law and her stepmother, now a widow. He died as he had lived, helping out a neighbour. It was one of those freak accidents that probably could have been prevented but when you've been doing this stuff for years sooner or later it catches up with you. Hopefully his death was quick and painless, but it was surely devastating for all of his family. 

These things were weighing on my mind, I really must stop moving furniture and attend to them! And the Reservoir ponds have warmed up enormously and everyone is swimming, I badly want to go swimming too. I have no doubt that all of this contributed to the exhaustion, the frustration of putting off stuff I either needed or wanted to do was mounting.

Finally, I have been invited on an afternoon kayak trip on Friday (tomorrow) and I think I have to rest up a bit before I can go, so today no work is scheduled. Last night I dreamed that I smashed up the bow of my kayak and it sank, I was tremendously relieved to wake up to the realization that it was only a dream, the kayak is safe and sound.

Mashup

A few odds and ends from the past couple of weeks.

I got my first dose of Pfizer. Older already-vaccinated people said it was the one with the fewest side effects so that was good; turns out that for me at any rate the rumour is true. I am also one of the few people I know who managed to get the shot at the local community clinic; everyone else is having to go much further afield to get it. I booked my appointment as soon as I woke up, around 6.30am, and apparently that is what you have to do to get a shot in the local area. Meanwhile vaccine is going begging in the city, if you care to make the hike you can get it easily there.

As it happened there was a sale of composted manure on at a building supply store near the clinic and I thought, Two birds with one stone. But I had heard that a sore arm was the most significant after effect of the vaccination so I asked the nurse who was administering it how bad would it be and could I lift heavy bags afterwards. She said that actually that was a good idea, that the more I used the muscles in that arm the less pain I would experience. So, 300 kg of manure later, only a little bit of tenderness in the area of the shot and that only lasted a day. Tip for the day, and you're welcome. Mind you, the nurse didn't say it had to be 300 kg, you could get the same effect with a little squeeze ball.

I spent less than half an hour at the clinic, 15 minutes of that spent waiting after the shot to see if there were immediate anaphylactic reactions. Several stages to getting the shot, each stage requiring another round of hand sanitizing. By the end of it, at the last hand washing stage, I said, Now I have the cleanest hands ever! Everyone who left the waiting area said Thank you! to the handwashing volunteer, who replied, Thank you too! 15 minutes of Thank Yous and Thank You Toos! I told a friend about it and she reminded me of a 22 Minutes episode called Canada Goes to War. A bunch of Canadian soldiers in a trench, popping their heads up one at a time to fire their guns and then yelling out, Sorry! When they jostled or passed each other in the trench, another round of Sorry! all 'round.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

My dishwasher finally bit the dust. It was old when I bought the house and lasted another ten years so I can't complain. I've been debating what to do when it finally quits, and given the pandemic rise in price of practically everything, it would cost almost double what it would have costed to replace it back in the day. I decided to handwash the dishes for awhile and see if that was realistic, and it definitely is. 15 minutes a day, no more. I use the dishwasher to store the dirty dishes (bottom rack) and the newly washed dishes (top rack). Doesn't take up precious counter space, gets the mess of dirty dishes out of sight, and it is not nearly as noisy as the dishwasher was when it worked. So I am happy with the arrangement. I suspect that the dishwasher is repairable but I am less and less inclined to get that done.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

I sat in on my youngest son's MA thesis defence via Zoom yesterday afternoon. It went really well. Although I have been in conversation with him every week, he doesn't like video calls so this was the first time I've seen his face since I don't know when. He looked very professional in his glasses, which he didn't have last time I saw him. It was quite a thing to see him in action, reading the synopsis of his thesis and then responding to critical questions. I remember how nervous I was doing my MSc defence, my son did not seem nervous at all. So that's it, major step forward for him. 

My older son in Toronto is having a bad time of it. Between pandemic surge, provincial government mismanagement, kids at home due to school closures, and his own job which has amped up in stress. His description of it sounded like herding cats and whack-a-mole combined. His boss resigned and now he doesn't know who he is supposed to report to. The boss resigned to take a new job elsewhere and I think my son is also a little jealous, the former boss is now working at a job my son wishes he was doing.

