I've been told

Crow family on the roof

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

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

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

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

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

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Step one: rails and inverters for solar panels

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

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

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

Bad news, good news

Even the statues around here have to wear masks

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

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

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

Where I found the blue jay, still alive

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good news: I'm not deaf this morning.

Snowstorm

Big snowstorm overnight Sunday into Monday, about 47 cm (16") on the ground by the end. High winds blew it into thick drifts. One of the students next door helped me shovel out my car and then my snow plough guy came and cleared out the rest of the driveway. In the process he took out half a dozen bricks I was using as a border between the garden and the driveway, and dumped them somewhere. I found one in a big pile of snow on my front lawn and two more across the street, but couldn't find the rest. The ones across the street would have been in the path of the sidewalk plough which came by later, so who knows where the rest of them are.

I think almost everybody was busy clearing snow on Monday. The student who helped me borrowed my shovels (I have 4! They all do different things!) to do her driveway, and then later a student across the street borrowed one. I told a friend about it and mentioned that the student across the street liked to throw loud parties; the next time he does that I am going to remind him ("Remember me? The Shovel Lady?"). My friend said I should take the shovel with me to his next party. Just as a reminder.

Today we went to the Reservoir for a walk, the snow was deep but the snowshoers had cleared some trails. It was blindingly beautiful: sun, blue sky, white snow, black trees. We met up with some other dogs and owners and all walked together, single file in the narrow snowshoe trails. One dog, a young tan-and-white Springer Spaniel named Jerry (Jerry Springer) was enjoying dashing through the snow, while Hapi and her buddy Owen (a Bernese Mountain Dog) plodded along behind the humans, because the trail is so much better after a few humans have stamped it down.

Unfortunately it was hard work for Hapi and her left rear leg is not great, she kept slipping off the trail into the deeper snow. At one point she gave up and just lay down in the trail. After a minute or so of rest she was able to get back up, but at that point we decided to head straight back to the car, enough was enough. I kept her in front of me so I could catch her if she fell again. Jerry the spaniel bumped her a few times racing to get by her so she switched to a parallel trail. Then we met up with a young husky who romped with Jerry. Huskies are hard to control and usually kept on leash but this one had a radio-controlled collar so the owner could let it run. Turns out the husky's name was Winter.

Newfoundland is having a Covid outbreak. First New Brunswick and now Newfoundland, it feels like the walls are closing in. Scary.

Winter Sunday

There is something about a winter Sunday that's peaceful and timeless. Everything is white and black, traffic is in a lull, lots of people are staying indoors because of the cold, so the outdoors looks bare and empty. It seems like it will never end.

In the morning while waiting for Hapi to wake up I decided to go for a walk by myself. Soon enough this will be my daily experience. I walked in a part of the Acadia woods that would take Hapi a very long time to get to because she walks so slowly. While out in the woods I ran into E with her dog Lulu, a Great Pyrenees. Lulu has gotten into trouble at the Reservoir enough times that E doesn't go there anymore. A nice dog but big and excitable. It was nice to walk with E and Lulu, a little bit of dog-fix plus catching up with E whom I haven't seen in a while.

Shortly after I got home Hapi was ready to go out so we drove to the Reservoir. We were late, a few people I often walk with were just leaving, but that's okay, we go on the ravine trails when there's no one else around. Hapi perks right up on the ravine trails, she goes faster than me. Then I went skating.

By the time we emerged from the ravine there were lots of people already on the ice, kids, parents and dogs. Somebody brought a portable barbecue and the smell of burning charcoal was starting to waft over the ice. Hapi hung around hoping for a snack. There were tiny toddlers racing down the ice on teeny tiny skates and older kids carefully picking there way on new-to-them skates. Big kids with hockey sticks and pucks, one hockey net and a pair of boots set up as goal posts, and some "rink rats" clearing powdered snow off the track.

On Saturday I was out on the ice the afternoon while Hapi slept at home, I met a friend who brought her kick sled. It's a Swedish thing, two ski-length long blades with a high-backed chair joining the blades at the front. There are a couple of pads on the blades behind the chair that you can stand on, you hold the back of the chair and you kick the sled along with one foot, like a scooter. The blades are long and flexible so you can steer by bending them. I tried it out and then my friend pushed me around while I sat in the chair. She said that in Sweden they don't clear the ice off the sidewalks, everyone has a kick sled to get around on.

