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!

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.

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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.

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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.

I bought a truck

My old truck, November 2011

I bought a truck yesterday. Or at least, agreed to buy a truck, I will take delivery of it on Monday.

It is not what I intended to do, kind of a spur of the moment thing. I looked this truck up on the internet and it gets so-so reviews and the price we agreed on is a little high, but I don't care. When my friend J (B's son) dropped by to tell me about this truck I told him I'd think about it, but I was so excited that it was not possible to be rational about it. I realized that in spite of best laid plans, that truck was what I really wanted. So I went to see it, drove it, chatted for an hour with J and the owner, and struck the deal. He wants cash so I'll get that on Monday.

It's a Chevy S10, same make and model as my old truck, but a few differences. More powerful engine and smaller cab, somewhat more recent vintage. I had a relationship with my old S10 and was sorry to see it go, but I don't have a relationship with my current vehicle, it's just a means to an end. I am already very excited about this new(er) S10. Although it is not so new as my current vehicle; the term "new" doesn't really apply.

In a month of disappointment and sadness, it's good to have something to look forward to.

First skate

I went skating on the pond yesterday. I was the only person skating, the ice was smooth, clear and trackless. It was a joy to be out there, I imagine the feeling is similar to what downhill skiers experience. In the photo above, all the marks on the ice are mine.

Hapi watched from the shore.

Later, more skaters arrived. A young man brought an axe and a metal pole to measure the ice thickness, his mother was there with a long rope in case he went through the ice. It was 5" thick. I had seen a father and son skating the day before, I thought since there was no hole indicating that they had fallen through that it was probably safe to skate on. The last couple of nights have been really cold and the daytime temperature has not exceeded 0C.

The moon over the ice

Yes it was a risky thing to do, but soooo worth it. There were a couple of Parks Maintenance guys working near the pond, I thought if I did go through the ice, they could probably help me out.

Later I walked Hapi on the trail around the pond and met someone who asked if it was me who was out there skating. I said Yes and she said, You don't have to skate alone, call me and I'll go skating with you. I didn't know what to say so I just said Sure. It was such a thrill to have the pond to myself, skating alone was not a downer.

When I first went out on the ice my skates were a bit loose. The first time skating each year I always get them either too loose or too tight so I have to stop to adjust. I decided to skate to 'The Heron House' and adjust them there. This is my own private name for the spot where I saw the heron on the shore the first weekend of December. It turns out that it is a small clearing on the shore and there is a path leading out to it that you can only see when the trees and bushes have all dropped their leaves. I have walked out there several times since December and I feel like I am experiencing the world through that heron's eyes when I am there. So I call it The Heron House.

At the special care home

The picture today is of the garden in front of our local post office. Those three balls look to me like the coronavirus, every time I see them that's what I think of. They are past their prime now, they used to be purple, but they still look like giant virus particles to me. They are called Ambassador Alliums.

I went to see B today, first time in over four months. The special care home she now lives in is about a half hour drive away. Her son called me last night to say that I could come with him and his sister for their scheduled visit, I think because B insisted. It is really hard to get a visit there, it can take up to a month just to get an appointment, and the visit time is just half an hour in the gardens surrounding the home.

It was certainly a lovely day for it, the gardens are at their peak of beauty. I didn't get to see all of it because the property is quite extensive. A PSW meets you at the parking lot and takes your temperature and asks a bunch of health and travel questions. B's son and daughter did not want to wear masks and I had forgotten mine, but the PSW offered me one and I took it. Then he escorted us to the pavilion where we would meet B. We saw another PSW pushing her wheelchair from the building to the pavilion and we waved.

I could not bring Hapi but B thought that later they might start allowing dogs to visit. She talked a mile a minute, as if she'd had fifteen cups of coffee before we arrived. She is so happy there. She says the staff are all very nice and her roommate is just the nicest person one could imagine. They laugh a lot and B says they torment the staff. The PSW pushing her chair stayed for the visit; she is a high school student who is looking forward to getting back to school in the fall. She's had enough of home schooling.

Later the supervisor came by to make sure we were all comfortable. He said it was okay to hug B as long as we had masks on and used the hand sanitizer sitting on the little table. I don't know what the home is like inside but B says it's very nice. I am so glad she is happy there, she seemed far better than she has been in the past year. With her oxygen tank and her wheel chair she is quite happy and she has taken up knitting again.

Her roommate is 91 years old and loves Christmas and angels. When B was still in quarantine the PSWs were telling her all about who her roommate would be and when they described her passion for Christmas and angels, B said, "She's not a religious nut, is she?" Well, she's not, she just loves the stuff that goes with it. B is very impressed with the angels.

When the time was up the PSW who took our temperatures came by to tell us. Another resident was lined up for her family visit in the little pavilion. It was a nice visit, I look forward to doing it again.

Evanescence

I don't know how this works at all.

The last couple of days have been really nice weather-wise, sunny with temperatures around +13C. Not exactly summer-warm but definitely not winter-cold. I've been getting better by leaps and bounds, my old energy levels coming back, the scary chest pain receding (my neighbour wanted me to get it checked out but I will never ever again go to the hospital to get chest pain 'checked out' unless I am in the midst of a full-blown heart attack), and the little tiny flowers emerging from the ground.

I made my first foray into a store (wearing one of my fancy masks). It involved a twenty minute wait outside in the sunny parking lot and then being admitted and served by two staff members, like I was royalty. All I wanted was some potting soil, I felt a little guilty when one of them said, "That's it? That's all you want?" I scanned the entire store behind the two gentlemen and wished I'd brought a list. Silly me.

Then another stop at a store where the owner cracked the door and asked what I wanted. I did have a list for that store, she recorded my list in her memory and closed the door to go fetch it all. A few moments later a shopping basket of my goods was placed on a stool outside the door and I was invited to tap the little machine through the window with my card. How amazing!

I love the way the purple grades to blue

Hapi wanted to visit the man in the used bookshop next door so we went in there too. We have a bit of a tradition; he offers her an organic dog biscuit and she turns it down. This time she took the biscuit and tried to bury it under a low bookshelf. She doesn't do organic.

After a walk on the dyke, where we met a man with a great dane puppy that towered over Hapi, I drove home with all my goodies, including the barley malt syrup for malt bread.

What I don't understand is the sheer joy of it all.

It comes and goes, but all day I just kept having these moments of sheer peace and joy. When I was talking to the bookshop man I was trying to explain it but couldn't really do it. He said he'd had so many anxious people stop by that it was nice to hear that someone was doing okay with it all.

He mentioned that because of his business he was on facebook and sometimes that really depressed him. I told him that I had quit facebook before all this happened and now was glad to not be exposed to it. He said you're right, you really don't want to know what's going on there.

Not to say that it's all evil, I'm sure there is a lot of good going on too. But I failed utterly to filter out the evil when I was on it and now staying sane is so precarious that battling evil is just not something I want to do.

I really like my little peace-and-joy world. Temporary for sure, but one shouldn't dismiss something just because it is temporary. Everything is temporary, even us.