Kayaking and Busyness

On Gaspereau Lake in 2009

On Thursday I went on a 5 hour kayak expedition, that includes time spent eating lunch onshore and going for a nice swim. I was utterly exhausted by the time I got home, emphasis on utterly. It was gorgeous and I enjoyed every minute of it but never took any photos so sorry about that, you'll just have to imagine it.  I'm using photos from other years here.

On Gaspereau Lake, 2009

The lake we were on has lots of islands and submerged rocks, which make it both interesting and relatively safe for kayaks because few motorboats want to risk running into those submerged rocks. We encountered a large group of teenagers with a couple of older leaders, maybe in their 20s, travelling in canoes and taking a break on an island with a large flat rock that easily accommodated the entire group. It turned out that they had been on the lake for several days, camping on various islands. Which gave us the idea that we could do that in the future too.

Gaspereau Lake, 2009

One of the interesting things we saw was in a bay called Lower North Bay. I joked that it was not as far north as Sudbury. From a distance we saw a row of black dots that might have been birds, or might have been semi-submerged tree stumps, we weren't sure. As we got closer the black dots disappeared! Then we wondered if it was some kind of mirage. The far end of the bay was kind of marshy but we followed a channel through the marsh and eventually spotted our black dots again. It was a large family of Canada Geese who easily disappeared into the marsh grass when we got too close.

On Gaspereau Lake, 2009

Another interesting thing we saw was while we were eating a rather sumptuous lunch feast on a rocky shore. We heard a loon and looked across the lake in the direction of the loon call, we saw another black dot out in the middle of the lake. But it was too big to be the loon, loons swim low in the water and are sometimes hard to spot, this was more of a black blob than a black dot. Then one of us remembered that she had brought binocs with her so we checked it out. It turned out to be a bald eagle, standing on a submerged rock! I'm guessing the loon was calling a warning about the eagle, and the eagle was just standing there either resting or looking for his next meal.

At the Reservoir, 2018

I was in my new inflatable kayak. I got it last year and tried it out on the Reservoir once before getting sick and not being able to take it out again. On Wednesday I practiced assembling and inflating the kayak in my back yard, which took well over an hour. However I learned enough to be able to do it a lot quicker the next day. When we arrived at the lake I was able to assemble, inflate and load the kayak for travel in under 20 minutes. It rides very high in the water and in my opinion looks kind of ugly (it's made of black rubber), but is adequately fast and amazingly maneuverable. I can turn on a dime. I had a spray skirt for it but had a lot of difficulty getting it on and after several minutes gave up. Didn't really need it though, very little water ended up inside the kayak by the time we were done.

Once deflated and disassembled it fits neatly in a large backpack that makes it possible to transport from the water to the car. I weighed myself with the kayak on my back and it came to almost 45 lbs, which is a lot. If I lose my balance I will topple with that kind of weight, so I do have to be careful. I use the paddle as a staff to hopefully prevent falls. The others were able to move their kayaks to the cars much more quickly than me, but the time it took to load their kayaks onto the car roofs and tie them down was much longer and I actually stood around waiting while they finished loading their kayaks. So I think it was worthwhile. Mind you, I just got an email from a store out west that sells inflatable kayaks with a kayak on sale (and free shipping!) that was cheaper and looked far better than mine, one I had looked at last year but thought I couldn't afford. Oh well.

On Friday I was still exhausted, I woke up too late to take Hapi for her walk before my writing group meeting. Then I got a call from a contractor who had said he was coming Saturday but now was coming on Friday and expecting to be at my place before my writing group meeting was over. So I had to call him to say I wouldn't be home and could he postpone. He went off and ran some errands, said he'd be at my place shortly after 1.00pm but his errands took till 2.30pm and I again postponed Hapi's walk until he arrived. And by that time it was too hot, so Hapi never got a walk. In compensation I drove her to the post office for a dog treat.

I thought I was going to mow the lawn but I was way too exhausted, so I spent the afternoon listening to the contractor tell stories about himself. He's someone who can work and talk at the same time so I didn't mind, but what I really wanted to do was just read a book, even listening was energy consuming. When he left he said I should just tell him to shut up because he lives alone and takes advantage of having an audience for his non-stop patter. Probably should have but he was sufficiently interesting that I didn't like to interrupt. Fortunately he is not coming back today, he'll finish the job on Sunday or Monday.

I'm not as exhausted today and I have to pick up a couple of things for the contractor to finish the job, but otherwise my day is pretty much clear, a welcome relief to several days of busyness!

The Carrot, and some Onions

I made a deal with myself that I could write in my blog after I've written some of my novel-in-progress. I'm kind of bored with it right now so I need a carrot on a stick. I'm collecting my reward now.

I went to a concert on Saturday night, the Canning Kitchen Party. A Middle Eastern Ensemble came to Canning from the Halifax Jazz Festival to play their music for us and it was a small but packed house. Quite amazing music, made me feel very grateful that these people moved here as refugees. I heard about this concert earlier in the day via an email from a friend; I already had plans for the day but thought I should rearrange in order to go. I called a neighbour who is a musician to see if he wanted to go and he did so that was the motivation to get it together. We were both glad we went.

One of the musicians was trying to explain to us the basics of Middle Eastern music, how it is based on up to 52 different tones and there is music to be played in the morning and music to be played in the evening and music that is good for different parts of your body. I tried to understand the stuff about tonal music but I am afraid it is beyond me. It does sound very different from Western music.

This morning another email, this time someone wanting to celebrate the sale of her house after listing it for only 5 days. The real estate market has exploded here, "Sold" signs popping up everywhere. Usually it takes months, if not years, to sell a place but now the pace is dizzying. The woman who just sold her place has no idea where she will move to, she really hadn't expected it to go so fast. The buyer offered her asking price because they were afraid it would go to someone else if they didn't. Again, I had other plans for the day and I wish I'd seen her email when she sent it the day before but oh well. I was going to visit someone else but at the last minute they cancelled out so I toddled over for the celebration. A glass of bubbly and a plate of food. Maybe I should sell my place…

Just kidding. I have no plans to go anywhere. Some of the people at the celebration were talking about all the crazy housing developments going on around town and how the town council isn't handling it very well (in their opinion). But as one person said, we'll all be dead before the worst of it comes to pass so let's not get our knickers in a knot.