There's a constant stream of people coming and going, you can only skate for so long before your feet turn into blocks of ice so very few people stay for the entire day. I usually only skate for half an hour but lots of people skate longer. They enlarged the parking lot this past summer but it is still way too small, there are lots of cars parked on the street. It is so great to see all ages of people out there, skating, playing and learning to skate.

First skate

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

Hapi watched from the shore.

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

The moon over the ice

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

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

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

Here comes the sun

This is not the most complimentary photo of Hapi but it is what she looks like now. It will all grow back but she does look fragile in this photo, compared to how she looked in her youth, in the header photo above. 

Yesterday afternoon at the Reservoir Hapi and I were walking with Owen and his owners. Owen is a bit larger and a bit slower than Hapi. We met up with a young man and his St Bernard dog. The dog was hilarious. Full of energy he ran around and around us, in and out of the woods and checked out Owen until Owen growled at him. He generally carried on like a crazy dog, we were all laughing at him. Compared to the St Bernard, Hapi looked like a skinny minny and fortunately the bigger dog left her alone, he seemed to at least know better about that. 

But he was crazy. His owner, not a small man himself, told us non-stop stories about this dog and its former mate, Wiser and Ram. Mostly about how out-of-control they were. They broke windows and scaled ten-foot high walls. On more than one occasion the police were called. Unfortunately on one of their escapades they ran out into the highway and Ram was hit and killed, he was the bigger of the two.

When we got back to the parking lot the young man and his dog squeezed themselves into a small car, in which all of the fabric ceiling had been torn and was hanging in tatters around their heads. The dog stuck his huge head out one window and the man waved to us from another window as they drove off. They were just so funny, we stood in the parking lot laughing and laughing.

I forgot my technology Sabbath over the holidays but picked it up again yesterday. It was a slow quiet day, except for the Ram and Wiser stories. I was going to make a zucchini banana bread but the recipe was on my computer so I will do it today. It is a gorgeous sunny day, we have not seen the sun since sometime last year. Owen's owner was saying she was talking to someone who was asked if there was one thing she would like to change in the new year, and that person said that they would like to see the sun. It seemed like a very surprising answer, given all the stuff that is going on now, but when you think about it, sunshine changes everything.

Ducks on ice

The snow started Wednesday afternoon and by Thursday morning we were blanketed in it. Overnight it warmed up so the snow was not light and fluffy but heavy and wet. I spent some time shovelling the stuff, then drove to a nearby farmer's market to pick up sweet cider that was on sale for one day only. I bought two jugs, one for me and one for the girl next door who helped me shovel the snow.

One of the two Reservoir ponds froze over completely a few days ago when it was bitterly cold, the other smaller pond only half froze. Now all the ducks are crowded into the half frozen pond, and for some reason they prefer to stand on the ice than float on the water. Who can guess what goes on in the mind of a duck?

When the small pond is frozen completely the ducks will leave. A few will come back in the spring, but the majority will not return until next fall.

I photographed the Reservoir Dog Tree before the snowfall. Hapi's ornament is in the upper right, I printed her name on it but not very well.

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I am trying an experiment, a technology Sabbath. Technically, the Sabbath runs from Friday night to Saturday night, but I have chosen Sunday as my technology Sabbath. Basically, no screens. Last Sunday I turned off the wifi, the computer and the tablet. I turned off my cell phone data and also text messaging; the only thing I could use the cell phone for was voice calls. I decided to leave that function on. I could have used the phone camera but decided that was too screen-y. Most of my books now are e-books, so no reading online. My evening entertainment is watching Netflix and Prime shows on my computer, none of that either.

The hardest part was not having TV shows in the evening. Reading while eating one's supper is not easy, I listened to the radio instead. Mostly CBC's Cross Country Checkup. I went through my library of paper books and picked out a couple of novels that I didn't mind rereading, so I would have something for reading in bed. One small glitch: I was going to do some baking in the afternoon but most of my recipes are now on the tablet. I was able to do something that I had committed to memory, but one recipe (Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread) I had to postpone to another day since I did not have recipe memorized.

