Still here

It is very hard for me to get things done. I thought I should start some kind of 'to do' list on my phone, since that is usually close at hand, but the couple of apps I downloaded for that purpose were not what I had in mind. I wanted something like my Mealime app which keeps my grocery list. Finally I decided to just use Mealime, prefacing each 'to do' item with the words "to do". Mealime files them under "Other", works for me.

I vaguely had the idea that I would post to this blog after I got a new computer, since the old one seemed to be failing. Well, I got the new computer but the process for setting it up is proving to be complicated. It is still on the To Do list, but falling further down as other items become more urgent. So I am posting this from the old computer just to say "I'm still here."

Worst winter ever. My illness is worse and as I am 3 years in now, I have no prospect of improving. I know this to be Long Covid but cannot get diagnosed because there is no bio-marker nor is there any agreed-upon criteria for diagnosing it. In fact, most doctors around here do not admit to its existence. Until there is a diagnostic bio-marker most doctors will tell you that it is all in your pretty little head (meaning psychological not neurological) and take an antidepressant for it.

My GP referred me to a psychiatrist who asked me two questions: How do you know Dr. P (at the beginning of the hour) and Have you any questions for me (at the end of the hour).

He told me:
1) post-viral syndromes don't exist and he knows this because he grew up in Ireland and Brucellosis (I thought that was a disease of cattle?).
2) Brain Fog doesn't exist.
3) I should quit chasing specialists for a diagnosis.
4) When I told him that my experience with antidepressant side effects was pretty awful, he said, Well even Tylenol has side effects. 

Since he never asked me any questions about why I was there or my state of mind, I assume he got all of his knowledge of me from my medical record. Great.

Now that many countries are funding research into Long Covid, a lot of potential causes and bio-markers are being suggested. Maybe sometime soon (i.e., within the next couple of years) they will narrow down on one cause and one bio-marker. Here in Nova Scotia it will probably entail investing in new technology to detect that bio-marker, so say another couple of years. That means Long Covid will go from being a syndrome (a collection of symptom criteria) to an actual disease, as MS did when the MRI came into play.

But that's not a cure or even a symptomatic treatment. So another decade or so. I am 75. In 5 years I may get my illness recognized, and in another decade and a half there may be a treatment. Right.

One day on FB (I rejoined in order to access some support groups) FB recommended I join a group dealing with The Afterlife. That made me laugh. With the tinnitus, brain fog and dizziness I don't feel like I am part of the real world, I am observing from inside a bubble constant noise, inability to think properly and unsteadiness, The BesideLife.

There is no outward sign of illness. I ace tests of my memory and executive function, but cannot follow a recipe or even remember the order of steps to make my breakfast. Words escape me. My longterm memory feels like old lace rotting away. I spend most of my time on my daybed, with breaks to take Princess for short walks and the occasional shopping trip.

I got an Accessibility tag for my truck and I bought a wheel chair. It was okay, but I need something with more features so I am sending it back to get a more powerful and more flexible chair. I am looking at my e-bike and kayak wondering if I should sell them. I've started VON Frozen Favourites delivered to my door at a very reasonable price. I now have a twice-monthly house cleaner.

I am gradually eliminating things from my life. The garden is probably going to go. I stopped making my bed. I don't socialize. My opinions and views on this disease are a bit too strong for most of the LC support groups I joined so I am slowly eliminating them as well. They say that when you live in isolation your brain gradually rewires to accommodate that, making re-entry into the world of people more difficult. It just feels like too much work, too much bother. I have one friend that I try to visit regularly, and according to my Garmin watch 'Body Battery' time spent with her is as restful as a sound nap; I guess the effort to maintain some kind of social persona is work, and I don't have to do that with her.

Yesterday I was in my driveway and my next door neighbour came over to ask how I was, in a concerned tone indicating that she really wanted to know. It was a bright sunny warm day and I am now quite sensitive to light and I was leaning against my truck in order to talk to her. You know how you feel when you have the flu with a high fever? It was like that, a real struggle to gather my thoughts and figure out what to say and what not to say, all the while clinging to the truck to stay upright and closing my eyes against the sunlight.

The snow is gone and temperatures have warmed up. I see young able people running and cycling and walking briskly, even swimming (the ponds are still way too cold for us older folk but for young people it is great for scampering in and out screaming about how nice it is while clutching their chests in what looks to me like extreme coldness). Princess has discovered her inner lab and goes crazy in the water chasing sticks and wanting to be part of the crowd of young people having fun. She caught their frisbee in mid-air and ran off with it, obviously hoping for someone to chase her and throw the frisbee again.

Given that this is my new life, I would like to re-invent myself within the confines of disability, but I don't really know where to start.

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.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The daybed actually arrived a week early, and coincidentally my neighbour said he was coming by to install new hemlock garden frames in my garden. So I had a rather strenuous weekend assembling the bed and helping to install the frames. I also had to take out the old couch and move some furniture around to accommodate the daybed. Clean Up Day (or rather Clean Up Week) was this week, so having the daybed arrive early meant I could get the old couch out on the kerb in time for Clean Up. I saved some of the cushions from it so it was not complete, nevertheless someone eventually nabbed it before the Clean Up garbage truck came by. 

I am happy with the daybed but it does have a couple of drawbacks. One is, it's so high that my feet dangle. Another is, it's so wide that even with the old couch cushions along the back I can't lean against them when I am sitting up. There was one non-critical defective piece and Wayfair promised a replacement by tomorrow. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Yesterday I got my second Covid vaccine booster shot (finally!). Last night I had a roaring earache and this morning I had a sore arm and felt very tired. I think an ear infection was brewing before the shot, and once my immune system engaged with the vaccine, the infection took off. It's still there but not as painful.

