Sunny Days

Last few weeks have been terribly busy, and I have probably been pushing myself too hard. I am keeping lists of things I have to do, and as each item gets checked off two more get added on. I am not making progress.

A pile of turtles

Went kayaking, it was fun (and exhausting). As it turned out, the second Covid booster seriously set me back. I almost didn't go kayaking, I felt so sick. A full week after getting the shot I think I recovered, but the first day of kayaking left me almost too dizzy to function. It was only a bit less than two hours of an easy paddle up a quiet meandering river. We saw piles of turtles. Literally piles, they were perched one atop another on floating logs in the sun. The second day of paddling was much better, I had recovered from the booster shot and was able to spend the whole day out on the water. 

There were six of us in a three bedroom cottage, ranging in age from early sixties to mid-seventies. The difference in energy level between the three in their sixties and the three in our seventies was pretty stark. The other two seventy year olds were recovering from bouts of Covid in April, so they were in only slightly better shape than me. On the second and third days we split up into two paddling groups, the younger women wanted to go further faster. They even went swimming!

It felt good to be out in my kayak again, the trip was so worth it.

Shortly after I got back, the roofers arrived to reroof my house. The idea is to have brand new shingles under the solar panels. In three days they had most of it done but there are some ridge shingles missing because of shortages; none to be had in the entire province. They'll be back to finish the job when the ridge shingles are available again. I warned them about my crow family, but there was no conflict, the men and the crows did not bother each other.

I called the solar panel installer after the roof was done to get an estimate of when he planned to start. Turns out some document or other got lost so there is a delay. Surprise surprise. He thinks he will start in 3 weeks, and it will take about 6 weeks. I am not holding my breath.

Then I put my car up for sale, it sold within a couple of days. I priced it at an amount that I wanted, then after it sold I looked on the internet to see what it should be priced at. I was about $500 under what they said it was worth. Even so, the guy who bought it tried to talk me down in price. I am pretty sure he knew it was already underpriced, he just wanted to see if he could get an even better deal. Nope.

My next big job is to get the house painted. I had already lined up a friend to help me do that, and she wanted another person to do the ladder work. A friend of hers has a son with a mental illness that pretty much prevents him from getting a steady job, she arranged for him to help, after running it past me of course. But she can't start until June and I had the idea that the young man could start this month doing cleaning and scraping. So he's been here for the past few days. He's a good worker, he just has difficulty relating to people. That's fine with me. He has some experience with this kind of work so I don't really have to supervise him. I know his mother from the dog park, she used to have a border collie that Hapi liked, which says a lot because Hapi didn't much care for border collies.

New garden frames and transplants-in-waiting

Since coming back from kayaking we've had beautiful sunny weather and I've been working in my garden. It is slow going because it's heavy work and I am tired and dizzy. I'm not making progress as fast as I would like. My transplants are huge and desperately need to be planted, but strictly speaking it is too early yet and I haven't got the beds ready for them. I did manage to get peas, spinach and some potatoes planted.

I love seeing the goldfinches and cardinals flitting about, and the male cardinals are quite noisy now, declaring their territories. Pinky and Big Red are still fighting, I saw them in a showdown in my neighbour's driveway. But they saw me watching and flew away before they really got into it.Traffic at the bird feeder is dropping off, but I keep it up because the cardinals always come in the evening and I like seeing them.

I am being referred to an internal medicine guy and I am supposed to go to the Chronic Conditions centre for a NASA Lean Test. That's to see if I have Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS). If I have POTS then I guess it means my heart has been affected, but not sure how much. Not even sure I have it, but it would explain the two years of dizziness and fatigue. It's also a known complication of Long Covid.