The middle son is at home for another week or so, then he takes on a summer job as a "bird dog", flying in northern Alberta assessing forest fires. He seems to be doing okay and is looking forward to flying again.

A friend and I, both with three grown offspring, have a little joke about our kids: One out of three ain't bad. It seems like our grown kids are always having ups and downs and sometimes it is hard to maintain perspective about their problems. So if even one of them is doing okay, one out of three ain't bad. I've been watching the latest Crown series, and in one episode the Queen has lunch with each of her grown children to determine which is her favourite, a challenge posed by Prince Philip. Turns out they all have problems or are behaving badly in one way or another. At the end her husband tells her not to take their problems to heart. But she couldn't even say one out of four ain't bad. That's not good.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Hapi declines. Last week I gave her a bone which she buried several times and then dug up to chew on. That night she had a bad bout of diarrhea on the kitchen floor and I had to get up to clean it up in the wee hours. She scurried outdoors and spent the rest of the night, all of the following day and following night sleeping in her dog house. She didn't eat at all during that time. She recovered and had a day or two approaching normality, but she kept digging up that bone and chewing on it and had a second round of diarrhea a few days later, fortunately outdoors. Now she sleeps pretty much all the time, with a couple of hours up and about in the late afternoon/early evening. When she walks she thuds stiff leggedly.

It's time. A dog walker at the Reservoir said, We're sure going to miss her. That was kind.

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.

Bad news, good news

Even the statues around here have to wear masks

Bad news: yet another Covid exposure. Same grocery store, different day/time.
Good news: It took exactly 2 hours to find out, book a test, get tested, and be back home again.
Bad news: ran over a blue jay backing into my driveway after dark, after the test. It scuffled away from me in the snow so I left it.
Good news: Bird gone in the morning.
Bad news: Crow sitting on a snowbank in the front yard making funny noises, I took another look and saw the blue jay lying in the snow.
Good news: The jay moved, it was still alive, so I went outside and brought it indoors to warm up. It obviously can't fly, maybe its wing is broken? At least no visible blood.

Scuffle marks in the snow where the crow was "investigating" the blue jay

I went on the internet to see what to do about the bird and it turns out there is a wildlife rescue and rehab organization in this province, Hope for Wildlife. I texted them. I put the bird on a towel in a box in my windowless bathroom with the lights off and the door ajar. Hapi won't go through a doorway unless the door is wide open, she was asleep anyway. Two hours later someone from Hope for Wildlife called me and said they would send a volunteer over to pick the bird up. 

Where I found the blue jay, still alive

Good news: The volunteer arrived promptly, so I retrieved the bird in the box from the bathroom.
Bad news: The bird had revived somewhat and was really scared, it jumped out of the box and flew down the stairs into the basement.
Good news: The volunteer came in with a net and we found and captured the bird, who was by now quite feisty. We put the bird in a better box it couldn't get out of. Maybe its wing is not broken after all.

Not only would Hope for Wildlife try to rehabilitate the bird, they gave me a case number so I could email and find out how it was doing. I asked if they could release it here when it was better so it could rejoin its buddies, the volunteer said that's what they try to do. I am so impressed with this organization. It was founded by a woman named Hope and there are some videos about their work on Youtube.

More good news: Covid test came back negative, in under 36 hours.
Bad news: Went skating and fell on my bad knee.
Good news: Knee seems okay, I was able to skate a bit more after I fell.
Bad news: I picked up a prescription and they shorted me, label said 90 tablets but only 30 in the bottle. On the phone they said they'd check their numbers to see if they made a mistake. Whaddaya mean?!? Of course you made a mistake!
More bad news: I got a bill for a repair that was supposedly free under warranty, but they had this whole rationale for why it wasn't really covered! I argued but to no avail.
Good news: Got a shipping confirmation for my second order of garden seeds.
Bad news: What happened to the first order? I called their Customer Service number and waited a really long time, only to have them tell me that order was "back ordered". Back ordered?!? I thought they grew the seeds themselves! How can they be "back ordered"?!? 

Good/bad news: They took away the dog tree and replaced it with a bench for putting ice grippers on your boots.

Good news: They left the dog ornaments (Hapi's is on the far right).

Good news: An online birthday party for one of my sons. 
Bad news: I discovered I had gone deaf in one ear just that day! What?!? Stress maybe?!? 