I chatted with a woman who is 88 years old, she's the mother-in-law of a friend of mine. She told me she'd just gotten back from her cottage and had had a wonderful time there, she'd gone kayaking 4 times. She can hardly walk but she still kayaks. She explained the process of getting from her wheel chair into the kayak and then back out again. Impressive!

I complained to my musician neighbour on the drive to Canning about the small size of the onions I grow, he gave me some advice on how to fix that. So this morning I was mulching the onions. I didn't have quite enough straw, so first I stole the mulch from the tomatoes—I think they're big enough now to live without it at least temporarily—and then I started using lawn clippings. We'll see what happens. I always plan to mulch but somehow never quite get around to it. My neighbour said he didn't use straw he used sea grass he collected from a couple of local salt marshes. I did that once, it's a lot of work and your car ends up full of mud and salt marsh insects.

I know my neighbour hasn't had a garden for some years now and has a few mobility issues so I pointed out to him that that was when he was so much younger and spryer, and besides $5 buys a bale of straw that could take an hour to collect and transport as sea grass. But this morning I was not willing to go look for a bale of straw to buy so I used what was left over from a couple of years ago. Next time I go for eggs I'll see about getting some straw as well.

The summer is slipping by so fast! I still haven't gone swimming or kayaking (I was terribly envious of the woman who has already gone 4 times!). I feel so lazy, all I want to do is sit on my back deck and watch the garden and listen to the birds.

The rain and the ramifications of aging

The downpour last Friday was pretty significant, lots of flooding and washouts. 72 mm, which is a lot in one day around here. Damage to roads, flooded basements, so on and so forth. I heard that Main Street filled right up and overflowed the sidewalks onto adjacent lawns. But my basement stayed dry! All the work done two winters ago paid off. Of course the sump pump was very busy for a couple of days after that.

I just got email from a dear friend out west, she has been very sporadic about replying to my emails. She said there was a reason for that, the last couple of years have been awful for her. And now she knows why, she just got a diagnosis of Parkinson's. Apparently before any of the physical symptoms show up there is depression and anxiety. I remember that the last time I visited her (two years ago) she did seem uncommonly anxious, but I attributed it to recent events in her life. Which it may very well have been, but exacerbated by this other thing. We have a mutual friend who was diagnosed with Parkinson's around about the time I left BC, on subsequent visits I have watched his deterioration and the effect on his partner. Not good.

I was shocked by my friend's email and I was just headed out the door to a meeting. For the first half of the meeting I was kind of out of it. I did eventually get into things, but it was always there in my mind. Still is I guess.

My brother's birthday yesterday, I called to wish him Happy Birthday. We chatted about a bunch of things and he told me about our other brother's call, how other brother was quite upbeat about treatments for his liver cancer. I pointed out to my birthday brother that that may very well be, but other brother's prognosis is little more than a year without treatment, and a few months more than that with treatment. Birthday brother said he did not know that. Birthday brother is very busy right now and I said I hoped he could get everything done this year because next year we may be needing to travel out west …if not sooner.

The meeting I attended this week was a Green Party thing. First campaign meeting for the newly nominated Green Party candidate in my riding. Potluck and strategizing, very exciting. I met a very dynamic young woman in the committee I joined who kind of left all of us older folks gaping. Amazing energy and activism. WWW take note, she's headed your way, going to Memorial for first year university studying the ocean. Molly. We are sorry to lose her but she has left behind everything she can think of, all of her connections and history, for our candidate to use. Voting age is 18, which means high school grads, and I guess there's a lot of them wanting some meaningful change.

On another note, I went for an eye exam today. The local optometrist has quite a shop, employs a whole lot of people. I went to him back in the day when it was just him and his receptionist. Anyway, after the exam he sent me to talk to someone about prices for glasses. After a bit of a wait I talked to this woman who laid out all the options, ranging from the "cut rate deal" of $299 (just the lenses, frames extra) up to $869 (lenses only) for the super duper lenses that make you think you are not wearing glasses at all. We discussed coatings and angles and health benefits and she gave me a bunch of pamphlets and I noted down manufacturers' names and prices for turther investigation.

One of the things she told me about was this coating that is supposed to filter out "high energy blue" (or something to that effect). Used to be UV was bad, now it's creeping up the spectrum through blue.

So I went online to find out what the big deal about blue is. Turns out there is a lot of conflicting information. Blue is good/blue is bad. At my age, cataracts are starting, a number of my friends have already had the surgery. Cataracts cause your vision to yellow, blue is filtered out. One study says blue causes insomnia, another says blue cures insomnia. Cataracts protect against macular degeneration (caused by blue!). Cataracts good/cataracts bad.

Another thing I have been researching is lawn mowers. As noted previously, I can't start my gas-powered lawn mower, so I was looking into alternatives. My lawn is broken up with bushes and garden beds, there is a very dry area and a very wet area and a steep slope on one side. Not to mention all the holes that Hapi has dug either as hidey holes for precious bones or as cool nests to sleep in. A corded electric is out of the question, too many twists and turns. Self-propelled sounds nice but it means you can't mow backwards in tight spaces. I looked at a cordless electric (battery powered) and that was promising, but it was 20 pounds heavier than my rinky dink gas mower. It's big and hard to maneuver, but it's quiet and doesn't vibrate and it stores well.

For the life of me I cannot find a mower that is easy to start, light-weight and maneuverable, and doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I may have to give up on the idea.

In the mean time I am weight lifting in hopes of being able to start my mower before mowing season ends. And I decided not to worry about blue, I soon won't be able to see it anyway.

Weaving done, for now

It's a solid downpour outside, complete with thunder and presumably lightning, and it is supposed to last into the night. Hapi is sleeping in the basement, hopefully oblivious to the thunder.

I finished my weaving project on Wednesday night. I had to go into the city every other day for a week and on the final day I was weaving for eight hours. By the time I got my project off the loom my back was almost completely destroyed.