I am reading an interesting book, A Primate's Memoir, by Robert Sapolsky. It's about his years in Kenya studying a troop of baboons. He obviously has a deep fondness for his study subjects and a wicked sense of humour. At the start of the book he says that the tragic last chapter is completely true, but he did change a few names. My curiousity caused me to read the last chapter first, and it was so tragic I almost couldn't go back and read the first chapters. Who knew you could be so fond of baboons? Stuff I've read about baboons suggests that the males run the show and females are completely under their control, but it turns out that is wishful thinking on the part of (male) animal behaviourists. As usual, things are a lot more complicated. However, because Sapolsky's research involved taking blood samples, and the females were mostly pregnant, lactating or generally taking care of children, he couldn't take samples from them. Taking a sample involved darting a baboon, waiting for it to fall unconscious, carrying it back to his vehicle where he took the sample and then returning the baboon to where it was when it fell unconscious. Since he couldn't really do that to a female who couldn't afford to spend time away and unconscious, most of the baboons that he knew up close and personal were male. 

All the lovely sunny weather we are having does not bode well for summer crops. The land is unusually dry. It is supposed to be a La Nina summer which is unusual too, and that means more hurricane activity. The large number of snow storms we had this winter were due to a La Nina winter. Not sure what unusually dry ground and unusual hurricane activity will add up to, not much good I guess.

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.

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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. 

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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.

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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).

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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.

Swimming and reading

My swimming companions

Since getting home from my kayaking expedition at the beginning of the month I've been swimming at the Reservoir, almost daily. I swim with a woman who seems to be an amazing source of local gossip. Some of it good, some of it not, some about people I know and some about people I don't. I occasionally have gossip tidbits to exchange, but not very much really. The main benefit of all this gossip is to keep me swimming; I can do 4 laps while listening and at best 2 laps while not. So, there's that. 

She has a neighbour who sometimes shows up to do serious swimming (the crawl, with flippers, goggles and ear plugs), it turns out he is also a serious kayaker. So I mentioned to my swimming companion that I am always looking for fellow kayakers and she said she'd pass that along, which she did. So we shall see. I've pretty much decided that I don't want to combine kayaking and camping any more, at least not the way we have been doing. Maybe a single base camp for a 4-day trip, but not changing campsites every day or even every other day. So what I want is people I can do day trips with, sans camping.

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Today is a wet stormy day and after today the temperature will take a downturn, so I may not be swimming anymore unless we get a mini heat wave in October. Not likely. Today I am doing more or less nothing. This past week, besides swimming I also did some rather strenuous yard work so doing nothing is my idea of a rest. I watched the storm outside the window, I read, and got caught up on bills.

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I just finished reading an interesting book which I can recommend: The Premonition, by Michael Lewis. I'd never heard of Lewis before, and on the back cover of the book is a review comment: "I would read an 800-page history of the stapler if he wrote it." I absolutely agree, it was an enthralling read and I learned a few things, albeit rather depressing things. But no matter, he writes in a very upbeat style leaving one with hope and a little faith in the fundamental goodness of human beings. The book is a pandemic story, specifically about Covid19, but it starts in the early 2000s, under the G.W. Bush presidency. I learned that Bush did one good thing during his presidency, he read John Barry's book about the 1918 Flu Pandemic and it scared him into creating a committee to come up with a pandemic plan for the USA. The membership in this committee was brilliant, they did their homework and they came up with an official pandemic plan that—had it ever been implemented—would have changed the course of the American experience of the 2020 Covid Pandemic. Sigh…

Lewis focuses his book on a half dozen individuals, some of whom were original members of that committee, and some of whom were latecomers to the party. All of them brilliant in their own ways, all of them heroes who went above and beyond in their attempts to stem the carnage of the pandemic in the USA. The book reads like a thriller, you get inside the lives and heads of Lewis's subjects, and in the process you learn a thing or two about how bureaucracy works. That latter bit leaves me a little depressed, but it's good to know that heroes exist.

Lewis says an interesting thing about government in general. He says that the federal government—and I think this applies to any federal government—is a manager of a portfolio of existential risks, whether natural disasters, financial panics, military, energy or food security, and so forth. It is the job of government to be ready for any of these risks and to jump into action when they happen. To that end they maintain a stable of experts, a host of disaster plans, and a cohort of people ready to act according to plan when disaster occurs. But that's expensive, and it means a whole lot of people being held at the ready for such a disaster to materialize, and people who are against the idea of Big Government just want to eliminate all that. It makes the cvil service look wasteful. A couple of things that happened when Covid exploded in the US were that the plan was forgotten or ignored and it turned out the supplies necessary for addressing a pandemic weren't there, they'd long since expired and not been replaced.