In spite of all the activity I feel like I have turned a corner, the post-exertional malaise was relatively mild and short-lasting. Just two weeks ago I was having second thoughts about going kayaking due to low energy, but this week I feel excited about it. And, as it turns out, three of the women (six of us in all) had Covid in the recent past and are still feeling dragged out by it. So I secretly feel happy about that, it means that I won't be the only one going slow. They will understand exactly what Covid fatigue feels like.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Sometime shortly after my birthday I had a long phone conversation with one of my sons. One of the things we talked about was ADHD. He's pretty sure he has it, his brother and two nephews have already been diagnosed. He can't get diagnosed because he doesn't have a doctor and going through private channels is just way too expensive. It is causing problems for him at school (he's halfway through a B.Ed.). We talked at length about how that was for him, and I just saw way too many similarities between his experience and mine. They say it is hereditary, my sons have different fathers so the common link is me. 

After that conversation I went looking for information on the internet, and now I am pretty sure I have it too. It was kind of a shocking discovery, especially in how it complicates any chance of recovery from my illness. Also in how it has affected my entire life. If I had had an early diagnosis things might have been very different. When I told a friend she said, Now you know that what happened is not your fault, you don't need to feel ashamed of your past. You should be proud instead.

I've just started reading ADHD 2.0 by Dr. Edward Hallowell (2021). He more or less says something similar. It is encouraging. I don't know whether pursuing an official diagnosis is useful or not. My sons say that the medication that they have been using has a downside, sleeplessness. Consequently they only use it in situations where they really need it and can afford a night or two of sleeplessness. My son at school uses the medication (he doesn't have a diagnosis therefore no prescription) on the occasional Saturday morning to get through a project due the following week. The other son (diagnosed, with prescription) uses it to get through very busy times at work (his work involves periods of extreme activity followed by periods of rest and lowkey activity).

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The photo above is my homemade indoor greenhouse, currently full of transplants. I planted peas and spinach outdoors this week (in one of the new garden frames!) but the transplants need warmer weather to go outside. I may have to get my neighbour to come in to water them while I am away kayaking. They are sucking up a lot of water and I don't think they will make it through 3 days without watering.

Crowsnest view

Many years ago, back in the '80s, I planted a dozen pine trees along the north edge of my property, but only two remain. When I moved back in 2010 there were three, but one of them showed signs of disease and I had it cut down before it infected the other two. 

At the tippy top of the one you see in the photo above, there is a crows nest. First time ever. I can't really see the nest, it just looks like a dark spot at the top of the tree, but there is always one crow up there and it calls pretty much incessantly. Yesterday I caught sight of "the changing of the guard," as one crow left and the other arrived. Whichever crow is not in the nest is very busy foraging.

Unfortunately I am having the roof redone this month, and that will be directly below the nest, probably just as the eggs are hatching. I don't know how that will go and I can't reschedule. I hope the crows don't get their knickers in a knot but manage to maintain the nest and nestlings in spite of the commotion. I will warn the roofers.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I quit the Pacing program after the second session. The second session was run by a student OT as the first OT had left for unspecified reasons, and the third session was going to be run by another OT. Each session so far has consisted of an hour and a half or more of Powerpoint slides, and the third session OT sent an email with the slides for the session attached. 47 slides! I emailed back that that was way too stressful, and she responded that if this did not serve my needs I should phone to cancel my participation. I did that.

Who does that kind of thing?!? Even for healthy people at an in-person workshop an hour of Powerpoint is more than enough, and for unhealthy people using Zoom, an hour and a half is absolutely over the top. I used to teach the effective use of Powerpoint and other methods of information delivery, a twenty minute presentation is more than enough. I realize OTs are not trained in online teaching but, ... O.M.G.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

J came by yesterday and we took the cover off my truck and started her up. It was lovely to see it again, instead of a yellow blob in the driveway. The battery needed a bit of a kickstart but other than that the truck is fine. J is replacing the tires and rims on his truck next week, then he will give me his old rims and he will mount my new tires on them and the truck will be ready to go. He has lined up a buyer for my Mazda as well.

The Mazda is a kind of soccer-Mom minivan in nondescript grey, but it has run well through the winter and it transported Hapi everywhere after I sold my old truck, so I will kind of miss it. But having two vehicles in the driveway is inconvenient. The "new" truck (it's actually older than the Mazda) is a bit small which is a good thing and a bad thing. No extended cab so no big dogs can sit in it. But the roof of the cap on the box is low enough that I think I can manage to get my kayak on it by myself. I already figured out the method on the old truck and this one will actually be easier. Better be, the muscle wasting that has occured since I became ill is quite shocking.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I ordered a daybed for my livingroom. My sofa is great for sitting on but not so much for lying on, and I do way more lying down than sitting up these days. I wanted a bed I saw on the IKEA website but they wouldn't deliver and going into the city to pick it up seemed daunting. I checked Walmart and Wayfair, their beds weren't as nice or as economical but they did deliver. 

