Icy trails, part two

I followed some of the mystery trails in the woods that I mentioned in my previous post, and I am thinking that they are red squirrel trails. Red squirrels look like chipmunks without the stripey markings. What I noticed was that the trails come close to large tree trunks in many places and if these are squirrel trails then that makes sense, the squirrel can get off the trail quickly if it suspects trouble. And when I was following one particular trail there was one squirrel screaming at me from high in a tree and another watching me from a fallen tree that disappeared when I got too close. Actually, it was probably Hapi they were watching and screaming at.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A couple of nights ago I watched two movies, Three Identical Strangers and Edie. 

Three Identical Strangers is a documentary about triplets who were separated after birth and adopted out to three different families; accidentally discovering each other at the age of 19. The movie starts out quite joyfully as the three boys ecstatically discover and connect with each other. But it gets darker as the adoptive parents and an independent investigator look into how this could have happened. As it turns out, the boys were deliberately separated as part of a secret experiment, a "twin study". 

I must say that I always wondered when twin studies were cited as evidence for the heritability of certain human traits or nature vs nurture debates, how did twins get separated in the first place? Accidentally? On purpose? For good reason? This documentary makes it clear that in this particular case it was deliberately done for the sake of someone's research. Of course it raises huge ethical issues about such research, and I won't be able to read about twin studies ever again without being rather disgusted by the implications. In the film a pair of separated female twins were interviewed after they reunited. The interviewer commented that this was like a Disney movie and one of the twins said, Yeah but darker.

An aunt of one of the boys commented throughout the film about her reactions to the revelations that ensued; I thought her comments were insightful and wise. At the end she says—on the subject of nature versus nurture—that she thought that good parenting could overcome anything. One of the issues raised in this film is that not everybody is so lucky to have "good parenting". Sometimes who the parent is and who the child is due to genetics or whatever is at odds, and sometimes it is irreconcilable.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Edie is a story about an old woman determined to climb a mountain in Scotland. She is probably in her late 70s or 80s and quite frail, not at all an athletic kind of person. Her husband has just died and her daughter has packed her off to an old folks home of some sort. She rebels and sets off to climb this mountain, but is poorly equiped for the venture. She literally bumps into a young man who then becomes involved—initially against his will—in helping her to achieve her goal. The film ends with the two of them on the peak of the mountain. 

There's a lot of drone footage that is quite dizzying and if you have any kind of fear of heights you might want to close your eyes for some of that. My reaction to the ending was that I am quite certain that climbing down is a lot harder than climbing up and if she had so much difficulty getting up there I sure hope she got airlifted out because I could not see her surviving the descent even with the help of the young man.

What got to me about the story was that I could relate to a lot of her back story. Essentially she had spent an adult lifetime caring for a disabled husband and a child and having to forego a lot of stuff she would have liked to have done while she still could. When the husband died she was set free but was now so old that the adventures she longed for were out of the question. Years of caring for others when she would really have rather not, turned her bitter and grumpy. She treated the people who were trying to help her quite abruptly and unappreciatively, not that there were a lot of people trying to help her.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Now in my 70s I look back on an adult lifetime of raising boys by myself and taking care of old dogs and, briefly, a parent. There was maybe a 12-year gap when I had no children, dogs or parents to be responsible for. Right now I am caring for my second old dog. Both my parents died in their 70s and although I am assured that my parents' age at death has little bearing on how long I have left to live, it doesn't feel like that. I feel like I maybe have five good years left, not a lot.

It is winter and while there is not a lot of snow there sure is a lot of ice. Finding places I can let Hapi off the leash is hard, all the trails are icy and she must be on leash on sidewalks. Being old she likes to stop and sniff every tree, every snow bank, every fire hydrant; and since her sense of smell is somewhat diminished by age, she takes a very long time for each sniff. So when she is on leash we plod from tree to hydrant to snow drift and stop at each one for a minute or more; it is not exactly a lot of fun. Not to mention the picking-up-your-dog's-poop bylaw. At least when we are on the trails I can let her off leash and not have to stop and wait every time she wants to sniff something.

I relate to Edie's anguish at her life having been a total waste of time. At one point she tells the young man to take a lesson from her, don't do what she did. But I figure there is little chance of that, our culture presses women into caretaking far more than men. When I was young I dearly wanted to be a boy. Although I did not know the details, I was pretty sure that living in our world as a girl or a woman did not nearly provide the opportunities available to boys and men. My mother did encourage me to think about going to university, mostly as a hedge against poverty as a married woman. She herself had had the opportunity to go to university but she gave it up to get married and I suspect that she regretted that decision very much. But I was young and keen to be free of all restrictions, including those imposed by schooling and pursuing an education, so I did not follow her encouragement until much later in life.

"Love what you do and do what you love. Don't listen to anyone else who tells you not to do it. You do what you want, what you love. Imagination should be the center of your life. " ~Ray Bradbury

I find this quote (from the whiskey river blog, Feb. 28) annoying. Sure, follow your heart and do what you love and don't pay any attention to all those naysayers. But if you are a woman that means don't get married, don't have kids and don't take on the care of your own parents when they get old because all those things will stand in the way of doing what you love, unless of course caretaking is what you love. Our culture pays lip service to the idea of finding what you love and pursuing it, but it all hinges on someone else doing the caretaking and there are precious few men doing that. It's woman's work.

Icy trails

Came across a bit of a mystery in the woods this past week. Hapi and I go for an afternoon walk in the nearby woods, where there are multiple circular trails joined together, crossing local roads in three different places. In one area I came across what looked like a new trail, except it is only about 4" wide. It winds around through the forest, under overturned trees and up and down the hill slope. I can't follow it all the way because in places there is less than a foot of headspace above the trail.