We hear a lot about how Trump sabotaged the Covid response but Lewis does not dwell on that. He talks about a whole lot of other failures that contributed, and how his little team of heroes tried to mitigate them. These heroes did not have job titles reflecting their importance, they were what one person referred to as "L6": so far down the hierarchy of authority that they should have been inconsequential, but they weren't. They really took the ball and ran with it, regardless of the consequences to their careers. Few of us get that opportunity, but these people did and their stories are inspiring.

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…

Fragile Miracles

Yesterday was the last day of morning kayaking. The director of the program came out to the lake early to unlock the gate and give us Regulars an extra hour of paddling, she brought her son and a couple of his friends with her to play on the paddleboards while she oversaw the kayak registrations and sendoffs for the day, because the students who usually do that job ended their summer jobs the day before.

It was a gorgeous day for it. The latest heat wave ended yesterday so it was warm but not scorching. A few of us did not come because the early hour was just a bridge too far, but those of us who did come set out in search of the mythical Fish Ladder.

Word has it that there is a fish ladder on the lake, we kind of assumed it would be near the power dam. D and myself had already explored the environs of the dam but had not sighted the ladder, so the group set out for a wider search of the lake. However, after a two-hour paddle the mythical Fish Ladder remained mythical, a project for next summer. It was an exhilerating paddle, especially since we kind of lost track of the time and left ourselves only a half hour to get back to home base. We went straight down the middle of the lake, a flotilla of little kayaks paddled in unison.

Next week is a week of morning appointments, things I postponed until kayaking was done. The week following is the kayak-camping trip on Kejimkujik Lake. Last spring we had organized a four-day kayaking trip at a lodge (Milford House), but that was cancelled due to Third Wave lockdown. Here in Nova Scotia it was actually the second wave, but for the rest of the country it was the Third Wave. Anyway, we had so many people wanting to come on that trip that I was half-thankful that it was cancelled; it was going to be crowded. But now we are hard-pressed to get four people willing to go, perhaps because we are all of an age when sleeping on the ground and camping in the rain are less than pleasant prospects.

But for me, four days on the water sounds like heaven, rain or no rain. And I am ridiculously fit, I feel more up for this than I have in decades. One night this week, insomnia had me up in the wee hours and while failing to get back to sleep I was marvelling at how hard my stomach muscles are now. My thumbs were very sore for a while but they have recovered, paddling hard for an hour now hardly affects them. In spite of lack of sleep I am still up and ready for an active day first thing. It feels like some kind of miracle and I don't want to waste it, at this age one is keenly aware of how fragile such miracles are.

Last night I was watching TV with the back door still open, the last of the heat wave was dissipating and leaving windows and doors open was nice. At a certain point I had a very strong sense that Hapi had just come in through the back screen door to check on me, it was quite overwhelming. I had to turn off the TV and walk around the house for a bit to try to shake it off. In spite of having a very good day I went to bed sad. One of my appointments this week is an interview at a seniors housing co-op, and one of their rules is no pets. For the first time since Hapi died I wonder if that will work for me. In addition to missing Hapi, I miss my backyard cardinal and the chipmunk that lived for a while in my window well. One grows attached.

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.

Eaglet, moon rise and post viral

Houston's Beach, cloud with rainbow

Another more or less perfect week. I and another kayaker have been exploring the hidden coves on the other side of the lake that we kayak in. There's a young eagle living there who sits by its home nest calling all day, presumably for his parents to come feed him. He can fly—we've seen him in the air—but he prefers to sit in a tree by the nest calling plaintively. One day three of us floated in the water beneath him and he quieted and examined us from the safety of his perch.