In reading a lot of customer reviews I realized that all of these beds have to be assembled by the customer and assembling wooden beds appeared to be a very frustrating experience, no one mentioned frustration with the metal bed frames. So I looked at the metal beds and found one on Wayfair that I thought I could live with, at a reasonable price. They say it takes 30 minutes to assemble but all the customer reviews said it was more like 2 hours. No one wrote that it was frustrating, just that it was important to read the instructions carefully. I look forward to its arrival.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I visited some friends earlier this week and it turned out they had Covid. So I was exposed, having walked in maskless without checking. I immediately left, went home and washed up as best I could (even a nasal rinse and salt water gargle! not that that would make a difference, but you never know) and then went grocery shopping to stock up in case I got it. Today is Day 3 after exposure, so far so good but I read that symptoms are not likely to appear before Day 3. According to the CDC in the US, I should test on Day 5, and if symptom-free test again on Day 7. So the next few days will be the critical ones.

I later talked to one of those friends on the phone; he said it was like a very bad cold. His wife got it first and she is already out and about, she had a mild case of it. He's still "under the weather." He advised me to stock up on ready-made food, that it's important to keep eating even though your appetite is gone. Since I am already ill, I don't want to guess how getting another bout of this will play out.

B got Covid in her nursing home, now the home is in lockdown. B is okay, I've talked to her a couple of times since she got sick. A bit spacey but okay.

Nova Scotia used to be one of the best for low case counts and adherence to mask mandates; now that the mandates are all removed we are the worst. The Omicron is rampant and I know way too many people who have or have had it.

Sign seen on campus

No marbles or spoons in the bowl

You have to be honest, so that people believe you. You don’t need to try. You need to be yourself. And maybe, after you show who you are, maybe people will love you more than before, because they see that you are not so strong or are lazy at times. No, each time don’t lie and show people who you are exactly. And it’s important not to show that you are better than who you are. 

~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, March 2022.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It's been awhile, not a great time. I completed the CBT-I course. On paper, according to my sleep diary, my sleep "efficiency" improved a lot and the amount of time I spent sleeping improved marginally. In reality all my illness symptoms got worse and I continue to wake up exhausted, "unrefreshed" as it were. I guess the facilitator gets bragging rights about my improvement but from my perspective it was a complete disaster that I am trying to recover from. Good luck with that.

A week after the CBT-I course ended I started an Energy Management (Pacing) program and so far, it feels like yet more disaster in the works. The facilitator, an occupational therapist, said that it would be "hard work", and that some of us will only see survival as the outcome. I question whether survival as an outcome is worth yet more hard work. I drafted an email to that effect and sent it to the OT, but got back an immediate response that she was out of office and would not be back until the next Pacing session happens. So do I show up for it or not?

If I am going to work hard, I'd rather do it in my garden, there at least there will be a positive outcome to hard work. My Wednesday coffee buddy's husband has a business doing cabinetry and finished carpentry, he is going to make garden frames for his wife and he said he'd make some for me too. Mine are disintegrating and it sounds like the ones he will make will be way better. He has started attending our coffee dates but he only stays for a short while, just to take a break from his work.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I have started some seeds but so far only a few have sprouted. I am trying to start onions from seed as I have had poor luck with onion sets. Unfortunately I think I added way to much water to the tray of seeds so I may have drowned them. Hope not but we shall see. 

On Tuesday I drove a friend half way down the Valley to her new home. She wanted to take a load of stuff and I wanted to see her new place. Her place is marvelous, a small one bedroom apartment on the ground level in a kind of motel-like building. She has a front door, a back door, a private patio (with a view of a small forest) out back and two parking spaces in front. I met her new landlady who is very nice. In these days of rising housing costs she is actually going to reduce her rent by almost half, thanks to a seniors' subsidy. 

The only down side is that she doesn't know anyone in her new town, all her friends are here. But she is a very sociable cheerful kind of person, I am sure she will do well. She made me leave my deck chair at her new place so that I would be obliged to come visit. The problem is, that after I got home I collapsed; an hour and a half of driving, lunch out, and a tour of the local shopping mall utterly did me in. My chest hurt and I was winded, dizzy and spaced out all the next day. There is a bus, but it takes almost two hours one way.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Today I did a bit of yard work. I had to cart in some firewood and while doing that observed all the things that need to be done this month. It was very hard to resist tackling it right away even though according to the Pacing program I should not. They use a lot of metaphors in this program that sound descriptive but when you break them down they're not so helpful. 

We were supposed to imagine that we had a bowl of marbles when we woke up and each time we engaged in an activity we spent a marble or two. Some people know it as Spoon Theory. The OT asked us to describe how we spent our marbles. I drew a complete blank on that and then asked, "What if there are no marbles in the bowl when you wake up?" I just couldn't picture it, the metaphor made no sense to me. 

Another one was about activities that "recharge our batteries". What activities this week have recharged my battery? Again, not able to picture it. The reality for me is that I am not a very meditative person, I like to be active, gardening, paddling, swimming, etc. These activities are what give me pleasure but now they are draining. So do they "recharge my battery"? Or do they run it down to the nub? 

I don't think I'm going to be a very good program participant. After the CBT-I experience I am hypercritical of programs that supposedly are going to improve my health. I am in a space now where I feel that since I am no better now than I was two years ago when I first got sick, it is highly unlikely that I will ever improve. My age and the lack of decent medical care are working against me. I see that they are working on changes to MAID, one of them is Advanced Directive. That's where you can be approved for MAID even though your illness is not fatal, just no hope of recovery. At this point that is hopeful news to me.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

But to end on a positive note, I am extremely grateful that the CBT-I program is over. I was happy to see that a few of my seeds have sprouted. I'm thinking about getting a puppy.

