I've been told

Crow family on the roof

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

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

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

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

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

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Step one: rails and inverters for solar panels

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

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

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

Don't complain camp in the rain...

Long time, no write!

Been busy though…

I did go on the kayak-camping trip last week, Monday through Friday. The first day was solid rain and then we had three days of sun and cloud, with rain on the final day of packing up and leaving. I have to say the rain made things quite difficult. 

Shelter from the rain

We were extremely grateful that our first campsite included a shelter, so we decided not to pitch tents but sleep in the shelter. That was okay although I didn't sleep very well. The next two days we had to move to two more campsites, which involved a lot of packing up, unpacking, setting up tents and taking them down again. That part of the whole trip was utterly exhausting, at least for me. I think the other two fared better: they shared a tent and were probably in better shape than I was for that sort of thing.

On our last day, one person was packed up and ready to leave before the other two, I was ready but stayed behind to help the third person into her sprayskirt. They get caught on the life jacket behind you and it often takes a helping hand to get it unstuck. She left and I tried to leave but got stuck between a rock and the shore. Rocking the kayak did not free it but did end up letting water into the cockpit. Then I got out to guide the kayak away from the rock, only to get two boots full of water. So by the time I left the shore I was soaked and sitting in a puddle of water inside the kayak.

The other two were waiting for me offshore but they had their backs to me and did not see my futile efforts to get launched. One of them asked me what I was doing and I told her. She was sympathetic, but the other woman laughed.

I guess I don't like being laughed at when I am in difficulty. I said, "I know it sounds funny, but it doesn't feel funny."

We paddled back to our starting point and I kept my distance from the others because I was seething. 

There were incredible moments of joy and beauty during the trip. One of our campsites was up a river and the trip there and back was absolutely magical. At that campsite, every time I looked at the river I was completely in awe of it, completely entranced.

But overall it was utterly exhausting, not from the kayaking but from the camping. A friend said she would have an awful time sleeping on the ground but for me that wasn't it. It was the packing, unpacking, packing again and erecting and dismantling of the tent and tarps over and over again. It absolutely killed my back. Also the fact that the other two women helped each other but I was largely left to fend for myself. I guess three is an awkward number, unless you have a spacious three-person tent.

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My town has recently embarked on an ambitious plan to cut carbon emissions by assisting homeowners to get climate-friendly upgrades. I contacted the plan organizers and they got me started on a project to install solar panels on my house. In the past I have resisted this because it is costly and the breakeven point on upfront costs is about 15 years from now, when I may very likely be dead. However, the town's plan involves offsetting the costs through home equity. In theory I can install enough solar panels to cover all my electrical needs without spending a dime of personal money.

Of course, like all such programs, it involves a lot of paperwork, talking to contractors, getting quotes, and who knows what else. The upside is meeting and talking to interesting people who tell you interesting things, the dowside is consuming a heck of a lot of time and mental energy. The plan spokesperson thinks I can be all done by Christmas, but at least one of the contractors I spoke to is saying probably next summer for completion. That sounds more realistic. There are a lot of unresolved issues and questions, but I guess it's kind of exciting.

Yesterday and today I am digging up potatoes, so something complicated but somewhat exciting to think about is welcome. As I told one friend, digging potatoes is as backbreaking as my previous week of camping, and given how cheap potatoes are to purchase, I wonder why I bother to grow them.

Lots to think about…

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.

Windows, Doors and Egg Rolls

I am getting new windows installed this week, they said it would take 3 days and they've just completed 2 days. All the new windows are in place and some of the trim. Tomorrow they will complete the trim.

Before coming in they asked me some Covid-related questions and then said they would be wearing masks and expected me to do so also, which I agreed to. As it turned out, one of the two workmen never wore a mask, but he also never entered my home, working strictly outside. I chatted with him at one point and he said he didn't believe in vaccines, but he realized that he was going to have to get vaccinated in order to keep working. I said nothing but thought, "good!"

While they install the windows I am weeding my garden, a task I don't relish but since I had to stay home but not in my house it does seem like a good time to get that out of the way. I think I am doing a couple of years worth of weeding.

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I dreamed about Hapi last night. We were on a trail we have often walked, she had her old energy back and was trotting along briskly with her tail up. Her coat was almost completely grown out except for a white patch on one shoulder. It was nice to see her back to her old self.