Good news: I'm not deaf this morning.

This'n'that

Thursday nights I watch a Prime Video show with two of my sons via the Watch Party feature and afterward we chat about it and other things. They're in a different time zone and not available until early evening their time (late evening my time) so it's a bit exhausting the next day but kind of worth it. I enjoy having those regular conversations, and I don't really care about the quality of the show we are watching, I now realize, because it is just one more thing to talk about. So the fact that the show was kind of disappointing was okay, we all agreed on its shortfalls and tried to pick out a few good points in it.

For our online chat we have been using an app that one of my sons uses all the time for online video games, and we will be able to use it to watch shows streaming from other sites if we want to. My son demonstrated that by showing us a video game he has been playing.

One happy thing I learned is that my youngest son has been accepted at two different colleges for a teaching degree. He's waiting on the third which is the one he really wants to attend. Apparently the pandemic has burnt out so many teachers that governments are desperate to hire/train more. A year ago he was turned down pretty summarily when he applied for entry, now they are chasing him. In the mean time he has been tutoring, first in person and then online, so I think he can handle it. Teaching is something he really wants to do.

A day of snow followed by rain followed by double digit warm temperatures has put an end to skating for now. If we were to get a prolonged cold snap we might see more skating but I kind of doubt it. The pond rink looks like toast. On the really warm day I took Hapi out without her coat and she was fine. I passed a couple of people who muttered, "What breed of dog is that?" Nobody would guess she was a malamute. 

Yesterday we visited Muddy's, a convenience store on Main Street whose owner loves Hapi, he was dumbfounded by her new look. He couldn't keep from laughing, and he grabbed every customer in his store to show them Hapi. Good thing he gave her lots of treats. These days she's a sucker for dog treats.

A friend's dog died two days ago. Buddy was a Rottweiler, a year younger than Hapi. He was always a sick dog, Addison's I think, but she nursed him along for a very long time. Now she's a wreck. Buddy wanted to be friends with Hapi but Hapi wanted nothing to do with him. I didn't want to take a chance on it, if they got into a fight Buddy would have destroyed her. He was a sweet dog with people, but a bit iffy with other dogs, kind of like Hapi in her youth. It was hard to predict how they'd be if they ever were allowed together.

And November

I put my birdfeeder out a week or so ago and almost immediately the chickadees found it, quickly followed by the blue jays. There are an unusal number of jays in the neighbourhood this year, at one point I counted over eight at or around the feeder. They fight amongst each other and scare off the smaller birds. The chickadees are also more numerous than usual and they seem adept at scooting in and out to grab a seed between jays. 

I am concerned for the other birds though. I've only seen two goldfinches and that is unusual as well, they were formerly the most numerous. A cardinal pair visit just before dusk but often the feeder has been totally emptied by then, thanks to the jays. I am now trying to replace the empty feeder later in the day in hopes that the small birds and cardinals get a shot at it, the jays seem to find other places to go around noon.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I was talking to my son about Hapi and her brother Hiro. He had told me that Hiro had cancer which incapacitated him. But now he tells me that he doesn't think it was cancer, rather it was a preventable accident. I think he felt very guilty about the accident and clung to the cancer theory advanced by the vet who attended Hiro's euthanasia. That is sad. He texted me a Youtube video of seven Malamutes and a toy poodle being fed by their owners through a window (8 minutes long), it is very cute. Most of the Mals look like Hapi, one looks a bit like Hiro.

He also texted me a link to another Youtube video (11 minutes) about the myth that destruction of the environment and climate change can be halted by personal actions such as changing lightbulbs and taking shorter showers. This was in response to my comment that I felt pressured by certain people to invest in solar panels for my house. My son said the solar panels weren't going to save the world. That if anything, the gain of reducing hydrocarbon-based energy usage is offset by the cost of mining and manufacturing the components of solar panels.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I went to an Artisan's Market event at the local Lions Club hall with a friend. Names and phone numbers were taken at the door to enable contact tracing if needed, a handwashing station provided and of course masks and social distancing were obligatory. Nevertheless the place was crowded, it was difficult to maintain social distance and I found the noise bothersome. I got to chat to a couple of people I recognized behind their masks, but I soon got overwhelmed. My dizziness ramped up and I started looking for the exit. I told the friend I arrived with that I would wait for her outside. It was cold and damp and the only place to sit down outdoors was a still-damp picnic bench, but it was better than staying inside the hall.