I have encountered this trail in several places so I don't know if it is all one trail or several trails. It looks almost like a frozen rivulet but it doesn't follow the natural slope of the land. In one area there were a couple of burrow openings, but not directly onto the trail. It has a bit of a textured pattern from many paw prints, but none stand out enough to identify the creature or creatures using this trail.

It has been cold and icy this past week, I have not seen the regular dog walkers at the Reservoir because the trails there are treacherously icy and the dogs don't really like it. This coming week is supposed to be a good deal warmer, so maybe the ice will retreat a bit.

B told me on my last visit that she has been discharged from the hospital and is now just waiting for a nursing home bed. I thought she already had one but that turns out to be either not true or old news. Anyway, her son F dropped by today and told me that they reversed the discharge because she is getting worse, but no one has told her that. Her organs are starting to shut down and I said to F that it could be just a matter of weeks now. F said that she was so stubborn that he thought she would hang in there a good deal longer than that, but he thinks it unlikely that there is a nursing home in her future.

Sunny days

Snow family enjoying the Reservoir

Hapi's "gut reset" is working like a minor miracle. Not only is she producing lovely little hard turds but she seems to be energized by the relief from her former formless plops. What can I say, this is revolutionary for me and possibly for her too. Now I just have to figure out how to keep her on this diet without breaking the bank. I'm following a couple of leads, but the holiday on Monday kind of puts a crimp on things.

I called one shop that might carry a cheaper version of this diet but they seemed so out of touch that they didn't even know Monday was a holiday here ("Heritage Day"). I drove over to the shop and it was being "womanned" by a kid who was totally new to the job and didn't know anything. She tried to phone the owner but no answer, she even knocked on the owner's door but still no answer. Apparently the owner was taking an afternoon nap and the young woman did not want to disturb her. Oh well, I'll try again Monday. Or maybe Tuesday if they decide to close on the holiday.

In spite of being extremely cold (well, for around here) the weather is quite nice. The ice on the trails is nicely covered by hard-packed snow—but not too much snow—and the sky is sunny and mostly clear. I went to my writing group meeting after what seems like months of absence, I haven't written anything but it was nice to reconnect and listen to other people's stories.

I think my life is slowly shifting towards normalcy: physiotherapy almost over, visits with B in the hospital down to a dull roar, and Hapi's health seeming to improve. I have even developed a bit of a thick skin in listening to B's complaints, I can walk away at the end without carrying it with me.

Summer reminder

Slumpy

I'm in a bit of a slump these days, I'm guessing too much screen time. Just don't seem to be able to tear myself away. Tried turning off the internet access but that doesn't last long, within minutes I come up with some question that I need an answer to which only the internet can provide. Maybe it's the weather, or the reduced social life due to not-so-healthy dog. I don't know. Just feel slumpy.

Hapi has always had "loose stool", AKA diarrhea. She had it when she lived with my son and she has had it all the time she has lived with me. For the most part I just put up with it although I did try various dietary treatments over the years. Nothing worked. So now that she is old the diarrhea has gotten way worse and I finally reached a breaking point and called the vet's office. Turns out they have a nutrition expert, and she recommended a "gut reset" involving a week of probiotics and an expensive veterinary dogfood. This morning I went in to the office to pick up the gut reset food at a hefty $80 for one week. Wow.

From there I went to the Reservoir where Hapi and I walked with D and her dog and I told her the gut reset story. She said, Been there done that, six years ago. For her dog it was an instant cure (the dog had projectile diarrhea! I can't even imagine that!), but they could never take the dog off the diet. She advised me where to go to get the food at a lower price. Still expensive but not $80/week-expensive.

Hapi got her first gut reset meal today and she seems to tolerate it. I looked at the ingredients and was quite appalled. Just about every "bad" dogfood ingredient I've ever read about is there, front and centre. But feeding her "good" dogfood hasn't worked so far, I may as well try the "bad" stuff. I looked up the dogfood on the internet and sure enough the technical reviews point all that out and don't seem that impressed, but the customer reviews are overwhelmingly positive. One reviewer said that their dog did great on it and there were no digestive issues because there was nothing there to digest.

I called a couple of old friends on the west coast a couple of weeks ago and left messages. The 4-hour time difference makes it hard to schedule but both friends have now called me back. One has a terminal lung disease and is fading fast, the other is fine but she relayed that a mutual friend is also not well (also terminal, but not for a while). Argh! But I had good conversations with both of them. The healthy friend called me today just as I was peering into a squirrel's nest that D pointed out to me at the Reservoir. The squirrel was higher in the tree screaming disapproval and then my phone chimed in.

There were three of us that used to hang out together (along with a couple of spouses): me, J-one and J-two. J-one and I used to joke about J-two being such a Pollyanna, she always saw the good in everything to the point of naivety. It was J-two who called me today and we had quite a wonderful conversation about the state of the world and various personal events. I take back all that stuff about Pollyanna naivety, she is one of the wisest people I know. Her spouse has Parkinson's and she is tasked with caregiving. She said it's like caring for a toddler and she was never good at that with real toddlers, so she is constantly working on strategies for staying sane. Recently I have been feeling that way about Hapi so I was agreeing with her vigourously. After we hung up I remembered that she had recently travelled to Mexico sans-spouse but I completely forgot to ask her about that trip. Next time.

I told J-two that as long as I have Hapi I won't be travelling but some time after that I would like to visit out west again. She said that she and J-one could provide accommodations for a week each (I sure hope J-one agrees with that!) so there's two weeks covered right there. I have two other friends that I'm fairly sure would consider a week each if the timing was right so I think it could be good. I would love to do a train trip...

Magical Mystery! just down the road...