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I missed only one morning of kayaking due to weather and I am glad that I did, I think five days in a row is a bit much for me but I can handle four days broken by rain. Yesterday I kayaked in the morning, swam in the afternoon and went to a beach bonfire in the evening to watch the full moon rise. We roasted marshmallows while waiting for the moon. Our "firepit" was an ingenious little metal affair that folds away to nothing, it has a heatproof but porous bottom to allow air flow from below without setting fire to whatever is underneath, it also has an optional firescreen cover and a grill for roasting food over the fire. The owner of the portable firepit says he bought it over the internet from some company in southwestern USA.

We also had telescoping forks for roasting our marshmallows. My companions prefer their marshmallows browned but not burnt, I prefer them well burnt. I stick my marshmallow into the coals to set it afire, then raise and twirl it to make sure the entire surface is burnt. After we had our fill of marshmallows, the popping corn was popped and we filled up whatever crannies of our stomachs remained unfilled. 

At one point we were all so engrossed in the popping of the corn that we missed the actual rising of the moon. It was halfway up before we noticed. Watching the progress of the moonrise was the highlight of the evening, a few clouds at the horizon allowed you to actually see it rising upwards. It gradually turned from dull red to bright white as it gained height. The reflection of the moonlight on the water of the Minas Basin gave the moon a kind of long bright trail.

The tide was very low so the beach was extensive when we arrived, but it was coming in so that by the time we left the beach was half its width (length? distance to the water's edge?). Some fishers were out fishing for striped bass and flounder; they only come into the Basin when the tide is rising so serious fishers are prepared for nighttime fishing when the low tide is late at night. The beach is also the only place in the county where you can camp for free so there were several tents and one RV set up for the night, with a couple of fires in the parking area. In June recent school grads use the beach to celebrate so it can be quite noisy, but in late July it is quiet.

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I am quite exhausted by a busy week so I try to rest on the weekend, nevertheless I plan to go out tonight to a music event with a couple of friends. I was going to mow the lawn today but couldn't muster the energy so hopefully I can do that tomorrow. My friend J is going to paint my truck cap tomorrow and then sometime this coming week I will get a roofrack installed on it. In the course of prepping the cap for clearcoating last week, J managed to sand off too much of the existing paint, so now he has to paint before he can finish the clearcoat. I didn't think I would find a roof rack before autumn but I found a shop that said they could have it for me next week. A little pricey but worth it.

A birthday and an adventure

On Thursday it rained in the morning with thunder and lightning, so we did not go paddling. Instead I got myself caught up on various chores and in the afternoon went to a birthday party at a local restaurant.

The birthday girl was celebrating her 80th and she invited a couple of other women who also were celebrating birthdays in July. 

Altogether we were six. Since the weather was a bit iffy, we chose a restaurant that had a fully covered patio so we could be outdoors without getting soaked (or baked, if the sun came out). It's a marvelous restaurant specializing in Turkish food. The owner lives around the corner from me and is a single father, I often see him in his apron walking down my street to his restaurant, with two young boys in tow.

We had a lovely meal and greatly enjoyed this being our first restaurant meal since the pandemic started, we showed off our funniest fanciest facemasks. You have to wear a mask when you are moving about but can take it off when seated at your table, and all of us were double vaccinated. Near the end of the meal the owner came to our table bearing a plate of baklava made in-house, with lit sparklers in honour of our birthday party and the fact that several of us had birthdays in July.

"Here in our restaurant, we all have birthdays in July!" he said.

Afterward we retired to the birthday girl's home for more wine and celebration.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

One day this past week the kayakers booked in the afternoon instead of the morning because one person had a dental appointment in the morning. I decided not to go. But as luck would have it I did end up kayaking with someone else I had met at the Reservoir while swimming there. She had bought an inflatable kayak and wanted to learn to use it but was reluctant to go out on her own. I said I would accompany her in my own inflatable. We chose a lake close to town, Lumsden's Pond. There's a provincial picnic park and tiny beach there. 

