Status update

I have been sick now for over 10 days. Pretty sure it's not covid-19 but no way to know for sure as the only people being tested are recent arrivals from away or their contacts who display the typical symptoms, and I don't fall into either of those categories. Which is fine, I am practicing social distancing and washing my hands and all that, and a couple of neighbours have offered to do grocery shopping for me. I don't feel like I am mortally ill, just not very well.

One of the most bothersome things is the level of anxiety. The other night I started obsessing about symptoms, and whether or not I have the virus. I kept looking stuff up on the internet and at one point I looked up anxiety. Bingo! At least half of what I am experiencing could easily be attributed to anxiety. How do you separate out what is real illness and what is the physical effects of anxiety?

So now I am in effect social isolating. There are certain people who raise my level of anxiety so I am not calling or responding to calls from them. Not that I dislike them, I just can't handle how those conversations affect me right now. I think we all have to forgive friends and family for being less than perfect, but in trying times we also have to protect ourselves.

All parks are closed, including the Reservoir. So no walking the dog there. I miss all the other dogs, as does Hapi. Today we met one of her buddies out for a walk and the two dogs wanted to walk together. Ironically both dogs are large and both owners are small; it was a bit of a tug-of-war to separate them. The other dog whined at the injustice of it all and Hapi dug in her feet and refused to move. If I am not careful she can slip out of her collar because I can't tighten it up enough without choking her. She knows that.

Photo notes: someone hung a bunch of teeny weeny bird houses in the woods at the Reservoir. These pics are from before the park was closed and also before our latest big snow storm.

Post-hike malaise

I did go on the hike I mentioned in my last post and it was pretty grueling. Hapi and I both survived it, but only just barely. The pace was being set by a couple of younger people and Hapi and I were the slowest. The first half was all uphill. The hike leader realized how far I was lagging behind so he chose to stick with me and let everyone else go ahead. I was grateful for that but at the same time it didn't feel great to be the slowest person.

On top of that, I was overdue for visiting B in the hospital and I thought I wouldn't be able to do it the next day due to various other commitments, so barely I got home and I turned around again to go to the hospital. Not a great visit, B was crying and trying to plan a way to escape the hospital. Since she's on oxygen and can hardly make it from her bed to the toilet with her walker it was all very hypothetical but I went along with it.

After all was said and done, I had cold symptoms a couple of days later. Great. Meanwhile the world is going crazy over covid-19 and since the overlap between flu, cold and covid-19 symptoms is pretty fuzzy, there was the additional anxiety of maybe this isn't a cold. I couldn't tell if I had a fever or not. Turns out my thermometer is well past its best-by date and you can't get a thermometer for love or money, anywhere. A little more anxiety.

This morning I woke up feeling hellish. Hapi spent the night in the basement because of the wind and rain (she doesn't like it) and sure enough she had peed the bedding so I had to get up to let her out and start a laundry. A few hours later the wind had diminished somewhat so I drove her to the Reservoir for a walk. I photographed some tiny new "birdhouses" hung in the bushes. Very brightly coloured, like Easter decorations.

And so it goes.

When life bites you in the behind, keep moving

This weekend I hit a wall, figuratively speaking. Appears to have caused major damage, still coming to terms with it. I hate when that happens!

Monday morning I took Hapi to the Reservoir, she dawdled her way there and back while I was so frustrated, angry, depressed and tired that I had to really concentrate on not yanking her leash to speed her up. When we finally got home I called a couple of friends and left messages to call me back and then put a big bowl of food out for her and took myself on a two and half hour brisk walk in ugly weather out on the dikes. By myself. Got home exhausted, too tired anymore to be angry, depressed or frustrated.

One of the friends called me back, she'd spent quite a lovely morning at the gym and later out for lunch. When I told her about my forced march and state of mind we ended up joking about it. A lot of laughing. She apologized for laughing but really it was helpful. Took the edge off things.