From CBC News website on Thursday February 6:

"Like Magic: The mystery behind Wolfville's makeshift outdoor rink"

And from the Wolfville Reservoir Ponds blog (see link on right side of this page):

"Thursday, 6 February 2020

Large Pond (whose name might be "Darlene")

We recommend against skating until the current weather 

system has passed.  Local ice enthusiasts might wish to 

assemble Saturday in Guy Fawkes or Salvador Dali masks to 

reassess tactics and hopefully free the track and rink from 

their crusty new overlord.  Once conditions allow, Mayor 

Cantwell, honourable members of Wolfville Town Council, and 

their robustly-taxed flock are (UNOFFICIALLY) invited to 

skate (AT THEIR OWN RISK) on this ghost of town water 

committees past, maintained on a skate-lace budget.

Small Pond

Deep and unstable; do not use!"

I might just have to go skating, despite back problems!


Ice storm overnight has left everything encased in ice, including my car. Unfortunately I cannot open the doors when they are icy so I just have to wait for warm temperatures again. Physiotherapy appointment this morning has unfortunately not been cancelled but just about everything else has.

The Messy Side of Life

On the Causeway

The other day I was making a squash soup. The instructions called for running an immersion blender in it which I did, but the blender has these really stupid buttons that are hard to push and you have to keep pushing on one of them to keep the blender running. Because it's hard to even find the button never mind keep pressing it steadily while stirring the soup with it, it stops and starts erratically. At one point I lost control of the damn thing and it whipped out of the soup, spewing squash all over the kitchen. That thing is now in the trash.

Hapi has been having off and on diarrhea for the past month or so, she made a mess in the basement one night so I cut off her access to all but a small corner of the basement.

Hapi's bedroom

She didn't like that so she took to sleeping outside at night which was fine by me. So on Monday, I spent the afternoon at my needlework group and she spent the time sleeping in her doghouse. During her sleep she pooped in the doghouse. It must have woken her up so she got out of the doghouse and continued pooping all over the deck. That's what I came home to. Between squash soup all over the kitchen and dog poop all over the deck (and inside the doghouse and all through the thick fur on her backside) I don't know which is worse, maybe the poop. Thank the lord for washing machines! And rubber gloves and hot soapy water.

Anyway I decided I'd better consult her veterinarian, and I was fearing the worst. But that night I thought I'd check with Dr. Google first and lo and behold, diarrhea is a side effect of the anti-inflammatory she has been on for the past eight months. So I am taking her off the meds. She fasted all that day, she got a couple of small meals but no meds the next day, and I didn't call the vet. We'll see if Dr Google is onto something. And I found another immersion blender and ordered it, the reviews sound good and the pictures show the buttons looking much more manageable than the ones on the blender I just trashed.

My mechanic inspected my car because I said it was making a noise I didn't like. It took him an hour but he thinks he found the cause, a strut mount. He says it will be expensive to fix. I said, maybe it's time to retire this car and he agreed. But I don't want to buy another car while Hapi is still with me, and he said he could probably nurse the car along for however long we're talking about. He put some kind of goop on the strut mount to slow its deterioration down. What a good boy!

Happy Hour

A dog walking friend is always talking about "Happy Hour". Today she was saying her dog is getting fat from all the treats she gets at Happy Hour. She's an ex-American, so at Happy Hour she turns on the (American) news and has a drink. I think "Happy" is ironic these days and she can only stomach the news with a nice drink. I was saying to her that maybe I should try Happy Hour, and what time of day was that anyway? She said 4-ish, which is when I go for a walk in the woods with Hapi (a much more pleasant activity than watching to the news!), she said maybe I could take Hapi for a walk earlier, that is what she does.

So today I tried it. The weather today was beautiful, sunny blue skies and above (just barely) zero temperatures. Hapi and I went for our walk in the woods at 3 and were home by 4, I gave her half of her supper and poured myself a glass of wine. No news, just Beethoven on the CD player. I probably won't manage to do this every day, but today it was nice.

* * * * * * *

B is still in the hospital, her doctor told her it would be 2-6 weeks before she could leave. She heard 6 months and freaked out. I had taken 5 days off from visiting but the day I did visit was right after getting the bad news and she was being interviewed by a psychiatrist. Apparently she had been talking about killing herself.

Anonymous advice in the snow

On the bright side, she has a new roommate, S, and those two hit it off like a house afire. S insisted on having her bed moved right up beside B's bed, hardly room for a curtain between them. Turns out S is a friend of B's daughter. She has spina bifida and all sorts of disabilities and medical issues as a result, but very friendly and upbeat; hard to believe she has as many issues as she does to deal with.

The three of us yakked and laughed for a bit and then the shrink came to get B for further conversation, and S filled me in on B's reaction to the news from the doctor. Then she told me how she ended up in the hospital: fell in the bathroom, didn't have her emergency button on her and couldn't reach the phone, had to drag herself all the way out of her apartment into the hallway so another resident could see her and call for an ambulance. I am glad B has S for company, but I don't know how long S will be there. She thinks she broke her leg but nothing showed up in the X-rays so she's waiting for further tests.

Anonymous encouragement in the snow

I've decided I can only handle once-a-week visits to the hospital. I spent more than a week playing catch-up on all the stuff I wasn't doing because of physiotherapy, visiting B, and Hapi's various health issues, and yesterday was the first day that I sat down and thought, Okay, what shall I do now? I actually had an afternoon of Free Time!

I made a chocolate pudding cake, something I've been meaning to do for years and never quite got around to. I misread the recipe and put an extra tablespoon of cocoa in it, didn't hurt a bit! Maybe I'll read a book or knit something, or make another pudding cake. A friend told me her mother used to make something called Hasty Pudding that was almost exactly the same as my chocolate pudding cake, only caramel-flavoured with raisins. If I ever get tired of chocolate, I could try that!