I was feeding loonies into a parking meter during the day, but it turned out that the meter was broken and I got a parking ticket. Fortunately the "meter maid" (in this case, a guy) was nearby and I managed to explain to him what was happening so he tore up the ticket and gave me free parking for the rest of the day.

The dogsitter that I lined up for the time I was in the city called me on the weekend to say that he was in the hospital and about to be moved to the city for major surgery. So much for dogsitting. His illness is progressing rapidly and I don't know how much longer he will survive, he is dying piecemeal. It's a tragic situation and my own disappointment at suddenly losing my dogsitter pales in comparison.

However, my wonderful mechanic who has kept my vehicles roadworthy over the years at a fraction of what it might cost elsewhere, stepped up and said he'd have no problem staying with Hapi as long as needed. He loves her and Hapi loves him almost as much as she loves me. I think he reminds her of my son, her former owner.

After the marathon weaving session on Wednesday I was a zombie on Thursday. My back felt like I'd broken something and my brain was barely capable of reading a magazine, let alone carrying on a conversation. Today is better though, the brain functions and the back tries to. But I am glad it is raining, it means one more day of staying indoors resting.

I am already thinking about my next weaving project. I have a couple of ideas and can't decide which one to pursue. Today I was reading a book on tapestry weaving and wondering if I should tackle that. But it is a whole different skill set so it's going to depend on whether I am up for something simple or complicated. I am just beginning to feel like I am getting somewhere with textile weaving, I should probably postpone the tapestry weaving for a bit. But it is tempting.

In the meantime I still have to do some finishing work on the current project. There are a few ends to needle-weave in and cutting and hemming and fringe-knotting to be done. It's more tedious than interesting, so it could take a while.

My weaving project and other stories

The duck that lost her nest and her two bodyguards left the Reservoir for a few days after the nest was destroyed but they are back now. Looks like the threesome are a thing now, tragedy has cemented their relationship. There are lots of fish nests all around the edges of both ponds with fishes guarding them. I'd love to get a photo of a fish guarding its nest but they see me coming and move away from the nest before I can snap a picture.

The parks people lower the water level on one pond in order to put a string of buoys around the beach swimming area, but over the years we dogwalkers have protested this action because it puts the fish nests in jeopardy. Some of us have gone so far as to volunteer to put in the line of buoys ourselves without lowering the water level, but I guess the town is not up for the risk of a bunch of seniors doing the work of paid staff. This year the guy who puts in the buoys did it without lowering the water level so far as to destroy the nests. He's a nice guy with a great sense of humour. We are always complaining to him about town policy with regards to the Reservoir and he passes on our complaints because as he says, it's job security for himself. As long as we complain he has enough work to remediate the park to our specifications for the foreseeable future.

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The warp...

My weaving course ended last Wednesday but none of us completed our projects. Our work has to be off the looms before the 24th because the looms are needed over the summer. Our instructor says this has never happened before and it seems to be the result of the Centre reducing the length of the course from 10 weeks to 8 and each of us having to take evenings off for personal reasons (funeral, wedding, writing competition, etc). So now I have to go into the city every other day for a week in order to finish. Road work season has started and there is now a half hour wait on the highway for that so my commute time is now two hours each way. And, I have to get a dogsitter for Hapi because it is now too warm to leave her in the car while I am in class.

...and the weft

In addition to all that, I had previously committed to doing some volunteer ushering this weekend for a show put on by one of the local high schools. So this is the weekend from hell, non-stop busyness. That's my idea of hell, busyness. By the time my project is finished I am going to be a basket case.

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Last Wednesday I took advantage of having to get a dogsitter by going into the city a little early to stroll the harbourfront boardwalk. The Bluenose II happens to be in town for a couple of days before decamping to Ontario for the summer. That ship is pretty controversial, being a classic example of a hole in the water to pour money into. However it is very beautiful and I feel like I have a personal connection to it because I once met its original builder at his boatyard just outside of Lunenburg, and back in the '80s I took my kids for a cruise around the harbour on it.

Another time I was taking the ferry from Chester to Tancook Island (see story here) and the Bluenose II happened to be in Chester then. Our ferryboat captain, as a joke, pretended to ram the ship. At the last minute he veered off, to the great relief of the Bluenose II crew lined up on deck and all of us passengers on the ferryboat.

Little Birdies

The lone neighbourhood crow

A couple of weeks ago a male cardinal brought his offspring to my bird feeder and showed the youngster how it works. Since then the youngster has been back several times. He or she is all brown, more brown than a female cardinal, so I don't know if it is a male or female. I was going to take down the feeder but after seeing the juvenile cardinal I decided to leave it in place a little longer. Today the father cardinal was back with the youngster and fed it several seeds from the feeder. Other days I have seen the youngster in my back yard just fooling around.

I also have a new crow visitor. Once it tried to get at my feeder but the bird is just too big. Another time I saw it strutting on the front lawn with all its head feathers fluffed up like a kind of mane. It was very handsome! I think it has claimed my lawn as its territory. There are usually a dozen or so crows that hang out in my neighbourhood but right now there is just one. I think the others are busy raising their young.

I wrote this a while ago when the trees were still bare of leaves. More recently I have returned to the Reservoir after a week away due to Hapi having discovered the duck nest (see previous post). Sadly but not unexpectedly the duck nest is no more, a few broken egg shells are all that remain. A friend recounted her own dog's discovery of the nest when it was still active, and the male "bodyguard" ducks chased her dog away. So I guess they really were bodyguards and not opportunists. But now they are all gone; I feel sad for the duck but it really was a bad place to nest.

My Pet Predator

Last week was the awards ceremony for the writing competition I entered. I was short-listed but did not win which was what I expected. But two other writers from my writing group and a husband (of one of the other writers) and myself headed into the city for the event. We went early enough to go for dinner beforehand and had a great meal at a tiny African restaurant just around the corner from the Art Bar where the ceremony was held. The winners in each category read their entries and then four people who were in a mentorship program read excerpts from their works in progress. One of the writers who came to the city with me is a poet and she was hoping to hear the winning poetry selection, however the winner was a no-show and they did not read that entry. Too bad, I think it would have been interesting.