After unloading all our gear and lugging it down to the beach, I realized that I had locked my keys inside the truck. J, my companion, thought we could go back to my house to get the spare key and then return to Lumsden's in her car which she had left at my house. Then she remembered that she left her car key in my truck. She had her phone and thought she could call CAA (my phone was inside the truck), but it turns out there is no cell coverage at the park. J said never mind, we will cross that bridge later.

I've used my kayak a couple of times already this summer so the process of getting it ready for the water is properly memorized; time-consuming but not confusing. J had no experience at all and her kayak was brand new. Also very cheap. It really took a while to figure it out, even with both of us reading the instructions a couple of times. But eventually we got it water-ready.

J couldn't figure out which end of her kayak was the bow, we had to guess and my guess was opposite to hers. She went with her guess. As it turned out, she was wrong and the kayak was very unmanouverable. She couldn't paddle in a straight line if her life depended on it! So after all that frustration we went back to shore after a very short paddle. Once onshore we turned her kayak upside down to see which way the keel was pointing, and then turned it right side up again to see if there was anything on the bow end that was different from the stern end so she would know the next time. We packed up the kayaks and then tried to figure out how we were going to get my truck unlocked.

As luck would have it a young woman and her child were just heading home, they stopped to greet us and we asked the big question: would you drive one of us to town? And also back to the beach again? At first she said she was happy to take one of us to town but not back again, and we hesitated as we tried to figure out how we would get back, then she said never mind she would drive us back too. She didn't mind the driving, she was just concerned about how her young daughter was going to take it.

I went back with the young woman and her daughter who was fine with it all, she sat in her little car seat smiling until she fell asleep. We had a nice chat, it turns out I knew the woman's parents and we talked about a variety of things, from travel out west to Toronto weather to whether or not to invest in solar panels. She turned down the offer of a bottle of wine for her trouble saying it was her pleasure to help out. Of course my house key was also locked in the truck, but I keep a spare outside so I used that. Note to self: spare truck key somewhere outside the truck cab!

First thing I did was unlock the truck and get J's bottle of water out as I was pretty sure she was quite parched by now. Then we went for a swim. We swam across the lake and back, a much longer swim than I am used to but we were chatting so much that we didn't think to turn around until we reached the other side. I didn't sleep so well that night due to neck pain because of the long swim, but it was otherwise a very interesting day that ended well.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

J mentioned a book she was reading, Why We Swim. I looked it up on our local library website and the e-book version was available so I borrowed it. Looks interesting. In the first chapter the author writes about the earliest known record of human swimming, dating to over 10,000 years ago. There are cave paintings of swimmers in the Sahara Desert! In those days there was a whole chain of lakes full of fish, and in addition to the cave paintings there are old harpoons buried in what was once a lake bottom. I can't get those ancient swimmers out of my mind, the idea that where they once swam is now a complete desert.

Kayaks and rodents, and trucks

My truck and J's

It looks like I won't be posting much this summer, too busy. It seems I had more time on my hands last summer to keep posting here, but this summer not so much.

My main activities are kayaking and swimming, with a little gardening on the side. July is my low gardening month, I fertilize and plant in May, weed a lot in June, and then in July I figure my plants are established enough to let the weeding slide. Whatever is not doing so well I shrug my shoulders and think, "I guess it's a bad year for <whatever is not doing well>". And I start picking and eating whatever is doing well. So far it is peas and green peppers and a single cucumber. Green peppers! I have never successfully grown green peppers! Makes up for all the lettuce, kale, chard and squash that failed to sprout or grow.

The garden is overrun by volunteer potatoes, apparently my potato harvest last year was not so efficient. Even so I got a lot of potatoes and had enough left over in the spring to replant this year. The potatoes may be why the squash failed to grow, their alloted space was taken over by the volunteer potatoes.

A friend and neighbour has been organizing daily kayak trips. The county bought a bunch of little plastic kayaks and set them up at a public beach on a local lake for county residents to use for free. All you have to do is book a one-hour time slot and then show up for it. My friend is a great organizer (if she was a dog she'd be a border collie!) so she books the kayaks a week in advance and then herds a bunch of us to the lake to paddle. We carpool because it is a 45-minute one-way trip. My friend does not have a car but she also gets a ride out of it to her favourite golf course on the way home from kayaking (busy girl!).