One Out of Three Ain't Bad

(Three out of Three, plus The Dog)

This past week has been perfect winter weather, it has warmed up but there is still snow on the ground, there's no wind to speak of and the snow has been cleared off the long pond for skating. Supposed to get a lot of rain on Sunday so I don't know how long this will last. Yesterday Hapi and I went for a long walk in the Acadia woods and my youngest son called my cell phone, so we chatted while I walked. Hapi used to be his dog.

Things are going very well for him now, he has several projects on the go and they are all looking promising. The best one is his new girlfriend. He is in his forties now and has never had much luck with women. I can remember telling him when he was in early 20s that if he was still single by the time he reached his 40s he'd be in big demand, and that turns out to be more or less true. That's how it went with one of my brothers, he didn't meet his current partner until his mid-forties, after many years of not being quite good enough. Anyway, my son has a couple of other projects happening and they are turning out well too. He moved from the west coast to Ontario and this is his first experience since childhood of 'real' winter. It was nice to hear from a child who was doing well in life.

When I came out of the woods onto the road there were three young women walking towards us. They asked to pet Hapi and were oohing and aahing about how beautiful she was. My son was still on the line listening to this. When we parted ways he laughed and said he remembered when that used to happen all the time with Hiro, Hapi's brother.

* * * * * *

I visited a friend to drop off an application form she needed and to pick up some cheese her husband bought for me at Costco. We were talking about our various offspring and she told me a heartwarming story about one of her sons. She said, "One out of three ain't bad!" I told her some stuff another dogwalker told me, she also has three offspring and two are not doing well. I never hear about the third one, The Good Daughter. We both laughed and said, "One out of three ain't bad!"

* * * * * *

B is still alive and still in the hospital. She is a lousy patient. I was visiting her every other day but that became exhausting and very depressing so I dialled it back to twice a week. Still exhausting and depressing. Last night I googled "pity party" and thought, Yup, that's what we have going on here. She told me that her son F couldn't visit every night any more because he didn't have enough money for gas. I called him and said I'd loan him the money but he said he only told her that because he didn't want to go every single night. They moved her to another room, she no longer has a window and there's a woman with dementia in the bed across from her. I think they moved her because she was disturbing the other patients in the room she used to be in.

F says the doctor told him she won't be moving to a nursing home for 2-3 months. There's a bed waiting for her but she's not well enough to leave the hospital. I suspect they don't want to move her while she is in such a foul mood because they don't want her disturbing the other nursing home residents. She is not nice to be around. I know she's dying, I know she's very uncomfortable and can't sleep. She has to drinked thickened liquids and eat pureed food and hates it with a passion. She tells me terrible stories of being abused by the night nurses. F says to take everything she says with a big grain of salt, she's not in her right mind. Listening to a constant stream of complaints and nasty gossip about the nurses and orderlies is distressing. I may be some kind of naive Pollyanna but I just can't take that anymore. Beginning to see why F and I are the only people visiting her and we are both secretly trying to figure out how to reduce our time with her.

* * * * * *

Yesterday I walked by the skating pond with Hapi and another dog walker. I was admiring how beautiful it was. The other dog walker said I should take Hapi home and come back with my skates. I sighed and said I couldn't, that today was a day to go visit B. I thought about that last night, I don't think I am doing anyone any favours not going skating. Today is Friday and it's going to rain on Sunday and who knows what the ice will be like after that…

Bruce MacKinnon sums it up

Halifax Chronicle Herald, Jan. 11, 2020

Nope

I spoke too soon, she's dying. Her GP is amazed she made it through the night (last night); I don't know if she'll be with us tomorrow morning. I went to see her this afternoon, it was very bad. She's only semi-lucid. She recognized me, but only just. At least her doctor, not the Emerge doctor who admitted her but her GP, realizes she's not demented. But it doesn't matter anymore. She has been living with a few serious chronic conditions but now the diagnosis is congestive heart failure. She's on oxygen but it really doesn't make much difference now. She's quite miserable and uncomfortable, she wants to go home. Nobody has told her that she is dying.

I showed her some pictures of Hapi, she liked that. She wished I could bring Hapi in but of course that's out of the question. She's by a window but it faces onto a courtyard that I can't get into with a dog. F said he had me on the list of people the nurses will talk to on the phone about her but he wouldn't put B's sister or brother on the list because he said they were mean to her and didn't deserve it.

Relief in sight

B's son F came by yesterday to do a minor repair on my car. I asked after his mother and he told me she was in the hospital. F spoke to the doctor who admitted her and asked him to please not allow her to sign herself out. The doctor assured F that wouldn't happen, that she was too sick to go home anymore. They plan to keep her there until a nursing home bed comes available.

F is relieved: "Now I can get some sleep!" Not only is B unable to sleep but anyone taking care of her cannot sleep either. After getting her admitted F went home to bed, but the hospital called him in the middle of the night for B's CPAP machine. F got up and delivered it; he said he didn't mind being woken up for that, knowing he could go back to bed afterward and sleep the rest of the night and into the morning without interruption. I feel relief too, I have been rather stressed by the whole situation.

The doctor said they were going to run a lot of tests on her to find out what is wrong and how to treat it. They are even going to test for dementia. That worries me a bit, if they decide she is demented what exactly will they do? I am pretty sure that is not her problem. The main symptom the doctor and nurses are seeing is extreme grumpiness. I think after months of difficult breathing and little sleep, coupled with financial difficulties and inability to get help from Social Services or our healthcare system, I'd be pretty darn grumpy too.

But overall I am glad she is in the hospital and not coming out until they get her into a nursing home. I think that is where she needs to be, let's hope the next available nursing home is not too far away (the rules say up to 100 km away is allowable). If you go to the hospital in an ambulance you jump to the head of the queue in Emerge; and if you are already in the hospital when you need a nursing home bed then you jump to the head of that queue too.

