An old acquaintance and messing about in the attic

2007, my truck in Nova Scotia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Change in the weather, change in me

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

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

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

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

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

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

Real dog, fake eagle

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

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

March news

Not much has happened in the last week, either that or my memory is shot to hell and I just don't remember what has happened.

My neighbour told me that the trees behind our houses have been full of Cedar Waxwings so I have been keeping an eye out for them and sure enough they arrived when I had my camera ready. They twitter like a crowd of grasshoppers. From a distance they don't look like much, easy to mistake for starlings. but up closer you see their crests and bright yellow bits, they are very pretty birds that like to hang out in large groups. They also are not that shy, they didn't mind me coming close to the trees they were perched in.

March came in like a lion, cold and blustery; let's hope it leaves like a lamb. I managed to get in a bit of skating, highly unusual for March, but the area of the pond that is skatable is so small that the time it took to put on and take off my skates was probably longer than the time I actually spent skating.

Remember B, my friend in the nursing home? Well, she finally got her first vaccination shot this week. They had promised it for early February. She has an appointment for the second shot in early April, just days before she plans to attend her daughter's funeral. Yes, her daughter died, cause not really known, she was found dead in her apartment. She was probably as unwell as B and she had stopped taking her insulin about a month before she died. Very sad. Also very hard on B, they spoke on the phone dozens of times every day. 

B's daughter was not mobile so she couldn't visit B even before the pandemic except on major holidays (Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving). The funeral is being held in the small village where B raised her family; a local funeral director is taking care of all the details and it will all be done at no cost to B. The daughter wanted to be buried with her husband but she will be buried with her father instead, since B could not make arrangements in the town where her son-in-law was buried. They are one hard-luck family.

My brother sent me a couple of photos that he had scanned of the house my parents lived in right after I was born. One photo shows me and my parents (and their two dogs, Gunner and Tigger) in front of the house, probably around 1949, and the other is what that house looked like in 1986. At the time I lived in Ottawa and on a visit my parents showed me where the house was. So, looking at the more recent photo and knowing that it was somewhere near the river shore in that village, I used Streetview to find it by following all the streets that were close to the water on the map of the area. It's still there. It looks a little bit like the house I live in now.

Reading and trade offs

Hapi seems to be having some difficulty with pain, I discussed it with her vet and the vet prescribed gabapentin. She warned that the gabapentin would make Hapi "loopy". Coincidentally my own doctor prescribed something for me to combat nerve pain, and I have to say it's making me feel "loopy" too. I am thinking that almost any medication for nerve pain is going to have that side effect. Personally, I'd rather deal with pain than loopiness. My level of pain is relatively low, perhaps if it was much higher I'd be more willing to accept loopiness. I don't know how Hapi feels about that trade off.

We were late arriving at the Reservoir yesterday (due to loopiness); several dogs and owners were just leaving as we arrived. Hapi insisted on following the crowd back to the parking lot. One owner commented that Hapi just wanted to hang out with the other dogs, I said that it was more likely that she knew some of those dogs were going to be fed treats when they got back to the cars and she wanted to be in on that. I let her follow her nose and she managed to scarf up a few treats before everyone left and we went for our walk in the park. The trails are getting icy but the pond is no longer skatable.

Today is probably the coldest day of the year. The thermometer is in deep subzero territory and the wind is at blizzard levels. Not a lot of snow though. Yesterday was (relatively) warm and wet so between the rain and the melting snow we now have lots of ice. I took Hapi out for a walk early this morning because the forecast was for falling temperatures and rising wind speeds. Sure enough, lots of icy trails. I tried to stay in the woods to avoid the worst of the wind. I am grateful for Lee Valley Icers, the old lady's (and old man's) friend.

Hope for Wildlife emailed me that my blue jay does not have a broken wing or foot but appears to be suffering from head trauma. Now I am thinking that I did not run over it with my car after all, but that it crashed into one of my house windows near the bird feeder (and driveway). No blue jays have shown up at my bird feeder since then, I think they now consider it too dangerous. I met a friend on the street who lives a few blocks away, she says that recently there are twice as many blue jays at her feeder and they are eating her out of house and home. 

I just finished reading Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of Mind (2020), by Peter Godfrey-Smith. The evolution of consciousness, or mind, is a theme Godfrey-Smith also wrote about in in his previous book, Other Minds: the Octopus, the Sea and the Origin of Consciousness (2016). In the earlier book Godfrey-Smith focuses on octopus consciousness and how that might have evolved; in the more recent book he looks at the evolution of consciousness in general. He discusses what consciousness is and whether non-human animals have the same kind of consciousness that we have, and if not, how does it differ. 