The trails at the Reservoir are still icy, one dogwalking friend is staying away and another just flew to the Barbados for a month-long vacation. She owns a condo there. Yesterday a couple of us asked her if she was concerned about travelling right now. She said she had looked for hand sanitizer but couldn't find any so she bought gloves instead. Someone asked her, But aren't you scared? She replied, "I'm 94! Something is going to get me! I can't be wasting time feeling scared!" We'll all be counting the days until she returns.

Today I went on a short hike with the Wednesday walking group, they do much easier walks than the Thursday hiking group. Hapi dawdled along behind, waving her tail happily but definitely dawdling. A couple of times I had to go back for her because there was a car coming or there was a big dog at a house we were walking by or whatever. Nothing happened and she was fine. Tomorrow the Thursday group is going to a location that I want to go to but realistically I shouldn't. Haven't made up my mind yet what to do about that. In the state of mind I am in right now it is better to keep moving so I am too tired to feel anything else, but Hapi may not appreciate that. Leaving her at home for a slower walk later in the day is an option but not really a good one.

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...

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!

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.

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.

What Crows Know

The other day I was walking to the Reservoir with my dog and we stopped to chat with a woman I know who lives on the road to the park. She is a bit older than me and lives in the cutest little blue cottage set in a garden lot with a screen of trees and shrubs along the roadway for privacy. In the good weather she is often out in her yard with her cat, who happens to like Hapi. Hapi has come to know who I am friends with along our route and she always wants me to stop there and chat with them, regardless of whether their cats are friendly or not.

Anyway the woman was in her yard and I crossed the road to chat. She told me she has been watching the crows and their reactions to different people walking by. Apparently they have been dive bombing some passers-by.

"Really? They don't dive bomb me!" I said.

"Of course not," she said, "They know you because of your dog, and they know me because of my cane, but it is interesting to watch how they react to people they don't know."

That took me aback. They know me?

"Well of course they know you! You have that big gray dog!"

I know that crows are smart and it is interesting to watch them go about their business, but it did not occur to me that it was a two-way street. When I left my friend's yard to continue on to the Reservoir I was thinking about the crows. What exactly do they know about me? For sure they know where I live, and they must recognize my car. But mostly I am on foot around town so they know my comings and goings, they know something of my daily routine.

Do they talk about me?

When I hear them cawing as we walk by, are they saying, "Here they come, there they go"?

The crows must know quite a few people around town, I can't be the only identifiable person to them. Do they keep track of relationships, who knows who and what they do together?

Or maybe they are completely uninterested in me, it's my dog they are keen to watch. The day that Hapi took so long to get out of bed I saw a crow standing in my driveway near the back door where Hapi usually emerges first thing in the morning.

It was pecking at the ground, as if pretending that it was there hunting for food when really it was wondering what had happened that the dog was not outside yet.

My smarty pants kid

My youngest son wants to buy a house here. He doesn't want to live here, he just wants it for rental income. I've been going out with a real estate agent off and on for a year or more to look at possibilities. He's got a condo out west that he is selling to buy the house. The condo sale has been a torturous affair but it now looks like it might actually happen. So I went out yet again looking at houses and I found one. I really liked the look of it, it is in a good neighbourhood and within my son's budget. The price is reasonable for the current state of the housing market here.

My son was not enamoured with it, he thought it was too "suburban" for his taste. He sent me links to houses that he thought were more to his liking. I pointed out to him that while the houses he liked would probably be nice places for him to live, they were not really suitable as income property. He thought he could get a twofer, something that he could make money off of and also enjoy living in himself some day. I said I didn't think that was really possible unless he came down here himself to do the house hunting. It's one thing for me to choose an income property for him, quite another for me to choose a place he might like to live in.

So I think he is reconciled to this house. In any case he made an offer and it was accepted, we did the home inspection and I made the deposit on the house. Until he closes the sale of the condo he has no money. Let's hope the condo sale goes smoothly.