Thoughts from my weekend of reading

I am reading The Splendid and the Vile by Eric Larsen. It is a very large book (over 500 pages fine print, no pictures) about one year in the life of Winston Churchill, spring of 1940 to spring of 1941. As Mr Larsen says, this is the year that Churchill became Churchill, the bulldog of a man we think we know. Very detailled, quite engrossing. Mr Larsen draws on several personal diaries of the time, notably John Colville's (The Fringes of Power, 1985), who was Churchill's personal secretary and privy to most of Churchill's political and personal life. Of course, a book set in that period of time cannot ignore The Battle of Britain or any other notable events of the time, up to and including the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It is a fascinating view into that period of World War II.

Something that interests me is how Adolf Hitler is portrayed, both in this book and elsewhere. When we think of Churchill and Hitler, we conjure up stereotypical images of heroes and villains, believing one to be All Good and the other to be All Evil. I've certainly heard evidence that Churchill was not entirely the stereotypical hero, plenty of people have good reason to be disturbed by his role in hiistory. In this book Larsen only focuses on Churchill's moment of heroic glory, but he does not deny Churchill's lesser qualities. But what of Hitler?

In videos I've seen of Hitler's famous speeches, he appears as a fervent madman. Yet in this book Larsen quotes reporters who attended such speeches as to how genuine and convincing Hitler seemed. He was a master of rhetoric, not in the fervent madman sense but in his command of the stage, his intuitive sense of timing and his ability to convey facts and emotions in a convincing manner. It is hard to square the two impressions. 

I think we make a mistake in portraying the man as solely an evil madman. He was the right man at the right time. Germans were very much hurt and suffering from the Treaty of Versailles agreed upon at the end of World War I, he addressed that suffering and offered a righteous solution to it that Germans could embrace. He of course blamed 'The Jews' as the ultimate source of German suffering, but he was not so different from many others who harboured that prejudice at that time. The fate of the St. Louis is a case in point. When other countries declared war on Germany, it was not out of outrage at the Nazi persecution and murder of Jews, but rather the very real fear that Germany under Hitler was capable of conquering all of Europe and then proceeding to conquer North America.

Like Churchill, Hitler was a great leader, he encouraged and mobilized Germans to address their social and economic distress, he made them proud to be Germans. My opinion is that we should look on Hitler as we do Churchill, a man of both good and bad qualities. If we think of him as a madman then the damage that he did is considered almost impossible to repeat, after all it was done by a madman and a psychopath and we have mechanisms in place to deal with such people. 

If on the other hand we realize that he was actually an ordinary man who managed to get his hands on the levers of power, then we also realize that it could happen again, it is not so far fetched. He did after all do some good for some people, he did care about the fate of his people and much of his motivation was not out of hate but out of desire for revenge for very real hurts. A lot of people could fill those boots, it is not an extraordinary circumstance.

Standards

I was chatting with a friend on the phone the other day. She had recently been in phone conversation with her thirty-ish daughter on the far coast. Lovely girl, very attractive and sociable, very smart, expert horsewoman and loves to hike the mountain trails. For most of her life she and her mother did not get along well at all, she was definitely Daddy's Girl. But somewhere along the line things shifted, now they chat regularly and when she comes home to visit, my friend says it's like heaven on earth, she can hardly believe in it.

Anyway, daughter recently broke up with boyfriend. Not really news, she does this regularly. But this guy looked serious, maybe this time it would go somewhere. However, when he suggested they move in together, daughter balked.

"Mom, I have standards. You don't just move in together and see how it goes. We have to date for at least a year and then maybe we'll get engaged."

Friend and I were silent for a moment, remembering our pasts. A year?

"What did you say to her? Nothing, I hope."

"I said, 'Right! Who does that s***?'"

"Certainly nobody we know!"

We laughed.

The other thing was, he was anti-social and had a temper. A temper?

"But Mom, he's never laid a finger on me!"

Right. We know where that goes. A year, eh? And he didn't like that so they broke up.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

We talked about the pandemic.

"We're the lucky ones," she said, "retired with pensions, no mortgage, no kids to support. And we live in one of the best places."

"I know, eh? Sometimes I just sit on my back deck and think to myself, 'Oh wow! Oh wow!'"

I was pulling up weeds yesterday and my neighbour came out into his backyard with a cup of coffee and commented on weed pulling (mine) and lawn mowing (his).

I said, "But aren't you glad you have a back yard?"

He agreed and thought about it for a moment and then said, "Aren't you glad you're not thirty with kids right now?"

For us retired folks self isolation and physical distancing is not a lot different from normal life, but I have no doubt it is very hard on younger folks with busy lives put on hold, livelihoods evaporated and kids forced to stay home.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

My friend and I discussed Hapi's problem with the basement stairs. She had all sorts of suggestions around blocking the stairs and I was the one balking. I spent most of the rest of the day sorting out my objections to the idea. I think there are two things. One is selfish, if I block her access then I will have to move upstairs too and I don't want to. The other is quality of life vs quantity. She really wants access to the basement and I don't want to refuse her. She knows she has a problem with the stairs. For now, I am going to let her deal with that on her own terms. It's a risk, I know and I may regret it, but that's how it stands today. We'll see about tomorrow.

Push-ups and a beer bubble

At the end of the week there will be lots of sunshine. In the near future, what used to be three days of sunshine at the end of the week, has now turned into one day of sun and two of rain. That's been the forecast for the whole month: one day of sun, two days of rain and then at least three days of sun just around the corner. So after our one glorious day of sunshine we are back to nonstop rain (it was supposed to stop before noon, ha ha).