We had a good time. I left Hapi with friends and unfortunately she howled most of the time that I was away. They were a little taken aback by that, they had never heard her howl. Separation issues I guess.

I took Hapi to the feed mill with me to get some seed potatoes, onion sets and pelletized lime. They let dogs into the store there. There is a feed mill cat who is unafraid of dogs and another customer had their dog as well. I let Hapi wander, I didn't think there was anything she could get into. Boy was I wrong.

One of the girls behind the counter had ordered chicks to raise for meat birds and her order had arrived and was sitting on the floor behind the counter. A big box full of very cute looking chicks. Hapi eventually made her way behind the counter and saw the chicks. She plucked one out of the box. The girl behind the counter was very fast, she got that chick out of Hapi's mouth in a split second. The chick appeared shocked but alive and hopefully not injured. I apologized profusely but she said not to worry, they were just meat birds.

I was a bit of a nervous wreck when I left the feed mill, I thought I'd take Hapi for a walk to calm my nerves. So we went to the Reservoir. There's a duck there with a nest. Apparently this is the second next that duck has tried to sit on, the first nest and its contents were destroyed by dogs. The current one is only slightly better hidden but I knew about it and roughly where it was from one of the other dog owners. On this particular day I found out exactly where the nest was. Hapi found it. She flushed out the duck sitting on the nest and proceeded to investigate its contents. Meanwhile I was running throught the bushes and across a ditch yelling, "No! No! No!"

I managed to get to the nest before Hapi could snatch an egg and I dragged her away. There were 8 eggs in the nest. A couple of male ducks had been patrolling the pond nearby and when the mother duck was chased off her nest squawking in protest, they joined her in the air, also squawking. I used to joke that those ducks were her bodyguards, but I think they are actually opportunists waiting to see if they can impregnate her again if the nest fails. At any rate the whole gang flew away.

I took Hapi home, thoroughly wrecked by the two incidents. What fun to have a predator for a pet! But I dare not go back to the Reservoir now, she knows exactly where the nest is and will continue to seek it out as long as it is there. Not that I think there is any hope that any of those eggs will survive, if the dogs don't get them then the eagles surely will. Not to mention raccoons, skunks or coyotes. But I just don't want Hapi to be the one to do it. So I am having to take her elsewhere for her morning walk.

Two geese hiding their babies on the left, beaver swimming by on the right

Today we went to the Gaspereau Canal. I saw two ducks, two geese, two eagles and a beaver. I saw the geese twice and it turned out that they had four goslings with them. When they saw Hapi and me they herded their charges across the canal and positioned themselves so that I couldn't see the babies.

Beaver lodge, just left of centre (looks like a heap of sticks by the water's edge)

The beavers around here are "bank beavers", they don't build lodges in the middle of a pond but on the banks of rivers. they don't build dams either, which is a good thing because if they tried to dam the canal they would be removed. One day last month the power company lowered the water level in the canal and you could see the whole beaver lodge including its underwater entry point (which wasn't underwater at the time).

Female eagle in tree, probably waiting for the goslings to appear

There are a lot of micro-hydro installations in this province. They are the original dams built back in the day when such things were quite small. The canal goes between two such dams operated by the power company here, my neighbourhood is powered by one of those dams. There is also a fish ladder around one of the dams for the Gaspereaux fish (they are called alewives in Toronto). Fishers along the river catch them with big dipnets every spring on their spawning migration up the river, and they are shipped to Haiti for food. Fishing season on the Gaspereau is a big deal, it just ended this past weekend. The power company is supposed to run their operation in such a way that the fish are not killed but periodically they screw it up and thousands of fish end up dead.

The Mower Starts and Other News

Weaving at home: a rug

Turns out the lawn mower works just fine, the problem is me. I don't have the upper body strength any more to pull that starter cord hard and fast enough. I don't know which is worse, having a mower that won't start or not having a body that can start it. Well, at least I have a work around: my buddy J can drop by on his way home from work to start the mower so I can mow. I think he'd even mow for me if I asked him to. It may come to that one day, but not yet.

Anyway, I did manage to mow the lawn on Thursday. We seem to be in a weather pattern of rain downpours every other day and if I wait till the end of the day between downpours the grass is a little drier. Momentarily.

I've had many suggestions from sympathetic former mowers to get an electric or even a battery-powered mower. I did look into those possibilities on the internet, but the big problem with the alternatives to a gas-powered mower is that they do not do well with wet grass. I could use one for several months in the summer and fall, but in the spring the grass grows like crazy and the ground is soggy (and so is the grass).

One of my neighbours suggested I get a scythe. She confessed that she cuts her grass with a bread knife!

I said, "That must take forever!"

She said, "Yup, all summer."

I'll stick with getting J to start the mower on his way home from work.

I joined a potluck group and there was a potluck dinner last night, my second with the group. I avoided this group in the past because of my dislike of and lack of talent in cooking. Lately I have been facing down my concerns in that area with a phone app recommended by one of my sons. So I thought I should give it a shot. The first dinner I didn't know anyone and I brought an old standby, a sort of fruit crisp made with blueberries and strawberries. It wasn't great, and I took half of it home with me. Oh well.

Last night I made something from my phone app. First off it was way too big and second I again brought home at least half of it. Someone else made something similar that was way better. They also made a much smaller quantity so they didn't take any of it home with them. I ate and drank too much and ended up waking in the night due to that, and spent too much time fretting about my poor cooking skills.

Not even a phone app is going to improve my cooking skills. Either I have to quit the group or get my head around the fact that my contributions will be less than stellar.

The warp on my home loom

But in other news I got a lot of weaving and writing done this past week, due to the crappy weather. With a bit of luck I'll have the current project off my loom at home before the end of my weaving course. The last class I went to I was the only student and the instructor and I exchanged life stories while working on our respective projects. I finished threading the heddles and am halfway through sleying the reed.

I won't be going to class this week because of the writing competition awards and I will almost certainly have to come in one weekend to finish the weaving before the end of the course. But the instructor sold me a warping mill and I ordered some 2/8 cotton for weaving. I love looking through the catalog for colours. I ordered Cherry Red, Dark Orange, Old Gold (yellow), Magenta and Royal Blue. The catalog itself costs $40, one day I'll invest in one of my own. I look forward to using the warping mill for the next project.

