My new daybed and other new things

I did not get Covid. The crows' eggs have hatched. The daybed arrived and I have assembled it. I am getting better. Next week I am going on a 3-day kayaking trip, based at a Lodge so no camping. My garden is progressing in spite of bad weather.

One morning this past week when I was still in bed, I could hear a Mourning Dove cooing. One of the new baby crows was replying to it, too cute! The roofer has not arrived yet even though he promised 'in a couple of days.' The weather has not been good for roofing. With a bit of luck, he'll get to it before the solar installer comes calling, but after the baby crows have fledged.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And on and on it goes

Happy New Year.

I guess.

Well, maybe it will be, who knows. The signs aren't good though.

I walked to the Reservoir this afternoon, looked at the melting ice. A week ago I got to skate on it when it was a glassy smooth sheet of ice, now it's a mess of melted ice, pooled meltwater and piles of melting snow.

Eventually it'll freeze up again, but whether it will be glassy smooth or not is anybody's guess. Usually the first few days after it first freezes are the best, but then it's not very thick so you're taking your chances. Best not to go alone.

On my way home a friend who was driving by stopped and asked if I wanted a ride or not. I jumped in her car and said, "Your timing is perfect!"

These days I am out of bed no more than 6 hours a day at best, most of that time taken up with chores and errands. But if the stars line up, the weather is good, and there's no chores or errands, then I can go for a walk. I can no longer walk to the Reservoir and back without exhausting myself, so I was glad she showed up when she did.

She's not in much better shape than I am, doesn't know if it's physical illness or depression. I said, "Does it matter?" Not a lot one can do about it either way.

We've both gone in search of laughter, I found it in old "Seinfeld" shows and she in "Friends". By the time she dropped me off I think we both felt better, nothing like a good laugh to cure what ails you. Temporarily anyway.

My son's family in Toronto all have the Omicron. Today they said Ontario has more than 18,000 new cases, and since they're not doing extensive testing that's just the tip of the iceberg. It's the same here, we have no idea how many cases there really are. Today I read that the booster shot wears off pretty quickly; 65-70% protection at best and down to 45% after 10 weeks. Israel is already starting a 4th round of shots.

We're doomed I tell ya, we're doomed!

Since I am not really up and about that much, I have less to report that's anywhere approaching fun or even pleasant; so I probably won't be posting that much. There's only so much gloom I can write about before I bore myself.

Hi Jerry's Mom!

Now I am in self-isolation, hopefully just for a couple of days. Came down with cold symptoms (runny nose, headache) but to be safe I got a Covid test and have to self-isolate until I get a negative result. I've booked a Covid booster shot for 4 days from now and I really don't want to cancel it because the next available slot around here is not until late January. Hopefully it's just a cold, but even so, nobody wants a cold now. 

Covid is roaring back, thanks to a recent event in another university town and the high mobility of students and their parents at this time of year. From last Thursday until Sunday night I was ushering for several Christmas-themed musical events, mostly on campus. I felt lousy on Sunday and tried to beg off, but the organizer said they were short of staff and needed me. He called me this morning and was shocked to hear that I'd gone and gotten myself tested today; he had not thought of the risk, since everyone was masked. 

One of the events—a Matt Anderson concert—was sufficiently big that a lot of people came up from the City (another area of community spread) to see him. He does an excellent show, I'm glad I got to see/hear him. Since he lives locally, he chatted casually about local irritants, which was fun. And he gave a shout out to our local grocery store which has been handling the pandemic really excellently. Got a round of applause for that one, they really have. He had with him another local, Kim Dunn, a set of black gospel singers and a couple from Newfoundland (don't remember their names), and a great bass player whose last name might be Dixon. The gospel singers called him 'Uncle Baby' because he was the youngest of a large family and was already an uncle at the moment of his birth.