Hurrah for January

Yippee! It's January! I know I am supposed to make some new year's resolutions, or goals for the coming year or something like that, but I am so happy that December is now A Thing Of The Past that all I really want to do is wallow in that pleasure. It's over. I am happy. I just had a cup of tea reclined in my lounger reading The New Yorker. I am way behind in my reading so this is only the December 2nd issue, but it is rather nice to read about what made headlines in December knowing that they are now a thing of the past.

Last night I went for supper and card games at a neighbour's place. The weather was truly crappy but knowing that I did not have far to travel to get home made me feel quite secure. Of the seven women—myself included—I knew only three others and I think that was true for most of us, except our host who presumably knew us all otherwise why did she invite us? It was interesting to engage in conversation with women you knew and didn't know. When the conversation turned to cats I was bored (not a cat lover), and when it went to dogs no doubt the cat lovers were bored. But we all put on interested faces. None of us were born here and two of the women currently live in Alberta and the NWT. A bunch of us grew up in Ontario and one woman hails from Switzerland. Three women were sisters living in different parts of the country and enjoying an annual reunion. None of the sisters ever married or had children, they are known in their family as The Three Aunts and are apparently quite popular amongst the nieces and nephews.

One woman came in the throes of a cold, which I didn't realize until some time after I sat down beside her at the dinner table. At first I hoped it was just an allergy but eventually she confessed to feeling rotten and left the party muttering about wishing she were dead. Oh joy. But the food was excellent, and the rest of us managed to hang in there until midnight when the champagne was poured and we toasted the new year. These days staying awake that long is an accomplishment! Today I am dosing myself with vitamin C and Oil of Oregano (my go-to respiratory infection preventative).

A couple of days ago I got an email from my walking group saying that we would be walking at the Reservoir on New Year's Day. I wrote to our leader advising that the trails there were icy and maybe he could suggest to the group to bring ice grippers. He did not. This morning Hapi and I went early and walked a bit on the ravine bike trails before meeting the group near the ponds. Half of them did not have ice grippers, including the leader. 

I asked him if he got my email and he looked stunned. Yes, he got it but he didn't recognize my (new) name so he disregarded it! I stared at him. You ignored it because you didn't recognize my name? He said that he didn't recognize the name and thought whoever it was probably didn't know what they were talking about. If he had known it was me of course he would have relayed the information to everyone else. I rolled my eyes at him and suggested that perhaps next time he ought not to be so judgmental. 

The walk was cut off early because half the walkers were having a lot of difficulty with the ice without ice grippers. Hapi and I stayed on to walk with our eldest dogwalker (93 years old) who was fully equipped with ice grippers and ski poles. We laughed about it.

On the sad news front, one of the regular dogs has been diagnosed with what Hiro died of. His owner will bring him to the Reservoir as long as he is able, but his days are numbered. Already he is refusing to eat. He is one of my favourites, I tell people he is a cross between Ferdinand the Bull and Eeyore. Very sweet dog.

Magic

All day yesterday I was thinking about Magic. I get all nostalgic for the Christmas of my childhood but usually not until Christmas Eve. The realities of the commercial celebration of Christmas drown out any thoughts or feelings about Magic, but on Christmas Eve things have settled down—relatively speaking—and it's a lot easier to let other thoughts in.

For many people—myself included—Christmas is a travesty. Some turn to Solstice celebrations as an alternative but I have never warmed up to that one, somehow celebrating the return of the sun at the beginning of winter just seems wrong. In this latitude we have several months of very long cold nights ahead of us before the return of the sun becomes noticeable. Winter in the Maritimes can be quite horrible, what with blizzards, power outages, and bitter winds. The return of the sun just seems like a nasty joke at this time of year. Maybe in March...

On Christmas Eve I remember how I felt about Christmas as a child. When you are really young and gullible you believe in Santa Claus bringing you the toys and gifts you long for, in the whole Nativity story with its angels and bright stars guiding wise men to the birth of a Holy Child. The Holy Child.

The Santa Claus story gets dropped first, at some point you realize it is just make-belief perpetrated by adults. You pretend you believe anyways because there are hoped-for gifts involved. But the Nativity story stays with you longer because even adults seem to believe in that one. And it is a magical event full of joy and wonder. 

The only other Christian Holy Day that comes anywhere close is Easter, but that is tinged with betrayal, horror and despair. Adults give you the story of the Easter Bunny to make up for all that but like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny is exposed as a fraud pretty early. The gifts that the Easter Bunny brings pale in comparison to the gifts of Santa Claus. 

For me, Christmas and Easter are the only times that Magic becomes real, the bright and dark sides of Magic. I think of it as a whole other world that briefly touches our world of reality and cold hard facts at those times. So on Christmas Eve, I think about and feel the bright joyful side of Magic. It is close enough to touch. On Christmas Day it spins out and away, not to return until Good Friday in its darkest form of death and sadness, but Christmas Eve is a time of awe and deepfelt joy. 

Last night I kept going outside to listen for the harness bells of Santa's magical reindeer-drawn sleigh. As a child I convinced myself that I really could hear Santa's sleigh, so I continue to listen for that even in old age. I looked for Betelgeuse but it was a cloudy night and I didn't see it. I have heard that Betelgeuse has dimmed in preparation for going supernova and I would like to see that for myself.

Pre-Christmas newsletter...

It's been a good news/bad news kind of week, but I guess that's normal for this time of year. Going shopping for the necessaries is torturous due to all of the seasonal gift shoppers out and about. I have kept my own gift shopping minimal; in one short hour I went on Amazon to pick out five gifts—four for grandchildren and one for a distant terminally ill long time friend—and had them gift wrapped and shipped to various parts of the country. Sons and their wives will get Amazon gift certificates on the 24th. Easy-peasy if a little ethically compromised. I'd just as soon skip the whole thing but right now might not be the time for it. Maybe next year…

Hapi is cruising along uneventfully, her limp comes and goes. She has discovered garbage which I suspect is deliberately being left out for her, someone out there likes to see her snooping around their back yard and is encouraging her illicit activities (the garbage was not only not in a bin but carefully placed in what looks like a dogfood bowl!). Now that there is a bit of snow on the ground I can track her and managed to catch her in the act, so now she is locked into my back yard. The picture above is her looking morose about her captivity.