The End of the World and My Lawnmower Won't Start

With all the rain my lawn is in dire need of a mowing but finding a day dry enough to do it has been a problem. I thought yesterday, Sunday, would be it but the lawnmower would not start. I got pretty frustrated trying to get it going and finally left a message for the guy who serviced the lawnmower a few weeks earlier. Surprisingly, he called back in an hour. Said it wasn't his fault, he was super busy and didn't think he had time to look at it, and it was my fault for doing something stupid anyway.

So then I was mad. Mad at him for lecturing me, mad at myself for doing something stupid, mad at the weather for raining and mad at the grass for growing. Took Hapi for a walk in hopes of walking it off, but it didn't help. Had a bath and then drank the last of the homemade vodka-raspberry-juice liqueur and ate some potato chips and watched a depressing TV show. That didn't really help.

Previous to all of that one of my sons told me that he had posted on Facebook a link to a scholarly paper that predicted the collapsse of civilization sometime in the next 10 years due to climate change. My son said he was making changes in his plans for the future as a result of reading this paper. We discussed it for a bit, I was a tad sceptical and especially so since my son seemed a bit vague on some of the political facts supporting this argument. I went looking for the paper and downloaded it intending to read it later. But with the lawnmower situation I was now more receptive to the idea of civilizational collapse. So by the time I went to bed I was in full blown existential depression.

Needless to say waking up didn't help much either, especially now that it was raining in earnest. Forecast is for a couple of days of this. I finally tried to read the paper my son had posted and I have to say it is poorly written, overly long and doesn't really make any kind of sensible argument at all. If this is the final word on civilizational collapse then we might have a few more decades to muddle along.

Found the lawnmower manual which recommended washing the air filter with soap and water, so I did that. Next step is to soak it in engine oil and replace it in the lawn mower. Who knows, maybe that will work. Then I'll call back the maintenance guy and tell him to p*** off, but if it doesn't I will bite my tongue and say nothing.

In the afternoon there was a brief letup in the rain so I took Hapi to the Reservoir. Forgot that the black fly are out in force so I walked quickly to stay ahead of them. I think if civilization does collapse they are going to miss us.

Wild things

I was reading an article about human efforts to control the Mississippi River in Louisiana ("Louisiana's Disappearing Coast", Elizabeth Colbert in the New Yorker, March 2019). Colbert describes the various engineering projects over the past century and some of their unintended consequences. In passing she mentions the huge imbalance between humanity and wildlife. The total weight of all humans outweighs the total weight of all wild mammals by eight to one, the total of all humans plus our livestock outweighs all wild vertebrates except fish. There is no place on earth now that has not been affected by us in some way.

So when you think about it, what does "wild" really mean? I think it used to mean the natural world unaffected by us, creatures untrammelled by our influence. Does it any more? In some ways "the natural world" is just a kind of vast zoo (or garden) where creatures have the appearance of being "wild". Wilderness is a kind of illusion.

When did this happen? In my lifetime the human population has tripled, and presumably our impact on wilderness and the natural world has increased by some similar factor. Maybe when I was a small child there was still some true wilderness in existence? Or maybe it happened before that, I don't know.

I was talking to a friend on the west coast last winter (by phone) and mentioned skating on a local pond. At first he misunderstood and thought I was talking about a skating rink on solid ground and when I corrected him he called it "wild skating". He likened it to "wild swimming" which apparently is a thing in some places. I said that I disliked swimming in pools, I would rather not swim at all if there was no natural body of water to swim in (I suppose swimming at the reservoir is an exception, but it feels like a natural body of water). He was amazed and admitted that he had never done it, and this is a man who regularly engages in extreme hiking, camping and skiing in the mountains.

It would not have occurred to me to call what I did "wild". We had a good laugh about that.

What does "wild" mean now? Is it some historical concept? Or has it changed its meaning to something a little more domesticated?

An expletive deleted children's story

The weaving project in progress

My big news this week is that I got shortlisted for a prize in children's lit. Actually happened over a month ago but I was sworn to secrecy until they published the official list, which just happened. It's terrible to be sworn to secrecy on something so exciting, and the release was palpable. I immediately fired off emails to friends and family and all of the friends—every last one of them—was just as excited as I was.

Deafening silence from family. A prophet in one's own land sort of thing I guess.

Eventually one brother, the one with the awful diagnosis, broke silence and the three sons one by one also chimed in over the next few days. Have not heard from brother #2, but I believe he does not check email regularly, or so I tell myself.

Anyway, I won't know till the end of the month whether it goes any further than being shortlisted and I don't really expect it will, but the shortlist is exciting enough. There's going to be an awards ceremony (multiple prizes in different categories) which conflicts with my weaving class and I almost feel like skipping the awards but that wouldn't really be kosher. Show up and congratulate the winners, hobnob with 'real' writers. Risk not finishing my weaving project due to too many skipped classes.

Being a 'children's writer' was not really what I was aspiring to but hey! I'll take it.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The new couch

In other news I have rearranged and refurnished my living room. I was at a local building supply place a month ago to purchase a tool that was on sale and happened to see a couch there that interested me. It was in the paint and flooring department and there were a couple of customers sitting on it contemplating some flooring samples. I sat down beside them and decided it was comfy. My only issue was whether it would actually fit in my living room which is small and already overcrowded with furniture. So I took measurements and went home, took some more measurements and concluded that if I got rid of a couple of furniture pieces I might be able to fit the building supply couch in.

The old table

One of the furniture pieces that would have to go is my large dining table. It's a good table but it is too large for the small room and really only gets used for piling books and papers on. If it had a leaf that I could remove it would be fine but it doesn't. So I did a bit of moving stuff around and bought the couch. Huge effort to get it home and set up but worth it, I love the couch. Then some internet browsing to find a smaller table and thought I found the right table at the IKEA in the city. A trip to the city with a friend to look at it in real life, combined with a browse of the best Chinese grocery store in the city (or that's what the newspaper review of Chinese grocery stores said) and I came home with a Norden gateleg table (and dark dark soy sauce, noodles and dried mushrooms). The table's principal feature is that it has two huge hinged leaves so that it folds down to almost nothing.