I like his writing style, his apparent scientific knowledge particularly of the theory of evolution, his philosophical slant on that knowledge and the huge resource of his scuba diving experience on the Australian Great Barrier Reef. Of course he includes photos taken on some of those dives. His focus is on the early development of life in the sea, he gives short shrift to more recent development of modern land-based animals. I like that because so much of writing about biological evolution is focussed on land-based animals which is really a relatively recent development. Most of our modern biological processes were first developed in an ocean environment and only much later modified and adapted for land-based life.

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.

Ice and illness

Ice storm yesterday, a mix of snow, ice pellets, freezing rain, rain and wind. Overnight the temperature rose and then fell so it was below zero in the evening and the morning but apparently quite warm in between. Now there is a thick layer of ice on the ground everywhere. I get around okay with my Icers but Hapi has some difficulty with it. I spread sand on the driveway but I still need to sand the steps she uses to get into the back yard. Also the front steps. I don't use them much in the winter time but I try to keep them clear just in case.

I was late to the Reservoir this morning, I met some of the dog walkers as they were just leaving. I recently gave a whole bunch of back issues of The New Yorker magazine to A, a dog walker in her 90s, now every time I see her she thanks me for them, she is really enjoying them. The nice thing about that magazine is that it doesn't have to be current to be enjoyable reading. I used to take my magazines to the library when I was finished with them but the library stopped accepting them when the pandemic started. A told me she used to go to the library to read The New Yorker and then with the pandemic they stopped having them. She was reading my magazines. Meanwhile I was stockpiling them in hopes of finding someone who would enjoy them since I hated to just throw them in the recycling. So we are both happy.

I had a doctor appointment yesterday morning but there was no way I was driving in freezing rain, so I was able to get the appointment changed from an in-person to a phone appointment. Yay Covid; never could have done that before. Last week I had an MRI brain scan and yesterday the doctor told me that my brain was old but normal, no signs of any abnormalities. I wasn't really surprised, I've been moving away from that idea anyway. She also offered referrals to a neurologist and to a clinic that specializes in complex chronic diseases and I accepted both. She cautioned me that the neurology referral will take two years to come about; yay Nova Scotia. I hope the other referral will be quicker but I am not holding my breath. She thinks I should try a tricyclic antidepressant for neuropathic pain. I am very wary of antidepressants in general, I will try it but I am pretty fed up with drugs that cause unpleasant side effects. My illness is just one giant unpleasant side effect, I don't need any more thank you very much.

Sometimes I think that Hapi's health and mine are somehow linked, that we have the same problems at the same time. I wonder if it's something in the water we both drink? Or if it's some kind of woo-woo psychic link? Or I am just projecting? I am fed up with not being well, not being able to skate or ski. I can still walk but I pay a price for that in fatigue. In the midst of the storm yesterday there was a brief period when no precipitation was falling from the sky and the road was not too icy. I had run out of milk so I walked down town to buy some. I wanted it to be a quick trip so I did not wake Hapi. It was quick, but the walk back up the hill was completely debilitating. I am so tired of this.

Winter Coatless

Hapi's fur is slowly growing in, it's about 2-3 cm (1-1.5") long now. Some of her outer coat is black so she is starting to darken along her flanks. The new fur is quite coarse compared to the old fur on her face, I suppose because the hair ends are blunt due to having been cut.

There's another old dog at the Reservoir who got shaved at the beginning of the winter, he's a Golden Retriever. With his shaved coat he looks like an oversized puppy. I saw him the other day along with three smaller dogs. Hapi and all the small dogs were wearing their store-bought winter coats, the Golden was coatless.

I said something to the owner about him being the only dog without a coat, the owner said, "We don't need no stinkin' coat!"

It was true, the Golden's fur was short but thick and he seemed pretty happy.

So I'm hoping that soon Hapi can go without too. It was warm enough this afternoon to go out coatless.

I made snowshoe trails in my backyard for Hapi to get around in the deep snow, but she doesn't use them much because they are not as hard-packed as the ones in the woods. 

We had a big dump of snow and it has stayed cold since then so the snow has stayed too. But tomorrow we are getting rain and freezing rain, and temperatures will warm up. Having the deep snow has been really nice but I think we are now headed into ice and slush. Such is a Maritime winter.