After years of sending unreciprocated Xmas cards I decided to give it up this year, and then two of my dogwalking buddies gave me cards at the Reservoir. Now I am considering rushing out to buy cards to give back. Who knew we would become a little community of card-exchanging friends?

The ponds are now at their most dangerous, covered in ice that looks thick enough to walk on but really is not. Hapi learned her lesson long ago and avoids ice-covered bodies of water like the plague, but many younger dogs don't know any better. Then dog owners attempt to rescue their dogs with the not unexpected results, soaking wet and freezing cold humans and dogs.

The park maintenance guys have been busy doing post-Dorion clean-up and over the past few weeks have come to know all the regular dogs. They stop their chipping machine when we walk by to chat and pet the dogs; the dogs have come to look forward to these little encounters. The other day one of the guys was asking after one dog in particular who they hadn't seen in a while and we realized that we hadn't either. The dog's health has been iffy lately so we wondered if something bad had happened. But that very same morning the dog showed up with his owner, who explained their absence as a happy event. They were off in PEI celebrating her 65th birthday.

The bad news is two-fold. One is finding out about the terminally ill friend mentioned previously. That was shocking. I have been debating going to see her (she lives on the opposite coast), but leaving Hapi behind is problematic and taking her with me is out of the question. So for now our relationship will be confined to the telephone.

The other is regular visits with B, who is in terrible shape. Can't move, can't breathe, can't sleep. All efforts to get her help have either failed, been put on hold due to the holiday season (!!!) or been sabotaged by B herself. It is so depressing and makes me so angry that I am almost beside myself after such visits. I fantasize about angry calls to various authorities but am afraid I will only make matters worse if I follow through on such fantasies. Three times in the past few weeks her son has called an ambulance to take her to Emerge because he can't move her himself. At $140 a pop it's an expensive proposition and they have no money. I said to him, well, they can't get blood from a turnip so keep those bills coming. Maybe someone will take notice of her if she becomes a regular ambulance user. He agrees.

December howls

Almost everyone I know around here was bleary-eyed with exhaustion yesterday, none of us could sleep with the wind howling through the night. After two days it finally died in the wee hours of this morning.

Can't speak for anyone else but I lay awake listening and imagining worst case scenarios with all that noise outside. Last night I did manage to go to sleep in confidence that the wind was slightly less howly.

The hot the cold the rain the snow, I can live with all that, but the wind, oh the wind...

Story tails

It was an unseasonably warm day, rain was forecast but was minimal. I turned off the heat pump and opened all the doors and windows to get some fresh air into the house, something that is in short supply in the wintertime. I puttered around getting some winterizing chores done. Then I noticed that Hapi was nowhere around and I had left the gate (and the front door) open. So I set out to find her. I headed in the direction that she had last been sighted a couple of weeks ago, a small row house complex up the street and across the field. There were a couple of older men loading junk into a pickup there. I asked one of them if he had seen a large grey wolf-like dog around.

"Oh, I've seen that dog, beautiful! But not today, sorry."

I was about to turn away and head in another direction but he asked for my phone number in case he did spot her. So I gave it to him. One thing led to another and in less than ten minutes we had exchanged the broad details of our past lives, our children, what it's like to live in this town. I'm guessing he was a few years younger than me, but not much. Another younger man with long black hair and tattoos all over bare arms (it was warm out!) came by and the older man asked him if he'd seen my dog. The young man said no he hadn't but he could text his wife to see if she'd seen her.

"That's okay, she only just got out, I'm pretty sure she's still close by," I said.

The young man nodded and continued on his way with a bag of garbage for the outdoor garbage bin.

I went back to chatting with the older man, now we were on to where our children lived and what they were doing there. Eventually though I had to call a halt to the conversation, I was expecting company and I should probably be at home when they arrived. Besides, I had left all the doors and windows open. As I left, the man said he wanted to know more about my son who had recently bought a house in town, he himself made his living as a landlord of over thirty units and was curious about someone just starting out on that career path.

"I made a lot of mistakes when I was younger, I'm not sure I would do it over again," he said.

When I got home Hapi was in the basement, sleeping. I think she was there all along.

Good advice

These days I am not taking a lot of photos, so pictures for my posts are going to be scarce.

Last night I ushered at the Jeremy Dutcher show. Wow. Powerful music. I'd never heard of him before, but last night was amazing. We ushers were invited to a reception for Dutcher after the show but I had already agreed to meet another usher at a local pub so I didn't go to the reception. Some nights the last thing I want to do is usher but I go anyway and sometimes it is really worth it. Dutcher and the previous show, Between Breaths, were spectacularly worth it.

Dutcher talked about his (and his parents') efforts to preserve their language, Wolastoqey (Maliseet). He said that there are only a hundred native speakers left now. He said that it was not just about the words lost but the unique worldview lost. Every language expresses a worldview, when you speak that language you participate in that worldview. When a language goes extinct, so does that worldview. I think this is true.

* * * * *

The usher that I met at the pub is francophone, from Montreal. At 77 years old she is one of the most beautiful women I have met. I love the sound of her voice and her laugh as well. Mostly I spent the evening just listening. Our server recognized her as someone who had participated in a panel on women aging in her sociology class. The server said she really appreciated my usher friend's advice. After the server took our order I asked my friend what her advice had been.

"I told them to get an education, it would set them free."

She said that living free is the most important thing; and maybe a university education these days doesn't get you as far as it used to, but it is still important enough to help young women be free in their lives. Apparently our server took that to heart.