It was a successful experiment which I will repeat again tomorrow. I learned a few things about myself, one of which is that I am addicted to weather reports: I constantly check the weather online throughout the day. It felt weird not to know what the forecast was, or whether there was any precipitation showing up on the weather radar.

Dental Expedition

The Eagle Tree, with one eagle (there are two who use this tree)

Today was a heck of a day.

Had to go to the dentist, for emergency dental work. Last night a tooth broke, a chunk of it ended up in my supper. In the morning I called my dentist but the earliest she could see me was a month from now so her receptionist suggested I call the emergency clinic. I did and they said, Be here in an hour. So I went.

They were really nice. Expensive but nice. Took an x-ray, showed it to me on the computer and suggested 3 options: do nothing, get a filling, or get a cap. I opted for the filling, although I probably should have gone for the cap. Anyway I was led away to another room where the youngish dentist and an assistant did the job. But first they had to fill me up with local anesthetic, it took multiple shots before I was numb enough for them to proceed. They were absolutely all about killing the pain.

It all went fast and then I got the bill which was hefty. But I was dizzy so I sat there for awhile before driving home. I still have to get the cap, or a root canal or something, so that's why I think I should have gone for the cap in the first place. Oh well. I have an appointment with my regular dentist to see what's next.

I went home and took Hapi for her walk. It was very cold and windy last night so I made her sleep indoors and she couldn't wait to get out in the morning. She had a long nap in her doghouse while I went to the dentist. It was still very cold but the wind had died and it was a sunny blue-sky day. I can't remember the last time we had a sunny blue-sky day.

So, a month or so ago somebody put a little artificial tree in a planter by the Reservoir parking lot. One of the dog walkers got the idea of putting an ornament with her dog's name on the tree. A few more followed. I bought an ornament and put Hapi's name on it but kept forgetting to take it with me. Today I did remember, but I forgot to photograph it on the tree. Anyway, now she's immortalized on the Reservoir Dog Tree. I'll try to remember to take a picture of it. [Since I forgot to take a picture, the photo above is of the Reservoir Eagle Tree, from a previous day.]

Tomorrow is supposed to be our first major snow storm of the season, there were a couple of things I had to get done before then so after the walk and some lunch I got out the ladder and climbed up to take down a roof gutter. It is not a sturdy gutter and snow sliding off the roof dislodges it, so it's better to take it down before that happens. Not a pleasant job, especially in the cold when one is dizzy. One of the girls next door saw me on the ladder and offered to hold the ladder for me, I accepted. I couldn't dismantle the gutter so she ended up switching places and doing it for me while I held the ladder. She enquired about what arrangements I had made for snow shovelling and said if I needed help just call.

I asked her whether she was going home for Christmas and she said, No, the five of them had decided to spend Christmas together so that they didn't have to do quarantine after the holidays. I am secretly relieved that they are doing that.

I listened to the premier and his chief medical officer on the radio this afternoon. Since we've had a rise in cases they've been doing talks daily. I have to say, yet again, how great they've been. I kind of look forward to those talks and will miss them when they're done. The first doses of vaccine were administered in the city today, to healthcare workers working in the city. There's only the one freezer for the vaccine and it's in the city, so they are only doing a few healthcare workers this year.

I think it's going to be a while before it's my turn, I'm fairly far down on the priority list (healthcare workers, long term care residents, over 80s, over 75s, over 70s, …) There's a few active cases in my healthcare region, notably a local poultry processing plant got shut down and a couple of schools. But no one has been hospitalized and no cases in any long term care homes. The emergency dental clinic is the furthest I have been from home in the past 6 weeks, I only shop for groceries and what little social life I have is at the Reservoir. I feel relatively insulated.

All that freezing for the dental work has finally worn off and I feel crappy. But I'm glad I don't have a big hole in my tooth anymore.

Spot the Blue

This photo looks like nothing. A drab grey November day at the Reservoir, enlivened only by the presence of the ducks. Who will soon be leaving, but never mind, they are here now.

However, smack dab in the middle of the photo, on the far shore of the pond, is a Great Blue Heron masquerading as a tree stump. He does a great job of it, the only reason I know he is a bird and not a dead tree is because of very occasional, tiny movements of his head. Tree stumps don't have heads, or at least not heads that can move.