Much as I hate exercise, I now have an exercise routine. The other day I had to move one corner of my bed and could not do it. Just about zero upper body strength. I knew I wasn't in good shape but that was really bad. The bed had to be moved so I persevered and eventually got that one corner to budge in the right direction but it felt like a Herculean effort. Hence the exercise routine. Gotta get me some upper body strength, and while I am at it I may as well address the total lack of grip strength and the creaky knees.

My goal is to be able to do a push-up, you know, the regular one with hands on and knees off the floor. A couple of days in and I ache all over but I'm going to try to keep it up, I have a goal. Right now I can manage a few fake push-ups with my hands on a high bench, but my wrists are so weak that I can't maintain that position for very long. So the wrist strength has gotta improve too.

 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

One good thing about having been sick for a month this spring, I lost some weight. Mostly because I was too darn tired to cook, so I was rationing myself to save energy. Most people think I don't need to lose weight, but I have a pair of jeans that I could not wear last summer but I can now. Way back when those jeans were roomy on me, now they fit snugly, but last summer I could not close them over my butt. They're old and out of style but I am happy that they fit. Hopefully I can maintain this weight at least until the summer is too hot for jeans.

 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So the rules have changed, now immediate family are allowed to form two-household "bubbles". Not having any family anywhere near, that doesn't apply to me, and even if it did, I'd have slim pickings as to who I could bubble with. But yesterday I got a small taste of what bubbling might look like.

I mowed my lawn in the late afternoon and left the gate open afterward, thinking that I'd have a bite to eat and then go for a walk with Hapi. But Hapi didn't know I was taking a few moments before going for a walk, and the gate was open so she took herself for a walk. I went looking for her, met a young man who said he'd seen her heading eastward, but the next person I met in that direction said he hadn't seen her and he was sure he'd have noticed if she had walked by. I walked a little further in that direction before giving up and heading westward, maybe the first young man was wrong.

I walked toward a couple of her favourite spots, a student garbage bin and a feral cat feeding site. She was in neither location, however I did encounter a group of four people in deck chairs spaced appropriately who knew both Hapi and me. After expressing concern about Hapi's walk-about they invited me to join them for a beer. How could I resist? Hapi was bound to return sooner or later and why should I hunt around fruitlessly for her? I stayed for the beer. I think that was my first social occasion since I don't know when, two months ago?

When I got home Hapi was in the back yard with the gate closed. Someone must have escorted her home. Small town life, I love it.

More May Snow!

It is snowing today. I think we have had more snow so far in May than we did in all of April. The pattern of two days of precipitation for every sunny day still holds. Yesterday I was particularly grumpy about it all. I am running out of wild bird seed and a grey squirrel keeps raiding my bird feeder so I am getting very annoyed with him or her. I rap on the window when I see it and it stops to look at me but then carries on with its raid. I have to put my boots on before I can go outside to stand under the feeder to yell at it. I used to take a broomstick with me but that proves to be unnecessary, the squirrel runs away when it sees me advancing toward the tree the feeder is hung in. I think it has made the calculation about how long it takes me to get out there and has decided to keep stealing seeds as long as it can before I get too close.

Hapi fell on the basement stairs twice yesterday, her rear end is weakening. She still wants to go down there so as much as possible I have to escort her, particularly coming up the stairs which is when she is most likely to fall. My mechanic's dog died as a result of a broken back from falling on a staircase so I am very conscious of that danger. In addition to falling she also had a "bowel accident" in the night. I am carrying on as usual but not thrilled about the possible implications.

I was talking to a friend on the phone the other day and she was telling me about a mutual friend who was tired of all the social distancing restrictions and didn't believe they were necessary. The mutual friend was saying that she was no longer paying attention to it all. My phone friend was thinking to herself, Okay! Good to know! We laughed and agreed that the mutual friend was someone we would definitely be physically distancing ourselves from, as much as we otherwise liked her. Frankly, as much as I previously disliked and disrespected our provincial premier before all this, I hugely respect his overly cautious approach to the pandemic. I don't know if I would vote for him again, but he would not be the worst choice especially in a time like this.

From my reading of current statistics and of the history of the 1918 pandemic, the overly cautious approach seemed to prevent the most deaths in both the short term and the long term. As well, after the 1918 pandemic local economies bounced back much quicker in jurisdictions that imposed greater restrictions for longer periods of time.

The main problem with trying to take lessons from 1918 though is the dearth of reliable information. The gathering and analysis of statistics was not that great in those days. In addition, all countries involved in The Great War were suppressing that information as much as possible; the only countries that allowed information about the pandemic to leak were neutral countries, such as Spain. Which is why it is often called the Spanish Influenza: Spain was one of the first countries in which the media were covering what was really going on. But the estimates of the death toll from that pandemic range from a few millions to well over 50 million (possibly up to 100 million), which gives an idea of how difficult it is to draw any definitive conclusions from the available statistics.

Already we are seeing the same thing with this pandemic. There is wide variation in symptoms and not a lot of mass and repeated testing. So we really can't say for sure how many people have contracted the disease or died of it or what the death rate really is. Our ability to gather that evidence is far greater than it was in 1918, but still we have a problem with it.

The tulips in the picture are from my garden, their stems broke before they could open up. One of them is supposed to be a red and white tulip in honour of Canada's 150th anniversary in 2017, but as you can see it is not. But it is a lovely colour nevertheless.