The weekend before the home inspection my son found another place for sale that he wanted me to look at. It was well beyond his budget, I think he was just getting jittery about the house. I think I talked him out of it, then felt jittery myself that I might be pushing him in a direction he did not want to go. But I think he is okay with it. We chatted last night after I paid the deposit and he told me of his plans for the future. It's all very ambitious and I really hope it works for him. We talked about him coming for a visit to see Hapi, who used to be his dog. I said travel in the winter is a bit dicey here, he should either come right away or later in the spring, but I didn't know if Hapi would still be around in the spring. Some days she's full of beans, other days I think she's just barely hanging in.

I mentioned to him a book I was reading. I said it contained a lot of philosophical references which I was not expecting and were kind of over my head. He asked who the author was and I couldn't remember, then I looked at the book and told him the author's name.

"Oh that guy is garbage, don't read it," he says.

"What do you mean, why is he garbage?"

My son starts in on how the author has off-the-wall theories about ethics, but this book I am reading I don't think is about ethics. Although I could be wrong on that, I'm only on the first chapter.

"Well I think I'm going to read it anyway, I'll let you know what I think when I'm done," I said.

He told me once that I was the smartest person he knows (aw shucks!) but he's pretty smart himself. I'm kind of proud of him.

The sorry month of November

High tide in the harbour

Hapi has her good days and her bad days, today was a bad day.

Yesterday at the Reservoir she took off on her own into the woods and was gone for almost twenty minutes. She came back looking quite proud of herself but very shortly started limping. By the time we got to the parking lot she was limping pretty badly and another dog walker offered to drive us home.

During the night she was licking her paw and in the morning she had no desire to get out of bed. She didn't seem ill, she just didn't want to get up. Around 11am (with the time change that would have been the equivalent of noon) I made her get up. I decided that even though she was limping very badly now it would still be a good idea to go to the Reservoir. I drove this time. She limped slowly down the road to the ponds. We met several dogs along the way and she was happy to greet them all. Three dogs were leaving the Reservoir and she looked like she really wanted to go with them but I coaxed her down to the pond. She went in the water and just stood there. Some more dogs arrived and she got out of the water to greet them too. Then I took her home. I think that even though she was in pain she still appreciated the little bit of social time she had there. She spent the rest of the day in her doghouse. I hope she is a little better tomorrow.

I'm not in great shape either. Sleep has become elusive and after multiple nights of insufficient sleep I am tired all the time and quite lacking in energy for anything. Even reading has become difficult, a couple of pages and I'm done. It's depressing. I have pretty much exhausted all the various remedies and relaxation techniques out there and am wondering how I am supposed to function. Hapi and I are a sorry pair right now.

Big Muddy

Today was exciting, not in a good way, but at least it ended well.

I went shopping in the next town over, where all the big box stores and malls are. Picked up a couple of things at a couple of big stores while Hapi waited in the car. When I was done I thought I'd take her for a walk on the trail by the Cornwallis River, a big muddy tidal river that empties into the Minas Basin near my town. The river is serpentine and when the trail came near the river I could see that the tide was coming in. On one side of the river you could see the water flowing outward and on the other side it was flowing inward.

At a certain point the trail is too close to the river, they have had to shore up the trail side of the river with boulders. I stopped there to watch the water before turning back the way we came. Hapi took the opportunity to go into the water and float around for a bit. I took a couple of photos of her there. I called her out of the river to head home and she started coming, but she couldn't get out of the water. The mud was very thick and she was having a tough time getting her footing. A woman walking by on the trail stopped to ask if the dog was okay. I said she was not okay, she couldn't get out of the river.

"Do you want me to call 911?" she asked.

"No," I said, "I'll give her a little longer to try to get out, and I have a phone so I can call if I have to."

The woman watched for a few moments and then continued on. I urged Hapi to get out, all the while looking for another spot along the shore that might be easier. Tried calling her to a spot that looked less steep but she didn't want to go back into the river. A couple of times she almost made it but the rocks below the tideline were covered in a couple of inches of slippery mud and she just couldn't get a grip. She was already tired when she went in and now she was exhausted. She gave up and just stood there in the mud and water shivering and whimpering a bit. I called 911.