He has been here now for three days. On the first day I saw him flying above the pond, a truly magnificent sight. I thought he looked young and very curious about the pond, flying around it several times before disappearing northward. The second day I saw him standing upright on the pond shore where he now does his tree stump imitation, and today he is hunched over and almost motionless in the dreary weather. Apparently he was more than a little curious about this pond.

A flying Great Blue looks to me like a miniature pterodactyl: something very ancient, very stately, very awe-inspiring. There used to be a colony of Great Blues not far from here but I have not seen them in years. I once went on a field trip to their nesting site back in the '80s, but I have heard nothing about that site recently, so I imagine it has been long since abandoned. They are migratory birds and usually all gone from this province by December. This bird seems to be a straggler, perhaps he is lost.

The ducks are curious about him, they cluster around the shore where he stands. 

Poor old dog gets a pedicure

This is a photo of my favourite tree at the Reservoir. It waits to turn brilliant yellow after all the other trees have finished, it is outstanding. It's been windy this year but in less windy years it drops its leaves directly below so it looks like a spotlight on the trail. 

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I am reading "Bright Eyed" (subtitled "Insomnia and its Cultures") by Richard Vaughan, a Canadian poet who died last month (October). If insomnia is a thing for you, I recommend it. Won't provide any cures or even hope, but it's pretty bang on. I'd never heard of RM Vaughan before his death made headlines last month, but I think I will go looking for more stuff he's written. Reading reactions to the news of his death, he sounds like quite a guy, wish I'd known him.

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A few days ago I gave Hapi a long cow rib bone. I get a shopping bag full of raw bones from a local butcher for $3, and she's been chowing down on these things for as long as she has lived with me. However this will be the last one. She went to town on it, there was nothing left of it by the time she was done. Then she spent the last three days barfing and pooping bone bits. Some of them up to 2" long. O.M.G. She had her first "normal" poop this afternoon, I really hope she has not sustained any internal damage. She acts like she's okay now, although the first couple of days she looked a bit iffy.

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More or less at the same time one of the other Reservoir dog walkers told me she had a dream about Hapi, that I had neglected to trim her toenails and now her nails were so long they were causing her pain.

"Look at the way she walks, she's in pain," this dog walker said.

Well, yeah.

"Look at her toes," she instructed.

Hapi's feet are covered in long hair so I couldn't see her toes without trying to pick up her paw, and of course Hapi wasn't going for that.

"See, she's in pain, not letting you pick up her paw is a sign of pain."

Oh brother. Just seems to me that with two weak rear legs, me trying to lift any of her paws off the ground was going to leave her a little precarious, of course she would object. Anyway, Hapi now has a pedicure appointment at the vet's next week. I really have no idea whether her toenails need it or not.

The person who took the photos of Hapi in my previous post also put them up on Facebook. Someone commented on how terrible she looked: was she lost? neglected? abused? I didn't see that, but another friend saw the photo and responded to the comment that she wasn't lost, neglected or abused, she was just old. And well-loved.

It is true that her fur is a mess, thanks to her daily wades in the pond and my inability to groom her. She lies on the ground and expects me to crouch over her while brushing or trimming her fur; my back just doesn't permit more than a few minutes of that. So yeah, she does look kind of scruffy.

Odds and Ends

Unexpected landscaping issues, don't ask

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Colour

We've made it to the Reservoir a couple of times since my last post, as I said Hapi has good days and bad days. On Sunday the colours were magnificent. They still are, but Sunday was a blue sky day that made for stunning contrasts of primary colours: red, blue and yellow. There were lots of people without dogs there, just enjoying the colours. A friend was telling me that she really liked the reds, and I said the yellows were nice too because particularly on a cloudy day they brighten everything up.

The ducks

The ducks are back, males are in the majority. There's a bit of courting going on for the few remaining unattached females. I saw one couple doing their head nodding courting routine, and a male halfway across the pond came zooming over to interrupt the proceedings. It's very competitive out there. The bald eagles are more present as well, always on the lookout for an opportunity. Such lovely killers.