* * * * *

I gave myself a good scare this week, really silly of me. It started out consulting Doctor Google about some signs (symptoms?) that Hapi was displaying. I came to the conclusion that she had Cushing's Disease. Among other things, one sign of this disease is increased appetite, so one day I let Hapi eat as much as she wanted to see just how far she would go. She used to be very picky about what, how much and when she ate but that seemed to be changing. So that day I just kept refilling her bowl to see how far she would go. She ate twice as much as usual. In my mind that kind of confirmed the Cushing's diagnosis. However the next day she didn't eat a single thing and she seemed to be in pain. All she really wanted to do was hide in the basement. So I made an appointment for Friday with the vet to discuss, by which time Hapi had recovered from her day of overeating.

The vet darn near laughed in my face. She waved the results of Hapi's recent bloodwork at me and said, "She's healthy! Old, but healthy!"

I got myself all worked up for nothing. Hapi might have Cushing's, but it's kind of irrelevant. The tests are expensive, there is no cure, and dogs can live for years with it. I'll try not to overfeed her again.

My knee versus Hapi

What ElizabethAnn saw on a recent trip to the big city

My knee gave out last week. I have a longterm issue with my left knee, stemming from an injury in 1975 now turned arthritic. During the summer the pain gradually increased but I ignored it, figuring it would go away on its own. Not so. Last week it became almost intolerable climbing stairs and then driving my car. Since my car has a standard transmission and clutch and the problem is in my left knee, that proved to be an unfortunate combination. These days they don't make standard transmissions any more but my car is old. I know I have to replace it but was hoping to keep it going at least as long as I have Hapi because it accommodates her quite nicely.

Now it's a race to the finish, my knee versus Hapi. A couple of months ago I would have said my knee was going to last much longer but Hapi has perked up so much with the onset of cold weather that I think she will outlast my knee. With a knee brace and some knee exercises and a slight adjustment of the seat in my car I can get by. I've signed up for physiotherapy as well. We have a free physio clinic in town but of course there is a waitlist for that. I spoke to one of the physiotherapists there and she thought I had a good chance of getting in before Christmas.

One of my dog walking friends at the Reservoir cautioned me against getting knee surgery. She has had numerous surgeries on her knees and back and says that in retrospect she never would have had the knee surgeries; it was a downhill run right from the get-go. The back surgeries are another story, although they were high risk she felt she had no alternative if she wanted to save her mobility for a few more years.

My friend B was checked into the hospital last week by her doctor (good news: B has a doctor now!!). She can't breathe and I guess he was quite horrified by her condition. I went to visit her in the hospital in the next town over and was amazed at her improvement. They had her on an oxygen tank and she was her old self again. Not exactly mobile but in good spirits and joking about everything. I think the nurses were quite enjoying her rough good humour. However she was quite bored and the hospital charged almost fifty dollars a week for watching TV, which is B's main activity during the day. She doesn't read, she rarely knits and she was in a room by herself. So after a few days she checked herself out.

Her son came to drive her home and her breathing problem immediately resumed. I came to visit her a few days later and she was in a far worse mood than she had been before the hospital stay: depressed, angry, spiteful, self-pitying. I commented on how being able to breathe while in the hospital had enormously improved her mood, her son seemed relieved that someone besides himself was telling her that.

B said that she couldn't get an oxygen tank at home until she was assessed and that they wanted to keep her in the hospital for another four days to do the assessment, but she refused to do that because it was too boring. She had been given a bunch of forms by the Housing Authority to get her doctor to sign but he would only sign one of them. She showed me the forms he refused to sign and frankly, I can't say that I blame him. In order to jump the housing waitlist queue she has to prove that she is in dire need and although it is plain as day to anyone familiar with her situation that that is the case, the form is so bureaucratic and convoluted that the doctor would be forced to sign his name to things that he could not prove.

I can certainly understand B's mood in the face of her ill health and all the barriers to getting help, the problem is that she is lashing out at the people who are trying to help her and that is not furthering her cause. But I'd be mad and spiteful in her shoes too.

Another friend suggested that perhaps B would be better off in a nursing home. I am now inclined to agree, but as near as I can tell the process of getting her into one is almost as bad as getting her into decent subsidized housing. Never mind that she will fight tooth and nail against being consigned to a nursing home.

This is all taking a toll on me, I feel quite helpless to do anything for her and visiting her when she is in such a foul mood is not fun at all. Besides her son, I am the only person who sets foot in her apartment, and the main purpose of the visit is for B to feed treats to Hapi. They adore each other. I am thinking that my next visit will be at a time of day when her son is not around and I am going to have a hard talk with her about hospitals and nursing homes. She is very hard on her son but inclined to be gentle with me since I am her only friend now, so I might be able to get through to her if he is not around.

On the positive side of the ledger, I have been invited for Christmas dinner with a bunch of fun people, and am considering joining a committee to bring another refugee family to town. This committee has already successfully settled four Syrian families and is looking to take on a fifth. Apparently there are a million Syrian refugees currently living in Turkey and the Turkish government is looking to send them all back to Syria as soon as their push to end the Syrian war is done. Many Syrians are desperate to get out of Turkey before that happens, they do not think their chances of survival in a war-torn Syria are great. I think that for all our problems one of the big pluses of living in this country is our attitude towards refugees and immigrants. It would be nice to be actively involved in that.

Sleep

Hapi at the Reservoir after the snow

The cold snap we are having fueled an energy burst in Hapi, she is enjoying the weather a lot. She still limps but it doesn't seem to bother her, we are doing a lot more walking than I thought she was capable of.