May snow

Lacking in sleep and cranky. I had a topic in mind to post butI'm just not in the mood now. It rained most of yesterday, with a brief late afternoon break for a dog walk but then back at it for the rest of the evening and night. The wind picked up, snow started blowing around and something or other was banging on the front porch outside my bedroom. I had to get up a couple of times to find out what it was and stop it. Now I can spit nails.

I drove to the Reservoir with Hapi just because I couldn't face walking. It has stopped snowing but it is still very windy and cold. A couple of people greeted me with waves and smiles and I tried to respond in a halfway friendly manner but really wished they hadn't noticed me. Maybe it was Hapi that they were smiling and waving at.

So far May has been despicable and there is no end in sight.

Hapi in her happy place

I took Hapi for a long walk on the dyke this morning and then did a little shopping. I had a list, it would be too dangerous to just browse. Two stores were relatively safe, no other people around but the third was the grocery store and that can be a little hairy. But I stuck to my list and got out of there as fast as I could and went home, put everything away and washed my hands.

I thought I'd have a bath in the afternoon, the weather was supposed to get unpleasant anyway, so why not. I hardly got out of the bath when I got a text message from my former neighbour, E. She just moved out yesterday to another smaller place in town but we still text back and forth. Anyway, she sent me a pic of the announcement that our premier was opening all the municipal parks and trails, effective immediately. I was so excited. The Reservoir!

I didn't even wait for my hair to dry, I grabbed my raincoat and packed Hapi in the car and drove to the Reservoir. The parking lot was almost full, I guess everyone had the same thought as soon as they got the news. There was a family fishing, and lots of dogs. Hapi went into the pond, of course. The park maintenance people have been busy, there are a few changes, but otherwise it is our old park.

Tiny birdhouse

I met one older fellow, I didn't recognize him but I did recognize his dog; usually his wife walks the dog. But I know that he is responsible for all the Fairy Doors in the park and I thought he was also responsible for all the new miniature bird houses (too small for even a tiny bird). But he said No, they weren't his. His creations were more sturdy he told me. That's true, one of the tiny birdhouses had already fallen apart, but his Fairy Doors are still there.

Purple Fairy Door

It's good to have our park back, he said.

I went on a news website later where the premier made his announcement. He said that we had seen too much tragedy, we needed to get out in the fresh air for our mental health. But he said he'd be watching and if we misbehaved, well, there would be consequences. The number of positive diagnoses is still rising, and so is the death toll.

Reading and seeding, and a dirty wet dog

When I was sick I couldn't read much, my attention span and reading comprehension were not good. Watching TV was okay, and reading the news on the internet was okay too, so they became my obsessions when I wasn't out walking with Hapi. But when all the news was the same I eventually lost my obsession with it, going hours at a time with not looking or even thinking about it. I carried on phone conversations with a few friends that were largely about telling jokes and making funny. That was good, sometimes I got off the phone hurting from laughing so much. My magazine subscriptions sustained me because the articles were short, I could put them down after only a few moments of reading.

When I got better the weather did too so I was out getting my garden ready for planting, which won't start seriously until mid-May. I started some seeds indoors and all my south and west facing window sills were littered with a mish mash of plastic containers of seeds. I save seeds year over year but I had to order a few new ones. As it turns out a whole lot of people who never gardened before are now getting ready to garden so the seed companies are inundated with orders. 

Usually I buy Vesey's seeds and they are readily available at a couple of local animal feed stores and farm markets. But this year Vesey's focussed on individual online orders and did not send any seeds to the usual stores so I had to go online too. They are over a month behind in fulfilling orders and yesterday when I went onto their website to see where they were at with shipping, there was a notice that they were no longer accepting orders. They cut it off only three days after I placed my order, so I am just barely in under the wire. I knew they'd be slow so I didn't bother ordering anything that had to be started right away.

Some of the seeds that I started were over five years old (I bought them in 2015, which means they are from the 2014 crop). Every last one of them sprouted! I wanted three plants so I planted nine seeds, and now I have nine seedlings. Yesterday I hauled a shelving unit out of the basement that I had previously attached grow lights to. It took most of the day to set up but now I can put most of the seedlings under the grow lights instead of constantly moving them from south to west windows and back again. A bit more expensive and it makes my tiny crowded living room even tinier and more crowded, but hopefully less work.

After two days of being cooped up due to very bad weather Hapi and I got out for two walks yesterday. She drove me crazy over those two days. She likes to stay outdoors during the daytime even in bad weather, but towards the later afternoon she gets very impatient with me not coming out for a walk so she is constantly at the door, in and out, tracking the mud and snow in with her. I had several towels on drying racks because each time she came in I'd try to wipe off the worst of it and the towels got soaked. It was a huge relief for both of us to get back to walking again.

Over those two days I called some friends on the west coast that I hadn't talked to in a long time. They were wanting to know about our recent mass shooting, and whether I lived near where it happened. Lately in the news they refer to it as "the rampage", which I think is an apt term. So I think I will start using it instead of "mass shooting". April 2020: the pandemic and the rampage. 

Yesterday I got a surprise phone call from another friend out west who I had neglected to call, that was really nice. She is an odd bird, but we have a lot in common and can sit around having odd conversations endlessly. She also had been sick for a long time, about a month earlier than I was. We compared notes and thought we both had the same thing but didn't know whether it was covid or not. She said that because she lives with one of her daughters and two grandchildren she wore a mask the entire time she was sick and stayed in her bedroom as much as possible. Nevertheless her daughter and grandkids did eventually come down with it too. But she said that what was odd was that while her daughter was just as sick as she was, it hardly affected the young grandkids at all.