I did see some nice things there but I couldn't think straight enough to determine whether I wanted to buy anything. My friend had a Christmas shopping list in her head that she successfully ticked off as she moved from booth to booth. I was very impressed with her efficiency. She has a large family in the area and Christmas is a major production for them. But over the years she has gotten her Christmas shopping down to a system, she knows what kinds of things she can gift to each family member. She emerged from the hall happy that most of her Christmas shopping was already taken care of.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Sorry, I have no pictures. I've plasticked over the window where the birdfeeder is so it does not photograph well, and taking gloves off to use the cell phone camera outdoors seems like too much bother these days. Our lovely warm spell is over and we are back to the regularly scheduled November weather. Trees are bare, ground is wet, air is cold.

Odds and Ends

Unexpected landscaping issues, don't ask

I started buying a dog food kibble called PC Nutrition First Sensitive Skin and Stomach, and Hapi seemed to tolerate it well. I asked the manager of our local small grocery store if he could start carrying it, he asked how much I would buy in a month and I told him, then he had his son check to see if he could order it. He can and he will, one bag a month just for Hapi. On the front of the bag is a picture of a dog which at first I thought was a Husky. But one day while examining the picture more closely I realized it was not a Husky but a Malamute, I recognized the yellow-brown eyes and the "snow nose" (black with a pink stripe in the middle). How cute I thought, she gets dog food with her picture on it.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

My brother called to tell me that our eldest maternal cousin had just died, peacefully in his sleep at age 77. First of my generation in this family to go. Who's next? I don't keep in very good touch with cousins, nor they with me, so it's good that the brothers keep me up to date. It just so happened that my brother called me when I was doing a back-of-the-envelope calculation of my current financial status. My thinking is, if I have ms then my life span is shortened, by an average of 7 years according to the internet. Also according to the internet (I use that phrase to indicate how tenuous and suspect such "facts" are) the average life expectancy for a woman with ms is 77 (the sevens! all those sevens!). I'm 72, 77-72=5, all of a sudden I am rich! Relatively speaking.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I got quite depressed on Saturday, racing circular thoughts driving me deeper into that morass. I thought I'd like to have a nice glass of wine to short circuit the racing circles but had to read my homeopathic instructions to see whether I was allowed. A brief moment of glee when I read that alcohol was about the only exception to the restrictions, as long as it was moderate of course. Of course! One glass of wine is enough to put me under the table, one glass is moderate, right? So I did. Early enough in the evening that I could go to bed reasonably sober. Now I have a whole open bottle of wine (less one glass) to deal with. 

I spoke to a dog walking friend the next day about it. I only know her and her husband through dog walking, we otherwise have no connection to each other, but somehow we have gotten close enough that we actually talk about some pretty serious stuff in our lives that we might not discuss with anyone else. She laughed at my one-glass-of-wine binge.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Autumn colours peaked last week, we're now into the "here-comes-winter" part of autumn: colder, greyer, much shorter daylight hours. Hapi couldn't be Hapi-er. She prances again, tail flag high. But sleeps a lot and is really slow to get going in the morning, we're lucky if we manage to get to the Reservoir before 10.30 am.

Speaking of which, the other day I saw a man by himself there just sitting on a bench with what looked like his cell phone in his hands. Looking closer I realized it was a controller and he was flying a drone over the ponds. He started to leave as Hapi and I were leaving and I asked him about his drone. He was quite excited to tell me about it and when we got to the parking lot he gave me his Youtube name on a slip of paper so I could look up some of his drone videos.

Here's one he did at the Reservoir earlier this summer. I've looked at some of his other videos, he obviously loves living in this area, and also playing with his toy. The pond I was swimming in appears on the left at 0:35 and 1:27 min, and also at 2:18 min.  At 1:27 you get a sense of the size of that pond, I was doing up to 4 lengths in that one. The other smaller pond with the little beach is where Hapi likes to go.