All told we are in the car for an hour and a half every morning for one hour of paddling. You may think that much driving is not worth it, but it is. It is glorious to be out on the water in a tiny little kayak! On really hot days we go for a swim afterward. At that hour of the day the beach is not crowded, and it is nicely set up with change rooms, port-a-potties, a little kiddie playground, and lots of grass and picnic tables, some of them under cover for shade or shelter from the rain. The beach is more pebbly than sandy so most people sit on the grass when not in the water.

In the junkyard

Lately my afternoons are taken up with my truck project. J found a cap for my truck at a local junk yard, so we went there to buy it and the junk yard guys helped transfer my tonneau cover to J's truck and install the cap on mine (photo at top: my truck and J's with the tonneau cover transferred to J's truck). J has no money but wants to pay for the cover which he says is worth $100 or more, so he's going to pay it off with work on my truck. 

Isn't she handsome?

I now need a slider window at the front of the cap and a roof rack. I won't find those at a junk yard so I will have to pay a bunch for them new and wait a while for them to come available. In the meantime J is going to clear coat the cap and do a couple of small repairs on it, it is otherwise in very good condition. It was pretty filthy when we retrieved it from the junk yard, but a couple of good rain downpours and a bit of scrubbing has done wonders for that. It had been sitting on the ground for at least a year so stuff was starting to grow on it and at least one critter had made a home for itself inside.

Speaking of critters making homes for themselves, I've been finding holes in my potato patches. It looks as if something was trying to dig up my potatoes, but no potatoes showed any damage. Also tunneling into the compost bin. Then one day last week J and I were in my driveway discussing next steps on my truck project when J spotted a critter diving into the window well of one of my basement windows. I looked into the well and saw that there was another tunnel dug in there. A few moments later a head popped up at the edge of the window well. It was a chipmunk! It spotted us a few feet away and immediately dove back down. Since then I have seen it running between my garden and the window well a couple of times.

I am not going to chase out a chipmunk. If it was a grey squirrel or a rat I'd take steps immediately, but a chipmunk? Can't do it. I will put up with its ravages in my garden.

Crunch time

Hapi's death was pre-scheduled. I was invited on a 4-day kayaking trip and I knew I couldn't take her with me or leave her with anyone else and I badly wanted to go. She was enormously slowed down, sleeping a lot and moving very slowly for short walks. But she did like her soaks in the Reservoir pond on good days. Her long fur and the pond water and her age made for a very stinky dog but I didn't care about that since I knew her days were numbered. So one day I scheduled euthanasia at the vet's, giving myself about 10 days to recover before going kayaking.

Best laid plans, eh?

I took her in on Friday afternoon, and the city went into lockdown. Covid case numbers continued to rise and people were foolish, so by Sunday the new premier was furious and locked down the entire province. Kayak trip cancelled, everything cancelled. On Monday we had the highest case count ever, but numbers are starting to drop now (still well above first wave numbers though). With many elders—especially those in long term care facilities—vaccinated, the pandemic is largely amonst younger folk. I got my first vaccination two weeks ago which gives me partial protection, but far from perfect.

I go back and forth between: I just killed my dog for nothing, and, don't second guess yourself it was going to happen soon anyway. I've been resorting to puppy porn to take my mind off it.

Yesterday I was invited to 'bubble' with good friends, a couple living in my town. Their dog died last fall and this weekend just before the province-wide lockdown they went down to the South Shore and got themselves a very cute collie-cross puppy. Yesterday I went over and sat in their back yard to meet their new pup, as yet unnamed. Extremely cute. Then my friend drove with me to another nearby town to drop off my car for brake work.

This morning I woke up sick. I was very tired yesterday but didn't think anything of it, but now I know it was the preliminary phase of something upper respiratory. I'm guessing just a cold but scheduled a Covid test for this afternoon. Called the garage to say I wouldn't be picking up my car until I knew I was in the clear, and told my friend to keep an eye out for symptoms. Cancelled tomorrow's dental appointment.