This week I assembled the table. I had forgotten what IKEA assembly projects were like.

The instructions have no words, only pictures. There was a whole separate document of warnings, all in pictures only and some of them quite incomprehensible. At a certain point I was stymied, the hinge screws would not screw in. I tried an electric drill/driver but that did not help. The warnings document had a picture of a person phoning the IKEA store (as opposed to standing there with the manual in hand and a big question mark in a balloon above their head) so I did that.

The person with the heavy accent (I had to get him to repeat what he was saying numerous times because I couldn't understand him) told me to try harder. After huffily telling him that I had already done that (I think I used the F-word) he then told me to bring the table back to the store. I thanked him for his assistance and ended the call. The question mark was now multiple exclamation marks.

The electric drill was lying on the floor next to the offending hinges so I picked it up and selected an appropriate bit and reamed out the pre-drilled screw holes until the screws would go in. I may regret that in the future but for now it works.

I am happy with my new smaller table and the building supply couch. Hapi on the other hand is not, she hates change. She comes into the house and stands at the doorway to the living room and looks around with a big frown, then she turns and goes back outside. Aside from two brief inspections of the living room she has stayed outside ever since. Doggy disapproval is clearly communicated.

Spring kayak vacation

Milford House from the rear

I just got home yesterday evening from the 4-day kayaking trip, it was wonderful and I am tired but happy.

I find it impossible to take photos while out on the water but one of my fellow kayakers thinks she has come up with a solution, so maybe next time.

The place we stayed at, Milford House, is great and the staff very friendly and helpful. Although checkout time is 11 am, we wanted to stay out kayaking in the afternoon. We asked about toilet facilities (the main lodge is closed at this time of year, only the 3 winterized cabins are open and they were all occupied) and we were told that all of the non-winterized cabins were unlocked and ready to go for the summer season opening in a couple of weeks. So we were able to use a toilet in one of those cabins.

Our "cabin"

Our "cabin" was bigger than my house with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a huge living/dining/kitchen space and a large verandah overlooking the lake. We had ample firewood for the woodstove, but since all of us use woodstoves routinely for winter heat we were not eager to try it out. We did light the fire one evening but very quickly had to open windows and doors to cool off.

Our deck

Milford House is the oldest lodge in the province, in continuous use for almost two centuries in spite of at least three major fires. There are over 20 "cabins" of various sizes all around the lakefront, each one well separated by space and trees from its neighbours. The lodge is situated on a chain of lakes joined by "runs" so there is lots of kayaking to be done exploring the lakes and runs. In the past we have camped on these lakes in warmer weather as there are several campsites and picnic spots around. Some of the campsites have been mapped but there are others only known by word-of-mouth. You only tell special friends of their location as it would not do to have them over-run.

Stopped in one of the runs

We saw a great blue heron fishing in one of the runs, it seemed to have staked out a space along the run as its territory. We saw several turtles sunning on logs and rocks, a couple of loons, several black ducks and a pair of Canada geese. On our first evening we saw one lone goose on the lodge back lawn, it paced back and forth and did not fly away when we walked by. It looked a little alarmed by our presence but seemed to be stuck there. I imagined that it was there for a rendezvous and dared not leave its post. The next day we saw two geese swimming together nearby and I thought that the rendezvous had arrived. We saw them several times over the time we were there. Whenever they took to the air they honked loudly and continuously.

Three of our four kayaks

Picnic stop

One afternoon after a long rainfall the lake was glassy smooth. Rocks emerging from the water were perfectly reflected as interesting symmetrical shapes. Sometimes they looked as if they were floating in mid-air. Very dreamlike.

In the evenings we had wonderful suppers and wine, we talked about what we had seen, our kids, our lives, all the usual stuff. It was great. Cell phone coverage was sketchy, also great. We are seriously thinking of making an annual thing of it. At this time of year there is maybe a day or two between it being too cold and wet and too buggy, so it is nice to be in a cabin rather than a tent. The black fly were out in great clouds but not yet biting, just being annoying. Spring is not Nova Scotia's best season. The autumn however is spectacular: warm, colourful and relatively bug-free. That's the best time to go camping.

I could have brought Hapi along as Milford House is pet-friendly, but she would have to have been locked in the house whenever we were out in our kayaks and a couple of the women were not keen on dogs anyway. I was fine with the break and she stayed home with a dogsitter.

Lonely goose

In the picture above is one goose. There used to be two, but the horse that also resides in this pasture rolled over on the other one and killed it. I'm sure this one goose is lonely now, it was always in the company of its fellow. I am sad for it, I used to enjoy seeing the two of them together. [Disregard the snow, this picture is a few weeks old]

My son who just lost his dog (my dog's brother) is coming to visit this summer, he wants to see Hapi and keeps asking how she is doing. He's afraid she'll sicken and die before he gets to see her again. She used to be his dog. Apparently my vet is worried too, I got a call from her office a few days ago asking how she was doing. She's fine! She's fine!

This month has been very wet and cool. My backyard lawn loves this but I do not, I need waders to walk to my compost bin. The grass is looking like it will need mowing before I leave but the ground is so soggy I dare not. I am afraid that by the time the ground dries out the grass will be knee-high. I don't need one more task before I leave anyway. Maybe this is the year to just turn my backyard into a "meadow".

Phone call

August 2017

My brother phoned me yesterday. Usually we only phone on birthdays and Christmas despite good intentions to do better than that. It was not good news.

He started by describing surgery on his wrist for a longstanding problem that had worsened in recent years, we had talked about this upcoming surgery on our birthdays (two days apart in early April) and so I thought he was calling to talk about the results.

Pre-surgery he was required to do a regular physical check-up, and it turned out that in his medical records was a 5-year-old diagnosis of liver cancer. Somehow that report was overlooked at the time. My brother has his suspicions about how that happened and it pretty much amounts to grounds for suing somebody, but that is kind of beside the point now.