More swimming

Yesterday I went swimming a bit earlier than usual. I've been trying different meds the doctor prescribes for insomnia; the current one leaves me quite lethargic during the day. However I am addicted to the swimming so I keep it up in spite of the lethargy, and yesterday I went early because I was afraid if I waited until later I would lose motivation due to the lethargy.

I did four laps, up from my usual two. Somehow the minute I hit the water the lethargy disappears and I am capable of amazing feats :-). Just kidding.

The local eagles have been very active lately, gliding in the updrafts. Before I left home for the Reservoir I watched three of them circling the University, two of them were circling so close to each other they almost touched wingtips. Then they'd whistle at each other, "stay back! stay back!". Later while swimming I watched another five overhead. One of them swooped down and skimmed the treetops by the pond. It was so close we held our breaths afraid that it might hit a tree and fall down. The fish were jumping like crazy too. Lots of tiny flies right above the surface of the water that they were going for. A man was out swimming with his dog, they didn't swim as far as us but pretty far for a man and a dog. The dog was right at the man's side without actually hitting him.

When we got out of the water we stood or sat around drying out and warming up in the late afternoon sun. We chatted about this that and the other thing. One of the women, C, asked me for my cell number, I gave it to her and she recorded it on her phone. A few days before I was so tired—someone set off fireworks at 3am and I got up to check on Hapi and never got back to sleep again—and I had a backlog of tomatoes to can, so I decided to stay home and do tomatoes instead of swimming. C had waited around for me to show up thinking that I was just late so now she wanted my number so she could check on me if I didn't appear. I gave her the number and asked her to text me so I would have her number too. 

The tomato patch, still chugging along

When I got home after swimming there was a voice mail waiting for me on my cell (I don't take the cell with me when I go swimming), from an unknown number. I played the message. At first I thought it must be a pocket call because there was no recognizable message, just a bunch of background noise, but I didn't know who it was from because I didn't recognize the number. I listened to the noise for awhile to see if I might recognize who it might be.

I heard myself, it was us swimmers chatting in the sun after our swim. The message continued on for over 5 minutes, I think it only cut out when there was no further room for it in my voicemail. Then the test text came in from C. I texted back that I had just been listening to a voice message from her phone with all of us in it. She said she never sent that message. I think when she was recording my number on her phone, her phone decided that she wanted to call that number and so placed the call. It felt strange to be listening to a recording of myself and a few others just chatting.

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I don't know how much longer Hapi will last. She's not eating as much, probably because she sleeps all the time. She's given up on the basement, she spends the night outside. Her fur is a mess, her bald patches are becoming noticeable. I now have to use the towel sling to help her into the car to go to the Reservoir in the morning. The couple who own Owen say they always look for Hapi, and are amazed that she is still coming for a walk. Mind you,"walk" is a relative term. She walks slowly to the pond, immerses herself and then just stays put. One day I walked all the way around the two ponds by myself because she didn't want to get out of the water. Then she walked back to the car by herself, because I was still on the far side of the pond. Another dog walker followed her to make sure that she didn't wander off, but she knew where my car was and just waited there.

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The long weekend was kind of crazy here, the returning students were "packing" as the Premier put it, going around in huge groups unmasked and tightly packed. At least one kid was fined for it. I hope they settle down soon. Of course it's only a minority who are misbehaving, the majority are staying safe. But I am sure that the fireworks at 3am over the weekend were a student "prank".

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I talked to my son who has been waterbombing fires out west all summer. Actually he spent very little time actually flying, the summer started out cold and wet so there were very few fires this year. But he did go down to Washington state to fight fires there. Because he is considered an essential worker he doesn't have to quarantine when he crosses the border. Nevertheless he was in an area hard hit by the pandemic so the firefighters were staying away from town in their base camp as much as possible. 

He told me that in the nearest town people were taking the pandemic very seriously, social distancing and wearing masks. He said the rate of infection there was something like one in a hundred (this province's rate is around one in a thousand, and that's the highest rate in the Atlantic Bubble). Now he is laid off for the winter and debating whether to look for a winter job or just do "Daddy Daycare". He said they were further ahead financially if he just did the childcare, so he's looking for a hobby to occupy himself. He bought two guitars for his daughter's birthday, he intends to sign his daughter and himself up for lessons. What a good daddy!