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So, a few days ago I was cleaning up the muddy patch on the back door left from Hapi scratching there to notify me that she wanted inside. I couldn't get it all off, I think she managed to scratch through the paint and it was going to need repainting. I was thinking about what colour I wanted, and that reminded me of the Green Door and the Orange Door, two Chinese restaurants in Vancouver. They are no longer there but they used to be on a back alley in that city's Chinatown. There was no signage and no advertising, you heard about them by word of mouth and you basically had to walk down that alley looking for a green door or an orange door. I don't remember which one I ate at (it was in the late 60s), but there were no windows. Once inside you felt like you were in someone's basement, with an open kitchen along one side and big dining tables along the other side.

My boyfriend and I asked for two egg rolls each plus a couple of main dishes. The waiter gave my boyfriend a funny look, but we didn't know what that was about. He went away and shortly came back to say that they had run out of egg rolls and we could only have one each. Okay, that's weird, but okay. He went away again and after a while he returned with the egg rolls. They were huge. Each one was a full meal. We immediately cancelled the rest of our order and the waiter did not seem surprised or perturbed by that, I think he was expecting that reaction. We were greenhorns and had no idea what was meant by an "egg roll". It was almost literally a rolled up egg omelet filled with ground meat and vegetables. I'm guessing three or four eggs in each omelet.

So remembering that experience, as a result of cleaning the door, I then wondered how you would make such an egg roll, and whether it was something I could reproduce myself. I tried it out with what I had and it was pretty good. I just used what I had in the fridge, some celery, an old carrot, a very old frozen soyburger, an onion, some sweet Thai garlic sauce, and of course eggs. My omelet wasn't big enough so there was too much filling and I had to just spread the filling on top of the omelet and eat it with a knife and fork. A work in progress.

An old acquaintance and messing about in the attic

2007, my truck in Nova Scotia

This morning I received a surprise email, from a guy asking if I remembered picking him up hitchhiking a long time ago. And I did! In fact, I had been thinking about him only yesterday. It was 14 years ago, in 2007, and I was on my way to visit friends in Nova Scotia. I did not yet live there, in fact I did not really have an address anywhere, I was in the process of moving from Vancouver to Toronto.

So, somewhere near Hartland New Brunswick I turned off the TransCanada for gas and to look for a camping spot, because it was evening and I was tired of driving all day. While putting gas in my truck a young hitchhiker walked up to me and asked for a ride to Halifax Nova Scotia. I said Sorry, I was about to get off the road for the night. He pleaded his case and then left, presumably waiting for some kinder soul to stop there for gas. I reconsidered and after paying for the gas I told him I would take him a little further down the road, but I had no intention of driving all the way to Nova Scotia that night, and Halifax was kind of out of my way.

He loaded his bag in the back of the truck and we proceeded. He was chatty and as it turned out quite an interesting person with interesting opinions on things. For a young fellow he seemed to have done a lot of different things. Also he was interested in what I had to say as well. The conversation was interesting enough that I was reluctant to end it by dropping him off so I told him I would continue driving as long as I could, provided that he kept me awake. We actually made it all the way to Halifax.

He had been living in Toronto but he was an American who had been on the road for quite a while. He was going to Halifax because his girlfriend lived there and he actually thought she would put me up for the remainder of the night if we got there. We did get there but she wasn't interested in having a strange woman guest overnight so I continued driving to my destination which was a little over an hour away from Halifax. I must have given him my email address because he emailed me a couple of days later to ask if I made it okay and to say thanks for the ride and interesting conversation. I emailed him back and that was the end of the conversation, until today. He said in today's email that he came across our old exchange of messages while, I dunno, cleaning up his mailbox? He wondered if I remembered him.

I emailed back. I am curious as to what he did with himself over the last 14 years and where he is now. I am guessing he is in his mid to late 30s, possibly very early 40s, as he was quite young back then. Anyway, we'll see if he responds, I hope so.

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Last fall I bought some fiberglass insulation on sale to put in my attic. Then I got too ill to actually do it. I did manage to get the bales up into the attic but they sat there unopened all winter until now. This afternoon I geared up—old clothes, hat, goggles, mask, gloves, headlamp—and climbed into the attic to spread the insulation. I had 7 bales and managed to lay 5 of them down before I couldn't stand it anymore. Fiberglass insulation is awful stuff! The attic already has blown-in insulation, and that is pretty awful stuff too. I have a trapdoor to the attic and the blown-in stuff leaks down whenever I open it so I had to spread a tarp on the floor below as well. Filthy filthy stuff!