Rather ironically, my job was to check people's vaccination status at the door. So every single person attending got to stand in front of me, in close proximity, while I examined their ID and vaccination proof. It was cold outside and there was a long line-up to get in so the outside door was kept open and my hands froze. After a while of reading teeny tiny print my eyes were watering and I couldn't read at all. Not to mention the discomfort of wearing a mask with a runny nose and a headache, and the reflection of the overhead lights on the plastic IDs. The concert was delayed by half an hour due to us being so diligent about checking vaccination proof, a couple of people thanked us for being so careful. 

I had the official app on my phone for scanning the vaccination proof, but it worked haphazardly. Everyone had different versions of proof, some paper some plasticized, some big some small, some with a scan code some without. Some even from out of province. It was actually faster just to eyeball the documents rather than try to scan them.

People were trying to show me their driver's licence photo, thinking that that was what I was looking for. But it wasn't, with everyone masked a driver's licence photo is useless. I just needed to check that the name on the licence or other ID was the same as the name on the vaccination proof. It's a small town so a lot of people I recognized anyway.

One person said, "Hi! I'm Jerry's Mom!"

Jerry's mom?!? Who the heck is Jerry? Then I remembered. Jerry is a dog and I used to walk with Jerry and his 'Mom' when Hapi was alive. But by the time I remembered she was gone.

Hi Jerry's Mom!

Checking in...

Rock painting of Hapi

Well it certainly has been a while since I last posted here, seems like the longer you go the longer you go. Hard to get back into it. 

Hapi, summer 2020

Heat wave, second one this month. Heat waves are like rainy days, I just want to stay indoors. With my new windows and cellular blinds it stays a bit cooler, but not a lot. Last year I used the air conditioning on the heat pump and ended up with mould growing inside it, so this year I want to keep that to a minimum. Just the really bad days. But so far the new windows and blinds seem to be doing the job I hoped they would. So now heat wave days are like rainy days, I just want to hide indoors till it passes.

Nothing terribly exciting or upsetting these past couple of weeks, other than getting my second Covid shot. Knocked me sideways for a couple of days, but I'd heard that was possible so I planned for it. 

Got all my firewood stacked away, I should be good for a couple of winters now, if the weight of the wood doesn't collapse the woodshed, LOL. They delivered wood that was 2" longer than what I requested, so hopefully that won't be a problem. Although I think that some of the thicker pieces might be. My woodstove is not that big.

Garden is progressing, the squash and cucumber took forever to germinate and the romaine lettuce never did. I'll try again in a couple of months, I think it is too hot now. I got a flat of really ripe strawberries (8 quarts) from a local farm market really cheap ($24) and have processed them all into frozen berries, except for a quart for eating fresh. Strawberry season is still going so I'll probably buy another couple of quarts for eating. I have some frozen berries left over from last year so I think I'll turn them into jam, if and when the weather cools.

I've been swimming a couple of times a week, kayaking the odd time or two, and walking with friends and their dogs. One Friday I noticed that Hapi's ornament at the Reservoir had disappeared and that threw me into a weekend of mourning. I had debated taking her ornament down and bringing it home, but it didn't seem like a great memento so I didn't. Then it disappeared. I found out later that someone had vandalized it and left it lying on the ground in the parking area; some other dog owners saw it and decided to get rid of it because they didn't want me to see it like that.

After that weekend a neighbour stopped by to give me a rock painting she had done of Hapi (see above). She said she had hung on to it for awhile, making improvements, but finally a friend told her, "Enough, just give it to her." Her timing was impeccable, it cheered me up enormously.

Am reading an Elizabeth Kolbert book called Under a White Sky which is kind of interesting. She talks about several human attempts to save various endangered species or control invasive species and in every case there is the problem of unintended consequences. Then she talks about geoengineering solutions to climate change and the concomitant danger of unintended consequences. But she likens it to chemotherapy: no one in their right mind would consent to chemo if there was something better. Geoengineering is like chemo for climate. 