The woman who answered took the details and she said she could see exactly where I was from my cell phone signal. I also gave her a description of the spot. She said the police would be along shortly and I should call her back if my dog was able to get out on its own. I waited. In the distance I saw the white police car coming, but he had to stop a couple of times to open gates on the trail. Finally he pulled up and jumped out of the car.

"Does he have a collar? Does he bite?"

"Yes" and "No."

The cop immediately ran down over the boulders to where Hapi was and grabbed her collar and pulled her up. He had to pull her half way up the rocks because she couldn't get her footing, partly because it was steep and slippery and partly because she was exhausted. They both arrived back on the trail wet and muddy.

"Where's your car? I'll drive you there," he said.

If it were just me I would have said I could walk but I didn't think Hapi could.

"Are you sure? She's covered in mud!"

He just looked down at his feet which were caked in mud almost to his knees.

He opened the back door to let her in but she wouldn't go. I went around to the other side and opened the other door and Hapi followed me and tried to get in. I had to lift her in, she really couldn't do it. Now we were all covered in mud.

"Good thing I'm planning to do a laundry," I said.

He said, "Just a moment, I have to call off the Fire Department who are waiting down the road in case I couldn't get her."

He made the call and I told him where I left my car and we drove there. I told him that I was a little embarrassed to call 911 for my dog since she was not a human person.

"Hey! My dog is my person! Next time, you call!" he said.

He then suggested I take Hapi to the Pet Valu store where they have a big tub to wash a dog in for $10.

"Good idea!" I said, "I've been there before but I wouldn't have thought of it."

He dropped us off at my car and took some information, my name and address and age. I'd already given that info to the 911 lady, I guess he just wanted to make sure he had rescued the right dog. I went straight to the Pet Valu and washed off as much of the mud as I could. Hapi wasn't happy but all the store staff came to watch and admire what a beautiful dog she was.

When Hapi finally got out of the river the tide was already in by almost a foot and still coming. I suppose if we had waited long enough it would have floated her up over the mud to where she could get a grip on the rocks, but by that time she would have been half dead of exhaustion and probably still wouldn't have been able to get out. I might have been able to grab her but it was a good 20 minute walk back to the car and she wouldn't have been able to do it. I couldn't get my car onto the trail because of the gates. I probably should have let the woman who stopped earlier call 911 but at the time I thought you weren't supposed to do that for just a dog and I still thought Hapi could get out on her own.

Not exactly what I had planned for the day!

Hapi tales

Right now I am dealing with a stabbing headache, a gum infection and a sore tongue (from accidentally biting it) all on the left side of my head. I'm thinking this is stress-related. Usually I get these kinds of ailments after the stress has been mostly relieved so I suppose this is good news, I'm out of the woods. But it is not pleasant.

We're seeing some daylight at the end of the tunnel for my friend B. Her son who lives with her will see an increase in income, over $250/month, which will go a long way toward alleviating their financial situation. There is potential for more in the long term as well. Also I made contact with the Continuing Care people in the provincial government and they are going to assess B's situation to see if there is anything they can do to help. Bottom line, she is not invisible anymore; there will be people aware of her circumstances and troubles who actually have the power to do something about it. There is a Seniors department in the government but I couldn't see anything there worth pursuing. Seems to be mostly about "positive aging" and keeping fit.

Hapi's fur yarn and the woollen tail sock

My dog Hapi has been losing the fur on her wonderful tail, there is now a four-inch strip of exposed bare skin near the tip (see photo at top). I've taken her to the vet a couple of times and the diagnosis and treatment has been not so useful. I joked with friends about making her a "tail sock" to cover her bare patch in the wintertime, and this week I got serious about knitting one up for her. I remembered that I have a ball of yarn that was spun from her own undercoat fur a few years ago so I thought it would match her tail fur. It is very soft. I made a test tail sock from sheep wool that is not so soft and before winter I will make the final one, assuming that her tail fur does not miraculously grow back before then.

...We thought they'd never end...

Labour Day, one of the very few days of the year when everything is closed. I like it, it's like a moment out of time, time standing still.