Oh yes, I started out talking about reading and where I intended to go with that was to mention a book that I am reading now called The Invention of Yesterday, which I am very much enjoying. The author, Tamim Ansary, is an old Afghan-American hippy with a very interesting perspective on the history of human civilization, and also a good sense of humour and casual style of writing. My brother told me about this book, and I am recommending it to anyone who has an interest in such a topic.

April: Sun, Mud and Teeny Tiny Flowers

My front lawn is covered in little blue flowers and a single wild violet. They weren't there last year but they are now. Covid blues.

It was one of those weekends, prefect warm sunny weather. It always strikes me as odd when we have summery warm weather but the trees are still bare of leaves. An April phenomenon.

Since they moved the date to change over from Standard to Daylight Savings time, March is kind of like that too; it seems odd to have sunlight in the evening when there is still snow on the ground.

On Saturday I thought I'd take Hapi out onto the dykes, I called a friend to see if she wanted to come too with her dog. As it worked out she wasn't available until the evening so I ended up going twice, in the morning and the evening.

On the morning walk we ran into one of the Reservoir dogs and his owners. Owen is a Newfoundland/Bernese Mountain Dog a little younger than Hapi but much bigger and in a more critical state of health. I recognized him from a distance, his 'Mom' always wears a red winter coat and he's a huge black dog: hard to miss. Owen saw us and plainly was very excited. He started lumbering towards us and then became so overwhelmed by excitement that he started howling. It was amusing and endearing.

It seems that everyone wanted to go out on the dykes this weekend, lots of people trying to maintain a safe physical distance. Since there is a fairly wide path on top of the dyke and a parallel road along the land-side of the dyke, it is not that hard to do but it does mean you have to be constantly on the watch for people approaching you and which side of the trail or roadway they are walking on.

Of course, all bets are off with the dogs, even on leash they hunger for contact with their fellows and have no understanding of social distancing. Owen and Hapi had a brief reunion and then acted as if they didn't know each other at all, a fairly common doggy behaviour.

Later I met my friend and her dog in a parking lot near the dyke and we set out. I thought it was going to be a fairly brief walk but we ended out being out there for a long time, following a circuit that we knew existed but hadn't been on before.

Hapi found not one but two mud holes to wallow in. When she emerged from the first one she had changed her colouring, instead of a white-ish underbelly she now was completely black from her midline down. The second mud hole at first looked promising as a clear water pond that she could clean up in, but instead she got stuck in the mud under the water and I had to go down and drag her out. Oh boy.

When we got home she was really stinky, muddy and wet, and she went to bed in the basement right after her supper because she was so tired from the long walk. In the morning her bedding was as stinky, muddy and wet as she was the night before. Laundry time.

Usually I would get her groomed in late March/early April but since that didn't happen her fur is thick and too matted to brush out now. So I spent an hour cutting the muddy matted fur out, chasing her around the back yard with my scissors. The job was exhausting, I quit after an hour not because we were done but because I physically couldn't do any more. It doesn't look too bad, but there are enough missed tufts of fur sticking out that I will probably tackle it again when the weather gets better.

She looks less shaggy but she's still stinky.

Malt Bread II

I baked the Malt Bread last night, had a toasted slice this morning. Needs a bit more sugar, as my brother's partner had written in the margin of the recipe.

Yesterday we got two (!!) Emergency Alerts from the RCMP, warning us of another shooting incident and then telling us it was over. As it turned out there were actually 4 incidents around Halifax that they had to investigate, 3 were false alarms and the 4th ended with a couple of arrests but no injuries or deaths. But at least they seemed to have learned something from last weekend. I'll definitely put up with Emergency Alerts even if they are false alarms. Hapi's afternoon walk got postponed as a result but that's okay, for me at any rate. Hapi wasn't so happy about it.

There was a virtual vigil last night, I listened to part of it. There's only so many speeches and so much sad music that I can deal with. When I did take Hapi for her walk around the neighbourhood I wore a red bandanna face mask in honour of mourning and saw many red hearts and flags hanging from or displayed in windows. Several people hung out Nova Scotia tartan scarves by their doors.

Last week I was so happy to be well again and able to get out of the house and enjoy the beginnings of Spring, this week it's been shock, anger and grief. I don't know what next week will bring.

I've been listening to a lot of John Prine lately, sad loss to Covid-19. Here's one of my favourites:

That's How Every Empire Falls

NovaScotiaStrong

Crows at work

The main purpose of this post is the photo above. I went out on my back deck a couple of days ago when the weather was kind of cold, grey and windy with periods of showers and flurries. Behind my fenced yard there's a field, half of which gets mowed and half of which doesn't, my view is of the unmowed half. So right now there's lots of tall dead grass flattened by winter storms.

I saw a crow walking around out there and after a few moments realized it was looking for nesting material. I'd seen it fly by earlier with a hank of grass and now I was watching it harvesting the grass. It seemed very picky, tugging at one grass stem after another looking for whatever qualities it deemed perfect for a nest.

Keyhole view of the field out back, sans crow

I then thought, 'Oh, I should photograph this,' but of course by the time I had gone into the house to get my cell phone and then returned, the bird was done harvesting. Just as I aimed the camera it flew off behind a garage. I quickly aimed the camera at the sky on the other side of the building and caught the bird flying away a beakful of grass.

At this time of year the birds are endlessly entertaining. Sometimes the birds find me entertaining; they hang around the branches surrounding the feeder staring in my window at me.