The eagle tree, with eagle flying just behind and to the left of it

I am going to see a homeopath tomorrow. Expensive, but I had good luck with one I saw a couple of decades ago with the same symptoms. In preparation for tomorrow's appointment I had to fill out a form about my medical history and what I was currently experiencing. An interesting process. Our healthcare system does not allow for automatic universal medical records, whether your medical records get passed from one GP to the next entirely depends on your own efforts. I've experienced a couple of gaps of years without a GP, and by the time I get a new GP I am not sure I want to pursue getting old records forwarded. And certainly all the new GPs I've had displayed zero interest in my past medical history.

I don't know how valid homeopathy is, it certainly does not fit with any science that I am familliar with. However, at least homeopaths are interested in knowing your past health history, whether physical, mental or emotional. The one I will be seeing works out of a clinic that includes other health practitioners, including a GP. The appointment is expected to last 2 hours.

Wealth

Hapi standing in my reflection at the Reservoir beach

The other day I was walking at the Reservoir with A. She is a year younger than my mother would be if she were still alive, she has the same name and she grew up in the same province. A's father was a doctor, my mother's father was a lawyer. A's family lived in a small village on the shore of the St Laurence River, my mother's family lived in a wealthy suburb of Toronto. My grandfather was involved as a lawyer in the amalgamation of some 12 or 13 smaller communities with Toronto proper, so by the time I was born, the house my mother grew up in was now in Metro Toronto. When I started school I used to walk by that house every day. I marvelled at how grand it was, nothing like the tiny overcrowded house my family lived in then.

But I digress. A walks very slowly and so does Hapi so I like walking with her because then I don't feel like I am slowing anyone down. A's dog Teddy is a little devil of a toy poodle who scampers everywhere, but he is growing older and shows more interest in Hapi than he used to. A and I chat about history, both personal and world. We share book titles that we think might interest the other. So, on that day I got talking about my childhood memories of "The Cottage", my grandmother's summer home that we stayed at every summer until I became depressive teenager who didn't want to go anywhere with anyone. I described the lake, the water activities, the trails, the tennis courts, the Regatta and the Corn Boil, so on and so forth.

A was ewwing and ahhing at my descriptions. She told me that I was so lucky to have that, that she routinely begged her parents to buy a little cottage on a nearby lake. Her father said No, they lived right on the Saint Laurence so why did they need a cottage on a lake and besides, he worked all the time being a country doctor. A loves tennis, so the fact that I had access to tennis courts all summer long particularly impressed her. However, I do not and never did love tennis, so I pretty much ignored the courts. My cousins were avid players so sometimes I accompanied them to the courts and would explore the surrounding woods while they played. And tucked into the underbrush not far from the road, I discovered a shuffleboard court. Now that I could get into! The mallets were kept locked up with the tennis paraphenalia so I had to borrow the key from my obnoxious cousins, but still, a small price to pay.

Telling A about the shuffleboard court, she exclaimed, Oh you were so lucky, so wealthy! Not just tennis courts but shuffleboard too! Well, I have to say I have never looked at my childhood as "lucky" or "wealthy", but A has set me straight. I think I have always looked at my childhood through that constricted lens of a depressed teenager, and missed the best bits altogether.

Swimming in tomatoes

Yesterday afternoon I walked with Hapi around the town harbour. It is quite tiny, once advertised as the smallest ocean port in the world. But since it has not been dredged in decades, it is far from being an ocean port now. 

The tide was high and the water dead calm. A small flock of sandpipers was playing there. They would fly in amazing patterns close to the surface of the water so that their reflections made it look like there were twice as many. After a few minutes of flying they would all land on rocks or mud at the edge of the water for a few more minutes to rest before rising into the air again. They flew together, sometimes breaking into smaller groups, circling and crisscrossing the harbour. There were two larger birds flying with them but I couldn't make out what kind of bird they were. Not ducks or gulls. It was fascinating to watch.

I've been swimming every day. It's exhausting and gives me a backache and dizziness, but I do it anyway, it feels good at the time. There are about half a dozen of us who swim at more or less the same time. At first I took Hapi with me but now I leave her behind so I don't have to deal with smelly wet dog at night. She's getting weaker and tireder anyway. The last few mornings I've had to coax her a lot to get her to go for a walk with me.

Owen the Bernese Mountain Dog is back at the Reservoir, I hadn't seen him all summer and feared he had passed on, but not so. His owners took him to PEI for a bit and they've been staying away from the Reservoir in the heat of the day. But it's cooler now so they're back. He is one of my favourite Reservoir dogs. Ava is still with us but getting sicker and not eating well. She wagged her tail when Hapi and I came by for a visit but Hapi wasn't so interested. I think she knows what is going on and doesn't want anything to do with it.