We are into the very best time of year around here, a month or two of absolutely perfect weather. The unbearable heat of summer is done, the miserable cold of winter still in the future. And the gardens and farm markets bursting with tomatoes and corn and squashes and everything else. The students are back and celebrating the way students do, the streets are lively and sometimes too lively. This year the students in my neighbourhood seem not to be the "party hearty" types so we all get to sleep at night.

This is good for Hapi too. She can just barely handle the heat of summer, the cooler days are perking her up. I was supposed to take her to the groomer to get all her matted fur cleaned up but I totally forgot and now the next available appointment is a month away. She's going to be a terrible mess by then. Under normal circumstances it takes hours and hours to clean her up but now that she is old I am reluctant to put her through that. I told the groomer I just want "quick and dirty" and if that means she comes out still a matted mess then so be it.

She had a bad episode of diarrhea necessitating leaving the back door open at night so she could get out rather than do it in the kitchen, when that cleared up (yay rice and apples!) she then became incontinent. So she has decided not to sleep indoors at all. I miss her being by my bed but on the other hand I get to sleep through the night.

She is losing the fur on her tail, her once beautiful billowing flag. The vet checked her out and thought it was not a sign of something worse, she was otherwise healthy enough, and recommended trying melatonin. So we're doing that. I now sympathize with men going bald, I hate seeing her ratty tail.

Birthday gift, one of the tea towels I wove in the spring

Last Wednesday was a friend's 65th birthday. I've known L for 46 years, she was a teenager when I first met her. On Wednesday a bunch of us met at her sister-in-law's for a birthday lunch and then on Saturday her husband threw her a "surprise" birthday party at home. It wasn't really a surprise, when he phoned to invite me to the party L happened to be there and I had the phone on speaker (I usually do that automatically): so much for surprise. But he invited all of the old gang, all of us who have known L almost since she arrived in this province.

She arrived a year before I did, in 1972. There was only one other person at the surprise party who knew L longer than I did, M. He told a story from back in the day, a story that until this Saturday he had not told in its entirety. As L told me later, if M had told the truth about the incident before now she would have killed him. She always knew he wasn't telling the truth, fortunately she no longer wished to kill him for it. It was a good story, I'd never heard the whole story either, just his severely edited version of it. L and I rehashed the story on Sunday and we decided that even now he was not telling the whole truth, parts of the story just didn't ring true. Oh well, we all self-edit.

Now you're intensely curious as to what the story is, I'll just say that it involved drugs and the RCMP and hiding stuff behind L's back. In the end nobody got hurt and nobody went to jail, sort of an Alice's Restaurant tale. I guess that tale was M's birthday gift to L.

At one point in the party L's husband sat down beside me with their old photo albums and started turning the pages. Talk about Memory Lane!! Between the photo album and M's tale it was an evening spent in the past, almost half a century ago.

L's mother died when she was quite young and her father was no great shakes at parenting. So at 16 she took off with her boyfriend on his motorbike and on a whim they headed to Nova Scotia. Shortly after arriving here he was killed in a road accident, leaving L and another friend who travelled with them behind. They had found an abandoned house way back on the mountain, near some other hippies also squatting in an abandoned house. So she met some of the local freaks that way. There quickly grew up quite a community of young people, including some new arrivals from out west, the three guys who set up Trinity Farm ("the three guys"). My husband and I and our 2 kids arrived the following year, we had lived in a house with the three guys in Vancouver. We had parted ways for our own adventures, but for one reason and another we decided to follow the guys to Nova Scotia a year later. M was the cousin of one of the three guys and used to hang out at Trinity Farm, and so did L. My little family arrived at Trinity Farm on the Labour Day weekend of 1973.

When M told his story we weren't sure exactly when it happened, but piecing together the bits that each of us remembered from those days we decided that it was it was either the fall of 1974 or the early winter of '75. I was preoccupied with my own drama (family breakup) so I was only dimly aware of other people's dramas. Those were definitely the days, my friend.