Another fact she points out is that what they have learned from Greenland glacier ice cores is that the last 10,000 years have been unusually stable climate-wise, and that is probably the reason human civilization developed. Humans have certainly had the intelligence and ingenuity to create agriculture and various other civilizing technologies long before that, but the climate was way too unstable for a sedentary way of life to be of lasting value. Better to just hang out as hunter-gatherers and take whatever the planet dishes out. While current climate change and species' extinctions are largely human-created, sooner or later that 10,000-year stable period would have ended anyway. But with all of our technology, great cities and huge population, that climate change is almost certainly going to be devastating. Makes climate-chemo look like a chance worth taking.

And speaking of heat waves, here's a link to a video for constructing a cheap DIY air conditioner...

Windows, Doors and Egg Rolls

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mashup

A few odds and ends from the past couple of weeks.

I got my first dose of Pfizer. Older already-vaccinated people said it was the one with the fewest side effects so that was good; turns out that for me at any rate the rumour is true. I am also one of the few people I know who managed to get the shot at the local community clinic; everyone else is having to go much further afield to get it. I booked my appointment as soon as I woke up, around 6.30am, and apparently that is what you have to do to get a shot in the local area. Meanwhile vaccine is going begging in the city, if you care to make the hike you can get it easily there.

As it happened there was a sale of composted manure on at a building supply store near the clinic and I thought, Two birds with one stone. But I had heard that a sore arm was the most significant after effect of the vaccination so I asked the nurse who was administering it how bad would it be and could I lift heavy bags afterwards. She said that actually that was a good idea, that the more I used the muscles in that arm the less pain I would experience. So, 300 kg of manure later, only a little bit of tenderness in the area of the shot and that only lasted a day. Tip for the day, and you're welcome. Mind you, the nurse didn't say it had to be 300 kg, you could get the same effect with a little squeeze ball.

I spent less than half an hour at the clinic, 15 minutes of that spent waiting after the shot to see if there were immediate anaphylactic reactions. Several stages to getting the shot, each stage requiring another round of hand sanitizing. By the end of it, at the last hand washing stage, I said, Now I have the cleanest hands ever! Everyone who left the waiting area said Thank you! to the handwashing volunteer, who replied, Thank you too! 15 minutes of Thank Yous and Thank You Toos! I told a friend about it and she reminded me of a 22 Minutes episode called Canada Goes to War. A bunch of Canadian soldiers in a trench, popping their heads up one at a time to fire their guns and then yelling out, Sorry! When they jostled or passed each other in the trench, another round of Sorry! all 'round.

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My dishwasher finally bit the dust. It was old when I bought the house and lasted another ten years so I can't complain. I've been debating what to do when it finally quits, and given the pandemic rise in price of practically everything, it would cost almost double what it would have costed to replace it back in the day. I decided to handwash the dishes for awhile and see if that was realistic, and it definitely is. 15 minutes a day, no more. I use the dishwasher to store the dirty dishes (bottom rack) and the newly washed dishes (top rack). Doesn't take up precious counter space, gets the mess of dirty dishes out of sight, and it is not nearly as noisy as the dishwasher was when it worked. So I am happy with the arrangement. I suspect that the dishwasher is repairable but I am less and less inclined to get that done.

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I sat in on my youngest son's MA thesis defence via Zoom yesterday afternoon. It went really well. Although I have been in conversation with him every week, he doesn't like video calls so this was the first time I've seen his face since I don't know when. He looked very professional in his glasses, which he didn't have last time I saw him. It was quite a thing to see him in action, reading the synopsis of his thesis and then responding to critical questions. I remember how nervous I was doing my MSc defence, my son did not seem nervous at all. So that's it, major step forward for him. 

My older son in Toronto is having a bad time of it. Between pandemic surge, provincial government mismanagement, kids at home due to school closures, and his own job which has amped up in stress. His description of it sounded like herding cats and whack-a-mole combined. His boss resigned and now he doesn't know who he is supposed to report to. The boss resigned to take a new job elsewhere and I think my son is also a little jealous, the former boss is now working at a job my son wishes he was doing.