I haven't been writing much because I've been busy and tired. Harvesting the garden, processing tomatoes, swimming. Everybody has way too many tomatoes. A friend was giving away buttercup squashes and I said I wanted one; when she came by to drop off the squash she tried to get me to take a pint of tomatoes too. I turned her down. When I go swimming we trade tomato recipes. Today I picked a basket full to overflowing of tomatoes, I ate several while I was picking. I had tabbouleh for supper and tomorrow I'm going to try a recipe another swimmer described, a Caprese pasta dish.

There's maybe one more week of swimming weather, it's getting cooler and I am not such a stalwart swimmer as to go swimming in cold water. Cool yes, cold no.

More heat wave

The pond I swim in

I gave up on keeping Hapi out of the water. I had started going back to the Reservoir just because I missed my dog buddy company in the mornings, but I kept Hapi on leash whenever we were near the water. I would stop at the beach and let her get her feet wet but not the rest of her body. It was a bit of a tug of war, she really wanted to go in deeper.

With this relentless heat wave I wanted to go swimming but that meant I had to leave Hapi at home by herself in the heat since I can't trust her indoors any more. She might have a pee or poop accident or worse, fall down the stairs. So I was starting to feel really sorry for myself, stuck in the darkened house in a heat wave. It often gets hot and humid here in the summer, but not for so long.

One of my dog buddies said I should try letting Hapi get wet and then combing her out with a hair conditioner. So I bought some hair conditioner and tried it. Hapi was so happy to be allowed in the water! But the conditioner didn't really make any difference. Once I let her in the water that once, I felt it would be mean to go back to not letting her go in the water, she wouldn't understand. And besides, I could go swimming too if she came along.

Hapi at the beach in the morning

So now, I go to the Reservoir in the morning for a walk with the other dogs and their owners, and then mid-afternoon I go back for a swim. In the afternoon the little beach is full of kids and their parents, Hapi wades in with them. Most of the parents and kids already know Hapi, the kids all want to pet her in the water. Hapi is very patient with kids, she lets them surround and pet her, and although I tell the parents, "She's friendly," they just nod as if they already know that. I go in the water with her and as much as she can she stays with me, but she won't go out any deeper than where she can keep her feet on the ground.

After a few minutes of that I go in the other pond, the big one. There's no beach, you have to climb down a short rocky path to get into the water. Hapi is too unsteady on her feet to manage that anymore so she just stands on the shore watching me. I swim the length of the pond and back. It is so wonderful to be in the water surrounded by the trees. I'm a poor swimmer but I have stamina, I alternate between breast, side and back strokes, occasionally just treading water if I get tired. But two lengths of the pond is not enough to tire me out so I don't do a lot of water treading. My favourite thing is the back stroke, looking up at the big sky with clouds drifting by. I can only do that when the sun is behind me so on the first length I have to look downward at the shoreline but coming back I can look at the clouds.

When I've completed my two lengths Hapi is there to greet me coming ashore, then we go back to the beach on the small pond for one last dip for her. We usually get home by 4pm and the swim is so refreshing that I don't start feeling the heat until hours later when it is starting to cool off anyway. Hapi has her supper and goes to bed, two swims a day tuckers her right out. By the way she walks I think she is in constant pain, standing in the water alleviates that some. I tell people it is her hydrotherapy. Her fur is going to get messed up again, but I think she may not last long enough for that to become a great issue. That's what I tell myself anyway.

Yesterday I ran (swam) into a single parent with her little boy. We were chatting about the heat and the water and we both agreed that it was so nice to have these ponds so close to where we live. There are ocean beaches and lakes nearby, but this is the best because it is so close by. She is from Chile, she asked if it is always this hot here. I said yes and no, it usually gets this hot at some point but it doesn't usually stay hot for so long.

I had been talking to a carpenter in the morning, he was working on the house next door and he said that he used to have a job in Calgary where it often got very hot but it was a dry hot, not humid like here. The humidity just drains you. He had his young son along with him, the whole time he was working he was telling his son what he was doing and why, and giving his son little tasks to do with him. I was thinking, lucky boy, to be able to work with his Dad.