So many people are getting tested here now—highest testing rate in the country—that negative results are somewhat delayed, but I assume they get back to you ASAP if you're positive. The military have been called in to assist with testing. Today another friend called asking if I wanted to 'bubble' with them, but I am already in a bubble and my status at the moment is unknown. My friend said, "Oh well, see you in another life."

The lockdown is considered a circuit breaker so it could be over in less than two weeks, it just depends on the numbers. Nova Scotians can be as foolish as anyone else, but in a crunch we pull together. This is a crunch.

Change in the weather, change in me

The last few days have been rather busy. We had two really warm nice days, enough to make one think Spring is really coming. A friend called me saying the warm weather was making her think about kayaking and would I be interested in a 4-day kayaking expedition in May.

I fell for it, hook line and sinker. I haven't been kayaking at all in almost 2 years, and definitely not on an expedition in that time. Two years ago May four of us booked a "cabin" (more like a house) at a lodge on a lake system in the interior of the province and spent our time kayaking the lake system and cooking and eating great meals. Not to mention wine and conversation and a fire in the big old stone fireplace and soaking up the sun on the deck overlooking the lake…

Anyway, same cabin, same time, same women. But I can't leave Hapi alone for much more than 3 hours and I can't leave her with someone else or put her in a kennel, her health and well-being are just not up to it. The friend who called me is a very pragmatic sort of person with no pets, she tried to be polite about it but her scepticism about me still having a sick old dog shone through. The last expedition she organized I bowed out of for that reason. I told her I was interested and thanked her for her call because it got me thinking about what I was doing and why, something I needed to do. So long story short, I am looking at euthanasia for Hapi, sometime before May.

The following day I met with two friends for wine and cheese and crackers and nachos, etc., leaving Hapi at home. We had a really good time and I was home 3 hours later, to a kitchen floor covered in doggie diarrhea. I cleaned up, did some laundry, and gave Hapi a small amout of food just to get her pain meds into her. Next morning, more diarrhea in the kitchen, more cleanup, and more thinking.

I was thinking about calling the vet on Monday to talk about Hapi's future, or lack thereof, but the vet's office called me on Friday afternoon. I had the conversation with the vet tech, she talked a lot about "quality of life", and I said Hapi's quality was just fine but mine not so much. However, this caregiver is burnt out. The possibility of a new spring, a new opportunity only available if I am dogless, just was overwhelming.

On Saturday I went to a movie. It was a fundraiser and the seating was carefully arranged for social distancing; I sat with two of the women who would be going on the kayaking expedition. The movie, a documentary, was interesting but overly long, I think it needed some serious editing. The problem with a lot of documentaries—to my mind—is that the filmmaker has a message to deliver that he/she considers really important, and just hammers it home repeatedly. I think the dramatic repetition is a bit much. By the end of the film I was already at my 3 hour limit and then there was a discussion. I didn't like getting up and leaving in the midst of a discussion but felt I had no choice, I was at the end of my Hapi-tether.

Real dog, fake eagle

I know that tether is only going to get shorter. I know she is not going to improve. She still has good times, she eats well and likes our walks, she can still manage a short flight of stairs. Her daytime schedule has become very unpredictable, I can no longer count on her to eat at a certain time and have a nap for a certain length of time. She gets restless unpredictably. I love having a long bath but it's hard to schedule anymore because if Hapi is outdoors she will scratch incessantly at the door and she has already damaged the weatherstripping considerably. If she is indoors and needs to go out she is liable to have an accident if I don't hop to it.

My friend's phone call the other day was a wake up call, it made me realize how stressed out I was about Hapi, and for how long this has been going on. The unpredictability of how much longer this situation is going to continue, the lack of a foreseeable endpoint, has made making plans or even thinking about the future impossible. On the other hand, having a specific endpoint makes a lot of things so much easier to bear. I can do this, knowing that it is only for so long. It is sad but doable.