The middle son is at home for another week or so, then he takes on a summer job as a "bird dog", flying in northern Alberta assessing forest fires. He seems to be doing okay and is looking forward to flying again.

A friend and I, both with three grown offspring, have a little joke about our kids: One out of three ain't bad. It seems like our grown kids are always having ups and downs and sometimes it is hard to maintain perspective about their problems. So if even one of them is doing okay, one out of three ain't bad. I've been watching the latest Crown series, and in one episode the Queen has lunch with each of her grown children to determine which is her favourite, a challenge posed by Prince Philip. Turns out they all have problems or are behaving badly in one way or another. At the end her husband tells her not to take their problems to heart. But she couldn't even say one out of four ain't bad. That's not good.

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Hapi declines. Last week I gave her a bone which she buried several times and then dug up to chew on. That night she had a bad bout of diarrhea on the kitchen floor and I had to get up to clean it up in the wee hours. She scurried outdoors and spent the rest of the night, all of the following day and following night sleeping in her dog house. She didn't eat at all during that time. She recovered and had a day or two approaching normality, but she kept digging up that bone and chewing on it and had a second round of diarrhea a few days later, fortunately outdoors. Now she sleeps pretty much all the time, with a couple of hours up and about in the late afternoon/early evening. When she walks she thuds stiff leggedly.

It's time. A dog walker at the Reservoir said, We're sure going to miss her. That was kind.

Keep on checkin' in

Hapi on a good day, emerging from the canal

Hapi has good days and bad. I think her good days coincide with cold clear weather, her not-so-good days with warm or wet days. Today is a warm wet day and I felt like maybe I should move up the euthanasia date, I don't know if she is suffering but sometimes it appears that way. She had a long nap and then went outside to 'patrol the perimeter', the important stuff.

I bought some bones for her but she is not interested in chewing them, just burying and reburying them. The back yard is full of muddy holes—all the former burial spots—who knows where the bones are now. Then she comes indoors with mud piled on her nose, which she uses to shove the dirt back in the burial hole. I now keep a paper towel at the door to clean off her nose before I allow her indoors.

I joined a Covid-long-hauler group on Facebook. I don't know for sure if that is what I have (or hopefully, had), but I wanted to ask the question: can you get Covid, get better, and then get 'long haul' symptoms several months later? Well, I asked my question and turns out quite a few long-haulers say that is what happened to them, and the long haul was worse than the original bout. So maybe that's what I have/had. Somebody posted that the good news is, when you finally get your first vaccination, it will be like a booster shot, you'll be good to go. Mind you the vaccine reaction symptoms will be worse. But that is temporary.

These days, I get more and better information from others in the same boat than from the so-called experts. Everybody chips in their little bit of info and you begin to get a bigger picture. Doctors only see what other doctors see, they don't really pay attention to anyone else because, after all, they are not medically trained experts. So round and round they go, where they stop nobody knows.

So today it was announced that my age group could get the first vaccination. But, the only two local places where you can get vaccinated are not taking appointments, haven't been for almost a week now. I'm allowed to get vaccinated, I just can't book a vaccination. On the other hand, if I lived in the city, easy-peasy. They have so many open appointment times that they are begging people to book them. I tried phoning the vaccination number, had to wait almost an hour on hold, but when I finally got a live person she acknowledged that they had been getting a lot of calls from my health region asking 'what gives?' and they don't know. And apparently, she said, all the higher-ups who might know, are 'in a meeting'...

Just keep checking she said.

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Postscript, April 2nd: I took a neighbour's advice and logged in really early this morning, around 6.15am, and managed to snag a vaccination appointment for two weeks from now. I went back two hours later and there were no appointments left available. This is the only time there have been any appointments available in almost a week and they were gone by 8.15am.