I asked the carpenter what he knew about generators and we talked about mine, which I think I have a problem with. He offered to help me with it and spent a few minutes getting me set up to drain the fuel from it. I left gas in the generator over the winter and that is not a good thing. It took the better part of the day to get it all out but I am relieved that I finally tackled the job. I told the carpenter that I was looking for someone to do some work on my place but I was waiting till after Hapi, he gave me his card and told me about his dogs. He had just had to put down the oldest one.

Race to the finish

Chicory weed, one of my favourite summer flowers

Hapi can no longer climb the basement stairs on her own, she waits at the bottom while I go down and arrange a towel sling under her rear end. Sometimes we manage it smoothly, sometimes not. Those stairs are tricky, sometimes I lose my balance and fall on top of her, sometimes I move too fast and she stumbles. The new normal. A friend asked me if I could increase her pain meds but I don't think pain is the problem, it's muscle wasting.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Big excitement at the Reservoir the other day, a few of us standing around the beach when three eagles appeared overhead. One eagle attacked another, they locked talons and grappled in mid-air amid much whistling, then all three flew away. Two returned to the tree they usually hang out in and whistled for quite a while after.

One of the people on the beach happened to be a naturalist who had a camera with a big telephoto lens; he tried to get a photo of the event but he says it's not very good, it all happened too quickly. However he did have a recent photo of the two baby owls at the Reservoir which he showed us. I had seen one of the babies a couple of weeks ago and then it disappeared and I feared the worst. Not so, he said, the two babies are now adult-sized and flying around a bit. It takes a lot of practice to fly through dense forest.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

We got a new member in our writing group and one person wrote that we should give her a copy of our "guidelines". Once again I voiced opposition to the idea—I really dislike that document, it doesn't reflect what we actually do and now that we are totally online it is kind of irrelevant. Nobody responded to my objections so I thought that meant that no one agreed with me, however one member did eventually write to say that she was in total agreement and was glad I had spoken up. I would like that document just to die of neglect, I am not really up for the turmoil of yet another revision process.

Fireweed: harbinger of fall, the higher the flowers on the stalk the closer it is

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I took my car to the garage yet again for a final repair to replace a broken transmission mount. The car has been making awful noises for over a year now and this was supposed to fix it. I don't doubt the broken mount, however the noise is still there. I arranged to go out for lunch with a friend at a place across the road from the garage while they did the repair, this is the first time we've gotten together since mid-March and we had a great time. The garage phoned me to say the car was ready and they would leave the key in the car because they like to take a two-hour lunch. After lunch I drove my friend home and a couple of hours later I called the garage to say I was coming back to settle the bill.

I told the mechanic the noise was still there, he was sure he had fixed it so he wanted to take another look. In the end, by process of elimination, he is deducing that the problem is the transmission itself. His recommendation is not to fix it, too expensive, and start looking for another vehicle. He gave me a discount on the cost of replacing the transmission mount. Transmission might break, but it won't fall off! So there we are, dying dog and dying car.

My friend's vision is completely gone now, she is much worse than she was in March. But she's a barrel of laughs and it's good to spend time with her, we laughed ourselves silly. At the restaurant the staff were all masked. At one point one waitress started yelling at a man to get out, get out right now. The man left and we were staring at the waitress wondering what just happened. She laughed and said, We do this all day, I yell, he leaves by the back door and walks around to the front door and comes back in again. He's here all day. She was just making space for the noon hour custom.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I am having some problems with my loom so I phoned my old teacher for advice. We had a nice chat about this and that but she couldn't really advise me. I have come to the realization that this loom is defective and perhaps I should look for another one. A loom that fits the bill will cost me three or four grand new, less if I can find a used one in good condition. Having had the experience of using better quality looms at the classes I used to attend, I know it will be worth it, even if I have to order one new. And I'll be able to re-use some of the parts of my existing loom. It was handmade by a gentleman in Ontario and it looks good and appears well put together, but the devil is in the details. It was intended to duplicate a Leclerc loom, so I am looking for a 'real' Leclerc loom. But it's a lot of money, a new loom or a new car? Don't know that I can do both.

Renovation

Renovating the Reservoir beach

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

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

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

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pandemic life at its best!