At the time of the diagnosis the cancer was operable, but if nothing was done he had a prognosis of 18 months to live. Five years ago. Now it is not operable. He will do chemo for it but the prognosis is considerably dimmer than 18 months even with the chemo.

He has been healthy as a horse the past five years. He quit drinking, he ran, he lost a bunch of excess weight, he renovated his house and built a monster workshop/garage/guest apartment pretty much by himself. He still has no symptoms.

I'm kind of stunned. His first appointment with an oncologist is after I get back from kayaking. He is my youngest brother and I don't want him to die. I wasn't planning to go out west this year but maybe I should.

Chowder supper

In a few days I leave for my kayaking trip. Also I signed up for a weaving course in the city which started this past week but I didn't go to the first class. My next class is scheduled for the night before I leave for the kayaking. I took this course once before and I know that the first class is mostly just talking about what we are going to do so I figured I could skip it, but the next class is when we actually start our projects so I can't skip that. I have prep work for that class, which is to wind a warp for my project. And also prep work for the kayak trip: I am responsible for two meals and of course all my gear. So I will be very busy the next few days.

I did take time to go for a chowder supper in the Harbour though. It was a terribly stormy night and I almost didn't go but I am glad I did. The folks in the Harbour were doing the supper as a fundraiser to pay for renovations on the community hall. A number of years ago the United Church closed the local Harbour church and gifted the church, the cemetery and the tiny parish hall to the community, with a small sum of money for repairs. That money has long since been spent but the need for repairs and upgrades continues. This particular fundraiser is to help pay for the recent addition of plumbing: a bathroom and a kitchen sink and hot water tank in a small addition to the hall.

While at the supper someone emerged from the bathroom saying, "My first flush!" We all took turns washing dishes at the brand new sink with the window looking out over the Bay of Fundy. The parking lot was blocked off due to extreme mud so everyone was parked on the road. One of the fellows told me about the outdoor faucet for anyone to use for drinking water. They got money from an organization that funds community emergency infrastructure to do that and it helped pay for the indoor plumbing. A win-win for the community.

The church is maintained as well, it is used for music concerts. A great little venue that local musicians are happy to play in.

The chowder supper raised over $600.00 and I had a good time talking to people I haven't seen in a while. I washed a few dishes but didn't try the new toilet; I wished I had though by the time I got home.

Bad mother

[This photo has nothing to do with the blog post title]

The last time my book club met, we were reading Olive Kitteridge. It seems we were divided down the middle in our reviews, some readers raved, some panned. I was one of the panners. Ravers praised the complex character of Olive, the development of character, the exposure of how awfully she treated her son Christopher. But also how the author led them from dislike to understanding, maybe even respect.

The book annoyed me so much (one chapter in particular) that I had to go take a bath to cool off. Then I read that it had been turned into a mini-series starring Frances McDormand, so I went looking for that and ended up watching the whole series (4 hours) before our meeting. This is one time I thought the TV version was better than the book. In my view the author took a bunch of characteristics and smushed them into one character and called it "complex". Olive did not make sense to me. McDormand's interpretation of Olive seemed to be that she was somewhat autistic, and I could make sense of that. But I disliked the son intensely for being so judgmental. At one point he referred to his second wife's son by another man as a "piece of crap", and I thought: "takes one to know one".

In my book club one reader referred to Olive having abused her son so it was no wonder he was so screwed up. Each chapter is a kind of vignette, only a couple take place during Christopher's boyhood, and I didn't really see consistent evidence of abuse. While Olive admits to having hit Christopher as a boy I don't see that as evidence of abuse. For sure she was not anyone's ideal mother, but she loved her son and took care of him as best she could. A couple of times in the book someone says that it is always the mother who gets blamed for childhood problems, and I agree with that. Very rarely do we accuse fathers of abuse or neglect unless it is quite horrific. Mothers just have to be less than perfect to be up for judgment.

There were a few anecdotes of horrible behaviour on the part of our parents and I said, Yeah, my siblings and I tell those stories and laugh about them. One person who is a family therapist decried Olive's narcissism for refusing to hear her son out when he criticized her for being a bad mother, another member related how when her teenage daughter accused her of being a rotten mother (for not letting her do something or other) she retorted that yes she was an awful mother, now go to your room. I said that if my son did that I'd react the same way Olive did; after pouring one's heart and soul into raising a kid one is not keen to hear that the kid didn't appreciate it one little bit. The therapist thought the correct response was to be open to criticism and to apologize for the hurt caused.

Interestingly, one new member said that what struck him was the difference between how kids are treated in North America and in Europe; he described how kids are allowed to go everywhere and do almost anything with little restriction or apparent harm. It surprised him how repressive American parents are. Perhaps if parents felt free to loosen the reins a bit they'd be less inclined to oppress their kids. But gods help you if you aren't actively "parenting" every second of your life. Bad mother indeed!

I was a less (much less) than perfect mother, so perhaps I am overly sensitive on the issue. I think I come from a long line of less-than-perfect parents and there was a time when I was pretty judgmental about my own parents' mistakes and faults. Eventually I figured it out and moved on. But it bothers me when I see other people engaging in that, I feel like swatting them upside of the head for stupidity. As my father used to say, "Quit yer bellyaching!"

But I guess that qualifies as abuse too.

Adapting

I was on my way home the other night with two women. They are volunteers who help a couple of Syrian refugee families adjust to life in this part of the world. One of them was talking about a young girl in one of the families—she thought the girl might be around 11 years old—and how tall she is. Apparently this is a concern for the adult women in the families. They feel that because of her height she should start wearing a hijab, like an adult Muslim woman.

The girl is reluctant, no one else in her class at school wears one and so it would make her stand out. She just wants to be like the other girls in her class. So it's an ongoing discussion. The two women I was with thought it was a shame to make the 11-year-old grow up so fast, to mark her as different in a world she just wants to belong in.

It must be hard for refugee parents to see their children resisting ages-old traditions, becoming less and less recognizable to them. The stress of making their way in a foreign land exacerbated by the strain of dealing with children who adapt so much more quickly to the new way of life.