Cardinals are much shyer and really don't want to know who puts the seeds in the feeder, but the jays and finches are definitely interested.

Chickadees aren't curious because they already know; they consider it their job to whistle at me when the feeder is empty.

I hope I have enough birdseed to last until the parent birds start bringing their offspring around to teach them about bird feeders.

Easter Sunday

The traditional greeting is Happy Easter but I am going to refrain. Some of us are happy, some are not, and both are appropriate. But Easter is about hope being fulfilled, there will be a good future ahead of us, so I will add my voice to that sentiment even though not all of us feel that way.

On the plus side, we have a temporary reprieve from environmental degradation, air and water pollution are temporarily on hold allowing for nature to regroup. On the minus side, it is temporary, virtually unopposed climate change marches on.

On the plus side, we have governments worldwide reconsidering political and social values, and how we might go forward honouring those values. On the minus side, many political entities are flailing around making things far worse.

On the plus side, people are really working together to be helpful and supportive and there are many amazing acts of kindness going on. On the minus side, some folks still haven't gotten the message and they are depressing and outraging the rest of us. Not to mention some supreme acts of selfishness.

On the plus side, it is Spring in the northern hemisphere and we can feel it. On the minus side, covid-19 restrictions prevent many Springtime traditions and activities from being carried out.

On the plus side, if you're reading this you're still here! On the minus side, … [fill in the blanks]

A lot of jokes and funny comments on life with covid-19 are making the rounds, and I appreciate it. A book club friend emails dark jokes on a regular basis, a psychotherapist friend has been collecting and emailing psychotherapist jokes around the topics of grumpiness and frustration.

I'll leave you with a sample:

My Self-Isolation Quarantine Diary 

Day 1 – I Can Do This!!  Got enough food and wine to last a month!

Day 2 – Opening my 8th bottle of Wine.  I fear wine supplies might not last!

Day 3 – Strawberries:  Some have 210 seeds, some have 235 seeds.  Who Knew??

Day 4 – 8:00 pm.  Removed my Day Pajamas and put on my Night Pajamas.

Day 5 – Today, I tried to make Hand Sanitizer.  It came out as Jello Shots!!

Day 6 – I get to take the Garbage out.  I'm So excited, I can't decide what to wear.

Day 7 – Laughing way too much at my own jokes!!

Day 8 – Went to a new restaurant called "The Kitchen".  You have to gather all the ingredients and make your own meal.  I have No clue how this place is still in business.

Day 9 – I put liquor bottles in every room.  Tonight, I'm getting all dressed up and going Bar hopping

.
Day 10 – Struck up a conversation with a Spider today.  Seems nice.  He's a Web Designer.

Day 11 – Isolation is hard.  I swear my fridge just said, "What the hell do you want now?"

Day 12 – I realized why dogs get so excited about something moving outside, going for walks or car rides.  I think I just barked at a squirrel.

Day 13 – If you keep a glass of wine in each hand, you can't accidentally touch your face.

Day 14 – Watched the birds fight over a worm.  The Cardinals lead the Blue Jays 3–1.

Day 15 – Anybody else feel like they've cooked dinner about 395 times this month?

P.S. - The garbage was collected on my street at 2.00 pm yesterday, seven hours late. It wasn't really anyone's fault, the change was mandated back in 2019 and who knew that an extra week of garbage would be so huge? Most students left town in March after the last garbage collection, and landlords had to clear out the garbage they left behind. Usually there is a "Dump and Run" event at the university in late April or early May where a lot of that stuff is disposed of by the students themselves in a more orderly manner.

A Four-Eagle Day

Yesterday another friend emailed that she was making cloth masks to give away and would anyone like one. I said I'd love one, two if she had enough. This morning we spoke on the phone and I told her I was sick and she said she'd leave the masks outside her front door. I went over to pick them up, now I have three sewn masks and a bunch of bandanas I can use so I have a great selection. Pandemic fashionista!

Hapi doesn't like walking up hill and neither do I for that matter. Since the university campus where I have been taking her is on a hillside it means we are both very tired when we get home. Today I took her in the car to the far end of the local dyke and we walked there. This is the perfect time, no wind, not cold, no bugs yet, and the grass on the dyke is dead and flattened by the winter, making for easy walking.

The sight lines were great I could see other people—if they were there—miles away. Not a single person in sight, I got to walk mask-free and Hapi was off leash. She did manage to find a pile of manure in a field which could have been a disaster, but for some reason she chose not to roll in it (whew!). I walked pretty slowly but even so I came home exhausted.

Eagle nest in tall tree, centre

On the road to the dyke you pass under a big tree with an eagle's nest in it, the nest has been there for a very long time. I saw one of the eagle parents sitting in the nest, another brood hatching. Later when I was walking on the dyke I saw four eagles circling in a column, the highest one looked like it could almost touch the sun. Wish I could have photographed that.

My brother's birthday was yesterday, I called him and we chatted for awhile. It seems you can't talk to anyone without bringing up you-know-what. Later I called a dog-walking friend and she said she had seen me out walking earlier in the day and had yahoo'ed at me but I didn't hear or see her. She is healthy and still goes out shopping at local small markets. She says all the markets have protocols in place to enforce physical distancing and she always meets people there to chat with from a distance. She is a firm believer in homeopathy and is taking a homeopathic remedy that she says will prevent you-know-what.

You'll see, she said, I am protected.

Okay, I said, We'll see.

When I told her my birthday was a couple of days ago, she wished me happy birthday and said, Now you're almost as old as me!

I laughed. She's past 85. I may never make it that far.