I got the worst of it done, all the places that required crawling around under low rafters. I think what's left is maybe one bale's worth, and it's all in an area where I can stand up. Thank the gods for that. However, I lost my utility knife somewhere in all the blown-in stuff. I tried looking for it but gave up pretty quick; easier to just get another one.

Renovation

Renovating the Reservoir beach

I was watching my weather app the other day, it was warning of severe thunder storms and tornados about to hit Toronto. As far as I know the tornados did not materialize, but parts of northwestern Toronto got lots of rain, flooding and power outages. Meanwhile at home a very under-reported storm was shaping up for the late evening. The forecast said a bit of rain coming in the late afternoon but not enough to trigger any warnings.

Wow, did they get that wrong! It was an almost record setting deluge overnight with flooding. My sump pump kicked in for the first time in months and was still working hard 24 hours later. Boy am I glad I got that pump and the French drains put in! Several shops in low lying areas had to remain closed yesterday due to flood clean up. Large parts of the Valley are below sea level with extensive dyking dating back hundreds of years, but it was the water coming down from the sky not in from the sea that was the problem.

The good news is, my basement stayed dry and my romaine seeds finally decided to sprout after I had given them up for dead. Who knew flooding was what they required. June and May were unusually dry but the weatherman more than made up for that in a single day, almost 75 mm of rain overnight. The record for July in these parts is 78 mm (set during WWII).

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I've been moving furniture the last few days. It started with the notion that I would get more weaving done in the winter months if I moved the loom from 'the loom room' which I don't heat in the winter time into the living room which I do heat. The living room is small and already chock-a-block full of furniture, so I had to come up with a floor plan that would accommodate the loom. I thought if I moved my desk out and the loom in it was doable. I also thought better to do it now than to wait until the current weaving project is finished, which could be months from now.

Obstacle #1: even folding the back beam of the loom up (it's hinged to do so), the loom is marginally wider than the doorway to the loom room. I tried to force it, thus messing up the recently completed threading of the loom. Reluctantly I backed off and proceeded to take the door off the hinges to obtain that extra half inch of width needed. It's an old door, very heavy, and as it turns out, the hinges are coming loose from the door frame. With great difficulty I got the door off the hinges. The loom passed through the doorway with maybe a millimeter to spare.

Obstacle #2: a loom in the living room makes the living room look like a textile factory. I had taken a lot of measurements and had determined that the loom would fit, but that didn't mean that it would look okay. It completely dominated the space due to its large length, width and height and also due to its very mechanical appearance. After the episode of the doorway I was not up for moving it back or for another round of furniture moving, but I did think that if I simply exchanged places between my favourite reading arm chair and the loom, its dominance would be less noticeable.

Obstacle #3: The loom looked better after the rearrangement and I was tired and hungry so I quit for the day. The next morning I realized that the new location of the arm chair was now blocked from the natural light coming from large windows at the front end of the room and I needed a lamp to be able to read when it was broad daylight outside. Plus I would not be able to see the birdfeeder from the arm chair in its new location, and the loom was set up in the wrong direction to see much of anything. Argh. I spent the whole day mulling that one over and realizing I was going to have to move almost every single piece of furniture in that small room to get what I wanted.

And also realizing that while taking measurements and arranging furniture according to its width and length and overall floor area was doable in my head, I was not taking height measurements and even if I was I could not really picture the effect in my head. I suppose some home decorating design app would take care of that but I was now in no mood to go hunting for such a beast and learning how to use it.

I spent yesterday moving the furniture again. I can now live with the current arrangement, in fact I think it is better than the old one. There are a couple of minor problems (such as having to move the pictures on the walls because their old arrangment now looks completely wrong) and I still have the clean up of the old loom room to do. I spent a couple of hours straightening out the warp threading after it got messed up on its passage through the too narrow doorway, and another half hour getting the door back on its hinges. One of the hinges is loose and will need repair, but I don't think I would have noticed that without having taken the door off in the first place, so I suppose that is a good thing.

I tried to convince Hapi that the newly empty loom room would make a good bedroom for her but she's not buying it. It was a warm night so I left the back door open in case she wanted to go out in the middle of the night. She did, but required help getting up the basement stairs so I had to get up for that. Today I have yet another car repair to take care of and I have to find another place for Hapi and I to go for a walk due to huge park renovations going on at the Reservoir.

Pandemic life at its best!