I had an appointment with my doctor this week, I was hoping to convince her to give me a prescription for sleeping pills. Not that I want to be on sleeping pills but I don't know what else to do, I've tried everything else. It took six weeks to get the appointment, and then the day prior to the appointment the clinic called me to say the doctor was sick and would I mind rescheduling with a substitute doctor the same day. I didn't know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing but I sure wasn't going to say no.

The substitute doctor was a locum, a young woman who does not have her own practice but just substitutes for other doctors as necessary. She scheduled extra time because she didn't know any of the patients she would be seeing, and it became immediately obvious that she had done her homework. She knew why I was there, my medical history and recent bloodwork results, and was very engaging. I quite enjoyed the meeting with her and she was very informative and helpful.

I asked a question about my hearing. I know it is going and I am trying to put off hearing aids as long as possible. I can hear better if I can clear my Eustachian tubes, but the one on the left is difficult to clear. She said she had the same problem and had been told she should blow balloons. She had never tried it but hoped that I would so she could find out if it really works. She said I could also try decongestants but they don't work well on Eustachian tubes and the side effects are not good.

In the end she gave me the prescription for sleeping pills, saying that my regular doctor was probably going to kill her for that but she wasn't going to be around then so I will have to deal with that in three months time. She also told me that my bloodwork was fine, and not only that but she said that it was reasonable to expect that it would stay that way more or less indefinitely. She saw no warning signs of impending trouble. Of course all that can change on a dime but it's nice to know that for now everything is fine.

Interestingly, doctors (in this province anyway) are being strongly advised not to prescribe sleeping pills to seniors. There is currently no recommended treatment for chronic or longterm insomnia with the exception of cognitive behaviour therapy, which is essentially not available due to lack of certified therapists. But provincial Pharmacare for seniors subsidizes sleeping pills at the highest strengths available (formerly they only subsidized lower strengths). I guess the right hand does not talk to the left hand. Not only did I get my prescription but it cost me less than ten dollars for a three month supply, which is a lot cheaper than any over-the-counter medication.

I spent some time on the internet following up on some of the stuff the locum had referred to. I found an interesting article about a sleep clinic in the UK that apparently is very successful and popular, with a years-long wait list of patients. They do cognitive behaviour therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) and apparently have a 50% cure rate, with around 80% of patients experiencing significant improvement. That means half of patients who come to this clinic are not cured, and 20% see little or no improvement. The head doctor of the clinic is rightly proud of their record, nevertheless he says that doctors should be prescribing sleep medication because chronic insomnia is a severe malady and there are simply not enough therapists to provide CBT-I for everyone who needs it.

Also, not everyone responds to CBT-I. I have read that seniors are less likely to see significant improvement because of age-related changes, although some studies seem to show that seniors are especially benefitted by CBT-I. I tried to do it on my own last winter and had some success, but could not break through a limit of six hours a night. Months of six hours a night left me exhausted. Non-prescription medications—including herbal remedies and cannabis—have been unreliable, ineffective, and/or left me groggy during the day. My one experience of sleeping pills for about one month of daily use a couple of years ago was effective, reliable and did not leave me groggy during the day. But they were hell getting off of when the supply ran out.

I haven't used my new pills yet. The bottle sits in my bedside table drawer, a kind of talisman against sleeplessness.

Super powers and other odds and ends

You know how some people talk about having a super power? I just realized today that I have one too. Unfortunately I don't have a lot of control over it, it just pops up spontaneously, usually in the middle of the night. Kind of inconvenient but at least it makes being sleepless a little more entertaining. So the super power is a kind of laser-like clarity on any issue I choose to focus it on. When it is happening I think of questions that I have been puzzling over and then shine my laser light on it. Instant clarity! Sometimes I might be wondering what makes someone I know tick, I just shine this light on them and then I know. It is non-judgmental, there is no right or wrong about it or emotional content, just it is what it is.

Last night it kicked in and I focussed it on some emotional stuff I've been dealing with lately. Nothing like lack of sleep to leave you off-balance emotionally. The whole issue was laid out clear as day. What it was I was feeling, where it came from, how I was misdirecting it, what I needed to do about it. I played around with it for awhile, directed it towards some other things on my mind to see if I could get more answers, and then it went away and I went back to sleep. It's a weird super power. But it definitely gave me some clarity.

My new birth certificate finally arrived. It's very odd looking, everyone I have shown it to agrees with me on that. It is so thin and light (I think it is made of the same plastic that they make dollar bills from now) that I almost threw it out with the envelope it came in. I was expecting a little plasticized card and there was none in the envelope. First I pulled out a blank sheet of paper and stared at it, then I looked into the envelope and thought I saw some writing inside the envelope. Sure enough there was this really thin piece of plastic in there that was my birth certifcate. I went to the bank to change my name on my account, the teller said she was born in another country and had never seen a birth certificate like that. Then I went to another bank to change my name on my credit card and the teller there pulled out her own New Brunswick birth certificate which was a conventional plasticized card. I still have to go back to Service Canada to get my SIN name changed.

I harvested my second crop of peas, my pathetic squash crop, and a couple of turnips. I have two rows of snow peas, I pulled up one row but left the other row in place. It dawned on me that snow peas might be aptly named. So I am leaving the second row out to see what it will do in the snow. I took most of the peas off the plants and left some of the smaller ones in place. The plants are very green and still flowering vigourously. The pea pods are still growing. I still have beets, kale and turnips in the garden and a few onions that hadn't sprouted when I harvested their cohorts. Now they are providing me with green onions. I like beets but I like beet greens better, so mostly I grow beets to get the greens. Also, I found what appears to be a single oakleaf lettuce plant growing in my garden. I did not plant it, I don't know where it came from.

I changed out the rope that I hang my birdfeeder on in preparation for putting the feeder out soon. The old rope was frayed and brittle and broke a couple of times last winter so it's time for a new one. The board I put peanut butter on was mouldy because I left it out all summer so I will have to replace that too.