Old People Out On The Town

Last night was the last show in the Performing Arts Series that I volunteer usher for, it was a great concert of the Nova Scotia Symphony Orchestra. They come here every year. This year they have a new and younger conductor, he was very good (and not hard on the eyes!). I learned some things about classical music from his introductory remarks for each piece.

The first was an Octet composed by Stravinsky, then a Tchaikovsky piece written just for stringed instruments ("Serenade for Strings"). The conductor said that Tchaikovsky was the culmination of a classical trend toward bigger and more emotionally grand symphonies, Stravinsky was a return to smaller and more basic forms. After the intermission they performed an early symphony by Dvorak, before he became famous for his Slavonic Dances. My favourite Dvorak piece is the New World Symphony. It was quite delightful listening to this much earlier symphony and hearing premonitions of both the Slavonic Dances and the New World Symphony in it. The final performance was by a composer I'd never heard of with a name (I mislaid my program and don't remember what it was) that sounded Russian or East European but who was actually Irish-French living in England. He pre-dated the other three composers. I think his piece was called Appalachian Spring and it was quite spritely. The last two pieces included stellar performances on a grand piano, by a woman who I found out later is transgender. Which kind of explained her height and dramatic manner of playing.

I had previously arranged with a couple of the other ushers that we would go out for a drink after this show. We went to the new pub in town, a converted church. This town has a proliferation of alcoholic establishments, more coming every year it seems. When I lived here back in the '70s and '80s there was one tavern and another student place on the university campus. Both venues are still here but the tavern in town has become quite seedy. Most "townies" and students avoid it. But in addition there are now a cidery, a wine bar, four pubs and four licensed restaurants. There's another pub due to open this summer. All this in a town of maybe 2500-3000 people.

The converted church is an older stone building with a wood panelled vaulted ceiling. It feels more like a city kind of pub than a small town pub. One of the other ushers invited a fourth along and we got a high table for four. Later our two "bosses" came in with some young women, they waved to us and sat at the other end of the church. Just as well, they would have dominated the conversation.

As it turned out the fourth usher had a really interesting story to tell about herself. She was the youngest at our table, maybe a couple of years younger than myself. She came to Canada when she was six, her family escaping Hungary in the aftermath of the failed Hungarian Revolution. Her description of the harrowing escape from the perspective of a six-year-old was riveting. At one point she said her mother gave her and her younger brother slugs of brandy to knock them out and keep them quiet. She said her mother always denied that she did that but she firmly believes her mother lied.

The day of the escape her mother woke her up and told her that she didn't have to go to school that day because they were all going to the zoo together. Her six-year-old self was very disappointed that they never did get to the zoo. She remembers two train rides that day. At one point the conductors on one of the trains hustled the family and some other people off the train and into a baggage storage room at a train station, and locked them in. She couldn't understand what that was all about, standing in this small windowless room surrounded by luggage in the dark. But Russian soldiers had boarded the train and the Hungarian conductors were hiding all the people trying to escape. The brandy-drugging episode was at night just before they had to cross a field to get to the border with Austria. They waited at the edge of the field for it to be dark before they could cross.

They arrived at Pier 21 in Halifax after their long journey across Europe, but their father did not want to stay in Nova Scotia. There was a large community of Hungarian refugees in Toronto that he wanted to join, but he couldn't find a job in Toronto. They ended up moving to St Catherines, where our friend the storyteller grew up. I remember that the high school I went to in Toronto was smack in the middle of the part of the city where most East European refugees ended up, I met many Hungarian kids in my classes. If her father had found a job in Toronto, maybe I would have met her then. She found school very hard because she couldn't understand or speak English. But the turning point came for her when she actually understood a book they were reading. It was "The Little Engine That Could". The first song on the radio that she understood the words for was "Lipstick on Your Collar", but she didn't understand what the significance of lipstick on a collar could be.

Another memory she had was of going to the baths with her mother before they left Hungary. Budapest sits on top of extinct volcanoes and is full of hot springs. Over the centuries many public baths were built there. The one our friend went to with her mother was a Turkish bath, built by Turks when they occupied Hungary hundreds of years ago. She remembers the amazing blue tiles of the place, but especially she remembers that it was the first time she saw her mother naked. Hungary has a long history of occupation by various peoples, and a certain resulting resentment. Our friend noted this on her last visit there. She is disappointed with Victor Orban and doesn't know what will become of her country of origin.

It was a most interesting evening!

Grooming and Vetting

On Monday I took Hapi to the groomer. It was a 4 hour ordeal, Hapi and I were exhausted by the end. Things went a little better than the last time though. I think the groomer, Mary, is getting used to Hapi and is a little less afraid of her, so she was firmer and more confident around her. Also she changed the way she did some things. She used to blow dry Hapi in the bath area which has three walls, and Hapi looked and acted like a cornered rat. This time she did the blow drying on the grooming table where Hapi could look out the window. She looked more resigned than terrorized.

Mary uncovered a big black spot on Hapi's tail that was new to me and she couldn't identify ("maybe a hot spot?"). So on Tuesday I took Hapi to the vet to have a look at it. A quick internet search suggested some kind of dermatitis but I am so sensitized after Hiro's death that my mind goes to worst case scenarios. The vet (Natasha) thought it was more of a dermatitis thing and recommended washing it and keeping it dry. "Benign neglect" she said. We also discussed end-of-life options, euthanasia and such. She recommended starting Hapi on some kind of painkiller regime. Natasha also said I should be aware that some cancers have a genetic component and what happened to Hiro could very well happen to her.

The only thing Hapi doesn't like about the vet's office is the weigh scale. We did eventually coax her into standing on it for a few seconds, just long enough to get a rough estimate of her weight. I was overfeeding her during the winter since she spent so much time outdoors, and sure enough she had put on weight. So it's time to scale back on that.

My son is going to mail Hiro's leftover painkillers to me, Natasha said she could give me a prescription but she wants to do regular bloodwork to keep an eye on Hapi's kidney and liver health, since that is the most likely drawback to the painkillers. So I guess the next time we see her I'll order that up. Probably expensive but what can you do. Natasha said that I should see dramatic change in Hapi's disposition and activity level if she goes on the painkiller.

I do like this vet, she combines pragmatism and compassion in a nice way.